Greenland Interglacial Temperatures – last 10,000 years. Are we headed for an ice age? (See below for more detail.)
David Lappi is a geologist from Alaska who has sent in a set of beautiful graphs–including an especially prosaic one of the last 10,000 years in Greenland–that he put together himself (and which I’ve copied here at the top).
If you wonder where today’s temperature fits in with the grand scheme of time on Earth since the dinosaurs were wiped out, here’s the history. We start with the whole 65 million years, then zoom in, and zoom in again to the last 12,000 from both ends of the world. What’s obvious is that in terms of homo sapiens history, things are warm now (because we’re not in an ice age). But, in terms of homo sapiens civilization, things are cooler than usual, and appear to be cooling.
Then again, since T-rex & Co. vanished, it’s been one long slide down the thermometer, and our current “record heatwave” is far cooler than normal. The dinosaurs would have scoffed at us: “What? You think this is warm?”
With so much volatility in the graphs, anyone could play “pick a trend” and depending on which dot you start from, you can get any trend you want. — Jo
GUEST POST by David Lappi
65 million years of cooling
The following two graphs (images created by Robert A. Rohde / Global Warming Art) are climate records based on oxygen isotope thermometry of deep-ocean sediment cores from many parts of the world [1]). On both graphs, colder temperatures are toward the bottom, and warmer temperatures toward the top. Significant temperature events on the first graph show the start and end of Antarctic glaciation 34 and 25 million years ago, and the resumption of glaciation about 13 million years ago. It is obvious from the graph that we are now living in the coldest period of Earth’s history for the last 65 million years. Despite recent rumors of global warming, we are actually in a deep freeze.
Global Temperature estimates over the last 65 million years.
Image created by Robert A. Rohde / Global Warming Art
5 million years of cooling
The last five million years of climate change is shown in the next graph based on work by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 [2] . It shows our planet has a dynamic temperature history, and over the last three million years, we have had a continuous series of ice ages (now about 90,000 years each) and interglacial warm periods (about 10,000 years each). There are 13 (count ’em) ice ages on a 100,000 year cycle (from 1.25 million years ago to the present, and 33 ice ages on a 41,000 year cycle (between 2.6 million and 1.25 million years ago). Since Earth is on a multi-million-year cooling trend, we are currently lucky to be living during an interglacial warm period, but we are at the end of our normal 10,000 year warm interglacial period.
65 million years of global temperatures
Image created by Robert A. Rohde / Global Warming Art
The last 10 millenia
To detail the more recent prehistoric temperature changes, scientists have drilled a number of ice cores in ancient glacial ice. Paleotemperature data from ice cores is considered to be our best continuous record of temperatures on the planet for time-spans up to about 420,000 years ago. Annual layering in undisturbed glacial ice allows us to precisely date the layers, and gives us a very accurate time and temperature sequence. The US government drilled the GISP 2 ice core in central Greenland over a five-year period, and the data is available here. This data set is useful because it reports temperatures (measured by oxygen isotopes) every 10 to 60 years — a good resolution. I sometimes see graphs of ice-core temperatures or greenhouse gasses that are based on measurements every 1,000 or 2,000 years: not nearly close enough together for comparisons that are useful today. I downloaded and graphed these data in Excel myself. The following graphs have a time scale in years Before Present (BP).
The next graph of temperature from the ice core for the last 10,000 years (the current interglacial period) shows that Greenland is now colder than for most of that period (vertical scale in degrees C below zero). We can see the Medieval Warm Period 800 to 1,000 years ago was not particularly warm, and the Little Ice Age 150 to 650 years ago was one of the longest sustained cold periods during this interglacial. We are now recovering from this abnormal cold period, and the recovery started long before anthropogenic greenhouse gases were produced in any quantity. The curved trend line in green shows that we have been experiencing declining temperatures for the past 3,000 years, and are likely to be heading down toward the next ice age. Temperatures are only considered to be increasing if viewed for the last 150 years, from 1850 onward, which is roughly when thermometers began collecting global data, and is also the period of time the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has chosen for its review. The red portion of the curve is the recovery from the Little Ice Age. The amount of 20th century warming is unknown, since it was recently revealed that unknown portions of the international temperature databases have been tampered with, and the amount and extent of the tampering has not been publicly documented. It is likely that some warming has continued into the 20th century, but it is also likely that the amount of warming is not as great as the 0.6 degrees C that the global warming advocates would lead us to believe.
Our current warming is well within natural variation, and in view of the general decline in temperatures during the last half of this interglacial, is probably beneficial for mankind and most plants and animals. The graph clearly shows the Minoan Warming (about 3200 years ago), the Roman Warming (about 2000 years ago), and the Medieval Warm Period (about 900 years ago). Great advances in government, art, architecture, and science were made during these warmer times.
UPDATE: This graph shows the ice-core data up until 1855. The last 150 years (1705 to 1855) are highlighted in red to show the warming as the Earth began coming out of the LIA.
Long-term, temperatures are now declining (for the last 3,000 years), and we appear to be headed for the next 90,000 year ice age, right on schedule at the end of our current 10,000 year warm period. We have repeated this cycle 46 times in succession over the last 2.6 million years. And in case you are wondering, the previous Antarctic ice cores tell a broadly similar story. The following graph of ice core data from Vostok (vertical scale in degrees C variation from present) shows that Antarctica is also experiencing a long-term (4,000 year) cooling trend mirroring the Greenland GISP2 cooling trend. Though the individual temperature spikes and dips are different than in Greenland, the long-term temperature trend on the planet appears to be down, not up. And since it is so late in our current interglacial period, we could be concerned about global cooling.
Vostok Antarctica, last 12,000 years of Interglacial temperature.
The US is currently drilling a new ice core (see here), already at 1,512 meters where it is 7,700 years old, that is dated absolutely by counting annual ice layers, and each layer will be analyzed for temperature, greenhouse gases, and other constituents. This will give us the best Antarctic record yet. I believe the results will confirm the above. We geologists owe it to policy-makers to give them the benefit of our longer-term perspective. I believe we will regret regulating CO2, since doing so will not produce any measurable climate control, and may actually cause great harm to world economies. If we want to promote renewable energy sources (and I do), let us not penalize fossil fuel production and use. We may soon need all the energy we can produce, if the long-term cooling continues.
My main point is that natural variation is so large, even if we cease all emissions completely, the climate will still change (just look at the graphs). The cost of (possibly) slightly influencing this change is so great, why not spend a lot less adapting to it? Since we don’t know if the long-term climate is cooling or warming (I bet on cooling long-term), we could spend trillions to cut emissions, only to have the climate cool catastrophically on its own. What then? Pump as much CO2 into the air as possible?
Warming is not a killer, but global cooling is. It would only take a few years of global crop failures from cold weather to put populations at serious risk. Both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are thickening: Leave anything on the ice, and it gets buried pretty fast (for example: the US South Pole Base was recently reconstructed because the old base was being crushed by snow and ice, and WWII planes lost on Greenland’s southeast coast, were covered by 264 feet of ice in 50 years: see the image below). This is not rocket science. Sure, the sea-level edges are retreating (that is why we call them the ablation zones of a glacier), but they represent a minute portion of the continent-scale ice mass.
“Glacier girl” crashed on an icecap in Greenland and became buried under 264 ft of ice.
UPDATE: 2017 The image comes from this Youtube about the discovery and recovery of the plane.
Joanne adds a few thoughts…
Antarctica: whiter than white, and its own separate system
Antarctica — whiter than white
Greenland and the GISP cores are just one point on the globe. It’s hard to know what temperatures in the tropics were by drilling in the Arctic Circle. However, we do have hundreds of studies regarding the Medieval Warm Period about 1,000 years ago, and, clearly, the higher temperatures affected most of the globe (as I discuss in my post on why the Hockey Stick is audaciously wrong).
But, the Vostok ice core graph is not mirroring the detail in GISP. Why should we rely on Greenland as a better climate guide for the planet? Svensmark suggests that Antarctica responds uniquely. Because it is covered in Earth’s most reflective ice and snow, it has a very high albedo, sending most of the incident sunlight right back to space. The Arctic is not as white, and neither is Greenland. Greenland is also tied to local water and wind patterns, whereas the Antarctic is more isolated, and completely surrounded by vast oceans. The result is that cloud cover changes have a different effect on Antarctica. The theory goes that if the world becomes cloudier, most places cool, but Antarctica warms. The cloud tops are actually less reflective than Antarctic snow, and they re-radiate the heat they absorb. They also trap heat from below, preventing it from escaping into space. An effect like this means that while Antarctica is a good indicator of big climate movements, it may not be so good for smaller changes on smaller time scales. Hence, Greenland may be a better indicator of planetary climatic trends over the past 10,000 years.
Not another IPCC-gate?
Fitting with this is the trend of the last few decades where most of the world warmed, but Antarctica cooled and its sea ice increased. And as it happens, just today comes word of another cringeworthy error in AR4: They managed to whitewash the steady growth in Antarctic sea ice, and underestimate it by 50%. (When the facts don’t fit your theory, change the facts…)
Jo
References:
Alley, R. B. (2000) The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quat. Sci. Rev. 19, 213-226
1 J. Zachos, et al (2001) — Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present, Science 292 (5517), 686–693
2 L. E. Lisiecki and M. E. Raymo (2005) — A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ18O records, Paleoceanography 20, 1003
UPDATE: Sunday Feb 21, 2010 – The Gisp graph of the last 10,000 years has been updated to improve it.
UPDATE: 5 Feb 2016 — The Gisp graph axis title was incorrect. “Years Before Present (2000AD)” has been changed to “Years Before Present (1950AD)”. The caption has been improved and the red coloring on the ice core data described. h/t to Josh, Harry Twinotter and Just-a-guy for improving this graph.
Here’s another interesting Greenland ice core chart:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/01/extreme-cool-warm.html
I’m thinking it’s time to move to the tropics.
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Very nice analysis –
Geologists are always very pragmatic.
Geologists Rock! (sorry, couldn’t resist it)
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I have read that there are two possibilities. The first is we are out of the Pleistocene ice age and the second is we are about at the end of the Holocene interglacial and will soon go back into another 90 to 100 thousand years of bitter cold. Since there is a land mass at one of the poles and a lack of free ocean currents because of continental alignment we have the conditions we need for an ice age to occur. Considering the continents move about as fast as your fingernails grow it will probably be quite some time before we come out of the Pleistocene. Then again, I don’t have a crystal ball. Perhaps we should use the crystal ball at the IPCC. Oh, I forgot, they have never made a correct prediction.
As I wrote on other threads, there was an extreme ice age at the end of the Ordovician 350 mya and CO2 was 4,400 ppm. Although the conditions existed back then to make an ice age possible, the level of CO2 was more than an order of magnitude greater (4,400 ppm) and an ice age should have been impossible. As MattB has correctly pointed out, there was “something” else affecting the climate. I believe it was the Milankovitch cycles. If the effect of CO2 is monotonic and the IPCC is correct about a positive feedback in relation to the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, the ice age 350 mya should not have occurred, but it did. Also, since the CO2 content was lower and temperatures were higher during the MWP, RWP and the Minoan warm period during the Holocene Maximum of the Bronze age the theory of anthropogenic global warming is falsified.
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In a sense the long history of temperatures is really irrelevant. It is very nice background information, but the shorter history (1850 to present) is proof enough that there is no man-made warming. The Scandinavian graph and various other instrument based trends contradict the assertion that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have caused unprecedented warming. The interview with Phil Jones highlighted that the “warming” that caused the alarm was not even unprecedented in recent (last 150 years) time frame. All we need to do is reference Phil Jones himself and the argument should be over QED.
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On a positive note, maybe Schneider was right the first time. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nprY2jSI0Ds&feature=related. I love Leonard Nimoy. Even though he is the narrator I picture him with pointed ears! Yep, I love Star Trek. I hope that doesn’t anger some people as much as when I mentioned i own and love my MAC!
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Typo alert: Heading should read:
Antarctica: whiter than white, and its own separate system
____
It does now. I’ve been doing final edits in place, with the article already up and running. Thanks for the alert. Hit your refresh button to view the latest version. Gratefully, Ed.
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More confirmation that AGW is a pseudo-religion, a tool and method of taxation and of control, brought to us by Elitist Intellectualism. (A new oligarchic-elite-socialism)
What do we do about it?
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Jo:
Long-term, temperatures are now declining (for the last 3,000 years), and we appear to be headed for the next 90,000 year ice age, right on schedule at the end of our current 10,000 year warm period. We have repeated this cycle 46 times in succession over the last 2.6 million years.
Repeating a 90,000 year ice age + 10,000 warming will only work about 26 times in 2.6 million years. (but otherwise the picture is still very informative, altho depressing !
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I can’t say I’m exactly pleased that there’s so much evidence pointing to another ice age on the way. But at least it’s better to know the truth. That way you can prepare as much as possible.
Mark D.,
What do we do about it? I don’t know. But the State of Texas announcing that they’ll challenge the EPA’s finding that CO2 is a danger to humans is at least a start. I can’t see the EPA prevailing under the current circumstances and now Republicans can filibuster Supreme Court nominees they don’t like. It’ll serve the Democrats right too. Turnabout is fair play! I do not ordinarily like the filibuster, but sometimes it fits the situation too well to ignore.
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I hear what you are saying Roy, Right now I wish we could send home all of congress. It couldn’t hurt anything to have them gone.
On a different subject:
Anyone want to complain about the NOT straight line on this graph??? Anyone, Hello Warmers? are you there???? 🙂
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Mark D.
Easy, don’t pay your taxes – if a large number citizen’s won’t, then what are they, government, going to do?
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Sorry this is off topic but this just came to my attention:
http://catholicclimatecovenant.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Lenten-Carbon-Fast-Calendar-2010.pdf
The push may be further along than I thought……….
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It’s worse than we thought 0.0
Couldn’t resist… it is also why you find so few geologists buying into the AGW line of reasoning. They know where we have been and what Gaia is truly capable of. We are just a blip in the history of the earth. I also like this video that was posted from WUWT ice core graphs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlI
I also have another way of refrring to the data mangling… in government we should be sticking to the mantra of “evidence-based policy-making.” Unfortunately what we see in the AGW agenda is “policy-based evidence-making.” Somehow I don’t think this is a new concept as statistics have been mangled to meet policy agendas for as long as there have been statistics. After all, I believe Aesop said that:
“We can easily present things as we wish them to be.”
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interesting graphic on youtube but no units on the y-axis.
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Louis, I am pretty sure not paying taxes would put me in jail faster than a mass murder.
If you have experience with getting away with that let me know your secret 🙂
Seriously, if we all got going to do just that, the government would borrow even more to keep running. Right now the debt is about $35,000 per person in the USA (a staggering amount for my household x5). I could withhold paying my taxes for a very long time to equal that amount.
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Mark D. @14,
I mean no offense to Catholics but the Catholic Church’s science knowledge is about the same today as it was in Galileo’s time.
Unfortunately they have a lot of weight.
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THe pope certainly seems to be a climate change sceptic, same for the head of the church here in Australia (in fact you could stretch to “denier” with Pell).
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@bulldust
I just saw the video clip, thanks. While there, I went ballistic on a few wing nuts. You know, the capitalism sucks, the MWP was only in Europe, etc. crowd. Latest poll, 60% don’t want Obama to run for a second term. Cap and Trade is dead and so is the political future of anyone who supported it. I think you can find most of these Gaia worshipping, granola munching, back to the dark ages simpletons by googling The Jay Leno show and viewing the Jay Waking segments where Jay asks people simple questions and the interviewee responds with brain dead asinine comments. The scary part is that these people are easy to find and everywhere. The dumbing down of America has already occurred. I live in Sonoma County, California. It is so far left that it is like one big damn scientology meeting. People walk around smiling and acting like automatons. I think they worry that if they don’t think happy green thoughts all the time that someone will wish them off into the cornfield like what happened in the original twilight zone. I almost got into a fist fight once with three guys when I overheard them talking about how they were going to save the glaciers and I started laughing at them. Fortunately, there were only three of them and one of me! You talk about science and their eyes glaze over. It is as if they receive a command from the Borg collective to shut down and they go into sleep mode. All they can do is appeal to their church, the IPCC, and quote their vicar, Al Gore.
What I call linking to other sites to cite evidence to substantiate a claim they call cut and paste. They try to get nasty and shout you down. I, of course, don’t countenance such behavior. When you get in their face they go into shock and back off quickly. Typical of bullies.
@ Roy Hogue No offense taken. It is embarrassing for me as a Catholic to see such crap! Thank God the church limits ex cathedra statements to matters of faith and morals! on a positive note, see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-501316/The-Pope-condemns-climate-change-prophets-doom.html Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. ihope the bishops get the message!
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@ mattB 18
You are absolutely right and I couldn’t agree more! I am going to have to give you another thumbs up!
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@ The Editor
Please leave Roy’s comment up. I viewed Mark’s link at #14. Although your statement about the hierarchy and the ecclesiastics is true a lot of priests and some bishops have gone rogue. When I attend Mass I bite my tongue, most of the time. See # 19
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Ed – as a Catholic who has moved on, I think you are overly generous on the Church’s scientific leanings.
____
As I am with yours. — Ed 🙂
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Mark D
You have missed the point – if an individual did that, he goes to jail, but if hundreds of thousands of citizens did, it becomes another matter.
Incidenally folks, as expected the man-made global warming media are now maliciously targetting the media climate realists messengers as pointed out by Tim Blair today re Piers Akerman and the UK Independent’s story on Sir John Houghton and what Sir John said a decade ago re disasters. It’s an election year here in Oz and it’s going to get nasty.
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Mark D
In addition I doubt the government would opt for borrowing more if the banks realised that the debt can’t be serviced by taxation. Heck, look at Greece at the moment, bankrupt and if they let her fail, as they should, then the whole system collapses. To ward that off the EU central bank will do another Ponzi.
The ETS and the Cap-n-trade or its equivalent in the US is nothing other than to finance the existing debts the socialists have created. It’s got to hit a brick wall some time, and present policies are simply forestalling the big one.
The one irritation with the lefties is that despite a catastrophic failure of their policies, they refuse to accept the idea that it’s their policies that are wrong and instead blame us for not living up to the expectations that those policies assumed. I’m not sure how you counter that stupidity.
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One point with the Greenland Ice core and the warming periods – if the same pattern is found in the Antarctic cores then you could state that the MWP, for example, was global.
Here is a topic for discussion – given Greenland’s present location, what global rise in temperature would be needed to return to MWP temperatures in Greenland, and given this scenario, would not this have profoundly affected the climates elsewhere on the Earth?
And if the MWP was a regional phenomenon, then what mechanism could possibly warm that part of the Earth to the exclusion of the rest of the earth?
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Like Eddy, I live in Sonoma County. I am very open-minded about scientific debate. I have a deep distrust of a “we are the experts” mentality.
In addition to the science being discussed here, there are complex social issues involved. I want our planet to be a clean and healthy place. I want us all to have the freedom, liberty, and love we need to thrive and grow.
The discussion about how to do this involves policy. Unlike accurate science, good policy is harder to define, and should, and does, involve emotion, morality and ethics.
I love granola and forests, and organic food, and good wine, and none of this has to do with my attitudes about climate change.
Phil
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Eddy @19,
Thank you for posting that. It’s very encouraging. The pope has a lot of weight and I’m glad to see it on the side of not jumping to conclusions.
———-
I do not like to offend and that’s not my intent. But I do like to speak the truth. Here is a quote from that message.
If my comment is taken down I’ll understand. But I think it fairly states the meaning of the message for “Lenten Carbon Fast 2010” from the ARCHDIOCESE OF WASHINGTON.
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LOL Edddy… I hear where you are coming from. Unfortunately I think you’ll find the majority of people pass through their lives like zombies… worried about the mortgage, their health care, the kids, the car, the job etc… it can drain your will to live. This is why I deliberately simplify my life by working in a low-stress job, no car, ten minutes walk to work, in a good climate etc. Life is good, and it frees up my brain to think interesting thoughts. Never had a hankering to have kids either /shrug. Ironically my carbon-footprint is miniscule compared to many “greenies.”
Eddy you remind me somewhat of Sam Kekovic mate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dqsyXPkG3I&feature=related
Perhaps you should emmigrate to Australia… we are are like little America, but not quite as bonkers yet. Also, you tend to find that the majority of Australians don’t take themselves too seriously. If anyone does we tend to cut them down to size quickly. But I digress…
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Louis,
Time of course will counter that stupidity but unfortunately only after it’s done a lot of damage. Our problem is that we have no means of using any kind of real political force against them.
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Ed @ 21 – Touche!
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@ Phil
There is nothing wrong with enjoying wine and forests, and if you want to pay extra for organic that is your choice. The Left only wants tolerance when it comes to supporting its causes. If you disagree with Leftists, they become rabid and start foaming at the mouth. The height of hypocrisy. When I drive through Sebastopol and see that it is a “nuclear free zone” I LMAO. I saw some people at Armstrong Woods, and I wanted to ask them if they were paid to dress in period costumes or if they were volunteers. My sister stopped me, and informed me they were just locals from Guerneville enjoying the woods.
@ mattB Since you are guy who accepts appeals to authority, I am surprised to learn that you have ‘moved on.” Maybe you can apply the same “logic” to AGW? The church isn’t into “leanings” when it comes to science: It is interested in facts, logic, and the scientific method. I still can’t fathom why you trust the IPCC and the CRU. The last thing the UN got right was the vote to send troops to Korea in 1949 (or was it 1950?). The CRU is corrupt. It has altered data, perverted the peer review process, stated that it would rather destroy data than promulgate it, and then conveniently lost the data. Yet, when [you are] cornered and asked to cite evidence, your standard response is to state that the IPCC says it’s so, and therefore it must be so. You know it, and I know it, and if you deny it, I will cut and paste your past statements until you admit it. The nice thing about the Pope is he can’t be tempted with taxpayer grant money to keep perpetrating the greatest fraud in the history of the world. Pax vobiscum.
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While I will not venture a guess as to whether another ice sheet will cover Michigan and New York at any time in the near geologic time frame, I do think Chris Scotese’s work makes it clear that someday it is going to get very hot around here. It also shows that any such change is irrespective of mankind.
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
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Eddy I could ask how come someone so keen on the scientific method feels the need to follow a superstition once a week… but I will not.
At the end of the day my decision on who to trust on cases of science that I neither have the time nor the nouse to figure out for myself is no more a reliance on authority than most those who choose to believe Courtney, MacIntyre etc.
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[…] I was glancing at an interesting post on JoNova when I encountered this horror, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington’s Lenten Carbon Fast. […]
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a must read:
Chris Horner: Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part One)
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-2-0-—-the-nasa-files-u-s-climate-science-as-corrupt-as-cru-pjm-exclusive-—-part-one/?singlepage=true
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[…] more here: The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings « JoNova […]
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It is not that hard to show common sense, history, from print that is hard to adjust later, tells us that there was a widespread warm period when the romans were growing wine grapes in north England, and also that the Vikings settled in Greenland (the name should have been a clue to Gore!) and went to vineland in Canada, then were frozen out, there were ice fairs on the thames in London, and so on, these were contemporary writings from old books and have credibility.
Given the flat earth slurs lately the hit on the Catholic church seems fair, it is great the Pope has his eyes open and is prepared to say what he thinks.
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Say ED. I think we should distinguish between the various ED’s in some fashion so that people can feed back to EDitor and know it is not Eddy A.
By the way it seems that there is a rather heavy handed ED defense of the Catholic Church. I don’t think Roy was offensive. The Church NEEDS to hear what it’s members (and non members) think. Further, If they were so sharp the Pope would not have made the statements lately made about AGW.
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Dirty Eddy aruda and others may be interested in a fascinating article about the evolution of our species HERE “When Humans Almost Went Extinct.” From Doug L Hoffman at “The Resilient Earth”
Throw another 2″ steak on the wood barbie and enjoy 🙂
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@ Mark D
I am not here to debate theology. I believe in an individuals right to believe or not believe. As a recipient of the Daughter of the American revolution medal for Outstanding Knowledge of American History I will be the first to admit that the Church has made many mistakes. That being said. Anti Catholicism has replaced anti semitism and I will not wait for a holocaust to occur. The editor has done nothing but state the truth. I feel sorry for just about anyone who engages in a scientific argument with a Jesuit. during the late midAllnthe universities established during the middle ages and the Renaissance were by the Church. I am glad to see the pope use his moral authority to call the AGW alarmists out. Stalin once qupped about the pope, how many divisions does he have”? John Paul II, of happy memory, in concert with
Ronald Reagan and Solidarity defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. For a good read I recommend the book “His Holiness” .
So Matt, still buying into the superstition of the AGW scam?
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Eddy, this was Roy’s statement:
“I mean no offense to Catholics but the Catholic Church’s science knowledge is about the same today as it was in Galileo’s time.”
Certainly an opinion but far from offensive. (we both have written more offensively than that). I assume too that there was dissent (although pretty silent) in the Church in Galileo’s time too.
My post was not at all to debate religion. It was to bring to your attention just how pervasive this AGW thing has become. When your (any) church tells you to “carbon fast” you have a serious problem.
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By the way this is not limited to the Catholic Church. The calender and concept come from an ecumenical interfaith group. I am a Protestant that loves my Catholic heritage. I mean no harm (or holocaust)in my posting the link. Further, I am able to clearly distinguish between Faith and religion. Religion is where Faith meets with the weaknesses of man.
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65 million years of temperature swings whilst a 30 year old dogma grinds on – Mons. Garnaut, the Oz government`s high priest of AGW (hope that wasn`t too religious given recent exchanges!) provides his latest 2c worth on ETS implementation downunder.
The last quarter of the transcript is particularly worth reading, I think we all know that these can only be on-paper reductions through the money-changers, not physical ones – the ultimate irony as usual.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2822925.htm
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Wong the Worrier. Still persisting with the scare mongering. If its not glaciers, its beaches. Give us a break Wong – once again, the jig is up.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/penny-wong-warns-of-climate-change-threat-to-bondi-beach-and-the-sunshine-coast/story-e6frg6xf-1225831860523
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@ Mark D.
I was not offended by anyones statement and I even asked the editor not to remove your comment (see # 20) actually, I hold you in the highest regards.
@MattB
You wrote, “At the end of the day my decision on who to trust on cases of science that I neither have the time nor the nouse to figure out for myself is no more a reliance on authority than most those who choose to believe Courtney, MacIntyre etc.”
Please be so kind as to tell us how you know that most of those who ‘believe Courtney, Macintyre, etc.’? When you use the term “nous” do you mean mind or intellect or do you mean common sense? I don’t “trust” anyone. You underestimate yourself, Matt. You were willing to try and debunk Courtney’s paper and….oh ya, thats right, never happened. Well, I think you have it in you. If you don’t, why are you here? Science isn’t a beauty contest. The temp records the CRU use are corrupt and the IPCC relies on them so logic dictates that the findings of the IPCC are unreliable, as well. If you cannot or will not reason logically and deductively, go find something better to do with your time as you are wasting it here.
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I think you should give Richard the credit that it will take longer than the no time I’ve committed to the task to date to review his paper thanks Eddy. Personally I think the two questions I asked remain unanswered to date, but I will continue regardless.
Nouse in the sense of intellect, not common sense. You can pretend otherwise Eddy, but in the end we all take other folks word for things sometimes. Maybe not you, but I know from observation that many skeptics balance apprpriate skepticism with embracement of absurdity, so I’m not alone. Just honest.
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hey guys – Jo pays the huge data costs of this site for scientific discussion, not discussion about whatever is going through you head at the moment – please respect that!
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hi folks – thanks David & Jo, an eye opener!
i’m interested in your take in the latest ABC science blog:
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/02/18//2823232.htm
quote “But far from revealing fatal cracks in the fabric of the climate science, what we are seeing is instead the scientific method played out in front of the media.”
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janama:
February 18th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
hey guys – Jo pays the huge data costs of this site for scientific discussion, not discussion about whatever is going through you head at the moment – please respect that!
Science? You mean
janama:
February 12th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
I’m sorry Eddy – I thought you were an Ok bloke – but when you mentioned your Mac computer I had to put you in the [snip…c’mon we can be nicer about that] category. Not that is have any problem with Mac computers, only those who feel they must emphasis the fact they have one.
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Janama – were you ever teacher’s pet?
10
[…] Ms Wrong Wong cant see the big picture, […]
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Eddy I’ve not seen a killer debating move as good as that since Lambert pulled out the Pinker quote vs Monckton! Good work.
10
That was one post Eddy – you ramble on for days!
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MattB:
February 18th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I think you should give Richard the credit that it will take longer than the no time I’ve committed to the task to date to review his paper thanks Eddy. Personally I think the two questions I asked remain unanswered to date, but I will continue regardless.
Nouse in the sense of intellect, not common sense. You can pretend otherwise Eddy, but in the end we all take other folks word for things sometimes. Maybe not you, but I know from observation that many skeptics balance apprpriate skepticism with embracement of absurdity, so I’m not alone. Just honest.
“…but I will continue regardless.” Sure matt! When you are finished debunking Courtney’s paper ask for Mr. Blue, that will be me holding my breath!
“Nouse in the sense of intellect, not common sense. You can pretend otherwise Eddy, but in the end we all take other folks word for things sometimes.” Circumstantial: To argue that an opponent should accept an argument because of circumstances in his or her life. Another fallacy, MattB. Just because something applies to you doesn’t mean it applies to “we all.”
“… Maybe not you, but I know from observation that many skeptics balance apprpriate skepticism with embracement of absurdity, so I’m not alone. Just honest.” Just because you are not alone doesn’t make your argument valid. Argumentum ad populum
“… many skeptics balance apprpriate skepticism with embracement of absurdity” No examples cited or persons mentioned. A sweeping generalization and another straw man.
“…Just honest.” Perhaps, lying requires intent. Based on your usual dazzling display of fallacies I would have to say, “just illogical.” BTW, its “nous”, not “nouse.” Perhaps you should spell it “noose” as you hang yourself with illogic almost every time you post! Trying to get you to respond with empirical evidence is as easy as getting blood from a stone, ab asino lanam!
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@ Janama
OOH, you really hurt my feelings now! Rather juvenile, don’t you think? How about this one?
Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. I’m rubber, your glue, everything you say to me sticks to you. No returns forever!
Sent from my Mac
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I never said you should accept my argument Eddy. Just that we all do it. The fact I do it does not mean we all do it. The fact we all do it is what means we all do it. As Jesus would say let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
I figured reading this blog would give you enough examples without me citing them Eddy. HOnestly not sure how it is a strawman.
What is the logical fallacy where the person’s tactics involve dissecting a post and fabricating logical fallacies therefore dismissing them without addressing themm
Argumentum ad falsus fallacytatum?
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@ mattb,
Matt can I ask you a serious question? yes I have taken the piss out of you in the past and you have done the same to me, but lets put that to the side for the moment.
What specifically convinces you that man is responsible for global warming? I am truly interested becasue I dont understand your side of the argument.
Also what if anything would convince you otherwise?
Thanks
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It’s a vibe thing:)
But seriously – good question. will answer another time am leaving the computer just now. Yu uare more likely to get a prompt reply to this than my debunking of Richard Courtney’s paper I’ll just give you that hot tip right now.
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@MattB
You wrote, “Argumentum ad falsus fallacytatum?” I am LMAO! Quisque comodeus est (everybody is a comedienne).
Matt wrote, “Just that we all do it. The fact I do it does not mean we all do it. The fact we all do it is what means we all do it.”
We: the first-person, plural personal pronoun (subject case) in Modern English. You used it, Matt. Actually, it was “we all’ that you used. Were you combining the plural of majesty with the Texas colloquialism Y’all to get a hybrid we all?
Matt wrote, “I never said you should accept my argument Eddy.” I didn’t accept it because it was illogical.
Matt wrote, “As Jesus would say let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Matt also wrote, “Ed – as a Catholic who has moved on…’ Are you moving back or quoting Jesus as a philosopher or something else?
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Speaking of temperature records… a new bombshell may have landed as an FOI request from 2007 on GISS has finally delivered to the CEI:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/17/after-two-years-of-stonewalling-nasa-giss-foia-files-are-now-online/#more-16505
The files are here:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/business/foia/GISS.html
Christopher Honer has an analysis here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-2-0-%E2%80%94-the-nasa-files-u-s-climate-science-as-corrupt-as-cru-pjm-exclusive-%E2%80%94-part-one/
There are more parts to come…
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Penny Wong: Climate sceptics are all red herrings and quackery
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/wong-climate-sceptics-are-all-red-herrings-and-quackery-20100218-ogb3.html
It’s the same programed robotic scaremongering spin from PW, nothing has changed, floods, droughts, heatwaves, pestilence and fires, all she needs to add to spice it up is vampires and rivers of blood.
She is like “the boy who cried wolf”, I can’t believe people still listen to her.
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[snip… this appears to be part of an orchestrated email attack since three different people from the same university are all saying the same thing at the same time, and “surprise”, it’s the same university with commentors who are awaiting moderation until they reply with evidence or manners…]
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[snip]
Make of that what you will.
[We make of it a fake attempt to target the blog comments here… three people, none of whom have commented before, all with matching emails? –JN ]
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Albert@60
Penny Wong said:
As a sceptic, I disagree, I think the Copenhagen outcome was a perfect outcome. The proposals were obviously so draconian that even Robert Mugabe was concerned.
Also, I didn’t see anything there about the great sinking Norwegians…. Or Docta Phils admissions the other day. Then again, I didn’t finish reading it. The stupidity was nauseating.
Oh, that’s right, climate-gate never happened according to our media.
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Everybody, please read the link by Albert@60 thoroughly.
You will note a change of approach from half-truths to straight out lies, I suspect even Goebbels would be suggesting to tone it down.
The gloves are certainly off and I detect almost a hint of desperation in this diatribe by our Glorious Minister for Climate Change.
BTW there is a state government election in South Australia on the 20th of March…testing the waters and techniques, are we, Pen?
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RE: Albert #60 MadJak #63 – Penny Wong
I read Gerard Henderson in the Oz saying she may moved out of the way once the ETS is finally finished, and it makes sense. Rudd just wants this crap to go away at the moment, refuses to mention it, so she has no further use really. Join her port-folio up with something else and give her some other job. Solves a problem for him – and us!!
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Chip McGibbons:
February 18th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
I tell you what i make of it.
You are a two bit useless turd with nothing constructive to say.
Grow up
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Nathan Prendergast:
February 18th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Nothing stopping you from posting. People have a right to post their opinions.
If you are soooo tired, have a bex and a lie down. Better still, start your own log and ban people you are sooo tired of.
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Mr. de Boer has decided it is time to seek challenges away from the UNFCCC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8521821.stm
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George, I think that is significant! Who said “the rats are going to start jumping from the sinking ship?
Talk about saying it softly……
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Nathan Prendergast at #61 and Chip McGibbons at #62:
Please apologise to Mr Aruda.
I know nothing about him except what he has posted here, and his politics are clearly very different from mine (I am an old-fashioned left-wing British socialist).
But he posts provocative and thought-provoking messages. If you disagree with any of his messages then say why you think he is wrong. His postings here demonstate that he would give you similar courtesy.
If you cannot find fault in his messages then say nothing. Attacks on his person tell about those who make the attacks and they say nothing about what he has written here.
The attacks waist our time reading them, so we are likely to ignore other posts you make because then we can avoid further waist of our time.
Richard
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Hmm, interesting that a pair of gutless trolls who haven’t commented at all on at least the last five posts magically appear two minutes apart to slander Eddy and complain about monopolization. I suspect that if I look back further I’d still not see their names.
So boys, when was the last time you actually made a constructive comment?
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Well said Richard. Even if you are a commie pinko! 😉
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Bulldust at #59
Thanks for those. I am actually astounded at how useless (at best) our government “experts” have been. It seems they all need to be fired!
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It’s interesting how many trolls have come from our favourite “university”. We’re being targeted and Eddy just happened to be the guy in the line of sight that second. There were three comments in 2 minutes from 3 different emails all coming out of the same educational institution. The new theme seems to be to try to create division within the blog thread as if sceptics are attacking each other. Oooo-errr. We’d better tell the Union of Concerned Skeptics…
Shucks. I’m almost feeling famous.
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Wong: Climate sceptics are all red herrings and quackery
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/wong-climate-sceptics-are-all-red-herrings-and-quackery-20100218-ogb3.html
Well coverd by Pielke Jr.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/
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Thankyou for snipping my thoughtless back quote at #67
I feel so stupid 🙁 I think anger got me at the time
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JLKrueger:
February 18th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
How are those ribs coming along JLK? Are they medium rare yet?
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I think the resignation of Yves de Boer, chief of the UNFCCC hence Pachauris boss, is very significant at this time. This strengthens the chance that Pachauri may also jump ship in the near future.
If he does, look for a vastly revamped and shortened AR5.
Gotto have humour. Pachauri puts on this song whilst contemplating his fate with the IPCC
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Further to my post #78, here is what I’m singing. Hey…Hey
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Science Not Consensus @48,
I’m maybe not the best one to offer you an opinion but that latest ABC science blog is at least a sop to how science should be done. However, by itself it means very little. Such words are easy to say and very hard for some of the world of science to live up to.
Specifically one may not so easily gloss over the willful publishing by the IPPC of things they knew were false or their reliance on CRU data they must surely have known was altered to show a preconceived result and a host of other things. An insider has even admitted that they did no science at all.
In short, this does not expose the reader to the problems that need to be exposed. It simply accepts what went on at the IPPC as normal science, which it was not.
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JLKrueger:
You make an important point at #72 when you say to me
I think this is intended as a joke but I am replying to it as though it were intended seriously because it makes an important point.
Proponents of AGW often portray dispute of AGW as being motivated by right-wing politics. This ignores that the AGW-scare was started by the most right-wing PM the UK had during the twentieth century (viz. then Magaret Thatcher now Lady Thatcher), and it is disputed by people of all political persuasions and none.
Scepticism of AGW is defence of the highest scientific standards and is opposition to the misuse of science for political ends. History shows what happens when such scepticism is not adequately applied; i.e. eugenics, Lysenkoism, etc.. So, everybody who supports enlightenment knowledge – whatever their political views – can and should unite in calling on ‘warmistas’ to Prove It!
Keep safe in the desert and I hope your ribs are recovering.
Richard
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Penny Wong said..
But here is a new research finding using the ARGO system
Global Sea Level Decrease 2004-2010
The full 6 year dataset from January 31, 2004 to January 31, 2010 of the ARGO global network of 3198 free drifting ocean floats with GPS is now available (data first became available from this program in 2004-see float locations here and shown below). Using the Pacific Marine Atlas program to plot data from the entire network shows a slight downtrend in Sea Height over the past six years (January 31, 2004 – January 31, 2010) using data from the entire network:
Thanks to The Hockey Schtick
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Yes, Richard. I was teasing (hence the “winking smilie”) and your reply was right on.
Thanks for the well-wishes.
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JLK #81
It does bring to mind that “politics make strange bedfellows” as of course the leader in the USA is the far left AL Gore. One thing seems certain now, while there has been cracks in the ranks of AGW believers, most of those defecting have been on the right. However, not all have been.
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Sorry, that is Richard in 81, not JLK.
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There ya go, making me laugh again!
I was actually able to get back out on the streets of Kabul today. I do, however, have to carefully plan my coughs. The movement of the broken bits everytime I breathe is annoying, but not painful. The violent muscle spasms have mostly subsided for now, but I have a lung puncture that is seeping air into the body cavity and making me slightly bloated.
Not quite as much as a puffed up cane toad though! 😉
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Eddy,
There are many I would never engage in a debate about science, certainly not a Jesuit and you’re in that category too. I try to keep a firm grip on my limitations.
Nevertheless we’re faced with quite a number of supposedly sound scientists who’ve run aground on the rocks of AGW. The explanation that money accounts for it is only partly satisfying. There are also those human weakness called the need to feel important and the need to belong which both suck so many people into the group-think.
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JLKrueger:
February 19th, 2010 at 3:12 am
I thought I had it bad with my toothache, sheesh. Broken bits, punctured lung, coughing, bloating. No need to shoot at you is there m8? Give you a bar of soap and you do a great job of it yourself lol
But your always in good spirits and it’s a pleasure to chat with you, always.
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Oh JLK do me a favour. I get a lot of diggers to my video shop from the Enogerra barracks. Quite a few went over just recently. If you come across any of them, say hi for me from Everton Park Video.
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Looking at David’s second 65Ma graph, the colder it gets the more unstable the temperature becomes, but the positive peaks seem to max out just under the Vostok 0 level and for the older warmer periods there is a much smaller variation, but the line remains fairly steady not to far above the line.
This behavior is very similar to say an audio system when you ramp the volume up so that it is very very distorted. Likely cause is just the max heat from the sun of course, but assuming the earth was subject to the same external factors as always, what could be causing that limiting effect on the maximum temperature of the earth?
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The reason I suspect has caused a continuous cooling trend is that like the Moon, the mean Earth’s orbit is moving further away from the Sun owing to tidal forces.
Whether or not there is a short term cooling trend (i.e. over the last 10K or so years) is not entirely clear from the ice cores, however; the current interglacial has been both longer and cooler than the last few and is reminiscent of the behavior over 500K years ago when the glaciation period was 40K, rather than 100K years, moreover; we are towards the end of a historically long interglacial period. BTW, the last century of CO2 emissions has nothing to do with this as the current interglacial was historically long even before man started burning fossil fuels.
That being said, if I were to bet what the climate would look like in 10K years, I would say that it will be several degrees cooler, independent of man’s CO2 emissions. The most that mans CO2 emissions can do is delay the onset of the next ice age by perhaps a few decades to a century and even this is speculative and hard to support with the physics. Historically, the CO2 levels during ice ages can drop to less than 200 ppm. At lower levels of CO2, the incremental 100 ppm or so man made CO2 will have a larger effect than it has at 400 ppm and might even increase the minimum temperatures during the glaciation by a degree or so, but unfortunately, this will not be enough to mitigate the next, inevitable ice age.
It’s really too bad that CO2 isn’t as powerful as the warmists would have us believe. Otherwise, we might have a chance at mitigating the next ice age when a km thick sheet of ice is covering most of N America and Europe. Talk about inconvenient …
George
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Franks, re #90
Two things come in to play. At colder temperatures, the surface is emitting less energy and incremental energy has a larger effect on the temperature.
The limiting factor for warmer temperatures is evaporation, which seems to limit the average surface temperature to the low 300’s K (about 75-80F). We see this in the temperature behavior of the tropics, which seems to saturate at about this level. The reason evaporation limits the temperature is because evaporation removes significant heat from the planet (usually referred to as latent heat). This heat is then radiated by the clouds, half of which goes into space and the other half of which is returned to the surface. As the clouds cool, the evaporated water condenses into rain, falls to the surface and further cools the planet because rain is almost always cooler than the surface. Of course, the other effect of rain is snow, which increases the surface reflectivity and further cools the planet. This is partially responsible for the record cold temperatures in the US, where a larger fraction of the surface has been covered by snow for a longer period of time than usual.
George
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@ Baa Humbug, Richard S Courtney, JLKrueger and, of course, Jo
thanks for watching my back for me while I was getting some sleep.
JLKrueger, I am glad you are getting better but please don’t over do it, a punctured lung can get really serious and fast!
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Off-topic, sorry to do this but out of time and did not see where else to post this.
I have a question!
1st: can anyone point me to a list of all the IPCC (and other) scientists, such as Pielke Sr, who have spoken out against the tainting of science, the misrepresentation of their work, have outright quit because of it, so on, so forth?
Thanks for any help! *runs*
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Roy @80
Thanks Roy, interesting.
Remember Phil Chapman, Australia’s first astronaut? I came across this article (in the Australian no less) while investigating mini ice ages, thought you might be amused.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sorry-to-ruin-the-fun-but-an-ice-age-cometh/story-e6frg73o-1111116134873
I like this quote “All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.”
cheers
20
Never underestimate the Catholics and science, after all they have one of the oldest observatory’s in existence-
http://vaticanobservatory.org/
Plus a lot of time spent studying science for potential heresy. Oh for a free pass to their archives and an uber version of babelfish. But that’s digressing slightly, so we’ll have to make do with geologists. Nice article, and especially that image of the Glacier Girl. Never knew about that before.
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To all. Just to set the record straight, I am Catholic as well. However, the Church may have a great observatory (now), but they are clueless in most things scientific (relying on real science to do what they are best at, while the church does what it is best at – faith).
And the Church is starting a descent on a slippery slope here. What is the primary tenet of the Church? LIfe! Indeed, it gets a lot of static because of its BC policies and rigid no exception policies on it. Abortion is just the most controversial (in America) overt sign of its stand on the issue, but most of us are well aware of their stance on ANY BC.
Yet part of the AGW movement (once you move outside of the science and get to the means of getting to addressing the AGW issue) is the very antithesis of the Catholic Church! Eugenics! That is what these wackos that have bought the AGW line completely are advocating (don’t believe me? Check out the comments on SciAm).
The Church is the gingerbread man and the AGW movement is the fox. The Church wants a ride across the river. It will get a lot more than that in the end.
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This material is very powerful. Could it be the basis of a third (fourth?) skeptics handbook?
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Sometimes I think I have learned more than my little brain can handle, just on this post and it’s links. But I am gonna keep stressing it as I know the truth will out. I can’t add much to the science however as I guy I know said, if you can’t fight in the front lines you can carry water and ammo. JN, Baa H, EA, JLK and friends .. keep pounding, I’ll keep carring the water.
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Science Not Consensus @96,
The article you link is both interesting and contains some sound wisdom. No one knows exactly what the future will be but it certainly is not going to be catastrophic warming. Along with the author I can’t ascribe any useful meaning to extreme weather events because they just happen anyway. But here where I live the overnight winter frost has been both the most severe and more often in the last three years than any year I can remember. And I’ve lived here 40 years.
Getting colder is probably in our future, not from cold weather events but from evidence pointed out right here in this thread.
Thanks for pointing out that article.
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Baa Humbug:@82
Thanks for the post and your link, I wasn’t aware that ARGO was fully functional.
The recorded sea level drop of about 10mm/century does not support Penny Wong’s hysteria. I guess Gracie won’t need to pack her bags.
10
For those interested, the leading Dutch newspaper has a front page headline that Henk Tenneke was right after all – AGW was crap from the beginning. When the Dutch media start putting that as front page material you know the game is up. Yvo de Boer is also finishing up on 1 July, joining KPMG. Read it all at climate depot.
I’m of Dutch stock so this makes me doubly proud.
Also I have posted an essay on http://www.henrythornton.com on a climate matter.
Also received a PDF of Tim Lambert’s material for the Monckton-Lambert debate, and have the chore of researching Plimer’s long list of references to “Ice Ages” in order to see what Lambert based his debate argument on. I suspect R.F. Beck will consider it a waste of my time. I also offered to answer Monbiot’s questions put to PLimer by some poster at Lambert’s with the proviso the questions are posted with specific references to Plimer’s text. Should be fun.
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Louis, I am one quarter Dutch and my surname (secret on the web) is Dutch in origin. Hats off to the Dutch! Let’s hope that they can carry an Olympic torch to light the “game”. (Dominoes comes to mind)
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Andrew Bolt is also Dutch so I would expect something on his site about it soon.
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Everyone should read Louis in this link. There are several very well made connections and points.
Either click on the link in 102 above or here:
http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5944
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jo,
much is being made of this on other blogs:
The AGW Smoking Gun
by Gary Thompson
http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/540020/page-1.html
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@Louis Hissink #102
I’ve read your linked article, and I am impressed. I was struck by one comment that really resonated with me: “The problem with the intellectual mindset is its disconnection from physical reality.”
My honest opinion, that I’m sure many will disagree with, is that most university professors don’t know much about what goes on in the rest of the world. By that I mean Geologists, for example, examine and analyze real life things – not just what another (mostly) campus bound professors have to say about something, maybe because of the publish or perish thing.
For example, I suspect another poster here, JLKrueger, definitely knows more about how the real world functions than most professors. And I remember Eric Hoffer blasting a professor at Berkeley that had criticized his lecture by answring, from memory: “That SOB seldom gets off campus.” He didn’t abbreviate SOB!
I suspect that by far the majority have really little weather/climate experience beyond their local areas. They have no practical experience of really working with, analyzing, or predicting real weather/climate. Basically, I think they are amateurs posing as experts!
I observed weather on Recon crews over about 2/3rds (at the boundaries) of the Western Hemisphere, mostly above and then a small bit below the equator in the Southern Hemisphere. I also a saw some of the Eastern Hemisphere Arctic during those 9+ years. After that I worked gathering and relaying the world’s weather observation for the USAF Air Weather Service, and also fed what is now called the GTS before I retired. I also did several years of programming real, on/line, working 24/7 weather software.
My impression is that these professors are nibbling around the edges of the subject without much really useful background or experience, and I suspect most of them couldn’t even read real weather reports or even tell you what is being reported with any accuracy. This is illustrated by their fixation on CO2 as the major climate change mechanism. I am convinced that this is akin to wearing blinders.
So much for my assessment of these folks. I won’t be convinced otherwise, but everyone has a right to his own opinion.
10
Eddy No 3.
This is a link to my blog: http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com/
Scoll down to the second page and loock for teh thread on the Holocene. You might find it interesting.
Rod, No. 107. There is something in what you say. As a practicing professional geologist (where’s Matt?) AND a university professor, I have to say that geology professors get out in the real world more often than some other disciplines. However, what I have found with most strictly academic scientists is their inability to reach a final conclusion and an answer to any question. It is against the entire scientific method to stop questioning. There is always another way to look at a problem, even if it will not contribute to the immediate question at hand.
It is a university professor’s job to continue searching for new data, new knowledge, new ways of interpreting the data. That should not be constrained. The trouble we are having is not science or university scientists. It is politics and the political corruption of scientists and the scientific process.
The university professors would not have published thousands of articles on the effects of CO2 and Temp on … whatever their respective fields are…. if the politicians weren’t pumping billions into research funding. As long as the money is there, cash-starved professors will apply for the grants. Dry up the funding and the research focus will change to something that pays. And the findings of their grant-funded research will cetainly NOT state that there is no connection, or that it is clear there is no affect. First a research scientist simply doesn’t make such positive conclusions but always looks for another way to disporve the findings, but second, such a position is akin to walking in and asking your boss for a pay cut and to be first on the next layoff list.
Let’s look at NASA. Through the 90s, which division of NASA do you think was the ONE which did not have its budget slashed? Give you one guess. Did anyone of import at NASA during the past two decades EVER say AGW is not happening – let’s move on to the next topic. Oh, there is none? OK, well let’s all go back and see if we can think of something else to study.
20
Happy Friday!
Here’s one I knocked up at lunchtime – a bit rough but it’s vaguely on thread!
Cheers,
Speedy.
If the ABC was Relevant, Part 15.
[John and Bryan are in the studio after the show. Feet on the table, ties off and waxing philosophical over a beer or three.]
Bryan: ….And that’s why Peter Garrett’s job is a safe as houses.
[There is an awkward silence.]
John: [Changing subject] I see Penny’s in the news again.
Bryan: Yeah?
John: Got up on her hind legs and went into bat for the climate scientists. They’re not coping well with the skeptics.
Bryan: Inquisitive types, aren’t they?
John: True, Bryan. But it’s a given that the weatherologists have been taking a bit of stick lately. Look at Al Gore…
Bryan: Brilliant scientist. Did a movie.
John: Say no more Bryan. But nevertheless pilloried by the skeptics on a simple matter of interpretation.
Bryan: How so?
John: He only tried to say that sea levels would rise by 6 inches – suddenly there was this communication problem, and somehow the public gets the idea he said 20 feet…
Bryan: Clearly misquoted.
John: In his own movie.
Bryan: You can’t be too careful John.
John: And Professor Pachauri. He’s just at home, doing his tax…
Bryan: As you do.
John: As you do Bryan, and making a very earnest attempt to declare a net income of 3 million. But…
Bryan: But?
John: Owing to an unexpected typographical tragedy, he only managed to put himself down for 30 grand that year.
Bryan: Missed off a couple of zeros?
John: What’s a couple of zeros?
Bryan: Nothing!
John: Nothing at all Bryan. Not that you’d ever guess it but. The critics went off like a pork chop – just like they did with that glacier business.
Bryan: What was that?
John: Well, the good Professor had just finished informing the Indian Government they had about 30 years to find themselves a new set of Himalayan glaciers…
Bryan: And?
John: And that they were a collective pack of duds, Bryan. When a quick glance at the notes revealed that the existing glaciers would be in the hands of the said government sometime north of the year two thousand and never.
Bryan: At least he got the thousand bit right.
John: Despite this, the gratitude of the Indian Government was distinctly underwhelming. And as a token of their appreciation, I now believe he’s about to be given the Khyber Pass.
Bryan: Khyber Pass?
John: Home of the Vegemite Valley Bryan.
Bryan: Not good.
John: A little like Professor Jones. Doing a little spring clean around the climate laboratory one day, when he inadvertently discards the greater part of the 20th century temperature record.
Bryan: Desperately unlucky, John. A brilliant scientist but.
John: Just not very well equipped for the collection, retention, analysis and reporting of large data sets Bryan.
Bryan: No-one’s perfect…
John: Not wrong there Bryan. So you can see where Penny is going with this Bryan.
Bryan: Yep, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Climate Science.
John: It’s just that the numbers are dodgey.
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@ Tom G(ologist)
Great site. You made a good point about the true motives of the greens. Unfortunately, they are harder to get rid of than cockroaches.
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Hi Eddy
I prefer cockroaches, they have a purpose.
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Speedy….:)
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Mark D.: Thanks – it’s probably the Irish in me. I’m going to school on the comments here – there’s some pretty cluey types on board and I won’t even try to keep up…
Cheers,
Speedy
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PENNY WONG’S SPEECH YESTERDAY IN DEFENCE OF THE IPCC
This has been today headlined at http://www.climategate.com/the-lies-of-aussie-climate-minister-penny-wong
Please visit and make a comment
I have today written to all Senators rebutting the IPCC defence points made in the Minister’s speech
If anyone wants a copy of my e mail leave a message on Climategate.com or here
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Speedy 🙂 :thu:
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Pat – thanks for the link @ 106
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ETS DEAD IN AUSTRALIA
Just thought I’d share some great news.
The ETS will not be debated in the Australian senate next week. The official line is that the debate has now been postponed until at least mid March. See link:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/emissions-vote-delayed-20100218-oius.html
However I suspect that it may never be debated at all. The Rudd government is now threatening to call a double dissolution election over its efforts to introduce means testing on the private health insurance rebate. Obviously Rudd realises to call a double dissolution on the failure of the ETS would guarantee electoral oblivion. A pity K D Wong hasn’t realised this yet.
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THANKS Bruce; but I am concerned that the Govt is doing a deal with the Greens; does anyone know if the Greens vote for it and Senator T crosses the floor is that sufficient
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Val Majkus
Thanks for the link – should link from there to Jo as well?
I think Rudd/Wong need 2 Lib/Nationals to cross the floor. But the interesting question is – would Rudd want to “win” this one – especially on the Green’s terms? Will he gleefully gurgle from this poison chalice? And are the rest of the Labor Party willing to support him on this suicide mission ?
The saving grace for the Greens is that they have never been faced with the possibility of implementing (and hence being accountable) for their policies. This has allowed them to exist in polcy fairyland, subsidised by us mug taxpayers. We have a potential scenario where they, with Labor muscle, could give us a real taste of their “Utopia”.
Cheers,
Speedy.
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Hi Val,
My understanding is that they need an additional seven votes to pass the ETS. Even with the 5 green senators, they still need two more.
I agree it is still too close for comfort.
This means we can’t be complacent – we must continue to hammer the eco fascists with the facts. I also think that the recent developments in the home insultaion fiasco will start a groundswell against the Rudds government’s green agenda.
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This should be the end of the AGW hypothesis once and for all:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_agw_smoking_gun.html
An excerpt from the article:
The science behind the AGW hypothesis is that increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere (that humans produce by burning fossil fuels) will block more outgoing long-wave IR radiation (OLR) from exiting the atmosphere and thereby warm the surface. It is well-known that IR radiation causes CO2 molecules to vibrate, but only at very specific wavelengths (wavelengths are the distances between peaks of each wave), and that wavelength is 15µm. (Fifteen µm means that each wavelength crests at a distance of 15 millionths of a meter.) As was discussed above, this vibration of the molecule causes it to heat and then radiate IR radiation back toward the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. If the solar activity is taken to remain constant, more CO2 in the atmosphere will trap more of the OLR, and thus cause a net heating of the planet.
So what type of experiment could be performed to test this AGW hypothesis? If there were satellites in orbit monitoring the emission of OLR over time at the same location, then OLR could be measured in a very controlled manner. If, over time, the emission of OLR in the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs decreases over time, then that would prove the AGW hypothesis (i.e., that OLR is being absorbed by CO2 and heating the planet instead of being emitted from the atmosphere). But what if, over time (say, over thirty years), the emissions of OLR wavelengths that CO2 absorb remained constant? That would disprove the hypothesis and put the AGW argument to bed.
As luck would have it, that experiment has actually been performed! Three journal papers report the data from three monitoring satellites that have measured the OLR of 1997 and 2006 and compared those measurements to 1970, and they are located here, here, and here.
There were three different experiments performed in space to measure OLR emissions. The Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (IRIS) was performed in 1970, the Interferometer Monitor of Greenhouse Gases (IMG) was performed in 1997, and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) was performed in 2006. All of these experiments were performed over the Pacific Ocean and confined to the same three-month period (April through June), and the data were limited to cloudless days. The variable measured was brightness temperature, which is given in degrees Kelvin (K). Higher brightness temperatures correlate to higher emissions (meaning that more OLR is emitted to the atmosphere and less is absorbed by GHG).
The figure below (from the first link above) shows a comparison of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. (Positive values indicate that more OLR emission was measured in 1997 vs. 1970, and negative values indicate that less OLR emission was measured in 1997 vs. 1970.) The top graph is taken over the East Pacific, and the bottom graph is taken over the West Pacific. The middle line is the actual measurements, and the other lines show the upper and lower uncertainty ranges. The x-axis of the graph is given in wave numbers per centimeter (cm), and the area that relates to CO2 is at the far left of the graph (700 wave numbers per cm). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: There is actually an increase of OLR emissions in 1997 as compared to 1970!….
The next figure (from the second link above) shows the actual measurements of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. The dark line is the IMG data (from 1997), and the gray line is the IRIS line (from (1970). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: The 1997 OLR associated with CO2 is identical to that in 1970.
….
The last two graphs can be placed on top of each other, and the black lines (actual measured data) are basically copies of each other. That means that there was no difference in OLR between 1970 and 2006.
All three of the links referenced here devote the latter sections of the papers to removing the impact of surface temperatures and water vapor and graphing the OLR that is associated only with trace GHGs. The authors perform this trick (there is that word again…) based on the climate models and not through actual measurements, and surprise, surprise — these simulated results show a reduction in OLR emission with wavelengths that are absorbed by CO2. Computer-simulated results based on climate models are never a replacement for actual measured data, and they should never be used to draw conclusions when actual measured data contradicts those models.
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thanks Bruce and Speedy for the info; Speedy by all means leave a comment and a link to Jo’s site (I’m a great fan of both sites but Jo has nothing today specifically on Penny Wong’s defence of the IPCC)
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Val #122
“…….today specifically on Penny Wong’s defence of the IPCC)”
Oh yes she has 🙂 Just went up during the last hour.
I will also pen something for Henry Thornton on Wong’s defence this weekend. (Dissecting Lambert’s Monckton Debate plus answering Monbiot’s Plimer questions are put on the backburner for the moment).
10
Rudd hopes to force a double dissolution so the he can win on healthcare and hold a joint senate/house of reps sitting and pass the ETS.
Sydney Sceptic: – may I say whilst I find the article interesting and apparently conclusive I don’t know who the hell this Gary Thompson is – I’m amazed they would print such a damaging article without revealing the credentials of the author.
10
thanks Louis; hadn’t seen that
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Bruce @ 117, 120
Hot off the press (apropos your home insulation reference) see below – a cynic could be forgiven for thinking that the government wants to give “environmental” considerations a bit of a breather re the delay in senate discussions on an ETS? Only posting this (politics specific) link to perhaps flesh out the overall situation a bit more…
The “greatest moral challenge of our time” is now obviously eligiblity for private health insurance rebates.
Eddy A. et al in the “48 plus 2” – keep us posted re the US scenario, my (probably cloistered) downunder perception of legislative priorities at your end is also ETS and health schemes, am I correct?
http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TopStories/2010/02/19/Home_insulation_scheme_closed_430749.html
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Rudd’s talk about a double dissolution has a certain degree of bluster. When all Senate seats go up for grabs the quota is halved making it that much easier for smaller parties and independents to be elected.
No major party wants that and hence, “DDs” are few and far between.
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Mark
I never knew that – thanks! This puts the bluff in perspective.
Like the last two years of this Rudd government, this latest bit of fluff from them is just as substantial!
Cheers,
Speedy.
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Val @ 122
I’ve sent a link over – but also the question:
Why is Steve Fielder still waiting for an answer from Penny Wong to explain the scientific basis for the Rudd policy?
A: Doesn’t she know?
B: Doesn’t she care?
C:Doesn’t one exist??? Correct Answer: C.
Cheers,
Speedy
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Joanne,
Can you explain the red upward stroke at the right of the graph, between 187 and the label “Years BP”?
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Tom @109,
Your analysis is good. Unfortunately it’s a lot easier to get funded if you can tell people they have a catastrophic problem about to hit them and you need to do research on it.
Asking for — and getting — funding to do more useful research seems to be a lot harder. And it doesn’t make the researcher feel important or make him famous to do the more useful but mundane work.
This certainly doesn’t cover all of it but I think it’s the basic problem. Drying up all the free money would be a good thing. It would also get rid of a lot of useless and unimportant research.
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Mark D.,
Dutch is good! My wife was born in the Netherlands and lived there for much of her early childhood. Good people!
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Sphaerica (post 130):
I can answer that. The last 150 years are highlighted because that is the portion of the curve that the IPCC is telling us is the “problem” and “unprecedented”. The Little Ice Age (150 to 650 years ago) was the longest sustained cold period during this 10,000 year-long interglacial. Naturally, our recovery from this event involves some warming, and I’m glad it does.
When viewed against the ice core record for the entire 10,000 years, the recent warming is not unusual or “unprecedented”.
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Dennis Ables (commnet 9):
During part of the 2.6 million years the ice age cycles were only 41,000 years long (see the graph).
Earlier in the article:
“The last five million years of climate change is shown in the next graph based on work by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 [2] . It shows our planet has a dynamic temperature history, and over the last three million years, we have had a continuous series of ice ages (now about 90,000 years each) and interglacial warm periods (about 10,000 years each). There are 13 (count ‘em) ice ages on a 100,000 year cycle (from 1.25 million years ago to the present, and 33 ice ages on a 41,000 year cycle (between 2.6 million and 1.25 million years ago).”
I think if you do the math with these numbers you will find it comes to about 2.6 million years.
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Louis Hissink (comment 24):
You are right that the fine detail in ice core data usually does not match from one ice core-hole to another, sometimes even on the same ice-cap.
However, the broad trends do match, so when I see the temperature declining over the last 3,000 years in both Greenland and Antarctica, it leads me to believe that we are likely to have a cooling problem long-term, and we should be thankful for any short-term warming we can get. As shown by our experience with the Little Ice Age, life can get pretty tough, even with only a little cooling.
The ice core records show the terminations of at least four interglacial warm periods, and the next ice age usually starts with temperature declines over thousands of years, just like we are seeing now.
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Science Not Consensus (comment 47):
You have pointed to an interesting link at the ABC.
I wonder when the other news media organizations will stop saying or parroting “the debate is over” and “the science is settled” and start reporting on the lively debate that has been occurring on the Internet for years and years.
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David Lappi / Joanne :
Yes, I understood that. I guess what I meant to say was what value was used, over what period (the scale is so small for that stretch), and what data source was that value and period based on? I looked at the raw data that the graph was taken from, and the data begins 95 years ago. What was used to fill in 95 years-ago to the present?
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Franks (comment 90):
There are likely many resons that the Earth is currently experiencing multiple glaciations (historically low CO2 levels [if this is even important], continents at or near polar regions, restricted ocean circulation in the Arctic caused by drifting continents, Solar variation, Solar/Earth orbital factors, the position of the solar system in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, …).
Each one of those fluctuations that you are looking at over the last 2.6 million years on the 65 million year chart and the five million year chart are an individual ice age/interglacial warm period set, 46 of them by my count. And there are other climate fluctuations just before that, but they may not have been cold enough to be called “ice ages”.
The climate variability during cold periods might rise because snow cover is such a good reflector of sunlight, leading to colder weather. During interglacials, the snow is largely gone, leading to warmer temperatures. Earth’s orbital variations seem to be in control of our glaciations during the last 2.6 million years.
Limits on the upper temperatures are again likely due to many of the above factors. Luckily, the Earth has been relatively hospitable for life for perhaps a billion years, and we have not been “cooked off” the planet yet (gives a whole new meaning to the term “cook off”).
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Sphaerica (comment 137):
Most of the ice core data uses the year 1950 as “present”. I did not add any data to fill in the intervening period. You could extend the red line by a little if you like, but it won’t make any difference in the long-term overall picture.
How many degrees of global warming have there been since 1950?
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The first entry for ice core data at NOAA says Age 0.0951409 (in K-years), and -31.5913 C, The site gives a start year of 2000 AD (end year -107075 AD) so the graph of their data must start from there, which is 2000 – 95.1409, or roughly 1905.
So I guess my question is simply what actual number did you use for warming in Greenland from 1905 to the present, and where did you get that number? I’m presuming that that is what you are saying the red line is, because from the looks of it, the ice core data only covers the blue line (i.e. just a little past the 187 years ago mark, which I’m guessing is up to 1905).
You had said that
But if that’s the case, and you didn’t add any data, then what you in fact highlighted was merely an increase from about 1755 to 1905, and you failed to present any data from 1905 to the present (specifically, the warming that’s occurred in the late twentieth century).
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What most posters, many of whom are qualified to say, matches what common sense should tell us, in the 1960s, when schools still taught reality, we were told about the MWP and the little ice age, not using those terms though! I have no scientific training except some physics from my engineering training, probably average “man in the street” knowledge, but to me it never did add up, for Labrador to be called”vineland” and Greenland to have it’s name, tells me it was warm there back then, warmer than now. That the Vikings found their settlements became unlivable due to cold tells me it got cold (this is school kid history and logic not rocket science) and if the climate was to return to pre ice age “normal” then it would need to get warmer and climate would have to change!!!.
Any scientist who sells out for funding, whilst showing a very human weakness has nevertheless undermined his own profession, should an accountant do this there would be an instant career change , why should any profession have lower standards? Doctors who prescribe drugs because of financial enticements from a drug company and not for the patients best interest have to explain themselves to their professional body. The Titanic was , from its engineers point of view compromised to save time and cost, lifeboats were omitted for asthetic reasons, he “sold out” (and back then the money spoke really loud, if he had stood on his judgment he would never have found another job) and people died, many climate scientists compromised themselves for grants and funding, they sold out and should be held to account.
The politicians have no where to hide, the Gores of this world are plainly corrupt in an evil way, their “cure” is pure snake oil, perhaps a list should be kept of those politicians who supported this scam, either they were unimaginably incompetent or corrupt, either way they should not be living from the public purse and neither should they get golden handshakes or pensions. they are unfit to serve.
20
From post # 130,
187 years into the past from today.
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WARMER ALERT:
Sphaerica, when you use these terms: “You failed to present any data from 1905 to the present (specifically, the warming that’s occurred in the late twentieth century).” You are talking in an accusatory tone. ARE you here as a PRO AGW or skeptic?
I believe it is only fair that you explain your position now.
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Mark D.,
The tone wasn’t meant to be accusatory, and I’m sorry if it came across that way. The statement was very simply (to paraphrase/rephrase) “if he didn’t add data for 1905 to the present and if he meant with the red line to show twentieth century temperature changes, then I think he made a mistake and mistook one span of pre-1900 warming temperatures to represent the 20th century data.”
I’m still not sure that he did make a mistake, but I can’t quite sort it out from his answers. It seems like he did, but really, I’m leaving it to him to say.
I just want the graph to be accurate. If he did mistakenly not realize that the data only goes to 1905, it shouldn’t be a big deal to track down the Greenland temperature change from 1905 to today, and add that in.
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Sphaerica:
What I have graphed is the data from the US government’s data archive site.
See: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/current.html
So Sphaerica has pointed out that the 20th century (and 21st, I might add) may be missing from the GISP2 ice core record. If you would like to mix data types (say like tree rings and modern thermometer records?) you could add another data type to the graph and call the graph something besides a graph of ice core data.
Sphaerica: How much warming would you like to add to the graph at the end of the ice core record? And where are you getting your data (not from corrupted data bases held by NASA and CRU I hope?).
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David Lappi,
I got the data by following the link in your post (data is available here), and from there following the link to the data itself: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt.
As far as adding to the graph… it’s your graph. I just pointed out a discrepancy. You could choose any source you want from which to get the missing data, or I suppose that if you feel that there is no reliable data source or that doing so would be inappropriate (mixing apples and oranges), you could revise the text of your post to avoid the claim that the graph covers twentieth century temperatures, eliminate the meaningless red distinction (i.e. make it blue), and add the “95” years ago label where it belongs at the end of the graph where it says “Years BP” (implying the current year).
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Sphaerica (comment 146):
You have pointed out a common practice in most of the ice core graphs that I have seen. For example, see the following graph of GISP2 temperatures and snow accumulation rates. By the way, note that snow accumulation rates are increasing, long-term.
I think that researchers that deal in time scales of tens or hundreds of thousands of years use “Years BP” on the assumption that a few of the most recent years won’t change the 10,000 year picture, as I have assumed. In this post, we are looking at “the big picture”.
When snow falls in the accumulation zone of a glacier, year after year, it gradually turns to ice. At GISP2, they drilled to considerable depth before they hit ice sufficiently strong to sample. This is the only reason that the ice core record does not start “At Present”. That and the fact that the drilling was completed on July 1, 1993.
In my opinion, the real warming we have experienced during the 20th/21st century is tiny (if there is any at all) compared to the warming shown of my graph since the end of the Little Ice Age (the red part of my graph). Warming through the 1940s, cooling to the mid-70s, warming again to 1998, then cooling to present. So, I do not think my graph is misleading to most, and conforms to practices and standards I see in the peer-reviewed literature, and of my data source.
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Sorry, this image did not transfer in my last post above. Here is the link.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.gif
David – I added in that image html. You are not the only one having trouble with it. Something I’ve adjusted in roles and capabilities may be mucking things up… I thought anyone could post an image…? JN
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You have it correct, Cap and Trade (Cap and Tax) and Obamacare…Cap and Tax is DOA (Dead on Arrival) and Obamacare is on life support, neither likely to pass in this coming election year. In the US, the public has awakened to the impending rape and they aren’t supportive.
Both bills passed by razor thin margins (fewer than 10 votes) with many Democrats crossing the aisle and voting with the Republicans. Both measures got stalled in the Senate. Now that the Republicans have a 41-vote “super minority,” if they hold ranks, they can hold up legislation. In an act of personal political survival, several incumbent Democratic Senators who are trailing in the polls have crossed the floor to help the Republicans block both measures.
Interesting times.
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David Lappi,
Yes, of course, “Years BP” is the correct label for the axis of the graph. But it belongs below the tick labels, as in your alley2000.gif example. What I meant was that by including “Years BP” as a tick label instead of as an axis label, it implies that the rightmost point on your graph is the present (i.e. 0), when it is in fact 95 years before present.
10
Correction, it’s 95 years before 2000 CE, (105 years before the present). I guess that’s part of the issue, too. “Years ago” is often used when dealing with things that are thousands or millions of years before the present, because the difference between “2000” and “2010” and “2015” as “the present” then really doesn’t matter. But when the difference is only 95 years, the “current” year is what matters. And in fairness, the current year should be assumed to be the year a reader is looking at the graph, not the year the data for the graph was gathered, because that’s how a reader is going to instinctively interpret it.
So I guess I think the most correct thing to do would be to put 95 as a tick label to the right at the end of the data, add another tick for 0 (with no data, or alternate source data), and then label the entire axis as “Years Before Present (2000 CE)” or “Years Before 2000 CE.”
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JL and others with an interest,
It is absolutely amazing to me that a U.S. President can go from being literally a messiah to many, to struggling on life support in one year. It’s a good thing as far as what it does to his agenda. But it’s a pretty sad commentary on the state of our Union that so many fell for such a man. Popular history will no doubt deal with it dishonestly.
For the first time in my career in computer science I find myself wishing I had gone into the social sciences instead. I’d like to have the time and the resources to really get into what has changed in U.S. society over the years. I suspect I’d find the roots of Obama’s election go back a long way, even farther back than Franklin Roosevelt.
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UPDATE: The Gisp graph of the last 10,000 years has been updated to improve it. The new graph is in the post above, with an improved timeline. Thanks to comments from Sphaerica to make the graph even more useful.
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Glad to help, Joanne. FYI, the large version of the graph (when you click on the link) is still the old one, and the text still inaccurately describes the red line: “The temperature shift the panel is so concerned about is shown in red.”
10
Sphaerica:
Thanks for your useful comments. It took me awhile to reproduce the graph, since I am not in the office this week, and idn’t have access to my original GISP2 spreadsheet. I have reworded the reference to the red part of the graph and it should appear on the site when Joanne uploads it.
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Thanks much, David.
I would point out (and no, I don’t expect you to further modify your graph, or your logic, or your argument) that I think you could apply temperature station data to your graph for two reasons. The first is that you wouldn’t want to apply any global average no matter what, because your graph isn’t for the globe as a whole, it’s specifically for Greenland. The second reason is that if you do use only Greenland data, as appropriate, you can bypass any homogenization issues which cause you to distrust the data and simply go back to the raw readings.
If you use Greenland data (for instance from any one station with observations back at least to 1905, and as close to the spot where the ice core was taken as possible) you avoid any issues at all with the data. That is to say, I think it highly unlikely that it will be affected by any Urban Heat Island effect in Greenland, or other site problems, and there’s no need to use homogenized data. You can go straight to the raw data for the site, and simply use the temperature difference between 1905 and the present.
This page might let you do that.
With that said… I can’t find the coordinates for where the ice core was taken, and you could easily argue that even using a nearby station could well be wrong if the ice core came from a remote central Greenland location (which is probably the case).
But, looking at all of the weather station data for Greenland and the surrounding area shows temperature changes from 1905 to the present to be between 2C and 3C at every station with data since 1905 (Upernavik, Jakobshavn, Angmagssalik). This temperature range seems very large, but it’s not at all surprising, given that the northern 30 degrees of latitude are clearly showing more warming than other parts of the globe (based on Spencer’s satellite measurements, not just the ground stations), and your own graph demonstrates the same thing (i.e estimates for temperatures of other parts of the world for the same periods, such as the MWP, show warming, but not of the magnitude represented by the ice core for Greenland).
Using the 2C number would put current warming about equal to that of the “Roman Warming Period” (and well above the Medieval Warm Period).
Using the 3C number would put current warming stlightly above that of the “Minoan Warm Period,” and make it the warmest temperature in the last 10,000 years.
On the other hand, the data from 1905 to 1940 shows a 2C to 4C warming at most Greenland stations, followed by a decline, and then a rewarming. That implies that non-GHG factors induced a warming this century in Greenland which lead to temperatures themselves exceeded those of the “Minoan Warm Period.” Given this, I’m really not sure what to make of the ice core data as compared to the station data, and paleoclimate data versus early-20th century data versus 1970+ data.
To resolve this, I’d probably have to get into the science of the ice cores. That is — an ice core is probably a record of many decades averaged together, not necessarily the highest temperature in the period. To match apples to apples, we’d have to wait another hundred years and take another ice core, to see what value we got for the 1905-2010 period from the ice core, versus the observed temperatures. Maybe a core would show the average temperature change in that range, which would be between 1C and 2C.
Still, this is just further hypothetical discussion on my part. Your graph is accurate and balanced in its presentation. I hope my fiddling wasn’t too annoying.
— Sphaerica
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Sphaerica:
GISP2 was drilled at an elevation of 3200 metres (10,500 feet) on the ice cap, at a site (identified for it’s ice core potential) not previously occupied for weather station purposes. I am not aware of any long-term weather stations on the summit of the Greenland ice cap. I doubt that sea-level temperature measurements would be very similar to the drill site, and I have no idea if the trends would be similar. I have attempted to find the information that might be available from the ice cap, but so far, no luck.
As far as using data from the NASA’s GISS database, we know that there have been “corrections” to the data, and one should go back to the paper records (if they still exist) to make sure of getting real data. Do you know where to get these? CRU implied that they destroyed their orginal data due to “data storage space” issues.
The coordinates of the drill site are here. From: http://nsidc.org/data/gisp_grip/document/gispinfo.html
“On 1 July 1993 the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) successfully completed drilling through the base of the Greenland Ice Sheet and another 1.55m into bedrock at a site in the Summit region of central Greenland (72o 36′ N, 38o 30′ W; 3200 masl) (Mayewski et al., 1994a). In so doing GISP2 recovered the deepest ice core record in the northern hemisphere (3053.44 meters). The Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP), GISP2’s European companion (30km to the east of GISP2 site) penetrated the ice sheet to a depth of 3028.8m one year earlier. Between these two projects, the longest (ice core) paleo-environmental record (>100,000 years) ever compiled is now available for the Northern Hemisphere.”
Note that bedrock at the drill site is about 200 metres below sea level, so it is unlikely that the ice mass is going to slide over the fringing mountain ranges and into the ocean anytime soon (this is one of the more bizare comments that I have read from warming promoters).
Any suggestions?
10
Based on what I understand now, I would guess that to arrive at a temperature for the current year they would need an ice sample (or equivalent ground based observations) of anywhere from 20 to 50 years to either side of the year being sampled (and the temperature would represent something of an average for that 40 to 100 year period), which means we’d really have to wait another 20 to 50 years from now to get the temperature average that would be applicable to represent the 0-years-BP “2010” tick.
I have to poke around, and see if they say anywhere what “thickness of icepack” is needed to get a reading (i.e. the range of years included in a temperature “reading” from the ice).
So, off the top of my head, no, I don’t think there’s any reliable way to fill in the last tick. You might argue that all you need is the temperature change, not absolute temps, and just an estimate, and so go with a rule-of-thumb number from Angmagssalik, but I personally don’t feel that would be right — eyeballing it, even if you went with nearby station observed temperature differences, I think you’d need to wait until at least 2035 to get 50 years representing the span around 2010 (1985-2035).
Now, if your point is to compare past warming to what current GHG theory says may happen (as opposed to what has happened to date, which no one is actually saying is a problem), then you have to go with their 3C/doubling estimate and plot that over some expected period (although no one knows how long it would take to actually reach 3C, assuming that anthro-CO2 is held to 560 ppm, and assuming that climate sensitivity is in fact 3C per doubling). If you assumed the current annual addition of about 1.9 ppm/year, adding to the current level of 387 ppm, that would be 91 years from now, plus some additional lag time (say two or three decades) for temperatures to catch up.
Of course, you wouldn’t then be plotting what has happened or necessarily will happen, only a hypothetical based on what the theory says would happen, in order to compare it to past climate changes. But obviously the hypothetical of 3C, no matter what the time frame, would both outreach and outpace all three past warming periods and wander up off the top of the currently graphed scale.
10
Sphaerica:
I found that they had an automated weather station at the GISP2 site from 6/89 to 1/95 and the weather records are here (less some significant gaps in the data):
http://nsidc.org/data/gisp_grip/document/gispclim.html
Now my qestion is how to get a statistically valid average temperature for the site given the data gaps, which occur during various parts of the year.
Suggestions?
10
I think that my previous post is still valid, i.e. that the ice core data represents temperatures averaged over very long (50 year at least) time spans, so picking a temperature for a year or even an average temperature for an entire decade might be the wrong thing to do. But as long as you were clear about the fact that it’s an estimate, and is the best you can do, and that it’s included for comparison only, then you could go ahead.
But I’d go back to the statement in my previous post, which is that a comparison of past temperature peaks to any current (30-40 year) increase isn’t really relevant. It is simply saying “see, warming to date is nowhere near what it’s been in the past.” You can make the point if you want, but the reality is that if warming has in fact stopped and does not continue, then there’s no problem (and in fact it may even be very beneficial), and I think everyone would agree to that. If warming continues to 3C or more, it’s a big problem and is actually demonstrated by the way it far outstrips any other previous warming on your graph.
So the debate circles back to “is it warming and how far will the warming go?” I think the approach of “is current warming comparable to or less than previous warming” is a bit of a misdirection, because current warming in and of itself is a non-issue.
The graph is still cool, though. It shows how very volatile the poles are in the climate. I wonder what Arctic summer ice was like in those warm periods.
10
If you want to play with the Greenland data, though, I personally would start by graphing it and looking at the gaps. You might be able to fill in gaps by using an average of temperatures from that same period from other years, scaled for the year missing the data. That is, use the range for previous years to give you the shape of the curve (up/down/dip/rise), but fit it to the start/end points of the missing data. If you compare several years and find that they are all similar to a degree, and more importantly if you find that the average for the gap, as compared to the end points, is very similar, then you can probably feel secure in using that as a method.
For example, suppose you had a 3 month gap with -29C as the starting temp, and -30C as the ending temp. If you look at other years during the missing period, suppose you had one that started at -27C, ended at -28.5C, and had an average of -28C, and another that started at -26C, ended at -28C, and had an average of -27.3C. These two cases both have an average temp. between the end points that is 2/3 the final temp. So you could then estimate with fair confidence the average temp for your 3 month gap between -29C and -31C as 1C * 2/3, or -29.6C.
You can also get error bars out of this process, when you see how much that “2/3” factor (whatever it turns out to be) varies from one year to the next. Your error is your lowest individually sampled factor times the gap temp range and your highest individually sampled factor times the temp range. This probably has to be further extended to account for the statistical size of the sample, but I’m not sure you need to get that picky.
Of course, if you get wild variations (e.g. one January with an anomalous warm spell, when other January’s have a steady, slow drop in temps), this method won’t work, and in fact I’d think it would point to the idea that you can’t use the data with the gaps in it.
You could fudge it another way, by changing the bandwidth of your sampling (see Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for more on this). For instance, you might get a perfectly valid average for a year using only the temperature from the first day of every month.
A comparison of any result to nearby stations (as changes in temp, not absolute temps, given the altitude and location differences) could be used just as a “sanity check.”
It’s an intriguing problem. I have little experience/education in the area, though (i.e. what is actually “right” or “wrong” to do with the data).
10
Typo in the above: “gap between -29C and -31C as 1C * 2/3, or -29.6C” should be “gap between -29C and -30C as 1C * 2/3, or -29.6C”
10
Sphaerica:
At #160 you rightly say:
Yes, the IPCC says that the fern takes 93 years to seal to become solid ice.
Gas diffuses from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration. Therefore, accepting the IPCC claim of 93 years for ice sealing, the effect of the time for ice to seal alone provides smoothing to gas concentrations similar to the effect of a 93-year running mean on data from ice that sealed each year.
Then, the ice samples are of ice accumulated over decades. Assume samples are of only 50 years ice accumulation, then the samples could not indicate a rise in mean global temperature of 0.6 deg.C over 60 years (i.e. similar to that since 1940 as indicated by HadCRUT3, GISS and GHCN).
There are many other problems with the ice core data, too.
Richard
10
Richard S Courtney:
Do you have a reference/link for that, so I can read up on it myself? I’m not sure what you mean by “the fern takes 93 years to seal to become solid ice.”
[The IPCC doesn’t “say” anything, they just cite papers… do you have a particular paper that you either read or saw referenced? That would be the most useful, especially if you have access to a PDF copy that doesn’t require purchase or a subscription.]
10
I’ve attached the first few samples of data for the DomeC ice core (sorry columns are not preserved). The cores are sliced into 55cm samples and averages all of the years in that sample. While more recent samples are averages of as little as a decade, later samples are averages of over 1000 years. The CO2 data uses slices of about 500cm in order to extract enough CO2 for a meaningful measurement. CO2 samples are averages of from 100 to 10000 years. Because all of these numbers are averages, they will not reflect peak climate conditions.
More recent years show relative errors because there is not always the same number of summers and winters in each 55 cm sample. Instead of using 55cm slices, recent slices should be trimmed on seasonal boundaries and the excess pushed to the neighbor slice. While the snow in the top 13 bags wasn’t hard ice, it should have been processed. I suspect that the reason those values are not published is because the variability does not match the thermometer record.
George
Column 1: Bag number (55 cm sample)
Column 2: Top depth (m)
Column 3: EDC3 age scale (years before year 1950)
Column 4: dD data (per mille with respect to SMOW)
Column 5: Temperature estimate (temperature difference from the average of the last 1000 years)
Bag ztop Age Deuterium Temperature
1 0 -50.00000
2 0.55 -43.54769
3 1.1 -37.41829
4 1.65 -31.61153
5 2.2 -24.51395
6 2.75 -17.73776
7 3.3 -10.95945
8 3.85 -3.20879
9 4.4 5.48176
10 4.95 13.52038
11 5.5 22.21633
12 6.05 30.60813
13 6.6 38.37379 -390.9 0.88
14 7.15 46.81203 -385.1 1.84
15 7.7 55.05624 -377.8 3.04
16 8.25 64.41511 -394.1 0.35
17 8.8 73.15077 -398.7 -0.42
18 9.35 81.93244 -395.9 0.05
19 9.9 90.75925 -395.9 0.05
20 10.45 99.97031 -399.3 -0.52
21 11 109.88879 -391.4 0.79
22 11.55 119.25888 -399.5 -0.55
23 12.1 129.40378 -402.9 -1.11
24 12.65 139.93889 -393.9 0.38
25 13.2 150.10205 -398.6 -0.40
26 13.75 160.58005 -389.8 1.05
27 14.3 171.01834 -394.5 0.28
28 14.85 181.44466 -400.5 -0.72
29 15.4 191.48283 -403.6 -1.23
30 15.95 201.87233 -393.1 0.51
31 16.5 212.18626 -410.9 -2.44
32 17.05 223.16292 -393.6 0.42
33 17.6 233.73909 -391.1 0.84
34 18.15 244.64073 -391.9 0.71
35 18.7 255.49973 -396.3 -0.02
10
BTW, the important thing to notice is that when someone says that current temperature changes are larger than ever before, they are comparing the absolute change in temperature over recent times with the change in multi-decade averages. In fact, changes in multi-decade average well in excess of 2C per century are very common in the ice core record. In the more recent samples, there are changes in 20 year average temperature than exceed 2C per sample. Continuing this for a century would be a rate of change in excess of 10C per century! Look at the earlier post, between bag30 and bag31 (around 1750), the 10 year average temperature increased by 2.95C in just 10 years.
The Vostok samples did not show as much short term variability since the slices were several times thicker and the data was representing averages of even longer periods.
George
10
Here’s a comment I’ve left on
http://www.climategate.com/legal-elephant-now-in-the-climate-room-but-mainstream-media-absent
check out the site and please leave a comment there
for your info; comment I posted on
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/tips_for_tuesday_february_23/desc/P20/
today and reply to it
LITIGATING AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE FRAUD
John O’Sullivan is a British writer, retired academic and legal advocate who has ten years’ of experience litigating against government corruption in the U.S. federal and state courts. He has an interesting article today http://www.climategate.com/legal-elephant-now-in-the-climate-room-but-mainstream-media-absent#more-4601
It has a link to an opinion piece he wrote detailing how ordinary citizens in common law countries including Australia can mount legal challenges against these purveyors of an ill-founded one world, un-elected socialist green government at http://algorelied.com/?p=3768
There are now under way in US courts 16 ‘Endangerment’ lawsuits filed against the EPA by Industry groups, conservative think tanks, lawmakers and three states challenging the EPA’s “endangerment” finding for greenhouse gases. The lawsuits ask the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review EPA’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. That finding—released in December in response to a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling—allows the agency to regulate the heat-trapping emissions under the Clean Air Act. One of the petitions has been filed by Peabody Energy Company and it’s instructive reading
It strikes me that if the ETS is passed Australian litigants including Industry groups ought to start similar proceedings; does anyone have any contacts in any industry groups to whom that suggestion could be made
val majkus (Reply)
Tue 23 Feb 10 (10:45am)
handjive replied to val majkus
Tue 23 Feb 10 (03:17pm)
Great link, Val.
The Climate Realists have won a couple of skirmishes but, the battle is far from over as ‘our’ elected representatives are using our tax payers dollars to promote their Global Warming Cultist fraud.
The scientific evidence of truth is mounting though, we must keep chipping away until it is overwhelming & impossible to ignore, even by the lapdog media.
Unlike the GFC, where billions are stolen & trillions given away in ‘stimulus’ to the perpetrators & no one has done ‘time’, the law must be shown to work or society will be worse for it.
Keep the legal links coming, as they are the start of the snowball.
Thanks to John for the article
10
co2isnotevil,
Where did you find the data? Can you provide a link?
David Lappi,
I looked at the NOAA data again, to compare it with what CO2isnotevil supplied. Your graph has tick marks ~100 years apart (based on the 10,000 year time frame you are representing). The “bag” data uses 55cm chunks that seem to span varying numbers of years (apparently based on the degree of compression, as older samples have more years), anywhere from 3 to 50 up near the surface.
The thing is, looking at the NOAA data, the time spans in the early measurements from 95 years ago to about 400 years ago have gaps of only 6 or 7 years, which suggests to me that you can use the station data you have, as long as you average 6 or 7 years together.
It does, however, highlight another problem with your graph, which is that the time scale is variable. The distance between early tick marks is about 150 years, but over time it grows. This disguises the time frames involved in the older warming periods, making them look like they happen more abruptly than they actually do. To me, slope on a graph is as important as height (i.e. rate of warming, as well as degree of warming).
20
Sphaerica:
At #164 you ask me:
Firstly, an apology for an error: I mis-typed “93 years” when the actual value is 83 years. Sorry.
Ice forms from snow. The snow then solidifies to form solid ice. Firn is material that was snow and is in the process of solidifying to form solid ice (n.b. ‘firn’ not fern: that was another unforgiveable typo). The firn is porous, and it contains gases in its pores. These gases become trapped in the ice that results when the solid ice is formed. Neftel suggested that this sealing takes 83 years and the first IPCC Report (1990) adopted this as fact.
Neftel suggested (and the 1990 IPCC report accepted) that the air trapped in ice is the same as the air at the time when the firn finally sealed to become solid ice. I have repaetedly pointed out that this is directly contradicted by the scientific fact that gases diffuse from regions of high concentration through porous materials.
A good stating point in understanding the failings of ice core analyses is the paper by Jaworowski (and the references it cites) at
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
Jaworowski is the ‘grandfather’ of ice core studies. He was the first to obtain and use ice cores for studies of past environmental conditions, and he determined most of the methods for obtaining and analysing samples from ice cores.
I have been associated with him for decades, and – on his behalf – I presented his paper on ice core analyses of past atmospheric CO2 analyses at the first Heartland Institute Climate Conference when
heart trouble prevented him travelling to New York.
Please get back to me if this answer is not sufficient.
Richard
10
Sphaerica,
Here is a reference to the DomeC temp data.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/epica_domec/edc3deuttemp2007.txt
Here is the top level web page which points to this and other data.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html
Here is a plot of the raw DomeC data.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/ic/d_temp+co2.gif
Here is a plot with 1500 year averaging applied.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/ic/d_temp+co2+i1500.gif
I used 1500 year averaging to make the CO2 and temperature samples averages over the same approximate period. Note that when 1500 year averaging is applied, only recent data is affected and the result is to reduce the overall temperature range from about 15C to only about 13.5C.
George
11
Richard S. Courtney,
Thanks much for the info and the link. I would greatly prefer the original “hard” science papers to read, but if they’re locked behind journal subscriptions, this will have to do. I’ll poke around.
What you say makes sense. What they say (the 83 year shift) makes limited sense (i.e “it’s the best we can do”). In general, I take all paleoclimate data with a huge, ancient grain of salt. I put very little weight on any of it.
Still, your discussion of the oxygen diffusing implies to me that the granularity, and peaks and valleys, of the data are suspect, but there is still information to be gleaned. Peaks are likely to be lower than they were originally, valleys, higher, and some peaks or valleys would be completely lost. Has anyone done any work to estimate the rate of diffusion?
It seems to me that the diffusion should result in an “averaging” over time, so, for instance, a temperature series like:
4, 5, 8, 12, 18, 16, 14, 10, 8, 8, 8
over some time might start to look like
5, 6, 9, 13, 15, 15, 14, 11, 9, 8, 8
and then maybe more time like
5, 6, 7, 14, 14, 14, 13, 11, 9, 9, 8
and so on, as the different time periods “bleed” into each other. Eventually, it would be a straight line of all 9’s.
Hence, the lows and highs of the valleys would be inaccurate, and over time smaller valleys would disappear. On the other hand, the average within a longer time frame would still be valid (which would explain the expanding lengths of the time periods reported, i.e. no only because of compression of the ice and inability to differentiate layers, but also because of possible diffusion across years).
This is, of course, all pure conjecture on my part… just a thought experiment. I obviously have a lot of reading to do!
Thanks again for the info. Links to any hard papers would be much appreciated, but this is good. Information and learning is always good.
10
co2isnotevil,
Thanks much for the links. [*Mild embarrassment*… I should have been able to find that myself… I guess I just didn’t look hard enough. I’m divided among 5 different projects right now, and not giving any of them enough focus.]
10
Sphaerica:
Concerning ice cores, at #171 you ask me:
Some estimates have been attempted but their results are determined by the assumptions they use so, in my opinion, all such estimates are worthless. As examples, I mention two of the difficulties which confound the estimates.
Firstly, diffusion does not stop when the ice seals. This is because gases dissolve in water and the surface of ice is coated in liquid water at all temperatures down to below -40 deg.C (yes, temperatures less than 40 deg.C below the freezing point of water). This strange surface property of ice was first discovered by Michael Farady in 1859 (I will send you a copy of a paper about it if you email me at [email protected]), and it is why ice is slippery. In the case of the ice sampled by ice cores, the ice consists of fused crystals and the liquid water phase exists between the crystals where they are fused. Diffusion of dissolved gases occurs through water.
Another difficulty is that bubbles travel up through solid ice, and their rate of travel is affected by the nature (e.g. crystal size) of the ice.
So, I think ice core analyses indicate when changes occured but only to a temporal resolution of about +/- 90 years, and their indications of magnitudes and rates of change are very dubious.
Richard
10
Sphaerica and Richard
I hope you don’t mind me “butting in”. I think Sphaerica will find THIS ARTICLE by Vincent Gray at the John L Daly site interesting. It includes correspondence between Gray and Richard.
Typing Jaworowski into Dalys search option will give lots to read.
Hope this helps.
p.s. Richard, you’ve responded to me and other commenters on this blog extensively. Just wanted to say I appreciate that very very much. Expands my (our) knowledge.
10
I agree with you Mr. Humbug: Richard, thanks for the effort and experience.
10
Sphaerica: I owe an apology. At #143 I said this:
It seems my spidy sense was off. You have offered help and been helpful. I hope you understand the blog has been hit by lots of nefarious trolls and I perhaps had a case of “triggerious digitalis”.
Please continue to prove my hunch wrong.
10
Eddy Aruda: I’m glad you brought up the Ordovician Ice Age: It did indeed occur sandwiched between Greenhouse climates. But this glacial episode only lasted a few million years at the most, and was possibly as short as 500,000 years. But it was also very severe. Continental rearrangements can’t be the answer, as they happen slowly, and thus wouldn’t have changed dramatically for 10 million years either side.
It appears that CO2 may be the answer after all:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/osu-vpp102609.php
Turns out that if you look at detailed isotope records, there was a large amount of volcanism along the proto-Atlantic margin, causing the high CO2 levels you mention, and a corresponding Greenhouse Climate. But these emissions were somewhat held in check by the massive erosion of the uplifting Appalachian mountains which sequestered a lot of CO2. Then, for some reason, the volcanism abruptly stopped, but the weathering continued, causing a massive drawdown of CO2 from the atmosphere. The Hirnantian Ice Age was the result.
So one lesson to take away from this is that you should be more skeptical, rather than accept graphs that suit your idea of how things work.
10
Mark D,
Your spidy sense was not entirely off. I am to a large extent what you term a “warmist” in that I believe in 90% of the science and the AGW position, however I do not debate it or argue it or try to convince others to believe what I believe (I did once upon a time, but I’ve come to realize that it is not only ineffective, but counterproductive). I leave other people to make up their own minds. I am only interested in learning new things myself, continuously keeping an open and, yes, skeptical mind, and trying to make sure that everyone understands the science and also that it is presented properly and fairly as often as possible.
I will try to educate people within my own limitations (I’m obviously neither perfect nor super-sentient) and where there are misunderstandings, but not “convince” them of anything. People are entirely responsible for their own opinions.
This post and graph were actually good examples of a perfectly understandable series of mistakes, and David and Joanne were both very sincere and forthright in recognizing and correcting the discrepancies. My hat is off to both of them for how they handled it.
I just wish everyone would start treating the issues that way, instead of playing “Mom, he hit me back first!” with both the planet and the global economy, either of which could cause unnecessary suffering for countless people if badly mismanaged.
20
ginckgo said:
And we should be worried about higher Co2 because?
10
Sphaerica,
Thanks for helping out here too. Believe it or not, we do enjoy discussion of the science (and sometimes the politics) here.
Please continue to keep us honest.
10
178
Sphaerica:
Thank you for those comments. I have little trouble with a “skeptical” as in continuously thinking mind (open helps some)
Thank you also for confirming my spidy sense as that has kept me alive for awhile.
Starting in reverse; how they handled it is how you handled it (openly with discussion). The series of mistakes (IMHO) were on a scale rather small. The central point is still solid. The issue of how the last 83 years is dealt with actually exposes a flaw in the whole ice core record. (score 1-1 skeptic vs AGW activist).
I hope you stay here and offer your sensible comments. We may choose to disagree on the political but we can at least talk.
10
Sphaerica,
Now that you have seen the DomeC ice core data, have the relatively large changes in multi-decade average temperatures changed your opinion about whether any recent changes are unusual or even unexpected? If anything, recent change has been relatively average, or even on the small side. The crux of the CAGW argument is that recent change is unprecedented and must be due to man. If it’s not unprecedented then why must it still be due to man?
I know the AGW talking point is that the models say so. The models say so only because they assume it to be so and not because first principles analysis derives it to be so. This is a very important distinction.
BTW, I have never been confused about your position, but I’ve also recognized the potential for you to understand why man’s CO2 emissions are not evil.
George
10
Mark D. I wasn’t making any conclusions about “worrying”, I was just pointing out that CO2 levels apparently had a deciding part to play in the Ordovician Ice Age.
10
So you agree a “massive drawdown of Co2 results in an Ice age? Therefore our putting Co2 into the atmosphere likely will forestall the next ice age?
I can’t wait till the next Gaia worshiper says that interference with ice ages is contrary to the “Mother”.
10
I agree that a glacial maximum (pedantically, we are still in an ice age) is arguably worse than global warming for us. I also think that the current planetary conditions (such as continental arrangements) may dampen the effect of GHGs. On the other hand, all signs (in particular the combination of Milankovic cycles) point to us not entering another glacial episode for some time yet (probably several 10,000 years), which might mean that our current interglacial will last much longer and our warming impact may not be stopping any dreaded cooling.
20
None of which has to do with anthropogenic causes. Well then: cheers! I hate dread……or was it dread hate…..Either way cheers!
10
Ginckgo @ 185
After having had the benefit of about 60 “big” warm/cold cycles over the last 3.5 million years (count them yourself on the five million year graph), why do you think this warm period will be very different from those of the past? And if the warm period is going to continue another 10,000 years (or more), please explain the long-term decline in temperatures that we have seen on the planet over the last 3,000 to 4,000 years? This is how previous warm periods have ended – a long inexorable slide to ice-age temperatures.
Hope you are right, ice ages suck. I’d much rather have a few degrees of warming, at least we will still be able to eat. With ice covering huge areas of the northern hemisphere, and the a lot of the rest converted to unproductive braided river floodplain and unfarmable permafrost and tundra, a lot of people will starve. I have spent lots of time in the Arctic, and that environment will not support many people, and those few survivors will be hunter/gatherers.
The next ice age would really not be my problem, except that some people are trying to get my government to take my money and accelerate our slide into oblivion.
10
Sorry about the delay in responding, but Scott asked me:
“Matt can I ask you a serious question? yes I have taken the piss out of you in the past and you have done the same to me, but lets put that to the side for the moment.
What specifically convinces you that man is responsible for global warming? I am truly interested becasue I dont understand your side of the argument.
Also what if anything would convince you otherwise?”
I’ll try not to make it too long an answer.
Short answer is that I think that the science (that suggests that it is highly likely that increasing CO2 levels will increase temperatures to an extent that will be a serious problem for civilisation to thrive in) is sound, uncomplicated, and the predicted outcomes match what we are observing. Do I accept that it may be wrong? Sure I do. I understand your side of the argument well enough – so I find it hard to fathom that you honestly don;t understand the non-sceptical arguments – they are pretty basic.
The extension is that I also consider that moving to a lower carbon (not low energy) society is well within out technological means. Especially the early steps of CO2 reduction, that could be expected to be implemented by say 2020 – that is fairly moderate reductions/caps/slowing of increases, replacing the least efficient carbon fuels/uses with alternatives that stack up economically – that is the low hanging fruit. So I imagine a situation where in 2020 there has been significant investment in low-carbon alternatives, and after years of debate the science is quite clear that it was a false alarm and CO2 is not a problem, and all I see is better energy efficiency, a diversity of energy sources, and much cleaner energy use across the developing world in particular.
Based on that scenario, it would take quite the science revolution to convince me that taking steps to reduce CO2 emissions now would not be a good thing. In fact I can’t honestly imagine thinking that the CO2 reduction steps proposed would not be a good thing even in the absence of AGW. I think we are in urgent need of a non-fossil fuel solution to maintain living standards in the future.
Following from that I believe that a trading scheme is the lowest economic cost method of allocating the resource (CO2 emissions). This is basic economic theory. Of course such theory can be ballsed up in implementation, but any implementation strategy can be ballsed up, whether it be government direct intervention, carbon tax, or whatever.
If I believed that reducing carbon would cripple our society, send us back to the dark ages, bring on a little ice age, kill billions in developing nations, introduce global communist/socialist government etc etc … well yes I’d probably require a higher level of confidence in the current science.
31
I was just looking at those graphs above again, and sorry if I’ve missed something, but what kind of curve have you fitted to the data to get the trends? These are the GIPS2 Greenland and Vostok last 10,000 year graphs. To my eye the Vostok curve looks very strange. Almost like it is a 2nd order polynomial fit?
I also note the LIA and MWP are invisible in the Vostok graph? Are they not supposed to be global events?
10
MattB@188,
You do realise that by advocating some sort of Trading scheme, we would be obligued to put a large amount of our resources and responsibilities into the hands of the very organisations and institutions that have so visibly shown themselves to be :
1) Incapable of handling simple mortgages without bringing the economic system to it’s knees
2) Have been very clear in their threats to Governments around the world that they’re “Too Big to fail” and hence for them to be bailed out
3) Have been a hotbed of racketeering, Graft and rots since their inception
4) Have been well known for showing little or no ethics unless regulations demand it of them
5) Are well known to focus on short term profits over long term benefits
6) Cannot tangibilize the intangible
Cost Effective? Really? No way.
You can pick whether I am talking about Bankers or politicians. heheheh.
Here’s a thought, how about people thinking and acting locally? How about planting some trees if you believe C02 will be catastrophic? If you’re right, good for you. If you’re wrong, I’ll harvest the tree for you later.
It seems to me the environmental movement has gone from “Think Globally, act Locally” to “Think locally and demand someone else fixes things up globally for us because we can’t be arsed and would prefer just to whinge about it”.
10
I see your point MadJak – but surprisingly for a greenie I’m actually trying to manage emissions using the systems that have helped our economy and civilisation advance to the modern technological wonder that it is today.
In case you’ve not noticed those guys control pretty much everything else and it is doing ok.
If AGW could be solved by me planting trees, then sure lets go for it. But it can’t. I suggested the same in 1997 in my honours presentation and my esteemed Professor told me not to be ridiculous there wasn’t enough land for the number of trees required. I tried to explain that the markets would determine to which point planting trees would be useful, and set a price based on scarcity of land, but I probably didn’t cobble together a great answer.
sad thing is if I’d embraced nuclear back then and not listed to greenie hogwash I’d probably be a professor myself by now;) He found my anti-nuclear stance similarly absurd.
10
MattB,
Allways a pleasure discussing things with a pragmatic scientist, however here goes…
So what makes you think a trading system isn’t going to be open to all the failures of both the banking system and the political problems as well?
OT, In know, apology in advance:
Actually, it isn’t. I would argue the GFC is not over by a long shot. The debt has simply moved from private hands into public hands. It hasn’t disappeared and it still needs to be paid off. The Financial institutions who brought this about are fighting to keep the unregulated banking system that created this mess – you see they know that if they really mess up, jo blow taxpayer will have to bail them out because they’re “too big to fail”, so they’re not going to be any less risk savvy.
Of course, If real capitalism was allowed instead of the politically sanitised “we can have any dips” capitalism then we wouldn’t be in this mess, but that’s enough on that right now.
20
Matt B:
At #188 you say:
Really? I would much appreciate your expanding on that assertion because having studied the subject for nearly 3 decades I have yet to find – and/or be informed of – any “science (that suggests that it is highly likely that increasing CO2 levels will increase temperatures to an extent that will be a serious problem for civilisation to thrive in) is sound, uncomplicated, and the predicted outcomes match what we are observing.”
I am aware of simplistic assertions of isolated scientific facts (e.g. CO2 is a greenhouse gas) which, although true, do NOT indicate “that increasing CO2 levels will increase temperatures to an extent that will be a serious problem for civilisation to thrive in”.
I am aware of nonsensical predictions (based on improbable assumptions) that increasing CO2 levels will increase temperatures discernibly (e.g. the IPCC SRES scenarios). But investigation of those studies shows them to be “pseudo-science of precisely the same type as astrology” (ref. Courtney RS, “Crystal balls, virtual realities and ‘storylines’ ” E&E (2001) ).
And I am aware of “predicted outcomes” that DO NOT “match what we are observing” (i.e. Hansen’s failed 1989 predictions, the ‘missing hot-spot, etc.).
So, I would be grateful if you were to inform me of the basis for your assertion: I always want to learn.
Richard
20
co2isnotevil,
I will warn you that I won’t get sucked into a debate on AGW, because it is far, far too complex to cover in blog posts, and inevitably tails into a series of comments along the lines of “warmist!” “d-person!” “miserable miscreant!” “brainless protoplasmic acorn!” “irrational invertebrate fairydust!” etc. etc.
But, to answer direct questions on my own personal stance on various points…
My own position is based on my knowledge of the physics, chemistry, and interactions of the system, and is based on the expectation that these factors must inevitably force global temperatures higher (unless it turns out that 2+2=5). The great unknown that I remain hopeful about and open to is total climate sensitivity (i.e. less than or greater than 3C / CO2 doubling), although I find it disheartening that intelligent and invested proponents of a lower sensitivity (Lindzen, Spencer) have in two decades been unable to provide evidence or a well-defined mechanism to support their contention that feedbacks are primarily negative and that, more specifically, changes in cloud cover/albedo will minimize total warming.
However, my position is also that recent changes are irrelevant. Based on the science, we have already committed the planet to warming about 1.4C (which is not a problem, if it stops there), even though it may take many decades to see that commitment. My concern, of course, is that each year that we pump more CO2 than necessary into the atmosphere, we raise that commitment, and at some point a commitment to too high a temperature change will become very expensive to mitigate.
This is not at all my position. I do not entirely view the recent change as unprecedented, and I do not trust the paleoclimate record enough to allow it to provide a better than questionable comparison. Paleoclimate to me is like a hunch to a detective. It can’t be used as evidence, but it can lead you to the evidence. I do find the rate of recent temperature change to be somewhat alarming.
My own fears are based on my understanding of the climate as a whole, including numerous factors (albedo, solar intensity, etc.). Past climate enters the picture only as a template for what may have caused climate change in the past, and even then it is only a hint at what should be considered, not an exclusive menu of the only things that are factors.
As I’ve said, I won’t debate, so I don’t use talking points, and I certainly don’t think in talking points. I also don’t use models as predictors. Models are tools with which to conduct experiments in an environment which precludes actual, physical experiments. An analogy is in designing a spacecraft to make a 20 year journey to Alpha Centauri. You can’t first build ten test craft. It’s not possible, unless the project is multi-generational. So you would use models, not because it’s the best way, but because in that scenario its the only way.
But the models aren’t predictors (to me). They are lab experiments, used to test and refine hypothesis.
Not evil. Simply unnecessarily extensive, with unexpected repercussions, while some viable and reasonable mitigating alternatives exist.
As an aside, along this line of thinking, my favorite example of this is the 9-5 work day. In the past, this made sense for a variety of reasons. In the present, with a global economy and business contacts that span many time zones, it no longer makes sense. But at the same time, by following it, our road networks must be designed to handle peak traffic volumes many times more than necessary, because everyone tries to get to work at once. In the resulting congestion, travel times are doubled or tripled, which represents lost productivity (=money), lost time out of people’s lives, and unnecessary burning of a limited resource (fossil fuels). That simple change to an ingrained social habit, having businesses offset either their work day or their employees’ work days, would save society both time and resources, with the side effect of very noticeably reducing CO2 emissions at no cost.
But businesses will not act on something like this without incentives (because the payoff, though huge, is not directly to the businesses involved, but rather to society as a whole).
I think there are any number of ways to approach the problem of reducing CO2 in ways that will be beneficial to society. From an economics approach, they would be “Pareto Improvements” and as such do not require a belief in AGW to enact. To me, given the current political climate, that should be the starting point. People don’t have to surrender to one side of the argument or the other to enact changes that would benefit everyone in the world, whether AGW is true or not.
21
Ginckgo, David Lappi,
My understanding is that an ice age is a non-issue and a distraction. The Milankovitch Theory by this point has been pretty well accepted and studied, and based on the reasonably well known and measured cycles of axial tilt, orbit and precession, the earth will not enter another full glacial period for another 20,000+ years. Ice ages are generally 40,000 to 100,000 years apart, and we only came out of the last glacial 10,000 years ago (the Last Glacial Maximum was about 20,000 years ago). The entire issue is still being researched and bandied about, but all recent estimates for the next ice age are on the order of thousands to tens of thousands of years.
I care about 50 and 100 years from now (out of my life span, but important to my daughter), but I’m personally not going to get too worried about an ice age that will cause problems thousands of years in the future (unless you want to save some fossil fuels for them to burn when the time comes ;D… Naaah!!! ).
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Sphaerica:
February 25th, 2010 at 12:15 am
I like the last 2! Very creative.
10
Richard I don’t doubt that I can’t introduce you to any science that would change your position. All I could do is present science that you know of and don’t agree with. Such is life.
10
Sphaerica:
Thank you for entertaining a dialogue.
You say at #194:
But you follow that with:
Sorry, but No!
As you admit, the climate system is complex. Hence, it is not possible to assume that change to one isolated variable “must inevitably” induce any certain outcome.
Increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration will certainly induce more IR absorbtion in the atmosphere, but that does not mean one can be certain this “must inevitably force global temperatures higher”. It is possible that the increase could result in a climate system response that lowers temperatures (please note that I am pointing out that it could lower temperatures, and I am not asserting that it would).
There are legion examples of such counter-intuitive climate system behaviour. I provide two such examples (that are understood).
Ocean surface has a maxium temperature of 305K and this maximum is achieved in the tropics. Any increased heating to the ocean surface at this maximum temperature induces cooling (yes, add more heat to the surface and it cools).
Hot air rises. So, it could be asserted that air temperature must increase with altitude in the troposphere (i.e. in the lowest layer of the atmosphere), but air temperature reduces with altitude. (The nonsensical plot of the film titled ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ is based on a failure to understand why this is).
Richard
P.S. Incidentally, and in attempt to illustrate how simple statements can mislead, I point out that in measurement theory it is a fact that 2+2=5. This is a function of rounding errors, and I explain it as follows.
An instrument with accuracy of +/-1 indicates each measured value in the range 1.6 to 2.4 as being 2.
Hence, two measurements of an item with value of 1.6 have a total value of (1.6+1.6)=3.2 which rounds down to 3 within the measurement error.
And two measurements of an item with value of 2.4 have a total value of (2.4+2.4)=4.8 which rounds up to 5 within the measurement error.
However, each of the measurements in both these cases is recorded as 2. Therefore, the measurements in case are summed as being (2+2)=4. Hence, (2+2) has any value between 3 and 5.
Such summing of measurement results is used when, for example, calculating mean values of sets of measurement results. And the fact that (2+2) can have any value between 3 and 5 is very important when calculating measurement errors of data sets.
20
Matt B:
You say to me at #197:
Surely, even you can do better than that cop out!
At #193 I quoted the assertions you made at #188 and I asked:
Now, either you have “evidence” (that I may or may not be aware of) or you do not. I do not know of any evidence “that it is highly likely that increasing CO2 levels will increase temperatures to an extent that will be a serious problem for civilisation to thrive in”. I do not know of any such evidence; none, zilch, not any.
If you think you have some then please state it. One, single item of such evidence would be a start. We can then debate its worth and onlookers can assess our arguments for themselves.
Please note that I am not asking much. I am merely asking for you to provide some evidence that supports the assertion which you made (and I think is untrue).
Richard
20
Sorry Richard – I was asked an honest question and I gave an honest answer. You can bluster in looking for a fight all you want, and then you’ll point to your paper and say YOU LOSE YOU OWE ME $10k. We’ve been through this before. You know where the science is – the IPCC kindly bundle it for you. Do you think I have something extra that the IPCC overlooked or I wrote on the back of an envelope earlier and have not had time to have it published in a journal? Well I don’t, sorry.
10
Richard S. Courtney,
I disagree with nothing that you said. In fact, I knew it before you typed it.
When I said “unless it turns out that 2+2=5”, I am simply stating (perhaps too succinctly and so confusingly indirectly) that “unless something we take to be a known fact turns out to be untrue.”
I disagree with your phrasing of “… assume that change to one isolated variable…”. I understand the complexity of the system very well, and I simultaneously know how little I/we know. This does not, of and by itself, make knowledge of the system or prediction impossible. I don’t know down to the millimeter and nanosecond exactly how the bubbles will form in a pot as I try to boil water, but I can predict the final temperature of the water and the time it will take to reach that temperature.
My expectation of cause and effect is not an assumption, but a fairly well grounded (to me) deduction.
The earth’s energy budget is, in fact, fairly simple. Energy comes in in one and only one meaningful way, as solar radiation [yes, yes, gravitation from bodies like the moon also impart or deduct kinetic energy, but we can take that as comparatively inconsequential]. Energy goes back out in one of two ways, either as reflected or emitted radiation.
The question of exactly where an energy imbalance goes, until the system reaches equilibrium and outgoing radiation = incoming radiation, is the million dollar question. Energy sinks include layers of the atmosphere, H2O phase change/latent heat, wind and ocean current energy, chemical conversion, and many more, not to mention an uneven geographic distribution of that energy. The process of cataloging these “energy sinks” will be a long and tricky one, and will take science at least another hundred years, just as the progressive understanding of geometry, gravity, quantum mechanics, and other specialties have been and continue to be multi-generational.
This is, in fact, the true and harmless meaning behind Trenberth’s statement that “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” His area of expertise is the earth’s energy budget, and accounting for where all the energy goes and why is what is needed to make accurate timing predictions along the way (but not to understand where things will end when the system reaches equilibrium).
But success in that endeavor is not necessary to understand that changing one isolated variable can in fact induce a certain outcome (barring feedbacks which alter the energy imbalance, not the measurement of temperature — but I already explained my feelings about feedbacks in the previous post). The energy must go somewhere, and some of it will ultimately be manifested as heat when the system reaches equilibrium.
The real question is “what is that equilibrium state?”
I hope this clearly explains my understanding of and perspective on the problem. I did not mean to write so much, or to sound like I’m lecturing. My real point is that I do understand what you are saying, but I have a different perspective on the relative importance of the details.
As a far more interesting aside (to me), when I typed “2+2=5” I actually anticipated some response focused on that. In my mind (being more interested in mathematics than measurement theory, and relating to my chosen moniker, Sphaerica) a better example of this occurs in geometry. Everyone knows that the angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees… except they don’t, and understanding that difference is the key to solving some important real world problems.
I’ll leave it as a puzzle to the reader to explain that truth.
Oh, but your measurement theory analogy is a good one, and I will remember it and, if you don’t mind, use it on occasion.
20
Sphaerica:
February 25th, 2010 at 2:35 am
I respect your position of not wanting to debate AGW. I cannot however let your Trenberth statement go without comment.
John P Castello explained this famous quote best.
Trenberths statement is far from harmless. Either the models are wrong, leaving the IPCC in the lurch, or the global temperature data are wrong, leaving the IPCC in the lurch.
Castello continues his analysis..
Kevin Trenberth, responding to Tom Wigley’s criticism of his comments, is beginning to sound like a skeptic:
The most fundamental law of physics is that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed or transferred. If their climate models do not even satisfy this elementary law, then it is questionable whether they are useful for anything at all.
According to the expert, they cannot account for earths energy budget nor do they know where it goes or why. Therefore making timely predictions (with current understanding) is not possible.
20
Sphaerica,
I have a deep understanding of the physics, chemistry and interactions as well. I also have a deep understanding of how feedback systems operate, the ice core data and weather satellite data. When I look at all the evidence, I conclude unambiguously that the system exhibits net negative feedback.
You can rest assured that the climate sensitivity is far, far lower than the IPCC ‘consensus’ claims. You also must not be confused about recent change claimed by warmists which is still ‘justified’ with the flawed hockey stick temperature graphs. BTW, have you read the Lindzen Choi paper or are you echoing what the left wing warmist blogs say about it? It actually does show very strong evidence of a climate sensitivity far lower than the models are assuming. The problem many people have is that they are blinded to the truth when that truth contradicts a faith based belief. When that truth undermines an entire faith based belief system, the resistance can be very difficult to overcome.
Many are confused because the climate system has both gain greater than unity and negative feedback and unless you understand how feedback control systems work, it’s easy to confuse gain greater than 1 with feedback. Gain arises from squeezing full spectrum surface energy through an atmospheric transmission window narrowed by atmospheric absorption, conceptually similar to the nozzle at the end of a hose.
Feedback manifests itself as the direction the gain changes as a dependent variable changes, in this case, surface power (or temperature). The nominal gain is about 1.6, which is the approximate ratio between surface energy in post albedo incident energy, The satellite date shows that as the surface temperature increases the gain decreases and visa versa. This is a clear indication of net negative feedback relative to surface temperature/energy.
It’s important to uinderstand the definition of feedback. Negative feedback is an effect which opposes change, while positive feedback is an effect which reinforces change. Claiming that positive feedback amplifies effects is technically incorrect and illustrates confusion about the differences between gain and feedback.
The data shows negative feedback, and the physics predicts it. Most climate system feedback originates from water vapor. A secondary effect of water vapor feedback is the ebb and flow of surface ice and snow. Ice and snow is positive feedback and the magnitude can be measured by examining the differences between summer and winter by considering the winter snow pack permanent. Water vapor feedback is relatively easy to quantify as the effects of evaporation. First, we know that more evaporation increases cloud cover. Clouds both reflect solar energy which results in surface cooling and traps surface energy which results in surface warming. The satellite data shows that these effects more or less cancel, although seems to exhibit slightly more surface warming than cooling, There are 3 large negative feedback mechanisms which cause cooling as the surface temperature increases. First is the latent heat of evaporation, As water evaporates, heat is carried away from the surface and into the clouds, where it is radiated away (half up and half down). As evaporated water falls as rain, the rain is almost always cooler than the surface and further cools it. Finally, when rain falls as snow, the surface becomes more reflective and less solar energy is absorbed by the surface.
A big error in the alarmists analysis is the conclusion that solar variability is not enough to cause the change observed in the ice core record. This is predicated by considering the change in yearly incident radiation at a specific northern hemisphere latitude. This fails to account for the amplification that occurs relative to perihelion and the global seasonal min and max surface reflectivity. As a result, they conclude that the Sun isn’t enough and assume that positive feedback mechanisms must explain what they can’t otherwise seem to figure out. This is another indication of the confusion between gain and feedback.
George
20
Baa Humbug,
I agree with almost everything in your post except for your conclusions, which make me think that you missed my point.
Energy does not equal heat. A measure of energy does not equate to a measure of temperature. Trenberth’s concern is with the earth’s energy budget, not its heat (or temperature) budget. That is the shining nugget of truth that clarifies the difference in how people are interpreting his statements versus what he is saying. It is also core to my own understanding of the issue.
In this context, the specific statement that “It is a travesty” does not mean that it’s a travesty because we should be able to account for it and can’t (and then by extension all statements on climate are invalid), but rather that until we can account for it we are powerless to safely and intelligently do anything about it except to cut emissions (i.e. any sort of geo-engineering is out of the question).
You will also note that much of my own discussion was about our inability to make timely predictions. When is hard. How much is easier. That it will ultimately happen is much easier. That we are committing to it without an ability to clearly see it as we do it, or to go backwards once it is done, is the danger.
10
Sphaerica,
You seem to be confused about the existence of a irreconcilable energy imbalance that would continue to trap energy on the surface forever. The Earth system is always in a state of energy imbalance. Considering each hemisphere on it’s own, during half of the year, more energy is arriving than is leaving and the surface warms. During the other half of the year, less energy is arriving than is leaving and the surface cools. The Each hemisphere and hence the Earth is only in balance once in the spring and again in the fall.
The hemispheres respond independently and the net result from summing the hemispheric responses shows a S hemisphere signature because the S hemisphere energy balance variability is larger than in the North. Did you read this? http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html
BTW, the hemispheric specific energy balance has a peak to peak value of about 180 W/m^2. That is, at peak imbalance, the Earth is either absorbing or emitting 90 W/m^2 more power than when it is in balance.
The idea that there is this small imbalance caused by more CO2 which accumulates forever is completely wrong and illustrates a lack of understanding about how feedback systems operate and assumes a climate system that is so sluggish that there would be no difference between the day and night time temperatures.
George
20
Sphaerica:
February 25th, 2010 at 3:48 am
Thanks for the reply. It’s 4am here in Brisbane, i would love to continue discussing this with you but can’t. Thought I’d post this so you don’t think I left you in the lurch without a reply.
maybe we can continue tomorrow.
p.s. You are the most civil “warmist” I’ve come across. hat tip to you.
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[…] [More] Notes: […]
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co2isnotevil,
I don’t have time to read your link for a little while (I’m trying to unravel a particularly sticky programming problem at the moment — I hate computers), but I promise I will.
Off the top of my head, however… your breakdown of the earth into hemispheres seems unnecessarily complex to me. The world is a sphere, continuously (24/7) absorbing the same amount of energy as defined by a disc with the radius of the earth. At any point in time, regardless of time of day or season, some point on the earth is being hit directly, while for other portions the angle of incidence varies proportional the cosine of the distance from the center. But the energy absorbed is constant. Because of this, interestingly enough, during our spring/fall the equator gets two summers and no winter, where in the light of the sun hits the equator directly.
Of course, the variable there is the albedo, which does change for different parts of the earth with the seasons (ice/snow), cloud cover, etc. This imbalance is very noticeable in the global temperature because of the uneven distribution of landmasses across the hemispheres, and their influence on albedo and temperature (IR emissions). But again, this is the manifestation of temperature, not energy. The energy flux is still relatively constant (but I will follow your link, to see if there is something I’m missing).
But I would still go back to the primary aspect of the most basic energy model, that while inbound energy exceeds outbound, the difference is being absorbed by the system but is not by definition evidenced in measurable temperatures, because the system is more complex than that. But the general equation still holds (system at equilibrium when inbound = reflected + emitted).
In detail, yes, the system is always in a state of energy imbalance. The earth gets too hot and radiates more. It gets too cool and radiates less. It swings back and forth on daily, monthly, seasonal and other schedules.
My point is that the swings and other factors can easily mask situations where net reflected + emitted > inbound, and so the system is accumulating energy that will eventually be reflected in increased temperature (and corresponding increased IR emissions) and/or a relatively stable new albedo, which will in turn restores the balance of inbound = reflected + emitted, but with the system at a higher temperature (the new equilibrium).
My main point is that it is my understanding that it is wrong to focus on temperature, because temperature is both an incomplete description of and an incomplete measure of the state of the system.
20
Sphaerica:
Thank you for your honest answer at #201 to my question at #198. (It is a stark contrast to the silly respone from Matt B at #200 in response to a similar question).
You say to me:
I apologise if my remark caused offence: that was not my intention, and I have drawn attention to your rebuttal by quoting it here.
Clearly, we disagree as to whether you are correct when you say;
Your “deduction” seems to be based on the KT energy budget, and I suspect our disagreement is because I have severe doubts that their budget is correct. I think it would not be helpful to anybody for us to debate that here (although I am willing to do that), but please feel free to contact me by email if you want to debate the matter.
More interesting are your views on equilibrium.
I have repeatedly pointed out that the system seems to be bi-stable (i.e. it is stable in each of its galcial and interglacial states). The Sun is g-type and, therefore, it is known that it has increased its thermal output by ~30% in the 2.5 billion years since the Earth obtained an oxygen-rich atmosphere. But the Earth has had liquid water on its surface throughout that time. If radiative forcing had a direct effect on the Earth’s mean global temperature (MGT) then the oceans would have boiled to steam long, long ago.
This poses two questions to me.
1.
Why do some people accept an assertion that 0.4% increase to radiative forcing from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will prove catastrophic when ~30% increase to radiative forcing from the Sun has had no discernible effect?
2.
Why does the system exhibit bi-stability.
And I think the two questions probably have the same answer.
The basic assumption used in the models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing. And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this as follows.
The climate system is seeking an equilibrium that it never achieves. The Earth obtains radiant energy from the Sun and radiates that energy back to space. The energy input to the system (from the Sun) may be constant (although some doubt that), but the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun ensure that the energy input/output is never in perfect equilbrium.
The climate system is an intermediary in the process of returning (most of) the energy to space (some energy is radiated from the Earth’s surface back to space). And the Northern and Southern hemispheres have different coverage by oceans. Therefore, as the year progresses the modulation of the energy input/output of the system varies. Hence, the system is always seeking equilibrium but never achieves it. Indeed, each year MGT rises by 3.8 deg.C from July to January and falls by 3.8 deg.C from January to July. (Incidentally, politicians claim that a rise of MGT by 2 deg.C must be prevented to avoid catastrophe but MGT rises – and falls – by nearly double that each year and nobody notices. Ho hum. That’s politicians for you).
Such a varying system could be expected to exhibit oscillatory behaviour. And, importantly, the length of the oscillations could be harmonic effects which, therefore, have periodicity of several years. Of course, such harmonic oscillation would be a process that – at least in principle – is capable of evaluation.
However, there may be no process because the climate is a chaotic system. Therefore, the observed oscillations (ENSO, NAO, etc.) could be observation of the system seeking its chaotic attractor(s) in response to its seeking equilibrium in a changing situation.
Very, importantly, there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP. And the ~900 year oscillation could be the chaotic climate system seeking its attractor(s). If so, then all global climate models and ‘attribution studies’ utilized by IPCC and CCSP are based on the false premise that there is a force or process causing climate to change when no such force or process exists.
But the assumption that climate change is driven by radiative forcing may be correct. If so, then it is still extremely improbable that – within the foreseeable future – the climate models could be developed to a state whereby they could provide reliable predictions. This is because the climate system is extremely complex. Indeed, the climate system is more complex than the human brain (the climate system has more interacting components – e.g. biological organisms – than the human brain has interacting components – e.g. neurones), and nobody claims to be able to construct a reliable predictive model of the human brain. It is pure hubris to assume that the climate models are sufficient emulations for them to be used as reliable predictors of future climate when they have no demonstrated forecasting skill.
Anyway, those are my views and I hope they are helpful to your thought.
Richard
20
Correction, I meant “net reflected + emitted < inbound” for a pre-equilibrium scenario where a GHG is still absorbing more IR than is being emitted, because the system has not yet reached a temperature which will “balance” the new level of atmospheric absorption.
20
Many of your statements ring true and warrant further thought (bi-stable, chaotic attractors, etc.). I myself noticed the 900 year cycle in the graph that started this thread (perhaps the sequestration of heat in the 1,000 year long deep ocean conveyors, resurfacing to warm the world?… just a musing).
I would point out, again, that while measured MGT appears to vary by 3.8 C seasonally, and certainly the actual energy must vary some due to changes in albedo and IR emissions, it is the net annual energy change from one year to the next that matters, not temperature, and we aren’t successfully measuring that energy level (again, Trenberth’s statement that we can’t, and it’s a travesty). Energy, not temperature, and measured everywhere, not just at the surface or the middle troposphere or in heat versus other repositories. As an aside… I greatly rue the years with Bush as president, when that would have been the best time to invest in greater scientific measurement tools like satellites, so that we would have had more data now.
I had two main thoughts of interest as I read your post, though:
1) If in fact the climate is already a system seeking chaotic attractors, with already inlaid cycles and factors (and this seems to me quite possible)… the introduction of an unexpected (by the earth) CO2-like factor alters the system (i.e. the location of the attractors). That is, no matter where the climate was heading, if the physics holds true, then we are aiming for a point 2C to 4C above that original destination. God help us if the earth was already headed for a 2C increase, and we’re adding 2C to 4C on top of that!
Again, this goes back to my point that warming to date since 1970 is not the issue. Expected final warming due to any actually realized GHG affect is the issue, and we won’t actually experience and be able to measure that until it’s too late.
2) In terms of the question of 30% solar increase vs. 0.4% radiative forcing increase… 30% relates to a time period of billions of years, which is not relevant to my puny lifetime as a pile of self indulging pile of COHN molecules. 0.4%, if it translates as expected into 2C to 4C, will eventually affect the self indulging pile of COHN molecules that my wife and I created in a moment of whimsical and perhaps ill-advised (she’s a rebellious teenage pile of COHN now) leisure.
20
Sphaerica,
Energy and not temperature is what’s important. In fact, all of my analysis is energy based (actually power and energy) and temperature is just a consequence. The state of the system is dominated by the energy stored in it, which is proportional to T^4 (surface, clouds, atmosphere, etc.). The response is not constant (i.e AO, El Nino, etc), but this represents a change in the system transfer function, not a change in the basic state of the system, although it is often convenient to model a time varying system as a time invariant system with extra state.
Considering the hemispheres independently is not a complication, but a necessary simplification. The reason it’s necessary is because the responses of the hemispheres are highly asymmetric relative to incident energy and that there is very little net energy flux flowing across the equator (look at ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns). In addition, the incident energy is also not the same for the 2 hemispheres and during the S hemisphere summer peaks about 80 W/m^2 more than in the Northern summer because perihelion is in January.
If you look at the link I supplied earlier, the hemispheric specific responses extracted directly from the satellite data are almost pure sinusoids that track the sinusoidally variable incident energy, while the asymmetries makes the sum (the global response) appear to vary in counter intuitive manner. The clean sinusoidal response of each hemisphere is indicative of a relative simple set of differential equations that govern the climate system transfer function. The problem is that if you try to apply this to the global response in order to extract the global transfer function as a single set of DE’s, it won’t work. The hemispheres must be treated individually. The fact they they are not is a fundamental flaw in the AGW case. BTW, extracting transfer functions from the response is something that any first year EE student would be capable of doing. The analysis also clearly shows that the basic system time constant is on the order of a month and not the decades required for CAGW. The delay between min/max incident energy at the solstice and the min/max temperature on the surface is indicative of the time constant.
You talked about unnecessary complications, but everywhere I look in AGW centric papers, there are far more complications with no underlying physical basis. The purpose for assuming these complications is either to obscure the real answer or to justify an assumption (rather than rely on first principles) in order to get the politically convenient answer.
Another point you are missing is that once the energy balance passes through zero, it is by definition in balance and whatever happened before no longer matters. We see yearly solar forcing variability far larger than forcing attributed to CO2, yet each and every year, the Earth quickly adapts. Locally, this happens on a daily basis as we switch between night and day when the incident energy varies from 0 to full solar output.
The point is that any ‘imbalance’ caused by the days incremental CO2 emissions is completely absorbed by the system within 24 hours over which all points on the Earth have passed through a net imbalance of zero.
George
20
Sphaerica:
Thank you for your considered response at #211.
You really are a gem among ‘warmers’. I learn most from discussion with those who do not agree with me, but (sadly) most ‘warmers’ are incapable of rational discussion. Please stay here and continue to present your views. Rational opposition to climate realism is rare and helpful to both ‘sides’ in the AGW debate.
For the moment, and with one exception, I let your comments stand so others can make their own assessmentsof our opposing views. The exception is your comment that says;
I think this requires me to clarify that in my post at #209 I was discussing magnitude of forcing change and not the time scale over which the change occurs.
I fail to see the relevance of the time scale. If change to radiative forcing has an effect on equilibrium temperature then only the magnitude of the change is relevant and not the time scale over which it occurs.
Anyway, as George says at #212, empirical evidence indicates that response time is very short for changes to magnitude of radiative forcing.
However, I strongly agree with you when you say
Again, thank you and please keep up your rational disagreement.
Richard
20
Sphaerica:
Upon reflection, my clarification in #213 should have been more clear.
When I said:
“If change to radiative forcing has an effect on equilibrium temperature then only the magnitude of the change is relevant and not the time scale over which it occurs.”
I should have said:
“If change to radiative forcing has a dominating effect on equilibrium temperature then only the magnitude of the change is relevant and not the time scale over which it occurs.”
Sorry.
Richard
10
Richard,
Notice how the MGT is at it’s lowest value in January, when the Sun is closest to the Earth?
This is why the hemispheres must be considered independently. Each hemisphere has a different incident energy profile, seasonal reflectivity profile, ocean and land distribution profile and very little energy flux flowing between them. When the hemispheres are measured by themselves, the temperature follows incident energy in the expected manner.
The resulting variable MGT is then the average of the 2 independent hemispheric responses. In effect, it’s a beat note between the individual hemispheric responses.
The other place this matters is with the relationship between temperature and cloud coverage. If you look at the global response, the global cloud coverage seems to be inversely related to surface temperature, where you would expect that higher temperatures means more evaporation which means more clouds. In fact, if you look at the hemispheres by themselves, cloud coverage and even the atmospheric water content (also available in the data set I use) are indeed proportional to the temperature.
George
10
Richard S. Courtney,
Not much time to write now, but referencing http://geosc.psu.edu/~kasting/PersonalPage/Pdf/annurev_03.pdf, the solar change has been roughly linear (but 30% over 4.6 billion years, not 2.5 billion). Since life only really began about 600 million years ago, the sun would have been 3.9% weaker then. The other 26.1% change predated life on the planet. Vaguely complex, more modern life (tetrapods, the sauropsids and synapsids) didn’t form until 300 million years ago, when the sun was a mere 1.95% weaker. Protomammals, 200 million years ago, 1.3% weaker. Modern primates, 75 million years ago, 0.5% weaker. Homo erectus, 2 million years ago, .013% weaker.
You can see where I’m going. While solar radiance certainly warmed the planet less when life first appeared, other factors (axial tilt, location of land masses, CO2 levels) were certainly major contributing factors in climate (with sky high CO2 levels probably dominating). And the difference in the time line of man is trivial, clearly dominated by the Milankovich Cycles and other factors (for major climate changes) over changes in solar output.
That’s what I meant by time scale. Clearly, the planet could have been cooler a billion years ago, due to the difference in solar radiance, but I’m not sure how it affects the discussion.
It’s an interesting fact, though, one I didn’t realize. It’s interesting to see the projections of solar output for the next 300 million years. If our species lasts that long (or whatever species we evolve into by then), I wonder if we’ll switch planets, or just move the earth? Maybe sprinkle some asteroids in a cloud between us and the sun to provide a bit of shade!
30
Sphaerica:
I said I would let our comments stand for now so others can compare and assess our different views for themselves. But one of your responses requires a reply from me so others can make a fare comparison.
At #209 I said;
I stand by my point. Indeed, 2.5 billion years ago the atmospheric CO2 content was much higher than now, too. So, I take your response at #216 to be a point of detail when it says;
It is possible to dispute these matters (as the link you provide indicates) but there is no purpose to such dispute in the context of my argument.
Take it as 30% or 4% increase to radiative forcing from the Sun over geologic time, and my substantive point still holds;
i.e. the past increase to radiative forcing from the Sun has had no discernible effect on MGT but that increase is much greater than the suggested increase to radiative forcing of 0.4% from a doubling of present atmospheric CO2.
Richard
10
Richard S. Courtney,
Apologies… when I found the paper with the 30% reference, I assumed that was your source as well, and so I also assumed that the 4.6 billion year number matched as well without going back to your original post to check it.
20
I should have included pictures with post 215.
These plots show the incident energy (yellow), gain (cyan), cloud coverage (magenta) and surface power (red). The gain is calculated as the ratio of the surface power to the albedo adjusted incident energy. The others are direct measurements of 25 years of averaged satellite weather data. The surface power is related to the surface temperature through Stefan-Boltzmann.
Global data is here: http://www.palisad.com/co2/plots/wbg/g/gain.png
North hemi is here: http://www.palisad.com/co2/plots/wbg/nh/gain.png
South hemi is here: http://www.palisad.com/co2/plots/wbg/sh/gain.png
Notice how the gain increases at lower energies (temperatures) and decreases at higher energies. This is the signature of negative feedback. In other words, the gain varies in a manner opposite to the surface energy, thus offestting (opposing) changes in surface energy.
As forcing changes (incident solar energy), the surface energy (surface temperature) follows with a delay of about 5-6 weeks, corresponding to the delay between min/max energy at the solstice and min/max surface temperature.
As the surface energy increases, the cloud coverage increases, decreasing the post albedo incident energy.
As the post albedo incident energy decreases, the surface energy decreases (i.e. negative feedback).
When the gain decreases, surface energy is reduced and is another indication of negative feedback.
Note that the measured gain is does not correspond to a specific physical property of the system, for example as the surface energy corresponds to the surface temperature, but is a way to quantify how the system responds to forcing. Because of it’s readily characterizable behavior, the gain makes an ideal knob for parameterizing the response of the system.
George
00
George:
At #219 you provide pictures to illustrate your points in #215 where you say to me:
Yes, I know. But I respond to draw attention to your point. It supports my view that the hydrological cycle – not radiative forcing – dominates the behaviour of global climate.
Richard
00
Higher temperatures leads to more clouds?
I would have thought in view of the Lockart et al 2009 paper that more sunshine hours (SSH) leads to more evaporation.
In the above study, Lockart et al find that an average of 1.5hrs more sunshine lead to 4x more evaporation than an extra 2degC temps.
This supports Richards view that the hydrological cycle does indeed dominate the planets climate.
00
There can be no question that the hydrological cycle dominates the climate, or at least dominates the feedback that moderates the climate. I say moderate because negative feedback moderates, while positive feedback destabilizes. Clouds are just one of the knobs controlled by this cycle.
George
00
George (co2isnotevil),
I’m still re-reading your page, but I have some questions:
Do you know if the satellite measurements account for, on a particular location of the globe, angle of incidence as well as length of day? That is, changes in albedo are primarily a result of ice and snow formation in the winter hemisphere, however that hemisphere also experiences changes in amount of daylight and angle of incidence of the sun. The sun is more present (i.e. more hours, more direct) in the hemisphere with a lower albedo. Do you know if this is already built into the satellite albedo numbers, or not?
Where did you get your values for PS, PC, and PW?
What do you mean by the statement “This is a result of different means between hemispheres and that energy, not temperature, is summed algebraicly”? Please clarify.
In your definition of “gain”, it is a dimensionless number. Can you please clarify what you feel that this value represents? Exactly why is a gain in excess of 9 “simply not possible”? You seem to be saying that it’s not possible for our planet to ever warm by 3C, no matter what.
00
Sphaerica,
The albedo I report is a global albedo calculated as the reflectivity of the surface (including ice) and the reflectivity of clouds, weighted by the fraction of cloud cover. I do this across 250km square regions of the surface and add them up. Weighting based on solar energy exposure happens because each of these 250km squares (actually each slice of latitude) has it’s own profile of incident solar energy which is accounted for in the energy/power calculations.
PS and PC are calculated by inverting Stefan-Boltzmann on the satellite reported cloud and surface temperatures. PW was determined by a more comprehensive model where it’s value was set to eliminate the residual. The value was small (a few W/m^2) and can be calculated from the efficiency of a Carnot engine whose hot and cold pools of energy match the hot and cool pools of energy stored in the Earth’s thermal mass.
Temperatures are proportional to the fourth root of the power. Energies and not temperatures are summed across time and space.
The gain is the ratio between surface power and forcing power. Surface power is related to surface temperatures through SB. Forcing power is the albedo adjusted incident solar power which as I discussed earlier accounts for day length and seasonal solar exposure. For all intents and purposes, this is an accurate representation of the climates sensitivity to incremental forcing power. Note that this is a ratio of power to power, not power to temperature, which because of the intrinsic T^4 relationship between temperature and energy is an invalid way to even express the climate sensitivity.
A gain over 9 is not impossible, but a global gain that high is just not possible within the constraints of the climate system. The gain will become that high when the temperature is very low, for example at the poles, but the global gain will never be that high unless we were in a snowball earth scenario. The point is that water vapor feedback through the actions of evaporation, clouds, rain and snow modulates the gain and as the temperature increases, the gain approaches unity.
There is no difference between incremental solar forcing and incremental forcing attributed to increased GHG absorption and the climate must respond similarly. We can measure how it responds to incremental solar energy and this response suggests a climate sensitivity of well under 1C for doubling CO2 (yes I know this is an invalid metric …).
George
00
Sphaerica,
Let me clarify one point. It’s not possible for the climate to warm by 3C given only 3.7 W/m^2 of incremental forcing power (it’s actually even less incremental surface forcing power, but that’s another topic).
Now, if the current temperature was only about 250K, then 3.7 W/m^2 would increase the temperature by 3C since the gain would be about 3 and the energy difference between 250K and 253K is about 11 W/m^2, which is about 3 times 3.7 W/m^2.
George
00
George,
You analysis shows some good work. It is certainly intricate and difficult. Koodos to you for putting it together, and working through all of the math and data.
But there are pieces of it I don’t agree with (or maybe don’t follow). Statements like “this is an accurate representation of the climates sensitivity to incremental forcing power” don’t ring true to me. That is to say, the work until that point was fine, but then the declaration that it then equates to or in any way relates to climate sensitivity seems arbitrary.
There are also some other minor flaws, such as the statement that
But the AGW hypothesis does not say that the corresponding temperature increase is directly attributable to CO2. In fact, their CO2 component is, I believe, very close to the 0.55°C that you arrive at. It is other positive feedbacks, such as the increase in albedo resulting from expanded ice melt, and increased water vapor (both of which are prime components of your own model) that bring the 0.55°C to 3°C. You even say this yourself later in the page.
I also had a problem with the statement that
It is certainly true that the two seem to be tied together, but there is no evidence that cloud cover is a controlling variable. All this really proves is that increased temperatures increase evaporation, which every agrees to. There is no direct evidence that it is anything other than an artifact (i.e. just because it exists, doesn’t mean that it goes on to exert some control on the system). Certainly, there are separate camps for the effects of clouds, arguing whether or not it will be a net positive (due to H2O GHG effect) or negative (due to albedo changes) feedback. But your work doesn’t do anything to support the statement that it must be a controlling variable (which I interpret to mean a negative feedback).
Also:
This stands out to me as bootstrapping. You have defined gain as surface power divided by radiative forcing, so of course it is an inverse relationship. You can’t then say that because it is an inverse relationship, it is a sign of negative forcing — you defined it that way.
I think the basic problem with the analysis is that you a priori used the seasons as your basis of analysis, ignoring year to year trends. Between the seasons the changes in radiative forcing obviously dominate. I think you are then extrapolating this domination of the sun over the seasons into an interpretation that it then dominates and drives all climate, and I don’t think that extrapolation is valid.
Still, it looks like good work, and I think you could try to take it further. It would be interesting to see, for instance, the same work done for the 10 or 20 year periods at the beginning and end of the measurements, comparing the changes from one to the next (e.g. 1979 to 1989 or 1999, then 1989 or 1999 to 2009).
I hope my criticisms aren’t too bothersome to you. I certainly am not saying to “throw it away.” I wish more people would look that intensely into the subject. It just didn’t “sell” me.
10
Correction, I said “increase in albedo resulting from expanded ice melt” when of course I meant a decrease in albedo (and a corresponding increase in radiative forcing).
00
Sphaerica,
First, thank you for providing a useful critique of my work. I’ve tried to solicit feedback from other warmists whom I communicate with from time to time, including Rossow, MacCracken and Schleshinger, but no one seems to want to provide any feedback. The usual anonamous feedback from a warmist is an automatic dismissal because they don’t like the result, although most scientists (except perhaps Schleshinger) are more diplomatic.
Concerning my characterization of the climate sensitivity, consider that if you convert the surface energy into a temperature through Stephan-Boltzmann and keep the post albedo incident energy as it is, then the units of the sensitivity correspond exactly to the units of the IPCC climate sensitivity, except that the relationship between temperature and forcing is explicitly not linear. When you do this, the 1.66 gain translates into about 1.1C per 3.7 Watts/m^2 of forcing. In reality, only half of the extra 3.7 W/m^2 of ‘forcing’ absorbed by the atmosphere is directed back to the surface, so to the match the units of the sensitivity used by the IPCC, it’s value is closer to 0.6C per 3.7 W/m^2 of additional atmospheric absorption. Often, the 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing is mis-characterized as 3.7 W/m^2 less surface energy at the top of the atmosphere, which is technically true, except that the atmosphere is radiating energy itself and by absorbing 3.7 W/m^2 more, it will in turn radiate more, half up and half down (considering that energy directed parallel to the surface more or less cancels). I like to use my expression gain, only because it is more consistent with the underlying differential equations and transfer function extraction. If you are familiar with electronic circuits, you might be able to see the underlying math for transfer function extraction (Laplace transforms), the relevance of gain and the difference between the small signal gain and the DC gain which sets the operating point of an amplifier.
Concerning your second point, the results I produce already account for the effects of ice albedo changes. Rather than being epochal, the variability is seasonal. The main difference between an ice age and today, is that much of the ice melts in the spring allowing us to observe the dynamic response when entering and exiting an ice age. It’s important to recognize that the gain illustrates the net effects of all feedbacks, known and unknown. All effects of the hydrological cycle, including ice are fully accounted for. Remember, I can also demonstrate that the system responds quickly to change.
Concerning your next point, the reason cloud coverage is a controlling variable is because of it’s temporal relationship to the surface energy. There is a lag between incident energy and both cloud coverage and surface energy, with cloud coverage changing before surface energy. You need to look at the min and max values, which line up left to right, incident energy, cloud coverage, surface energy. It’s a causal system and temporal ordering of the variables time varying components is the indication of cause and effect. I actually have a far more detailed model which originally clued me in to this behavior, but it was this analysis which provided the smoking gun.
Regarding your last point, you need to think of this in terms of gain and feedback, rather than as only feedback. The system has an intrinsic gain which is caused by squeezing full spectrum surface energy through an atmospheric window narrowed by atmospheric absorption. Most of the analysis you might be familiar with assumes that the open loop gain is 1 and anything over 1 is from feedback. In fact, the open loop gain is about 1.7, which means you don’t need to invent feedback terms to explain the amplification of solar variability, relative to the differences in temperatures between ice ages and interglacial periods.
One of the reasons I ignored year to year trends was because of criticism that the IPCC temp data had too many small discontinuities to be used for ‘climate trend’ analysis. Of course, it sure looks to me like the methodology is there to make this a non issue, but there are errors in the way it was applied when new satellites replaced old ones. Using a 25 year average of month to month change mitigates these errors. Note that than variability in the response (i.e. the gain) caused by decadal oscillations like El Nino can be extracted by examining the response during different phases of the cycle. I still haven’t converged on how to decide when these flip, but it seems to be related to whether the Earth needs to warm or cool by amounts exceeding specific thresholds of local imbalance.
It might help if you looked at this as well. This as all the same data and further splits it into 30 degree slices of latitude.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/plots/wbg/plots.html
You might also notice that if I defined the gain as the ratio of surface energy to incident energy, it’s always less than 1. Similarily, is we define the gain as the change in surface energy divided by the change in incident energy, it’s value would be even lower (about 0.5 for the NH and 0.2 for the SH). The gain I am using for the climate sensitivity is the average over year, which is equivalent to the concept of the Q point for an amplifier.
George
10
George,
I understand what you’re saying, but I still disagree with many major points. To give only two:
I’m uncomfortable with your use of the term/concept of gain, and your use/definitions of things like feedback and climate sensitivity. For instance, to me the claim that “the open loop gain is about 1.7, which means you don’t need to invent feedback terms…” is self-contradictory. Gain is by definition an amplification of a signal through feedback. It’s just at 1.7 now because of the feedbacks that already exist in the system, warming the planet so that it’s not a snowball. Figuring out what those feedbacks are, and how they’ll respond to a forcing of any sort, is the million dollar question.
I also don’t see what you see in cloud coverage. There are major differences in the tropics versus the mid lats, and in most cases while I see a delay in warming/cooling (i.e. changes surface radiation vs. changes in solar forcing), cloud coverage coincides pretty closely with surface radiation. This makes sense. As the oceans warm, there is more evaporation and more clouds. But I see no evidence at all in the data that tells me that clouds in turn cool or constrain the system. In a purely seasonal model the system cools when the solar forcing is reduced.
Lastly, your logic seems to contradict the idea that the planet could ever warm or cool by any amount. Even if you say that there has been no warming in the past thirty years, how do you explain other periods of warming and cooling if the system is as tightly regulated as you state? It just doesn’t add up (for me).
10
Sphaerica,
Here’s the way I look at it. The IPCC quantification of climate sensitivity is a heuristic that has absolute no first principles foundation in physics and contradicts all of the data. My characterization of the senstivity has a first principles basis in physics (i.e. it’s derivable), a basis in control theory and matches the data almost exactly. I’m open to a better way to quantify how the climate works, but the speculative hypothesis preferred by the IPCC is certainly not it.
While cloud coverage does correspond to surface energy changes, the cloud coverage changes first (look at how min/max values line up). You might also notice that both the input and outputs of the system are relatively clean sinusoids. The cloud coverage is not as clean with lots of consistent (i.e. year to year consistent) wiggles. The cloud coverage is adapting to throttle the climate to keep the output (surface energy) tracking the input (solar energy) in a pattern forced by the non linear system having to produce a sinusoidally varying surface temperature from a sinusoidally varying solar input.
The actual control mechanism is more complex than just clouds, but it’s definitely related to water. Clouds are just a indicator of the process. The feedback warmists usually emphasize is that as water vapor increases, so does atmospheric absorption, i.e. positive feedback. However, this is a very myopic view of the process. There are 2 very strong negative feedback mechanisms at work. First is the latent heat of evaporation. It takes more energy to evaporate water than the Sun can provide, so heat is removed from the surface as water evaporates, cooling it. As more water is evaporated, more heat is removed from the surface. In other words, the Earth sweats. Second is that as this evaporated water condenses and falls as rain, the rain is cooler than the surface and further cools it. In fact, while more clouds increase the albedo and reflect more energy, at the same time, they trap surface energy warming the surface. Clouds by themselves have an almost neutral effect, it’s the rest of the hydrocycle that provides all the negative feedback.
This mechanism does not preclude warming or cooling. The planet will necessarily warm and cool as the net solar input and hemispheric difference varies as the Earth’s orbit and axis changes. After all, the Sun is the prime driver. I strongly suggest that you pick up a book about control theory to gain a good handle on the difference between gain and feedback.
The 2 influences that must be accounted for to explain glaciation is that the seasonal variability in ice is small, so the ice is always present, and the basic 1.7 multiplier that must be applied to the post albedo incident solar energy, by virtue of atmospheric absorption.
George
10
Latent heat does not add or remove heat from the system. It simply transports it from the surface to the mid troposphere. Evaporation requires heat and gets it from the surface. The water vapor then rises to where, as the water condenses before precipitation, the latent heat is released to the surrounding air. Net = 0, so latent heat is not itself a negative feedback, just a heat transport mechanism from the surface to the atmosphere (which is then countered by other mechanisms, just as IR, which transport it either out of the system, or back down to the surface).
Your second feedback (the water being cool and so cooling the surface) is double dipping (using the same mechanism twice). Again, no heat (energy) is being added or lost, it is simply exchanged, although in this case its staying on the surface, and just moving around. You’re again talking about temperature measures, instead of energy. The net change in the energy is zero.
On the other issues I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I find your application of control theory to the problem novel, but not entirely correct (this is an evolved system, not an engineered system, and as such it is not so neatly constrained as human engineered projects). I also still feel that you have established a model where the only possible driver of climate is solar radiation, so it’s not surprising that your conclusion is that the primary driver of climate is solar radiation.
I’d still encourage you to take it the next step, and to compare differences between start and end periods in what you’ve done. Look for things that you haven’t found yet. Don’t be satisfied that in your opinion you’ve found the key, so there’s no reason to look further. Please add even more depth to the work.
10
Sphaerica,
No, the latent heat from evaporation is primarily transported into clouds, where it is radiated into space and back to the surface in approximately equal proportions. Also, most evaporation occurs in the oceans, where sunlight more directly evaporates water, although that’s more of a fine point. It perplexes me why many warmists can’t grasp the concept that the atmosphere is a black/gray body itself and radiates energy both out into space and back to the surface. You must know that a heated gas radiates energy (for example, the Sun).
The hydro cycle operates much like the way a refrigerator works. You put energy in and you get cooling by radiating that heat away from what you want to cool. The hydro cycle is nothing more than a refrigeration system using water vapor as the refrigerant gas. You keep forgetting that clouds act as radiators! They have a temperature and radiate Plank spectrums of power (with some absorbed lines).
Control theory applies to equations which describe systems. It can be applied to physical systems, engineered systems and even biological systems. Nothing about the climate system precludes the of use control theory. In fact, control theory is the best way to think about any closed loop system and really the only way to accurately characterize such systems. This is where gain comes in. Gain is the normal way to characterize closed loop systems and there is both the open loop gain and the closed loop gain.
Solar energy is the prime driver of the system. Changes in GHG, whether they are from water vapor, CO2, CH4 or any other gas change the response of the system, they don’t actually ‘force’ the system. Only energy that actually enters the system is capable of forcing the system. GHG absorbed energy already forced the system when it originally arrived from the Sun. GHG just delays the release of surface energy, it does not trap it forever. This is another important concept that many don’t get. If you want to talk about double counting counting energy, how about counting it as forcing when it arrives from the Sun and counting it as forcing again when it is ‘reflected’ (actually absorbed and re-emitted) by the atmosphere.
I have looked at the year to year differences and a whole lot more. Whether the planet warms or cools from year to year seems to be a function of where the zero crossings in the energy flux are relative to each other. You can rest assured that I have looked at this from many points of view, in far more detail than you seem to think and that this is continuous process.
Anyway, I’m off to Tahoe. If I don’t answer quickly, it’s not because I’m ignoring you, but because I’m taking advantage of all of the snow we’ve been getting (about 10m of accumulation so far).
George
10
Sphaerica,
One more point. If there is any question that clouds radiate away heat, consider how satellites measure the cloud top temperatures that we see in weather satellite images (they measure emitted longwave radiation). Also, while clouds are cold, the radiating surface is over 2x that of the surface (top, bottom and sides), so the total energy being emitted is quite high. It just like the 4x factor between the area of a sphere and that of a circle which is applied to incident solar energy.
George
00
Of course I understand that the radiation goes both up and down. That’s a basic concept of GHG theory. I even said so in my post, when I said “…by other mechanisms, just [sic, sb such] as IR, which transport it either out of the system, or back down to the surface.” See? Both ways, up and down.
But the statement that “the latent heat from evaporation is primarily transported into clouds” is misleading. It is the act of forming clouds (condensation) that releases the latent heat into the surrounding atmosphere.
And I don’t ever forget that clouds act as radiators. That’s a key argument about whether clouds are net negative (higher albedo) or positive (GHG effect) feedback components.
On control theory, GHG is the feedback mechanism which raises your gain to 1.7. Without it, the gain is 1 and the planet is very cold. I’m not saying control theory is entirely wrong here, just that it’s just an approach that limits creativity. Engineered systems don’t generally have all sorts of hidden knobs and nooks and crannies that are doing things you don’t expect. And people tend to stop their thought processes when they find what they hoped or expected to find.
Anyway… Enjoy Tahoe! I haven’t been skiing in years, and I miss it.
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I believe it is density change which provides the transport (the latent heat warms the air the warmer air rises with the vapor).
And is not the Net=0, minus whatever was radiated outward from the elevated vapor and even the condensate (while elevated) a negative feedback?
I suggest it is not entirely “double dipping” because the rain droplets may continue to cool by radiation before returning to the surface.
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The key point being that radiation and GHG calculations generally presume that outgoing radiation is coming from the surface into space. However the convection and latent heat moves energy from the surface up to the clouds which can then radiate upwards through significantly less atmosphere. We know that the top of the troposphere is a temperature inversion so clearly high altitude water molecules are efficient at radiating away their heat. After dumping heat at high altitude, the water runs round another latent-heat / convection cycle and picks up a new batch of energy from the surface again. Note that if GHG concentration near the surface does cause atmospheric warming, the water just lifts the energy higher because it will keep rising until it can condense.
To work out the energy carried by a single drop of water you need to add up the whole cycle which includes both the latent heat of one drop, plus the specific heat difference between the falling rain and the surface temperature.
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Most clouds form at about 8,000 ft (cloud base) depending on the temperature and relative humidity of the air. At that point, yes, H2O is among the strong GHG, and radiates heat up and down. Down mostly reaches the surface again. Up has a chance of being intercepted by more GHG on the way (yes, down does, too, actually). And yes, droplets could also radiate, but I think that term in negligible, and like others, the radiation is up and down, with a chance of being intercepted by other GHGs. The clouds themselves are also a GHG shield, acting as a blanket and keeping some warmth in.
Net energy for the earth as a system = 0 for latent heat, in that the water never escapes the atmosphere. It only gets out through IR. Yes, lifting the “heat” up several thousand feet gets it closer, but there’s still a whole lot of atmosphere for it to get through after that.
Still, all in all, yes, that’s the mechanism, no matter what the degree… evaporation, vapor rises, condenses releasing latent heat to the surrounding atmosphere, IR up and down, some makes it all the way up/down, some gets intercepted, half up, half down, and on and on it goes. The end result is a planet at 288K.
I saw a page some months back with a wonderful 5 equation, 3 or 4 layer model that worked very nicely with the question of radiation up/down, but I can’t find it. I’ll keep looking, though.
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Bloggers shouldn’t this discussion be held at the “if CO2 didn’t warm us what did” thread?
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“The nice thing about the Pope is he can’t be tempted with taxpayer grant money to keep perpetrating the greatest fraud in the history of the world.”
What is it that tempted him, then?
00
Tel and Spherica @ 236 and 237:
I hope that you both don’t forget that the water droplets change phase (from water to ice) at something like 15,000 feet (5,000 m) in the tropics, and this phase change releases another batch of heat (the latent heat of fusion), way above most of the atmosphere, where it can more easily be radiated into space. And those same ice crystals take heat out of the lower atmosphere on their way down, when melting again. The altitude of the released heat makes the latent heat of fusion a powerful force in the heat radiated from Earth.
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My point is that the water will lift the heat to whatever is required to dump it out into space. Once the latent heat leaves the surface as rising vapour, that’s end of story as far as the surface is concerned, everything else gets sorted high up because there is really no way for that heat to get back (yes a tiny bit can radiate back, which will only encourage more evaporation).
The surface situation essentially has an upper limit hard-locked by the phase diagram of the water molecule and whatever surface evaporation can occur on that particular patch of surface (obviously in the middle of a desert with no water available at the surface, you get no evaporative cooling, in the middle of the ocean you are guaranteed to have water available). The main reason that cities heat up so much is they are very good at draining away water and provide no evaporation opportunities. Why we design them that way is anyone’s guess, probably because air-con is cheap.
David Lappi,
Yes I was ignoring ice which makes it a lot more complex with ice coming down to surface now and then and multi-way phase change including direct from vapour to ice in some situations. A snow covered surface won’t give much in the way of evaporative cooling so when the temperature drops you can consider this effect to be close to zero. In the tropics it’s a huge effect so there’s a strong negative feedback against warming beyond a certain ceiling but nothing to put a floor on falling temperatures (I guess sufficient snow cover on earth will start reducing total cloud cover, it would take a lot).
Does someone have a graph of evaporative cooling starting from snow cover and warming right up to tropical heat? I suspect it would look a bit like a wall, even in log-axis.
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Tanst,
Perhaps it was good judgment! I think so!
Now let this whole matter come to an END!
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These articles of mine seem especially pertinent and substantially support the conclusions of co2isnotevil:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3735
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4433
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Tel:
I write to support your view at #124 where you say:
Yes!
And the heat released by condensation at altitude heats all the molecules at that altitude. Most of these molecules are nitrogen and oxygen so are not GHGs. However, they can and do convey heat to GHGs (mostly water vapour and also CO2) by collisions to vibrationally excite the GHG molecules.
In the lower atmosphere any excitation of CO2 vibration has an almost certain fate of losing its excitation energy by collision with one of the bulk molecules (i.e. nitrogen and oxygen): it has about one chance in ten thousand of returning to the ground state by radiative emission (i.e. fluorescence). That collisionally-exchanged energy would enter the thermal reservoir from which it might very well emerge at a later stage as radiative emission from one or other of the GHG molecules or from clouds or other aerosols.
So, thermal radiation from the GHGs arises from collisional excitation followed by radiative emission, and these processes happen all the time at all levels.
There is lower pressure (so fewer molecular collisions and fewer interactions of photons with molecules) high in the troposphere (at the emission level). Therefore, at high altitude there is much greater chance of upward thermal radiation from GHGs escaping to space. But, the downward radiation from GHGs at the emission level is mostly absorbed in the atmosphere below. These processes continue in the region between the emission level and the surface but, in this region, the upward and downward radiation has little chance of getting far before being absorbed.
Any downward emission near the surface is absorbed by the surface.
So, it is not only clouds that radiate to space any heat transferred to altitude and deposited there by cloud formation. Importantly, the GHGs, especially water vapour, radiate it to space, too.
Simply, I completely agree with you when you say,
“Once the latent heat leaves the surface as rising vapour, that’s end of story as far as the surface is concerned, everything else gets sorted high up”.
Richard
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Sphaerica,
Consider this from another perspective.
The average surface temp is 289K and the average cloud temp is 262K. Consider that about 56.7% of the surface power is absorbed by atmospheric GHG and that about 35.5% of the power from clouds is similarly absorbed (from HITRAN 2008 based simulations). Further consider that half of the power captured by GHG ultimately leaves the atmosphere and half is returned to the surface. Calculate the surface power (395.6 W/m^2) and cloud power (267.2 W/m^2) from SB. Next calculate the net energy leaving the surface after GHG absorption as (1-.567/2) times the surface power (283.4 W/m^2) and the net energy leaving clouds as (1-.355/2) time cloud power (219.8 W/m^2), corresponding to an equivalent temperature of the surface and clouds, as seen from space, of 265.9K and 249.5K, respectively.
Note that the temperature of the surface, as seen from space is higher than the required albedo adjusted average of 255K, while the temperature of the clouds, as seen from space, is cooler. The planet wide cloud coverage averages about 66.4%. If we calculate the weighted average of the surface and cloud power, as .664*219.8 + .336*283.4 = 241.2 W/mm^2, corresponding to a planet wide temperature as seen from space of 255.3K, which of course is the answer it needs to be. FYI, the surface and cloud temperatures and the cloud coverage are the averages of extracted from 25 years of weather satellite imagery as aggregated by the ISCCP project at GISS
What this illustrates is how the percentage of cloud coverage controls the amount of power leaving the planet. The complete system is more complicated since there are multiple interactions between the variables. None the less, the important point is that the percentage of clouds selects the relative ratio of warm surface and cold clouds, as seen from space to match the albedo adjusted, incident power.
George
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Your ice core ends 122 years ago, fyi, and could not be reproduced in the same location because there is extensive ice melt in the region. Greenland is well above its temperature 122 years ago, in that same location.
Your sediment images have a period of 2ky, meaning that the last samples are at least 2 thousand years old, and are out of date with current climate by 2 thousand years.
Nothing here tells us about current climate.
Also, as a geologist, you should know that ice cores tend to lag the current record by up to a hundred years, since you must date them by finding signatures within the core, and the topmost (and therefore youngest) layer will lack reliable signatures.
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JC,
You are incorrect. The ice cores have very distinct markers that indicate yearly boundaries. There are well defined layers caused by the seasonal build up of snow. It’s as obvious as tree rings until you get 100K or so years in to the core. You are also mistaken that data is missing because of melt off. What little melting there is occurs near the margins and the interior where the cores were taken rarely gets warm enough for any melting at all.
The reason recent data is missing is because ice cores are analyzed in fixed width slices containing many years and that at the top of the cores where the layers are thicker, the fixed width slices contain few complete years plus partial years at the top and bottom which results in either more summers than winters or visa versa. This introduces significant deviation from the thermometer record which they don’t otherwise want to explain.
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co2isnotevil, no, I am not “incorrect.” The ice core was taken in 1993. The ice core ends 95 years from the date it was taken. That’s 122 years ago. You look at the GPS coordinate for the ice core and you look at Greenland ice melt between now and then, and it is clear that you could not recreate that same ice core. Especially since between 2002 and 2005 ice melt accelerated. If you attempted to recreate the ice core you may find a decent example, but it would lose more than 122 years, for certain. That top layer is just gone.
Also, I said topmost parts of cores lack reliable signatures, which you don’t disagree with, but you do feel free to put spin on. These ice cores are built using very sound scientific methods.
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JC,
Since when is the reason for excluding recent samples spin? Spin is a political attribute unless you are talking about Quantum Mechanics and while Quantum Mechanics does play a role with GHG energy capture, the relevance is likely to be far beyond your ability to understand. I suggest you take off your green tinted glasses and examine the issue from a scientific point of view, rather than the political point of view you seem to prefer.
If anything, the data is spun in order to avoid having to explain why the thermometer record doesn’t match the recent ice core data. BTW, this is the case for all of the ice core data. The DomeC core in Antarctica is a very clear example. I suggest you take a look at the raw data to see what I’m talking about. You can find it on the noaa paleo site (see post 170 in this thread for links). There are also links to papers describing the methodology which I suggest that you take a look at.
George
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co2isnotevil, I’ve seen the data, and I have no problem with it. The fact remains that none of these data can represent current trends with any degree of accuracy, and are only relevant on a historic context. The fact that GISP2 cannot represent the current reality in Greenland suggests that warming in Greenland is far beyond its highest estimates. After all, once an ice layer melts, it no longer represents any period of time, because it simply no longer exists.
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JC,
The reason for the mismatch has nothing to do with loosing ice. The Greenland ice cap has an unbroken record going back through periods that were significantly warmer than today. The reason for the mismatch is because the samples do not contain the same number of winters and summers in them and that for recent samples covering fewer years, this asymmetry makes a big difference. Do you really think that Conolley can wave his magic wiki wand and make the MWP and other warm periods go away just to be able to claim that we are in the warmest period on record? Are you really that gullible?
George
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jc – How much of the Greenland ice sheet has melted during recent years? And if you have a figure, where did it come from? That is, supply a scientific reference.
Are you sure that melting has removed all the recent ice layers at the GISP2 site?
The site is at 10,000 feet elevation on the top of the Greenland ice sheet. At that location, the base of the ice sheet is below sea level. Even in the tropics, the freezing level in the atmosphere is only 15,000 feet, and it declines to near sea-level at the poles.
For the five years the site was occupied during the drilling effort, from 1989 to 1995, the daily average temperatures at the site never got above freezing. This means that if the site did get above freezing momentarily during any particular day, any water generated would have re-frozen in the cold snow just under the surface.
There are lots of NGOs that publish “facts” and “reports” that are no more than fiction, designed to mislead the public and raise revenue for the non-profit sector.
Please look at the science yourself, and don’t take anyone’s else’s word for the “truth” unless you are also trying to mislead.
Here is a link to the daily average teperatures at the GISP2 drill site for the whole five-year period. The same web site has the three-hour averages, if you need those.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/climate/72583846_day.txt
So, “select all” and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet, highlight the entire first column of data and go to “data” and “convert text to columns”. This will give you a spreadsheet and you will find the average annual temperature of the site is something less than minus 31 degrees Celcius. Pretty cold… No meltwater streams are going to run into the ocean from there.
Much closer to the margins of the ice sheet, and in a more southerly location, a flight of fighter planes was crash landed on the ice, out of fuel and lost, in World War II. During the last 50 years, the snow and ice has covered the planes to a depth of 264 feet, hardly the melting that you have been led to expect. If Greenland were really losing it’s ice cover, those planes would still (or at least now) be on the surface.
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jc:
You also refer in your posts above to melt occurences, that is, days when the Greenland ice sheet experienced above-freezing temperatures, as measured by daily satellite passes. Those events are now much less common than they were earlier in this interglacial period.
The following link shows a graph of “Holocene Melt Years” at the GISP2 site, preserved in the ice core as layers distinct from normal accumulation-zone glacial ice.
http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/DATA/alley1.html
From this, we can conclude that the GISP2 site was actually much warmer 6,000 to 8,000 years ago than it is today. Your maps show no melt days at the GISP2 site at all, which confirms the continuing cold weather recorded by the automatic weather station data I refer to in my comment above.
The lower part of the graph shows the solar energy input has also declined for the last 10,000 years, and that the decline is continuing. This is likely the cause of the declining teperatures (and increasing snowfall rates) at GISP2 during this interglacial, and will likely result in our decline into a new ice age before long.
This is the climate risk that is truly dangerous, since it will only take a decade of cold weather to cause the starvation of billions of people.
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[…] of warming and cooling. A 65 million year review of climate and related information is available at JoNova.If this one million+ year trend continues, we are now nearing the end of our current interglacial […]
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[…] sorry the graphs are not working properly. source The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings « JoNova […]
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[…] this (from "The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings" by Jo Nova and […]
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[…] out a very interesting post by David Lappi on trends in global temperature: not just the last 100 years, but the last 10,000 years, the last 5 million years and the last 65 […]
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I’m reading this in October 2011. I found the article interesting and informative (I’m not a geologist or a scientist, but am interested.) The article seems reasonable, but when I get to the Comments, I see that an awful lot of them are just as politics-driven and petty as the worst of the GW “believers” they talk about.
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I find the article somewhat less informative. Statements like
are purely misleading. Furthermore, pretending that climate science doesn’t already examine precisely this data is plain spurious.
Paleoclimatology is the study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth. There is no lack of long-term perspective in the field of climate science.
More misrepresentation. Lappi is right, it’s not rocket science – although it does involve satellites – but it remains something he fails to understand. The Antarctic ice mass is decreasing rapidly, and despite what he implies, that doesn’t save things from being buried under ice.
You should take his bet, because it flies in the face of physics.
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Speaking of lies and misrepresentation, define “rapidly” (how long before it all disappears and what temperatures are necessary to cause that disappearance) and show proof that the ice mass has/hasn’t changed at similar rates in the past.
Furthermore, some citations about “The Antarctic ice mass is decreasing” would do your credibility some favours.
The above is a true statement. However the key is the uncertainty factor i.e. how accurate are proxies? care to show some error bands on some of these “perspectives”?
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[…] The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax The last five million years of climate change is shown in the next graph based on work by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 [2] . It shows our planet has a dynamic temperature history, and over the last three million years, we have had a continuous series of ice ages (now about 90,000 years each) and interglacial warm periods (about 10,000 years each). There are 13 (count ‘em) ice ages on a 100,000 year cycle (from 1.25 million years ago to the present, and 33 ice ages on a 41,000 year cycle (between 2.6 million and 1.25 million years ago). Since Earth is on a multi-million-year cooling trend, we are currently lucky to be living during an interglacial warm period, but we are at the end of our normal 10,000 year warm interglacial period. […]
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[…] with hundreds of other studies from all around the world (from Midieval times, Roman times, the Greenland cores). Why can’t we do good tree-ring analysis like this from many […]
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/ […]
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/ […]
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Is this GISP2 Ice Core data crap, cause there was an ice age 10000 years ago. Are you telling me that the temperature is less today than in the ice age. What a joke!
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[…] first chart is from The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings. It clearly depicts the extent of the current global warming catastrophe within the context of the […]
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Far out. All so smart.
But cant agree.
Follow the money trail maybe.
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err… Robert Rhode produced these graphs whilst working for the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, which was started and headed by Prof Richard Muller, who has declared himself a ‘converted sceptic’ To quote him:
“CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.”
The full article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all
Finally, BEST was funded by the Koch brothers, who largely own Koch Industries, the 2nd largest privately owned corporate in the US and a vested interest that frequently funds research that tries to debunk climate change fact. Because it threatens their profits.
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David Kitching, you should read more widely here It’s been covered:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/08/elizabeth-muller-director-of-best-ran-a-green-government-consultancy/
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Ah excellent. It’s good to see the Kochs were stupid enough to fund the right side then, if as your linked article claims, it was so obvious and that Muller was apparently not a sceptic to begin with. (isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?)
The article strikes me as emblematic of how fans of Climate Change conspiracy theories present their efforts with half-truths — lines that are technically “correct” but leave an impression that may be the opposite of the real situation.
For example, it says ‘She said she has advised governments, but not that the aim of that advice was to reduce their carbon footprint, and to select the right green technology.’. But then she didn’t say it wasn’t either.. and given that she apparently declares herself ”a leading expert in how governments can use ICT to develop a more sustainable, lower-carbon future.“ then surely even a sceptic would have the brains to see the nature of the advice she was given must have been of the correct type. Or do you need everything explaining very slowly and in great detail?
And as for ‘feeding off Big-Government’, that’s a very revealing comment. Not neo con libertarians by any chance are we? The same mob who drove the world economy to the brink through deregulation of the financial sector so the filthy rich could get more so, sucking almost all of national GDP growth over three decades into their tax haven bank accounts whilst the vast majority of the population made do with the crumbs, who got the west tangled up in two ten year long wars that have achieved nothing but which have cost tax payers almost unimaginable amounts of money.
You might find this link to be of interest: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9503044/Climate-change-deniers-are-either-extreme-free-marketeers-or-conspiracy-theorists.html
I could go on ad infinitum. It is a shame that genuinely scrupulous scientists who adopt a sceptical approach to the scientific field of climate change, and quite rightly challenge its findings as any good scientist should, become associated with, funded by, and therefore identified with a nasty plutocracy that cares for nothing but money and self and, regardless of any scientific findings, would do everything they could to promote their own interests. Whether or not climate change is a threat, and it is, the time has come for humanity to progress beyond coal driven, Victorian technology and move to the next phase. And I’m sure that if you asked any resident of Bangkok, and many other cities, whether they’d prefer clean air or the filthy fug they have to breathe at the moment, they’d opt for the clean option.
Climate change is a threat, and a over whelming majority of scientists and researchers concur on that. But regardless, even if it were not, I would still support the proactive funding and development of cleaner, more efficient and less destructive technologies that will result in entirely new global industries and provide huge economic benefits (see solar power in rural Africa), against the luddite whingeing of secretive, bloated plutocrats who care only for their own private empires and who have such a twisted idea of the meaning of the word ‘wealthy’.
I’m a busy man and won’t post here again. I have little doubt that it would be wasted effort to do so anyway. I hope you learn to see the difference between genuine scientific scepticism (and research simply based on the basic principle of the null hypothesis), and the pseudo altruistic luddite protectionism that pours forth from the over burdened coffers of vested interest commercial empires who would probably have us using coal burning steam trains if they could.
All the best.
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Post script:
You accuse skeptics of conspiracy theories but you mention Koch Bros. twice in your own posts?
You frigging conspiracy nutter……..
01
Ooooooh David such anger. Why are you here all of a sudden right after a major election?
Some extra free time now?
Looking for new income since your last job is over?
You are a busy man. I’m sure you picked this old post to vent right?
[SNIP]
PS you used Luddite twice in the same post. Really bad form (or programming).
Good day.
02
David, thanks for your thoughts. The evidence that I rely on is posted here.
As for libertarians driving the financial sector to the brink… congratulations — that’s a daring propaganda angle to shift blame somewhere other than on the guys who scammed the AAA ratings, sold of mortgage backed securities they didn’t hold the mortages on, or the legislators who allowed high frequency trading, and the organisations that kept interest rates artificially low.
I’m admiring your audacious wordsmithing.
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Another graph you’ve altered? It looks as if you’ve added your own global temperature to the end of the local proxy data. tsk tsk!
It was YOU that said “The only modern temp line on a proxy graph should come from that proxy” and yet here you are doing exactly the thing you said other should not. Broke your own rule hey girl?
The local proxy data is available here ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt and it ends 95 years before present.
The evidence you rely on isn’t as “sound” as you think.
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[…] Lappi, D. 2010. 65 million years of cooling […]
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[…] own “Charles the Moderator” submitted the low resolution Marcott proxy plot with the Jo Nova’s plot of the Vostok ice core proxy overlaid to match the time scale. This image is solely for […]
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On the graph of last 10,000 years of of interglacial temperature I do not see the relevance of the of the dates shown on the horizontal scale. could someone please explain.
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[…] To read the rest of the article […]
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[…] 65 million years of temperature swings […]
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[…] […]
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[…] […]
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[…] […]
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The imperical data support much of the graphs above, we have long known that the Eocene was very warm with fossils of alligators being found in the Spitzbergen region. We also know that at the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene the southern Hemisphere went into to a glacial period. We also know that the CO2 concentration in the late Eocene was around 1250 ppm, and as we went into the Oligocene it dropped to around 750 ppm (approximately 2 times our present concentration.) Within a few thousand years the CO2 concentration had increase again to 1150 ppm, but glaciation continued in the Antarctic.
Sedimentary rock cycles illustrate the drastic climate swings of the past long before man ever walked on the earth. Many sedimentary sequences record slow transgression of shoreward facies over more distal sequences followed by a very rapid submergence of these facies with fragments of the top of the previous cycle redeposited in the lower sediments of the next cycle, along with erosion features in the underlying sediments.
Geologic History alone invalidates AGW.
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Actually thickening icesheets are a sign that global warming is occuring. The atmosphere currently has 4% more humidity in it compared to the 1970s because warmer air holds more water. Due to the higher humidity, more snow is following on Antartica and Greenland compared to the past. In Greenland, the icesheets 1500m above sea level are currently thickening, due to the extra snow, but the icesheets under 1500m above sea level are melting. Measurements of the entire Greenland icesheet show that on a whole, the icesheet is loosing ice. Despite the fact that the icesheet is thickening above 1500m, Greenland temperatures are rising significantly and Greenland is loosing ice. In the case of Antarctica, part of the continent is getting colder and the icesheets are thickening due to extra humidity which cases more snow, and but as a whole the continent is warming and it is loosing ice.
As for the general argument that the earth is cooling, your graphs conveniently stop at the year 1905, before the vast majority of recent warming has occurred. If your graph included temperature date for the last century, it would have a very different shape. Yes, the snow from the last century hasn’t completely converted into ice, but there is plenty of data from other sources to show the dramatic rise in temperatures over the last century. Also your type of trendlines can be misleading, which is why scientists generally use running averages for their trendlines.
People who decide that they can interpret data better than the professional scientists often make thses sort of mistakes, which is why it is best to read what scientists are saying rather than amateur bloggers on the internet.
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That’s the great thing about Man-Made Global Warming — no matter what happens, “it’s right”.
Satellites show Antarctica has near record sea-ice (not what they predicted), and ICEsat shows antarctica is gaining ice mass (while GRACE says its losing it), temperatures at the South Pole are lower than when Scott and Admunsen went there, and the entire area from 60S -70S has not warmed in the last 30 years (see UAH).
Who predicted the Antarctic would behave differently to the rest of the world? A skeptical scientist called Svensmark.
As for Greenland, it was warmer 1000 years ago. None of the climate models know why, except they know it wasn’t CO2.
Your post hoc speculations are unfalsifiable and unscientific. Shame the professional scientists are so unprofessional.
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Trouble is that many of the climate scientists are not professional.
They have let themselves be brought by government funding, and unfortunately, it now has got to the stage that any scientist that puts forward a contrary view risks their career and livelihood. Too many now provide only the science that will provide the pay cheque.
Also “peer review” has been totally corrupted to such a degree that it is now meaningless , especially in climate science, but has also suffered a severe downgrading in status in all science.
The passing of papers from the likes of Mann’s, Lewindowsky, Doran, Gergis etc etc shows just how low peer review has sunk in climate science.
Its quite sad that the massive funding behind “climate science” has done this to real science as a whole. Science will take quite a while to recover its status after this is all over.
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We have already established, by a poll on this site, that a significant number of ‘bloggers’ who comment here are real working scientists and engineers, with a good understanding of physics, and math, and the practical use (and potential misuse) of computer modeling software.
As The Griss points out:
So Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need comes into play, which further corrupts the science, by removing the element of cross-disciplinary critique, that used to be fundamental part of the scientific framework.
The notion that only those within a given speciality can be considered qualified to question a theory, has only come to the fore in the last 50 years. And from the outside, looking in, the notion only seems to apply to science of Climate Change Alarmism. Why do you suppose that is?
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[…] shows an up tick. Not enough statistical data to overcome the previous 10,000 years of readings. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the…rature-swings/ The whole global cooling issue was brought up years ago, and was discussed often in the mid to […]
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[…] A longer time frame is always better to consider natural climate patterns. For example, Jo Nova’s blog has graphs from David Nappi, a geologist, of temperatures in Greenland over millions of […]
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