This is part of a series that Tony Cox and I are doing that references the most important points and papers, as a definitive resource about the evidence. The missing hotspot is not just another flaw in the theory, it proves the models are wrong: not just “unverified”, not just “uncertain”, but failed. Apologies to those who feel I harp on about this! This is a condensed review, squishing years of a scientific battleground down to it’s bare bones… — Jo
It is not well known that even the IPCC agrees that the direct effects of CO2 will only increase world temperatures by 1.2°C. All of the projections above that (3.3°C , 6°C etc) come from model projections based on assumptions of what water vapor and clouds will do (these are the feedback effects of the original 1.2°C).[i] Are the feedbacks correct?
If the IPCC models are right about the feedbacks, we would see a hot spot 10km above the tropics. The theory is that with more heat, more water will evaporate and rise, keeping relative humidity constant at all heights in the troposphere. The point has been conclusively tested with 28 million weather balloons since 1959.[ii]
The CCSP (Climate Change Science Project) published the predictions and observations as graphs in separate parts of its large 2006 report
The CCSP (Climate Change Science Project) published the predictions and observations as graphs in separate parts of its large 2006 report.[iii] ,[iv]
The observations don’t match the predictions
Figure 7. Based on Figures 2 and 3, page 13 of McKitrick et al.
Douglass et al [v] compared models with observations and officially pointed out the discrepancy in 2007. The paper was rebutted by Santer et al [2008][vi], but the Santer paper did not contain new observations, instead it “found more uncertainties” in model projections and in radiosonde results, which widened the error bars until they overlapped. Santer et al strangely used a truncated dataset, ending in 1999, even though more recent data was available.
McKitrick, McIntyre, Herman[vii] – (2010) used the same datasets, but included newer data, extending the analysis, and used a more sophisticated statistical technique to show that the models all predict warming in the low to mid troposphere, and that their predictions are about 4 times higher and outside the error bars of what the weather balloons and satellites measure. They answered the critics, with corrections in 2011, and the results became even stronger.[viii] All observational trends were now significantly below the average model trend.
Christie et al [2010][ix] also showed the observations didn’t fit the model predictions. They developed the Scaling Ratio – a ratio of the atmospheric trend to the surface trend. This neatly removes the effects of El Nino variations from year to year. They showed that global climate models predict a scaling ratio of 1.4 ±0.8. (i.e. the atmosphere should warm 40% faster than the surface). Instead the scaling ratio for real world data was 0.8 ± 0.3 (i.e. the atmosphere was probably not even warming as fast as the surface.) Fu et al[x] replicated the approach, largely coming to the same conclusion.
Not only are the model predictions exaggerated and feedback assumptions the wrong sign (positive, rather than negative), the small amount of recent warming was likely due to a natural climate shift in 1977 (McKitrick[xi]). This climate shift has been noted by many other researchers (Stockwell[xii] ) and implies man-made global warming is playing an even smaller role then predicted by the models.
The core assumptions of the IPCC favoured models are not supported by empirical measurements.
Miskolczi developed a theoretical explanation for the absence of a tropical hot-spot in 2004, postulating that the production of entropy would already be maximized, therefore, an increase in one greenhouse gas will be matched by a decrease in another (namely water vapor) so that the efficiency of radiation leaving the Earth will not be changed[xiv] ,[xv]. He estimates that the greenhouse effect as shown by the atmospheric optical depth has not changed in 61 years (he used estimations of greenhouse gas concentrations, and radiosonde recordings of temperature and humidity).[xiii] Other studies by Paltridge et al 2009 [xvi] have shown that water vapor levels have dropped as CO2 levels have risen. Miskolczi’s 2010 work has not been challenged to date at a peer-reviewed level.
[i] IPCC, Assessment Report 4, (2007), Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. Fig 8.14 [PDF] Page 631
[ii] NOAA Satellite and Information Service, Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive, Data Coverage. June 8th 2010. [Link]
[iii] Karl et al (2006), Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) 2006 Report, Chapter 1, 1958-1999. Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1, 2006, CCSP, Chapter 1, p 25, based on Santer et al. 2000; [PDF]
[iv] Karl et al (2006) Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) 2006 Report, Chapter 5, part E of Figure 5.7 in section 5.5 on page 116 [PDF]
[v] Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson, and S.F. Singer. (2007). A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, Volume 28, Issue 13, pp. 1693-1701, December 2007. [Abstract] [PDF]
[vi] Santer, B. D., P. W. Thorne, L. Haimberger, K. E Taylor, T. M Wigley,. L. Lanzante, J. R. Solomon, M. Free, P. J Gleckler, P. D. Jones, T. R Karl, S. A. Klein, C. Mears, D. Nychka, G. A. Schmidt, S. C. Sherwood and F. J. Wentz (2008), Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere. International Journal of Climatology, 28: 1703–1722. doi: 10.1002/joc.1756 [Abstract] [PDF]
[vii] McKitrick, R., S. McIntyre, and C. Herman, (2010), Panel and multivariate methods for tests of trend equivalence in climate data series. Atmospheric Science Letters, 11: 270–277. DOI: 10.1002/asl.290. Data/code archive. [Discussion on JoNova] [PDF]
[viii] McKitrick, R., McIntyre, S., and Herman, C. (2011) Corrigendum to Panel and multivariate methods for tests of trend equivalence in climate data series, Atmospheric Science Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 4, 270–277. DOI: 10.1002/asl.360. [Abstract] [See McKitricks page on model testing].
[ix] Christy J.R., Herman, B., Pielke, Sr., R, 3, Klotzbach, P., McNide, R.T., Hnilo J.J., Spencer R.W., Chase, T. and Douglass, D: (2010) What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979? Remote Sensing 2010, 2, 2148-2169; doi:10.3390/rs2092148 [PDF]
[x] Fu, Q, Manabe, S., and Johanson, C. (2011) On the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: Models vs observations, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, L15704, doi:10.1029/2011GL048101, 2011 [PDF] [Discussion]
[xi] McKitrick, R. and Vogelsang, T. J. (2011), Multivariate trend comparisons between autocorrelated climate series with general trend regressors, Department of Economics, University of Guelph. [PDF]
[xii] Stockwell, David R. B. and Cox, A. (2009), Structural break models of climatic regime-shifts: claims and forecasts, Cornell University Library, arXiv10907.1650 [PDF]
[xiii] Miskolczi, Ferenc M. and Mlynczak, M. (2004) The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation. Idojaras Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service Vol. 108, No. 4, October–December 2004, pp. 209–251 [PDF]
[xiv] Miskolczi, Ferenc M. (2007) Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres. Idojaras Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service Vol. 111, No. 1, January–March 2007, pp. 1–40 [PDF]
[xv] Miskolczi, Ferenc M. (2010), The Stable Stationary Value of the Earth’s Global Average Atmospheric Planck-Weighted Greenhouse-Gas Optical Thickness. Energy & Environment Vol. 21, No. 4, 2010 pp 243-263 [PDF and Discussion]
[xvi] Paltridge, G., Arking, A., Pook, M., 2009. Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 98, Numbers 3-4, pp. 351-35). [PDF]
———————————————–PS: Thanks to a generous soul in Adelaide. Another letter is on the way to thank you (your first letter arrived just fine, but my reply appears to have gone missing.) Merci! Cheers, Jo
The IR physics behind the 1.2 K CO2 intrinsic climate sensitivity is probably wrong. This is because the thermalisation in the Tyndall and the ‘PET bottle’ experiments is indirect at the walls and there’s adiabatic heating from constant volume. Nahle used a Mylar balloon – no apparent heating but he used an infra-red pyrometer, path length problem?
[The physics is that the climate people forget the most basic aspect of statistical thermodynamics, the principle of Indistinguishability devised by J W Gibbs - molecules have no memory. So, immediately another already activated GHG molecule emits the same energy photon, Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium is restored. This means in the lower atmosphere at least, the GHGs are probably an energy transfer medium with thermalisation at heterogeneous interfaces only. Real CO2 climate sensitivity must be much lower - a factor of 10 at least.]
The IPCC’s so-called science is one of the worst conducted investigations in history. It’s easy to show the key scientific mistakes made by Hansen, Ramanathan, Houghton et. al. Sussing out when it changed from scientific hubris to fraud has taken some time.
That started in 1995 when Santer changed the IPCC from science to activism. Then we had the hockey stick fraud and the alteration by GISS and CRU people of past temperature data. The sea level data fraud occurred fairly late in the day.
On sorting through the science, I can accept incorrect theory, after all everyone is human. What I can’t stand is sheer experimental incompetence. This is the belief in climate science that just because ‘pyrgeometers’ [IR specific pyrometers] are calibrated against a black body and labelled in ‘W/m^2′, this is an actual energy flow. WRONG.
It’s the nominal energy flux you’d get from an isolated black body in a vacuum, not a real energy flow. Thus, if you have two pyrgeometers back to back, zero temperature gradient, no net flux, the net reading is zero. Take one away and you purport substantial energy from the source temperature convolved with emissivity when there is no real energy flow.
This signal is an artefact of the shield behind the device. Every such reading has to be rejected, along with the IPCC Energy Budget which adds imaginary ‘back radiation, double real solar flux to the surface, to make sufficient in total to fry eggs if real!
Also every bit of satellite data derived from albedo has to be discarded because Sagan’s two-stream aerosol optical physics of aerosols is wrong. The list goes on and on.
The heat transfer and cloud physics in the GCMs need to be completely rebuilt by new, competent people untainted by fraud. I suspect that you gather by now that I’m not impressed!
41
I’m trying to visualise the “back radiation” thing and I think I’m making progress. Take a thin shell made of black body material with a vacuum inside and electrically heat the shell. If I put an infrared thermometer inside I’ll see radiation coming from the walls no matter where I point it yet there is clearly no nett energy transfer.
I need to think about this some more.
01
If backradiation is not measured correctly then that is a fatal flaw in AGW theory and the inability to match that theory with ‘real’ evidence. Morris Minor has summed up some of these measurement flaws:
00
To prove a theory false, it’s only necessary to show where it doesn’t match reality.
Calls to provide a better theory or to show how the falsified theory is theoretically wrong are distractions.
Keep in mind who’s being paid very generously to do proper science before letting yourself become distracted by coming up with a better theory. If they can’t accept that their theories are wrong in the face of contradictory measurement, they won’t listen to contradictory theory.
10
mydogsgotnonose, is that you ?
00
We are closely related……..!
00
mydogsgotnonose, is that you ?
00
Could you explain in more detail? How did Tyndall’s experiment work? What was wrong with it? Have more sophisticated experiments addressed your concerns?
00
The IR physics behind the 1.2 K CO2 intrinsic climate sensitivity is probably wrong. This is because the thermalisation in the Tyndall and the ‘PET bottle’ experiments is indirect at the walls and there’s adiabatic heating from constant volume. Nahle used a Mylar balloon – no apparent heating but he used an infra-red pyrometer, path length problem?
[The physics is that the climate people forget the most basic aspect of statistical thermodynamics, the principle of Indistinguishability devised by J W Gibbs - molecules have no memory. So, immediately another already activated GHG molecule emits the same energy photon, Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium is restored. This means in the lower atmosphere at least, the GHGs are probably an energy transfer medium with thermalisation at heterogeneous interfaces only. Real CO2 climate sensitivity must be much lower - a factor of 10 at least.]
The IPCC’s so-called science is one of the worst conducted investigations in history. It’s easy to show the key scientific mistakes made by Hansen, Ramanathan, Houghton et. al. Sussing out when it changed from scientific hubris to fraud has taken some time.
That started in 1995 when Santer changed the IPCC from science to activism. Then we had the hockey stick fraud and the alteration by GISS and CRU people of past temperature data. The sea level data fraud occurred fairly late in the day.
On sorting through the science, I can accept incorrect theory, after all everyone is human. What I can’t stand is sheer experimental incompetence. This is the belief in climate science that just because ‘pyrgeometers’ [IR specific pyrometers] are calibrated against a black body and labelled in ‘W/m^2′, this is an actual energy flow. WRONG.
It’s the nominal energy flux you’d get from an isolated black body in a vacuum, not a real energy flow. Thus, if you have two pyrgeometers back to back, zero temperature gradient, no net flux, the net reading is zero. Take one away and you purport substantial energy from the source temperature convolved with emissivity when there is no real energy flow.
This signal is an artefact of the shield behind the device. Every such reading has to be rejected, along with the IPCC Energy Budget which adds imaginary ‘back radiation, double real solar flux to the surface, to make sufficient in total to fry eggs if real!
Also every bit of satellite data derived from albedo has to be discarded because Sagan’s two-stream aerosol optical physics of aerosols is wrong. The list goes on and on.
The heat transfer and cloud physics in the GCMs need to be completely rebuilt by new, competent people untainted by fraud. I suspect that you gather by now that I’m not impressed!
00
This is always the first empirical point I make when debating anew on CAGW theory.
00
Testing as all comments on previous posts seem to have disappeared!
[thanks for testing! We are experiencing a technical problem. behind the scenes gurus are working on it and we hope to have it fixed soon] ED
00
Jo, with matters like this it would be useful to force a response from the Government since their rationale for the carbon tax is based on the IPCC predictions and this refutes those predictions. I’m just not sure how we could force a public response.
Letters sent by individuals to Ministers and MP’s simply get a ‘standard’ Climate Change is real blah blah blah type response. Can anyone think how a response could be demanded to address this and so many similar points which refute the IPCC predictions? Is there a Government Committee we can ask members of the Coalition to raise questions with? Could it be done through an FOI request from the CSIRO asking have they reviewed this issue and if so what were their conclusions and if not why not? Perhaps the Commonwealth Ombudsman?
I’m just looking for ideas from anyone or suggestions on how we could force this Government to address these and other critically valid issues against the CO2 emission based catastrophic climate change predictions.
10
Have any sceptical scientists produced a predicted fingerprint for their suggested forcings such as solar, cosmic rays, etc?
00
Surely it wouldn’t be the first or only elusive spot for which no convincing physical evidence could be found, yet is commonly believed to exist.
00
Perhaps if I had taken the time actually to read the referenced papers, the following argument would seem more compelling:
“They showed that global climate models predict a scaling ratio of 1.4 ±0.8. (i.e. the atmosphere should warm 40% faster than the surface). Instead the scaling ratio for real world data was 0.8 ± 0.3″
But that excerpt as it stands seems to say the models admit of a range of 0.6 – 2.2, while the observations are in the 0.5 – 1.1 range, which the former range largely overlaps. Maybe other readers, too, are unable to see how this disproves the models, so that passage may bear some clarification.
00
Apologies are not required, Jo you’re right on cue as always. I suggest people across Australia have never been more receptive to the sceptical view of mainstream climate science. Here in Australia the ghastly Gillard government has done much to discredit the religion of environmentalism
As Václav Klaus puts it:
For me, the bottom lip of climate alarmism is trembling and what better time to time to sink the slipper!
10
Jo,
I’m missing ALL comments from ALL your blogs?
What has happened?????????
ALL: We’re experiencing some technical difficultites ATM. We are working to get them resolved ASAP. Yoda
00
*gets popcorn* mattb, sillyfiller, brooksie and ross-the-false-outrager, to the rescue!
00
Two thumbs down the very second I post? Sorry about that. *sighs* I really shouldn’t speak truth to bullies like ross.
00
OT. . .
Lord Christopher Monckton had a good long interview on the latest episode of the Alex Jones show.
Was aired over night in America and is being repeated all day today for us.
Good topics such as Climate Change (now being called ‘sustainable development’), world government, the UN, etc etc. . .
The Alex Jones show is repeated every three hours so Monckton will be on today at 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm.
You can go here and choose the one with the most listeners:
http://www.shoutcast.com/Internet-Radio/alex%20jones
The direct link to the stream is here:
http://yp.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=1026951
Or, if you use a internet radio streaming app or something, do a search for ‘Alex Jones’.
00
Where have all the comments gone? Or is it just a problem with my computer?
00
The observations show it, I know it, we all know it, but the believers will not accept anything that contradicts the models. It’s a belief and values issue, not about evidence. “The warming must be there, just hidden…. The last decade is the hottest… We don’t understand the process well enough, but scientists all agree… You flat earth, tobacco loving, holocaust denying, oil funded amateurs are holding us back from a glorious green renewable sustainable world.”
I guess all we can do is keep plugging away at the contradictions, until the real world gap is big enough for all to see. Or enough voters get their backs up. Who knows how long?
Good work Jo. You should use as your motto “Nil carborundum illegitimi.”
Ken
10
Oh good. Back again.
00
It’s good to see this, Jo. New people are coming in all the time and it helps if they can find this information up front and easily.
I remember when I was new (not so long ago either – about a month before Fakegate). I could not get enough. I still have to come get my daily dose. Keep up the good work.
00
butbutbut,
The hot spot must be there somewhere, the computer told me it would be there and computers are never ever wrong.
It must be lurking somewhere really clever just so it can come out and BAM, whack us all.
They’re pretty bloody cunning those hot spots.
/sarc
10
As a beancounter, I like to be able to reach the same conclusion via a number of different means. This is another example of climate science being undermined by a number approaches. Like Sherwood Idso’s eight different ways of demonstrating the low sensitivity of temperature to CO2; lots of independent studies across the globe showing that there was a medieval warm period; and lots of studies showing the benefits of increased CO2 levels.
10
Maybe the Hotspot got chewed up by Will i ams helicopter on the way to a goreball warming debate?
00
[...] Models get the core assumptions wrong– – the hot spot is missing [...]
10
More bad science by Jo. The no heatspot thing debunked like 10 years ago.
Meanwhile, apples will be scarce and expensive in the US due to unseasonal warm weather followed by frost. More CO2 doesn’t help plants and growers after all!
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/05/18/canadaus-great-lakes-area-fruit-growers-wipeout-due-to-extreme-spring-deniers-they-need-more-co2/
40 days and the Carbon Price Mechanism kicks in. Meanwhile, the Heartland Institute is losing sponsors at a huge rate, might reduce the flow of bad, pretend “science!”
——–
REPLY: Debunked on the say so of an anonymous dog. Well that’s it then… I’m convinced. Jo
00
O/T but this must make your blood boil a little, jo. surely compromising for Lowy Institute to be involved!
24 May: News Ltd: Anna Caldwell: Outcry over $53k taxpayer funded Gillard Government blogs
Taxpayers will foot bill for two blogs with five likes
The Lowy Institute paid about $500 for short articles
“Extraordinary expenditure with lacklustre results”
Taxpayers will foot the bill for two blogs for about three months, featuring little more than articles about Australia-Asia relations.
Just one reader has bothered to leave a comment on the blogs, despite the sites being designed to engage with the public and the Government describing them as an “online conversation”.
One of the two blogs doesn’t even allow reader comment, a staple of online blogs. It does, however, allow Facebook “likes”, with most posts garnering between just zero and five likes.
Taxpayers are forking out for a full-time “editor” and a part-time assistant to run one of the websites.
The blogs, operating from March 19 to June 30, have been outsourced by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to private think tanks the Lowy Institute and the Australia Institute of International Affairs…
The Lowy Institute is being handed about $500 per working day on a $33,000 contract to post short articles and links to other websites.
The Australian Institute of International Affairs has a $20,000 contract and has so far published two competitions and posted 10 articles, including a speech by Kevin Rudd when he was foreign minister…
http://www.news.com.au/technology/outcry-over-53k-taxpayer-funded-gillard-government-online-blogs-outsourced-by-department-of-prime-minister-and-cabinet-to-private-think-tanks-the-lowy-institute-and-the-australia-institute-of-international-affairs/story-e6frfro0-1226365165154
00
One thing that really must be separated is the notion of the basic theory of AGW and how this theory was then translated into creating global climate models. The theory can be right and the models wrong…and indeed this is exactly the case. The models were also wrong in predicting how rapidly Arctic sea ice would decline. They obviously have something wrong in the way they are modeling arctic sea ice dynamics and positive feedbacks in the Artic region. The models are an interpretation of how the basic energy imbalance caused by the greenhouse effect of increased greenhouse gases would operate in Earth’s climate system. The models will be wrong from the very beginning, but some can be useful for the tools they are.
Regardless of where the models show the excess heat from the greenhouse induced energy imbalance will show up, the fact is that it is indeed showing up. It should be noted that for the period from May 1, 2011 through April 30, 2012, it was the warmest 12 month period on instrument record for both the troposphere and oceans down to 2000 meters. As a warmest who honestly tries to understand the skeptical perspective to AGW, I would like to see how they explain this instrument record warmth. The facts and data don’t seem to match up to the often repeated inaccuracy about warming having stopped.
00
it’s unravelling…
22 May: Reuters: German bourse scraps EU carbon emissions trading
Bavaria’s stock exchange will abandon its carbon emissions certificate trading operations in the EU-traded CO2 market on June 30 after volumes in Europe “plunged to practically zero” in recent months, it said on Tuesday…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/22/us-bavaria-emissions-idUSBRE84L0SN20120522
23 May: AFP: EU warns climate talks at risk of floundering
Europe warned at climate talks in Bonn on Wednesday that efforts to forge a new global pact to avert environmental disaster were in danger of floundering, and some pointed fingers at China.
Nine days into talks meant to set the stage for a United Nations gathering in Qatar in December where countries must adopt an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, negotiators complained that procedural bickering was quashing progress hopes.
With only two days left in this negotiating round, the parties have failed to appoint a chairperson or agree on an agenda for a newly established body dubbed the ADP tasked with overseeing the drafting of a new pact by 2015.
“If this slow pace of negotiations continues … it poses the risk of unraveling the Durban package,” Danish chief negotiator Christian Pilgaard Zinglersen warned on behalf of the European Union…
Pilgaard told the Bonn gathering that some parties, which he did not name, wanted to rehash issues that have already been settled…
And Wael Hmaidan, director of activist group Climate Action Network, said China was “blocking the ADP” out of fear that rich nations were trying to shift more of the emissions curbing burden onto poorer states than was historically fair…
***As countries bicker, researchers recently predicted Earth’s temperature rising by as much as five degrees Celsius (9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels, instead of the 2 C (3.6 F) limit being targeted…
But Zinglersen said Wednesday: “We are very concerned that success in Doha is currently far from certain. With only two days left in Bonn we have made very little progress on a number of key issues.”
***The United States had never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, while Russia and Japan have said they did not intend to sign up from next year. Australia and New Zealand have not confirmed their positions, while Canada withdrew from the protocol last year.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5izDD4Hvuc840J7zG_PdlRSCs9M0A?docId=CNG.2a8f1c6c6ae3e9293d9ab2d9d9238115.271
00
u don’t say! of course, that would depend on it getting hotter.
24 May: ABC: Laurissa Smith: Climate change could help Riverina wheat growers
Farmers in parts of the NSW Riverina have been told that their wheat yields could increase by up to 10 per cent in the next 20 years because of climate change…
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201205/s3509826.htm
tomatoes tell their own story:
24 May: Courier Mail: Kris Crane: Tomatoes treble in price wth Woolworths confirming production affected by lower yields of fruit after cool weather
He expected prices to easesoon after a spate of warmer growing weather…
http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/tomatoes-treble-in-price-wth-woolworths-confirming-production-affected-by-lower-yields-of-fruit-after-cool-weather/story-fn7kjcme-1226364930384
00
Here in NSW Australia it’s definitely colder. We had our first frost a full two months before Winter this year (it killed our vegetable patch). We have also recorded around -5 C daily for the last two or three weeks. That’s ice and frost every morning. I should point out, that -5 to -7 is usually the coldest we get in the middle of Winter and we’re not officially in Winter yet!
It’s going to be cold this year, folks. I know Europe got it bad. It’s coming around and now it’s our turn. Rug up warm. This is NOT a good time for electricity prices to shoot up!
00
Hotspots?
Time to go to the video for the ‘latest’ climate science from the Climate (C)ommission Community Forum at Parramatta RSL, 15 May 2012.
Prof. Will Steffen video presentation begins @ 7.20 mins.
~ cO2 greenhouse radiation explanation @ 9.45 mins.
Note @ 18.10, Flannery states the amount of money spent world wide on ‘clean energy’: $263 Billion!
Informed folks will spot the myriad of information deliberately avoided in this q&a, (granted, time is limited)
Some viewers might like the exchange between Steffen & audience when he claims scepticism is based on ‘belief’. Begins @ 34.0 minute with Flannery claiming ‘the truth‘ will eventually come out.
00
[...] it all here and please note the number of references and the quality of the discussions and [...]
00
When Schmidt agrees that the hotspot does not exist, I’ll believe that CAGW theory actually considers the “hotspot” to be important.
CAGW is the strangest “science” story I’ve ever heard. It holds correlations sacrosanct and observations, not terribly useful. It picks its own important criteria, and gives all benefit of the doubt, i.e. the truth of assumptions, to CAGW. Warming causes cold, more or less precipitation, less or more regional differences.
Could we ever get Schmidt to discuss this? Otherwise we are like the minister preaching to the choir.
00
While the radiosonde data does invalidate (falsify) the climate models, I’d be more cautious in saying it invalidates the GHG theory. This is because other factors affect mid-troposphere temperatures, in particular, aerosols and particulates.
Aerosol/particulate data is poor to non-existent over this period (since the 1970s), a problem compounded by weak or false assumptions about aerosols/particulates. But it is possible that decreasing aerosols/particulates have caused mid-troposphere cooling, masking the warming from GHGs. Although this requires a lower CO2 sensitivity than the IPCC claim.
From 1975 to 1978 the USA mandated emission controls on all new vehicles that reduced aerosol/particulate emissions by >90%. Because of the global nature of the vehicle manufacturing industry, these controls effectively became a global standard. IMO this is the likely cause of the step change seen in global surface temperatures around 1977. Decreased aerosols/particulates = increased solar insolation + mid-troposphere cooling.
00
Phillip, in the sense that it’s a theory of catastrophic man-made warming, the lack of a hot-spot does invalidate the theory. We just can’t get dangerous warming if water vapor doesn’t provide positive feedback.
10
I wasn’t defending AGW or CAGW. I happen to think the net water feedback is close to X -1. That is, increases in GHGs produce little, or even no, net warming. I also think that the post 1970 measured surface warming is largely an artifact of increased solar insolation and doesn’t result from ‘global warming’. My point was that in evaluating evidence, you have to consider all possible causes.
regards
00
I have shown above the reason why the modellers have gone very wrong – it’s the assumption that at TOA, emissivity UP = emissivity DOWN.
In reality, when you go from primarily convective heat transport to radiative, the probability of a photon heading to space dramatically increases.
So, they wrongly assume you have to balance that 240 W/m^ UP with the same DOWN hence their apparent belief in ‘back radiation’.
PS photons were invented by Planck to explain quantisation of radiation at the emission and absorption stage. They have no meaning in the Aether and the Schwarzchild two-stream approximation is also wrong in that at a point there is only the net arrival of radiated energy.
00
BTW, the troposphere hotspot is a prediction(from theory), not an assumption.
00
Phillip, in the sense that it’s a theory of catastrophic man-made warming, the lack of a hot-spot does invalidate the theory. We just can’t get dangerous warming if water vapor doesn’t provide positive feedback.
00
While the radiosonde data does invalidate (falsify) the climate models, I’d be more cautious in saying it invalidates the GHG theory. This is because other factors affect mid-troposphere temperatures, in particular, aerosols and particulates.
Aerosol/particulate data is poor to non-existent over this period (since the 1970s), a problem compounded by weak or false assumptions about aerosols/particulates. But it is possible that decreasing aerosols/particulates have caused mid-troposphere cooling, masking the warming from GHGs. Although this requires a lower CO2 sensitivity than the IPCC claim.
From 1975 to 1978 the USA mandated emission controls on all new vehicles that reduced aerosol/particulate emissions by >90%. Because of the global nature of the vehicle manufacturing industry, these controls effectively became a global standard. IMO this is the likely cause of the step change seen in global surface temperatures around 1977. Decreased aerosols/particulates = increased solar insolation + mid-troposphere cooling.
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Jo, you just GOT to change your comments format to allow direct replies to commenters.
It’s a major weakness of your site.
You shouldn’t have to snip Maxine w/o letting others take her on “on the merits”. At least until she engages in vicious ad homs.
Go ask Watts how comment responses add to the richness of his website.
(She was thread bombing with no evidence provided to back up her wild statements) CTS
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Lord Monckton said in his interview today. . .
Its been 15 years since since the whole climate change thing took off. 15 years since the models told us what to expect.
The warmists said that if the predictions dont come to pass over the next 15 years then the models are wrong.
Well, here we are, its 15 years later. The models are wrong.
For just how long does it have to be before people start realising its a load of crap?
ITS BEEN 15 YEARS FFS!
There are kids finishing up high school this year who dont know a life without climate change brainwashing. Those kids dont know any better. We have to keep fighting the good fight and help these kids to see the truth.
20
In reference to your work I want to draw your attention to a very interesting result of a study which was just released here in Europe.
One of those arguments of the climate change lobby which has been brought up over and over again was the idea of there will be a tremendous increase of extreme weather events.
The former days a study based on HISTALP (http://www.zamg.ac.at/histalp/) climate database was published.
Sorry these articles are written in German language but I am sure you will get the point with the help of Google Translate:
http://diepresse.com/home/panorama/klimawandel/760033/Studie_Wetterextreme-nehmen-doch-nicht-zu?from=suche.intern.portal
http://diepresse.com/home/panorama/klimawandel/521765/Das-Klima-wird-nicht-verrueckter?from=suche.intern.portal
Short summary:
There is no evidence for an increase of extreme weather events in the alpine region…
The guy who did the study: http://www.google.at/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=extreme%20weather%20events%20histalp%20b%C3%B6hm&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CFoQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zamg.ac.at%2Fdocs%2Fwir_ueber_uns%2Fcv%2Fcv_boehm_reinhard.pdf&ei=49a9T5a4HfL24QSzp7kf&usg=AFQjCNFhFsihMHSAZkPgPk-pP7RKzIsAgw
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more good news for Qld today (besides the Origin win):
24 May: Ninemsn: Govt scraps northwest Qld solar farm
The Queensland government has pulled funding for a solar farm in the state’s northwest to save money.
Minister for Energy Mark McArdle on Thursday said the government had withdrawn its financial support for the Cloncurry Solar Farm to save Queenslanders about $5.6 million…
“These are savings which will benefit all Queenslanders rather than localised climate initiatives,” Mr McArdle said in a statement on Thursday.
***It was up to the private sector to decide whether to invest in such projects, he added…
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8472810
***what a novel idea!
00
Climate Sensitivity Estimated From Earth’s Climate History
James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato
Pumped out of Hansen’s computer at 4am on May 9.
http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2012/20120508_ClimateSensitivity.pdf
00
Readers may be interested in (the misleadingly named) Skeptical Science take on this issue.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Dispelling-two-myths-about-the-tropospheric-hot-spot.html
In part 1 they indulge in some scientific sleight of hand, to explain away the lack of troposphere hotspot, by the use of the word ‘signature’. The intent is to mislead people into thinking that GHG warming doesn’t lead to mid-troposphere warming. When in fact GHG warming requires that the mid-troposphere warm faster than the surface.
Part 2 ignores the radiosonde data entirely and uses a questionable proxy to show troposphere warming is in fact happening.
10
Mostly O/T — –
A small piece of advice to JoNova posters:
This “R. Gates” (a pseudonym) posted for quite some time at WUWT, and finally gave us some relief when he realized that no one was buying his pseudoscience. He is a dedicated warmist in the sense of MattB, John Brookes, Ross James, et al, who, despite his claim, does NOT understand the skeptical viewpoint.
His/her mind is closed, and your best choice is to ignore his/her posts. When the whole of the CAGW meme implodes under the weight of its own internal contradictions, rest assured that “R. Gates” will continue in his best Don Quixote.
My warm-IST regards to all,
Mark H.
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Sorry, but isn’t the “Greenhouse Gas Theory of CO2″ really a perpetual motion machine? There is no more energy coming into the ( Earth ) system so over all there can be no additional heat, just a slight slowing down of its departure.
00
OT – Site Admin note. For those who are wondering, yes the odd 100,000 comments on other older threads have got waylaid, but they will return (hopefully) within 24 hours. (The site may be down tomorrow, but only for half an hour I am told).
- Jo
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[...] stations in the global CRUTEM4 temperature and humidity database. Peer-reviewed publications by Paltridge and others also find water vapor feedback is strongly negative. Without positive water vapor feedback, the [...]
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Reply to BobC
May 25, 2012 at 3:10 am · Reply
Not really, the coat stops the heat you are generating from escaping too rapidly but it doesn’t add heat. If you were, regrettably, to die with your overcoat on you would quickly cool down to the ambient temperature. The coat might slow that down a bit but it won’t stop you. In fact if the ambient temperature went up after you croaked the coat would slow down your heating up to equilibrium once more.
The CO2 cannot generate heat. The CO2 AGW story just describes a perpetual motion machine.
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For instance would putting a coat over a steel pole make it warmer?
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The heat from everything mankind burns or uses to create useful energy is 1/2000 th that of the enrgy we get from the sun. Adding 1/2000th under the overcoat would make no measurable difference at all.
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shhh….don’t tell any one, but Perth just recorded it’s ‘Coldest May morning in almost a century’. (Friday, May 25th)
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/coldest-may-morning-in-almost-a-century/21695
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Speaking of models, Jennifer Marohasy has had a win.
Notebook neural network beats supercomputer model for predicting rain
How is that 113th most powerful supercomputer in the world going guys? Sounds like you need to upgrade to a laptop.
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[...] of the positive feedback, working under the assumption that they are significant. In the meantime, empirical evidence is suggesting negative feedback. …or taking meticulous
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[...] contribution to the greenhouse effect that CO2 plays, its logarithmic properties and the likely negative feedback in the climate [...]
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[...] models get core assumptions wrong – the hot spot is missing 22 – 26, 28 – [...]
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So says the science —> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121129143504.htm
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[...] http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/models-get-the-core-assumptions-wrong-the-hot-spot-is-missing/ It is not well known that even the IPCC agrees that the direct effects of CO2 will only increase world temperatures by 1.2°C. All of the projections above that (3.3°C , 6°C etc) come from model projections based on assumptions of what water vapor and clouds will do (these are the feedback effects of the original 1.2°C).[i] Are the feedbacks correct? [...]
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Jo, your latest post on the hotspot shows the hot spot. Did you not realise?
00
.
Nice One,
You’re almost a year late on this post.
Get with it – don’t be like BOM and Tim Flannery – this is 2013.
And then linked to a comment from Feb 25th 2013 on another post to a comment by yourself – stating the above. Do get paid by hits on your comments?
You are only using linking comment syndrome to prove nothing. You have NFI.
Go away quickly idiot. No one else is going to follow your little Yellow Brick Road Tom Foolerly.
Nice One is linking continually to his own comments in different posts for other trolls to follow and give him a thumbs up. Clever little Nice One – use his own trolls to get him more money – this is a great system for the these GREEN IDIOTS.
Fools – but mainly you Nice One.
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[...] AR4 they put in two graphs that show how badly their models really do. In the next report they plan to bury the spectacular [...]
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[...] regional, or continental scale (Anagnostopoulos 2010 and Koutsoyiannis 2008). They don’t work on the tropical troposphere (Christy 2010, Po-Chedley 2012, Fu 2011, Paltridge [...]
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The skeptics show that the case for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is unsubstantiated. The alarmists cling to their beliefs by blocking criticism and suppressing contrary evidence.
10
There is plenty of experimental evidence of changes in Earth’s albedo from the Earth-shine Project.
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There is plenty of research available which shows far better correlation between global temperature and other forcings, compared to atmospheric CO2. The back casting of simple computer models using this correlation have also been much more accurate than the CO2 based models. I am sure a lot more work could be done in this area if Governments gave a fraction of what they spend supporting the CO2 theory to other avenues of research.
But 2dogs, the fact that you ask this question shows you do not understand the scientific process. If one scientist presents a theory another scientist can show that theory to be wrong without any obligation to come up with a different one. If for instance you say all swans are white based on your extensive research carried out all over the world bar Australia. Then I show you a black swan from Australia, I have invalidated your theory. I do not have to prove that all swans are black or white. Though if I wanted I may postulate that as a theory and it will stand until such time as someone produces a different coloured swan.
So if a scientist does not have a better theory, it doesn’t make the disproved theory any more correct!
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Yes Monckton is always a breath of fresh air among some of the more obscure stuff on the Jones channel, so is well worth looking out for. Whatever he’s said about the UN in the past has usually come to pass, if not been thwarted by his revealing it.
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Each new ‘Gate’ revelation has brought a rush of new curiosity about the subject, and each time Jo Nova is there, standing out like a lighthouse in the darkness and obscurity that is so often to be found on it elsewhere.
The message is now shifting though, from one of : ‘there really doesn’t seem to be a problem’ , to one more of, ‘look at what they were trying to sucker you into believing’ and ‘what will it be & is it already next’?
This is where Jo has already been away ahead of the game for so long, seeing through and revealing the underlying financial corruption behind it.
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Welcome Ally,
I was the same after climategate broke. The silence was deafening, and Jos’ site here has been a wealth of information.
The truth usually wins the information wars, eventually.
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[snip... maxine, try to substantiate some, any part of your comments so that we can see that you have some reason for your thoughts, other than just as free baseless advertising for the sake of denying the obvious. - Jo]
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Maxine,
absolute bunkum.
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Meanwhile, in Australia, which is DROUGHT FREE for the first time in over 10 years:
How about…
This is despite Flannery, aided by FAILED UN-IPCC/CSIRO computer models, saying in 2007:
Maybe resident troll Gee Aye will drive past and remind you that links to food production is not evidence of ‘climate change’.
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Time to close down the site Jo. Maxine “aka anonymous dog” has debunked you good and proper!
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Maxine, I’m starting to believe that is your actual image in the photo!
The chrysanthemums in our back yard (not planted by me), are blooming bigger and longer than ever in recorded history. Therefore increased atmospheric CO2 must be universally good for the planet and CAGW is totally debunked!
I’m wondering if the above is too subtle for you to understand???
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What handjive said.
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[snip, no support for that allegation]
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I dunno, SW of WA is drying out just as AGW theory predicts—next time you watch the weather report just see all the sunny days SW of WA gets and I think they are starting a third desal plant?
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Don’t be silly. The globe, land and sea, ARE warming up—nobody is seriously claiming that temperatures are decreasing (temporary fluctuations due to volcanic eruptions or active La Nina conditions aside.)
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Ken,
See comment below related the record global warmth. I’ve been studying this issue for a very long time and came to understand that the models were just an interpretation of how the energy imbalance created by the basic physical fact of greenhouse warming would be translated into the Earth’s climate system. Global climate models are always going to be “wrong” in the sense that they’ll never be able to capture the full reality of the situation. But the facts show that there is no real world gap between the basic tenet of AGW theory which is about an energy imbalance being created. The models simply are ways to try and interpret how this energy imbalance will be manifested.
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[snip. Do better. Jo]
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How do you explain 150 years of industrialisation, increasing CO2 etc concentration in the atmosphere and the steady rise of land/sea/air temperatures?
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[snip. Maxine, I'm trashing most of the thread bombing comments you are making now. You are wasting our time. Lift your game. -- Jo]
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Joe,
not every statement will “disprove” climate models. There has to be enough information to understand the situation. Try reading the rest of it.
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R. Gates
This is just the sort of unreferenced statement which pricks up my skeptical interest. I don’t know about the oceans to 2,000m, which have only been accurately measured for the past few years, however I do know about the troposphere. I wish I could insert an image here, but I’ll just have to quote the figures from UAH anomalies which you can find at http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt.
The 12 month mean to April 30 is +0.17, which is the same as it was in April 2002. The 12 month mean has fluctuated up and down above and below this since then, reaching its highest in October 2010 (+0.43)which was equal to October, November, and December 1998. 2010 and 1998 were during El Nino events. So it was NOT the warmest 12 month period in the instrument record. Please get your facts right and ensure they can be checked by giving references. Besides, the record shows evidence of warming, but NOT the cause of the warming.
Ken
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Evidence for OHC to 2000 metres being warmest? And please don’t refer to Levitus 2012 which has been debunked.
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Gates says…
Alternatively, the models can be wrong BECAUSE the THEORY IS WRONG, and this is exactly the case.
Anyone who has ever kept cold drinks in an Esky has proven the theory wrong.
Think about it.
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Have I missed something here? With all that money spent on climate research and modeling did the modelers use some other theory to construct their models? Do we have a communication problem here?
Perhaps what you meant to say is that, although the models (based on the AGW theory) are wrong, the AGW theory itself is “truthy”?
All kidding aside, the more likely explanation is that the AGW hypothesis is totally inadequate to explain — much less predict — the Earth’s climate. “Climate Science” is an embryonic field and not ready for prime time.
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But do they match the predictions? Nope. And the warming should generate a positive feedback, which should be evidenced by the hot spot. So where’s the hot spot?
Ken
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maxine says..
Have you conveniently omitted the ‘temporary’ fluctuations due to El Nino conditions?
Why would you include La Nina, but exclude the more prominent (from 1983 to 1998) El Nino conditions Maxine?
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Maxine, This article is about the missing ‘hotspot’ 10km above the tropics. Nobody has found that and it is a fundamental part of the CO2 CAGW theory.
Land, sea or air temperatures can increase for many reasons other than CO2 forcing. These other forcing options are poorly understood and deliberately excluded by the IPCC scientists who have all jumped on the anthropogenic global warming band wagon.
The fact is the climate models which assume CO2 as the main climate driver have failed to predict temperatures in the future or through back casting (without adding a variable aerosol fudge factor). That is why the alarmist predictions made over the last 30 years have failed to eventuate. That is why the IPCC’s climate models are all off the actual temperature record curves. That is why predictions by Al Gore, Tim Flannery and their cohort have failed to eventuate in the time frames which they themselves set!
Maxine, people on this site do not mind if you do not have a grasp of the topic and are genuinely seeking answers, or if you even want to state protagonist questions. But when you make statements without the slightest basis in fact, it is just annoying and you will tend to get ignored because we all have better things to do than respond to someone who simply likes to post baseless negative comments.
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Heat first, then CO2 … get it ?
Temperatures have trended downward for the past 15 or more years.
Climate Reality Intrudes, CO2 Has Little Impact On Long-Term Global Temperatures
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Heat first, then CO2 … get it ?
Temperatures have trended downward for the past 15 or more years.
Climate Reality Intrudes, CO2 Has Little Impact On Long-Term Global Temperatures
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Just a quick one Max, but correlation IS NOT causation!! Temps have been rising since the mid 18th century at THE SAME RATE!! It CAN’T be CO2 that far back!!
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How do you explain it?
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Well, let’s see:
1) Industrialization happened because of the Industrial Revolution.
2) Increasing CO2 is probably a consequence of the rising temperatures, but with less certainty than the cause of industrialization.
3) The last 150 years of temperature rise is not understood, anymore than the steady 250 rise of temperatures that occured from 800 to 1050 AD, but the Sun is a prime suspect.
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Oh dear Maxine. What BobC said at #8.1.4 plus – I would absolutely dispute “a steady rise in land/sea/air temperatures”. The rise in temperatures which is acknowledge over that time, and not surprising following the Little Ice Age, has been anything but ‘steady’. But then if you had actually viewed the graphed temperature records you would see there have been warming and cooling periods over that time – not a steady rise. Unfortunately for CO2 = CAGW theorists, any cooling period is an inconvenient truth when CO2 emissions have continued at increasing levels.
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Maxine:
WA can have Victorias desal plant if they want it. I hear it’s painted white and is the size of a Giant Elephant. It should probably be covered in Gold with the amount of money the victorians have paid for it too.
They probably don’t want the NSW desal plant – heaps of strings attached to that one. Pity they’re such buggers to move eh!
BTW – you haven’t answered my question from the other week – you know, the one about exactly what you have done to reduce your own personal ecological footprint. I would be interested in knowing how may flights you’ve taken in the last 12 months as well as the normal string of questions.
Or are you just another ecological hyppocrite?
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I don’t go by the weather reports. Frankly, since they’ve been found to get their facts wrong, I don’t all together trust them. I’m going by our own little weather station here. Since the sun’s activity has decreased, it’s getting colder, plain and simple. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t stop at the border. We’ll know better as Winter moves in.
It doesn’t change the fact that the last 12 years or so there has been no warming. Even James Lovelock recognizes that.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/23/breaking-james-lovelock-back-down-on-climate-alarm/
He says: “The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
I think we’re at the beginning of the downward curve.
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Yeah but that prediction was before the discovery of the Indian Ocean Dipole. SW of WA had lots of of sunny days in the early 1970s too. I remember getting sick of them as it made forecasting the weather boring and flying gliders likewise. Glider pilots love cumulus clouds and it requires enough moisture that the clouds form before the thermal runs in to the inversion.
The desal plants wouldn’t have anything to do with the population increase in WA would it? SW of WA ran out of dam sites in the hills in the 1960s. Inability to manage vegetation in the existing catchments due to greenie interference has reduced catchment efficiency to about half of what it used to be according to Warwick Hughes.
Now please troll elsewhere.
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Maxine have you visited the ‘Petrified Forest’ in the SW of WA? It’s a great example of Climate in the region varying greatly over the long term and without industrialisation or major land clearing to blame.
Once again you have just thrown in another irrelevancy and have failed to address any of the many responses made to you over the last few weeks. This demonstrates that you really are just acting like a time waster or Troll as some of the IT geeks might say.
BTW, as MadJak well demonstrates, it is naive to select one small region of the world and say what has happened in that region, despite the opposite happening in other regions, proves CAGW theory! In any event, people who know the SW of WA well know that there are a number of significant factors which affect climate in that region including ocean currents and land clearing.
As I have said previously, if you don’t pick up your game you will just be ignored, which is what I suspect is what most at this site have already decided to do.
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Maxine
May 24, 2012 at 9:52 am
You should just stop there Maxi!
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You’re too kind, Treeman … Maxine, that’s crap ! (‘scuse me, Miz Jo.)
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Keep studying…
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What energy imbalance:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/04/satellites-show-a-warmer-earth-is-releasing-extra-energy-to-space/
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A breath of fresh air.
Most here, even tho temperatures are increasing swear the globe is cooling. Others use distractions such as the exploded for 10 years myth of the hotspot being missing.
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http://i56.tinypic.com/acdczn.jpg
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Well take my eye off you and you’re over here pushing all the same old nonsense. So we have a molecular biologist, a lawyer, and an electrical engineer all way off the reservation and unpublished in the field … which means all this bleating will never see the light of day.
The back radiation bogey shredded on SoD, easily disproved by any pyrgeometer on a dark night (and you still peddling the old negative voltage twaddle when you know these instruments have been calibrated against net sky scanning radiometers on first principles), and the furnace shields, tin foil and Osram IR bulbs elegantly showing net is net. We’ve been over it all but you’re pushing the “unrefuted” Mizo-watchy nonsense – only unrefuted as it’s some obscure back-water journal doing the old light review. Well journal unrefuted but blog shredded and disappeared from sight.
Pushing the tropo hotspot ruse (who says it’s critical – you lot ? ROFL) with error bars so big you don’t know one way or the other. Meanwhile the global hydrological cycle is souped up – P.J. Durack, S.E. Wijffels, and R.J. Matear, “Ocean Salinities Reveal Strong Global Water Cycle Intensification During 1950 to 2000″, Science, vol. 336, 2012, pp. 455-458.
So tedious all these pronouncements. Take the time – get published – get some serious review – report back.
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Mmm, backradiated chicken; delicious!
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You are confusing radiation arriving at a detector and heat transfer. The understanding of this has regressed, especially in physics. The problem is that people apply the text book answers without understanding how the S-B equation is derived nor that Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation only applies at equilibrium.
As for your thought experiment, as the inside of the enclosure is a vacuum, it has no temperature. Put a spherical detector at the centre and the rate of arrival of radiant energy/m^2 is the inverse ratio of the areas but the temperature of the detector equals that of the inner shell!
The reason for this is that for the filled quantum density of radiating states, inside the enclosure and at the the outside of the detector, an equal number of states is filled per unit time from kinetic energy as from incoming radiant energy and the same for the number of decaying quantum states. This is the definition of Kirchhoff’s Law, equal emissivity and absorptivity so no net heat transfer. A number of people including me are trying to develop this new radiation physics, see Claes Johnson for example.
As for your thought experiment, the are ratio controls the rate of temperature equilibration following a temperature change, not equilibrium temperature – more below.
As for the climate models, the modellers [Met. Office?] have a contorted explanation of back radiation based on the erroneous assumption that Kirchhoff’s law applies to the upper atmosphere so 240 W/m^ 2 to space has to be balanced by 240 W/m^2 going downwards, hence presumably your mental model.
However, consider the mechanics. Mostly convective heat transfer in the atmosphere changes at TOA to all radiative. What this means is that there is a point where once an IR quantum is ejected upwards the probability that it heads to space dramatically increases so the probability it heads to the interior decreases dramatically.
In my terms, the emissivity to the earth’s surface decreases, eventually going to zero. This means you don’t have to balance the energy flow by postulating the silly idea that IR from the Earth’s surface is the S-B level for a bb in a vacuum, and is made up by bb back radiation. I spent decades measuring combined conduction and convection in metallurgical plants and this assumption in climate science is completely bonkers.
I hope people will now understand why; you must not make assumptions like emissivity = absorptivity when the mode of heat transfer changes. It’s statistical thermodynamics I learnt 45 years’ ago: simple numbers. Hhoughton knows there’s a change in the upper atmosphere but he makes a whopper of a mistake in imagining that equal Planckian and kinetic temperatures imposes a black body requirement in the lower atmosphere – there is absolutely no connection with radiation properties and Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics.
What I believe is that the people in the modelling groups who are tasked with the physics are quite low level intellectually [the Met. office guy I argued with is a technician and I even had the same guff from an Oxford professor of physics - they all assume the bloody text book is right when it always puts in the caveat - 'at thermal equilibrium': TOA is not thermal equilibrium, exactly the opposite].
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Warcroft.
Steffen says 30 years before we can be sure and I suspect that is because the original 15 has shown the opposite to what he believes. These guys cannot be pinned down as they just keep shifting the posts. The government are desperate to have confirmation of the hypothesis and don’t care who or under what circumstances gives it to them. Remember when Dr. Jensen MP tried to table documents in the Federal parliament showing no warming and failed predictions he was refused leave. Hard to discover the facts when they are ignored.
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Thank you Turnedoutnice; I presume you are aware of this paper:
http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2009/PP-19-01.PDF
Miskolsci’s work suggests that, as William Gibson notes:
This would mean that the optical depth is such that LTE exists at all layers with respect to radiative heat transfer and that ALL backradiation is coming from the immediate air layer to the surface.
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I didn’t say the vacuum had a temperature. I gave a particular example where you can see what would be labelled “back radiation” but it doesn’t heat anything.
I agree a spherical detector will arrive at the same temperature as the shell.
I’m trying to arrive at a simple explanation of this that lacks the jargon, and arm waving, that is suitable for the lay person. Yours ain’t it.
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Hansen is a busted flush because he uses Sagan’s incorrect aerosol optical physics which Lacis and he introduced to modelling clouds in 1973, as a crutch for the heat transfer mistakes in the GCMs.
Thus he currently claims 1.6 W/m^2 anthropogenic aerosol cooling hides exactly the same supposed GHG-AGW. What few realise is that the major part of that highly exaggerated GHG warming, the non-anthropogenic bit, estimated to be 2.88 W/m^2 [AR4] from the LGM to the pre-industrial age AND the amplification is hidden by the claim that the optical depth of low level clouds is double reality [see G L Stephens 2010]. This corresponds to ~10% increase in albedo.
The sad bit about this is that Hansen is a damned good scientist except for one thing. Lovelock has stated that climate science got it wrong. Hansen is desperately trying to find excuses for his and others’ failures in analysis.
There is no significant CO2-AGW. What he is assessing as climate sensitivity for GHGs is actually a combination of various natural effects including that of the dominant organism on Earth, phytoplankton which operates on clouds via the correct aerosol optical physics.
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Any GHG IR absorption experiment which uses a closed container is suspect. It’s because the system is constant volume so some warming is adiabatic and that adiabatic heating triggers more absorption if the absorptivity increases with temperature, as is the case for CO2.
Furthermore, if the container walls absorb IR, pseudo-scattered IR causes heating at the walls. The apparent proof of this is Nahle’s experiment using a Mylar balloon, very thin walls and constant pressure – no observed warming.
The mechanism of pseudo-scattering is quite simple. About 5% of CO2 molecules at RT are activated thermally to emit the characteristic spectrum. So, at the same time as an IR photon is absorbed, another is emitted in a random direction, restoring LTE, no thermalisation in that element of atmosphere..
The claim in climate science that the excess energy is thermalised in ~1,000 collisonbs [based on a 1 microsecond mean re-emission time for isolated molecules] is total bunkum in statistical thermodynamics’ terms – the principle of Indistinguishability, see ‘Gibbs’ Paradox’.
Therefore, instead of direct thermalisation, the absorbed IR energy in the Tyndall and PET bottle experiment is probably thermalised at the walls. In the atmosphere it probably keeps randomly on the move until it impacts a heterogeneous interface or escapes to space. That means clouds and bare aerosols are warmed and the GHG specific energy is broadened into a grey body spectrum.
This mechanism only applies to the lower atmosphere: at upper levels the thermodynamics changes and LTE is not necessarily the case so there could be some direct thermalisation.
The other issue is that at TOA, the continual drain into space biases the statistics such that the proportion thermalised is much reduced compared with that which heads off to space. In heat transfer terms this means the emissivity to space >> emissivity DOWN, a very significant deviation from Kirchhoff’s Law.
The modellers have invented very fanciful explanations to predict theoretically back radiation but because they assume Kirchhoff’s law applies, they’re very wrong. it seems no-one has done proper thinking in climate science in their desperate attempt to prove CAGW. It’s time that stopped and an honest appraisal was made. Only trying to help…..;o)
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Another bit of advice [from CG1 I believe] is that they only push the CO2-AGW hypothesis because they couldn’t think of anything else AND they’d be out of a job otherwise.
Meanwhile the demagogue politicians like Blair, Gore, O’Barmy, Rudd and Gillard push hard on the political side because it’s their route to future careers.
A good example of this career progression is the ex CRU guy who allegedly fiddled the NZ temperatures – working for the WMO now I believe.
There are well-organised groups of people, UCS, CACC, who are paid to spout the party line by the Marxists and the energy and equipment companies enriching themselves from the scam.
So, I have set out to produce a self-consistent replacement for the IPCC consensus and it’s amazingly coming together. The latest bit is the possible explanation of the near zero emissivity of the TOA DOWN because of the transition from mainly convection to mainly radiation, and the natural selection of random scattering to space because that set of holes is much bigger!
I stay anonymous because we’re dealing with quite nasty revolutionaries putting information on databases to target scientists who tell the truth. Furthermore, the election of Paul Erlich to the royal Society is cementing the links between the Trotskyites [e.g. Nurse] and the eugenicists deciding who will be allowed to live in the mass cull of billions.
This is not a delusion. This religion is truly turning nasty as its dogma is threatened: http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/global-warming-author-says-bar-code-everyone-at-birth/
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Mark H.,
While I am a warmist, in the sense of thinking it very likely that human activity has altered Earth’s energy balance, I certainly understand the position of skeptics very well, and have often applauded and commented on the need for honest skepticism in science.
I stopped posting at WUWT because Anthony insisted that I start posting using my real name, which I would gladly do if he were to make it a requirement of everyone. I have nothing to hide at all, but feel being treated equally is very important.
I post regularly at many sites, enjoy lively conversation, and am nearly always polite (until I am pushed by ad homs to retaliate). I’ve been studying this climate and the issue of the anthropogenic effects on the Earth system for quite some time. While I am not a PhD, I have a pretty good grasp on the science. I appreciate the honest skeptics as I do understand where they are coming from, but I just happen to disagree. Respect me and I’ll respect you.
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The 2009 Trenberth carton shows the ‘perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind’ from ‘back radiation’ increasing total heat from the Earth’s surface plus directly trapped in the atmosphere by a factor of 2.4.
The IR is increased by a factor of 15.5 [356 W/m^2/23 W/m^2] converting the heat ternssfer from mainly convective to mainly radiative.
The amplification is an artefact of the incorrect heat transfer in the models.
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Slowing down the departure of heat (e.g., insulating the heat loss path) can cause an increase of temperature. That’s why you wear a coat in the winter.
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This notion that CO2 and other greenhouse gases “slow down” the rate at which energy leaves the Earth’s climate system is exactly correct in the sense that when you increase greenhouse gases the system retains more net energy until a new equilibrium point is reached. The system must return to an equilibrium point eventually, though it can take many decades or longer to do so. But the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing is an ongoing event, much like a continuous CO2 vollcano that is, year after year adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Thus, no equilibrium point will be found until a after the level stops rising.
One final note, when greenhouse gases “slow down” the rate at which energy leaves the Earth system, they do this by altering the thermal gradient, and this affects not just the atmosphere, but even more significantly, the rate of energy flow from ocean to atmosphere, allowing the oceans to gain heat.
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I place two pyrgeometers back to back in air with zero temperature gradient [say it's horizontal]. At the centre point on the centre line there was zero net arrival rate of ‘radiant energy’. The two instruments measure exactly the same signal from opposite directions in the identical view angle. The net signal is zero.
Take one instrument away. It now measures a high radiant energy because there is no offsetting radiation. You have just made a practical demonstration of the oldest radiation law: 1791, Prevost’s theory of Exchanges.
The signal measured by a pyrgeometer is solely from temperature convolved with emissivity. The fact that it is calibrated in W/m^2 isn’t relevant: it is imaginary because the opposing radiation that offsets it, in this case to zero, is shielded. Only if the pyrgeometer were to point to a source in a vacuum with no other radiation sources would the reading be a measure of true net energy flux.
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The IPCC thinks its critical, so does Sherwood, Thorne etc.
And peer review; as if an ‘unkown’ outside the ‘field’ of AGW would be rewarded for his contrarian temerity by being allowed to be published; get real you ferret; if that were the case Stockwell would have 6 or so papers published in the last few years.
Like all good unionists the climate scientists run a closed shop.
As for this:
You tried that with Philipona’s ‘calibration’ paper but never got back to us on this particular point where Philipona says:
To which I replied:
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Can’t find the link right now, sorry, but I was reading a paper on climate modeling a few years ago that made the case that it was better to use modeled ocean temperatures in the atmospheric models rather than measured temperatures, as the measured ones were not uniformily distributed and had measurement errors besides, whereas the models could produce exact temperatures at any location desired. I remember thinking to myself; “These people grew up playing too many video games — they have now created a ‘science’ about a virtual reality.”
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Anna, we’ve had several years of experience as to how Maxine “adds to the richness” of Jo’s site.
Her style can be compared to a “drive-by shooting”: She doesn’t use reason, or stick around to engage in logical discussion. If you really want to read her stuff, you can find it with this google search: “Maxine site:joannenova.com.au”
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Anna, you are right in principle but Maxine regularly abuses the hospitality of our host.
Really I enjoy hearing Maxine wail (with much gnashing of teeth) because she is such an outstanding example of a brain washed acolyte to have skeptical newcomers recognize immediately.
I laugh heartily (in a Mooehahahahahahaha kind of way) at everything she types.
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Anna, the statements I trashed were from Maxines 10 – 14th comments in a few hours, and they included statements about organisations which “lie!”, etc etc, but without any substantiation. I let through the odd baseless comment, but not repeat advertisements, (especially from anonymous dogs). If I did, whole threads could be bombed by astroturfers making defamatory statements, and good commenters (real people) get bored, and we lose their contribution.
I am well aware of the value of giving skeptics target practice.
Maxine is most welcome to post evidence in support of contrary arguments and “she” knows it.
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I might add that it takes multiple offenses to get yourself banned from this site. Maxine’s been at it for over two years now.
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Hey Mike think about this for a minute.
“Take a thin shell made of black body material with a vacuum inside and electrically heat the shell.”
How about we compare two spheres one inside the other. One is therefore large and one is small in diameter and the small one is just a little too cool.
The small shell is the heated one but the heat supply goes through savage cycles. The cycles are increasing and decreasing the heat in multiple frequencies that are difficult to predict. In this case the inner ball temperature is stabilised by the outer ball but due to the outer ball having a larger radiating surface area the volume of heat radiated OUT from it is large enough to nearly make up for the volume of heat radiated OUT from it being reduced because it is cooler. Thus the inner ball is only warmed a tiny tiny and desirable amount due to its presence. While the inner ball is only warmed a tiny and desirable amount from the average coldness it would have without the presence of the outer ball the large effect of the outer ball on the inner ball is to reduce the rate and amount of temperature change that the inner ball undergoes.
Surely this means CO2 causes solar induced climate change to be reduced and delayed and therefore we need to pump heaps of CO2 out urgently right now to reduce the savage effects of the recent solar decline.
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Sorry if I confused you. All matter above 0 K emits EM radiation but only an isolated body in a vacuum emits all the Energy predicted by the S-B equation.
Engineers like me are trained to calculate the net energy transfer by using the difference between the two S-B equations for the two bodies in line of sight corrected for emissivity, absorptivity and geometrical ‘view factor’.
If the temperatures are the same there is no net energy transfer yet both bodies are apparently emitting EM energy. Why?
The answer forgotten even by many physicists nowadays is that the only way you can measure the EM energy emitted by a body in radiative equilibrium with another is to place a shield between them thus stopping radiation coming from the other direction.
However, does that radiation exist before you impose the shield? The theory says it should exist. However, none of it is converted to heat at the other body otherwise in the absence of another form of heat transfer, its temperature would change.
In your example, no heat is received by the sensor in the middle of the sphere. I rationalise it by using the statistical thermodynamics of the intermediate quantum state which can receive or generate kinetic energy or can receive or generate EM energy. In the atmosphere with GHGs, the GHGs are that intermediate state. For a solid it’s molecules on the surface with broken bonds.
The problem with the climate models is that they uses a black body gas in equilibrium with a black body surface. This cannot be true because the same activated states can transfer energy to the kinetic energy of temporarily-absorbed gas molecules. The IPCC has got it very wrong.
Planck never developed the theory sufficiently.
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Last 12 months, ocean heat content down to 2000 meters at the highest levels ever recorded:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Last 12 months, highest temperatures ever reported for a twelve month period in the United States (no doubt the freakishly warm March skewed this result):
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/national/Nationaltrank/201105-201204.gif
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That’s good Jo, It’s feeling a little bare……
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Censorship, Jo, are you that low?
I ask questions, questions based on the fact of observed global warming!
[She isn't "that low" us moderators are. On the other hand you never answer questions] ED
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Telling a fib there, nostreetcred. Temperatures are still rising. I guess you are basing your “cooling” statement on the 1998 El Nino peak temperature? Warming is not measured on peaks/troughs. Warming is happening, slightly modified by two La Nina years.
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A halfway decent response! But wrong I am afraid.
Industrialisation started early 18th century then accelerated—temperature graph perfectly in accordance with that.
Global warming is real—you can do things in your own life to reduce it.
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I never said it was a steady rise. I mentioned fluctuations like La Nina years and volcanoes reducing temps and undoubtedly whether the sun is active or inactive (sunspot cycles) might raise the temp a bit at other times. But a rise it is anc continues to be.
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I mentioned La Nina because it depresses temperatures for a while.
If you read real science the hot spot is there.
Global warming is real my friends.
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No, all of S Australia is slowly drying out with AGW but the SW of WA is drying out the fastest—just looking at the nightly weather report will show you that. Sure, Vic has had floods—2 La Nina years with higher atmospheric moisture did that—but you are mixing up climate with weather. in a few short years you might well be very glad of the desal plant.
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Maxine,
Slither slither slither. Answer the questions and stop cherry picking.
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Dumbass, the chart in your link is from Levitus.
Try again.
Your second link makes me so fearful. Lets see here USA makes up exactly how much of the globe?
You’d think if that was s very robust (accurate?) we’d see all kinds of satellite data to back it up?
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Actually the 2000 meter chart in my link from the NODC website is actual measurements taken in between Jan. and March of this year right from ARGO floats. What they show is the highest ocean heat content ever measured down to 2000 meters. Given that this represent thousands of times more energy than the atmosphere could hold, it is very hard to make a credible claim that the Earth is cooling, as quite the opposite is true.
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So the non-anthropogenic forces are not “ongoing”?
Stupid…….
Gawd I hope so.
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Your argument presumes that greenhouse gases cause more heat to be retained in the lower atmosphere by virtue of direct thermalisation and that there is a slower equilibration of the solid and liquid matter, a function of its much higher heat capacity.
This is wrong. Direct thermalisation is an assumption based on incorrect physics. It can only occur by GHG molecule interactions with exactly the right quantum states, a very slow process because they are in the minority. It is kinetically far easier for that energy to bounce around the atmosphere with the GHGs an energy transfer mechanism, pseudo-scattering, until it hits a heterogeneous interface.
Thus thermalisation will be mostly at clouds. These will warm but that in turn increases convective heat transport and cooling by reduced pressure, also increasing precipitation rate drying the atmosphere as proved experimentally. This is the mechanism by which the planet self regulates to give constant IR optical depth a la Miskolczi.
The IPCC physics is so bad it is embarrassing to imagine competent scientists can accept it. Indeed, having spoken to otherwise competent scientists at Oxbridge prof level, who do believe it, the justification is a very bad understanding of heat transfer physics, in particular the failure to understand that Kirchhoff’s Law of radiation only applies at equilibrium and a failure to have done real experiments in coupled convection and radiation which show that only when you get above about 100 °C does radiative exceed convective flux for 0.9 emissivity. Check it out using a standard engineering treatise like McAdams Heat Transmission [McGraw Hill].
Where else could you get a science which claims that the earth emits the same energy as a bb in a vacuum and that the atmosphere is a bb when in reality us metallurgical engineers brought up on Hottell charts know the latter can’t have greater than about 0.2 emissivity? Where else would we get apparently sane people like you to claim that a planet which has maintained liquid water even with 20% less insolation has such high positive feedback to CO2 that we’re going to become ‘another Venus’ when that planet never had liquid water and Sagan’s aerosol physics is obviously wrong as you can prove by looking at any rain cloud!
What we have is an outbreak of mass hysteria driven by fraudsters. Any properly qualified scientist or engineer sees through the fake IPCC science. It used to be the case that people were taught proper physics but clearly even physics departments have become Swiftian Academies of Lagado. The models are a distraction by fraudsters and their charming but exceedingly dumb technicians. Are you a fraudster or a technician?
PS Want some fun? Have a look at the studies of aerosol optical physics commissioned a decade ago, done by competent physicists. The wonderful contempt these people have for climate science is a wonder to behold, The problem is the sheer volume of money has ensured that only those who accede to the fraud are now in charge. Thus physics is now led by incompetents.
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Of course the real question is — not whether AGW is theoretically possible, but how much does it add to the Earth’s temperature?
So, the fact that the atmospheric “hot spot” (predicted by the AGW hypothesis) cannot be found, and the fact that the ARGOS float system shows the oceans losing heat adds up to the conclusion that the AGW contribution to the Earth’s temperature is trivial.
Observation trumps theory, as always.
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Phillip
— not to get too technical, but it’s a theory based on the assumption that relative humidity would stay constant in a warming world at high altitudes.
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I think I’ll take my advice on long wave from the World Radiation Center not some unpublished sceptic hobbyist thanks. Isn’t amazing all the researchers around the world doing surface energy balance, evaporation and even irrigation scheduling based on these instruments are having such success. It’s such a coincidence that an unpublished lad like yourself could make a mark on the world explaining where they ALL went wrong. And why their crops didn’t die from lack of soil water.
As for inability to get published – how wissy weak – all you wannabes do is trawl around playing secret science, legends in your own imagination but whimping out on serious peer review. Stop whinging and write your bilge up – unless of course you’re not up to it.
When’s your CSIRO seminar coming up?
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Can you show us?
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We aren’t your friends….
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Again, show us.
And I am not making up that is is cooling here in NSW. My zucchinis and squash died a full two months before Winter. This was not a single cold snap. It’s continuing. Frost and ice have been regular 5 or 6 days out of seven.
My guess is you live in a city and have to rely on the weather report from tv. I’m out in the country, out in the weather. I KNOW when it’s icy – in the mornings, the fields are regularly snow-white with it.
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Yes you can Maxine,
How about you lead the way by turning off un-necessary appliances, like your computer……and leaving it off……
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What type of perfect is this?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:1932/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:1932
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Last I heard it was 1/10,000.
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‘Back radiation’ is according to the 2009 Trenberth et. al. Energy Budget twice the average solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface. 333 W/m^2 is about the level you get 4 feet from a 2 kW kitchen boiler of the kind my mother used to have, and you can easily sense it with the back of your hand.
So, next time there’s a clear, humid night, lay 3 ft square of Al foil on the lawn, to prevent radiation UP, and put your hand out, palm down, about 4 inches above the foil. You will find that the back of your hand will feel cool. ‘Back radiation’ does not and cannot exist.
What’s more, you have just created an analogue of the pyrgeometer that climate science slavishly imagines, just because it’s calibrated in ‘W/m^2′, measures ‘back radiation’. To do so, it measures the difference of temperature between the sensor [back of your hand] and a black body at the temperature of the local air [your palm] then divides this by a calibration factor obtained by pointing the detector at a known black body.
This establishes the difference of the energy received from that black body and the internal black body, usually negative. Then it adds the theoretical signal from the internal black body.
This is a measure of the radiation from the atmosphere convolved with its emissivity, nothing to do with any real energy transfer defined as radiated EM energy being converted to heat at the Earth’s surface which is what is claimed.
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Agreed, but the main greenhouse argument is that we are making the overcoat thicker, not that actual heat production by humans is significant.
Of course, real data — before ‘adjustments’ — which shows that there is no hot spot, ARGOS showing the oceans cooling, and no sea level rise demonstrates that the hypothetical increase in the greenhouse effect due to human emission of CO2 is unmeasurably small (if not actually zero).
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“The models are a distraction by fraudsters and their charming but exceedingly dumb technicians. Are you a fraudster or a technician?”
______
Neither, but certainly charming. The models are tools, maps of a territory called “The Global Climate”. All maps are wrong in the sense that they can’t capture every detail of a territory, but even worse still for the GCM’s is that the territory happens to be a nonlinear system existing in a state of spatial-temporal chaos with multiple interrelated feedbacks. But in spite of all their handicaps and inaccuracies, they can still be useful tools, just like a map that doesn’t tell you where every pebble on the road is can still get you to your destination.
I personally set up a tour of NCAR in Boulder, CO, whereby a group of skeptics (including Mr. Anthony Watts) could meet with Dr. Trenberth himself where he could discuss GCM’s with them and really understand their strength’s and limitations. Watts decided to scrub the whole deal and it never occurred. Trenberth was willing, NCAR opened its doors to the skeptical world, but alas, the best laid plans…
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Even I, with no piece of paper to say that I am educated, can see through the fake science.
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If there is a hotspot it must be at cloud height.
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Carl Brehmer’s experiment suggests the same.
There’s a video clip that may help Maxine and a few others…..
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Agreed, but that is not what I said. I said it could cause a temperature increase. If you were to measure your skin temperature with and without the coat on a cold winter day, you would indeed find that the temperature of your skin was warmer with the coat. (You could even detect this without bothering to measure it
)
So, if your body temperature was measured an hour after you died, it would be warmer with the coat than without. Agreed, and consistent with what I said.
Nor can an overcoat — else they would not be analgous.
No, it is analgous to any other insulation method, which you have correctly described.
Not unless the steel pole had an internal heat source. Would putting a coat over a turned on toaster make it warmer? (Don’t try this indoors, or with a coat or toaster you care about!)
The Earth is more like the toaster than the pole. The Earth gains heat from the Sun, whose emission spectrum peaks in the visible, at about 550 nm (green). Visible radiation is not affected by CO2. The Earth loses heat to space by radiation which peaks about 10 microns (10,000 nm), which is absorbed by CO2. Thus CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) are much more effective at interfering with the Earth’s energy loss mechanism then its energy gain mechanism.
Of course, the fact that AGW is theoretically possible doesn’t mean it is significant. Actual measurements (e.g., the missing hotspot) show it to have an insignificant contribution to the Earth’s climate.
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Hey BobC, wasn’t the ARGO data adjusted recently so that it was in agreement with the models?
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Sure was Mark — couldn’t let mere data stand in the way of the Cause.
Here is an article about Josh Willis’ early “adjustments” to the raw ARGOS data — he simply admits dropping floats out of the data set because they were “too cold”, disagreed with his colleagues’ models, and therefore must be wrong. It apparently never occurs to him to actually retrieve some of the floats he assumes are in error and check their calibration. It would be easy to do — they broadcast their GPS location everytime they surface, and can be remotely commanded not to re-submerge. Apparently, the only thermometers that are any good are the ones that agree with the models.
Currently, they are using satelite data to further ‘adjust’ the float data, as cherry picking wasn’t enough to stop the cooling trend.
It’s hard for me to understand how these yo-yos got PhDs without gaining the slighest knowledge of how to do science. Maybe their degrees are in Political Science? Back in the ’60s, when I was grading physics labs for pin money, Willis would have flunked for this kind of data manipulation.
Data is sacrosanct, man — if you change the data then you have no idea what it is trying to tell you. Of course, these guys aren’t trying to find anything out — they are just paid political advocates.
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Yup, that was the very article I remember reading Bob. One wonders; do they try to “model” their bank accounts to what they think they should be?
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