cypress

For the time period between 1980 and 2009, we have sufficient data to draw conclusions and an adjustment during that time is justified. Lack of data for other time periods does not diminish this reality. One does not refrain from making an adjustment for a known effect because of the mere possibility that unknown effects might somehow someway counter the adjustment. I am unable to find support for your approach in any scientific or statistical texbooks, can you offer a manual that supports your approach?

Agreed, therefore the reasonable approach to any time period where no data is available is to make no adjustments, no estimates about margins of error, and no predictions as to what effects might have occurred. This is what I have been suggesting all along.

It depends greatly on the probability density of A in the set of all possible outcomes that meet the conditions required for A to occur, and the probabilistic resources available to act. If the probability density of outcome A is low relative to the resources then the overall probability will remain low. I suppose this might be what you mean when you say the conditions are favorable for A to occur, that is that the probability density is large compared to the opportunities for A to occur.

One cannot add a margin of error until it is calculated and it cannot be calculated without data. I don't see how you can be sure of something when there is no data. I find that interesting because only the timeframe is different. Kappenberger is interested in the time between 1950 and 2009, while I am interested in the mid 1800's to 2009, but the purpose is the goal is the same.

Though Knappenberger did not use your words, this is the point he was making. He assumed no effect (the null hypothesis) where there was no data available. I only need to show it is in effect from 1980 through 2009, which is the only time period an adjustment is made.

Is there a literal example of this that is real in the sense that it is observed and confirmed? I suspect that, like infinity, these mathematical constructs don't have analogs in reality.

yes, this is a common demonstration in angular momentum and couples. It is known as Induced rotation or precession.

I only disagreed that I treat function as binary. I agreed with your point, and went on to explain why function does have degrees of performance.

It's a misapplication, you take advantage of my loose and imprecise prose. To accept your argument, one could never back out any identified error in any data set on the basis that there may be unknown compensating errors that remain.

Except perhaps as a mathematical exercise in limits, It does not seem possible to travel on a closed spherical surface in a straight line in a real sense. A sphere is not an example of an unbounded finite geometric shape. I suppose there are mathematical models that represent finite space that remain unbounded in this sense, but like infinity, they both exist as mathematical concepts. Neither seem to have an analog in nature.

I don't see how either of these conclusions are justified. Uniform experience argues against both conclusions. I don't think I do. Poor function is most often due to a break or damage of the design. Sometimes it is due to poor design.

The researchers noted that there are two primary mechanisms for water vapor changes in the stratosphere. Earlier research also confirms these observations. One is transport of water vapor from the troposphere which occurs mostly as warm air masses rise in the tropics. The other is oxidation of methane which occurs in the upper stratosphere. One of the researches and authors of the study, Karen Rosenlof of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Aeronomy Laboratory made the following statement on these points: "We found that there was a surface temperature impact due to changes in water vapor in a fairly narrow region of the stratosphere. The reason for the water vapor change is the temperature drop at the interface between the troposphere and the stratosphere over the tropics. What we don't know is why the temperature dropped." Also, “This is such a sudden decrease, we can’t explain what’s behind it." She then goes on to exclude one possible sources when she explains that one large source of water vapor in the stratosphere is the oxidation of methane. But the decline in concentration of that gas detected by the researchers seems to be limited to a layer 2 kilometers thick in the lower stratosphere, while methane is found throughout the stratosphere. And even though scientists have discerned a leveling off in atmospheric methane in recent years, that trend doesn’t seem to be directly linked to the drop in the concentrations of stratospheric water vapor. So, most of the change in water vapor occurs in the lower stratosphere in the vicinity of regions affected by the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Furthermore the temperature does have strong correlation to sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific that, of course, follow El Niño–La Niña cycles, along with other tropical sea trends. Here is what other researchers said: The researchers speculate that the amount of water vapor gradually rising into the stratosphere at tropical latitudes has decreased, possibly due to a shift in global patterns of sea-surface temperatures that influence rates of evaporation and water vapor movement. The new findings “are a nice demonstration of the sensitivity of the climate to water vapor concentrations in the lower stratosphere,” says Andrew Gettelman, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder. Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station says he thinks the team has identified a new source of short-term variability in climate, one different from long-term drivers such as anthropogenic greenhouse gases. I don't find any researchers who are attributing the effect to GHG feedback or anything other than tropical region ocean oscillations. You seem to be claiming that 1950 is an orange but you have no data to demonstrate this. Since we have no reason to suspect it is an orange, by statistical methods we must treat it as an apple.

I am following standard accepted practice for the scientific method and statistical approach for experimental data. The guidance provides for accounting for known impacts when information is available to justify the accounting and cautions against speculating when data is unavailable. By your logic one should not make any correction for a discovered error on the grounds that it is possible that other remaining unknown errors, that would counter the correction, are being left out and thus the erroneous data should be left untouched. One could argue they are justified in this argument by noting that errors over time tend to balance out. Have I or Knappenberger misapplied these principles?

I think we are talking at cross purposes. I agree that we don't know what happened between 1950-1980 wrt high altitude water vapor. Thus the trend from 1950-1980 remains unadjusted and the trend stays in unaccounted for that period. Lack of knowledge of the past should not prevent making an adjustment for what we do know. I have reviewed my liturature for experimental and statistical analysis and don't find any precident for the action you suggest, perhaps you can provide some liturature on this. Perhaps you misunderstood my question. We are now speaking of the possibility that this is feedback not of GHG's per se, but of the global surface temperature. Are you suggesting that there could be other feedback mechanisms in play? If so can you help me to understand what they might be so I can get some information about them?

Yes, that strategy will get you through the homework and test problems with good results, but not in applied science like engineering. Ideal gas assumptins work well when pressures are quite low relative to critical pressure, temperatures are reasonably high compared to boiling point and when the gas molecules are stable, with balanced electron affinities so that they don't interact with other molecules. Nobel gasess and pure elementary gasses are good candidates for ideal gas laws. Complex molecules with asymetrical shapes are not.

Good job, but don't forget that boyle's law in the form you used is predicated on ideal gases. It assumes no compressibility adjustments and no interactions. well done if you believe you are are ok using ideal gas assumptions. Do you know when ideal gas is a good assumption for mixed gases?

Well first of all you need to determine the basis for your estimate. Are you going to use Ideal gas assumptions or adjust for compressibility? Are you going to assume perfect mixing and no H2 to N2 interactions? These two answers will affect the difficulty of the equations but not the process for answering this problem. Next you need to think through the problem and devise a strategy. I will help you with this but it won't help you on a test for me to answer this for you. So you need to give it a try first. finally we need to look up the equations that are based on the strategy and plug and chug.

Agreed and that is why Knappenberger does not attempt to make any conclusions about 1950-1980. Instead he takes a justified adjustment where data exists that allows for an adjustment. He says the following: "It is impossible from Solomon et al.’s analysis to know what went on prior to 1980, so, for lack of any other guidance, I’ll assume that no changes took place (or, that the net change was zero) from 1950 to 1980." So you and swansont have suggested that this effect might be due to feedback of climate change. Climate change being the change in global average surface temperature, correct? If it is feedback then it would correlate with but lag the influencer/driver of the feedback. Do you and swansont agree?

The Solomon et. al. data set, their statistical analysis of the data and resulting conclusions provide the basis to allow Knappenberger to account for 0.066C of the total estimated increase between 1980 and 2009. Unlike the first step, we are not making a correction, here we are accounting for net warming between 1980 and 2009 since the information allows. We make no account for the trend between 1950 and 1980 for this since we have no information one way or another. We account for as much of the apparent 0.702 C warming as possible, and we leave alone what we cannot account. At this stage the warming from 1950 through 2009 that is unaccounted for is now 0.486C. There is no correction being made in this step. No comparison is taking place. We accounted for warming where the data allowed us to make an accounting so that the unaccounted warming is adjusted downward. I see your statement as partially correct. First off the data covers half the time period not 1/3, but you are correct that we can only make an accounting of net warming where data is available. For the time period that this data is not available no account of net warming can be made by this stratospheric water vapor trends and so warming from 1950 through 1980 has no percentage that is accounted for by this effect. I agree that we cannot make any conclusions beyond the 1980-2009 time period. Solomon did not provide this number. Knappenberger applied the decade level adjustments and then took the cumulative adjustment to calculate the average adjustment at 15%

It makes a great deal of difference because the difference is between the product of a mind and a product of material processes. Should we conclude that if evolutionary processes do generate functional information it is because a mind infused information into the process at the beginning? Perhaps so, but then only Stylus is a valid example of an evolutionary algorithm because only Stylus begins with a functional system. But when you adjust the fitness function and mutation steps to be realistic, it only generates adaptations and never generates a novel system.

We will have to disagree on this apparently subjective assessment. You are now defining causation awfully restrictively. I was not this precise in my original claim. We defined warming as the apparent increase as described in the HADCRUT3. This means that even errors in the data set count in the total. Every cause counts, feedback or error or not, it has to go in one one of the only two categories I offered, to put warming. If it is accounted for and it is not attributable to AGW then it must go into the accounted bucket that I gave the improper label "natural". If the warming is unknown or AGW caused it goes in the other bucket. There is no third bucket. I have not seen a case where feedback or direct effects don't correlate with the causal agent. In this paper they make it very clear that it is not feedback from AGW when they state that from 2000 to 2009 diminished water vapor levels in the upper atmosphere depressed global warming by about 25% compared to what would have occurred due to increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Thus the term variability. What should the assumed behavior be when we lack data? If we extend the time period long enough I would think so, but how long should the minimum be assigned before we can be sure it cancels? If a 30 year period shows an average increase of 15%, it seems to imply this minimum time could easily be several hundreds of years. Since we don't have enough data to identify a valid number, it seems unreasonable to speculate in the short term where data is not available. More reasonable would be to assume the long term trend which you and I agree should be zero. I did not ignore the cooling observed where data exists. It is worked into the numbers and the graphic. I don't see how this is the case. The peer reviewed paper was silent about the long run likely because speculating about it would not meet peer muster. For the time period where we have data, an adjustment is not only reasonable, it is justified. Where we lack data, the presumed long term trend seems like the only option and a reasonable choice would be to take the expected long term average effect which is very likely zero. This is what Knappenberger seems to have assumed and done. Anything else?

figure 3 from Knappenberger's article. My link Right the average rate of warming as a result was about 10% in the 80's, 30% in the 90's and slightly negative in the 2000's for an average of 15% over the entire period. Information on climate is incomplete. We work with what we have on all sides of the issue. The information available suggests that it is a global, the physics implies that it should be global, there is no indication that it should be localized. If you have information of any kind that it should be localized let's have it so we can rework the estimate. Likewise, the authors don't find any evidence to suggest that it is related to CO2 increases. The trends follow warming patterns well but do not follow CO2 concentration trends in any way. The correlation to CO2 is very very poor and so there is no apparent reason to connect this pattern with human activity. CO2 has increased steadily through this entire period but this effect does not. It has been flat and negative as you noted in the past several years. CO2 continues to rise. Can you show me how the two events are connected and how I missed describing the correlation between this pattern and GHG's? If so I will be happy to assign it to human causes.

Next, from Susan Solomon et al is a report in Science Magazine from January. They show how variations in the water vapor content in the lower stratosphere influence global temperature rates of change for periods longer than a decade. In the paper they make the point that these changes are unrelated to GHG's. they show that from the beginning of the data set in 1980 through 2009, the overall increase in water vapor in the upper atmosphere has been responsible for 15% of the temperature increase. Since they don't have satellite data prior to 1979 it is not possible to predict what happened between 1950 and 1980 so with no other guidance we shall treat is as zero for that time period. The warming Knappenberger has now is shown in Figure 3. The overall total rise is now 0.486°C. Any issues?

In thermodynamic systems think about what it means for a process to be reversible. Then consider from a physical perspective how one can accomplish reversible temperature increase with an ideal gas and a variable volume chamber. It is possible. Yes, good. Also good. As described in the problem statement, yes. One error here. Let's identify and fix the error by understanding how it can be reversible. Then we will work out the equations. Recognize that that this is just one step of this heat engine cycle. Look at it as two parts, the ideal gas in the cylinder is one part and the mechanical components the other. Now in isolation and for this step, from the description, the gas increases in temperature and pressure increases too, so does the gass do work or is work done on the gas? Yes. Indeed you cannot. I hope I have helped but left enough of the puzzle for you to solve.

Fair enough 0.4-0.6 of natural warming, 0.2-0.4 unaccounted for, I agree this adjustment will be subtracted back in the end but since this is based on the skeptics argument, it will be easier to follow the entire argument, end to end. Since this is a midpoint correction and is well supported is it fair to say you don't take issue with it?