Another nail in the coffin of the human made global warming myth

[JohnB]

So you are denying the credibility of well-accepted palaoclimate proxy methods? Its funny how the same methodologies used to reconstruct past climates (foraminifera/deep sea sediments, Isotopic fractionation, Ice core proxies, dendroclimatology etc) which have always been accepted as relaible sources of palaoclimatic evidence are suddenly 'unreliable' when there are huge profits at stake.

Skippy, before passing judgement, it might be better to aquaint yourself with the field a bit more. These methodologies aren't all that old so to say that they have "always been accepted" is a bit strong I think. Your statement implies that these methodologies have been around and considered accurate for decades and have only recently been called into question. This idea is patently false.

 

I would add that there is a difference between using a core for paleoclimatology where it is not a proxy and paleothermometry where it is. There is quite a difference between showing the concentration of O18 in the air 1,500 years ago and tying that fact to temperature. The accuracy of the measurement in the core does not directly relate to the accuracy of the proxy. I suggest you read up a bit on the "Divergence Problem" to see why this might be so.

 

People want to discredit global warming because of the potential economic impacts it will have. Proper science comes from criticism of beliefs,, but it is only useful is proper evidence is supplied. To date I have still not come across one skeptic who has been able to provide evidence that natural phenomena is causing the modern warming.

Skippy, I would point out that the "Null Hypothesis" requires you to prove that natural causes are not responsible, rather than the other way around. The onus is on you to demonstrate that something out of the ordinary is happening. Good luck with that.

 

I'll even help. It is generally accepted that a change of about 1.5% in average annual planetary cloud cover extent is quite sufficient to explain all or most of the warming of the 20th Century. Could you please outline and cite references as to the historic values of this factor and show why natural changes in cloud cover can be ruled out as a forcing?

 

I add that in regard to Sea Level Rise, so what? Sea levels will rise and fall with temperature and are indicators of changing climate. However SLR in itself says nothing at all about the cause of the warming.

 

Be so kind as to briefly 'walk me through' how cyclical oscillations (I think you are referring to Milankovich cycles) coincide with the trends of modern warming?? I tend to believe that organisations such as the IPCC and NASA would not have taken these factors into account when presenting their findings. If you are referring to oceanographic cycles such as ENSO, Indian Ocean Dipole, Southern Annular Mode, Meridional Overturning Circulation (thermohaline circulation), Im sorry but they have already been reconciled and taken into account aswell.

You have a logical problem here Skippy. The argument has always been that "All factors have been taken into account". However this cannot be true if you can add factors and still come up with the same answer. Your argument is basically this; A+B+C+D=10, all factors are correctly valued and taken into account. Then someone discovers another factor "E" with a value of 3 so your equation is now; A+B+C+D+3=10, all factors correctly valued and taken into account. Both statements cannot be true. You simply cannot claim high levels of certainty, make changes equivilent to 30% of the value and continue claiming high levels of certainty. That is what religions do, change the narrative to show the church as always right. You might want to read "1984" to see about historical editing as well.

 

I add that many of those factors you mentioned are not modelled in the GCMs and so have not been "taken into account". Values have been parameterized and guessed at, but that is not the same thing. A number are simply not used.

 

The evidence for AGW has been presented, and detractors only present a shaky argument for natural cycles, none of which are backed up by a fraction of the evidence that AGW has.

Phi, your evidence perhaps isn't as strong as you would like to believe. Once you take out the "Appeals to emotion" and the pictures of polar bears and the scary "city flooding" and the rest, you don't have much left. Note that all these things, Sea Level Rise, migration pattern changes, etc are a result of warming however they do not indicate the cause. Arctic ice will melt and freeze whether or not we have anything to do with it.

 

Take out the BS and the only thing left is the thing that the vast majority of sceptics don't argue with. Under direct radiative forcings, the planet will warm by about 1-1.1⁰ K for a doubling of CO2. Any estimate above or below that figure relies entirely on estimates of feedbacks. GCMs are currently levelling off at around the 2.4K mark for doubling, but this is by no means certain. Given that the increase in temps relative to CO2 is logarithmic and not linear, then for the increase since the preindustrial we should have seen between .6 and .7 K of warming which is roughly what we've seen. Since we have been roughly tracking the result for direct RF the theory now requires some sort of accelerant to get to the 2.4K the models use. This is how the idea of "Tipping Points" came to be, simply an ad hoc response to the theorys failure to correspond to reality.

 

"Tipping Points" have not been observed and are purely theoretical constructs, the existence of which is required to keep the theory afloat. Without evidence from the paleo record, they are merely "really bad things" that must happen sometime in the future, like a day of judgement. Without them, we will gain about .4K over the next century and nobody will even notice.

 

One of the worst parts of this debate is that too many people are arguing either or. It has to be CO2 or something else. I believe this to be wrong. In a chaotic system like climate, one could liken the addition and subtractions of forcings to the Drake equation. (The difference being that we don't know if we know all the factors yet.) Some of the factors we know pretty well and others we are virtually clueless about. If we overestimate positive feedbacks from clouds but underestimate positive forcings from land use change then even though our final answer might be correct we will be misled when applying those values to the future. The true situation could be that we are overestimating three factors (by varying degrees) while underestimating six others, and we have no way to tell which is which or by how much.

 

Frankly, I've always thought the "It's CO2" to be way too simplistic for something as chaotic as climate.

 

The uncertainty here is largely manufactured.

Is it swansont? In 2007 the IPCC declared levels of certainty re various forcings (which is fair enough) and you might accept those levels of certainty. Fine. In 2010 Susan Solomon released a paer in Science "Contributions of Stratospheric Water Vapor to Decadal Changes in the Rate of Global Warming" which showed;

More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% as compared to estimates neglecting this change. These findings show that stratospheric water vapor is an important driver of decadal global surface climate change.

Interesting that people can be certain in 2007 about factors not discovered until 2010. I put to you that the certainty rather than the uncertainty is manufactured.

 

Similarly, how do you reconcile "certainty" with Dr. Trenbaths "travesty" comment? "We are certain about what the climate is doing, we just have no idea where the energy is going, how it gets there or what it's going to do next"?

 

No, there are many examples of manufactured controversy, like "it stopped warming in 1998" and "it snowed here today and I can build an igloo"

Yes weather is not climate, unless you're Micheal Mann talking about heatwaves in Philly. Silly comments come from both sides, it's just far more embarrassing when it's a climatological "leading light" that makes them.

 

PS. iNow, I came across a paper a while ago about the divergence problem that was quite interesting. Apparently some trees in cold climates grow along the ground (for some reason) but when temps pass a certain point they start growing straight up. This causes changes in the ring thickness and density and may go quite some way to explaining the problem. The point of divergence is the point where the growth pattern changes. I can dig it up if you wish.

 

PPS. How do you get the system to show who you are quoting like the old one did? Currently having a brain freeze and can't work it out.

Edited August 10, 2010 by JohnB

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

PPS. How do you get the system to show who you are quoting like the old one did? Currently having a brain freeze and can't work it out.

 

It's now

instead of the old style. You can also use the MultiQuote button to select several posts, then hit Add Reply and all will be pre-quoted for you.

[swansont]

Simply clicking the 'reply' button at the bottom of a post will quote the one post; this will include the post # from which the quote came so that one can click on the quote and go to that post, if one were so inclined.

 

 

 

Is it swansont? In 2007 the IPCC declared levels of certainty re various forcings (which is fair enough) and you might accept those levels of certainty. Fine. In 2010 Susan Solomon released a paer in Science "Contributions of Stratospheric Water Vapor to Decadal Changes in the Rate of Global Warming" which showed;

 

 

I was referring to conceptual uncertainty, not the statistical/experimental variety. All experimental results have uncertainty, but this does not inherently make them controversial.

[skippy]

Skippy, before passing judgement, it might be better to aquaint yourself with the field a bit more. These methodologies aren't all that old so to say that they have "always been accepted" is a bit strong I think. Your statement implies that these methodologies have been around and considered accurate for decades and have only recently been called into question. This idea is patently false.

I would add that there is a difference between using a core for paleoclimatology where it is not a proxy and paleothermometry where it is. There is quite a difference between showing the concentration of O18 in the air 1,500 years ago and tying that fact to temperature. The accuracy of the measurement in the core does not directly relate to the accuracy of the proxy. I suggest you read up a bit on the "Divergence Problem" to see why this might be so. Forams and many other indicators found within deep sea sediments and cores are proxies. 180 and 160 shed light on past climates because their atmospheric concentrations are linked to glaciation and eustasy. Your saying this does not indicate temperatures? P.s. the 'divergence problem' is related to small flaws in recent tree ring data sets. If you look at the graph below you will see that most of the data sets correlate quite well

 

Skippy, I would point out that the "Null Hypothesis" requires you to prove that natural causes are not responsible, rather than the other way around. The onus is on you to demonstrate that something out of the ordinary is happening. Good luck with that. Believe me, I would love to be able to prove that natural causes are responsible for recent warming. It would help me, and millions of other people sleep at night. Unfortunately fter looking through the literature, I simply cant. Given that natural climatic, geological and solar cycles dont seem to account for modern warming, I would say that is 'out of the ordinary'.

Source: http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/180px-Climate_Change_Attribution.jpg

 

I'll even help. It is generally accepted that a change of about 1.5% in average annual planetary cloud cover extent is quite sufficient to explain all or most of the warming of the 20th Century. Could you please outline and cite references as to the historic values of this factor and show why natural changes in cloud cover can be ruled out as a forcing? Water vapour is not a feedback mechasm? First I've heard of this. Here is a NASA and NOAA study recently published in Nature. "we conclude that the water vapour feedback is not overestimated in models and should amplify the climate response to increased trace-gas concentrations". http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v349/n6309/abs/349500a0.html

Here is another paper on feedback responses of water vapour by Kiehl et al. http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=peOHcKtQxZAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA251&dq=water+vapour+feedback&ots=AOYCY3CNzX&sig=sD9GGZ5c_hY2cvcjxeDDYdnaPXY#

 

Also read up on the feedback responses observed after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. "These results provide quantitative evidence of the reliabilityof water vapor feedback in current climate models, which is crucialto their use for global warming projections".- Soden et al, 2002. ^{http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;296/5568/727}

 

I add that in regard to Sea Level Rise, so what? Sea levels will rise and fall with temperature and are indicators of changing climate. However SLR in itself says nothing at all about the cause of the warming. I didnt say it did. Although it has been attributed to anthropogenic warming by countless sources, studies and datasets. Oceans are another aspect of the planet which is falling victim to our CO2 emissions. Acidification threatens the chemical and biological functioning of the oceans essential to life on the entire planet. You surely cannot argue with that..

 

 

You have a logical problem here Skippy. The argument has always been that "All factors have been taken into account". However this cannot be true if you can add factors and still come up with the same answer. Your argument is basically this; A+B+C+D=10, all factors are correctly valued and taken into account. Then someone discovers another factor "E" with a value of 3 so your equation is now; A+B+C+D+3=10, all factors correctly valued and taken into account. Both statements cannot be true. You simply cannot claim high levels of certainty, make changes equivilent to 30% of the value and continue claiming high levels of certainty. That is what religions do, change the narrative to show the church as always right. You might want to read "1984" to see about historical editing as well.

I like your analogy, but unfortunately factor 'E' has not been 'discovered' yet. So the equation still equates to or at least comes very close to 10. Close enough to cause concern and more than enough to take action.

 

 

Look, here is my one and only problem with AGW skeptics. They seem to just pick out minor flaws in data or literature and jump up and down saying that it discredits the entire notion of anthropogenic warming. Skepticism is essential in science, but purposely creating confusion among politicians and the public by using baseless criticisms in the face of a global catastrophe does not do anybody any good. It is fine to criticise the data, but do everybody a favour and provide evidence.

 

 

 

 

[JohnB]

I like your analogy, but unfortunately factor 'E' has not been 'discovered' yet. So the equation still equates to or at least comes very close to 10. Close enough to cause concern and more than enough to take action.

Then perhaps you need to read more carefully. The factor "E" that I referred to was in the paper by Solomon. You cannot claim high confidence in your attribution, get blindsided by a newly discovered factor that may be worth 30% and still claim high confidence. That is nothing more than pure intellectual dishonesty.

 

Note well that this (should it prove correct) relegates your pretty attribution picture to nothing more than than an illustration. Note also that this is in no way, shape or form "minor", as it equals somewhere between 10 and 30% of the attribution. Or do you consider that 30% error is "minor"? If so, what is in your opinion a "major" cockup?

 

Water vapour is not a feedback mechasm? First I've heard of this.

Again, read what I wrote. Clouds are both a forcing and a feedback. Cloud cover changes as a result of many factors, one of which is temperature. My point here is that cloud cover can change as a result of (for example) changes in ocean currents. In this case they are a response to the changes in currents however they are a forcing WRT temperature. Since you are making the claim that all natural forcings are accounted for, could you please cite a reference demonstrating how this factor was evaluated? I would dearly love to see how you got world wide cloud cover figures for the past 100 years accurate to >.5%. There's a Nobel waiting for you.

 

They seem to just pick out minor flaws in data or literature and jump up and down saying that it discredits the entire notion of anthropogenic warming. Skepticism is essential in science, but purposely creating confusion among politicians and the public by using baseless criticisms in the face of a global catastrophe does not do anybody any good.

Again, the onus is on you to prove your assertion of "Global Catastrophe". And if you are going to talk baseless, will these "catastrophes" do?

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01291.html (I've made fun of this before.)

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/793/melting_icebergs_causing_sea_level_rise (all 49 micrometres of it)

 

Oh heck, why be specific? Go here and pick the first 15 or 20 catastrophes that you like.

 

Forams and many other indicators found within deep sea sediments and cores are proxies. 180 and 160 shed light on past climates because their atmospheric concentrations are linked to glaciation and eustasy. Your saying this does not indicate temperatures? P.s. the 'divergence problem' is related to small flaws in recent tree ring data sets. If you look at the graph below you will see that most of the data sets correlate quite well.

Rather than prse the whole thing. Sediments and cores are not always proxies. The O¹⁸ (for example) is a direct measurement of atmospheric concentration and in that repect is not a proxy. When calibrating for paleoclimate usage it may become a proxy. The factors are not just temperature however, the concentrations also change depending on how far from the ocean the sample is taken. So using them as a proxy increases the uncertainty. It certainly "indicates" temperatures and temperature changes in a qualitiative fashion, but it's harder to pin down in a quantitative sense.

 

Another example is from ancient history. Pharonic Egypt rose and fell a number of times. Each fall can be linked to prolonged periods where the Nile flood was extremely poor. Once the good floods returned the civilisation rose again. This is also indicitive of climate change in the African continent since there were a couple of centuries of drastically reduced rainfall in the Nile catchment region. Qualitively it tells us change occurred, but doesn't allow us to pin a quantitive figure to it.

 

If you think that the "divergence problem" is related to "small flaws" I suggest you reread the literature. The Paleo community seem to think it's rather a big problem. Not so much for temp reconstructions but simply trying to work out why it is happening in the first place. Strangely enough, that is what a scientist does, try to work out why things happen.

 

As to your graph on proxies, two points;

a. They aren't proxies but reconstructions. Noting that error bars and uncertainties are not shown. This is of course in accord with good scientific practice as found in other fields.

b. The agreement is not really surprising when you realise that 4 out of the 9 reconstructions were authored by Mann and Jones. Why on earth would I be surprised that the same people, using the same datasets and similar methodologies derive similar results? I'm not surprised at all. However I do call it blatant bloody dishonesty when these thing are presented as "indepenent" results.

 

A short Quiz from Numberwatch;

You have made some observations and calculations, which show that humanity is doomed unless it changes its ways. You have total belief in the accuracy of your predictions. Do you:

 

a. Announce your results, but keep your workings secret for fear that someone will criticise them.

 

b. Announce your results, but set up a group of companies to make yourself mega-rich on the back of the scare you have created.

 

c. Drop everything, including secrecy and profit, and devote yourself to saving the human race.

 

Skippy, you're new here. (Welcome to the Forums by the way and sorry if the previous sentence sounds condescending, it wasn't meant to. ) If you do a bit of a search in the Climate and Politics Forums you'll see that we have had many discussions on climate change, with both sides referencing their arguments. Frankly, I don't really want to go through all that again. I take pride in the fact that I'm considered by the "warmists" on this forum as a "sceptic" and not a "denier" (and extend a compliment to you for not using the term). Over the last couple of years I believe that I have demonstrated that there is indeed a scientific basis for my scepticism which is generally about attribution and certainties. I realise that it might seem that I dismiss your graphs out of hand, however the search will show that they have been discussed previously and at length. Although I must admit that your first one is a version of the spaghetti graph I haven't seen, where did you get it?

 

We differ from the blogs that you've probably seen in that we require proof. Depending on which side of the debate you are on, there are plenty of places on the web that you can go to and say pretty much whatever you like and get away with it. You can go to RC, Deltoid and CP and rubbish CA as much as you like, you can go to CA and WUWT and dump on RC. We aren't like that here, we require proof and references and a polite attitude.

 

As I said, welcome to the forums and enjoy your time here. Have a read through the older threads and if you would care to, also have a look at this oneabout the GISS maps. I must have messed up somewhere, but I don't know where. I'm trying to find the time to get it into a usable form to ask at Lucias or the CCC for their ideas.

 

Again, welcome to SFN.

 

I was referring to conceptual uncertainty, not the statistical/experimental variety. All experimental results have uncertainty, but this does not inherently make them controversial.

Fair enough.

Edited August 11, 2010 by JohnB

[rewtedesco]

The would like to bring this back to the core of the discussion. There's a drastically largely raising concentration in the atmosphere as it hasn't been in any of the previous records from plants and ice probes. Higher C02 levels result in a higher likelihood of photons in the near infrared range to be absorbed in the atmosphere. These photons, if they leave the atmosphere carry energy, away from the earth. Increasing the absorption rate for these parts of the spectrum in the atmosphere reduces the rate of energy transport in a spectral bands where the CO2 is absorbing. At the same time the input from the sun remains pretty much unchanged, so does geothermic activity for the whole of the planet. The temperature at the surface depends on the long term radiation balance between incoming radiation from the sun and outgoing radiation which has a different spectral distribution than the incoming radiation. For the earth it's a lot more infra red and near infra red radiation sent out than what comes in, while there is a lot more visible light and UV coming than what goes out in those spectral ranges, mainly by reflection. But the total sum of energy in the incoming radiation averaged over a rotation of the earth or a longer period is balanced by the total energy of all outgoing radiation. There is no other type of balancing of energy flows between the earth and outer space other than the radiation balance. After all, we're not sending star ships out carrying hot water and dumping it somewhere, and we're not picking icecubes from comets, like you can see in a funny science fiction animation in "Futurama". Radiation balance which is a completely dynamic equilibrium can exist and will establish itself under any condition. The theoretical effective average black body radiation temperature of the entire planet earth plus atmosphere has to be equal to what we would find from computing the temperature of a black body that emits as much energy as the earth receives. This temperature is substantially below the actual surface temperature of the planet, by about 33 degrees. The atmosphere keeps us warmer than the computed temperature because it reduces the rate at which radiation energy can be transported. If there were only a change of CO2 concentration and no other effects the temperature has to raise. Since the raising CO2 concentration reduces this rate of energy transport to maintain radiation balance (by means of the increased absorption of photons by CO2 molecules), the temperature within the atmosphere and the surface raises. It has to raise to a point that a larger number of infrared photons are emitted until the incoming energy of radiation equals the outgoing radiation energy. We are actually lucky that the black body radiation increases (in the idealization) with the 4th power of temperature. Otherwise, with a lower power law, the temperature would have to raise more drastically.

 

But that was all just considering CO2 alone. Then there's water and the change of water vapour in the atmosphere affects the radiation balance as well by changing the absorption spectrum of air. The diminished water vapour in the atmosphere described in the naturenews article partially counteracts the effects of CO2. This is good but it's not really good enough, because it doesn't completely compensate for the increase of the effects of CO2 and other green house gasses, and since effect isn't quite understood, it can't be excluded that it reverts itself sooner or later. This effect of counter trends and feedbacks that end up reducing the effects of CO2 are often used by the "skeptics" to claim victory. It is often said that the planet can easily deal with all this and we should stop worrying. It's true that simple laws of physics will make sure that the planet 'deals' with it. The problem is only that we may not like how that process plays out for us. The planet remains close to the radiation balance under any circumstances (as long as the sun doesn't decide to do something funny and it really doesn't look like that at all. All kinds of things can happen that we haven't yet heard of. It's even plausible that there is an increase in photosynthesis if there's more heat and more CO2. But it's also plausible that this increases the absorption of light in the oceans, making the ocean surface even faster warmer, which also is seen as a consequence of reduction of snow cover on land and ice on the oceans. Hopefully we find other effects that automatically counteract the effects of green house gasses, but I'm not holding my breath. Of course, I am confident that the planet will survive whatever dumb policies may be developed in reaction to the circumstances. Whatever happens, melting glaciers, more storms here, new deserts there, torrential rains, or simply the pretty possibility of growing wine in Greenland. It's all a matter of gradual and sometimes drastic changes in the complex dynamics of the atmosphere due to small changes of some important parameters, in particular temperature. And its more than that: It includes widely unknown and hard to predict changes in the biosphere, from plant growth to urban development. I don't subscribe to the "mother earth idea", but the truth is that on a very basic level of physics one can't dismiss the idea that our own brains are part of that biosphere. And btw, a raise of temperature has a lot of effects on human brains directly, that's were simple physics, physiology and psychology play nicely together, see the heated debate about the consequences and the silly question "who did it" (I'm just pulling you leg, or am I?) The bottom line is that many "skeptics" say that all this is so terribly complicated and therefore unproven with enough confidence, and that there is no way to figure out with reasonable accuracy how the small changes of thermodynamic variables will influence the climate. But then they say that since we can't demonstrate with complete certainty that it wasn't "our fault", we should just simply stop worrying about it. I think its complete capitulation, more like what the folks from the Easter Islands may have done in their last years, while spending their last resources on building monstrous stone figures. That certainly didn't help, and all the recent amassing of "piety" in America looks also kind of silly.

 

Is even a small level of raise of CO2 levels, which is actually just a trace gas in the atmosphere responsible for such large changes that a few 1000 additional molecules in a cubic cm make a difference? I had my doubts about that too but then one can easily find the scientific and experimental evidence for that. For example, the description in http://climatephysic...opic/3057255/1/ explains it quite well. I'm citing here a whole paragraph of that:

" The method of calculation is as follows. The atmosphere is treated as a column of gas, with a longwave input at one end (the surface), and short wave input at the other (the Sun). Using the known absorption spectra of gases in the atmosphere, the calculation proceeds line by line through the spectrum to calculate how much radiation is transmitted and absorbed and emitted all along the atmospheric column. The end result is a profile of radiative heating and radiation flux, with a power spectrum of longwave emission at the top, and another for backradiation and solar transmission at the bottom. The calculation is repeated for different gas concentrations, and different conditions. With higher concentrations, the backradiation increases and the emission at the top drops. The forcing, by definition, corresponds to the change in longwave emission at the tropopause."

It may not be immediately intuitive, but there is nothing too mysterious about it. It's similar to a change of apparent color and transparency of a gas or of a fluid by dissolving small amounts of substances that change how well light of a certain frequency range goes through, is absorbed or transformed to other frequencies by absorption and emission. Only it's infra-red instead of visible light, and the cited description is more accurate. And I just realize that I could have just thrown this reference in here instead of writing this long diatribe. Just read that source. It's well explained.

 

Is human activity the reason for CO2 levels rising? I don't see how it could not be: If we burn up most of the fossil energy resources in two hundred years which formed over millions of years, I would bet that's much like a huge monstrous forest fire raging on a large part of the planet. It's bloody unlikely that photosynthesis in the biosphere has picked up speed sufficiently to compensate for the increase of CO2. Without putting any blame here, it's a simple question. Can you prove that humans didn't do it, and can you prove that inaction is the best we can do now? Actually that are really two questions. Even if humans didn't "do it", it is pretty darn clear how we can reduce green house gas production, and how it can be turned into a great benefit for the slumping economy. That would be an appropriate reaction of the biosphere to regulate itself automatically, wouldn't it? So if there is something like "Mother Earth" or Gaya, it's us. We better step up to the plate.