Bad news for the watermelons, great news for humanity.
54 thoughts on “The Big Climate Push”
In a sane world, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and the genius that sent out the Climategate e mails would win the Noble Prize.
And Al Gore, Mann, the IPCC, and the others who foisted this fraud would be frog-marched into jail.
In this case, push should be spelled putsch.
There’s a generation gap at work here. I know several older PhD physicists who constantly debunk AGW, but all the young PhDs I know in the hard sciences all accept it unquestionably and are pretty condescending towards skeptics. After all, I are only a lowly engineer.
Stewed watermelon…
It’s not dead yet folks. Lefties are like the 17-year locusts and vampires when it comes to furthering their causes.
It must have stake driven through its heart, and it must be burned to the ground and the ground salted like Rome did to Carthage.
It looks as if I am in the wrong neighborhood. When the population is going from an excessive 6 Billion to 50% higher
9 Billion in a projected 40 more years, a sane person might
wonder. When in the past 200 years Mankind has removed
50% of the Forests that is news to think about. With millions of cars and thousands of Coal plants. With extreme weather as expected with Anthropogenic contributions to the buildup
of greenhouse gas (GHG) and 2010 being the hottest year ever recorded. I worry when people think that they do not have a footprint. Get real.
Sidney Clouston Says:
You chose to end with:
“Get real.”
Ok…………………….Fight’s On!
(i.e. not the best way to introduce yourself, but suit yourself)
“With extreme weather as expected with Anthropogenic contributions to the buildup
of greenhouse gas (GHG) and 2010 being the hottest year ever recorded.”
All of that is total nonsense…
“I worry when people think that they do not have a footprint.”
Worry not…I am aware I have a footprint. I do what I can to make it bigger.
About the only part of your genteel introduction that I have some sympathy with is the deforestation of South America.
I want solutions that move us forward and generate more energy, not less. More opportunity, not less. More wealth, not less. More freedom, not less. More growth, not less. The latest interesting example I’ve read about (here) are Thorium liquid reactors generating electricity which can then be used – Zubrin in-situ-like – to create complex molecules out of simple constituents like CO2.
“I want solutions that move us forward and generate more energy, not less…”
All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect.
Andrew W Says:
” “I want solutions that move us forward and generate more energy, not less…”
All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect. ”
Don’t need a rationalization because not only hasn’t it been proven, it’s pretty well dis-proven; on top of which a group of people crucial to pushing the ” human-generated GHG causes GH effect” were shown to have cooked the books.
“it’s pretty well dis-proven” nonsense, even people like Spencer don’t dispute that increased GH gas concentrations will result in warming, the argument amongst the scientists is over the amount of warming for a given increase, and what localised climate change will occur (as opposed to just the “average” change across the globe).
Andrew W Says:
” “it’s pretty well dis-proven” nonsense, even people like Spencer don’t dispute that increased GH gas concentrations will result in warming,…”
Which is why I put the “human-generated” in my response.
” human-generated GHG causes GH effect”
I don’t think you’ll find much argument that a greenhouse effect *can* occur. I create one every Winter with my clear plastic shelter over my wooden boat. Makes the interior warm enough to work on the boat during a sunny day.
But Pole ice melting, polar bear killing, sea level raising, hurricane generating human generated greenhouse effect?
hahahahaha
Rand, thanks for keeping Sidney’s comment here. As we’ve learned over at WUWT, its always far lulzier to leave lefty insanity up on the wall for all the public to see and disparage. It’s even funnier when the inanity is the first comment but you take what you can get.
K,
Thanks, Anthony gets that a lot, but he’s far too humble to agree.
Sidney, in case you are still reading, here in NH, the state was 90% cleared in 1910 and only 10% wilderness left. Today, its now 90%+ forested again, which is typical across much of North America. One of the things your climate gods keep failing to tell you, and which the rest of the world refuses to acknowledge in the climate agreements that we keep failing to accept, is that if you count the amount of carbon sequestered by all the forest regrowth of the past half century as a carbon sink to balance our emissions, North America is actually more than meeting 1990 emission levels.
The scientists keep getting caught lying, blackballing, gatekeeping, and just plain doing bad science (like this months Nature had an article claiming plankton growth had dropped by 50% in the past century, only to issue a retraction when it was proven that the problem was their shoddy sampling practices.) You need to learn a standard saying among scientists: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the claim that we mere humans are modifying the climate of this huge and powerful planetary atmosphere, is arrogant, absurd, and unsupported by the evidence. It is the sheer height of hubristic disasturbationism.
Gregg, the increases in GHG concentrations that have been measured directly in atmospheric samples and indirectly in ice cores are the result of human activities.
Your plastic shelter has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect.
Andrew W Says:
“Gregg, the increases in GHG concentrations that have been measured directly in atmospheric samples and indirectly in ice cores are the result of human activities.”
Feel free to repeat this to yourself all you like.
I’m still waiting for a AGW genius to explain how the MWP happened. Of course you could believe Mann, he of the missing data and attempts to sabotage his critics. Then there’s the IPCC that relied on pure fiction at one point. Yes, you kids go wild. If all is as you say, why are there so many occurrences of outright fraud to push an agenda?
…….which isn’t to say humans haven’t put ANY CO2 into the atmosphere.
But human generates global warming?
Sorry.
Gregg, it’s simple maths, and again, it’s not disputed by most “skeptic” scientists.
Atmospheric CO2 has increased from 280 ppm to 390 ppm since the industrial revolution, if all anthropogenic CO2 that had been produced over that time had remained in the atmosphere the increase would have been to about 500 ppm. So yep, increases in GHG concentrations are entirely anthropogenic.
“So yep, increases in GHG concentrations are entirely anthropogenic.”
The UN recently took down a post on their web site about 50 million refugees that would be uprooted due to global warming. It was supposed to happen by the year 2010. So many of the predictions from the global warming alarmists have not come to pass. Being wrong on any number of predictions doesn’t seem to matter to the alarmists.
No one is for pollution and if people don’t buy into the apocalyptic fear mongering that does not mean they want to destroy the planet.
For the AGW troll here:
There are severe problems with ice cores when used to measure past CO2 levels. Leaf stomata give results at odds with the ice cores and generally show somewhat higher pre industrial CO2 levels, around 325 – 345 ppmv.
About 18 months ago The Chiefio(E.M.Smith) did a post on his blog about C12/C13 ratios. It simply isn’t possible to ascribe extra CO2 to burning fossil fuels using this method. It may be likely as we are burning significant quantities but it still only amounts to 3.5 to 4 % of the CO2 going into the atmosphere from natural processes each year. The natural sinks aren’t well understood.
During this interglacial there have been significant temperature changes. There was the Holocene Optimum when things were considerably warmer than now, the Minoan Warm period, the Roman Warmperiod and the Medieval Warm period the Little Ice Age and now it is getting a small amount warmer again – well maybe – the instrumental record is crap, the satellite record not much better and neither were designed for climatological studies.
I’m not the least bit surprised at these temperature changes as the system was given large whack by the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. So it’s oscillating with various periods. So what?
Water vapor and clouds are the regulating mechanisms for the temperature of Planet Earth. I don’t want to see yet another calculation of the effect of increasing CO2 unless it also accounts for the simultaneous presence of water vapor and clouds and is backed by observational evidence.
Are you any kind of Earth sciences guy, meteorologist, geologist, engineer or otherwise had to build anything, measure anything etc or is your knowledge gained from a few pathetic AGW blogs like RealClimate run by that deranged crew at NASA GISS?
Mike Lorrey Says:
April 29th, 2011 at 4:53 pm here in NH, the state was 90% cleared in 1910 and only 10% wilderness left. Today, its now 90%+ forested again, which is typical across much of North America.
Who’d a thunk it? You bulldoze a plot of land, build a suburban housing development, people move into the houses, and a generation or so later the place is full of trees.
Because people like trees.
“For the AGW troll here:”
Didn’t bother reading the rest.
Mike Lorrey Says:
”
here in NH, the state was 90% cleared in 1910 and only 10% wilderness left. Today, its now 90%+ forested again, which is typical across much of North America.”
Pretty much the same for Massachusetts.
rickl Says:
“Who’d a thunk it? You bulldoze a plot of land, build a suburban housing development, people move into the houses, and a generation or so later the place is full of trees.
Because people like trees.”
There’s a little more to it than that. Here in Massachusetts, you can walk through woods and run across stone walls that are hundreds of years old. They used to be farmland boundary markers. The farms have gone away and forests have reclaimed the land.
Go look at a google satellite image of Massachusetts and you’ll see that the majority of the state is forested. It wasn’t that way 100 years ago. The wood was chopped down to clear lands for farms, to build things, and for fuel.
Andrew W Says:
“Didn’t bother reading the rest.”
That’s one reason you are not believed.
Same reason the alarmists and some other pro-AGW’s are not believed. Because you have convinced yourself that AGW is real and you refuse to consider alternative evidence and/or alternative explanations for the data we do agree upon. Not even when the very foundations of your view are destroyed by the fact that data was selectively ignored and covered up, by your side, books cooked, by your side, or holders of alternative viewpoints politicized, by your side, as “deniers” and “Nazis”.
Any GOOD scientific paper does not use words/phrases like “must be” or “this is the reason”, or “it is proved”. And no paper will say the science is settled. Any good paper will list reasons why the idea propounded could be wrong, and experiments that could be made to test the idea.
And while it’s true that scientists pretty much accept certain ideas as operative (e.g. Natural Selection), they do so because of strong predictive power evidenced over a long time, and a wagon load of testing. None of which your side has.
AND, most importantly, the idea was subjected to days, months, years of maniacal, rabid pitbull attempts by other scientists gleefully trying to tear down the idea and reduce it to smoldering rubble. This is part of the process. But when people try to do that with AGW, Tourettes pops in:
Nazis!
Holocaust deniers!
Fat Capitalists!
So forgive us if we give short shrift to people who cover their ears, close their eyes and scream at the top of their lungs “AGW!”, and then demand that we transfer trillions of wealth to their fave causes.
What Gregg said… .
Gregg. I’ll address any argument based on science, but I’ll ignore stuff that’s just ad hom, “For the AGW troll here:” is such a poor start to a comment I don’t expect the rest to be worth reading.
As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.
It may be likely as we are burning significant quantities but it still only amounts to 3.5 to 4 % of the CO2 going into the atmosphere from natural processes each year. The natural sinks aren’t well understood.
Let me assure you: if fossil fuel CO2 were only 4% of the NET natural CO2 input to the atmosphere, we’d know about it damn fast. Your claim can only make sense if you are talking about only part of the natural CO2 flow — the part into the atmosphere — which is almost entirely countered by the natural CO2 uptake.
Your statement is very misleading, since net CO2 flows are what matters for long term changes in atmospheric CO2 levels.
Paul D. : Who said NET? My statement was very clear. There’s a certain amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere from all sources each year and humans make about 3.5 to 4% of that. I’ll even state that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing each year as it appears that at present the sinks don’t seem to take all of the yearly input, out of the atmosphere. However I will stand by my statement that the sinks are not well understood.
I also don’t care that the amount of CO2 is going up slowly as there is no observational evidence that anything bad is happening as a result. It has gone up 30% or more so surely we’d know by now and is still well below values reached in geological history. There is evidence that vegetation is growing better. I’m not prepared to turn the world’s economies upside down over this.
Oh and Gregg’s plastic shelter really is a “greenhouse” effect, unlike what happens in the atmosphere.
Shows the depth of your ignorance AndrewW.
No Mike, all you’ve done is show not just ignorance but also arrogance.
The “greenhouse effect” is a term with a specific meaning, it refers to the atmospheric physics in which the energy of incoming visible light heats the surface, the warmed surface emits infrared light and this outgoing infrared light is absorbed by greenhouse gases, this causes the lower atmosphere to be warmer than it would otherwise be. This is not the same effect that we see in a greenhouse, which is the blocking of the convection process by the roof that would otherwise take heat away from the near the surface to higher into the atmosphere.
It is the same effect in both cases. Where do you think the phrase “greenhouse effect” came from? What is the first word of the phrase?
Think about it.
This is almost as silly as arguing that oral s3x isn’t s3x.
In reply to your earlier comment
“There are severe problems with ice cores when used to measure past CO2 levels. Leaf stomata give results at odds with the ice cores and generally show somewhat higher pre industrial CO2 levels, around 325 – 345 ppmv.”
What a joke. The reason CO2 readings are made in such isolated locations as Hawaii (from ocean breezes) and Antarctica is that measurements at ground level where there’s a lot of biological or industrial activity going on are meaningless as far as the atmosphere as a whole goes, in forests, and in cities it’s common to get CO2 readings anywhere between 200 and 800 ppm, the problem is similar to the UHI effect, local effects swamping the big picture, but far more severe.
In contrast the ice core record is beautifully clean in the tracking of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and unlike the stomatal results, the measurements from across the globe actually match each other, and do so for hundreds of thousands of years.
“About 18 months ago The Chiefio(E.M.Smith) did a post on his blog…”
Oh, well, if some blogger calling himself The Chiefio says it’s so, well, who could question that? /sarc.
“The natural sinks aren’t well understood.” A reasonable claim, but I think the weight of evidence though is that the oceans have increased their uptake of CO2 as a result of the 40% increase in partial pressure of that gas in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic emissions. You really have to make some highly speculative assumptions to claim that the rise in CO2 is not a result of anthropogenic emissions.
“During this interglacial there have been significant temperature changes….”
Yep, climate does vary as a result of natural forcings, I think the warming over the last fifty years though is beyond dispute (go look at Spencer’s site if you don’t believe me).
“I don’t want to see yet another calculation of the effect of increasing CO2 unless it also accounts for the simultaneous presence of water vapor and clouds and is backed by observational evidence.”
A strange statement, incorporating water vapor and clouds into the maths is always done, in fact the positive feed-back from increased water vapor is the most basic consideration, I understand that an increase in atmopheric water vapor of about 4% over the last few decades has been measured.
“…is your knowledge gained from a few pathetic AGW blogs like RealClimate run by that deranged crew at NASA GISS?”
This from a guy who uses “The Chiefio” as a source.
Rand, often in science things get mis-named that’s how it is. The effects are very different; in a greenhouse it’s warming through blocking convection, in the atmosphere it’s about the atmospheric absorption and re-radiating of outgoing IR. They’ve even gone and built greenhouses out of rock salt, which is IR transparent, to check if the blocking of IR radiation by the glass/plastic was a factor.
Wiki: “The “greenhouse effect” is named by analogy to greenhouses. The greenhouse effect and a real greenhouse are similar in that they both limit the rate of thermal energy flowing out of the system, but the mechanisms by which heat is retained are different.[25] A greenhouse works primarily by preventing absorbed heat from leaving the structure through convection, i.e. sensible heat transport. The greenhouse effect heats the earth because greenhouse gases absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit some of it back towards earth.”
Andrew W Says:
“As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.”
It is a matter of science if your scientific “data” is cooked, and incomplete (both purposefully and in the natural course of scientific exploration), and if you’re side is closed to alternative explanation for data we do agree upon.
You can’t even define what temperature you are looking for. Define “average” or “ideal”.
You cannot even reliably connect some ficticious average ideal temperature to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
And your side’s predictions have failed to materialize in your own specified time frame. This is the test of any scientific proposition..powerful predictive ability. This is the core of science.
And best of all, when “global warming” failed your side jumped to “climate change” which allows you point to ANY change, heat, cold, whatever…and scream humans are the cause.
Gregg, I think there are three sides to the debate; 1. those that are politically motivated to argue that there could be destructive changes beyond what the science supports 2. those that are politically motivated to argue against even the most basic evidence that increasing GH gases will cause some change, and 3. those of us who’re just sick of the Noddy’s in the first two groups who keep trying to use the science as a political football.
Look, face it: you guys who deny that humans are destroying the world are just Haters. You hate puppies, and happy children running in the grass, and ice cream, and soft blankets, and and and… you’re just haters! And racists!
Accept your Doom. (Which is to be Disapproved Of by the Andrew W’s of the world. Hey now, put down a towel before you use that razor on your wrists!)
Gregg, your 3:43 clearly places you in the second group, you attack the first group for doing what those in the first group keep doing: “you’re side is closed to alternative explanation for data we do agree upon.”
and then you go on to attack the science by suggesting science can’t work out an “average”temperature.
“You cannot even reliably connect some ficticious average ideal temperature to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.”
My side doesn’t claim there’s an “average ideal temperature”, personally I look at it as a rate of change issue.
Sorry: “you attack the first group for doing what those in the first group keep doing:”
Should have been
“you attack the first group for doing what those in the second group keep doing:”
Hi Andrea, slow day for you to huh?
Andrew:
P.s. Your very first comment, in the thread, to me was:
“All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect.”
Which is hardly a “matter of science”. So no running to the ivory tower with this:
“As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.”
I don’t see your point Gregg;
“All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect.”
Translates to “I think your in group 2 in this debate, and;
“As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.”
Means “the rest of your comment is a criticism of the group 1 position, since I’m not advocating CAGW, it’s not directed at claims I’m supporting.
Andrew, please.
I thought you only spoke to scientific matter?
“Gregg, your 3:43 clearly places you in the second group, you attack the first group for doing what those in the first group keep doing: “you’re side is closed to alternative explanation for data we do agree upon.” ”
On this you haven’t a clue, actually. This is the “well…welll..he did it too!”
“and then you go on to attack the science by suggesting science can’t work out an “average”temperature.”
Right. That’s the whole point. What is the earth’s temperature? how has it risen or fallen. All the live long day you say the earth’s temperature has gone up.
From what? Using what clean data? Using what complete data?
“My side doesn’t claim there’s an “average ideal temperature”, personally I look at it as a rate of change issue.”
You can’t specify a rate of change unless you can measure the values and figure out the rate of change. And change from what?
You guys cooked that data remember? Hockey stick graph – remember that one? The one where you left out a whole warming period of a couple of degrees C BEFORE SUV’s were created? Or the other data that East Anglia suppressed?
And you decry increased CO2 levels. Tell me does the ocean expel CO2 because the temperature rises? Or did the temperature rise bring on the CO2 release?
Your models are hopelessly incomplete and assumption of unknowns arbitrary. You state the rate of change as if you really knew it and then want trillions of dollars moved in reaction to that.
your side posits scientific unanimity where there was anything but, and manufactured bogus signatures to “prove” it.
I’ll quote Lindzen because he said it better than I could:
“If one considers the tropics, that conclusion is even more disturbing. There is ample evidence that the average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years, yet current models predict average warming of from two to four degrees centigrade even at the equator. It should be noted that for much of the Earth’s history, the atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come. I could, in fact, go on at great length listing the evidence for small responses to a doubling of carbon dioxide; there are space constraints, however. …..
The notion that complex climate “catastrophes” are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors. …
namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of “bait and switch” scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree. …
For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2….”
Andrea Harris Says:
“Look, face it: you guys who deny that humans are destroying the world are just Haters. You hate puppies, and happy children running in the grass, and ice cream, and soft blankets, and and and… you’re just haters! And racists!”
Don’t forget that we kick the canes out from old people and jam the wheels of their walkers.
Gregg: “What is the earth’s temperature?”
People on all sides of the debate have little difficulty in understanding how to determine the average temperature of the atmosphere at any given altitude, your difficulty in understanding this simple (in principle at least) matter is perplexing. There are several organizations that analyze the available data, and though they have slightly different methodologies, the end results are consistent with each other.
“You guys cooked that data remember?”
Really? I don’t remember being involved in cooking any data, perhaps you have me confused with someone else.
“I’ll quote Lindzen because he said it better than I could:”
Are you serious? Really? You mean after claiming that we are unable to measure the average temperature of the various layers in the atmosphere in recent times, you immediately go on to promote a claim by Lindzen that he has data that average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years? Seriously? Given that you don’t believe in global averages, how pray-tell, was this average determined?
In the remained of your Lindzen quote he makes various claims in an effort to resurrect his discredited iris effect theory. You also fire some of his stuff at me about CAGW, which leads me to conclude that you have some pretty basic comprehension problems. But, just for you I’ll try one more time: I’m not in the group that believes in CAGW.
Andrew W Says:
April 30th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
“In contrast the ice core record is beautifully clean in the tracking of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and unlike the stomatal results, the measurements from across the globe actually match each other, and do so for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Which tells us that a common process occurs to smooth out the record at each site. Is it more likely that there is no variation globally, or that diffusion of the gas bubbles in ice over a long expanse of time diverges to similar limits under similar circumstances? The ice core data is, in fact, very speculative, as we have no “control” sample with which to compare results.
“You really have to make some highly speculative assumptions to claim that the rise in CO2 is not a result of anthropogenic emissions.”
Quite the contrary, you have to make some highly speculative assumptions to claim that it is. The measured CO2 record is more than just a linear rise. There is substantial detail across the frequency spectrum. I counted dozens of very well defined integer and fractional harmonics in the data. You can do the same with the data on anthropogenic releases, and that data stream also shows dozens of harmonics. Here’s the kicker: they don’t overlap. The match between anthropogenic production of and measured CO2 is entirely superficial. They do not match in the fine detail, and this is very nearly impossible if the one is the result of the other.
Moreover, the measured CO2 trend is fairly deterministic. There is little indication of the “random-walk” like characteristic one would expect from a system governed by time constants as long as are needed by the anthropogenically driven accumulation hypothesis. The climate scientists are not feedback experts. They have ginned up models which produce the results they want to show. But, they do not understand such systems well enough to realize that the secondary characteristics which would have to be displayed by those systems being randomly driven by other inputs are not in evidence.
“…in fact the positive feed-back from increased water vapor is the most basic consideration…”
Indeed it is, because without it, none of the GCMs predict catastrophic temperature rise. The data, in fact, show clearly that the feedback is negative. This is clearly evident in the phase plane plots by Spencer et al. in which the encirclements of the origin are very clearly counterclockwise. Counterclockwise encirclements indicate a lagging phase, whereas positive feedback would create a leading phase. Again, the climate scientists do not understand phase characteristics of feedback systems. They imagine that, if the two variables track together, that indicates positive feedback, but that only indicates positive correlation. To diagnose feedback characteristics, you have to look at the phase relationships.
“Which tells us that a common process occurs to smooth out the record at each site. Is it more likely that there is no variation globally, or that diffusion of the gas bubbles in ice over a long expanse of time diverges to similar limits under similar circumstances?”
If you look at the ice core CO2 concentrations over the glacial-interglacial cycles, what stands out is the evidence against diffusion of gas bubbles, the variations in older ice are as clear as those in younger ice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
“Moreover, the measured CO2 trend is fairly deterministic. There is little indication of the “random-walk” like characteristic one would expect from a system governed by time constants as long as are needed by the anthropogenically driven accumulation hypothesis.”
If the CO2 rise was due to natural, rather than anthropogenic variability, we would, if anything, expect more of a “random-walk” characteristic to the changes in concentration. We know what the anthopogenic emissions are, we know this contribution has been steadily increasing, for the mechanism to be natural, and for that natural mechanism to be the cause now but not at other times would mean a mechanism with variablity, so the consistency of the CO2 rise argues AGAINST a natural mechanism. (obviously we’re talking about too short a period of recent history to be concerned with the mechanisms involved in the glacial-interglacial cycle).
“The data, in fact, show clearly that the feedback is negative. This is clearly evident in the phase plane plots by Spencer et al.”
Water vapor is indisputably positive, Spencer has put forward arguments that some tropical cloud feedback is negative, as far as I know the degree and nature of overall cloud feedback remains uncertain.
“Again, the climate scientists do not understand phase characteristics of feedback systems.”
Excuse me for not automatically accepting you as having greater wisdom than the scientists actually involved in the research.
“…what stands out is the evidence against diffusion of gas bubbles, the variations in older ice are as clear as those in younger ice.”
Define “older” and “younger”. Otherwise, this is meaningless.
“If the CO2 rise was due to natural, rather than anthropogenic variability, we would, if anything, expect more of a “random-walk” characteristic…”
That is incorrect. Also, you should always follow “if” with the conditional form of the verb “to be” (sorry, just one of my pet peeves).
“We know what the anthopogenic emissions are, we know this contribution has been steadily increasing…”
And, we know that they do not match in the fine detail (or, at least, I know it).
“…to be the cause now but not at other times…”
A statement of absolute faith in the ice core record, which I have already called into question. You are begging that question, and reality is rather tightfisted with its alms.
“Water vapor is indisputably positive.”
I was sloppy. The overall water vapor system including clouds is indisputably negative.
“Excuse me for not automatically accepting you as having greater wisdom than the scientists actually involved in the research.”
I urge you not to automatically accept anything from anyone, abdicating your capacity for rational thought. But, everyone has their specialty, and it is quite apparent that the foremost proponents for CAGW are not experts in feedback systems.
As Ed Koch was fond of saying, I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you. I advise you consult those whom you trust, look beyond the superficial, and have a lifeboat ready when the sinking of the ship becomes apparent to all.
In a sane world, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and the genius that sent out the Climategate e mails would win the Noble Prize.
And Al Gore, Mann, the IPCC, and the others who foisted this fraud would be frog-marched into jail.
In this case, push should be spelled putsch.
There’s a generation gap at work here. I know several older PhD physicists who constantly debunk AGW, but all the young PhDs I know in the hard sciences all accept it unquestionably and are pretty condescending towards skeptics. After all, I are only a lowly engineer.
Stewed watermelon…
It’s not dead yet folks. Lefties are like the 17-year locusts and vampires when it comes to furthering their causes.
It must have stake driven through its heart, and it must be burned to the ground and the ground salted like Rome did to Carthage.
It looks as if I am in the wrong neighborhood. When the population is going from an excessive 6 Billion to 50% higher
9 Billion in a projected 40 more years, a sane person might
wonder. When in the past 200 years Mankind has removed
50% of the Forests that is news to think about. With millions of cars and thousands of Coal plants. With extreme weather as expected with Anthropogenic contributions to the buildup
of greenhouse gas (GHG) and 2010 being the hottest year ever recorded. I worry when people think that they do not have a footprint. Get real.
Sidney Clouston Says:
You chose to end with:
“Get real.”
Ok…………………….Fight’s On!
(i.e. not the best way to introduce yourself, but suit yourself)
“With extreme weather as expected with Anthropogenic contributions to the buildup
of greenhouse gas (GHG) and 2010 being the hottest year ever recorded.”
All of that is total nonsense…
“I worry when people think that they do not have a footprint.”
Worry not…I am aware I have a footprint. I do what I can to make it bigger.
About the only part of your genteel introduction that I have some sympathy with is the deforestation of South America.
I want solutions that move us forward and generate more energy, not less. More opportunity, not less. More wealth, not less. More freedom, not less. More growth, not less. The latest interesting example I’ve read about (here) are Thorium liquid reactors generating electricity which can then be used – Zubrin in-situ-like – to create complex molecules out of simple constituents like CO2.
“I want solutions that move us forward and generate more energy, not less…”
All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect.
Andrew W Says:
” “I want solutions that move us forward and generate more energy, not less…”
All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect. ”
Don’t need a rationalization because not only hasn’t it been proven, it’s pretty well dis-proven; on top of which a group of people crucial to pushing the ” human-generated GHG causes GH effect” were shown to have cooked the books.
“it’s pretty well dis-proven” nonsense, even people like Spencer don’t dispute that increased GH gas concentrations will result in warming, the argument amongst the scientists is over the amount of warming for a given increase, and what localised climate change will occur (as opposed to just the “average” change across the globe).
Andrew W Says:
” “it’s pretty well dis-proven” nonsense, even people like Spencer don’t dispute that increased GH gas concentrations will result in warming,…”
Which is why I put the “human-generated” in my response.
” human-generated GHG causes GH effect”
I don’t think you’ll find much argument that a greenhouse effect *can* occur. I create one every Winter with my clear plastic shelter over my wooden boat. Makes the interior warm enough to work on the boat during a sunny day.
But Pole ice melting, polar bear killing, sea level raising, hurricane generating human generated greenhouse effect?
hahahahaha
Rand, thanks for keeping Sidney’s comment here. As we’ve learned over at WUWT, its always far lulzier to leave lefty insanity up on the wall for all the public to see and disparage. It’s even funnier when the inanity is the first comment but you take what you can get.
K,
Thanks, Anthony gets that a lot, but he’s far too humble to agree.
Sidney, in case you are still reading, here in NH, the state was 90% cleared in 1910 and only 10% wilderness left. Today, its now 90%+ forested again, which is typical across much of North America. One of the things your climate gods keep failing to tell you, and which the rest of the world refuses to acknowledge in the climate agreements that we keep failing to accept, is that if you count the amount of carbon sequestered by all the forest regrowth of the past half century as a carbon sink to balance our emissions, North America is actually more than meeting 1990 emission levels.
The scientists keep getting caught lying, blackballing, gatekeeping, and just plain doing bad science (like this months Nature had an article claiming plankton growth had dropped by 50% in the past century, only to issue a retraction when it was proven that the problem was their shoddy sampling practices.) You need to learn a standard saying among scientists: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the claim that we mere humans are modifying the climate of this huge and powerful planetary atmosphere, is arrogant, absurd, and unsupported by the evidence. It is the sheer height of hubristic disasturbationism.
Gregg, the increases in GHG concentrations that have been measured directly in atmospheric samples and indirectly in ice cores are the result of human activities.
Your plastic shelter has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect.
Andrew W Says:
“Gregg, the increases in GHG concentrations that have been measured directly in atmospheric samples and indirectly in ice cores are the result of human activities.”
Feel free to repeat this to yourself all you like.
I’m still waiting for a AGW genius to explain how the MWP happened. Of course you could believe Mann, he of the missing data and attempts to sabotage his critics. Then there’s the IPCC that relied on pure fiction at one point. Yes, you kids go wild. If all is as you say, why are there so many occurrences of outright fraud to push an agenda?
…….which isn’t to say humans haven’t put ANY CO2 into the atmosphere.
But human generates global warming?
Sorry.
Gregg, it’s simple maths, and again, it’s not disputed by most “skeptic” scientists.
Atmospheric CO2 has increased from 280 ppm to 390 ppm since the industrial revolution, if all anthropogenic CO2 that had been produced over that time had remained in the atmosphere the increase would have been to about 500 ppm. So yep, increases in GHG concentrations are entirely anthropogenic.
“So yep, increases in GHG concentrations are entirely anthropogenic.”
Show your work.
“Show your work.”
http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/ocean-earth-system/ocean-carbon-cycle/
The UN recently took down a post on their web site about 50 million refugees that would be uprooted due to global warming. It was supposed to happen by the year 2010. So many of the predictions from the global warming alarmists have not come to pass. Being wrong on any number of predictions doesn’t seem to matter to the alarmists.
No one is for pollution and if people don’t buy into the apocalyptic fear mongering that does not mean they want to destroy the planet.
For the AGW troll here:
There are severe problems with ice cores when used to measure past CO2 levels. Leaf stomata give results at odds with the ice cores and generally show somewhat higher pre industrial CO2 levels, around 325 – 345 ppmv.
About 18 months ago The Chiefio(E.M.Smith) did a post on his blog about C12/C13 ratios. It simply isn’t possible to ascribe extra CO2 to burning fossil fuels using this method. It may be likely as we are burning significant quantities but it still only amounts to 3.5 to 4 % of the CO2 going into the atmosphere from natural processes each year. The natural sinks aren’t well understood.
During this interglacial there have been significant temperature changes. There was the Holocene Optimum when things were considerably warmer than now, the Minoan Warm period, the Roman Warmperiod and the Medieval Warm period the Little Ice Age and now it is getting a small amount warmer again – well maybe – the instrumental record is crap, the satellite record not much better and neither were designed for climatological studies.
I’m not the least bit surprised at these temperature changes as the system was given large whack by the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. So it’s oscillating with various periods. So what?
Water vapor and clouds are the regulating mechanisms for the temperature of Planet Earth. I don’t want to see yet another calculation of the effect of increasing CO2 unless it also accounts for the simultaneous presence of water vapor and clouds and is backed by observational evidence.
Are you any kind of Earth sciences guy, meteorologist, geologist, engineer or otherwise had to build anything, measure anything etc or is your knowledge gained from a few pathetic AGW blogs like RealClimate run by that deranged crew at NASA GISS?
Mike Lorrey Says:
April 29th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
here in NH, the state was 90% cleared in 1910 and only 10% wilderness left. Today, its now 90%+ forested again, which is typical across much of North America.
Who’d a thunk it? You bulldoze a plot of land, build a suburban housing development, people move into the houses, and a generation or so later the place is full of trees.
Because people like trees.
“For the AGW troll here:”
Didn’t bother reading the rest.
Mike Lorrey Says:
”
here in NH, the state was 90% cleared in 1910 and only 10% wilderness left. Today, its now 90%+ forested again, which is typical across much of North America.”
Pretty much the same for Massachusetts.
rickl Says:
“Who’d a thunk it? You bulldoze a plot of land, build a suburban housing development, people move into the houses, and a generation or so later the place is full of trees.
Because people like trees.”
There’s a little more to it than that. Here in Massachusetts, you can walk through woods and run across stone walls that are hundreds of years old. They used to be farmland boundary markers. The farms have gone away and forests have reclaimed the land.
Go look at a google satellite image of Massachusetts and you’ll see that the majority of the state is forested. It wasn’t that way 100 years ago. The wood was chopped down to clear lands for farms, to build things, and for fuel.
Andrew W Says:
“Didn’t bother reading the rest.”
That’s one reason you are not believed.
Same reason the alarmists and some other pro-AGW’s are not believed. Because you have convinced yourself that AGW is real and you refuse to consider alternative evidence and/or alternative explanations for the data we do agree upon. Not even when the very foundations of your view are destroyed by the fact that data was selectively ignored and covered up, by your side, books cooked, by your side, or holders of alternative viewpoints politicized, by your side, as “deniers” and “Nazis”.
Any GOOD scientific paper does not use words/phrases like “must be” or “this is the reason”, or “it is proved”. And no paper will say the science is settled. Any good paper will list reasons why the idea propounded could be wrong, and experiments that could be made to test the idea.
And while it’s true that scientists pretty much accept certain ideas as operative (e.g. Natural Selection), they do so because of strong predictive power evidenced over a long time, and a wagon load of testing. None of which your side has.
AND, most importantly, the idea was subjected to days, months, years of maniacal, rabid pitbull attempts by other scientists gleefully trying to tear down the idea and reduce it to smoldering rubble. This is part of the process. But when people try to do that with AGW, Tourettes pops in:
Nazis!
Holocaust deniers!
Fat Capitalists!
So forgive us if we give short shrift to people who cover their ears, close their eyes and scream at the top of their lungs “AGW!”, and then demand that we transfer trillions of wealth to their fave causes.
What Gregg said… .
Gregg. I’ll address any argument based on science, but I’ll ignore stuff that’s just ad hom, “For the AGW troll here:” is such a poor start to a comment I don’t expect the rest to be worth reading.
As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.
It may be likely as we are burning significant quantities but it still only amounts to 3.5 to 4 % of the CO2 going into the atmosphere from natural processes each year. The natural sinks aren’t well understood.
Let me assure you: if fossil fuel CO2 were only 4% of the NET natural CO2 input to the atmosphere, we’d know about it damn fast. Your claim can only make sense if you are talking about only part of the natural CO2 flow — the part into the atmosphere — which is almost entirely countered by the natural CO2 uptake.
Your statement is very misleading, since net CO2 flows are what matters for long term changes in atmospheric CO2 levels.
Paul D. : Who said NET? My statement was very clear. There’s a certain amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere from all sources each year and humans make about 3.5 to 4% of that. I’ll even state that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing each year as it appears that at present the sinks don’t seem to take all of the yearly input, out of the atmosphere. However I will stand by my statement that the sinks are not well understood.
I also don’t care that the amount of CO2 is going up slowly as there is no observational evidence that anything bad is happening as a result. It has gone up 30% or more so surely we’d know by now and is still well below values reached in geological history. There is evidence that vegetation is growing better. I’m not prepared to turn the world’s economies upside down over this.
Oh and Gregg’s plastic shelter really is a “greenhouse” effect, unlike what happens in the atmosphere.
Shows the depth of your ignorance AndrewW.
No Mike, all you’ve done is show not just ignorance but also arrogance.
The “greenhouse effect” is a term with a specific meaning, it refers to the atmospheric physics in which the energy of incoming visible light heats the surface, the warmed surface emits infrared light and this outgoing infrared light is absorbed by greenhouse gases, this causes the lower atmosphere to be warmer than it would otherwise be. This is not the same effect that we see in a greenhouse, which is the blocking of the convection process by the roof that would otherwise take heat away from the near the surface to higher into the atmosphere.
It is the same effect in both cases. Where do you think the phrase “greenhouse effect” came from? What is the first word of the phrase?
Think about it.
This is almost as silly as arguing that oral s3x isn’t s3x.
In reply to your earlier comment
“There are severe problems with ice cores when used to measure past CO2 levels. Leaf stomata give results at odds with the ice cores and generally show somewhat higher pre industrial CO2 levels, around 325 – 345 ppmv.”
What a joke. The reason CO2 readings are made in such isolated locations as Hawaii (from ocean breezes) and Antarctica is that measurements at ground level where there’s a lot of biological or industrial activity going on are meaningless as far as the atmosphere as a whole goes, in forests, and in cities it’s common to get CO2 readings anywhere between 200 and 800 ppm, the problem is similar to the UHI effect, local effects swamping the big picture, but far more severe.
In contrast the ice core record is beautifully clean in the tracking of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and unlike the stomatal results, the measurements from across the globe actually match each other, and do so for hundreds of thousands of years.
“About 18 months ago The Chiefio(E.M.Smith) did a post on his blog…”
Oh, well, if some blogger calling himself The Chiefio says it’s so, well, who could question that? /sarc.
“The natural sinks aren’t well understood.” A reasonable claim, but I think the weight of evidence though is that the oceans have increased their uptake of CO2 as a result of the 40% increase in partial pressure of that gas in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic emissions. You really have to make some highly speculative assumptions to claim that the rise in CO2 is not a result of anthropogenic emissions.
“During this interglacial there have been significant temperature changes….”
Yep, climate does vary as a result of natural forcings, I think the warming over the last fifty years though is beyond dispute (go look at Spencer’s site if you don’t believe me).
“I don’t want to see yet another calculation of the effect of increasing CO2 unless it also accounts for the simultaneous presence of water vapor and clouds and is backed by observational evidence.”
A strange statement, incorporating water vapor and clouds into the maths is always done, in fact the positive feed-back from increased water vapor is the most basic consideration, I understand that an increase in atmopheric water vapor of about 4% over the last few decades has been measured.
“…is your knowledge gained from a few pathetic AGW blogs like RealClimate run by that deranged crew at NASA GISS?”
This from a guy who uses “The Chiefio” as a source.
Rand, often in science things get mis-named that’s how it is. The effects are very different; in a greenhouse it’s warming through blocking convection, in the atmosphere it’s about the atmospheric absorption and re-radiating of outgoing IR. They’ve even gone and built greenhouses out of rock salt, which is IR transparent, to check if the blocking of IR radiation by the glass/plastic was a factor.
Wiki: “The “greenhouse effect” is named by analogy to greenhouses. The greenhouse effect and a real greenhouse are similar in that they both limit the rate of thermal energy flowing out of the system, but the mechanisms by which heat is retained are different.[25] A greenhouse works primarily by preventing absorbed heat from leaving the structure through convection, i.e. sensible heat transport. The greenhouse effect heats the earth because greenhouse gases absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit some of it back towards earth.”
Andrew W Says:
“As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.”
It is a matter of science if your scientific “data” is cooked, and incomplete (both purposefully and in the natural course of scientific exploration), and if you’re side is closed to alternative explanation for data we do agree upon.
You can’t even define what temperature you are looking for. Define “average” or “ideal”.
You cannot even reliably connect some ficticious average ideal temperature to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
And your side’s predictions have failed to materialize in your own specified time frame. This is the test of any scientific proposition..powerful predictive ability. This is the core of science.
And best of all, when “global warming” failed your side jumped to “climate change” which allows you point to ANY change, heat, cold, whatever…and scream humans are the cause.
Gregg, I think there are three sides to the debate; 1. those that are politically motivated to argue that there could be destructive changes beyond what the science supports 2. those that are politically motivated to argue against even the most basic evidence that increasing GH gases will cause some change, and 3. those of us who’re just sick of the Noddy’s in the first two groups who keep trying to use the science as a political football.
Look, face it: you guys who deny that humans are destroying the world are just Haters. You hate puppies, and happy children running in the grass, and ice cream, and soft blankets, and and and… you’re just haters! And racists!
Accept your Doom. (Which is to be Disapproved Of by the Andrew W’s of the world. Hey now, put down a towel before you use that razor on your wrists!)
Gregg, your 3:43 clearly places you in the second group, you attack the first group for doing what those in the first group keep doing: “you’re side is closed to alternative explanation for data we do agree upon.”
and then you go on to attack the science by suggesting science can’t work out an “average”temperature.
“You cannot even reliably connect some ficticious average ideal temperature to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.”
My side doesn’t claim there’s an “average ideal temperature”, personally I look at it as a rate of change issue.
Sorry: “you attack the first group for doing what those in the first group keep doing:”
Should have been
“you attack the first group for doing what those in the second group keep doing:”
Hi Andrea, slow day for you to huh?
Andrew:
P.s. Your very first comment, in the thread, to me was:
“All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect.”
Which is hardly a “matter of science”. So no running to the ivory tower with this:
“As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.”
I don’t see your point Gregg;
“All of this simply provides you with a self justification for rationalizing that increasing GHG’s doesn’t cause an increased GH effect.”
Translates to “I think your in group 2 in this debate, and;
“As the rest of your comment doesn’t address what I’ve said, or raise matters of science, there’s nothing for me to reply to.”
Means “the rest of your comment is a criticism of the group 1 position, since I’m not advocating CAGW, it’s not directed at claims I’m supporting.
Andrew, please.
I thought you only spoke to scientific matter?
“Gregg, your 3:43 clearly places you in the second group, you attack the first group for doing what those in the first group keep doing: “you’re side is closed to alternative explanation for data we do agree upon.” ”
On this you haven’t a clue, actually. This is the “well…welll..he did it too!”
“and then you go on to attack the science by suggesting science can’t work out an “average”temperature.”
Right. That’s the whole point. What is the earth’s temperature? how has it risen or fallen. All the live long day you say the earth’s temperature has gone up.
From what? Using what clean data? Using what complete data?
“My side doesn’t claim there’s an “average ideal temperature”, personally I look at it as a rate of change issue.”
You can’t specify a rate of change unless you can measure the values and figure out the rate of change. And change from what?
You guys cooked that data remember? Hockey stick graph – remember that one? The one where you left out a whole warming period of a couple of degrees C BEFORE SUV’s were created? Or the other data that East Anglia suppressed?
And you decry increased CO2 levels. Tell me does the ocean expel CO2 because the temperature rises? Or did the temperature rise bring on the CO2 release?
Your models are hopelessly incomplete and assumption of unknowns arbitrary. You state the rate of change as if you really knew it and then want trillions of dollars moved in reaction to that.
your side posits scientific unanimity where there was anything but, and manufactured bogus signatures to “prove” it.
I’ll quote Lindzen because he said it better than I could:
“If one considers the tropics, that conclusion is even more disturbing. There is ample evidence that the average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years, yet current models predict average warming of from two to four degrees centigrade even at the equator. It should be noted that for much of the Earth’s history, the atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come. I could, in fact, go on at great length listing the evidence for small responses to a doubling of carbon dioxide; there are space constraints, however. …..
The notion that complex climate “catastrophes” are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors. …
namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of “bait and switch” scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree. …
For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2….”
Andrea Harris Says:
“Look, face it: you guys who deny that humans are destroying the world are just Haters. You hate puppies, and happy children running in the grass, and ice cream, and soft blankets, and and and… you’re just haters! And racists!”
Don’t forget that we kick the canes out from old people and jam the wheels of their walkers.
Gregg: “What is the earth’s temperature?”
People on all sides of the debate have little difficulty in understanding how to determine the average temperature of the atmosphere at any given altitude, your difficulty in understanding this simple (in principle at least) matter is perplexing. There are several organizations that analyze the available data, and though they have slightly different methodologies, the end results are consistent with each other.
“You guys cooked that data remember?”
Really? I don’t remember being involved in cooking any data, perhaps you have me confused with someone else.
“I’ll quote Lindzen because he said it better than I could:”
Are you serious? Really? You mean after claiming that we are unable to measure the average temperature of the various layers in the atmosphere in recent times, you immediately go on to promote a claim by Lindzen that he has data that average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years? Seriously? Given that you don’t believe in global averages, how pray-tell, was this average determined?
In the remained of your Lindzen quote he makes various claims in an effort to resurrect his discredited iris effect theory. You also fire some of his stuff at me about CAGW, which leads me to conclude that you have some pretty basic comprehension problems. But, just for you I’ll try one more time: I’m not in the group that believes in CAGW.
Andrew W Says:
April 30th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
“In contrast the ice core record is beautifully clean in the tracking of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and unlike the stomatal results, the measurements from across the globe actually match each other, and do so for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Which tells us that a common process occurs to smooth out the record at each site. Is it more likely that there is no variation globally, or that diffusion of the gas bubbles in ice over a long expanse of time diverges to similar limits under similar circumstances? The ice core data is, in fact, very speculative, as we have no “control” sample with which to compare results.
“You really have to make some highly speculative assumptions to claim that the rise in CO2 is not a result of anthropogenic emissions.”
Quite the contrary, you have to make some highly speculative assumptions to claim that it is. The measured CO2 record is more than just a linear rise. There is substantial detail across the frequency spectrum. I counted dozens of very well defined integer and fractional harmonics in the data. You can do the same with the data on anthropogenic releases, and that data stream also shows dozens of harmonics. Here’s the kicker: they don’t overlap. The match between anthropogenic production of and measured CO2 is entirely superficial. They do not match in the fine detail, and this is very nearly impossible if the one is the result of the other.
Moreover, the measured CO2 trend is fairly deterministic. There is little indication of the “random-walk” like characteristic one would expect from a system governed by time constants as long as are needed by the anthropogenically driven accumulation hypothesis. The climate scientists are not feedback experts. They have ginned up models which produce the results they want to show. But, they do not understand such systems well enough to realize that the secondary characteristics which would have to be displayed by those systems being randomly driven by other inputs are not in evidence.
“…in fact the positive feed-back from increased water vapor is the most basic consideration…”
Indeed it is, because without it, none of the GCMs predict catastrophic temperature rise. The data, in fact, show clearly that the feedback is negative. This is clearly evident in the phase plane plots by Spencer et al. in which the encirclements of the origin are very clearly counterclockwise. Counterclockwise encirclements indicate a lagging phase, whereas positive feedback would create a leading phase. Again, the climate scientists do not understand phase characteristics of feedback systems. They imagine that, if the two variables track together, that indicates positive feedback, but that only indicates positive correlation. To diagnose feedback characteristics, you have to look at the phase relationships.
“Which tells us that a common process occurs to smooth out the record at each site. Is it more likely that there is no variation globally, or that diffusion of the gas bubbles in ice over a long expanse of time diverges to similar limits under similar circumstances?”
If you look at the ice core CO2 concentrations over the glacial-interglacial cycles, what stands out is the evidence against diffusion of gas bubbles, the variations in older ice are as clear as those in younger ice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
“Moreover, the measured CO2 trend is fairly deterministic. There is little indication of the “random-walk” like characteristic one would expect from a system governed by time constants as long as are needed by the anthropogenically driven accumulation hypothesis.”
If the CO2 rise was due to natural, rather than anthropogenic variability, we would, if anything, expect more of a “random-walk” characteristic to the changes in concentration. We know what the anthopogenic emissions are, we know this contribution has been steadily increasing, for the mechanism to be natural, and for that natural mechanism to be the cause now but not at other times would mean a mechanism with variablity, so the consistency of the CO2 rise argues AGAINST a natural mechanism. (obviously we’re talking about too short a period of recent history to be concerned with the mechanisms involved in the glacial-interglacial cycle).
“The data, in fact, show clearly that the feedback is negative. This is clearly evident in the phase plane plots by Spencer et al.”
Water vapor is indisputably positive, Spencer has put forward arguments that some tropical cloud feedback is negative, as far as I know the degree and nature of overall cloud feedback remains uncertain.
“Again, the climate scientists do not understand phase characteristics of feedback systems.”
Excuse me for not automatically accepting you as having greater wisdom than the scientists actually involved in the research.
“…what stands out is the evidence against diffusion of gas bubbles, the variations in older ice are as clear as those in younger ice.”
Define “older” and “younger”. Otherwise, this is meaningless.
“If the CO2 rise was due to natural, rather than anthropogenic variability, we would, if anything, expect more of a “random-walk” characteristic…”
That is incorrect. Also, you should always follow “if” with the conditional form of the verb “to be” (sorry, just one of my pet peeves).
“We know what the anthopogenic emissions are, we know this contribution has been steadily increasing…”
And, we know that they do not match in the fine detail (or, at least, I know it).
“…to be the cause now but not at other times…”
A statement of absolute faith in the ice core record, which I have already called into question. You are begging that question, and reality is rather tightfisted with its alms.
“Water vapor is indisputably positive.”
I was sloppy. The overall water vapor system including clouds is indisputably negative.
“Excuse me for not automatically accepting you as having greater wisdom than the scientists actually involved in the research.”
I urge you not to automatically accept anything from anyone, abdicating your capacity for rational thought. But, everyone has their specialty, and it is quite apparent that the foremost proponents for CAGW are not experts in feedback systems.
As Ed Koch was fond of saying, I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you. I advise you consult those whom you trust, look beyond the superficial, and have a lifeboat ready when the sinking of the ship becomes apparent to all.