It was entirely predictable that the denialists would hype up the glitch in the surface temperature record for last month. This opinion piece by Christopher Booker was picked up by Drudge, so the usual collection of global warming denialists have been fulminating about how this proves you can't trust the science. For example, at the Discovery Institute
But computer modeling is not pure science and at its best it is only as good as the information programed into it. That is true for wild claims made for computer models of evolution and it is true of climate modeling.
While all of this was predictable, it is still interesting to see exactly how Booker misrepresented what happened. Watch Booker spin:
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming.
Surreal? Some numbers ended up in the wrong column in a table. And the error was quickly detected and corrected. This should increase your confidence in the data, not raise a "huge question mark".
On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This is a fabrication. GISS made no such announcement.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
Grossly misleading. Just because there was some cold weather in some places, it does not follow that October was a cold month globally. In fact, and this is a fact that is mysteriously absent from Booker's piece, after correcting the error October was the fifth warmest October on record. All the error did was move it up four places.
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Another fabrication. Hansen made no such claim.
Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.
As someone who was in that audience, I can say that I was not startled, because the graph was accurate and had already appeared in the IPCC report. Nor did I notice anyone else there being startled.
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...and watch you spin back...
Ain't it lovely the way the denialists think that correcting errors is "spin?" It's as if they think inaccuracy is the norm -- er, which makes one worry a lot about any claim a denialist makes, if one is wise.
Wisdom is in too short supply these days.
The Discovery Institute?
Crank magnetism in action.
I guess this type of garbage will probably be circulating for a while such as in the Sunday Age (under "Turn off the alarm"):
He is, of course, alluding to the drop in the one month of January 2008 from the one month of January 2007 which has been corrupted in all sorts of ways including this one. I don't know where he got the claim for a 10 year CO2 life (presumably he means half-life time).
Ed Darrell:
> Ain't it lovely the way the denialists think that correcting errors is "spin?"
No, they don't "think" anything, they just want to ward off any discoveries of inactivist spin by shouting "Clinton did it! Clinton did it! Clinton did it!"
Almost a reflex action, if you will.
In the 17th century Galileo, aware that sound has a finite speed, hypothesized by analogy that light also has a finite speed. He stood on one hilltop with a lantern while a partner stood on another hill some distance away. Galileo's system was to hold a cloth to block his lantern, then swiftly move the cloth away. His partner would look for the lantern signal, then whip away the cloth in front of his own lantern. The time between whipping away his own lantern and seeing his partner's lantern would be the time for the round trip plus the time for reflex action.
After measuring the time lapse for one separation, his partner went to a hill much farther away. That longer time interval would equal the time for light to travel the longer distance plus the reflex time, which would be the same as for the shorter distance.
Galileo's plan worked in theory, but needless to say, error measurement in reaction time overwhelmed the measurement of lightspeed. I suspect those trying to measure global temperature change are having the same problems as Galileo.
Um...no, Alan.
Oh Alan
That was priceless. You should do stand up.
I think Tim and some regulars to this unintentionally entertaining blog should take advice from Dr Phil and learn to retreat with dignity. ;-)
Retreat huh? Well so long as the best the anti-AGW crowd can come up is crap like "average temperature has no meaning" or as Phil suggests above, that physicists don't know how to measure temperature, I don't yet feel that first year physics has been overcome.
I swear to God, you're almost as bad as those "evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics" loons. I find it quite depressing that people so clearly, and recalcitrantly ignorant of basic physics find their own opinions quite so convincing.
Interestingly enough, same blunder (October 2008) did not occur at Noaa-NCDC.
However, in the long run, the problem lies not so much with short notice Giss releases, but rather at GHCN from where NCDC, Giss, Hadley draw raw data for their separate temperatuture indexes histories. Scarcely populated areas such as Siberia, where a "hot spot" occurs frequently during the cold season, can artificially influence a whole area. Possible culprit according to wattsupwiththat: Leakage in community heating pipes.
Anyway, the latest curve fit at satellite RSS-MSU (1979-2008) shows about the same 30 year slope (1.6°/decade as compared to 1.7°C in September) - after a major revision of their data - as the surface network. UAH-MSU remains much lower, at 1.3°C/decade.
While you, Tim, are right to point out erros in newspapers, I think credit should be given to John Goetz who found the error at the Giss data release. (Giss is obviously understaffed in that area.)
AGWheretic - "I think Tim and some regulars to this unintentionally entertaining blog should take advice from Dr Phil and learn to retreat with dignity. ;-)"
I think Dr Phil would be better off talking to McIntyre about the hockey stick obsession that he seems to have. He would be right at home on Dr Phil's show as he often treats obsessive compulsives like those that hoard - perhaps McIntyre has this sort.
Yes I know do not feed the trolls - couldn't resist this one though.
climatepatrol writes:
The error was in data given to GISS by the NOAA.
David at Quark Soup has the best take on this issue, wrapping in the Galileo-like brilliance of Tony Watts.
Best,
D
I still think there is a good Onion headline in this episode of denialist fulmination - "Scientists Correct Error." It certainly is inspiring, watching the kooks foam at the mouth, distort the facts, and outright lie about this trivial mistake. Yawn.
Christopher Booker is a special, special man with special-special talents. If you think that his claims on climate change are bizarre, check out what he says about asbestos... My personal favourites are his assertion that white asbestos poses a "non-existent risk" to human health, and is "chemically identical to talcum powder" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381270/Christopher-Bookers-Notebook.html), but that it has been cruelly demonised as the result of a conspiracy involving the "French and Belgian" manufacturers of asbestos substitute products... (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1410696/Christopher-Bookers-Notebook.html). Damn those dastardly global-warming-believing, asbestos-demonising Continental Europeans!
...John P in a lather of some sort. Suggest a look at the latest Quadrant http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2008/10/illusions-of-climate-… and have a little lie down.
One wonders whether simply linking to a Kininmonth arty creates spittle-flecked screens from a commenter, or if that is just a standard by-product.
What say you, Ayrdale? Must one be a spilttle-flecker to be a denialist? Are there any that don't? Surely there's an indicator in here somewhere.
Best,
D
Excellent point D. Very enlightening...does you credit. Kinimonth comes with some credibility though doesn't he?
Quadrant doesn't.
Really ? Why not ? what's wrong with Quadrant ?....but that is really besides the point. Kininmonth presumably knows what he is talking about with regard to climate, and as a non-scientist I'm impressed with his Quadrant article. What about you Zarquon ? (and all you other boffins...)
Climate scientists who actively publish scientifically-peer-reviewed papers on climate science presumably know what they are talking about. Kininmonth is not one of these.
...oh dear. So the science is all settled, and any dissenters are mavericks. Loonies, spittle flecked deniers even. Mmmm. Sounds very unscientific. Insecure and narrow minded a little too. Well...rather than bankrupt our economy and destroy many jobs just yet, don't you think on going research into cloud formation, water vapour and solar influence such as this http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CLOUD-en.html should be considered ? Or is the case totally closed ? The danger so urgent that dissent is foolhardy ? Are you absolutely sure you're not mistaken?
Kininmonth's article? Not very impressed. It's not even internally consistent. For instance: He complains that models are not useful because the atmosphere-ocean system is too complex. Later he suggests that radiation balance estimates of the effects of CO2 increases are unreliable because observed change doesn't correlate better with CO2 change. Do you see the hypocrisy?
On a question of fact: we do in fact have observations of the global distribution of atmospheric aerosols. Has he not picked up a paper since the early 90's?
Models are not perfect, they come with a lot of caveats. I don't think they are as bad as Kininmonth asserts, but then I'm not a modeler. It's true that the atmosphere-ocean system is very complex, significantly non-linear, and not perfectly understood. But on the question of the net radiation balance result of large scale changes in atmospheric CO2 we do have a pretty good handle on that. As a result we know that the kind of changes we're making to the global system add a lot of heat to the system, and that's not disputable. I'm am not confident that some magical heretofore unnoticed mixing mechanism is going to make it all go away. Kininmonth is. You should make your own judgement on which opinion is more supported.
Ayrdale, I already [explained some of what is wrong with Kinimonth's piece](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/10/the_australians_war_on_science_…)
"don't you think on going research into cloud formation, water vapour and solar influence such as this http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CLOUD-en.html should be considered ? Or is the case totally closed ?"
Ha! Just another example of the AGW crowd demanding more fat grants for the big money to do their "research". What? He isn't? Oh, well never mind then.
Thank you for some well considered responses.Food for thought. However, may I in concluding my postings simply point out that academic debate aside, the bottom line is whether climate change will or will not produce cataclysm. I and millions of others find Al Gore's scenarios hard to believe and not worthy of panic or lifestyle sacrifice...the debate will go on.
Ayrdale, whether AGW produces "cataclysm" rather depends on your definition of cataclysm. A one metre rise in sea level, quite possible within a century if ice melting accelerates, would displace (IIRC) about 100 million people. Is that cataclysmic enough for you?
And what's wrong with Quadrant: It regularly flirts with HIV/AIDS denial (e.g. here, <"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6459/is_/ai_n29362223">here and here (third party links because the Quadrant archives are down), and go as close to evolution denial as it can without getting laughed out of Australia. It is edited by a guy who claims that no aboriginal children were taken from their parents and that very few aborigines were killed by european settlers. If Windschuttle had said the things about historical killing of Jews that he has said about killings of aborigines, there would be uproar; but because the aborigines didn't keep written records (and are, you know, black, and drug using, and pedophiles; the Australian told me so - and they are completely to blame for this, because there is no historical injustice that destroyed their family structures, economy and culture, Windschuttle will tell you), he gets away with it. Any "scientific" piece printed in their pages should be treated with extreme skepticism, given the company it is keeping.
Interestingly, the arguments Quadrant prints for HIV/AIDS denial, evolution denial, greenhouse denial, aboriginal holocaust denial, etc are all the same: the fact that so many experts in the field agree on the facts means that there must be a vast conspiracy at taxpayers' expense to which they are all beholden, probably orchestrated by sinister marxists (a sort of right-wing Chomskyism, if you will). The idea that experts might be agreeing because there is an independent reality that they are all perceiving never enters Windschuttle's head. It's a sad, slow, decaying death of a cold war icon of high-culture anticommunism.
Ayrdale.
I and a number of other commenters here have repeated spoken of the sensitivity of the biosphere and its ecosystem components and services to climatic and non-climatic pressures. The impacts usually do not occur at a rate that is detectable to the average lay person in his/her day-to-day travels, but they are certainly able to affect these same people and their communities over the span of a generation or two.
Such climatic and non-climatic changes have been occurring for decades now, and if they have not had as much impact upon humanity as they had the potential to so do, it is because we have been using millions of years of accumulated fossil energy, and extraordinary amounts of co-opted biospheric services, to patch the holes in our leaky boat. As is common to many denialists, and to many unfettered-market enthusiasts in general, you seem to have no significant understanding of humanity's relationship to the rest of the biosphere.
Al Gore's scenarios, whilst probably not to be seen in the lifetimes of many who are currently alive, are nevertheless entirely posssible in the longer term even with the climatic momentum that is currently in train, let alone with the impetus which humanity seems determined continue to push upon the atmosphere. One of the logical fallacies of thinking that many deniers seem to fall victim to is that the 'best guesses' for change that might occur by certain arbitrary and 'distant' time landmarks, derived by the body of conservative climate science, are actually end-points. They are not, and whether there is, say, 10cm or 100cm or 1000cm of sea-level rise likely to occur by 2100, what the subsequent plateau is going to be is more to the point. In this context it is not how quickly we warm the planet that is important for future generations, but what the temperature plateau is. The rate of warming is of more interest to current generations - although this in itself should concern more people than it seems to...
And it is the rate of warming that concerns climate scientists. The fact that climate changes over geological time is a strawman: most changes occur at rates that are orders of magnitude slower than we are presently initiating, and where changes might have occurred faster in the geological past they have indeed been responsible for extinctions that would certainly have been 'cataclysmic' for the affected species.
Most deniers (and indeed most people in general) are sufficiently careful of their childrens' futures that they wouldn't condone their childrens' futures' endangerment from things such as compromise of 'lifestyle' (spare me...) or, more importantly, compromise of capacity for health and safety. And most of these same deniers would extend the same concern to their grandchildrens' and probably to great-grandchildrens' futures. But start to speak of 500 years down the track, and what impact that actions we take now will have after this time (or longer) and their sense of responsibility starts to wobble.
I fail to see how our responsibility does diminish in this context, and by what algorithm such diminishment might be determined, but if there are any reading this who think that it's not our problem how we might screw up the planet for as yet unborn generations I'd be interested to hear why.
Oh, and with respect to the bio at the end of Kininmonth's torture of the science in Quadrant:
it is important to remember that AEF is a (Socratic?) ironically-named astroturf lobby group with none other than the dizzy Jennifer Marohasy at the helm. Not exactly the place for a credible scientific discourse - but of course, all that the parent IPA cares about is the public perception of such....
In fact, the 'conference' should be a veritable Möbius strip of scientific distortion - although given the number of welded distortions that will manifest perhaps a Klien bottle is a more appropriate vessel with which to 'contain' the nutters.
The trouble is, of course, you can never get them completely 'in' the bottle...
Erm, seems that the AEF yackfest is past-tense now, having occured a month ago. Seems I missed all of the excitement whilst I was away...
Should we care what they had to say?
I fail to see how our responsibility does diminish in this context, and by what algorithm such diminishment might be determined, but if there are any reading this who think that it's not our problem how we might screw up the planet for as yet unborn generations I'd be interested to hear why.
That and the preceeding was enjoyable to read. Thank you.
Not persuasive to the environment-haturz though. Or the opera crowd (me me meeeeee!). Or the small but significant minority whose self-identity is tied to denying that humanity should change its ways.
Sad but true. These people are outnumbered, though.
Best,
D
friggin' laptop. That's me me meeee! above.
D
Ayrdale, who apparently has learning ability matching that of his namesake, posts:
Yeah, pretty much.
It's narrow-minded to point out that crackpots are crackpots? Open-mindedness should end where your brains start to fall out.
Right-wing scare tactics. Mitigating CO2 effects is neither going to bankrupt our economy nor destroy many jobs. It is likely to help our economy and create jobs, especially as we move from more capital-intensive sources of energy (fossil fuel, nuclear) to more labor-intensive sources (e.g. windmills).
Who said it isn't being considered? It has been considered for a long time. But sorry, cosmic rays don't explain global warming. Cosmic ray infall has shown no trend in the last 50 years, so it can't explain the sharp upturn in global warming of the last 30.
No, the evidence is so clear that dissent is foolhardy. At this point it's kind of like dissenting on relativity, or evolution.
That greenhouse gases emitted by human technology are causing global warming? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. And I'll go on being sure until presented with good evidence that I'm wrong.
More on Booker, from those who missed it the first time around.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/09/23/the-patron-saint-of-charlata…
Why do the denialists think that just because global warming may be a 'natural' cycle, that it won't be a serious problem?
There are natural cycles to wildfires (lightning caused) and there are also fires that are human caused - it doesn't matter which one starts the conflagration, either of them can burn down Los Angeles. Since we can't control the natural wildfires (or the natural solar warming) we should at least try to put a damper on all the human caused events that we can.
It's a natural cycle for grand civilizations to fall due to natural climate change, so if nature turns up the heat and trumps our efforts, you had better be taking refuge in a cave somewhere.
Maybe we could pass statutes that put "global warming denialists" into the same category as "Holocaust deniers" and jail them in order to silence them. Now, that would be real science, wouldn't it? I find it particularly amusing that the writer of this obviously biased blog describes himself as a computer "scientist".
Another meme, another HtTtACS entry...
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/11/october-2008-another-phon…
> Maybe we could pass statutes
Maybe you could wait for someone to actually try to pass such statutes before whining about them.
Also, it's not a good idea to whine about Gore's "private jets" before they actually exist.
It took NASA over one year to appologize to the world for suggesting the loss of Arctic sea ice in 2007 was due to global warming/CO2. It was well known that the "LOSS" was due to wind blowing the sea ice into the North Atlantic.
GISS just can't get things right. They are just sloppy.
When the data does not fit the theory, you don't ignore the data like NASA does. (Have they figured out how to prevent suttle damage?) We are supposed to be close to 1 degree C above a base line but we are about 10 % of that.
The main driver, according to warmists is the positive feedback coming from H2O but they ignore the negative feedback parts of the equation. More water vapour means more clouds, means more reflected sunlight and more cooling rainfall.
The natural cycles that have been driving climate change are the Pacific and Atlantic cycles. We have right now a cool North Pacific and warm North Atlantic. What will happen when the North Atlantic goes into it's cool phase?
It took NASA over one year to appologize to the world for suggesting the loss of Arctic sea ice in 2007 was due to global warming/CO2. It was well known that the "LOSS" was due to wind blowing the sea ice into the North Atlantic. GISS just can't get things right.
this is complete nonsense.
the arctic sea ice trend (and that is the important thing) definitely is not caused by wind.
hard facts hurt, eh?
Link or it didn't happen.
Kent: please also link to the NASA apology while you're getting the link to your wind story.
"the negative feedback parts of the equation........more cooling rainfall" - Kent
Thank god we have such scientific geniuses to set us straight.
This is just too easy to let it go:
It took NASA over one year to appologize
There is no such apology, because none was necessary.
to the world for suggesting the loss of Arctic sea ice in 2007 was due to global warming/CO2.
Read the friggin' literature - it WAS due to warming, with other contributing factors.
It was well known that the "LOSS"
Why scare quotes? There was in fact a massive increase in summer ice loss in 2007.
was due to wind blowing the sea ice into the North Atlantic
Wind was one of several contributing factors, along with a massive increase in thinner new ice, which is more mobile and easier to melt, along with higher temperatures which caused increased melt in situ. The wind itself may have been influenced by CO2 induced warming, although it is impossible to conclusively attribute it. Read the friggin literature - or at least, don't lie about what it says, when many of us here HAVE read the literature.
GISS just can't get things right. They are just sloppy.
So far, you haven't given one real example of GISS getting anything wrong - and in fact, YOU have been wrong not just in every sentence, but in every clause of each and every sentence so far.
When the data does not fit the theory, you don't ignore the data like NASA does. Where have they ignored data? Please be specific.
(Have they figured out how to prevent suttle damage?) I don't know - what does the DATA say? You know, the data that NASA is looking at to understand the problem?
What base line? Be specific.
but we are about 10 % of that
Really? What base line are you using, that we are only 0.1C above it?
The main driver, according to warmists is the positive feedback coming from H2O
Yea!!! Something almost close to correct!! Not really correct, but at least in the ball park - we can call his use of the phrase 'main driver' sloppy wording, and ignore the 'warmist' tripe, and move on.
but they ignore the negative feedback parts of the equation.
They ignore it by publishing all those papers on water vapor and cloud dynamics, and working to incorporate them more accurately into the models? That kind of ignoring?
More water vapour means more clouds,
Or not - the increase is in absolute humidity, clouds are largely creatures of relative humidity, and relative humidity is remaining essentialy flat. But, perhaps there will be an increase. The scientists are still working on understanding this. But somehow you 'know the truth' even in the absence of compelling data? Hmmm...
means more reflected sunlight
Depending on the kind of clouds and the altitude of the clouds, it can elad to either a net increase or a net decrease in albedo, and there either warming or cooling, and the atmospheric scientists are still working to understand those details - but those kind of details and the actual uncertainty ranges are only important to thsoe who actually care about accuracy. Based on your extraordinary work so far in this rant, that certainly is not you.
and more cooling rainfall.
Care to outline for us how rainfall causes a net cooling of the atmosphere?
The natural cycles that have been driving climate change
Based on what kinds of evidence, evidence more compelling to you than the evidence for CO2 induced warming?
are the Pacific and Atlantic cycles.
Really? Funny how the period from the largest El Nino we've seen, to the recent major La Nina - a major net cooling in Pacific surface temperatures, overall - coincides with a flat to slight increase in global temperatures.
We have right now a cool North Pacific and warm North Atlantic. What will happen when the North Atlantic goes into it's cool phase?
Gee, finishing on a meaningless rhetorical question. Quel surprise.
Gah - I feel unclean now.
Tell us kent, when water vapour is transformed into rain, is heat generated or absorbed by the water involved?
well slag my keyholes:
"Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
the previous does not necessarily represent the views of me except that i found it via google.
Sorry learned sirs/and etc...couldn't stay away, enjoying reading this thread. (Careful putting those pointed pencils behind your ears people...) This spittle flecked denier would also like your opinion on the ARGO project. I've heard (but could of course be tragically and foolishly mistaken) that its results don't show a conclusive warming trend...
Ayrdale,
There is an interesting and well written article here from NASA's Earth Observatory about the ARGO buoys, their inconsistency with other data, and how that was resolved.
Now, a question for you. I would like your opinion on the Bush White House preventing the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which would have given us a whole new source of high-quality data for temperatures across the whole planet. Start here.
Since you seem well informed on the arguments advanced by spittle-flecked deniers, perhaps you could start a campaign on various similarly-flecked websites for the new president to launch the thing and prove global warming isn't happening. Since that's what it would say, right?
PS and why do you post from a blog that hasn't been updated since 2004?
Thank you James for your prompt reply to my post re ARGO and link to the Nasa paper. I will digest it in due course. Sorry can't answer your question re President Bush, but are you suggesting that he colluded with others to hide the real truth ? A conspiracy ?...well it's possible I guess...and a blog that hasn't been updated ?. No. please check again at
http://mickysmuses.blogspot.com
...very sorry, 1000 apologies etc. Saw the mistake as I signed that last posting off...an e in Micky. What a clown, and yes I said it...
Ayrdale:
Apparently some people think there's a conspiracy amongst climate scientists to hide the real truth about global warming. Of course, you wouldn't give any credibility to anyone who suggested that, would you?
...It's a sad fact that to accept AGW you have to swallow a huge dead rat...namely that AGW is a cause vociferously argued for with hysterical undertones by greenpeace. Credibility therefore is a major issue...Now quite what the arch fiend Dubya did or didn't order is besides the point. Objective science a la Karl Popper is the only issue; particularly on this blog. Leave it up to my blog to air the conspiracy theories. Objectivity with regard to troposphere and ocean temperature changes...that's what we need to know...and of course the IPPC are still in the dark about the role of clouds, water vapour and solar influence. Sooo, to allege the science is settled, the debate is over, and to support that viewpoint seems to me as a layman rather premature and unscientific...
...again James H. thank you for the link to the NASA paper re Argo. Its last 3 paragraphs suggest a degree of uncertainty to me...If there is a moral to this story, it's that when it comes to understanding the climate system, it's hard to imagine too much redundancy. Every scientist involved in these studies says the same thing: to understand and predict our climate and how it is going to change, we need it all.
We need multiple, independent, overlapping sets of observations of climate processes from space and from the Earth's surface so that we can create long-term climate records--and have confidence that they are accurate. We need theories about how the parts of the Earth system are related to each other so that we can make sense of observations. And we need models to help us see into the future.
"Models are not perfect," says Syd Levitus. "Data are not perfect. Theory isn't perfect. We shouldn't expect them to be. It's the combination of models, data, and theory that lead to improvements in our science, in our understanding of phenomena."
Greenpeace's conservation strategy for fishery resources is highly dependent on population ecology, which has evolution as its foundation.
Therefore, credibility is a major issue regarding evolution.
Also, since they own ships that sail 'round and 'round all over the world, they probably know that the world is not flat, since the spherical trigonmetry which underlies navigation wouldn't be necessary if it were. Therefore observational data supporting a round(ish) earth is lacking in credibility.
Ayrdale writes:
Why? The fact that a fringe environmentalist group endorses something scientists are saying means it's wrong? What are you talking about?
You're almost right about clouds. The role of water vapor and the sun are pretty well understood, thanks.
That's what makes you a layman and not a scientist. Or at least, an uninformed layman. There are laymen who've made a serious effort to understand the science, but that sure ain't you.
Yay, kent's back! kent: never not funny. Hey kent, if the damage is so suttle, why would it be an issue? Shouldn't they be more concerned with the mujer damage?
Thanks Barton,re my point about clouds, water vapour and the sun. Won't it be reassuring for all when the science is finally settled ? Look, I know I'm trespassing on your site, and I'm sure most of your colleagues are nice people, have families, pets and want to be liked...but some of you sure do come across as arrogant prats. Spelling's not too hot either, see above...
That is right pough, I am back but just to see wht the other half is up to. Regarding the shuttle. Why is it that NASA has to use the Canadarm to check for ice damage after every launch? If they had fixed the problem they wouldn't have to.
Chris, you wrote, "Tell us kent, when water vapour is transformed into rain, is heat generated or absorbed by the water involved?
Now that is a good question but there is more than one answer. We should be looking at the whole cycle. Water vapour, super saturated air, water droplet, ice/snow/rain, temperature of the air/H2O mix, etc.
I am looking into it will take some time since even the UN IPCC does not have an answer and they get the big bucks for this.
Heh. That's not a bad description of my first impression of you, actually. I was thinking "Evelyn Spyro Throckmorton", but that'll do.
That reads oddly with a comma and the ellipses don't seem to make much sense, either. If you want the second part to read like an aside instead of a second sentence, maybe try parentheses. For example:
Spelling's not too hot, either (see above).
(or)
Spelling's not too hot, either. (see above)
By the way, if you're making fun of kent's spelling, you should know he's on your team. If you were making fun of mine, that's irony. I think. Hold on; lemme consult Alanis... (Thus providing you with a better use of ellipses as well as another option for putting two ideas together! Semicolons FTW!)
Oh dear...
The thermodynamics of moist air are complicated sure. But it is still reasonably well understood. For example, crack open an undergraduate meteorology textbook. I'm looking at "The Dynamics of Atmospheric Motion" by Dutton (a true classic in the field), which includes an entire chapter devoted to moist theromdynamics. I've also got a far more advanced textbook on my shelf ("Storm and Cloud Dynamics" by Cotton and Anthes... good luck finding a copy) where clouds and water vapour are dealt with in excruciating detail.
Most of our theories regarding atmospheric motion in the tropics are based on an understanding of moist atmosphere theormodynamics (for example, onset and break down of the monsoon). Ditto our understanding of thunderstorm mechanics.
So before spouting off about how we "don't understand clouds/water vapour/", it might be reasonable to actually try reading some of the literature to see what we do and don't understand.
Oh, and just for the record, our knowledge of the dynamics of water vapour in the atmosphere does not change the fact that CO2 and Methane are GHGs.
Ayrdale, if you're genuinely devoted to Karl Popper, then it shouldn't matter a dead rats arse whether AGW is "vociferously advocated for", or against, by Greenpeace, the ghost of Mao Zedong and the American Nazi Party. If the biggest fool in the world says that the sun will rise tomorrow, he's probably right. What matters is the data.
Certainly there is uncertainty. That's why the IPCC's prediction of warming from a doubling of CO2 is 3 degrees +/- 1.5 degrees. That's a big range of uncertainty. To reduce it, we need, as you say, more data, better models, and multiple semi-redundant sources. But attacks on climate science, climate scientists, science budgets, etc, increase uncertainty by forcing scientists to spend more time covering their political butts than gathering the data - of which process, the DSCO is a classic example. A project that could dramatically reduce our uncertainty is sitting on the shelf, costing money, because the Republican party decided to turn it into a political football. (btw, I don't consider that a decision openly made by a legitimate wielder of power can be a "conspiracy". What it is, is abuse of power for political ends in order to hide awkward facts. Governments do it all the time).
Furthermore, the process of narrowing the uncertainty is of a completely different order than questioning the existence of the phenomenon, which only serves to delay action. Even a 1.5 degree average warming is not going to be easy to adjust to.
Kent says, "Now that is a good question but there is more than one answer."
Uh, no. Although I'm not an atmospheric physicist, and so don't know the answer, I'm prepared to bet that there is only one (correct) answer to this question, or any other question of fact.
Is Kent some weird kind of PoMo RWDB, or something?
Chris C.
Oh, and just for the record, our knowledge of the dynamics of water vapour in the atmosphere does not change the fact that CO2 and Methane are GHGs.
The only reason CO2 is a GHG is because they pump it in to increase yield. I don't think that pumping methane in would be a good idea.
You wrote, "So before spouting off about how we "don't understand clouds/water vapour/", it might be reasonable to actually try reading some of the literature to see what we do and don't understand."
I have read lots and the only conclusion I can come to is that there is more we don't know than what we do know.
You quote me wrongly, it is the UN IPCC that does not understand the H2O equation.The same guys who use positve feedback to prove the AGW theory when the feedback is in reality negative.
Water vapour contributes to warming but as it rises it cools. If it cools below 0C it becomes ice/snow and we all know how ice reflects sunlight back into space cooling the atmosphere.
While the condensation of water vapour may release heat as it condenses, the opposite happens when minus 30c snow/ice falls from the sky.Ever notice how it cools off when it rains? Then warms up as the sun comes out and all that water vapour absorbs the IR radiation?
If anyone thinks we know lots, just compare what we know now with what we knew ten years ago and imagine what we will know ten years from now.
As for my speculation about the switching of the North Atlantic to it's cool phase.
The minimal area of Arctic sea ice in 2007 just happened to happen at the same time that the PDO switched to it's cold phase. It might be of interest to those who focus on CO2 as the cause of the melt, that all that ice that entered the North Atlantic could have had some effect, such as the cool rainy weather in the UK. When multi-year ice melts it cools the water it is in and since it is fresh water it tends to want to stay on the surface, cooling the air above it. Cooling air causes water to be squeezed out in the form of dew,fog, or rain and that is what the UK has been getting big time. Almost everytime I check on google earth the UK is covered in white and green.
"Ever notice how it cools off when it rains? Then warms up as the sun comes out and all that water vapour absorbs the IR radiation" - kent
Move over Galileo!!
Kent said:
The fact is Kent that there is one simple answer. And it is that water vapour releases energy as heat when it condenses into rain.
There's no mystery or convolution about this - even our favourite electronic smart-arse has something
to say about this.
Rain appears 'cooling' when it contacts human skin because it is at a lower temperature than a living human body, and it pilfers some of that body heat to warm and eventually to evaporate the liquid phase of the rain's constituent water.
Rain's temperature relative to the environment in which it falls is a completely different matter to the anthropocentric 'cooling' with which you are so enamoured. If you are ever going to smarten up your contorted grasp of basic climate science you will need to consider issues such as the scale of the time of residence that water spends in its various phases (compared with other scales of time applicable to phenomena that are pertinent to the issue of climate change), and how the actual temporal and spatial distributions of heat, mediated through phase changes of water, relate to the overall global heat budget.
Of course, according to the denialists on blogs such as Marohasy's irony factory, there is no such thing as temperature anyway, especially global average temperature, because there is no heat equilibrium in the planet's systems. If you subscribe to this semantic knot-tying I suppose you could ostrich the whole issue of temperature out of existence, but then you would have trouble trying to prove your point that warming isn't occurring, because you will have just magicked your reference parameter out of existence...
Or you could try to get a grasp of the idea of representation, and of the fact that where such might have biases, systematic biases do not necessarily render representations invalid. Oh, and you might find that calculus can be pretty handy in this area too. Appeals to God are not.
I ache for the denialists to write their own treatise on the thermodynamics of temperature and climate, because I reckon it would blow the over-unity energy/perpetual-motion machine crowd out of the water/melted ice/condensed vapour.
Eureka! Rain is the cause of coolth!
re kent at 64:
Someone please tell me this is a parody? Please?
"The only reason CO2 is a GHG is because they pump it in to increase yield."
This has to be parody...
kent:
Not to that question. Perhaps I should have given a hint. Try googling heat of vaporization of water.
..and Argos should provide the definitive answer...
Chris, you have your clue already. He hasn't had a physics class. Or a natural science class that would depend on knowing the answer.
Best,
D
Kent,
There is very little I can post in reply, except plead with you to please stop embarrassing yourself. While you may have read lots, it is plain to see that you've understood little of it.
The radiative effects of water and glaciated clouds are difficult to quantify... sure. They do reflect incoming shortwave radiation. They also act to reflect and absorb outgoing long wave radiation... thus causing temperature rises. Really this is pretty simple Beer's law stuff. Cloud feedback may be either negative or positive. Ask yourself, why is it that clear nights (say over a desert) are cool, where as cloudy nights are in general warmer? Have a play with Modtran:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/cgimodels/radiation.html
You also seem really confused about the response of water vapour in the atmosphere to increasing temperatures. A simple, yet pretty good approximation, is that relative humidity (RH) stays constant in the atmosphere under a perturbation to temperatures. This can result in greater amounts of water vapour being in the atmosphere, but no change in level of saturation. This is the water vapour feerdback effect.
_Melting_ or sublimating snow will absorb heat from its environs. The same amount of heat it took from the atmosphere when it condensed/froze/deposed. Look up latent heat. It's first year thermodynamics.
You rant about the PDO is not even wrong. Unless of course you're describing the motion of oceans on another planet, 'cause what you've written is entirely unrelated to what happens on Earth.
The minimal area of Arctic sea ice in 2007 just happened to happen at the same time that the PDO switched to it's cold phase. It might be of interest to those who focus on CO2 as the cause of the melt, that all that ice that entered the North Atlantic could have had some effect, such as the cool rainy weather in the UK. When multi-year ice melts it cools the water it is in and since it is fresh water it tends to want to stay on the surface, cooling the air above it. Cooling air causes water to be squeezed out in the form of dew,fog, or rain and that is what the UK has been getting big time. Almost everytime I check on google earth the UK is covered in white and green.
finally i have an explanation for many a night, spent walking through british rain in the year 2000:
it was obviously caused by melting sea ice in 2007.
kent might want to start his learning process with a minor, but quite important discovery:
"cause BEFORE effect"
Ayrdale, in the US, vapor is spelled "V-A-P-O-R," not V-A-P-O-U-R. For that matter, in both the US and the Commonwealth countries, the name of the dog breed is spelled "Airedale."
kent writes:
No, the only reason CO2 is a GHG is that it absorbs infrared light much better than visual. Are you sure you're clear on what a "greenhouse gas" is?
lmost everytime I check on google earth the UK is covered in white and green.
oh, and going even further back, i finally remembered the song that your post placed spinning in my brain.
"green and grey" (new model army)..
from the wonderfull album "Thunder and consolidation", published in 1989..
sorry, "Thunder and consolation" :)
ChrisC. It is you who should be feeling embarrassed. You wrote;
"Melting or sublimating snow will absorb heat from its environs. The same amount of heat it took from the atmosphere when it condensed/froze/deposed. Look up latent heat. It's first year thermodynamics.
I was not aware that when water vapour condenses or turns into ice it takes heat from the atmosphere. If it did it would cause a cascade effect where the formation of a single crystal of ice would suck heat from it's surrounding water causing it to freeze...not!
Bernard J. wrote;
"The fact is Kent that there is one simple answer. And it is that water vapour releases energy as heat when it condenses into rain.
Simple is not an answer unless you are trying to be simplistic. In a Super saturated condition, water vapour can phase shift into water/ice without the release of energy.
Barton you are wrong about the spelling of vapour. It is vapor in the U.S.A. but here in Canada it is vapour. I am fully aware of what warmists call greenhouse gases as well as the actions of such in the atmosphere.
PS Why is it that so called experts keep telling us that CO2 is the main greenhouse gas??
kent writes:
Canada is a Commonwealth country, kent.
Because it's the main one we're altering and have some control over. Water vapor isn't changing very much except by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, and that provides the biggest feedback to CO2 warming. CO2 is a forcing, H2O is a feedback.
The main reason for this is that a pulse of CO2 stays in the air 200 years, on average, whereas a pulse of H2O stays in the atmosphere nine days. We could double water vapor tomorrow and almost all the extra would be gone in a month.
Barton they call CO2 the main greenhouse gas because they are dishonest not because it is the one we are altering and have some control over. We are pumping huge amounts of H2O into the atmosphere to grow agricultural products. We could ban the use of irrigation, which has increased dramatically since the 1940s, and reduce the human based increase of H2O..the major greenhouse gas.
Most studies say CO2 stays in the atmosphere for about 10 years not 200.
Agriculture pumps a lot of water vapour into the atmosphere. If I subscribe to the warmist theory, pumping H2O into the atmosphere will warm the atmosphere, thus warming the oceans,thus evapourating more H2O,thus warming the atmosphere even more.(It is what you say will happen with more CO2)
The real question that needs to be answered is how much energy is left for H2O/CO2 to absorb.
P.S. How does air temperature effect CO2's ability to absorb IR radiation as that temperature gets down around minus 30C?
kent:
What an incredibly ignorant person.
I can't believe I'm responding...
Perhaps I wasn't clear in my first response (in my defence I was very tired). When water vapour condenses is RELEASES heat (called the Latent heat of condensation, written L_c). When liquid water freezes, or vapour deposes (gas -> solid) it RELEASES heat. This is due to the fact that a solid state of a material is at lower energy state than a liquid state or gaseous state, resulting in a exothermic reaction.
The opposite effect occurs when snow melts to water, or water evaporates to vapour. However, the cycle is neutral. The amount of heat added to the environment by vapour condensation is equal to the amount of heat absorbed from the environment when it evaporates ie:
L_gas->liquid = L_liquid->gas
How? You've changed phase, therefore you've changed the entropy of the system. Both first and second laws of thermodyanimcs would state that what you've described is impossible. If you want to make claims like that you'd better have some really good evidence.
As an aside, I'm pretty sure that super saturation doesn't mean what you think it means. In fact, in a super saturated atmosphere, the free energy barrier generally cannot be breched and condensation/deposition will not occur.
ChricC... I cannot believe you have to explain this.. after all isn't it obvious?
Simple stuff.. matter that cools put off heat.. or else they warm up... matter that warms absorb heat.. or else they cool. Can't believe the guy does not get it.
ChrisC. When asked the question about energy, water vapour and rain, I looked into it wondering what happens when 100% humidity air cools below 0C.
What I found was that.... and maybe I should have wrote super cooled instead of super saturated, because the the energy level of the vapour is less than that of water or ice. Which allows water vapour to turn to ice without releasing energy. Personally ChrisC I seldom use the word "impossible". While magic might seem impossible it is because we don't understand the trick.
P.S. You may not believe you responded but thanks just the same, and thanks for the manner of your response.. no spittle at all, as it should be.
kent:
This person is incredibly, incredibly ignorant.
jonno:
Neither can I.
Chris O'Neill you are such an example of why we are told not to throw pearls before swine. I only get labeled ignorant on this blog site because some, but not all by any means are like you, intolerant. Cheers to all those who aren't.
kent:
It wouldn't have anything to do with you actually being ignorant would it, kent? I could have said at the same time that you were also arrogant but it's very hard to get through to you even just telling you one thing at a time. Being ignorant on its own is not a problem but you are ignorant and arrogant about it.
kent writes:
kent, did you read what I wrote? Water vapor doesn't stay in the air. It's controlled by ambient temperature. "We could double water vapor tomorrow" and the excess would be gone in a few weeks.
An individual molecule of CO2 stays in the air about five years. But a pulse of CO2 in large quantities stays for about 200 years. Do you understand how the behavior of many molecules can be different from the behavior of one?
tolerance of ignorance is not a good thing, particularly when said ignorance wishes to be contagious.