Matthew England will talk about climate models this Sunday 23rd August in the Powerhouse Museum as part of the Ultimo Science Festival. The press release says:
Climate modeller challenges skeptics
With the Government's emissions trading legislation now delayed, one of Australia's leading climate scientists, UNSW Professor Matthew England has thrown down the gauntlet to climate skeptics to update their thinking.
"Those that deny basic climate science question climate modelling and fundamental climate physics. But each of their arguments is wrong, outdated, or irrelevant. Most of their claims have long been refuted by the scientific community, the national academies, and so on. Others need no refuting: they fly in the face of basic geophysical measurements, or they are so appallingly wrong they go against simple high-school physics,'' England says.
The award-winning oceanographer, who is co-director of UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre, will discuss the whys and wherefores of climate modelling and provide the most up-to-date climate predictions out to the year 2100 (since the IPCC report of 2007), at the Ultimo Science Festival on Sunday.
"This talk will show the step by step of how the models work, how they have evolved over the past 50 years, where they can be trusted, and what their uncertainties are. I will also address many of the skeptics' claims and show why they are wrong," England says.
But the latest research is not a pretty prediction, according to England.
"We need a fairly dramatic change in the way we power this planet, away from the old carbon-intensive technologies and into a new era of clean energy. We need to do this very quickly to give us any chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming.
"Alarmingly, even at that level of warming we will lose most of the world's coral reefs and around 20 to 30 per cent of species will face potential extinction. The Greenland ice sheet is likely to disintegrate completely if we warm in excess of 2.5 degrees C, that's a seven-metre sealevel rise" he says.
England says we have already emitted half the greenhouse gases we can if we are to have a reasonable chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming.
"Every year that there is inaction, this locks in a greater level of climate change. Climate change is now unavoidable, but we can determine, to some extent, what level of change we are prepared to commit to," says England. "If we care about minimising the impact on heat extremes, bushfires, human health, our ecosystems and our capacity to produce food and have a secure freshwater supply, greenhouse gas emissions need to peak in the next decade and then decline rapidly."
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Good on him. Good on you, Tim, for publicising the event. Now give some evidence, even a little tid-bit, that your blog or any other has ever made any difference to people with political influence.
I have no idea what it would take for Senator Fielding or the troglodytes of the National Party or the Republicans in the USA to get it, to understand what is happening. Some of them don't even know that the earth orbits the sun, instead of vice-versa.
I am a scientist by training, a breed famously inept at dealing with politicians. I just hope that there are enough people who both understand the juggernaut rumbling towards us and who have some political clout. I also doubt that there are.
I live in a region that is going to be particularly hard hit by climate change. When I retire, which is soon, I am going to emigrate to a place that my research suggests will be much less severely affected. Wish me luck.
>Now give some evidence, even a little tid-bit, that your blog or any other has ever made any difference to people with political influence.
Even when there is broad political acceptance (the UK is supposed to be a 'leader'), the UK Treasury is largely sceptic and controls the money. You also have closet sceptics like Peter Mandelson that give out money for Brown jobs such as car manufacturers, Airbus etc. and withhold money from Green jobs in renewables.
OK Tim,
Good idea by Englands (I didn't know there was an Ultimo science festival, is it based around the UTS campus?).
However I would caution him to make sure he spikes the deniers guns at the presentation by emphasising that models are just part of the mix.
Your headline is misleading. He is not issuing a challenge to the skeptics; heâs just conducting a talk. Big deal. The AGW Believers never want to debate the skeptics anymore, because they ALWAYS lose. The skeptics on the other hand are still demanding debates but the Believers never accept.
Oh by the way, the UN IPCC wrote in their 3rd report that climate is a non-linear chaotic system and long term predictions of climate are not possible. Not possible! So how is smarty-pants Matthew England going to show climate predictions to the year 2100, when even his employers at the UN IPCC say that it is not possible? Good luck with that Matthew buddy! LOL!
Hi Tim,
This is a great idea. My question would be "Why has climate model computer software not been put through a formal, independent verification and validation (IV&V) process?"
In other risk-related software engineering fields, such as software for the nuclear industry, IV&V is accepted as the necessary way to generate "trust" and identify "uncertainties" for the public.
IMHO, "challenging the skeptics" is not the way software engineers should do it.
Clem@4
Please provide a citation from the Third Assessment Report (TAR) where the claim is made that predictions of future climates are not possible. If you could, please provide a chapter and page number.
I only ask as I simply cannot find such a claim in the TAR, and that statement seems to be contradicted in more than a few different places in TAR itself. It's a big report, and I may have missed it.
Thanks
> My question would be "Why has climate model computer software not been put through a formal, independent verification and validation (IV&V) process?"
Why hasn't Windows?
Or Word98?
Linux?
Quake 4?
Why, george, does the source code have to be put through an IV&V process? The ALGORITHMS are put through a far more rigorous trial-by-combat test than any computer algorithm: in the peer reviewed papers.
PS will YOU do the process? Under NDA (since you don't want to abrogate copyright merely because you'd like the source code of software to be free: that would be PIRACY)?
Klem, there is an old saying, Don't argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference." Hence the AGW believers avoid debating deniers.
A non-linear chaotic system does not automatically mean anything can happen.
The term "Believers" implies some sort of faith without evidence, but we KNOW the Earth is warming and we KNOW why it is warming, because we have looked closely and honestly at all the evidence.
"The AGW Believers never want to debate the skeptics anymore, because they ALWAYS lose".
Really Klem? And onb what tidbit of imbued wisdom do you base this ridiculous asserion? What is your expertise in climate science or in any scientific endeavor? Zilch?
Here's a wake up call for those simpletons out there who write piffy posts like the one Klem did here. Klem, please tell me how many of the sceptics are actually doing climate-based research and are publishing it in rigid journals? The answer is obvious: the sceptics do very little research, but instead snipe away at the sidelines trying to pick holes in research conducted by actually qualified scientists.
The second point is that debating sceptics, most of whom are pseudo-scientists anyway at best, is fraught with difficulties. Why is that? Because the sceptics lie, distort and mangle the science, and appear to be 100% confident in their baseless arguments. Most good scientists, on the other hand, are much more cautious and appear reluctant to make assertions with as much confidence as the sceptics do. Moreover, if we scientists debate sceptics, we are giving them credibility, meaning we think they have something useful to say (which they don't, in my view). But if we ignore them they shout that we are 'running scared'.
As Mark (I think) said earlier, the sceptics cannot and never will win a debate on climate science; all they have to do is sew enough doubt that nothing will be done to address the problem. They are muddying the waters so that the public and policymakers cannot see the bottom.
I am sure that its possible that Klem is a troll, but I thought his puerile post needing addressing.
what the Klems of the world provide
Clem is quite a handsome dining room table.
Hi Mark,
To quote from your comment:
The answer is that the algorithms may not have been coded correctly. Don't confuse apples and oranges. There is a big gap between science and software engineering. Unfortunately, it is common that many scientists believe they know all there is to know about software engineering. It is also common that many software engineers believe they know all there is to know about software quality assurance.
You also say:
I could I guess -- I have the necessary technical qualifications and naturally skeptical attitude required. I was not aware the climate algorithms or code was under NDA.
The Community Atmosphere Model and the GISS ACMs are available on the net. There may be others. But of course you knew this before you started harumphing.
BTW IV&V pretty much labels you
> The answer is that the algorithms may not have been coded correctly.
And this is HOW likely?
There's not the one model, you know. There are plenty of other models and if one has an algorithm coded incorrectly, it will stick out like a sore thumb (unless the effect has no effect on the system, in which case, being wrong will have no effect either).
There WILL be code reviews.
And the output is validated against other scientists working in the area. Something that Word 2003 hasn't had to deal with...
> I was not aware the climate algorithms or code was under NDA.
I am not aware that NVIDIA code used in their drivers is under NDA either.
But bloggers insist that this is the reason why they don't GPL their drivers.
And the algorithms are not under NDA. The code can be. Why do you conflate the two?
". . . there is an old saying, Don't argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference."
Actually, I thought the saying was "Don't argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
Chris@6 "Please provide a citation..."
the citation is here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.PDF
page 78, section G2, 4th paragraph.
Jeff @10 "please tell me how many of the sceptics are actually doing climate-based research and are publishing it in rigid journals?"
Not sure how many Jeff, but I know of one skeptic by the name of Dr. Richard Lindzen who happens to be the number one climate scientist in the world. He likely taught half of the climate scientists working in the field today. Oh and heâs not being paid by Exxon sorry, so you neednât pull out that old favorite.
"sceptics lie, distort and mangle the science". You mean it was the skeptics who produced the Hockey Stick graph? Hmm, not sure about that one Jeffy.
George Crews,
The model E CGM produced by the Goddard institute is also available for download. Better add that to your list of models that are freely available to be independently verified and validated.
George Crews.
Now that Eli has pointed you to some model links, and as you "have the necessary technical qualifications and naturally skeptical attitude required", can you inform us when and where you will be posting the results of your "IV&V"?
Klem.
The fact that you believe Lindzen to be "the number one climate scientist in the world" indicates to all here the irretrievably erroneous misapprehensions under which you labour. You really don't go out much, do you? Especially to a university library...
By this one statement of yours, you are forever revealed for the ignorant troll that you are.
George Crews.
Lucky you. The links to openly available models just keeps increasing - h/t Craig Allen.
I am sure that you will now realise that you can find even more yourself - which begs the question why you didn't do this in the first place.
It also begs the question why there isn't already a mass of Denialist material being consistently referenced, that independently verifies and (in)validates the models...
Doesn't it make you wonder?
Could someone direct me to the peer reviewed study that contains the empirical data that irrefutably connects CO2 as a climate driver?
Also, how is it possible to 'model' a non-linear chaotic system?
....maybe there's also a peer reviewed study that provides that explanation also.
Klem's reference doesn't say "long term predictions of climate are not possible. Not possible!", of course
What it actually says:
Klem, this is a very different statement than you claim.
You can gain a little credibility here by admitting that your statement's wrong, and explaining why (I'm not going to explain why for you, think of it as being an IQ test, if you fail, rest assured future posts by you will be ignored).
I sincerely hope you don't fly in modern jet airliners, just to be consistent ...
How is the statement wrong if that is the first line, word for word?
'therefore the long term predictions of climate ARE NOT POSSIBLE'
...it's qualified in the latter sentence by 'scientific dice rolling'.
Those are some 'models' you have there.....looks like they don't do much of anything except create incessant blathering from green-ists.
At least Klem, after he said:
was good enough to provide the reference when asked. What the TAR, section G2, 4th paragraph actually says is [my emphasis added]:
Readers, make your own minds up. But this "original" (oh, if that were true!) comment by Klem is another oft-perpetuated beloved canard of denialists.
Oh, and Freddy, here's some modelling of nonlinear chaotic systems not to do with climate... one of many such modellings. Of course it's possible!
It's a body of work, going back 150+ years. Do your own homework.
> I sincerely hope you don't fly in modern jet airliners, just to be consistent ...
> Posted by: dhogaza
It's OK as long as nobody else is hurt...
> Could someone direct me to the peer reviewed study that contains the empirical data that irrefutably connects CO2 as a climate driver?
Do you have any irrefutable proof that CO2 is not a climate driver?
...thx i'll have a look at that. Btw any links to the other? Just looking for the study that has some form of directly measured CO2 correlation to temps etc.....is it somewhere in the IPCC report?
An airliner is a non-linear control system, not a non-linear chaotic system.
Shorter Freddy and Harvey:
We ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY 100% REFUSE to even bother to hear Matthew England's explanation out. This shows that we're very open-minded people, just like Galileo.
Hi Freddy,
Where have you looked for this information?
Hi Mark,
The criteria, depth, and degree of rigour that assures the quality of commercial/OS software are (no pun intended) qualitatively different from that of high-consequence analysis software. So I do not see the logic of bringing up required QA processes (or lack of) for one to compare the other.
You also comment that:
Not necessarily. The climate algorithms present interesting SQA difficulties when implemented. As most everybody here knows, an ensemble of program results are used. That's because each model has its own strengths and weaknesses. (Modeling is all about artfully making the appropriate simplifications.) So in a sense, they are all "sore thumbs." Of course, that does not necessarily disqualify the ensemble. But IMHO it explains at least some of the reluctance to formal IV&V.
BTW, code reviews are good. IMHO, formally documenting the code reviews would be better. Complete traceability of the entire software development process -- better still. There is a difference between doing good code development and demonstrating good code development (SQA).
Clem
>The skeptics on the other hand are still demanding debates...
So are creationists, intelligent design nut jobs, UFO believers, Alien abductionists...
> ["]The Greenland ice sheet is likely to disintegrate completely if we warm in excess of 2.5 degrees C, that's a seven-metre sea level rise" he says.
> England says we have already emitted half the greenhouse gases we can if we are to have a reasonable chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming.
So how many years of business-as-usual are left before our fate is sealed?
Harvey said:"An airliner is a non-linear control system, not a non-linear chaotic system."
Dude, the simulations of aerodynamics use the Navier-Stokes equations, which are nonlinear and chaotic.
> The criteria, depth, and degree of rigour that assures the quality of commercial/OS software are (no pun intended) qualitatively different from that of high-consequence analysis software.
Explain.
Seriously, George Crews, what you were doing was just hand-waving.
If there's a bug in the Linux OS, it can corrupt or even destroy the data on your hard disk. If there's a bug in a climate model, you just get the wrong results.
And you think it's OK that Linux hasn't gone through "independent verification and validation"? Yet somehow climate models must go through "independent verification and validation"?
George Crerws said:"There is a difference between doing good code development and demonstrating good code development (SQA)."
Has it crossed your mind that MAYBE there is also a difference between scientific code development and developing code for widespread use?
And by the way, George Crews, where's the climate model that accurately hindcasts climate trends under the assumption that CO2 has little or no warming effect on climate?
Are you suggesting that there's a huge worldwide conspiracy to make all the world's climate model implementations err in the exact same way?
Look it comes down to this; Skeptics and Believers agree that the earth's climate changes, they simply disagree on the cause. The Believers say it's humans, the skeptics say it's something else. The skeptics just ask for conclusive evidence that CO2 is the driver of the earth's climate. We're not asking for proof, just conclusive evidence (it's not alot to ask really). Climate science has been trying for decades to show that CO2 is the driver of the earth's climate, but they have never been able to deliver. They conclude that it's CO2 because they can't concieve of any other explanation. Sorry, but that's not conclusive evidence.
And remember folks, pictures of melting glaciers and weeping polar bears are evidence of climate change only, they are not evidence that CO2 is the cause.
And have a nice day.
Hi Bernard J. (@19)
The current state-of-the-art of IV&V for high-consequence analysis software is that testing shall be the primary means of ensuring quality. But however necessary that may be, it is not sufficient. It is assumed the process that was followed during code development and maintenance is also critical.
Thus, performing IV&V after-the-fact is somewhat problematical. As an example, I once had to lead a "remediation" effort to "restore confidence" in the results of using about 125 nuclear safety codes whose development/use "lacked complete defensibility". I and about 15 other software engineers expended a tremendous amount of work and analysis restoring adequate confidence in the results. Much more than would have been required if applied during original development/use.
Therefore, there can be no practical suggestion that I could somehow IV&V a climate model myself.
Nor is it a practical suggestion that "a mass of Denialist material", or lack thereof, be used to judge the "trust" and "uncertainties" that should be associated with the climate models.
Nope, current state-of-the-art is process traceability combined with testing.
Shorter Klem:
I'm not listening! I'm not listening! I'm not listening to Matthew England! I'm open-minded!
Shorter George Crews:
I wave my hands frantically and ignore all your questions. Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy! Climate models may be buggy!
George, stop trying to blow everyone off with the bafflegab. It don't work. You've been called.
Sortition asks:
About 25, before India turns into a charnel house and takes the rest of us with them
The ubiquitous , eg , on the Wikipedia black body and Stefan-Boltzmann pages , and apparently a lot of texts , version of the fundamental equation for the temperature of the planet is :
 ( EarthAbsorptivity * SunSolidAngle * TempSun ^ 4 )
= ( TempEarth ^ 4 )
This violates Kirchhoff's insight , 150 years ago this year , that
a good absorber is a good emitter
and has earth absorbing as a gray body but emitting as a black body . The correct equation is
( EarthAbsorptivity * SunSolidAngle * TempSun ^ 4 )
= ( EarthEmissivity * TempEarth ^ 4 )
Where , in the standard gray body computation , EarthAbsorptivity equals EarthEmissivity
How can anybody claim to have a science , when they have the most fundamental physics wrong ?
...Says the man whose site appears to claim that the greenhouse effect involves a change in albedo instead of a difference in opacity by wavelength. Your theoretical example assumes the Earth has no atmosphere.
Try your experiment again, this time manipulating the right variable.
Anyone know of any academics with access to 16 software engineers? Perhaps they'd be willing to pay for the work?
I personally just want to seem some evidence that increased concentrations of CO2 will drive the climate to change in a way differently than it is already always changing.
I really do apologize to everyone here before hand, but I would prefer not to accept climate models as such empirical evidence. Is there any other corroborating source of real world evidence? I'm open minded and I just want to be convinced, as a layman.
Why should we do your homework for you?
And what do you think the alternative is, that thousands of climate scientists around the world are just making shit up?
Good on you for apologizing in advance, because the apology is deserved.
Brian D: "Try your experiment again, this time manipulating the right variable."
You compared closed boxes with normal air vs. 100% CO2 and found a difference.
This is like comparing Venus to Earth, which does nothing for telling us how the Earth's atmosphere behaves, or will behave even if we doubled CO2 concentration.
Try your experiment again, this time manipulating the right variable the right way!
@dhogaza
That's not really helpful, and your tone is unkind.
I have no stake in this, I just want some info.
Hope you have a good day :)
Everyone on this planet has a stake in this. You want info? Go find info. There are reliable sources for scientific information, you know.
You could go to Real Climate and click on their "start here" link, if you're really interested in climate science.
The fact that you don't accept models as being evidence exposes your mindset, however.
Dear Bob,
Emissivity/absorption are functions of wavelength. In the IR past ~ 4 microns pretty much everything has an absorbtivity/emissivity of > .9. Below 4 microns it is less. Kirchoff's law is safe. You have the fundamental physics wrong.
Shorter Joe: dhogaza is shrill and therefore I am right.
As for your attempt to rebuke me, I did not assemble that web page (which can clearly be discerned by comparing its writing style to mine). It was just the first simple page I could find where they were manipulating the right variable (the concentration of GHGs). Compare this to Bob's experiment, where he manipulates albedo and claims it rebukes the greenhouse effect.
If I wanted to properly experiment on the impact of doubling CO2 on a climate like the Earth's, I'd need two things:
1) A spare planet or two and
2) A time machine.
Alternatively, we could run the experiment on our own planet, and hope the outcome isn't bad. Oops, that's already what we're doing.
In the meantime, the best we've got are physics simulations. I believe Matthew England has something to say on those...
Speaking of, Tim, any chance of that talk going online?
Joe,
Read the Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart.
Joe:
Since increased concentrations of CO2 ARE driving the climate change, why do you think adding more will change the direction it is being driven?
@dhogaza
Yeah well I've been through most of RealClimate and I just didn't think who ever was running that site had much to say, it just seems like some armchair enthusiast's blog or something. He make some claims that are really boneheaded, like just because CO2 doesn't cause the temperature to start or end changing (in ice core records) doesn't mean that "in between" CO2 isn't causing the temperature to change. I don't buy that claim, it seems silly.
But whatever everyone says something they didn't mean sometimes and I don't hold that against any side in the debate at all, because it's irrelevant.
I DO look every now and again for good info and corroborative empirical evidence when I get interested in this issue from time to time, but I can't find it. Stupid me.
I don't see how "The fact that you don't accept models as being evidence exposes your mindset" is a problem. Isn't there lots of ways computers can go wrong? I just use mine to do email and other things and it goes wrong all the time!
Have a good day, god bless.
Eli: "Since increased concentrations of CO2 ARE driving the climate change, why do you think adding more will change the direction it is being driven?"
Well how is it driving climate change then? How is the climate changing in a way that is different than it already always changes?
t_p_hamilton:
Thank you for the reference.
Joe: Referring to published climate scientists - whose records you can look up in any peer-reviewed literature database - as "armchair enthusiasts" based on your own (amateur) interpretation of what "sounds silly" only shows that you lack the skills needed to evaluate competence in this field.
But that's to be expected, as it's an aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Yeah, so you are a troll. My initial intuition was correct, and the disrespect I showed you was deserved.
Brian D:
Holy! I missed that! A lot of those articles at RealClimate are by Gavin Schmidt, he's a "big honcho" isn't he?
Well gee, I think it is kinda funny that even I, an amateur, found his scientific reasoning amateurish! I know competence when I see it, and I'm just not convinced about it in this case.
Was your link to that video and its accompanying description ("Unskilled and unaware of It: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.") a veiled insult? That keeps happening here, it kinda hurts. I don't see what I said to open myself to that. I just said I thought some of the reasoning on RealClimate wasn't "buyable".
God bless.
dhogaza:
" the disrespect I showed you was deserved."
You are really making it difficult to want to be on your side. That's a really mean and disrespectful thing to say! Just...please be more kind to someone who wants to learn...I'm sorry.
God bless you.
I need to see the IV&V proof Klem, George, Harvey, Bob, Joe et al that you are different people not just the one clown waving different sockpuppets around. It's a challenge, boys: one of you prove that you're independent from the others in this nonlinear, chaotic, mouth-off you're enjoying and you might stand a (slight) chance of being taken seriously by somebody. Although not by me sorry - that'd take a demonstration that you actually understood something of the science you were blathering on about and had a little humility. None of that's going to happen, is it?
Joe:
First, if a doctor tells you that, say, eating tasty fried food daily will probably give you heart problems, do you disregard his medical advice because it sounds silly? Or do you accept it, understanding that of the two of you, he probably knows more than you do in this field?
Climatology is a complex field. This, regrettably, means it's very easy to spread misinformation about it, since the proper understanding may be too technical to fit into a sound bite. (For instance, the argument that CO2 lags temperature in the ice cores - based on a true observation - doesn't actually say what it seems like it's saying, and amounts to a straw man argument. However, demonstrating this takes quite a bit more background knowledge than simply parroting the claim, and thus takes time to explain, so some people don't bother looking into it!)
Second, the video was NOT an insult. Everyone is unskilled in different areas. I, for instance, am very unskilled in areas as diverse as ichthyology, forestry, agriculture, botany, medicine (anything more advanced than first aid), law, cooking, and plumbing. The Dunning-Kruger effect relates not to a person's skill level but rather an interesting cognitive effect relating to their skill levels.
If you think it's an insult, you obviously didn't watch it (or read the original paper it's based on; I chose the video here because it's a fine introduction at a good pace). Please do, and after you return, re-evaluate your comment #57 in light of knowing who RealClimate's run by and your own level of understanding. You'll see why I linked it.
Note well the conclusion of the video, which will demonstrate a "cure" of sorts.
Joe, If you really want to learn, then try working through the homework assignments and exam questions here: http://charleslab.ucsd.edu/ESYS10.htm
The link contains material that is taught in a course at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. You will learn a great deal if you buckle down and make a serious effort to work through the homework problems and exam questions posted there.
frankis:
I'm FULL of humility and I came here to ask questions and have had nothing but being put down and told I'm an idiot. THAT's how my humility was treated! That IS NOT PLEASANT! I don't know who the other people are. I don't know how to prove I'm me. It's not like giving out personal info on the internet is smart! Gee what is it with this place?
And I AM capable of understanding science too. But no one here seems able or willing to share it. I did get one book reference and I am reading reviews of it now, so I guess at least I got that. The rest of the people here...
God bless you all.
Hi Eli (@43)
You comment that:
Actually, it is easy to defend that my "bafflegab" is entirely run-of-the-mill software quality assurance (SQA) gab. See this reference in the Wikipedia as a start, perhaps looking up its reference to the IEEE's Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, Ch. 11, Sec. 2.1. I could give more references, or you could even visit my blog.
And I too would like to note the pervasive ad hominem here. The climate affects everybody and so every concerned person is at their best. Why do some people seem unconcerned?
Scientific programming is not "run-of-the-mill software", so why should "run-of-the-mill software quality assurance (SQA) gab be necessarily the way to judge it?
The software is not the end product of the process, as would be the case of a word processor.
The highest priority is that the science be correct. The QA there is peer review. Next priority is to get it done quickly. Second to publish is the same as not publishing.
I suggest that people who think otherwise ask themselves why if SQA used by Microsoft is so great, why isn't a group coming along and blowing the "amatuers" out of the water?
Klem above ...
Putting aside the deliberate misuse of the words "believer" and "skeptic" to refer respectively to those who accept the results of robust scientific inquiry on the current climate anomaly" and "those who reject the results of robust scientific inquiry on the current climate anomaly" (let's call the latter naysayers)
The naysayers don't say it's caused by something else. Rather, they say variously
a) It's not happening at all/UHI effects make data impossible to interpret
b) It's happening but it's just because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age (for reasions they doen't elaborate on because that would involved modelling and data on now and then neither of which would suit them)
c) It is happening but it's due to changes in TSI, GCM, cloud patterns
d) It's happening due in trivial part to CO2e
e) Sure it's happening, but we ought to do nothing because Al Gore is a rich pratt and this is just a tax grab/a game to get computer modellers jobs/ an attempt to restore socialism/destroy western society/return to the early holocene/ worship Gaia etc ...
In short, the naysayers are like Mr Horse from Ren and Stimpy. They don't like it and any excuse will do.
Joe,
Spencer Weart's book, as mentioned by t_p_hamilton, is a great, readable resource with hundreds of citations if you have further questions. It's available for free at the American Institute of Physics website. Here's a link.
Also, if you are interested in empirical evidence, here's an overview with links to some of the more important papers. Happy reading!
Peace.
You said, âWe need to do this very quickly to give us any chance of staying below a net 2 degrees Celsius global average warming.â
Where do you get this 2 degrees? According to the data from the Australian Bureau of Metrology, the mean global temperature anomaly for 2008 was only 0.33 deg C.
Mean Global Temperature Data
Also CO2 + H2O + Sun Light => Plant Food => Animal Food. As a result, CO2 is the foundation of life, and to say CO2 is a pollutant is extremely irrational.
Joe, since you end you posts with 'God Bless' I imagine you have a working familiarity with the bible - can I recommend you re-read Luke 16:19-31.
I am an athiest and a skeptic - but not a 'climate skeptic' - we are driving climate change and to keep claiming that so many scientists are wrong (or liars) seems rather like the rich man in hell asking Abraham why he wasn't warned.
I'm not suggesting you have made such claims but you are clearly heading in that direction - it is the inevitable claim that remains once you decide you don't like the 'science'.
Brian D write:
>"Joe: Referring to published climate scientists - whose records you can look up in any peer-reviewed literature database - as "armchair enthusiasts" based on your own (amateur) interpretation of what "sounds silly" only shows that you lack the skills needed to evaluate competence in this field.
But that's to be expected, as it's an aspect of the [Dunning-Kruger effect](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOHJa5Vj5Y)."
Joe responds:
>"Well gee, I think it is kinda funny that even I, an amateur, found his scientific reasoning amateurish! I know competence when I see it, and I'm just not convinced about it in this case."
Joe, watch the video, and you'll have a better chance of seeing why you ought not judge others in areas were you are not competent
Joe,
I feel your pain. When I began looking into the AGW
issue, my first stop was Real Climate. I, too, was green on the subject and asked some basic questions. My treatment was the same as yours: "We're not going to do your homework for you", "That question has been dealt with so it's no longer relevent", and "You're an idiot if you can't see we're right". So I had to do my own research. Today, I am thankful for that treatment because it forced me to read everything I could find, both pro and con. It took a while but eventually I found that the theory of catastrophic AGW lacks credibility. The long term history of CO2 and temperature simply do not support it.
I would also counsel not to engage AGW supporters who are dug in. It will quickly degrade into ad hominem attacks and arguements to authority. It's not worth your time.
I wish you the best of luck in your trek for understanding the AGW issue.
Hi t-p-hamilton (@68)
You comment that:
That's a very good point and I agree with you. But where do I try and start in order to explain my concern? Of course, with standard SQA terminology and concepts.
Recall that I have been describing high-consequence SQA processes (which the climate models have become). Software that can affect human life and health. Not Microsoft Word SQA. (They often let users find the last few bugs. Not a great idea if a bug could kill someone.)
And recall my distinction between doing science and performing software development. These are two very different tasks. High quality science is not the issue here. Have I ever said that is was?
The highest priority for high-consequence software is software reliability. The more life and wealth at risk, the more important it is that the software's results be reliable and dependable. This reliability and dependability is assured by proving the quality of the software. The proof that the correct science has be encoded correctly.
How is this done? Well, there is a whole body of knowledge of IV&V already established for high-consequence software. My whole point is that by extending this knowledge to the climate models, quality will be assured. No appeal to authority, etc. required. And this would be a GoodThing.
Janet Akerman:
"Joe, watch the video, and you'll have a better chance of seeing why you ought not judge others in areas were you are not competent"
The vast majority of the history of competent people have been wrong. A tiny, tiny minority have been right. I'm right about that. Claiming competence means nothing. Being told I'm not smart enough to understand something when the questions get too uncomfortable is a sad last bastion of defence.
I could just be TOLD what the evidence is, simply, instead of being sent on a turkey chase to websites where the comments are totally damning to the arguments the websites try to make. (aka Boris' links)
Steve:
Thanks for the kind note. I think I am done here, I'm really not getting much out of it. I agree that the sort of treatment you get for asking questions on pro AGW sites pushes you away from them. Sceptical sites will at least answer your questions instead of telling you to get lost. There are zealots on either side, though.
So long!!
> It took a while but eventually I found that the theory of catastrophic AGW lacks credibility. The long term history of CO2 and temperature simply do not support it
Steve: Physics is not wrong because some mean people hurt your feelings.
My feelings are also hurt when someone tells me that fundamental physics is wrong because the world's scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to trick the worlds governments into spending vast sums of money (sometimes into the hundreds!) on this problem.
Steve:
What is it about the long term history of CO2 and temperature do you think does not support the contention that signifcant AGW is occurring? Why does the theory lack credibility?
By the way, you are not the only one to have been put off by the attitude of the people running the RealClimate site, however my observation is that they have a very low tolerance of people asking questions which take as their starting point the assumption that the vast majority of climate scentists are deceitful, incompetent idiots.
If you ask a question in an insulting, accusing tone, and that question clearly shows you haven't even bothered to educate yourself with some basic, easily accessible reading, then they'll bite your head off, and it will serve you right.
Sure, you'll feel hurt, but that's got nothing to do with whether the science is right or wrong.
If you are wondering where the new trolls came from, Marc Morano linked to this post.
Super video link Brian D. (and Eli's Red Skelton clip's a real hoot).
And for a humorous take on D&K, except if you think you are a competent programmer, try this.
Tim (81) - thanks, explains everything.
Joe: "I think I am done here"
Good riddance.
Can anyone produce an example of a blog post has that has resulted in anyone changing to or from a denialist?
Morano's marauders. You must be regarded highly to unleash all those m&m's.
Hi,
I'd really like to know more about AGW. I don't have an opinion on this yet, I'm just after good information that will allow me to make up my mind on the basis of the evidence.
It seems hard to find a good clear explanation of the AGW Theory. I did look at this 'RealClimate' site, but it appears to be run by someone who has a vested interest. I think we need to hear from people who are not in it for the money. Also, the arguments did not make sense to me. Clearly, if the arguments are sound they will be logical, and if they are logical, they will make sense. This didn't. Much appears to rest on computer models. I'm not sure we should trust computer models too much - they do crash. My computer crashed last week and I lost a lot of important stuff. What if the climate models crash or have currupt data? I'd also like to know more abou the code. This seems very important. If we don't know the code how can we trust the models. We can't just take the word of computers. Does anyone know of any research into the code? Surely there are some peer-reviewed journals that have proved the code is OK. If not, there was a realy good book on code, I can't remember it's name, but I think the author was Dan Brown - surely we could get him to review the code, he seems to know a lot about code. We need to listen to the best scientists, Richard Lindzen is the bestest scientist in the whole world and he's not sure about a doomsday scenario. We need to hear more voices like his where we have expertise that is not part of a exercise in group think like the ICC. If the ICC would publish it's code and tell people in a way that made sense, I think that would be good. That they can't do this says a lot. Ordinary people can tell when something is convincing, and this isn't, instead we get appeals to authority - they are scientists and therefore we should beleive. I just want to understand and if there is evidence, I would be OK with that. I was talking to this guy at the pub the other day and he said it was the sun - that makes sense. I haven't seen any thing proving that it isn't the sun. And, has anyone seen CO2? We are meant to believe in this thing and yet no one has ever seen it - isn't that like religion? But i'm willing to be convinced, if someone would just explain it in a way that is competent. Anyone can see incompetence and recognize it and so far that is all I've seen. If AGW is real and can be rationally explained, surely someone would have done that and I would be convinced already, which I'm quite prepared to be. But I'm not, so you know that means.
"Can anyone produce an example of a blog post has that has resulted in anyone changing to or from a denialist?" - Alan
Changing opinion requires the prerequisites of good faith and an open mind, both which are lacking in the denialists.
Is there a link to a FAQ that people like Joe can be refered to?
Joe writes:
>"*The vast majority of the history of competent people have been wrong. A tiny, tiny minority have been right. I'm right about that. *"
Joe, whatâs the breakdown of historical conflicts between people competent in a subject whe in dispute with people incompetent in that subject?
For your argument to be relevant to this case, you would need evidence that history shows that in conflict on a subject competent people (those who have studies and understand the evidence) are more often wrong on that subject when they argue wjti people without competent on that subject.
Hence you are wrong to claim: â*Claiming competence means nothing. *â
Joe writes:
>"*Being told I'm not smart enough to understand something when the questions get too uncomfortable is a sad last bastion of defence.*"
Joe, there is a difference between competence and being smart enough. You need not resort to strawman arguments (the last bastion of incompetence?). Contrary to seeing any question that was âtoo comfortableâ, my reply was in response to this statement of yours:
>â*Well gee, I think it is kinda funny that even I, an amateur, found his scientific reasoning amateurish! I know competence when I see it, and I'm just not convinced about it in this case.*â
Your statement in response to being offered a useful link was evidence that you are likely a concern troll. The probability of this being correct is increased with the knowledge that there is an influx of insincere trolling from Marc Morano site.
Incidentally your original question was:
>â*I personally just want to seem some evidence that increased concentrations of CO2 will drive the climate to change in a way differently than it is already always changing.*â
This evidence was provided at real climate (which you were given) and the Spencer Weart. But if you were sincere I'd suggest you read the AR4 (chock a block full of such evidence) but I doubt you are.
Steve writes:
>"*it forced me to read everything I could find, both pro and con. It took a while but eventually I found that the theory of catastrophic AGW lacks credibility. The long term history of CO2 and temperature simply do not support it.*"
Wow you found this did you Steve? Yet you keep the evidence to yourself. At least those competent in the field document their findings and offer it for peer review.
I think your claims in this paragraph lacks credibility, in the face of overwhelming evidnce (summarised in AR4).
Hi Tim
Thanks for the tip-off. The Morano trolls are revelling in their day release. No doubt, as always, they will scuttle back to their sheltered stink tanks once the light of reason starts burning their brains.
Climate scientists involved in software development of computer models do perform a range of verification and validation checks; the degree no doubt varies as to the relative priorities. Software version control tools and version control management are applied. Indeed, the groups that I am aware of all have software engineers, with appropriate software development expertise and qualifications, manage the software development part of the modelling process. Obviously both scientists and software engineers must work together very closely, and where appropriate, some software development roles may be filled by climate scientists with particular skills. Scientific software development differs substantially from embedded-systems software development, and both differ substantially from business application development.
When it comes to the issue of whether the software solves the correct problem, this is a matter of traceability between each release of the software and the algorithms - as expressed in scientific articles, which have been reviewed by the scientific community - which are in fact a specification of the problem to be solved. The questions relating to whether one set of algorithms is better than another is almost entirely within the scientific realm; for example: the manner in which atmospheric radiation may be modelled is very much a scientific question, and selection of a particular approach (assumed to have survived peer review and post publication criticisms) is to specify that part of the overarching problem.
I have no doubt at all that the software development practices of any climate modelling group may be further tightened up; the question though, is what further gain is there in doing this, given the costs incurred? The reduction in defects versus extra cost is a decision for the group (and their masters) to make. Climate models are routinely tested against other models, and against known data.
In any case, the common meme of "computer models are code and code always has errors, therefore we can't trust the models" is a fallacy of a point taken to its logical (but ridiculous) conclusion. Errors are not all created equal; some cannot in any way affect the results of interest, but might affect the layout - such an error is a far cry from one which affects the simulation results themselves. The people who parrot the meme are using it as an excuse and nothing more, IMHO
[This post ](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/not-computer-models/)by Tamino gives another heavy does of evidence without computer models.
Though computer models provide strong evidence as well.
Regarding 'concern trolls', [here is](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/20/152515/151/294/571262) an intereting confession of a concern troll, though at troll that was more subtle and careful than "Joe".
"Is there a link to a FAQ that people like Joe can be referred to?"
Joe is an obvious troll. He comes here with "questions" which are just denialist taking points slightly warmed over.
The fact that CO_2 is invisible in the visible spectrum but not in the infrared should be sufficient, but no, he needs proof that the water is wet.
The obvious place to send Joe is one where his computer will be taken over by malware. This would likely hurt innocent bystanders so I cannot recommend it.
All of your rage and name calling will do you little good if the politics of AGW loses out. And based on recent polling in the US support for AGW is sliding downhill fast. I'd bet that cap & trade legislation will not by passed by Congress this year. Certainly not by Copenhagen. Even the Chinese and Indians have flipped the bird at you---saying to the West go ahead but if you want "us" to play provide the technology and 1 or 2 percent of your GDP. As voters find out what is in the details of any such deal I doubt US voters would support it at all. Poor Ban Ki-moon may miss his 4 month deadline to save the planet.
Man Made Global Warming is a position that calls a gas called CO2 a pollutant, but actually it is plant food and is naturally released every second in volcanoes along the edges of tectonic plates of the continents as well as in forest fires started by lightning strike.
It is position that started with âGlobal Warmingâ but changed the term to âClimate Changeâ when the trend is for cooling.
It is a position that states the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere as 380 ppm, never as 0.038%.
It is a position that plots the mean global temperature graph with the integer parts chopped off and called anomalies in order to magnify the temperature variation to give the incorrect perception of larger temperature variation (like looking at a profile of a surface through a magnifying glass).
It is a position that believes in global warming because the global temperature increased by 0.8 deg C in hundred years. However, if you start from 130 years ago, from 1878, the increase is only 0.33 deg C.
AGW is just belief without evidence.
troll@95
Your apparent belief that your commentary could make the slightest difference to anyone here possessed of functioning neurones and the desire to protect the biosphere on which all life depends underscores how irredeemably unhinged you right wing culture warriors are.
I do feel sorry for you, but you should do yourself a favour and work out your angst someplace where professional clinicians can help you.
"You" in this case meaning western governments who expect the Chinese and Indians to make emission reductions even though their emissions per person are vastly lower than western countries. The Chinese and Indians are merely pointing out selfish hypocrisy.
@97 You may not like it but we do vote. If your theory can't convince enough voters you may be stuck with calling those same voters nasty little names. You'll be left with saving the biosphere in your imagination. ;-)
"Poor Ban Ki-moon may miss his 4 month deadline to save the planet."
Which should be a reason for the people on said planet to celebrate because?????????????
We have just doomed human civilization. Lets go to Disneyland???????????
CO_2 absorbs light in the infrared but not in the visible.
Therefore it heats that planet.
Which part of that donât you understand.
Girma,
[Here is](http://www.ipcc.ch/) a summary of a lot of evidence that you belive does not exists.
Thanks for sharing your faith based beliefs though, very entertaining.
God bless
;)
@98--If you're saving the biosphere--then per capita emissions of GHG and selfish hypocrisy is irrelevant--it is the total amount of those gases that are released into the atmosphere that counts---now if you're talking politics.....
elspi--We have just doomed human civilization. Lets go to Disneyland???????????
Are you making a prediction about human civilization?
"Are you making a prediction about human civilization?"
Someone need to pull their head out of their ass and read "six degrees".
The question is no longer "how many millions will die"
but "how many billions will die" If that number approaches 6, then it is all over.
And no, I won't live long enough to see the bitter end, but my children likely will.
Our species has an intellectual heritage stretching back many, many millenia.
By comparison, our species has a mere 350-year-old history of rational, scientific thought, which in any case has not reached at least half the planet and has in addition passed a great many others by - as evidenced by the Denialists (and Creationists, anti-vaccinators, Homeopaths, Astrologers, etc...) we are all familiar with.
My point is that we are surrounded by an ocean of ignorance which will never be cured except by the application of vast amounts of time.
So it is apparent that our species will never agree on curtailing CO2 emissions (it's already far too late for the half-measures that have been proposed, in any case) and elevated CO2 concentrations are an indefinite fact of life from now on.
What's the *real* climate debate we should be having?
Here's what i think:
- should we allow catastrophic climate change to proceed but take the necessary steps so that we rationalists survive in a world where the ignorant are dying-off like flies, thus giving our species a much brighter genetic future or is this too much like eugenics?
- should we be developing technology to pump the atmosphere full of the appropriate gas/particulates to create a good solar shading effect thus cancelling out the effects of CO2?
- should we be developing technology to rapidly suck large amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere, such as perhaps vast ocean algae beds?
Troll,
You are proudly trolling here based on what confidence? Are you assuming that the laws of physics and nature will change in the face of [US public opinion](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/30/climate-change-us)?
How pleasent it must be for you if you believe that olligarchal PR and concentration of media ownership will validate your views on the [science of climate](http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf).
"Are you making a prediction about human civilization?" Someone need to pull their head out of their ass and read "six degrees".
See elspi--You really don't have to worry too much whirlwind the "rationalist" already has a solution. Good night to all--don't stay too late saving the biosphere.
Someone (I forget who) once said that debating a creationist was like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon will knock over the chess-pieces, crap all over the board, and then fly back to its flock to proclaim victory.
The same can certainly be said about AGW deniers. Hopefully Morano's pigeons have finished crapping all over this message board and are now on their way back to rejoin their flock (to proclaim victory whilst crying about persecution, no doubt).
Girma:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was formed in 1988 when no-one was asserting there was a cooling trend. (BTW there is no CLIMATIC cooling trend.) Please stop propagating bullshit. It makes it obvious you're a politically-motivated idiot.
That doesn't parse. Steps to reduce emissions are
a) taken by individual jurisdictions
b) will confront each jurisdiction with site-specific costs
but
c) CO2 doesn't respect jurisdictional borders
If there is to be a global carbon budget, it is both fair and most feasible that the burden of avoiding these emissions be settled according to
1) Historic contribution to the existing dangerous inventory
2) Continuing per capita contributions
3) Wealth per capita (especially since it is argued that this was a consequence of burning the said fossil fuels, clearing the land, forming the concrete etc)
Given that political support must be obtained for such programs then the concept of fairness in settling burdens associated with mitigation policy is indispensible.
Basing contribution on emssions by jurisdiction would simply skew the burdens of any program away from wealthy countries with small populations but high per capita carbon fuel usage and settle it on large countries with comparatively modest usage who have done little to contribute to the existing problem. If China were to break itself up into 5 smaller jurisdictions each a little smaller than the US in population then each would then be a minor emitter, but little aside from the accounting would be different.
If emitting industrial scale CO2 is essential to maintaining the basic usages of contemporary society in the short term but we must live within a global carbon dioxide budget, then it makes sense that everyone should have the same budget regardless of where they live, with only modest allowances to take account of specific site-based human need issues. In so far as technology transfer can abate these in some places, given financial assistance, this could then be a trade-off.
But simply pointing to China and India and asserting that they are entitled to emit less per capita than we are is cynical and disingenuous and a backdoor attempt to do an end run around mitiagtion policy through subverting its effects.
Girma (@96): 1878, was the hottest year in the 91-year interval from 1850 (the start of the Hadley Centre data set) right through to 1940.
And 2008 was unusually cold, compared with the rising trend, because of a La Nina event.
You have chosen these two years, which are both obvious outliers, to measure temperature change because you think you can avoid facing the truth by means of cheap-ass debating tricks.
Well, you can't.
Even when you choose these aberrent years, even when you ignore proper techniques for estimating trends, and even though most of the CO2 emitted by humans was emitted after the first 80 years of your 130 years had already elapsed, you *still* get a significant temperature rise.
Every time I read the crap people like you offer up in opposition to the bleeding obvious I become just that little bit more confident in my position as an AGW [alertist](http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%22National+security+…).
Girma at #.
It was [Frank Luntz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz#Global_warming) who coined the term climate change, in a cynical attempt by the Republican administration to manipulate public perception and make the sheep believe that the problem was not an important one.
Even Luntz now believes the science of warming, and in interviews has expressed his chagrin at having coined the phrase.
And you should be mortally ashamed of your cherry-pick so nicely rebutted by Gaz. The rest of your points are equally without merit - as, in fact, are the points of all of your trollish pack-mates. It is especially evident that this is the case, because not a one of you made a case with even a skerrick of evidence. Your guru Morano enjoys a science-free world, does he not?
Following on from the themes of elspi and Vince Whirlwind, I can't help but think (in my idle fantasies) that one should be forced to publicly register either one's support or Denial of AGW.
Thus, when the time comes that the costs of whatever action humanity takes begin to manifest, people should be penalised according to how they contributed to the decisions made... The Denialists should all be given no opportunity for rescue from the economic and ecological sequelæ of global warming should it occur, and if on the other hand there is no warming in 30-50 years, the AGW proponents (or their estates) should compensate those who resisted any action - after the benefits that acrue from transitions from fossil fuel industries are deducted...
I know who would come out on top in either case - and it wouldn't be the Denialists.
Minor correction, Bernard: Luntz suggested Republicans start using "climate change". He couldn't have invented the term, given that the "CC" in "IPCC" (amidst other references) predates the Luntz Memo.
Btw, #74? Janet, you win one (1) internets.
Re # 45 and responses 46 and 53 :
Please don't read more than I am writing .
Yes "Emissivity/absorption are functions of wavelength" . I am currently implementing the extension to my implementation of Stefan-Boltzmann/Kirchhoff to full spectra at which time I will have experimentally verifiable values for whatever assumptions of surface and atmospheric spectra you may wish to make .
I have not mentioned any experiment here , just basic , classical theory . And the issue is that at least 2 pages on Wikipedia , and at least one climate text that those pages reference , and a not uncommon assumption in blog comments I have seen , start with the gray-body case with a scalar Absorption/Emission , AE , parameter :
 ( AE * SunSolidAngle * TempSun ^ 4 ) = ( TempEarth ^ 4 )
This equation is wrong by a factor of ( 1 - AE ^ .25 ) or about 9% on the common assumption that earth has an absorptivity of about 70% . The equation is structurally wrong not even containing a factor for the emissivity of the earth .
From this foundation , I have never seen a quantitative theory of "forcings" , which I don't find surprising since this foundation is wrong .
Instead I keep seeing absolute impossibilities such as the notion that Venus's extreme temperature is due to some sort of "runaway" effect . Utter physically impossible garbage .
Klem | August 20, 2009 8:27 AM:
"The AGW Believers never want to debate the skeptics anymore, because they ALWAYS lose. The skeptics on the other hand are still demanding debates but the Believers never accept."
So you've not even heard of Monbiot's challenge to Plimer let alone how Plimer completely bottled it? Bit of a surprise that, you being so well-informed and all...
Girma at #.
It was [Frank Luntz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz#Global_warming) who coined the term climate change, in a cynical attempt by the Republican administration to manipulate public perception and make the sheep believe that the problem was not an important one.
Even Luntz now believes the science of warming, and in interviews has expressed his chagrin at having coined the phrase.
And you should be mortally ashamed of your cherry-pick so nicely rebutted by Gaz. The rest of your points are equally without merit - as, in fact, are the points of all of your trollish pack-mates. It is especially evident that this is the case, because not a one of you made a case with even a skerrick of evidence. Your guru Morano enjoys a science-free world, does he not?
Following on from the themes of elspi and Vince Whirlwind, I can't help but think (in my idle fantasies) that one should be forced to publicly register either one's support or Denial of AGW.
Thus, when the time comes that the costs of whatever action humanity takes begin to manifest, people should be penalised according to how they contributed to the decisions made... The Denialists should all be given no opportunity for rescue from the economic and ecological sequelæ of global warming should it occur, and if on the other hand there is no warming in 30-50 years, the AGW proponents (or their estates) should compensate those who resisted any action - after the benefits that acrue from transitions from fossil fuel industries are deducted...
I know who would come out on top in either case - and it wouldn't be the Denialists.
[i]I can't help but think (in my idle fantasies) that one should be forced to publicly register either one's support or Denial of AGW.[/i]
[b]Oooh, yeah[/b] - that's my current fantasy too.
The idea of pinning the cost of rescue on them is a bit far-fetched, but at the very list we could use that register as a means of permanently excluding these bleeding idiots from any position of political or bureaucratic influence and power.
I'm not worrying about the kooks like our trolls - they are an irrelevance - it's the otherwise normal-seeming people who have somehow absorbed the ludicrous Denialist "arguments" without realising how self-evidently non-sensical they are. I worry about these people making dexisions that affect me and the rest of humanity.
In this âGlobal Warming Swindleâ an organization called the Inter GOVERNMENT Panel on Climate change was formed by GOVERNMENTS to summarize the so called âpeer reviewedâ papers written and reviewed by people whose projects are all funded by GOVERNMENTS to come up with results that give GOVERNMENTS more economic power and revenue. Would you believe the summaries if I replaced GOVERNMENT in the above sentence with BUSINESS? Why?
The result of the summaries is the claim that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere of 0.01% since the industrial revolution has caused global warming, ignoring the effects of 1) variation in solar radiation, 2) variation in the orbits and tilt of the earth, 3) variation in the green house effect of from 1% to 4% water vapor in the atmosphere, 4) variation in the circulation in the atmosphere, 5) variation in the circulation of the sea and 6) variation in other variables that affect global temperature.
The method they use is by scaring us that global temperature is increasing like a hockey stick that it was flat before but is increasing vertically now, despite the fact that the global mean temperature has not increased for more than a decade:
Mean Global Temperature Anomaly
Fortunately, they admit the technique to be used to achieve their objective:
â⦠we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. â¦Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective, and being honest.â
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DetroitNew…
They want us to believe the global mean temperature to be flat and they scare us when it is increasing as they are doing now, and when it is decreasing as they did when we were kids (Science News, March 1, 1975):
âIf global temperatures should fall even further, the effects could be considerably more drastic. According to the [ACADEMY REPORT] on climate, we may be approaching the end of a major interglacial cycle, with the approach of a full-blown 10,000 year ice age, a real possibility. Again, this transition would involve only a small change of global temperature 2 or 3 degrees but the impact on civilization would be [CATASTROPHIC]."
Why did they change the term âGlobal Warmingâ to âClimate Changeâ? Why do they state the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere as 380 parts per million, but never as 0.038%? In their mean global mean temperature graph, why donât they show the temperature as it is, say, as 14.3 degree centigrade for one year and 14.6 for the next (a true small change of 2.1% on the graph), but they show only the decimals of the temperature as 0.3 degree centigrade for one year and 0.6 for the next (an artificial massive change of 100% on the graph)?
Fortunately, the global mean temperature has refused to match their computer prediction (proof of garbage in â garbage out) by not increasing since 1998 as shown in the link above. What do you call a belief contrary to reality? What do you call Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)?
Cheers
Oops. Sorry about the double post. I'm trying out a friend's wireless modem, and it dropped out. When I reset it I seem to have resent the post as well.
And thanks for the clarification Brian D. I should have been more explicit, and noted that Luntz coined the popular use of the term in a political sense. Perhaps I should have said "promoted" rather than "coined".
The pendant in me is most decidedly peeved with the side whose voacbulary does not multi-task well with crying twins in the room!
shows us that Girma is innumerate.
shows us that Girma has no familiarity with numerical psychology.
Shows us again that Girma has no familiarity with numerical psychology, nor with basic science - else s/he would have used the kelvin scale to exaggerate his/her claims even more, whilst simultaneously understanding that degrees and fractions of degrees changes to global mean temperature have significant biotic and abiotic impacts.
shows us that Girma is unable to assimilate the information from a (repeated!) post that explains how the term "climate change" was used by a Republican (= conservative, fundamentalist, denialist) government in an attempt to hijack the public's response to the of implications global warming. It was not promoted in the public domain by AGW proponents in order to create 'hysteria'.
Girma, you're not a very clever person, are you?
Self-confessed troll (i.e. self-confessed jerk):
Total GHGs = emissions per capita X population
Girma writes:
>*"In this âGlobal Warming Swindleâ an organization called the Inter GOVERNMENT Panel on Climate change was formed by GOVERNMENTS to summarize the so called âpeer reviewedâ papers"*
Are you disputing that the evidence is peer reviewed Girma?
Girma continues:
>*"written and reviewed by people whose projects are all funded by GOVERNMENTS to come up with results that give GOVERNMENTS more economic power and revenue."*
Not a clever conspiracy theory Girma, it falls over when considering that George Bush was both trying to gag the scientists while also being responsible for funding the scientists from the country with most representation in the IPCC.
>*"Would you believe the summaries if I replaced GOVERNMENT in the above sentence with BUSINESS? Why?"*
Why not, because business are forced to into positions where they are dominated by the profit motive. Leading to examples like suppression of smoking science, suppression asbestos health risks and melamine contamination of food.
Government on the other hand, with proper regulation (i.e. when they are not bought by business interests)can be forced to be accountable to the demos rather than profits.
The rest of your post regarding claims of what the IPPC ignore is utter bollocks. Go back and read the reports and stop parroting such false and utter garbage.
Apologies Girma,
I forgot to mention you are smoking your own belly button lint when you believe your own misrepresentation of Schneider. You 'conveniently' left out the last part of his quote where he explains his belief in being both effective and honest.
It the same as if I told people that Girma says:
*"the industrial revolution has caused global warming"*
Cos that's what you said.
So don't be a jerk and stop inhaling your own excrement.
Girma, you really need to examine your paranoia about governments.
Is democracy really so flawed?
You know, the system where the people elect governments, which then govern? And if they don't do what the people want, they are voted out? Sure, it ain't perfect, but really!
You seem to have the view that whoever does scientific research must be always, by definition, be lying because they receive funding from somewhere. Do you check under your bed for monsters every night before you go to sleep? Are you stockpiling ammo and canned food for the day when the UN takes over? Come on, get a grip!
And do you *really* think there's something so wrong with scientists talking about a temperature anomaly rather than "the temperature as it is", as you call it?
I mean, what they're examining is how much temperatures have changed from what they were before, so why not compare temperatures with what they were before? What could be more obvious?
Anyway, expressing the temperature in, say, the Celcius scale is really just comparing it with the freezing point (well very close to it - let's not get bogged down in talk of triple points) of water at sea level. It's just an anomaly using a different base.
What would you prefer to hear:
a) The global average surface temperature has risen by 0.7 K from 284.9 K in the first half of the 20th centruy to 285.6 K in the past decade,
b) The global average surface temperature has risen by 0.7 from from 13.7 degrees C in the first half of the 20th century to 14.4 degrees C in the past decade, or
c) The global average surface temperature has risen by 0.7 from from -0.3 degrees C below the 1961-1990 average in the first half of the 20th century to 0.4 degrees C above the 1961-1990 average in the past decade?
You can take your pick because they say the same damn thing!!!
And by the way, bonus points to you for bravely following up your ludicrous cherry-pick of 1878 and 2008 at #96 with another at #117.
Playing the 1998 card - it really is the weapon of choice when you want to blast any remaining traces of your credibility to smithereens.
Bernard J@118 ...
You are having a bad day ... pendant?
The pedant in me couldn't resist getting out the blue pencil ...
Good luck with the littlies ...
Klem says:
Says who? You? Lindzen hasn't published a climatology paper in 17 years. And that was the "iris" paper which was shot down by satellite observations.
He's also the guy who repeats denier garbage like "global warming stopped in 1998!" As a professional scientist (at one time, though not recently), he had to have taken at least one data analysis course and he must know that's a crock, and more importantly, know why it's a crock. But he repeats it anyway. What does that tell you?
Freddy:
Attribution studies:
Came RE, Eiler JM, Veizer J, Azmy K, Brand U, Weidman CR (2007) Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Palaeozoic era Nature 449, 198-201
J. L. Lean and D. H. Rind (2008) âHow natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006?, Geophys. Res. Lett.35, L18701
Carbonate-silicate cycle:
Walker, J.C.G., Hays, P.B. and J.F. Kasting, 1981. "A Negative Feedback Mechanism for the Long-Term Stabilization of Earth's Surface Temperature." J. Geophys. Res. 86, 9776-9782.
Greenhouse effect:
Arrhenius, S.A. 1896. âOn the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.â Phil. Mag. 41, 237-275.
Fourier, J.-B. J. 1824. âMemoire sur les Temperatures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Planetaires.â Annales de Chemie et de Physique 2d Ser. 27, 136-167.
Tyndall, J. 1859. âNote on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies.â Proceed. Roy. Soc. London 10, 37-39.
Will that do for now?
More Freddy:
Try here:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html
Klem:
Wrong! They conclude that it's CO2 because of radiation physics. Go look up Arrhenius's paper; it's available free on the web.
I am a Computer Scientist and Software Engineer working in various fields for the past 30 years. I have been browsing through and inspected various parts of a couple of these GCM's for a while now (General Circulation Models .. ie: THEY ARE NOT CLIMATE MODELS).
Most notably, I have spent some time inspecting Model-E by Gavin Schmidt's team at the GISS. I am truly astounded at the atrocious quality of the code I have reviewed. This type of coding would never get a passing grade in any job I have ever had, and further, I would not have a job if I were to produce garbage such as contained in the models I have reviewed. While I understand that the bulk of this code is legacy and has evolved over a long period of time, by Gavin's own words, the code within the GCM's at GISS are of sub-standard quality. Further, by Gavin's own words, there is NO review of these codes and processes. Further still, by Gavin's own words, there is NO emphasis placed on quality control, validation, source control management or review processes. Continuing further, by Gavin's own words, they deem these processes unnecessary and completely dismiss any quality control standards or review.
In my view, there is a plethora of issues surrounding the design, development and coding of all of the GCM's that I have reviewed. To suggest that these applications can predict anything is extremely foolhardy. I simply laugh at these people that accept results of these models as empirical evidence and hard foundation for future events. It is simply laughable.
Consider this, Microsoft employs many thousands of programmers. Microsoft enjoys one of the largest monetary budgets on the planet for software development. Microsoft also employs one of the largest Quality Assurance teams in the world. Microsoft also releases garbage software all the time (ie: various Windows releases, especially first releases). If Microsoft were creating a GCM, given their track record, would you trust the results? We are talking about the largest and most successful computer software company in the world.
Now, consider the fact that there are very few actual Computer Scientists or Software Engineers engaged in the coding and production of GCM's. By-in-large, most of the programmers are Mathematicians and Physicists. None of which have any qualifications or proper knowledge of software design, which is why most CGM's are still written in FORTRAN (and rather old versions at that). Few, if any, of the "Climate Modelers" are in any way competent Software Engineers or have any acceptable knowledge of software design. They know the physics, but they do not know how to effectively program a computer to use those physics.
Finally, there has not been a single GCM to date that has been able to effectively, within reasonable error, been able to predict the climate of the past 10-15 years. Why would one have faith (and at this point it IS nothing more than faith), that these GCM's are able to do this for climate out to the year 2100? Again, it's simply laughable.
Not only did the UN IPCC AR4 report cite little to no confidence in GCM results (yes, it IS in there, you must read the actual report contents, not the summary for policy makers), many additional papers and studies have concluded the very same things. The climate is simply not responding as GCM's have suggested or predicted. This is not to say that GCM's will never be able to perform these functions within acceptable error constraints (although I personally believe they won't), but they certainly can NOT do this now, not by any stretch of the imagination. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous if not fraudulent.
I have found it utterly amazing what people will believe. Just because some nerdy guy in a lab coat tells them that they have a machine that will predict the future, sheeple will believe it.
In closing, I seriously doubt that Professor England will debate anyone at this roadshow. I do not believe he will accept any rebuttal at all. If he would, I would love to be there to provide that rebuttal. I will enjoy ready about the results of this dog-and-pony show and hear what he as to say as he is claiming he "will prove the skeptics wrong". This would be some event, as it would be a landmark first for sure.
Bob Armstrong suggests that "the equation for the temperature of the planet" is the equivalent of
a theta Ts^4 = Te^4
where a is the Earth's absorptivity, theta the "SunSolidAngle," Ts the solar temperature and Te the Earth's temperature. Instead, he says, it should be:
a theta Ts^4 = e Te^4
where e is Earth's emissivity. He concludes, "How can anybody claim to have a science , when they have the most fundamental physics wrong ?"
This is all wrong in so many ways it's hard to know where to start. First, as Armstrong himself notes, for a gray body approximation using Kirchhoff's law, a = e, so both should drop out of his equation. Second, the actual equation for Earth's radiative equilibrium temperature (not its surface temperature) is
Te = (S [1 - A] / [4 sigma]) ^ 0.25
where S is the solar constant, A the Earth's (or another planet's) bolometric Bond albedo, and sigma the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. You can get the Sun's temperature in there by substituting the equation for the solar constant:
S = (R / a)^2 es sigma Ts^4
where R is the sun's radius, a the Earth's (or another planet's) semimajor axis, and es Solar emissivity. For such a calculation, the emissivity of the "top" of Earth's atmosphere is assumed to be 1 and thus drops out. The Sun's emissivity is also about 1 and can be ignored.
No one is ignoring Kirchhoff's Law, Bob. And I don't know where you got your equations, but they're wrong. I recommend you look into a good textbook on planetary astronomy. Bill Hartmann puts out a good one ("Moons and Planets") every decade or so.
Alan posts:
It's rare, but it happens. I think I've convinced the guy on the amazon.com forums who signs himself "Vainamoinen."
Guys, we really do need to cut the deniers a break. They don't know the stuff we know, and what they've picked up from denialist blogs and right-wing talk radio sounds plausible to them and prevents them from realizing how many of their questions sound. Answer the questions! The hard-core science deniers won't be affected, but those with an open mind will be, as will lurkers trying to figure this issue out. Remember that the vast majority of the public is NOT science literate. Politeness matters.
I have been impolite myself on many occasions when I didn't have to be, so this remark is aimed at myself as much as anyone else here.
Girma:
All the volcanoes in the world release about 200 million tons of CO2 a year according to the US Geological Survey. Human technology releases about 30 billion. Divide A by B. Discuss.
There is no global cooling trend:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/VV.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Ball.html
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Reber.html
It's the same figure. Why do you think the units are important? Do you think because CO2 is a small portion of the atmosphere, it is therefore unimportant in Earth's radiation balance? Do you know any radiation physics?
That is neither how anomalies are calculated nor why they're calculated. They are the difference from a base standard (e.g. the 1961-1990 average), and are used because temperature deviations are easier and more precise to measure than temperatures.
That's not how such increases are measured. You need to use all the points, and you're not allowed to select start and end points arbitrarily. Do you know what linear regression is?
See above.
Sorry Klem, if what you are saying is true, then they would have blamed it on water vapor, not CO2, as water vapor is clearly an overwhelming forcing by comparison to CO2, and, overlaps and saturates most all of the long-wave spectrum of CO2. So that you are suggesting is simply illogical.
CO2 is the culprit because nobody can gain (ie: Governments for control, or Al Gore for money) anything from trying to blame water vapor. I suspect that if cars were fueled by water, and electricity was made by water, then we would be seeing water vapor demonized just like CO2. Governments would want to ration and control water, and Al Gore would have created a water vapor offset exchange.
This stuff is such silly nonsense. Has nobody learned anything from the past? We've been down this road before. The scenery has not changed.
Would love to debate this stuff with you further, but I need to get back to coding (real coding).
Bob Armstrong:
The runaway greenhouse effect is something that happened on Venus in the past. What maintains its temperature now is simply the greenhouse effect. I recommend reading Kasting's many papers on early Venus and Earth. The classic papers on the runaway greenhouse effect, however, were by Ingersoll in 1969 and Rasool and de Bergh in 1970. It's quite a physically realistic idea, based on such simple factors as the saturation vapor pressure of water and how that varies with temperature.
Girma:
All those factors and known and taken into account. In detail:
1. Global climate models use TSI reconstructions to include the solar influence. It's negligible for the past half century.
2. The Milankovic Cycles operate on a time scale of tens of thousands of years. They're irrelevant to climate modeling on a century scale.
3. Every global climate model accounts for the radiative effect of water vapor. You can't get a realistic temperature for the Earth's surface without it.
4. What do you mean by "variation in the circulation in the atmosphere" and how does that affect the mean global annual surface temperature (Ts)?
5. Ditto the sea. Are you talking about sea-air temperature exchanges like El Nino? They don't affect the trend.
6. Since the known variables account for almost all the variance, the rest can be ignored, by definition.
Sorry, one last post ... although I certainly respect your politeness, as I wish more people would conduct themselves more appropriately on this matter, in response to the rest of what you are saying ... ROFLMAO ... you made my morning ... can't stop giggling ... seems you are searching for a clue ... good luck!
@ Bob Armstrong:
Really, this is my last post, I promise, but I just couldn't help myself on this one.
Bob, go back and study just a little bit more, I think you will find some very inconvenient information about Venus that just won't fit the illogical idea (and physically impossible) that Venus somehow had a runaway greenhouse effect. This Venus issue, which originated from an out of context quote from Stephen Hawking back in 1983, is just an exercise in hilarity. I have been down this road with my father (retired MIT engineer) in which he finally had to concede that I was in fact correct that Venus is not some mystical "greenhouse", and is in fact, still a "hot rock". Little to no shortwave radiation even makes it to the surface. Dig a little deeper, you will find that the heat on Venus is easily explainable without the magical "greenhouse effect".
More laugh's this morning than I deserve...cheers!
Klem says, "Not sure how many Jeff, but I know of one skeptic by the name of Dr. Richard Lindzen who happens to be the number one climate scientist in the world".
I assume this is the same Lindzen who admitted before congressional testimony about ten years ago that he was receiving more than 2000 dollars a day in consulting fees from the fossil fuel industry? And yet this is not supposed to influence his science?
Besides, Klem, in what unique position are you of all people in to conclude that Lindzen is the "number one climate scientist in the world"? Just because he rehashes what you wnat to hear?
Klem, your scientific acumen, like that of the other sceptics posting here, is as deep as a puddle. If Morano, a hack in my opinion, has linked to this site and unleashed his army of trolls, its no small wonder that its suddenly become overrun by know-nothings. I appreciate Barton's and Bernard's efforts to demolish this troll army.
@ 135 Girma:
Sorry, lied, last one this time for sure.
Girma, you know these things? How many GCM's (General Circulation Models) have you reviewed? And I don't mean reading resulting output somewhere. I mean, how many models have you opened the hood on and inspected for yourself? How many routines have YOU pulled apart to validate their processes? Are you sure what you are claiming is true? I have been under the hood of a few, and I can tell you, they are missing far more processes than they are including. I am not a physicist, but I have still been left thinking, "where is this?", "where is that?", "why isn't this considered?", almost endlessly. And if I have these questions, I suspect others would have far more. To date, I have seen no answers to any of these questions (and I HAVE questioned people like Gavin Schmidt of the GISS).
Squidly, like the other trolls here, had me on the floor with this howler:
"CO2 is the culprit because nobody can gain (ie: Governments for control, or Al Gore for money) anything from trying to blame water vapor".
Its strange how the trolls like Squidly ignore the blatant fact that a large number of immensely powerful multinational corporations that make the environmentalist lobby pale by comparison gain IMMENSELY from blaming water vapor, the sun, Al Gore (because he is fat), and any other factor for climate change, in order to ensure high profit margins (in other words, for $$$$$$$). When the shoe is on the other foot, it suddenly doesn't seem to fit.
I also find it hard to fathom why the troll army somehow believes that humans cannot influence climate when we have influenced other natural processes generated over immense spatio-temporal scales. The nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle and the phosphorus cycle have all been profoundly affected by human activity. Nutrient cycles in terrestial ecosystems have thus been altered. Human activity led to a rapid thinning of the ozone layer over the southern hemisphere; human activity is leading to the rapid expansion of drylands and deserts, and human activity is certainly altering local climate patterns. Humans are draining aquifers at rates far exceeding their renewal, as well as soil fertility. We are slashing and burnbing our way across the biosphere, with tropical forest cover reduced by more than 50% since 1950. Humans co-opt 50% of freshwater flows and more than 40% of net primary production, a figure that is increasing. We are responsible for the most rapid loss of species and genetically distinct populations in 65 million years, and certainly a range of critical ecosystem services have been reduced by human actions. Yet this army of distorters just cannot get a grip on humans influencing large-scale climate patterns.
The reason why is because these people are driven by short-term economic expediency for the privileged few. They loathe science but it is the only tool that they can twist and distort in their effort to ensure that business-as-usual is the ONLY business, and to hell with the future. I have debated several well known anti-environmentalists - for that is what they are - and have never found any of their arguments to be much of a problem. As a senior scientist, I find that the scientific grasp of many of the anti environmentalists is at the level of a high school student (and a bad one at that).
Yet these people persist. Given their abhorence of science, we can expect them to be around for quite awhile, particularly as things get worse and thresholds are approached. This is not a scientific debate because science is NOT on their side; it's more like a street fight.
Folks, I am disturbed and disappointed by the responses to Joe & Freddy upthread. Whether they be trolls or genuine seekers after knowledge the response can be better, and how can one be sure which they are on the strength of one or even two posts? Is there a reputable web page* that provides empirical data that irrefutably connects CO2 as a climate driver? If so, is it not just as easy to link to that page than to exhort them to âdo their own homework?â In addition, linking to said page will have two benefits â education of the questioner and any others who follow it, and also an increase in the web pageâs hit rate. Letâs bear in mind that the only access to education in this field for most people is Dr. Google. The scorn heaped on these people, though entertaining at times, only serves to alienate the very people we need to actively engaged.
The denialsphere has got its act together recently and by-and-large are all singing from the same hymnsheet. Contrast this with the scattergun responses we see to standard denier memes we see so frequently here & at similar sites and the outlook looks poor. I propose some measures to increase the co-ordination of responses in order to improve communication of the important issues.
1) The collation of a set of links that everyone uses to counter the standard denialist memes & FUD questions.
2) A reining in of the attack dhogs so they restrict their bile to those who repeatedly demonstrate a lack of willingness to understand the issue.
3) A concerted attempt by those who care enough and know the science to resist the temptation to scornfully declaim like a preacher and instead adopt a more tolerant teacher approach.
There are trolls on both sides of the debate, letâs not let those who are tolerated because they are âon messageâ lose it for us.
*Unfortunately Real Climate has been the subject of a concerted smear campaign and, like it or not, s%!t sticks. Understandably the proprietors of that site have become weary of the continued accusations & insinuations but their recent responses have appeared (to me at least) petty & (more importantly) unconvincing. We have to regard RC for the time being as a lame duck whoâs impartiality is â to those already suckered by the denialsphere â questionable.
"Man Made Global Warming is a position that calls a gas called CO2 a pollutant, but actually it is plant food"
More primary school nonsense from Girma... This statement reflects a total inability to understand basic terrestrial ecology...
OOOH THE PAIN, THE PAIN, THE IGNORANCE, THE STUPIDITY...
#139 ""where is this?", "where is that?", "why isn't this considered?","
Squidly, please define "this", "that" and "this" surely if you had some (legitimate) examples your previous post was a fine opportunity to present them?
Chris, I appreciate the attempt (futile I believe). You are correct in that I personally am one of those that seeks truth and knowledge. I am a scientist myself and I must say, this certainly is NOT a scientific blog.
I think I have had read enough adhomen attack garbage for one evening (morning). Guess it was MY mistake for stumbling in here and trying to present my own point of view, which I might add is an ever evolving view, as it *should* be.
Best wishes to all, and take care... oh, and try to exercise the cranium just a little bit...
> How many GCM's (General Circulation Models) have you reviewed?
> To date, I have seen no answers to any of these questions (and I HAVE questioned people like Gavin Schmidt of the GISS).
> Posted by: Squidly
How many have YOU reviewed and looked under the hood?
After all the GISS model has been out there for you to do so for ages. Yet apparently you haven't (else you would have mentioned it).
I HAVE questioned people like yourself about what they consider to be wrong and they still insist that the models are fitting to the data not phsyical models like the one that they use to show CO2 has no effect: Beers' Law.
That they consider this to be true shows they have not looked at the code in even the most cursory manner: they don't WANT to know if they are right (and neither do you), so they (and you) don't want to check up.
@ 143 Chris S.
Some simple examples are cloud cover, cloud reactions, precipitation, GCR's, just to name but a tiny few.
I would love to delve into this further with you, as I find it very interesting stuff. But, I don't care much for the name calling garbage, the unfounded B.S. (bad science) that is floating around here, and I have piddled away far too much of my morning on this already, and unlike most "climate modelers", I DO have deadlines, I DO have a CIO that I have to report to, I DO have an IT staff meeting to conduct in a few hours, and I DO have a lot of code review and validation to conduct before the days end, and all of this after a night of my own programming. Phewww.. It just never ends.
Again, you all take care...
The "saturation" argument was debunked 50 years ago. But recognizing that would require "learning from the past."
http://onramp.nsdl.org/eserv/onramp:16572/n7._Plass__1956corrected.pdf
And the idea that the "Venus Runaway Greenhouse" originated with Stephen Hawking in 1983 is demonstrably false. Google Scholar returns 55 hits of publications before 1983 with the words "Venus" and "runaway greenhouse", two of which Barton has already mentioned.
*Unfortunately Real Climate has been the subject of a concerted smear campaign and, like it or not, s%!t sticks. Understandably the proprietors of that site have become weary of the continued accusations & insinuations but their recent responses have appeared (to me at least) petty & (more importantly) unconvincing. We have to regard RC for the time being as a lame duck whoâs impartiality is â to those already suckered by the denialsphere â questionable.
this is their one and only target! to cast doubt and throw sh*t, in the hope that some of it sticks.
they don t have a single fact. zero knowledge. just power to influence the stupid.
the claim that RC is "questionable" (even if only to those sucked into the "denialsphere"is simply false. it is written by the guys who do the real science. who support their peer reviewed papers with real facts. the people who get sucked away from this, are simply stupid.
> You are correct in that I personally am one of those that seeks truth and knowledge.
I nearly laughed out loud (I hate LOL unless you REALLY laughed out loud) at this.
Yeah.
You seek truth that you want to BE the truth. You seek knowledge that you're right.
Bets on
1) how many 'goodbye i'm outta here' posts squidly has yet to make?
2) number of times squidly will denounce the use of ad-hom argument whilst using it in the same paragraph?
Anyone?
> Some simple examples are cloud cover, cloud reactions, precipitation, GCR's, just to name but a tiny few.
1) cloud cover: can warm or cool depending on height. And unless water vapour today acts considerably different from the way it did in the past, the paleo record shows that this cannot move the temperature change to CO2 doubling outside the 2-4.5C range per doubling from the models.
2) cloud reactions: what? you think they'll be upset and cry on us? What "cloud reactions" that aren't in "cloud cover"?
3) Precipitation: when it comes to climate, it doesn't matter if the rain is 3 hours late. Look in an atlas. It'll have a graph there of climatic rain for the region you see mapped. There IS no problem wrt precipitation ***when it comes to climate***. Weather forecasting is different, but that's not climate.
4) GCR: Since there is no change in GCRs that make any significant difference over the last 50 years and the temperature has gone up, what about GCRs needs to be worked on? Some have fitted a graph to data (Svenmark?) and put in unphysical constraints to get a fit and have said that this means GCRs are at fault. Yet forget to project what will happen when GCR's change.
So (1) is constrained by evidence and still falls within the model output. (2) is nonsense. (3) is no problem for *climate*. (4) doesn't explain what's going on at the moment so even if it were modelled incorrectly, it would still have no effect.
@ 145 Mark
I thought I made that clear in prior posts. Yes, I have looked through a few, mostly GISS Model-E ( http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ ) because it is readily available online. I have looked at a few of the others from the GISS site too, but they are older incarnations and not of much use anymore. I have gone through a good portion of the code in Model-E and have tried to make heads or tails out of a lot of it. I freely admit there is a whole lot in there that I don't understand, and their coding practices and lack of discernible documentation makes it virutally impossible to get a very firm grasp on a whole lot of the processes involved. Their code is a wild maze of kludges and fudging here and there, which obfuscates the system even more. I have compiled and run portions of Model-E, but it is difficult to get the entire application components all working properly, at least in my environment. I am however currently running three others. You can go check one of these out for yourself at http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/ (the other two you cannot, as I acquired them through my own sources at NASA). Here are a couple of Open Source projects that are interesting, but quite in their infancy: http://sourceforge.net/projects/climate-model/ and http://www.cquestrate.com/ .. I am doubting that the second one will really get off the ground however. I think you will find that most of these Open Source projects, unfortunately, don't usually get very far when attempting something as complex as a climate model. The CCSM project looks the most promising to me. I used to also run another one that was pretty cool, that you can get through the BOINC project and works like SETI@home. Its just kind of a fun little toy (with nice animated graphics and all), but it can take a month or more of operation to get it to the current date, at least on my humble computers. Obviously, I don't have the computers that NASA does (my fried does, as he works there) so it is difficult for me to do anything more than just play around, as far as execution is concerned. It takes hundreds of model runs to accumulate enough data for an "average", which is what most GCM's require. That takes a tremendous amount of computing power, which I don't have.
Anyway, thanks for the morning bashing! I really appreciate it! Especially from someone without a clue.
You take care!
"You are correct in that I personally am one of those that seeks truth and knowledge. I am a scientist myself and I must say, this certainly is NOT a scientific blog".
This coming from the same person (Squidly) who said:
"CO2 is the culprit because nobody can gain (ie: Governments for control, or Al Gore for money) anything from trying to blame water vapor".
And then, when challenged on several points, he/she claims that they are seeking "truth and knowledge".
Utter hypocrisy. Squidly, you didn't come on here to debate science. Come clean, will you? If you write the kind of nonsense you did above and then claim that this isn't a scientific blog, then its because the shallowness of your arguments have been exposed. I am a senior scientist in population ecology and I am always challenging the so-called sceptics to discuss the effects of climate change on natural communities and ecosystems. More often than not I read responses like that from Girma, basically grade school level stuff that has been dismissed in the empirical literature for years.
The problem is that, like it or not, there are very few environmental scientists/population-evolutionary ecologists who are climate change/AGW sceptics. If you exist, come out, come out wherever you are! As I said above, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the rate of climate warming and its effects on already seriously simplified and stressed natural ecosystems and their biota. I am afraid that I will require better arguments than 'C02 is a nutrient, not a pollutant', or 'an increase in atmospheric C02 will create a green utopia' or 'warming is good for the planet and its inhabitants' if I am to engage in serious debate. These arguments have been shredded innumerable times by myself and others on other threads and by many colleagues in the life sciences in the empirical literature.
> 1) The collation of a set of links that everyone uses to counter the standard denialist memes & FUD questions.
Realclimate has just such a section both in the "Start Here" section and in the sidebar.
This doesn't seem to have stopped any such continuously debunked "theories" from being regurgitated by the knuckle-draggers.
> 2) A reining in of the attack dhogs so they restrict their bile to those who repeatedly demonstrate a lack of willingness to understand the issue.
See the answer to #1.
> 3) A concerted attempt by those who care enough and know the science to resist the temptation to scornfully declaim like a preacher and instead adopt a more tolerant teacher approach.
Such an action is one that is seen in YOUR eyes and this does NOT mean that it is really happening.
But I guess if you KNOW that AGW is wrong, then someone answering your questions with "you're wrong" with less than a dissertation appended seems like they're declaiming like a preacher, since if you're looking to take offense, YOU WILL FIND IT.
And I'd like to ask ChrisS why these purported problems do not seem to be driving people away from the denialist side. I have heard NOBODY say that this sort of thing:
http://notahedgehog.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-christmas-spirit/
has put them off the denialist side.
NOT. ONE. PERSON.
I have not even met anyone who has met or even heard of one such event.
And Watt's blog is chock-full of what you declaim here yet you don't take him to task. Pielke allows NO COMMENTS AT ALL. Yet you don't seem to care that he is more preacher-like (what preacher lets the crowd ask questions of the preacher-man?).
I see this "complaint" done one-sidedly so often it must have a common cause and one that isn't inferred by the words but implied by the *lack* of actions.
And that is that the denialists know that they are idiots and have nothing but the table to bang on. And having this pointed out in scornful terms makes them look like idiots.
And looking like idiots is not what they want to seem.
They want it to look like there is genuine and reasoned concern about AGW and "problems" with it. So they must stop the scorn being applied when it is so richly deserved since that kills that "concern" since it is now show up in stark relief as unreasoned and spurious concern.
You must EARN respect.
You cannot DEMAND it.
@sod (#148)
It is unfortunate but RC is viewed in the same way in the denialsphere as we view Watts & his ilk. Thus, if a claim is backed up by a link to RC this is viewed by the "suckers" I mention above in much the same way as you or I view a claim backed up by a link to Lindzen or Morano. i.e it is dismissed out of hand. The smear campaign has been successful we have to live with that fact and deal with it. Repeatedly stating the truth (that "it is written by the guys who do the real science. who support their peer reviewed papers with real facts") will only fall on deaf ears.
Sad, but true.
> I thought I made that clear in prior posts. Yes, I have looked through a few, mostly GISS Model-E ( http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ ) because it is readily available online.
Then why did you make the assumptions you posited in your many randomised grunting posts?
Why did you have to ask Gavin anything? The source code is there. Nothing not in the source code is in the model. It is complete.
Wow, that was quicker than expected. Odds have changed. i'm going for two more adieux and also two ad-homs.
> Repeatedly stating the truth (that "it is written by the guys who do the real science. who support their peer reviewed papers with real facts") will only fall on deaf ears.
But such people would ignore any evidence or counter that shows them wrong.
Making your other post about "what we should do" completely meaningless. By your own admission.
After all, one of the reasons I've heard that the dozen or so other papers showing a hockey stick is wrong is because they all worked with Mann at some point and so are tainted.
> where e is Earth's emissivity. He concludes, "How can anybody claim to have a science , when they have the most fundamental physics wrong ?"
BPL you miss the weaselling there.
Bob IS RIGHT.
He cannot claim to have a science because he has the most fundamental physics wrong.
What he missed out was the trifling point that he was demonstrating what he was complaining about.
And he rolled in a couple of suckers who thought Bob was showing science.
"Finally, there has not been a single GCM to date that has been able to effectively, within reasonable error, been able to predict the climate of the past 10-15 years. Why would one have faith (and at this point it IS nothing more than faith), that these GCM's are able to do this for climate out to the year 2100? Again, it's simply laughable.
Not only did the UN IPCC AR4 report cite little to no confidence in GCM results (yes, it IS in there, you must read the actual report contents, not the summary for policy makers), many additional papers and studies have concluded the very same things. The climate is simply not responding as GCM's have suggested or predicted" - Squidly
The limitations of the GCMs has been made quite clear, and on one has suggested that a single GCM can predict the climate to 2100. Results have been reported with the appropriate circumspection - in terms of probability and ranges.
Quibbling over the 'code' is nonsense. Nearly every piece of substantial code could be written in various ways. As you said yourself, MS, with the best respoiurces at it's disposal doesn't always do a good job.
I think you can't see the climate for the code.
> All of your rage and name calling
> Posted by Troll
Irony: See above.
Chris S,
How are you planning on dealing with all the Gish Gallop above?
If you provide a set of links, where will you link to if not RC, AR4 etc? And what will be the response when you provide those links?
>i.e it is dismissed out of hand. The smear campaign has been successful we have to live with that fact and deal with it. Repeatedly stating the truth (that "it is written by the guys who do the real science. who support their peer reviewed papers with real facts") will only fall on deaf ears.
In this context and the inevitable smearing of what ever links your provide, can restate your plan?
> a single GCM can predict the climate to 2100.
Only tecnically true in that you have to read that as "predict THE climate to 2100". As in the actual real track of climate over that time.
But like rolling a ball down a bumpy hillside, you don't know the EXACT track the ball will take, but you DO know it's going DOWN.
81 Tim,
Thanks. I did wonder why this thread exploded. I'm struggling to catch up!
It's so depressing to read the same old faux sceptic comments and questions yet again.
Mark @154 demonstrates precisely the post that I find counterproductive. I don't take Watts etc. to task because I see no need to visit their sites, filled as they are with pseudoscientific garbage. I visit RealClimate and read their posts but have long ago stopped reading the comments filled as they are with argumentative tripe. Commentators like Mark obviously enjoy the argument and, as such, flail around at anyone & everyone they feel they can attack.
As far as respect is concerned - how can someone who knows nothing gain any respect in the subject? As things stand here & elsewhere anyone who asks a question is treated with scorn & derision. There seems to be an increasing paranoia on these lines - anyone asking a question must be a denialsit troll. Again, this outlook can only do harm to the cause.
We can either behave like idiot bullies, or we can behave like concerned teachers - choose your masque.
MAB @#162: Simple & clear-everyone post the same link (not RC for reasons outlined above - perhaps "how to talk to a global warming skeptic, or BPL's concise contributions) and NOTHING ELSE. If the "questioner" continues to display a willful ignorance, then unleash the likes of dhog & Mark as they clearly are just troll bait and our resident trolls can have at them, if they show evidence of learning then show them encouragement.
As it stands most expect any genuine question to be a denialist by default - this will only be a self-fulfilling prophecy as you drive people to the more "understanding" denial sites.
I'll ask again - is it easier to post a link to an answer or to tell someone tersely to "do their own homework"?
#164 Truesceptic
"It's so depressing to read the same old faux sceptic comments and questions yet again."
And why do we see the same over & over again? Because they are better disseminated and because refutations in comments threads are nearly always encased within personal attacks and kneejerk "you're a denialist" accusations. How better to send someone running to the protective bosom of the Watts crowd who tell them, kindly, what they want to hear?
> And why do we see the same over & over again?
> Posted by: Chris S.
Because the espouser of the question wants to prove AGW doesn't exist.
They don't want to find out anything, they want to know they are right.
Not because they're better disseminated. The rebuttals are as disseminated (unless the blog owner removes the post. Are you suggesting that denialist posts be deleted?) because they are done after YET ANOTHER blog post grunts out the same stale talking point.
> don't take Watts etc. to task because I see no need to visit their sites, filled as they are with pseudoscientific garbage.
But despite that AND that their site does the same stuff you're complaining of, NOBODY IS LEAVING DENIALISM because of the rudeness.
YOUR post is what I call timewasting.
It's a problem that, like many denialist points are MADE UP.
Find an example where the problem exists against denial of AGW.
You won't.
All you'll find is people who have NEVER shown any reasoning that accepts AGW saying "I used to think it was real until all the ad-hom and sarcasm from the pro-AGW religious zealots...".
The "problem" you point out DOES NOT EXIST.
Bob Armstrong, you will find your "implementation" in just about any book on radiation exchange in atmospheres. Goody and Young spring to mind, Ray Pierrehumbert has a beta version of his forthcoming book on the web.
To first order an albedo of .3 for the earth is a good estimate AS VERIFIED BY OBSERVATIONS (you could, as Eli recalls look at reflection from the moon to get this before satellites)
It is wonderful how people with no experience in a subject believe that the obvious has been missed and they are the ones to find it
Girma tries to sneak one by, unfortunately he succeeds
CO2 has increased from ~280 to ~380 ppm since the industrial revolution. that is an increase of over 30%. CO2 comprises the majority of greenhouse gases where the atmosphere effectively radiates to space (the water vapor condenses out lower down)
Chris, you only have to look at the reception that Judith Webster got at CA to know that you are wrong. For laughs go look at the nut jobs over at Marohasy
"Are you suggesting that denialist posts be deleted?"
No, I'm suggesting a more co-ordinated response to them than scattergun attacks from those with little knowledge & plenty of ire.
A quick question for you so I know where we stand and can decide whether to continue paying any attention to your posts: Which do you care more about - the continuing negative effects of climate change, or winning an argument on a forum?
Personally I care more for the former which is why I am advocating a better engagement with questioners than just shouting "You're wrong you ignorant f^ck" in their faces.
Looking up I see an example of the tenor of answer I would prefer from Eli - though the inclusion of a weblink to the citation would round it off perfectly. And the last sentence is unnecessary.
Squigly nonsense
Unfortunately this simply shows that squig is hallucinating. The community model has been around for a LONG time, is used professionally and is always being improved and maintained by the user community, ucar and ncar. Since it is designed to be used by many groups, the level of software coding is professional.
Squig complains about getting large code to run on his computer. Welcome to the real world Squig. This is always an issue and is why people work a long time to port applications and get funding for large computers.
Squig refers to the Oxford climateprediction.net. He might go look at what the serious purpose of that was, which would also give some of the other denialists a clue about why no model (not just of climate) is complete.
In short, Squig shows clearly that he is a Dunning Kruger kid trying to impress people with how much he does not know.
Bernard J #119
I wrote, âThe result of the summaries is the claim that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere of 0.01% since the industrial revolution has caused global warmingâ
You wrote, ââ¦shows us that Girma is innumerateâ
Thank you for that.
Let us look at the data.
1) Proportion of CO2 before the industrial revolution was 280 ppm. 2) Proportion of CO2 now is 380 ppm. 3) Increase in CO2 since the industrial revolution is 100 ppm. 4) Therefore, the proportion of this increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.01%
Am I innumerate?
#172 Eli.
I have no interest in what the chorus at CA or Marohasy have to say. We need to realise that the message we are giving is something that people don't want to believe. Now, if a doctor has to tell someone they have terminal cancer how do you think they go about it? Do they sit them down and break the news as gently as possible or do they give it bluntly & tell them that they are stupid if they don't immediately accept it?
Polls are showing that fewer & fewer people (in the US at least) are accepting the reality of AGW. Watts has been voted Science blog of the year. Blog science is gaining greater credence to the layman than real science. These are worrying trends. I can't see how statements like "It's a body of work, going back 150+ years. Do your own homework." (#25) "Do you have any irrefutable proof that CO2 is not a climate driver?" (#27) "Why should we do your homework for you?
And what do you think the alternative is, that thousands of climate scientists around the world are just making shit up?" (#49) are of any help compared with just providing a link to the answer, or at least providing some sort of explanation. It may not convince the questioner, but it may have some influence on others viewing a thread that do not necessarily post.
Girma,
Like other things, you are very innumerate. You are mistaking the actual contribution of C02 to the total pool of atmospheric gases with the actual increase in this gas alone which is of course much higher than 0.01%. This increase has profound implications for global and regional climate patterns, just as a trace amount of dioxin in the human system or venom from Atrax robustus might be fatal to a human being. So let's settle on middle ground and just say that you are intellectually dishonest. Fine.
Your ealier inane comment with respect to C02 being a nutrient and not a pollutant totally belies the fact that you know nothing about complex adaptive systems and terrestrial ecology. Its clear to me that you've gleaned your knowledge, if one can call it that, from web sites such as the Greening Earth Society, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, or others set up and funded by polluting industries with an axe to grind. Speaking as a scientist, my advice is to get off your butt and read some of the primary literature, instead of parroting arguments from those who are distorting science. Avoiding appalling web sites like Morano's would be a good start.
Girma -
Yes, you are innumerate, or at least illiterate; the sentence 'Therefore, the proportion of this increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.01%' is not a properly formed sentence.
You could say:
'Expressed as a percentage of the total atmosphere, the increase in CO2 is 0.01%', if you were trying to intentionally decieve. Of course, should you regard 0.01% as an unimportant quantity, I would suggest you try increasing the concentration of Cyanide ions in your body to 0.01% of your total body mass. (OK, don't, because you'll die)
If you wanted to be use the word 'proportionate', you could say that 'The proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 has increased from 0.028% to 0.038%, an increase of roughly 35%'. That would be clearer. You do want to communicate clearly, don't you?
It helps, Girma, if you get your terminology right.
A _proportion_ is a statement that _two ratios are equal_. It is an equation with a ratio on each side.
2/5 = 4/10 is an instance of a proportion.
A proportion is _not_ a percentage.
Feel free to try making a proportion out of your data. 380/280 = 1/10000 WRONG. 380/280 = 19/14 CORRECT = ~1.36
The _amount_ of pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 was ~280 ppm. The increase has been about 100 ppm.
The _percentage increase_ in going from 280 to 360 ppm is [(Final - Original)/Original] * 100 and the answer is ~36%.
That's probably about Key Stage 3 maths (in UK educational parlance): about 11 or 12 years old probably.
Ooo! And look: ~1.36 and ~36%. Now, I wonder if ...
Why do we need CO2 for global warming?
During summer, increase in temperature results in increase in water vapor from evaporation from the sea. This could increase the water vapor from a low of 1% to 4% of the atmosphere. Why does not this 3% increase in water vapor does not cause run away global warming, but an increase of 0.01% in CO2 since the industrial revolution causes catastrophic global warming?
Dear AGW believers, is this global warming?
TRUE Mean Global Temperature
"I could just be TOLD what the evidence is, simply, instead of being sent on a turkey chase to websites where the comments are totally damning to the arguments the websites try to make. (aka Boris' links)"
You expect us to write a book in comments at Deltoid?
But, anyway, dhogaza was right I guess. My score so far:
People dhogaza said were trolls: 473
People who weren't really trolls: 0
Chris S,
I agree with you that we need to counter the anti-environmetnalsits with hard empirical evidence. This evidence DOES exist. The problem is that many of us here post during breaks or when we get the time to do so. I am a busy scientist who gets paid to conduct research, give lectures, supervise students and the like. If I sat around here all day challenging the kinds of inane comments that pop up from the sceptics, then I'd never get anything else done. In previous threads I have expended a lot of energy countering the vast sea of nonsense about issues dealing with the environment, some of it with respect to climate change and its effects on communities and ecosystems. Bernard, Barton, Sod, Mark, d'hogaza, bi-int, and others have also expended a lot of effort in this respect.
The fact is that when every new sceptic shows up I just cannot rewrite volumes debunking their nonsense. Is the climate changing rapidly? Most certainly, especially in higher latitudes. Does this have ecological consequences? Absolutely it does; the changes now occurring are in all likelihood unprecedented in many hundreds of thousands of years, at least in terms of scale. We are talking about a largely deterministic system (at least in terms of short time scales) being forced out of equlibrium. Sure, climate is dynamic and changes occur, but not in single human lifetimes or less at the rates we are now seeing. The problem with people is that we have evolved as a species to respond to what we perceive as instantaneous threats: a bear on the path ahead, a violent storm, an earthquake. We have not evolved to respond to what we perceive as gradual change but which in the context of largely deteministic systems is actually exceedingly fast.
There is little doubt that natural systems, already stressed by a wide range of anthropogenic assaults which are well-known, are having now to adjust to climate change which is rapid. Food webs will certainly unravel, there will be many losers (particularly amongst habitat specialists) and the consequences for the ways in which natural systems function and the services emerging from them that sustain us is likely to be dire.
I have gone over this a million times before, in much more detail than I will here. I simply do not have the time to write a volume full of references (they DO exist, trust me) showing what I know to be happening. I have yet to meet a population ecologist denying the scale of changes now occurring. Most of those sceptics posting here appear unable to tell a mole cricket from a giraffe, yet they comment freely as if they had imbued wisdom on environmental science that somehow has been missed by those (like me) working in the field for more than 20 years.
Please excuse the typos, but I am busy and do not have the time to write (another) tutorial. If the sceptics and denialists wish to believe in the tooth fairy and in those with clear political and financial agendas, then that is their prerogative (with apologies to Britney Spears).
AGW believers, is this global warming (aka climate change)?
[True Mean Global Temperature](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…)
176 Chris S,
I would agree with you if we were talking about genuine sceptics or those simply lacking information and unsure where to find it. In either case, we can expect reasonable questions to which we can supply reasoned answers, supported as needed by references to published science.
But we are not talking about those. We are talking about denialist trolls _masquerading_ as those. Perhaps I've spent too much time skimming denialist blogs (I have a sick sense of humour, as you might guess from the [The Christmas Spirit](http://notahedgehog.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-christmas-spirit/) collection) but there are certain "tells" that one recognises. Things that should stand out are uses, veiled or otherwise, of the logical fallacies of 'Begging The Question' and 'Non Sequitur', combined amusingly enough with frequent misuse of 'Ad Hominem' accusations.
I understand your intention but fear you are being a little naive. Some others, like dhogaza and Mark, might appear to be overly aggressive but they know their foe!
Andrew Dodds #178
Thank you.
You wrote, âIf you wanted to be use the word 'proportionate', you could say that 'The proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 has increased from 0.028% to 0.038%, an increase of roughly 35%'. That would be clearer.â
I would prefer you instead wrote, âIf you wanted to be use the word 'proportionate', you could say that 'The proportion of the atmosphere that is CO2 has increased from 0.028% to 0.038%, an increase of roughly 0.01% (0.038-0.028)'. That would be clearer.â
Girma -
Yes. Scale on the graph isn't very good, though.
My previous comment referenced the graph.
An increase from 0.028% to 0.038% is an increase of 36%, as others have said. Not sure how you keep getting this wrong.
As far as Girma's innumeracy goes, on a scale of 1-10 I'd rate him/her/it an 'F'.
You AGW believers, I dare you to use the term âGlobal Warmingâ instead of âClimate Changeâ. You would not, because you will always win when you use âclimate changeâ: cooling is climate change, warming is climate change, forest fire is climate change and so on and so forth.
The only issue was âIncrease in CO2 causes global warmingâ. Unfortunately, now global warming has been replaced by âclimate changeâ and CO2 by âcarbonâ. The deception continues.
Global Warming
I wonder if Girma's bank manager has had to adopt the Girma method of calculating increases?
No 6.25% rates for Girma. No, his stoic bank mamager traipses off to his trusty abacus, calculates the net worth of the world, compers it to Girma's investment and then reports back - 'We can offer you a 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%
increase in your investment today sir!'
Global warming caused by CO2.
preview you fool!
Re: Chris@6 - IPCC TAR and AR4 quotes
Note that Clem@16 answered your original question. The following are also from the TAR (WG1 report, 2001).
- Page 88, section 1.1.2 : "Water vapour is the strongest greenhouse gas" [ NOT CO2 ... ]
- Page 91, section 1.2.2 : "Climate varies naturally on all time-scales"
- Page 429, section 7.2.2.3 : "At present, the underprediction of boundary-layer clouds is still ONE OF the most distinctive and permanent errors of AGCMs" [ my emphasis ]
- Page 432, section 7.2.3.3 : "... the difficulties all GCMs have in simulating the Madden-Julien Oscillation ..."
- Page 440, section 7.3.7 : "... since natural variability in the climate system is not fully predictable, it follows that there are inherent limitations to predicting transitions and thresholds" [ in the THC section, but this principle applies elsewhere ]
- Page 493, section 8.5.5 : "Accurate simulation of current climate does NOT guarantee the ability of a model to simulate climate change correctly" [ my emphasis ]
- Page 536, section 9.2.2.4 : "There is also the possibility of seriously flawed outliers in the ensemble corrupting the results"
- Page 575, section 9.3.6.6 : "... (although agreement between models does not guarantee that those changes will occur in the real climate system)" [ NB : This is my personnal favourite TAR quote, despite it being in brackets I still don't know how it got past the "censors" ... ]
- Page 589, section 10.2.1 : "Past analyses have indicated that ... AOGCMs have substantial problems in reproducing present day climate characteristics"
- Page 705, section 12.2.2 : "These findings emphasise that there is still considerable uncertainty in the magnitude of internal climate variability"
- Page 729, section 12.5 : "... it is not possible to distinguish an anthropogenic signal from natural variability on five year time-scales"
- Page 773, section 14.2.1 : "Models are of limited use without observations"
- Page 784, section 14.4 : "The elimination of models because they are in conflict with climate-relevant data is particularly important" [ I "particularly" agree with this quote ! ]
====================================
The AR4 (2007) report I got as PDF files. The page numbers below refer to the number "printed" at the bottom of the page.
- Page 115, FAQ 1.3 "box" : "Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas ..."
- Page 592, section 8 : "... IMPORTANT deficiencies remain in the simulation of clouds and tropical precipitation" [ my emphasis ]
- Page 593, section 8 : "... SUBSTANTIAL uncertainty remains in the magnitude of cryospheric feedbacks within AOGCMs" [ my emphasis ]
- Page 601, FAQ 8.1 "box" : "Nevertheless, models STILL show SIGNIFICANT errors" [ my emphasis ]
- Page 627, section 8.5 : "Society's perception of climate variability ... is largely formed by the frequency and the severity of extremes" [ and how they are reported by the mainstream media ?!? ]
===================================
The science is NOT (and never will be) "settled", the debate is NOT over.
This is an excellent comment, which brings me to squidly's complaint that Model E "isn't professionally documented".
If you look at. say, the dynamic cloud modeling module, on the surface it appears to be very poorly documented, indeed. However the code references a refereed, published paper by a subset of the modeling team. It is there that you'll find the physics and an overview of how the physics is being modeled. For scientists, this is far more accessible than the code. Getting the physics right is the hardest part. And it does serve very much as a specification, one that's very precise, and one that can be used to check the resulting implementation.
umm.....what does AGW stand for again???
It's gotta be said ...
Squidly don't know squidlyshit.
Don't waste your time.
> an increase of roughly 0.01% (0.038-0.028)'. That would be clearer.â
> Posted by: Girma
What does the effect of that 90% of atmosphere that is in diatomic form have wrt IR?
NONE.
Therefore the relationship of CO2 to that other stuff is irrelevant.
If you want to go to absolutes, the one you should be using would be in Gigatons.
New hottest ocean temps [on record](http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jLv3LpI0fw21ULmgkJtin…)
Global warming!
Global Average Temperature Jumps By The [Highest Ever Amount](http://www.azocleantech.com/Details.asp?newsID=6409) In One Month.
Mmm.
#182 Jeff: I know those references exist, I've evenwritten a few of them! I'm reluctant to fully disclose my identity but I've been working on the longest entomological record in the world for a while (it's in the same institute as the longest experiment), you'll probably be able to work it out...
The scenario I'm envisaging would negate the need for expending too much energy on refuting long debumked claims. I'll try a bit harder to spell it out:
Stage 1) A question is asked that may appear to originate from the denialsphere, or it may not. Respondent(s): "That's covered here (link) have a look and come back to us. (IMPORTANT: every responder gives the same link)
Stage 2a) Questioner returns with further questions related to the link given - these also may be denier memes but they show they have read the initial link. Respondant(s): "Good point - see here (link) for further work in this area"
Stage 2b) Questioner returns with further questions that make it clear that they have not read the link. Respondant(s): "You don't seem to have read the last post come back when you have (no further reponse)
Stage 2c) Questioner returns with unrelated question to his/her first. Respondant(s): "Did you check the link I gave you earlier - what did you think? (No further response until 2a is fulfilled or 3b occurs)
Stage 3a) Questioner returns with further related questions - continue linking to answers.
Stage 3b) Questioner continues to ignore the link(s) given or continues to post unrelated FUD. Respondant(s) "Dhogaza, Mark etc. he's all yours, have at it"
There, no extra work, no chance of accusations of ad hom or unreasonableness and denialist memes firmly refuted.
Now, this approach requires two things - a repository of standard (good) answers to possible questions and, more importantly a degree of co-ordination amongst the AGW blog community that we have not yet seen. We know that there is such a community - it includes such regular commentators as (in no particular order) BPL, dhogaza, Hank Roberts, Marion Delgado, Eli, Truesceptic, ScruffyDan, John P Reissman, tamino, MAB, Penguindreams, CM, Ray Ladbury, Greenfyre, Timothy Chase, frankbi, Mark, Mark Byrne etc. etc. (apologies to those I've left out). If this community can come together & form a united front refusing to be distracted by FUD then we can start chipping away at the edifice of crud that the deniers have constructed.
One last thing - although the questioner may be a denialist troll, there may be genuine seekers for knowledge "lurking" looking for the answers and looking to see if the answers they've been given by the Watts crowd have any traction - these are the people we should be taking into account in these exchanges.
Aggresion never works in the teaching environment, we must view these comments threads as opportunities to teach, not get our rocks off shouting down the ignorant.
Oh, gosh, Mark - BLR, good quote-mining there.
Too bad that anyone with a three-digit IQ knows that quote-mining is a form of lying.
I do agree with this statement made by Mark - BLR, though:
"The science is settled, the debate is over."
Yes, Mark - BLR, quote-mining is fun.
"Oh by the way, the UN IPCC wrote in their 3rd report that climate is a non-linear chaotic system and long term predictions of climate are not possible. Not possible!" - clem @4
Chris replied:
"Please provide a citation from the Third Assessment Report (TAR) where the claim is made that predictions of future climates are not possible"
Mark, none of your snippets are such a citation. Predictions of climate are possible of course, noting the IPCC's own clear statements of what this means - "the prediction of the probability distribution of the systemâs future possible states".
>The science is NOT (and never will be) "settled", the debate is NOT over.
Depends on what the question is. Did CO2e cause most of the current warming trend? Yes (>90% confidence).
Will current projections of CO2e rise cause 2K rise by 2100 or 6k rise? That debate is not yet settled.
@140&138-"As a senior scientist"--Bottom line is that both sides cherry pick evidence & scientist to support their views on these blogs. Harvey, perhaps you are a senior scientist of ecology (although I'd say you're more like a frustrated political scientist playing a version of my penis is bigger than yours) We all know that scientists are infallable particularly those that agree with the theory of AGW. As for critising those for taking money from the fossil fuel industry, I suppose then those scientist taking money from greenpeace,sierra club,government grants, etc are pristine in their scientific views and not influenced similiarly? I'd also like to read your peer review papers on the subject even if I'm dragging knuckles on the ground. If you're not published, a little less time raging on the blogs and time time presenting a coherent scientific argument might help you win the day. Blogs are for sport not serious debate. ;-)
Chris S,
Good post. Hope we meet up some time at an ecological conference.
Your are 100% correct when you say: One last thing - although the questioner may be a denialist troll, there may be genuine seekers for knowledge "lurking" looking for the answers and looking to see if the answers they've been given by the Watts crowd have any traction - these are the people we should be taking into account in these exchanges".
I realize ths. I know there are some peoplke surfing the internet who come into these thread quite by accident. It is this reason alone that I venture in here. I believe that we have to counter the nonsense spewed out by the anti-environmentalists (for that is what they are). Its just that I find I have to always repeat myself. I think several of us here hammered Tim Curtin on his thread when he raised the same simplisitc arguments as some are doing here. But I cannot spend 8 hours a day citing a volume of extant studies which provide good ecological proxies for largely unprecedented contemporary warming. Perhaps when I am on my sabbatical (that is very soon) I will have more time.
#184 TrueSceptic.
It may be naive, but it seems to me that the current method aint working...
Take another look at Mark's post @ 154 and tell me he hasn't assumed I'm some kind of denialist.
Then again, given Mark's track record I'm sure he'd pick a fight in an empty room if he could.
TJeff76,
You lost all credibility with your primary school argument about scientific funding from Greenpeace, Sierra Club etc as well as government (Greenpeace funding primary research? Gimme a break will you). As I said in another thread, and get this through your thick head, my research is based on population ecology and not global change biology (with the exception of invasive plants). If you want to debate me on the ecological effects of warming, which are manifest, by all means do so, but do not dredge up this ridiculous funding issue. The ones at the receiving end of big payoffs are not scientists like myself, but those who sell out to the think tanks and PR firms.
Furthermore, with respect to warming, I defer to the opinions of the vast majority of the scientific community who are doing the primary climate-based research, and have lengthy publication records, and not the hacks and pseudos who do not do much if any research but snipe away from the sidelines.
#205 TJeff
Someone who evidently can't use google feels it necessary to comment?
Dhogaza - he's all yours but I'll take first stab - Try [here](http://www.nioo.knaw.nl/search/node/Harvey) dumbass.
#206 Jeff
No-one can spend 8 hours a day on this which is why we need to start collating good replies in comments and good blog posts for ease of access for the rest of the community - a one stop shop as it were. Mark seems to have plenty of time on his hands, I wonder whether he'd fancy having something constructive to do?
George Crews has concerns:"The highest priority for high-consequence software is software reliability. The more life and wealth at risk, the more important it is that the software's results be reliable and dependable. This reliability and dependability is assured by proving the quality of the software. The proof that the correct science has be encoded correctly."
If an issue is really super-duper important, and requires modeling, then there will be multiple independent codes. Errors in a particular code become a non-issue.
You don't seem to realize that the main source of "error" in scientific modeling is reasoning, not coding. Testing theories is where the emphasis is put in scientific modeling. A great deal of effort is put into making sure the code is correct - but that is never mentioned in the papers - why would it be?
For example, the famous UAH satellite temperature record boo-boo that OTHER people had to correct because Christie and Spencer refused to believe what nature was telling them (through INDEPENDENT temperature products). No amount of SQA would have helped Christie and Spencer. There is STILL a problem with the UAH record http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/05/uah-annual-cycle-continues-in-2009/. Did SQA expose this, or will it help UAH find their error?
Science has come up with a coherent picture of what is going on. The fundamentals that we have known for 50 years are enough to determine beyond doubt that we have a problem. No models needed for that, so that "high-consequence" disappears. What the models try to do is, well, model the climate. Exactly WHAT will happen WHERE (on average). How much will temperature and precipitation patterns change in the Southeast US, for example? That would be useful information to farmers in the Southeastern US, and we can't tell them yet.
207 Chris S,
What is not working and how do we judge if it is?
I thought Mark @154 merely gave an example of the "being reasonable" idea not holding water when we look at the "other side".
I agree about his argumentative nature, though. Try the Tamino thread starting [here](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/do-you-believe-ian-plimer/#comme…) (I assume it's the same "Mark", apologies to both if I'm wrong.)
Sorry chaps, would like to contribute more today, but there's something special happening at the Oval & I'm off to find a TV
We all agree the increase in CO2 since the industrial revolution is 380-280=100 ppm, which is 100 * 100/1,000,000 = 0.01%. Which is NOTHING!
AGW believers, let us not use force in the form of government legislation before we are sure. How about waiting until the mean global temperature for any of the next ten years to return to the 1998 value of 0.55 deg C before the use of force?
I am cheering for China and India to continue to refuse to increase the cost of their energy and save us from the chain of AGW believers. The argument being all jobs will go to China and India and we in the developed countries will be unemployed and return back to the stone age. Their aim is destruction. Look at the last year fire in Melbourne, Australia. The environmentalist prevented any controlled burning of the forest bush, and this fuel in a hot summer day started fire and destroyed more than one hundred human life and thousands of other life. The world needs to shake itself from its green shackle.
207 Chris S,
What is not working and how do we judge if it is?
I thought Mark @154 merely gave an example of the "being reasonable" idea not holding water when we look at the "other side".
I agree about his argumentative nature, though. Try the Tamino thread starting [here](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/do-you-believe-ian-plimer/#comme…) (I assume it's the same "Mark", apologies to both if I'm wrong.)
> I agree about his argumentative nature, though.
Likely the same one.
But please explain where the nature is either
a) counterproductive (as in causes a problem where none existed)
b) wrong
Apologies for the dup!
And the one who became argumentative and snarked instead was Dhogaza.
"Read before you post" from someone who knee-jerked their way to a snide.
I never start a fight, but I always finish it.
215 Mark,
_Likely_ the same one?
> We all agree the increase in CO2 since the industrial revolution is 380-280=100 ppm, which is 100 * 100/1,000,000 = 0.01%. Which is NOTHING!
No it isn't.
Its, what? 10^12 tons, or something like that.
YOU lift that "nothing".
> Likely the same one?
> Posted by: TrueSceptic
Because at that time I hadn't read it.
I'm not a pre-cog.
PS isn't pointing that out with *italics* and all that, an argumentative stance?
> Mark seems to have plenty of time on his hands, I wonder whether he'd fancy having something constructive to do?
> Posted by: Chris S.
cf
> Sorry chaps, would like to contribute more today, but there's something special happening at the Oval & I'm off to find a T
> Posted by: Chris S.
Plenty of spare time to watch something you can't change and can read about in the paper tomorrow.
And when it comes to you responding, there doesn't seem to be a "must".
Which is *right*. There *is* no "must". But it *is* the opposite stance you take in print for other people to work to when compared to what you think you should do.
220 Mark,
You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?
Why reply to a post containing a link which _might_ refer to you without snatching a quick look first?
Yes, I can be argumentative too. :D
> Take another look at Mark's post @ 154 and tell me he hasn't assumed I'm some kind of denialist.
Take a look and see if you can find "you're a denialist, Chris".
I'm pointing out that denialists make those arguments.
I'm pointing out WHY they make those arguments.
I'm pointing out why those arguments are spurious.
I also argue against people who use ** *bad arguments* ** whatever they are using their *bad arguments* for.
The enemy isn't denial of science or lying or any of the other things. The enemy is bad arguments. One reason for which is one of those other things.
e.g. a bad argument because you don't care if you have an idea, just that someone else's idea be wrong (denial)
e.g. a bad argument because you want to mislead someone (lying)
e.g. a bad argument because you hate someone's POV (ad hom attacks)
> The science is NOT (and never will be) "settled", the debate is NOT over.
> Posted by: Mark - BLR
What do you define as "the debate" MarkBLR?
"Is CO2 causing most of the warming we see"?
If so, no, there is no debate left.
"Will we see a tipping point if we go over 550ppm"?
If so, yes there is debate left.
"Will we see a tippping point somewhere OVER 500ppm"?
If so, no, there's no debate there either. Except about how much *over* 550ppm it would need to go. Whether there IS a point over 500ppm is not contested by any rational science.
But denialists are using the fact that the second one has debates over it to mean that the first one has debates over it.
WRONG.
> Why reply to a post containing a link which might refer to you without snatching a quick look first?
> Posted by: TrueSceptic
Because it doesn't really matter what the post was. I can be argumentative.
And if that post wasn't a post of mine I wouldn't be upset or annoyed and therefore the "I apologise if not" wasn't required.
But I know that some people can be anal-retentive about the unimportant and that you posting "I apologise" over something that was unimportant could indicate you are one of those, then I looked.
219 Mark,
100 ppm is about 800*10^9 tonnes but it doesn't really matter in this case. The problem is with someone's perception of the importance (or not) of changes in small percentages. Because the percentage is small, even large increases in that percentage (almost 40%) can apparently be dismissed. No doubt if it increased by X10, it would still be dismissed because "0.28% is still tiny".
It's odd that most people with this idea seem nevertheless to accept the importance of the ozone layer. That can't possibly matter either, can it, as the percentage is so small?
@ Gaz #123 : ONLY in Kelvin do ratios make sense . By your values of a 0.7K increase from 284.9K over a century , this whole suicidal insanity is over a change 0.25% in our observed mean temperature . That is barely a human JND and the effects attributed to it are lunacy .
"I didn't start it, he did!"
Mark is consistently infantile, I'll grant him that.
@ Squidly 137 :
We agree ! Venus is radiating 16 times as much energy as any object in it's orbit can be absorbing from the sun . The idea that its temperature is caused be "greenhouse gas trapping" is absurd on so many grounds , anyone who presents it as evidence of a "runaway" effect shows they don't have a clue about temperature physics .
> Mark is consistently infantile, I'll grant him that.
> Posted by: dhogaza
And with an astounding level of irony, Dhog goes all childish...
Germa.
What concentration of cyanide is lethal to humans? How much ozone in the atmosphere is required to prevent UV radiation from sterilising the planet's surface? What level of fluoride in water benefits tooth strength - and as a supplementary, what level of fluoride is lethal to humans?
What concentration of testosterone in your serum caused your gonads to drop (I'm assuming that you're too ignorant to be female), and what increase in this concentration would send you into a fit of 'roid apoplexy?
If you're the visual sort, and you need kindergarten experiments to drive some understanding into your head, what concentration of potassium permanganate would you need to add to water in order to detect a noticable colour change? How would optical density change with concentration of said potassium permanganate?
What is the thickness of the gold film on the inner surface of an astronaut's visor? How does this compare with the overall thickness of the visor?
Are you getting the picture yet?
And please parse yourself if you are still confused about why you demonstrate innumeracy:
You see, "an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere of 0.01%" is grammatically the same as "an increase in CO2 of 0.01%", and as Andrew Dodds explain to you the increase in CO2 is actually around 36%.
That's the second time this month a troll has used this ploy, although I can't be shagged to figure out who the first one was, in order to show Germa that s/he is not even original. Anyone?
Fran at #124.
The pedant in me is even more peeved now!
The twins have a lot to answer for... ;-)
> 100 ppm is about 800*10^9 tonnes but it doesn't really matter in this case.
Aye, I only got a ball-park figure from what I remembered.
It *is* rather strange though.
For example, as far as the IR radiation is concerned, there's H20 and then there's CO2.
All that diatomic stuff doesn't even exist.
So if you want to talk absolute %'s and IR effects from it, you have to start with all the IR active gasses as 100% and then talk about the fraction of *that* as a percent.
Adding 10 septillion tons of O2 to our atmosphere will do NOTHING to the IR blocking effect.
But it will have a huge effect on the % of the atmosphere CO2 is.
But doing the maths CORRECTLY doesn't stay "on message" for knuckle-draggers who merely want to proclaim AGW is all a storm in a teapot, so they don't do it.
Mind you, as Bob amply demonstrates, they'll jump massively on you if you don't use your maths scrupulously correctly if it is to show AGW is a problem...
I think Father Tim needs to step in and send certain naughty boys to their rooms...
I agree with the comments about registering people's beliefs on global warming, i.e. whether they agree with it or not. People are going to need to take responsibility for causing confusion and inaction on this issue - we know how this is going to end, when the climate gets totally screwed! My god why can't people understand how important this issue is!?
I suggest people carry some sort of identity card, or maybe even just tattooing it on people. Might as well have IBM keep track of the registrants, since they're good at tabulating that sort of stuff. Then when the time comes, it will be easy to identify the people and, I don't know, maybe we should put them on trains on hold them in education camps where they can no longer be a danger to society, or themselves for that matter! We can care for them since they're obviously incapable of rational thought. There might be overpopulation issues in the camps, but we can keep them from breeding which is good for the rest of us anyway. They could even present a viable work force, and they could help build equipment needed to combat the dangerously changing climate. And if worse comes to worse, and so many of us die from the effects of climate change and fighting it, then we can have some sort of euthanasia program for them because the LAST thing we want to do is to leave the world to these idiots just for them to destroy it all over again!
231 Bernard,
I doubt you will find an origin of the "x% is nothing" claim. Innumeracy is extremely common and no "sceptic" who knows better will correct it.
> I suggest people carry some sort of identity card, or maybe even just tattooing it on people.
Why?
To hark back to the "Final Solution" of the Holocaust and tie that to being persuaded by AGW science that it is happening?
It's not necessary because we can, you know, ASK what people think of AGW.
Now it would be nice if they didn't LIE and said "I deny AGW" rather than the porkie-pie version "I'm just skeptical of AGW", but that's just because the person being asked doesn't want to tell the truth, not because they're afraid they'll be chucked under a bus.
> My god why can't people understand how important this issue is!?
PS I think that quite a few of the knuckle-draggers know how important the issue is.
It's why they are so insistent that nothing be done about it.
After all, if it wasn't an important issue, there'd be nothing important happening in ameliorating the problem and so it would be unimportant to fight it.
Just let the gravy train continue till they've retired and someone else is holding the can, and they'll be OK. God forbid that the gravy train should stop before they're stuffed full all their pockets...
I'd say that as long as the switch to El Niño is maintained until the end of the year then the period 1998-2009 (and all periods to 2009 at least a few years long) will have a positive trend in all global surface temperature estimates (GISS, NOAA and HadCrut3). This may shut the trolls up to some degree but it will never stop moronic arguments from the likes of Steve Fielding who pick February 1995 and say "Gee, there's been no warming for 15 years" because February 1995 was warmer than last month.
Re: Bob.Douglas "@ Squidly 137 : We agree ! Venus is radiating 16 times as much energy as any object in it's orbit can be absorbing from the sun . The idea that its temperature is caused be "greenhouse gas trapping" is absurd on so many grounds , anyone who presents it as evidence of a "runaway" effect shows they don't have a clue about temperature physics ."
Bob, as one who implies to be an expert in what you call "Temperature Physics" (Your term for Theromodynamics and Radiative Transfer I guess ?). Maybe you could tell one when one would expect Venus to freeze over ? As you must know, if Venus is emitting 16 times more energy it is receiving then it must be losing energy rapidly and thus cooling ?
BTW. Do a bit of reading (even Wikipedia would be a good start). The understanding of the role of the Greenhouse effect and the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is really decades old now textbook stuff. Paul Barton pointed to some of the classic papers for anyone truly interested in learning.
@ Barton Paul Levenson 134
Where's the energy to keep Venus hot coming from ? See 229 . It's not the sun .
As computed in my Basic Temperature Physics of Radiantly Heated Balls It's not coming from the sun .
Other reasons why it is absurd is that Venus has the highest albedo of all the inner planets so by the AGWer's Wikipedia equation should be the coolest relative to the black body temperature for its orbit . Further , its day is about as long as its year . Yet its day and night sides are virtually the same temperature , again , 2 times what the sun could make them .
Embarrassing .
"Girma is innumerate."
Don't mess with Girma; he's certified in Visual Basic.
Re: dhogaza@202
My post was responding to Chris@6, which reminded me of the disconnect I felt between the "Catastrophic Global Warming" media reporting and what I read in the TAR WG1 report (which I bought a paper copy of) at the time (2000/1).
There is a difference between "quote-mining" and "editing someone's post to make it say the opposite of what they wrote".
In general, I have found that SOME quotes, though by no means all, are in fact true.
Re: Mark@224
NB : Two threads "colliding" which include two different "Marks" may lead to some confusion ...
My (probably naive) approach has 3 basic rules :
1) Just because YOU think something is true does NOT mean it is in fact true.
2) Just because I think something is FALSE does NOT mean that it is in fact FALSE.
3) In both cases, (real-world) data / evidence is required to support the statement.
There is still debate as to HOW MUCH of the 1975-2003/4/5 warming phase was due to CO2. Lindzen and Svensmark, among others, will probably disagree with the numbers you think are correct.
I am (impatiently) waiting for the CLOUD09 experiment to start producing results at CERN. It is entirely possible that they will DISprove the proposed "Svensmark effect" (cosmic rays -> low level clouds -> global cooling).
It is also POSSIBLE that the data will support this hypothesis.
I think it is most likely that the actual results will surprise BOTH sides of the debate (for different reasons, of course).
@ Jeff Harvey 142 :
So to AGWers , science you learned in grade school was nonsense . You are 93% CO2 + H2O .
Of course rational people are rebelling against all the alarmist nonsense .
We all agree the increase in CO2 since the industrial revolution is 380-280=100 ppm, which is 100 * 100/1,000,000 = 0.01%.
This increase happened in about 150 years. So the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere per year is about 0.00007%. If we wait another ten years before using the authoritarian method of increasing energy prices, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase by only 0.0007%. Please let us wait another ten years just to make sure before we increase world energy price and wipe out millions of the poor by starvation.
If in the next ten years the mean global temperature anomaly again reaches or exceeds the 1998 value of 0.55 deg C, I will join the AGW camp.
Why do we need CO2 for global warming?
During summer, increase in temperature results in increase in water vapour from evaporation from the sea. This could increase the water vapour from a low of 1% to 4% of the atmosphere. Why does not this 3% increase in water vapour does not cause run away global warming, but an increase of 0.01% in CO2 since the industrial revolution causes catastrophic global warming? There is no catastrophic global warming. It is just delusion!
245 Girma,
What a tortured way of calculating the annual CO2 increase! All you had to do was go to [ESRL](http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/), where you can see that your average is not applicable to the present in any case. Figures in ppm:-
1998 2.93
1999 0.94
2000 1.74
2001 1.59
2002 2.56
2003 2.29
2004 1.56
2005 2.55
2006 1.69
2007 2.17
2008 1.66
@ David Donovan 240 :
Were it not for some substantial internal source of heat , Venus would cool to the point at which its radiation would match its input from the sun according to Stefan-Boltzmann/Kirchhoff , about 328k in its orbit .
Thanks for the great graph ! But even it exaggerates the variance in our temperature over the last century and a half by a factor of about 18 because true 0 is 273 degrees lower . Overall , we're damn lucky that the sun is as remarkably stable as it is .
Bob Armstrong explains why Venus is so hot:"Were it not for some substantial internal source of heat , Venus would cool to the point at which its radiation would match its input from the sun according to Stefan-Boltzmann/Kirchhoff , about 328k in its orbit."
Perhaps the Venusians left their toaster on. That would explain it!
Bob:
Re: "Please don't read more than I am writing".
I based my conclusion on your webpage, prominently linked in your name. It implies that we're worried about planetary albedo, not the greenhouse effect, which is wrong.
Re: "substantial internal source of heat"
You're not a follower of Tom Chalko, are you?
@Chris S.
(Jumping into this troll-infested mire late so apologies if I've missed this already)
The links at sceptical science are a really good collated resource of common responses to usual anti-AGW nonsense arguments.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Girma at #245.
"If in the next ten years the mean global temperature anomaly again reaches or exceeds the 1998 value of 0.55 deg C, I will join the AGW camp."
This is an extremely rare event. A skeptic has nominated in advance a measurement that will persuade him.
"You're not a follower of Tom Chalko, are you?"
Actually, he's a follower of Ron Paul:
Everyone is entitled to the liberty of their own physics. Down with the tyranny of Mother Nature's nanny universe!
If so Girma, you'll be joining for the wrong reason, just as you deny AGW for the wrong reasons.
One year of weather data is much too noisy to infer a climate trend. You are likely to have your wish at the next El Nono or Solar Maximum (both of which are likely very soon, but on your logic, you should depart 2 years later if 'warming has stoppped/been wiped out'.
That would not be a scientific method but mere subjective nonsense.
Oops ... El Nono ... hey I think the unintentional pun is a better name for the phenomenon.
El Nino = the baby (boy) (cheers Bernard J) and El Nono something that should not happen ...
Sidebar: Does anyone know the familiar term gor grandfather in Spanish? In Italian it's il nonno
@ BPL 130
We seem to have a failure to communicate . I had a math prof who , when facing totally blank stares from his class , would say "Ok , I'll say it again louder" .
My point is exactly that for a gray body a = e in the formula a theta Ts^4 = e Te^4 in your notation , and so drop out thus predicting that a gray body will come to exactly the same temperature as a black body , whatever its "gray value" .
Wikipedia and apparently a lot of "climate science" texts have this wrong , because their , not my formula completely leaves out the earth's emissivity parameter . As a result , they claim that , given the earth's approximate 0.3 albedo( Eli , there is no argument here ) , the temperature of the earth would be about 255k without their forcings rather than the proper computation of about 279k . This creates a false deficit of somewhat more that 30k rather than perhaps around 5k from this crudest of computations . Any theory which purports to fill that gap is clearly crap .
After agreeing with the above equation , in the next paragraph you revert to a formula which re-asserts the ( 1 - A )^0.25 fallacy . Alan Siddons points out that for every single planet , whatever their atmosphere , this formula , not surprisingly , produces numbers lower that the planet's measured temperature .
Finally , your last equation S = (R / a)^2 es sigma Ts^4 where "R is the sun's radius, a the Earth's (or another planet's) semimajor axis" is obviously absurd because the energy density at any distance sun is dependent solely on the sun's temperature and its distance . You have it independent of distance , but dependent on the receiving object's size .
Hopefully anyone on this blog can see that that is nonsensical .
I would like to emphasize that I have never been able to find a concise quantitative mathematical explanation of the supposed physics of forcings comparable to what is easily found for the derivations of Planck and Stefan-Boltzmann . Where are the equations ? This lack of rigor is evident , for instance , in the lack of any quantitative theoretical prediction of whatever the experiment cited by Brian D , 46 , is supposed to show .
If you want to convince us "skeptics" , show us your equations , and show us your quantitative experimental proof .
46
@Any of the passing anti-AGW commenters)
It would really help if you classified yourselves by filling in a simple questionnaire, since the anti-AGW position is so vast and incoherent in its scope. Quite often I see people post "well no-one thinks *that* what we're arguing is *this*", and then subsequently totally change tack and go back on that assertion, which makes any kind of reasoned debate utterly pointless. (Frankly I think reasoned debate in blog comments is fruitless anyway, but still...). It would help to know *exactly* which bit you're taking issue with.
a) Did global temperature increase over the last century?
b) Does increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere lead to warming?
c) Did the level of CO2 in the atmosphere increase during the 20th century?
d) Is the temperature trend currently still an upward one?
e) Is the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere a result of human activity?
f) Is the increased concentration of CO2 largely responsible for the current warming trend?
g) Would a continued increase in CO2 be a bad thing?
h) Would a continued increase in temperature be a bad thing?
i) Is the IPCC AR4 a legitimate summary of the science as it was at the time of publication?
This is purely an attempt to pin down exactly what position you're arguing. There's a huge body of work by thousands and thousands of diligent scientists stretching back a century and a half that you're trying to dismiss with a couple of drive-by interjections. You can't just say "AGW is a crock because *x*" and expect a single argument to stand unless that argument addresses basic stuff like the radiative physics that leads us to *predict* the observed warming in the first place.
Seriously, the number of times I've been engaged with a gang of four or five anti-AGW arguers who were unwittingly arguing from a set of mutually contradictory positions is astounding.
Attacking the models is a real meme at the moment - and its laughable because the models are not the real evidence, and in any event model predictions have been pretty accurate for a couple of decades now. Currently the flock is grazing on the "don't trust the evil computer code!" grass - they'll move back to the sun, or cloud cover, or hotspots soon enough...
@ CapitalClimate 254 :
Typical attempt at ad hominem insults rather than argument so common on the alarmist side .
I'm not a follower of anybody . I've come to parallel conclusions . And in both physics and freedom , I find classical theory most thoroughly proven .
@357, Armstrong:
"Finally , your last equation S = (R / a)^2 es sigma Ts^4 where "R is the sun's radius, a the Earth's (or another planet's) semimajor axis" is obviously absurd because the energy density at any distance sun is dependent solely on the sun's temperature and its distance . You have it independent of distance , but dependent on the receiving object's size ."
-----
Uhhh... dude. The semi-major axis ***IS*** the distance from the sun. It is approximately the 'average' distance between the sun and the earth - depending on what one decides to average over.
If you are going to blithely dismiss what someone else says, Armstrong, please bother to learn the bog-standard language he s using before you embarrass yourself this way.
259 Bob Armstrong,
Exactly.
Re: Bob....257
You write, in response to PBL...
"Finally , your last equation S = (R / a)^2 es sigma Ts^4 where "R is the sun's radius, a the Earth's (or another planet's) semimajor axis" is obviously absurd because the energy density at any distance sun is dependent solely on the sun's temperature and its distance . You have it independent of distance , but dependent on the receiving object's size . Hopefully anyone on this blog can see that that is nonsensical . "
Nice try Bob, but as `anyone on this blog knows', the "semimajor axis" quite obviously refers to the ORBIT of the body in question ! LOL !
Dave
@ Lee 260 & BPL :
I apologize . I didn't recognize the term , tho now it rings a bell .
Our only apparent disagreement is over the ( 1 - A ) ^ % 4 factor .
264 Bob,
I'm impressed with your honesty in confessing to ignorance of obscure terms.
You are a wonderful example of the best that Blog Science has to offer. I hope that others follow your precedent.
This is jaw-dropping hilarious (and I'm still refusing to do a denialist's homework for them).
Tiddles,
Your remarks regarding b) are somewhat hard to comprehend. Are you actually asserting that the rises in CO2 at Mauna Loa are not representative of the global trend in CO2 concentrations?
Regarding c), you assert that the anthropogenic heat generation from energy usage commercially, residentially and industrially contribute to the observed warming over the 20th C. Can you support that assertion. Last time I did the calculation for it's contribution to global temps I derived a number on the order of 0.01C i.e. beyond any realistic hope of detection.
Several here have demanded that so-called âdenialistsâ wear a badge, so I show you mine.
Do I believe that climate changes? Of course I do. Climate has always changed everywhere and it always will.
Do I think humans alter climate? Yes, of course they do and in several ways. For example, it is warmer in each city than in the surrounding countryside.
Do I know what causes global climate to change? No, I do not and nor does anybody else (although Milankovitch cycles probably give a clue).
Do I think that emissions of greenhouse gases are causing global climate change? No, I do not because the empirical evidence denies it.
Several here seem to think radiation physics is all that needs to be known to decide if anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW) exists. They are wrong because the climate system is complex and varies in several ways for unknown reasons. For example, causes of changes to cloud cover are not understood and have great effect. Cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, cloud cover decreased such that if the Sunâs heat were constant the extra surface warming was 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre. This is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. (The UNâs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq metre).
It seems that AGW-believers here are confusing four issues; viz.
(a) the existence of global warming,
(b) the indication of that warming,
(c) the cause of that warming, and
(d) the significance of the 'hockey stick' of Mann, Bradley and Hughes.
Considering each of these issues:
The existence of global warming is not evidence of anthropogenic global warming because warming of the Earth does not prove humans warmed it. At issue is whether emissions of greenhouse gases from humansâ activities are or are not affecting changes to the Earth's temperature that have always happened naturally.
It seems that global warming did occur over the twentieth century. The degree of this warming is debatable but there are several indications that it happened. These include the assessments of thermometer readings (i.e. HadCRUT and GISS) together with, for example, general retreat rates of glaciers and estimated rates of sea level rise.
Thus, the issue to be determined is whether the global warming over the twentieth century was significantly affected by anthropogenic warming. And this brings us to the 'hockey stick'.
It is self-evident that a constantly varying system varies. A change to the observed variations provides a reason to suppose that the system has obtained a change to the cause(s) of its variation. The alteration to the variations could be an observed change to the magnitude, frequency and/or rate of the variations.
And no observed alteration to the variations indicates that there has been no significant change to the cause(s) of the variations. This indication of no significant change remains true whether or not there is a reason to suspect that there has been a change to the cause(s) of the variations.
Simply, this is an application of the scientific principle known as Occams's Razor which says that the explanation requiring fewest assumptions is most probably correct. So, no observed change indicates that nothing significant has changed.
Put another way, the null hypothesis is that the system has not changed. And, therefore, those who wish to claim that it has changed need to provide evidence for the existence of the change (and this is true whatever their reason for suspecting that a change has occurred).
But there is no indication that the observed global warming of the twentieth century was affected by anthropogenic effects. The globe has warmed for about 300 years as it has recovered from the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the highest temperature of the twentieth century (recorded in 1998) seems to have been cooler than the global temperature that several proxies indicate existed at the peak of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP).
Also, the warming of the twentieth century occurred as two warming periods with one of those periods prior to 1940 (i.e. ~1910 to ~1940) and the other after 1940 (i.e. ~1970 to ~1998) according to the HadCRUT and GISS estimates. But about 85% of all the emissions of greenhouse gases from human activity was after 1940. These two warming periods occurred at the same rate of warming. Clearly, there is no reason to suppose that the period of warming from 1970 to 1998 was mostly induced by the emissions from human activity when the earlier - and similar - period of warming could not have been.
Hence, there is no observed alteration to the variations of global temperature to indicate that there has been a significant change to the cause(s) of the variations in the twentieth century. And, therefore, the scientific conclusion is that there has not been a significant anthropogenic effect on those changes.
The 'hockey stick' of Mann, Bradley and Hughes purported to show that there has been a significant anthropogenic effect on those changes. It suggested that the MWP and LIA did not exist. This was an extraordinary suggestion because there is much evidence to demonstrate that they did exist.
Upon investigation it was determined that the 'hockey stick' is an artifact of several analytical errors most notably incorrect statistical analysis of the data: almost any data - including random data of the form of red noise - usually provides a 'hockey stick' when subjected to those statistical procedures.
Furthermore, global temperature fell from the El Nino high it had in 1998 and has been stable in recent years. This demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that if anthropogenic effects are forcing up global temperature then those anthropogenic effects were overwhelmed by natural effects that forced down global temperature after 1998.
In summation, the scientific conclusion remains that there is no discernible anthropogenic effect on global temperature.
I will not bother to read this blog again because I know from past experience the nature of the personal abuse this posting will attract from AGW-believers whose superstitious faith it denies. But it seemed worthwhile to provide some science when the above postings mostly consist of rants and insults from AGW-believers.
268 RichardSCourtney,
I'm impressed that you are here to support Blog Science. Please do not cave in to the many ad hominem accusations you are sure to encounter here.
TrueSceptic #247.
Thanks for that information.
So, last year, the increase in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere for last year of 2008 was 1.66 ppm, which is 0.000166%. In ten years, the increase would be 0.00166%. Which is nearly nothing, zip & nil.
Well said Richard S Courtney - 'stick' it up them! I agree 100% with you.
These alarmist religeous zeolots are a dwindling bunch of one-eyed biggots lead by a few fanatics who sit comfortably in thier nice homes and jobs and who will never take a step back in pushing their green agendas and pulpit rants.
Tiddles you've obviously been misled by ludicrous Mauna Loa argument put by Tim Curtin.
His insincere arguments have been dealt with [here](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/tim_curtin_thread.php#comment-1…).
Bob Armstrong:
And what, pray tell, is that substantial (to put it mildly) internal source of heat? If Earth had it, Earth would also be about as hot as Venus. Lucky for us it doesn't.
Richard, thanks for that very lengthy...discussion.
I did find it just a little curious that you deny any empiracal evidence for AGW, yet at the same time acknowledge both an increase in CO2 and temps in the 20th C.
I assume that you acknowledge that CO2 is a GHG? If so why do you think that rising CO2 wouldn't cause any temp increases?
Yes, there are fluctutions from year to year. And yes, those flucutations can mask AGW effects - but only in the short term, that's why we are talking about climate, ie. 30 year averages. Otherwise, if the expected El-Nino eventuates later this year and we get a repeat of 1998, you'll have to come back here and recant on your above statement and say that the increased temps show that AGW is overcoming "natural effects". But that would be wrong too - a slightly cooler year or a slightly warmer year do not disprove or prove AGW.
Bob Armstrong:
Wanna bet? Reference please
(Eli thinks there is a simple confusion behind this claim, but it is crap wrong (OK Chris, Eli will try)
Boob Armstrong (one does have limits):
It is perfectly true that for the surface a=e. OTOH, the temperature of the atmosphere is not the temperature of the surface even for a gray atmosphere and a and e for the atmosphere are not the same as a and e for the surface. During the day there is another term describing the absorption of solar radiation.
Go read Goody and Young.
Bob confused, Eli?
Just cause he didn't know what a semi-major axis was, doesn't mean he's confused about evrything as as well.
Yeah, It seems you forgot that CO2 is a GHG. How do you write a 1,000 word comment on AGW without even mentioning CO2? Pretty impressive dodge.
Richard S Courtney writes:
>"Cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, cloud cover decreased such that if the Sunâs heat were constant the extra surface warming was 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre."
Can you provide a reference for this claim of Richard?
Richard Courtney misleads and runs:
Of course, since the original Mann Bradley and Hughes papers of 1998 and 1999, there have been additional reconstructions using additional proxy data and better statistical analysis, extending the reach of the method further back in time. They pretty much all match the Mann Bradley and Hughes result. Displayed on a common figure, they have come to be known as the spaghetti graph
The issue with red noise is that one can get a ten times smaller upturn at the end using Mann's original method with red noise. No one has been able to force the red noise stick to be anywhere near as high in the last century using red noise. Oh yeah, the Dick's "almost any" is, as they say, not even wrong, but he flees to harumph again.
"Tiddles" is Tim Curtin, and he is trying to repeat his [Mauna Loa trash](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/03/tim_curtin_thread.php#comment-1…) (and also previous postings) here.
I reckon that Tim Lambert should just delete Curtin from here, in keeping with the rstriction that he stay on his own thread.
In June, Russia said it would release 30 per cent more greenhouse gases by 2020, with President Dmitry Medvedev stating: "We will not cut off our development potential."
Thanks Russia, China & India for possibly saving us from the self-destruction of the west by the greens!
The greens say they are for forest, but they make it only ready for the next forest fire.
Similarly, they say they are for the poor, but we will see energy price skyrocket and cause misery on millions of people all over the world.
Oh, so your position on AGW is more one of political opposition than any consideration of the science.
squiddly @ 129, that's a very amusing post, which completely misses the point. (It gave me the best laugh I've had today.)
I'm also a computer scientist, and I happen to have spent a large part of my professional career maintaining other people's code, to the point where I'm no longer surprised at just how crappy supposedly professionally-written software can be.
Your complaints about the climate modeling software are particularly risible. Firstly, it's written in FORTRAN for two reasons, the more important of which is that it needs to be fast and numerically stable. (The other is that FORTRAN tends to be the language that mathematicians and physicists are most comfortable with, and often the only one they know. See main reason for an explanation of this.)
I can guarantee that the people who write climate modeling software have little to no interest in elegance. They probably won't be too fussed if it has a shitty interface and doesn't fail particularly gracefully. As I said, it needs to be fast and numerically stable, and it needs to produce a result which is a reasonable, if simplified, model of the world.
Girma's more honest though Michael about his motivation than is (for example) Professor Ian Plimer of the University of Adelaide. Plimer wrote an entire book of antiscientific pixiesh*t motivated by the same simple sentiment of economic or political alarmism as Girma's. Take away the delusions (of scientific competence) and the hatreds (of greenies, scientists, people who make them feel inadequate, etc ...) and there'd be nothing but economic alarmism and fossilised fuelishness left of characters like Plimer.
Tim,
this has been one of the more informative websites that I have followed in a long time. In essence you have taken the classic "How to lie with statistics" (Huff, 1954) book into the 21st Century via the internet...a book I recommend to all of my students because the very nature of science and statistics is designed to prevent scientists from lying to themselves.
This is my first post here and I frankly skim such blogs to learn more about interesting new papers (I have found many here but it takes some digging). Public debates with opponents don't interest me (exluding those published in the relevant literature) -- but teaching the general public/voters/policymakers more about how science actually works is of critical importance.
In that vein I expecially wish to thank Dr. Harvey for participating. Sir. You have done some very nice work. Yes I've been reading many of your papers, and I'm pleased to see another population ecologist on this website. Many others of course have also offered great venues for further education for those who truly wish to learn more.
In dealing with the classic denial comments, in my humble opinion the best procedure when dealing with comments such as Girma #171 is just a) find the common ground of facts and b) show why his calculation was wrong in language understood and replicated by most people on their Ipod or laptop version of Excel. I fully appreciate that this would be impossible for more complex models.
So we agree the start figure is 280 ppm (parts per million, 1880)
End figure is 380 ppm (same measure, 1998)
Note that we use common measures here.
A) start (1880) = 280 ppm
B) end (2008) = 380 ppm
C) calculate 380ppm divided by 280ppm = 1.38
D) So excluding what was there already (the 1.00), CO2 has increased by about the 0.38 measure. This is 38%.
This is a trivial example, but that took about 15 seconds to download the original data, another minute with excel, and another 30 seconds to write the email. But I didn't have to call anyone nasty names or talk down to others on this forum.
The climate issue is vitally important as you know, and as an ecologist I use that adjective in the very literal sense.
Best wishes and keep up the good fight. Andrew
Fair point Andrew.
But what do you do when the person comes straight back, despite a clear explanation, repeating the same thing, as the individual in this example (Girma) has done?
It only works when the individual comcerned has questioned in good faith, something amply demonstrated to be lacking.
Girma writes:
>*In June, Russia said it would release 30 per cent more greenhouse gases by 2020*
My Goodness! that is 3000 times more than 0.01%!
Girma, are you sure you don't want to retract your silly arguments about units which seem whole designed to muddy the waters.
[Girma is making silly arguments like their has been "*an increase of 0.01% in CO2 since the industrial revolution*". And arguing that we should to plot the changes in temp and CO2 on a scale that hides the real changes].- Talk about desperate nonsense.
@268:
Ah, Richard Courtney! I'm glad you showed up, and I'm sorry you'll miss my thanks. You see, your recommendation for deniers to endorse geoengineering as, and I quote, "a political ploy" was so transparently, well, political that it's helped me expose Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus to some of his (now former) disciples. These people remain skeptical of AGW, but they are now checking the sources of each claim they hear. How long would it have taken to deprogram them without your blunt, honest words?
You've been a great help, though I doubt you'll read this as a compliment.
Squidly:
Nothing physically impossible about it, Squid.
The idea that Venus's high temperature is maintained by the greenhouse effect was first proposed by Carl Sagan in 1960.
You're a Velikovsky fan, I take it.
No, it is not. And the shortwave radiation is enough to feed the greenhouse effect, considering Venus's thick greenhouse atmosphere. Surface illumination averages about 16.8 watts per square meter according to landers, but IR back-radiation from the atmosphere is about 16,000 W/m^2, which explains the 735.3 K average surface temperature.
The problem is that Gomer, sorry, Girma is a classic troll [I've visited many a forum, the signs are obvious to me]. I do not hold out any great hope that s/he can be turned around to common sense. S/he is either too deluded/stupid or doesn't care/vested interest.
Sorry, that last post was me. Just realised there is another Alan on here.
Squidly 146:
1. Every GCM accounts for cloud cover. You would know this if you had looked at the code for one. Even my RCMs have a cloud scheme.
2. What "cloud reactions?" What does "cloud reactions" even mean?
3. Precipitation is too small a fraction of Earth's surface area to have an effect one way or the other.
4. GCRs aren't included because there's no good evidence that they link to climate at all. In any case, there's no trend in GCRs for the last 50 years, so they can't have caused the steep upturn in global warming of the last 30, can they?
Girma:
1. When it is summer in the northern hemisphere, it is winter in the southern hemisphere, and vice versa.
2. The volume fraction of water vapor in the atmosphere is highly variable from place to place, but on average it sticks very close to 0.4%. It is limited by the Earth's temperature through the Clausius-Clapeyron relation and the hydrological cycle. An average water vapor molecule stays in the atmosphere only 9 days.
Girma:
Girma, your link goes to a misleading chart. It tries to make warming look small by using a scale many times the size of the variation. If you look at the chart, it shows the world's mean annual temperature going from about 13.5 to 14.5 K, and yes, that is global warming.
Girma:
Volume fraction doesn't matter, Girma. The 99%+ of the atmosphere that is nitrogen, oxygen, and argon is not radiatively active. There's no volume fraction term in Beer's Law.
What matters is the absolute amount--and that has increased 38% since the industrial revolution began.
As for 0.01% being nothing--try breathing in air laced with 0.01% fluorine. I'll watch--from a safe distance.
Bob Armstrong posts:
A change of 1 K in the Earth's mean global annual surface temperature is enough to move agricultural growing belts by hundreds of miles. The difference between an interglacial and an ice age is only 5 or 6 K. Heck, the difference between Earth and Mars is only about 70 K! Keep in mind that Earth's climate depends greatly on the state of water, and water freezes at 273 K and boils at 373 K. Comparisons to absolute zero aren't really relevant.
Bob Armstrong:
Of the 2,611 watts per square meter Venus solar constant, the fact that Venus is a sphere cuts this to 653 W/m^2. Venus's bolometric Bond albedo of 0.750 cuts this to 163 W/m^2, which is the amount Venus actually absorbs into its climate system. It radiates as much out in infrared. Venus is in radiation balance. See Taylor et al. in the 1983 Venus compilation from U. of AZ Press. This is from Pioneer Venus observations.
As I explained before, the runaway greenhouse effect is something that happened to Venus in the past. Its present high temperature is caused by the greenhouse effect of its carbon-dioxide-thick atmosphere. It's not absurd on any grounds at all. You don't know radiation physics.
"CO2 itself is inert of course but its radiative forcing can in no respect be larger than the original energy from which it derived." - tiddles
There is no relationship between the two. You're confused.
Bob Armstrong:
It is the sun. You have energy confused with temperature. You also clearly don't understand how the greenhouse effect works, or basic radiation physics, for that matter. And your web page is absurd. Will you please, PLEASE, crack a BOOK? Not Wikipedia, not a Heartland Conference web page, but A BOOK ON PLANETARY PHYSICS? And work the problems?
Girma:
I'm keeping this quote so I can show it to you later.
Bob Armstrong:
There is no substantial internal source of heat on Venus that makes it to the surface and thus space, and the radiative equilibrium temperature of Venus is 232 K, not 328 K.
Been reading Velikovsky?
Michael:
I received an impertinent spam this morning and it prompted me to return here to see what was being said in response to my post. To my pleasure and surprise, I found your polite and reasoned message saying:
âRichard, thanks for that very lengthy...discussion.
I did find it just a little curious that you deny any empiracal evidence for AGW, yet at the same time acknowledge both an increase in CO2 and temps in the 20th C.
I assume that you acknowledge that CO2 is a GHG? If so why do you think that rising CO2 wouldn't cause any temp increases?
Yes, there are fluctutions from year to year. And yes, those flucutations can mask AGW effects - but only in the short term, that's why we are talking about climate, ie. 30 year averages. Otherwise, if the expected El-Nino eventuates later this year and we get a repeat of 1998, you'll have to come back here and recant on your above statement and say that the increased temps show that AGW is overcoming "natural effects". But that would be wrong too - a slightly cooler year or a slightly warmer year do not disprove or prove AGW.â
I will try to address all your points in turn, but space is limited.
I do not deny âempirical evidence for AGWâ. As my post explained, there is no such evidence.
Of course atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global temperature both rose in the twentieth century. But they do not correlate: there has been steady rise in the CO2 while the temperature has fluctuated. The IPCC overcomes this by comparing 5-year averages of the data. However, any data sets can be processed so they âfitâ, and there is no known reason to apply these 5-year averages except to obtain a spurious âfitâ.
Correlation does not prove causation, but absence of causation disproves causation.
Furthermore, the atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global temperature cohere such that changes to the CO2 follow changes to the temperature. At shortest time scales the delay is between 6 and 9 months and differs with latitude.
A change cannot follow its cause in the absence of a time machine.
In one of the papers we published in 2005
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, 'The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle' E&E v16no2 (2005) )
we showed that the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration cannot be âaccumulationâ of a proportion of the anthropogenic emission of CO2 in the atmosphere (as e.g. the IPCC asserts).
However, we also demonstrated in that paper that the anthropogenic CO2 emission could be the major cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration because the emission may be disrupting the equilibrium of the carbon cycle. As that paper says;
âThis slow rise in response to the changing equilibrium condition also provides an explanation of why the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere continued when in two subsequent years the flux into the atmosphere decreased (the years 1973-1974, 1987-1988, and 1998-1999).â
Do I think this possibility is correct? No, I do not. But the data does not allow it to be rejected.
So, the empirical evidence does not show the atmospheric CO2 concentration is the cause of the recent rise in mean global temperature.
And the empirical evidence fails to show that the anthropogenic emission of CO2 is the cause of the rise of the atmospheric CO2 concentration .
It is pure arm-waving to say that the overall rise of mean global temperature over the last century is AGW but the fluctuations in the global temperature are âweatherâ. The AGW-hypothesis says the GHGs in the air are increasing positive radiative forcing to push the temperature up. The larger of opposing forces overcomes its opponent. So, only the effect of the larger force is observed.
This is like people pushing on opposite sides of a swing door. The door moves in the direction of the greater force.
(a) If the AGW-induced radiative forcing were sufficient to overcome natural cooling effects then the global temperature would ratchet up. An El Nino (such as in 1998) would force the temperature up, and the AGW radiative forcing would keep it up.
(b) If the natural cooling effects were sufficient to overcome the AGW-induced radiative forcing then the global temperature would rise and fall. An El Nino (such as in 1998) would force the temperature up, and after that natural cooling effects would force it down.
The repeated coolings prove that until now the AGW-induced radiative forcing have not been sufficient to overcome natural cooling effects.
Of course, CO2 is a GHG. And that does mean that a change to atmospheric CO2 concentration will induce some change to radiative forcing. But that does not mean a system as complex as the climate system will discernibly alter its temperature in response to a change in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The Earth is never in radiative balance in a global scale and it cannot be. The Earth warms almost 4 °C from January to July each year and has equivalent cooling from July to January each year. This is because the Earth obtains radiant energy from the Sun and radiates that energy back to space. The energy input to the system (from the Sun) may be constant (although some doubt that), but the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun ensure that the energy input is never in perfect equilbrium with the energy output.
So, at no time is the Earth in radiative balance except in the meaningless way that a stopped clock is right twice each day.
And the Earth is very insensitive to large changes in radiative forcing. The Earth has been bi-stable (i.e. stable in the glacial and stable in the interglacial state) throughout the 2.5 billion years since the Earth obtained an oxygen-rich atmosphere. And the Earth is heated by the Sun which is a g-type star. The life-cycle of such stars is known and, therefore, it is known that the Sun has increased its thermal output by about 30% over the last 2.5 billion years. But the Earth has had no significant change to its temperature in either of its two stable states throughout that time. And the oceans have had liquid water throughout that time. If radiative forcing had a direct effect on temperature then the oceans would have boiled to steam long ago.
I ponder why some people have superstitious fear that 0.4% increase to radiative forcing from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration may cause catastrophe when it is a known fact that 30% increase in radiative forcing from the Sun has had no discernible effect.
This blog was initiated by silly statements of a climate modeler. So, it is important to note that the climate models are based on assumptions that may not be correct.
The basic assumption used in the models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing. And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this as follows.
As I explained above, the climate system is seeking an equilibrium that it never achieves, and its thermal input/output is oscillating. Such a varying system could be expected to exhibit oscillatory behaviour. And, importantly, the length of the oscillations could be harmonic effects which, therefore, have periodicity of several years. Of course, such harmonic oscillation would be a process that - at least in principle - is capable of evaluation.
However, there may be no process because the climate is a chaotic system. Therefore, the observed oscillations (ENSO, NAO, PDO, etc.) could be observation of the system seeking its chaotic attractor(s) in response to its seeking equilibrium in a changing situation.
Very, importantly, there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP. And the ~900 year oscillation could be the chaotic climate system seeking its attractor(s). If so, then all global climate models and âattribution studiesâ utilized by IPCC and CCSP are based on the false premise that there is a force or process causing climate to change when no such force or process exists.
But the assumption that climate change is driven by radiative forcing may be correct. If so, then it is still extremely improbable that - within the foreseeable future - the climate models could be developed to a state whereby they could provide reliable predictions. This is because the climate system is extremely complex. Indeed, the climate system is more complex than the human brain (the climate system has more interacting components - e.g. biological organisms - than the human brain has interacting components - e.g. neurones), and nobody claims to be able to construct a reliable predictive model of the human brain. It is pure hubris to assume that the climate models are sufficient emulations for them to be used as reliable predictors of future climate when they have no demonstrated forecasting skill.
I hope this provides the clarification of my view that you wanted.
Bob Armstrong:
I got your point. Your point is wrong.
Of course it does. Albedo represents the amount of radiation reflected away by the object illuminated. An object with an albedo of 0.0 absorbs all the radiation falling on it. One with an albedo of 1.0 absorbs none of it. If Earth had an albedo of 1.0 it would be deeply frozen over.
With a higher albedo, LESS RADIATION IS ABSORBED.
And the emissivity terms can be found in any planetary astronomy book discussing temperature. They are neglected in calculating the radiative equilibrium temperature because 1) the Sun terms are concealed in the Solar constant variable, and 2) e = 1 for the top of the Earth's atmosphere or radiating level. Multiplying by 1 doesn't change the answer.
Not at all. The Sun's luminosity is determined by the flux density given off per unit area, times the total area. The area of a sphere is 4 pi R^2, where R is the sphere's radius. All that luminosity is spread out over a much huger sphere, radius a where a is the Earth's semimajor axis, by the time it reaches Earth. The flux density per unit area is thus proportional to the value at the Sun's radius divided by the value at the Earth's radius. The 4 pi factor drops out and you're left with (R/a)^2, a simple application of the inverse-square law.
Look, hundreds of years of astronomers and climatologists did not miss simple algebraic errors which you happened to pick up on. You simply have not read primary texts, or have not read them very carefully.
If you want to see the full derivation of the equation for a planet's radiative equilibrium temperature, try here:
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Albedos.html
If you want me to derive the solar-constant equation step by step, I'll post it here. More people than you might find it instructive. There's a reason for the equations that appear in textbooks. Sometimes, to save space, the derivation is not listed in detail, but they're all based on a strict chain of mathematical and physical reasoning. Unless it's a statistical equation or a parameterization, every equation in every textbook follows from first principles.
Tiddles:
It has increased everywhere. Local temperatures differ because local climates differ. The increase ("global warming") is in the average.
Mauna Loa is an island, its temperatures moderated by the sea and air currents surrounding it. You wouldn't expect it to warm as fast as a continental interior.
BTW, where is your temperature series for Mauna Loa? I'd like to see it.
thanks Barton. well done, and it was a lot of work!
Tiddles:
"Thermodynamics."
The heat of formation has nothing to do with how the greenhouse effect works.
Please crack a book. I'd recommend starting with Houghton's "The Physics of Atmospheres," or if the math intimidates you, try Philander's "Is the Temperature Rising?" Spencer Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming" is available free on the web.
Richard S. Courtney writes:
NASA GISS temperature anomalies and ln CO2 correlate to the tune of r = 0.87 from 1880 to 2007, which means CO2 alone accounts for 76% of the variance of temperature during that period. Here's a detailed derivation, with a chart:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html
Thanks, Sod, and others who have been complimentary. I appreciate it. :D
Bob Armstrong:
Where, pray tell, does:
say anything about where exactly this extra heat is supposedly coming from?
Janet Akerman #288
You wrote, â[Girma is making silly arguments like their has been "an increase of 0.01% in CO2 since the industrial revolution". And arguing that we should to plot the changes in temp and CO2 on a scale that hides the real changes].- Talk about desperate nonsense.â
Thanks Janet for that.
Janet, in the city you live, let us say the average temperature for today is, say, 18.62 deg C. Donât you think we should plot that measured temperature without any modification. Why go through the additional step of effectively chopping the integer part of the temperature? Look at it yourself. Do you get the same perception about global warming from the following identical data but plotted differently?
[True Mean Global Temperature.](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…)
[Mean Global Temperature Anomaly.](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…)
Barton Paul Levinson:
Than you for your dispute of my statement that atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global temperature do not correlate. But, unfortunately, your dispute is based on an error. You assert;
"NASA GISS temperature anomalies and ln CO2 correlate to the tune of r = 0.87 from 1880 to 2007, which means CO2 alone accounts for 76% of the variance of temperature during that period. Here's a detailed derivation, with a chart:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html"
Your analysis does not compensate for autocorrelation. If you make that necessary correction and then check the r^2 statistic then you will find that my statement is correct.
It would be much more cogent if you were to do this for yourself instead of my citing our own work.
Richard Courtney,
Your article (Rorsch et al.) does not appear on the ISI Web of Science. Pray tell me why. If its groundbreaking, why publish it in an obscure place? Moreover, neither of your co-authors are climate scientists. Why write an article with colleagues lacking any expertise in this area? Just wondrin'.
Also, I find it hard to locate articles by you on the Web of Science. This is the site where its possible to separate the wheat from the chaff. In fact, putting your name and 'climate' in the search engine yields exactly one hit. This paper (published in 1997) has precisely 0 citations.
Where's the beef Richard? Or is it true that the AGW sceptics publish just a lot of chaff and little wheat?
Bob Armstrong:
Your interpretation of the word 'rational' comes straight out of ther corporate PR anti-environmental handbook. I've given lectures at universities in the United States, Denmark, Finland, Britain and here in The Netherlands on this very issue and its nice to know that dupes like you just rehash the usual gobbledegook. By the way, how many university lectures have you given on environmental policy, Bob?
The word rational has been used in books and by astroturf PR/think tank-funded anti-environmental groups to describe science no matter how shoddy and non-peer reviewed that supports the contrarian view. By contrast, any science, no matter how rigidly performed, and published in journals like Nature, Science, PNAS that contradicts the contrarian view is disregarded as 'junk science'. The use of words like 'rational' appeal to members of the public anxious to find out the truth on an issue. It is actually a form of aggressive mimicry - note how many of the anti-environmental groups use soothing words or friendly sounding titles as a cover for their deregulatory agenda.
Anyway, Bob, thanks for being so utterly predictable. That's one thing I've learned about you fervent anti-environmentalists - your tactics never change. Well done!
Girma,
Your ploy is simply ridiculous! Do you measure your weight in grams? or in metric that is relevant to the scale of your weight such as kilograms? Why don't we set speed limits at say 36 m/s?
With your silly argument we may as well do away with the whole concept of statistical significance. Replace it with fidelity to unit relativity. If the change is not well matched to the SI unit (say within 3 sig figures) than it should not be considered important.
The fact (supported by massive evidence) is the change in temperature is having significant effect on the environment. Changing the ice and of balance ecosystems and species that have remained for thousands of years). Hence it is plain stupid trying to hide that significant change behind inappropriate units and decimal points . Its a denialist tactic not the tactic of someone seek knowledge.
But hey, you keep pushing the point! See how far you get with that idea. Again your smoking your own belly button lint. I am entertained by how bad arguments like yours can be. Could you come up with a worse one?
Re 315:
Do forget Girma, the warming is more significant in Europe than the United states. As the the Charts of temperature showing zero degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius prove.
;)
Your analysis does not compensate for autocorrelation. If you make that necessary correction and then check the r^2 statistic then you will find that my statement is correct.
actually Barton DOES compensate for autocorrelation at the end of his article. (read the addentum)
http://bartonpaullevenson.com/Correlation.html
your claim that they do not "correlate" is simply false!
Of course atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global temperature both rose in the twentieth century. But they do not correlate: there has been steady rise in the CO2 while the temperature has fluctuated.
you have fluctuations in most noisy data. that doesn t make a correlation to a non-noisy data impossible!
And the empirical evidence fails to show that the anthropogenic emission of CO2 is the cause of the rise of the atmospheric CO2 concentration .
this claim is false. what is happening to the CO2 that we add to the atmosphere?
It is pure arm-waving to say that the overall rise of mean global temperature over the last century is AGW but the fluctuations in the global temperature are âweatherâ. The AGW-hypothesis says the GHGs in the air are increasing positive radiative forcing to push the temperature up. The larger of opposing forces overcomes its opponent. So, only the effect of the larger force is observed. This is like people pushing on opposite sides of a swing door. The door moves in the direction of the greater force.
your example is completely false.
imagine a bouncing ball (fluctuation). now i lift up the table, on which the ball is bouncing.
the fluctuation will NOT stop!
The repeated coolings prove that until now the AGW-induced radiative forcing have not been sufficient to overcome natural cooling effects.
what cooling? at the moment we have a new record of sea surface temperature!
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/08/record-july-2009-sea-surface-temper…
You called me (like the inquisition of Galileo):
for daring to ask you (the majority at the moment) the simple question:
Do you get the same perception about global warming from the following identical data but plotted differently?
[True Mean Global Temperature.](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…)
[Mean Global Temperature Anomaly.](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…)
Cheers Janet
Oh so now your running away from all your ridiculous arguments and prentend that you only asked:
>*Do you get the same perception about global warming from the following identical data but plotted differently?*
Well at least you have backed away from your initial claims.
Now, your delusions of Grandeur, comparing yourself with Galileo. This on the basis that your arguments were called silly and your tactics denialist. How many pervayers of silly arguments through the ages have consoled them selves that they are just like Galileo?
Unfortunately from them (and you) Galileo was different. he was committed to evidence, a practitioner of good science. But if you think you can be like Galileo by trying to disappear significant change, hiding it away with irrelevant units then you go for it! Genius.
BPL,
A gold star for your efforts. I'm not sure which is more commendable, your knowledge or your patience.
Though I am sure of one thing - those who should be the most grateful(Bob et al), won't be.
Handy that real data and good analysis holds sway over bluster and hand waving.
Cheers Barton, and thanks for the clarification sod.
Let me demonstrate that the global mean temperature anomaly plots magnify the perception of the actual change in temperature.
Let us say the global mean temperature changes from 14.3 to 14.6 deg C. The TRUE percentage change in temperature is (14.6-14.3) * 100 / 14.3 % = 2.1%. If we use the anomalies, the DISTORTED change in temperature is a (0.6â0.3) * 100 / 0.3 % = 100%. Which is obviously a massive distortion. Since Science is the antithesis of distortion, all the anomaly graphs must be withdrawn.
Richard,
Thanks.
I tried lookin gtup your article but couldn't find it. All I can say is that what you claim doesn't have much support in more accessible material.
And I'm with sod - your door analogy is not convincing. I think the problem is that you try to explain in it a way that is simple summation of vectors. But what we have is not simple addition or subtraction of energy but various factors, such as El Nino-La Nina phases, that effect the flow of energy in the system.
Oops! Girma is back to the belly button lint!
Well at lest now Girma you are not pretending to claim that harshly rebutted, "*for daring to ask you (the majority at the moment) the simple question...*"
Unfortunately you are again trying to hide real and significant change behind inappropriate units. That sir is distortion, that argument sir should be withdrawn.
But hey, if it really floats your boat, keep it up!
Girma (#318),
Why do you plot the y-axis of your temperature graph at 0? By doing this your aim is to dampen the impression one gets when looking at global mean surface temperatures recorded over the past 120 years. Given how deterministic the system is, your graph tells us nothing about (a) the significance of the line, and (b) how this works out in a long term framework.
Basically your graph is pure deception because it gives the impression that not much has changed. But of course, the warmest 10 years have all occurred since 1995, and, given the immense scale of the climate control system, the majority of the climate science community would argue that this kind of temperature shift over such a limited time scale is significant.
What is clear to me is that you have trouble disentangling determinstic from stochastic processes, and that in your way of thinking 120 years is a long, long time. Certainly it is in terms of local scale processes which are much more variable, but certainly not for processes generated over immense spatial and temporal scales. All your posts do is reveal that you are out of your depth in discussing earth science.
Janet
What I am asking you is I donât deserve your personal attack, as I really believe that AGW is built on quick sand (as I demonstrated with the anomaly), and we should just debate the issue without the personal attacks. I know it is sometimes very hard to resist to lash out.
[Mean Global Temperature Graphs and Mountain profiles](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MountainProfileAndMeanGlo…)
Girma,you havn't demonstrated what you claim you have, mere asserted it. And nothing personal, is a silly argument. Disassociate your self from the argument and your do yourself a service. The silly nature of the argument is well [demonstrated](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) by MAB.
Falling asleep must check spelling...
Jeff, what are some of the ecological evidence that the change in temp is significant?
Girma,
I look forward to reading your reply tomorrow.
Girma, Your mountain is the wrong shape, find one that [does this](http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:360).
If the photo hasn't been manipulated, than no, it's not a distortion.
The analogy might be though, unless you tell us which mountain it is, it's height, and the actual scale in the enlarged photo.
Okay Janet.
For a long term mean global temperature of 14 deg C, if the mean temperature changes from 14.3 deg C to 14.6 deg C. 1) What is the percentage change in the mean temperature? 2) What is the percentage change in temperature anomalies?
I want you to calculate them step by step so that I can locate where we disagree.
Cheers
Girma, the one and only important question about the change is: does this amount of temperature change have an effect?
the obvious answer to that question is: it does!
plotting it in a way, that makes changes of up to 1°C nearly impossible to spot is simply stupid!
calculating and analysing anomalies is a rather normal approach in science. if you think it is not, please check some books!
"What is the percentage change in the mean temperature?"
Dude, I totally agree. I went to the doctor and he tried to tell me I had a dangerous fever, but when I drew a graph of my temperature in Kelvin, it proved that there was no significant change. How could a mere 1.2% change in body temperature cause any damage at all?
It's cool being smarter than a doctor.
For those of you who are complaining about using inappropriate scales on graphs, please, please be patient. I'm sure Jennifer Marohasy will be arriving any day now, to explain the right way to do it. After all, she made a promise:
["I will get to your issue - how to graph temperature data - soon."](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/the_australians_war_on_science_…)
Yes, indeed... soon. Since we're only a few days away from the anniversary of Ms. Marohasy's promise, I've no doubt she'll be rising out of the pumpkin patch any minute now.
Eli,
Thanks for answering my question - if it is really 25 years, my guess is that all is lost. There is very little chance that the world will respond in time.
Your arguments regarding India, BTW, I find quite absurd.
Girma asks:
Once more I will point put that you are confusing the psychology of visual perception with the statistical significance of trends in a time series.
There are two conventions in science, relevant to this thread, that you need to wrap your head around.
Firstly, graphs are constructed with a ratio of x to y of somewhere between 1:1 and 3:2. The scale of each axis is generally selected so that the maximum and minimum values for the data encompass somewhere between 50% and >90% of the scales. In some instances the minimum might encompass a zero value, but usually in such cases there is an explicit reason for including the zero value, and the spread of the data is greater than about a third of the scale.
The second concept is that we use our eyes to understand the spread of data, but not to analyse it. For analysis we use statistics, and statistics give us these useful things called means, standard deviations, and standard errors, confidence intervals, (and a host of other parameters) which may be added to a graph to indicate properties of the data.
Given your apparent experience you should know this. If you do not, you have either lied about your qualifications, or you do not deserve them. If you do know this and persist in commenting as you have, then you are a mendacious little troll of the worst sort.
Either way, I wouldn't let you within a bull's roar of anything to do with data analysis, no matter your claimed experience to do so.
Tell me Girma, how would you construct a graph of the surface temperature of the sum over the last one hundred million years? And if you plot it in the same manner that you insist global surface temperature should be graphed, how would you comment on the trend in the surface temperature of the sun over the same period?
Richard S Courtney wrote
"The Earth is never in radiative balance in a global scale and it cannot be. The Earth warms almost 4 °C from January to July each year and has equivalent cooling from July to January each year. "
Can you elaborate on this? Are you referring to the eccentricity of earth's orbit? Are you confusing the warming of the northern hemisphere due to the seasonal change in tilt of the earths axis wrt the sun with your statement above? What do you mean by "never in radiative balance" when across a yearly cycle the temperature comes out the same?
326 Girma,
I agree entirely, and we see similar distortion in [clinical thermometers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clinical_thermometer_38.7.JPG). These exaggerate tiny differences in human body temperature to a huge degree and are clearly designed to make people anxious about small changes that really don't matter. I wonder if the medical profession designed them this way to make more money out of people whose temperature has in fact deviated from the ideal only by a small percentage.
I think these should be replaced immediately with thermometers scaled from 0°C to 100°C, or better still with thermometers scaled from 0K. Then we would see that "fevers" and "temperatures" are nothing to worry about and any talk of someone "burning up" is just ridiculous exaggeration.
Courtney (#303) said:
No, all it shows is how dishonest you are, how ignorant of basic scientific principles and how gullible you think we are.
You are well known for your dishonest rantings and your association with companies which are responsible for AGW.
Can I ask you a question? Does your food, which is bought with tainted money, taste as fresh and wholesome as the food bought with honestly earned money?
334 Boris,
You beat me to it! Isn't it great that we can agree on how misleading those clinical thermometers are?
340 Ian,
Ad hominem! Ad hominem!
Girma (#311) said:
Girma, you do claim to have some experience in engineering don't you?
Then how come you don't understand the difference between "rounding" i.e reducing the number of significant figures in data and the use of "anomaly" to describe how two sets of data differ from one another? Are you deliberately trying to confuse people?
It seems to me that you have no clue as to the science behind AGW (or any scientific knowledge at all) if that is how you think.
Girma:
"You called me (like the inquisition of Galileo):
1. ridiculous
2. silly
3. stupid
4. denialist "
That is because you, Grima, (unlike Galileo) are ridiculous, silly, stupid and denialist. and I *really* want to see how you calibrate your clinical thermometers and interpret your body temperature - thanks, Boris.
344 Lee,
I don't think [Galileo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair) was called those anyway but if anyone knows different...
Girma, you are irretrievably thick when it comes to junior high school data presentation and analysis.
For a start, as has been indicated to you [previously](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…), percentage "temperature changes from 14.3 to 14.6 deg C" can only be described by an absolute scale such as Kelvin, and not by a relative scale such as Celsius. Thus, a change from 14.3C to 14.6C is 0.3/(273.15 + 14.3)*100 = 0.1%.
However, before you scream "wow, that's even smaller than 2.1%!", you need to realise that the significance of the change is determined by the deviation from the mean, and from the spread of noise around the mean. As has been indicated to you before, the proportion of the change relative to the absolute value of the mean is irrelevant â biology cares only about how temperature changes with respect to the physiological envelopes of its species and ecosystems.
This is why the anomaly is used. It is an entirely valid way of representing the changes in temperature, especially in bioclimatic envelope contexts, and it allows for a much clearer understanding of the trends than would reference to changes in degrees Kelvin.
Secondly, your comment that "the DISTORTED [sic] change in temperature is a (0.6â0.3) * 100 / 0.3 % = 100%" is a piece of mathematical CRAP. You are saying that a change from 287.45C to 287.75C is a change of 100%!
Erm, no it isn't.
A change from 287.45C to 287.75C is a change of 0.1%, just as in the previous correction. One cannot do the "0.6 is 100% larger than 0.3" trick, and every competent scientist knows this. Using your 'logic', going from 3.3 to 3.6 (which uses the same number of significant figures as you used) is a 'change' of only 9.1%, and yet the same 'anomaly' is involved that 'gave' you the "100%" increase in your 'calculation'.
And this is to ignore the fact that using your mathematics, a change from 14.6C to 114.6C would still give a "DISTORTED [sic] change in temperature" of 100%, as would a change to 1 114.6C or to 11 114.6C. Yes, you've packed at least two logical fallacies of mathematics into one 'calculation'.
Anomaly values are absolutely validly analysed statistically, but they are in no way validly analysed in the manner that you attempted. I challenge you to show that "percentage" changes, in the way that you describe, are used in the professional literature as a parameter in discussing such data.
You either have no understanding of how anomaly values are treated mathematically, or you do have such an understanding but are being deceitful in a most egregious way. Whichever is the case, you should not be involved in the practise of even the most basic of mathematical tasks.
Lee at #344.
I am not sure if your use of "Grima" was deliberate or not, but 'Wormtongue' is an absolutely marvellous imputation.
High five!
Indeed. And remember how much government money doctors get!
Sod #333
How is it possible that a change of 0.85 deg C from the mean temperature of 37 deg C in a human body is normal, but a change last year of 0.33 deg C from the 30-year mean temperature of 14 deg C in the globe is catastrophic?
Mind you, at a given grid point on earth, for a given specified time of the day, the temperature range within a year could easily be more than 10 deg C.
Compare 10 deg C with 0.33 deg C?
Truesceptic (#342) said:
No TS, "Just the Truth, the Whole Truth and nothing but the Truth". :-)
Too bad that journal editors don't make authors swear that when they submit a paper, especially the editor of Energy and Environment.
Girma at #349.
It is painful to watch you display your ignorance of science to ever more howling extremes.
Go get thee to a learnery, and meditate upon physiological tolerances in both press and in pulse contexts. Contemplate also the lessons arising from the parable of the apple and the orange.
Or just go get thee away entirely, and write copy for tabloid diet pill ads. You don't seem to have the capacity for anything more intellectually strenuous.
Oops, did I just do an ad hominem? Oo, naughty me.
Bernard J. #346
We measure and plot the mean global temperatures in deg C, not in Kelvin. As a result, we cannot calculate the percent changes in Kelvin. As I demonstrated before, the anomaly plots give the impression of exaggerated change in temperature and that is the perception one gets from these plots. My main issue is about the impression one gets by looking at the anomaly plots. As they are magnified and distorted, they must be withdrawn.
Grima teaches denier math:"We measure and plot the mean global temperatures in deg C, not in Kelvin. As a result, we cannot calculate the percent changes in Kelvin."
NASA measures temperature anomalies, using zero as the average temperature anomaly for the 1951-1980 mean. The anomaly in July 2009 was 0.60, so the % increase was...
infinity. OMG!!!11!!!ONE!!
Bernard @347:
That was a typo. I noticed it before I posted, and allowed it to stand.
5 back.
"We measure and plot the mean global temperatures in deg C, not in Kelvin. As a result, we cannot calculate the percent changes in Kelvin."
ROTFLMAOMSOMN
Girma, All I can say is "Who turns the computer on for you. "
That is literally the stupidest thing that has ever appeared on this blog...
In related new Usain Bolt ran 100 meters in 9.58 seconds which is 10.438 meters per second. We would like to know what his average speed was in miles per hour,
BUT WE CANNOT BECAUSE IT WAS MEASURED IN METERS AND SECONDS.
If I were you I would stay away from your high school physics teacher, because if he ever catches up to you, there isn't going to be enough of you left to bury.
And after reading this, the jury is not going to convict him for murder, but rather you for slander.
(or did you not ever have a physics teacher?)
My main issue is about the impression one gets by looking at the anomaly plots. As they are magnified and distorted, they must be withdrawn.
Okay you guys in this blog, show me your answer for the following:
For a long term mean global temperature of 14 deg C, if the yearly mean temperature changes from 14.3 deg C to 14.6 deg C. 1) What is the percentage change in the mean temperature? 2) What is the percentage change in temperature anomalies?
(Note: Anomaly = Actual mean temperature for the year - Long term mean)
My point is that the answers give you the impressions about global warming (actual or magnified) one gets by looking at the plots of the actual mean or the anomalies.
348 Boris,
Yes. I'm just annoyed that I didn't cotton on to their little game earlier.
Grima,
One more freaking time, piling on what many others have said - the percentage change relative to zero of the absolute value is simply irrelevant.
What is relevant is the change of compared to the expected/historic mean, relative to the range about that mean. We don't calculate change relative to zero (in either K or C scales) because zero is irrelevantly far outside the range of the distribution we care about. That range (not the change relative to zero) defines the world in which today's species evolved, and ecosystems developed, and civilizations emerged.
You keep insisting that we calculate the range relative to zero. That means you keep insisting that we consider something that is utterly irrelevant - which is why people are treating you as irrelevant.
322 Girma,
Your calculation grossly exaggerates the difference between the 2 temperatures. Why start from 0°C when it gets _much_ colder than that on Earth? The lowest recorded is -89 so why not take that as the start? The percentage then becomes (103.6-103.3)*100/103.3 = 0.29%
But you can't use percentages like that. We can only do that if we start from absolute zero and use K. The percentage then becomes (287.6-287.3)*100/287.3 = 0.10%. So it really is a tiny change!
Someone (Bernard) beat me to it again!
Lee #358
Were I live, we are told by the weather man something like a maximum temperature of 20 deg C and a minimum of 12 deg C. I have never ever heard a temperature of 0.33 deg C and so on. I am talking about the plots that the public sees.
I guess when the AGW camp first plotted the TRUE mean global temperature, they found it flat. So they devised the method of in effect chopping the integer part of the mean global temperature and plotting the decimal parts called anomalies to exaggerate the perception of change in global temperature by 14 times (for a mean global temperature of 14 deg C, as the range of the anomaly plot is 1 deg C).
I guess when the AGW camp first plotted the TRUE mean global temperature, they found it flat. So they devised the method of in effect chopping the integer part of the mean global temperature and plotting the decimal parts called anomalies to exaggerate the perception of change in global temperature by 14 times (for a mean global temperature of 14 deg C, as the range of the anomaly plot is 1 deg C).
your guess is false. i can assure you, that this was NOT what happened.
instead they saw, that when looking at the number 14.62°C, they could NOT tell, whether that was a warm year or a cold year.
on the other hand, the anomaly (+0.32°C) number does actually provide the most important information of this data point!
look, your view of this is simply wrong. we will not convince you though. please take a look at some text book on any science subject, and you will immediately notice that look at anomalies is NOT a dark plot by the AGW crowed, but state of the art science.
361 Girma,
I agree that it is shameless what they did, pretending that 14.5 is 0.5, and so on, but they really shot themselves in the foot because if the actual temperature is 15.5 or 16.5 and you chop off the integer part, you would still get 0.5. What fools!
Girma:
Unless you've had a very sheltered life, you would have heard weather reports that talked about, for example, "five degrees above average" etc. The word anomaly is just a fancy name that means exactly the same thing as saying "above average" or "below average".
362 sod,
It's no good going on about text books and science. The whole of science has been taken over by these AGW fanatics. Mathematics has also been perverted by these zealots, so even simple percentages don't mean what they used to!
Girma's : "You called me (like the inquisition of Galileo):
1. ridiculous
2. silly
3. stupid
4. denialist "
Reminds one that they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo.
Sortition, why do you think Eli's argument about India is silly?
No, Grima. Anomalies are used to allow us to look at several sties, some of which are much warmer on average than others, some cooler, and know whether they are getting warmer or getting cooler relative to a comparable base period.
If I know that the average max temperature for Redding, CA in a given July was 39C - I know nothing at all about whether that temperature is warmer, cooler or unchanged over time. And I know nothing at all about whether that July is also hot or cold time relative to Burney, 40 miles away, with an average max temperature of 32C.
Anomalies allow us to make those comparisons on sight - which is why they are used.
Also: a .3C anomaly may mean - does mean in some places - an average last spring frost a week or two earlier, and an average first fall frost a week or two later. Which, with only slight changes in wintier minimum temperatures, means a reduction in winter chill hours of 20% or more. Which in turn means that an orchardist with 320 acres of trees that need 1200 hour of winter chill for good fruit set, and used to get it 4 of 5 years - now only gets 1200 hours 1 out of 5 years.
Which in turn means the orchardist gets to tear out half a square mile of mature fruit trees, replant with less valued varieties that need less winter chill, and endure the 5 years before his orchard comes back into reasonable production, and 15 years before it hits mature production.
I think Bob Armstrong may have been embarrassed by Gimra, but in case he is still lurking, as Nick Stokes has pointed out to many who have tried the same gambits you are attempting, the emissivity and absorptivity are properties of materials, not systems. e(Wavelength) = a (Wavelength) for the earth but e(Wavelength) for the earth is not equal to a (Wavelength) for the air.
By earth above, Eli meant the ground
Richard Courtney returns, breaking his vows, and lays a ripe one. Since Richard is an IPCC Expert Reviewer, we must assume that he knows this and is simply trying to mislead:
The Earth is never in radiative balance in a global scale and it cannot be. The Earth warms almost 4 °C from January to July each year and has equivalent cooling from July to January each year. This is because the Earth obtains radiant energy from the Sun and radiates that energy back to space.
In fact, if we look, say at the NCDC Global Surface temperature anomaly record (land+ocean) for any year, there is much less than 1 C change during any year. For 2008
Month Anomaly (C)
1 0.2178
2 0.3458
3 0.7054
4 0.4297
5 0.4330
6 0.4829
7 0.5084
8 0.4844
9 0.4568
10 0.6069
11 0.5998
12 0.4808
Three misleads= a lie Richard
I had my daughter add a few pink noodles to the AR4 spaghetti graph and we submitted it to the IPCC. I think the "Expert IPCC Reviewer" line on her appliucation helped seal the deal with the preschool she's now attending as things are pretty cutthroat in the Yo Gabba Gabba set.
Holpern, Eli, Rabbit, Charlatan or whomever you may be:
I see no point in addressing all the falsehoods and ad hominem here, but one is so outrageous and based on such ignorance that I will not let it stand. You say:
"In fact, if we look, say at the NCDC Global Surface temperature anomaly record (land+ocean) for any year, there is much less than 1 C change during any year. For 2008
Month Anomaly (C) 1 0.2178 2 0.3458 3 0.7054 4 0.4297 5 0.4330 6 0.4829 7 0.5084 8 0.4844 9 0.4568 10 0.6069 11 0.5998 12 0.4808
Three misleads= a lie Richard"
No! Not a lie. A fact.
I cited global temperature variations and NOT monthly anomaly variations. Each monthly anomaly (i.e. the anomaly for January, for February ... for December) is the difference from the mean value of the temperature of the same month for the 30 years of the standard period. (Similarly, each annual anomaly is the difference of the annual temperature from the mean value of the annual temperatures of the 30 years of the standard period.)
Hence, the monthly anomalies cannot show the variation I mentioned because that variation is deleted by the subtraction to create the anomaly values.
It is especially offensive to be accused of a lie from a person (or persons) who operates a web site that only has the purpose of providing lies and smears, and when that person (or persons) hides behind a false name because the coward (or cowards) lacks the courage to be accountable for his (or their) lies.
Richard, Richard, you have such a temper and are so sensitive when anyone says anything about you and now you try and jump on poor Eli. Besides which, Eli thought you were simply hitting and running
Tiddles:
"the lack of any discernible radiative forcing at Mauna Loa"
First, TC, what the hell are you doing outside your own thread.
Second, what evidence do you have of a "lack of any discernible radiative forcing at Mauna Loa?" Temperature is not the same thing as radiative forcing.
Hell, before that - define the phrase "radiative forcing at Mauna Loa"in physically realistic terms that are relevant to AGW - where "G" means Global.
375 Eli,
I'm sorry but you _were_ wrong in this particular case. From [here](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/index.php) (Probably won't line up but it's easy enough to count the months!)
Combined Mean Surface Temp. 1901 to 2000 (°C)
JFMAMJJASONDAnnual
12.012.112.713.714.815.515.815.615.014.012.912.213.9
Jul - Jan = 15.8 - 12.0 = 3.8
@Tiddles
My earlier question on on CO2 was wrt the radiative physics behind CO2 induced warming. Something that can easily be verified experimentally by a ten-year-old with a beaker, a thermometer and a light bulb. I thought I had seen everything when you responded with your off-the-wall Mauna Loa correlation masterclass in point-missing, but now you've followed up with this gem:
> The idea that an exhaust gas like CO2 has more warming potential than the original generation of energy from which it derives, as claimed by IPCC AR4, WG1 and the ludicrous Matthew England, is preposterous.
This is the new "wrongest" thing you've ever written I think.
Do you genuinely think its claimed global warming is caused by the *heat of exhaust fumes*? Is that the shallowness of your knowledge? Or... what? Its utterly perplexing. By your logic, cavity wall insulation could never work. Or warming of the atmosphere by water vapour. Or conventional glass greenhouses, for that matter.
I still maintain the following:
I guess when the AGW camp first plotted the TRUE mean global temperature, they found it flat. So they devised the method of in effect chopping the integer part of the mean global temperature and plotting the decimal parts called anomalies to exaggerate the perception of change in global temperature by 14 times (for a mean global temperature of 14 deg C, as the range of the anomaly plot is 1 deg C).
Seeing is believing! Compare the following:
[Actual Mean Global Temperature](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…)
[Exaggerated Anomaly for the Public](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…)
For the same reason no climate scientist would predict that the Mauna Loa temp trend would match its CO2 trend, nor that the odds that any single point on earth will is more than infinitesimal.
Uneven heating across the planet's surface, while global CO2 levels rise about the same everywhere, is a *prediction* of climate science.
The Greens donât want others to drive cars, but they do. They donât want others to fly, but they do. They donât want others to sit on a chair made of wood cut from a tree, but they do. They drink clean water, but they hate the chemicals that made the water clean. They donât want others to use paper made of wood chip, but they do. As a result, I find them to be hypocrites.
They also, in effect, donât like the human species. They say, nature can continuously release CO2 along the edge of the tectonics of the earth, but humans cannot. Elephants can bring down trees, humans cannot. Beavers can build dams, humans cannot. Ants can build high-rise dwellings, humans cannot.
Finally, they are a party that is founded on human fear, not human self-confidence. They say you cannot use GM, because it risky. You cannot use nuclear energy, because it risky. They might say, Columbus, donât cross the Atlantic because it is risky. Wilber and Albert, donât try to fly because it is risky. Neil, donât go to the moon because it is risky. In short, they are saying: man, donât live.
In any species, the young is fearful, and the Greens have their support. I hope the time comes when self-confidence of humans reigns, which will obviously bring the end of the Greens and AGW.
Grima, please do not put these letters after your name. Most people understand what they usually mean but I haven't a clue what they mean in your case. They certainly don't mean that you have had a proper education or are even moderately intelligent. You are a pathetic denier troll who doesn't know what he is talking about.
Why I am a skeptic of CO2 being the knob of Global Warming.
Like Einsteinâs train ride thought experiment, I did the following thought experiment.
I got two 10,000ml plastic containers. I capped one of the containers, and I capped the other one after adding 1ml of CO2. This 1ml represent the proportion of CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans since the start of the industrial revolution (100 ppm). I exposed both containers to same amount of solar radiation, and measured their temperature as a function of time. My thought experiment tells me that the temperature difference between the two containers is insignificant.
"Michael August 22, 2009 5:04 AM quoted me as saying: "CO2 itself is inert of course but its radiative forcing can in no respect be larger than the original energy from which it derived." and added: "There is no relationship between the two. You're confused."
Really? so anthropogenic CO2 emissions have no relationship with energy produced at coal fired power stations and oil refineries? That is news. I think you are the one who is seriously confused." - Tiddles
BPL also pointed out how nonsensical this is.
Again - there is no relationship between the energy of production of CO2 and it's subsequent atmospheric effect. None. Zero. Zilch.
On what basis do you think that there is ( I mean scientific basis)?
It's like suggesting that you can't operate your home oven past a point of energy consumption equivalent to the energy that was required to manufacture it - bizarro.
Wow, this thread is...wow.
> My thought experiment tells me that the temperature difference between the two containers is insignificant.
So, your through experiment proves that there that CO2 does not have absorption lines? You are asserting that modern physics is completely wrong. You know this right? If what you say is right then everything since about 1890 is wrong.
Good luck with that.
Grima, to be able to have a "thought experiment" one must have a functioning brain. You fail.
If you were able to think in a rational manner you would see why your experiment was doomed to failure. Try reading some elementary physics texts and report back once you have reached about Grade 7 or 8 level.
Grima,
This was a 'thought expeirment'? - you mean just in your head??
>It is for you to explain why the warming arising from the radiative forcing from an extra 3.3 GtC of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa (end June 2008- end June 2009)is more than that from the fossil fuel production etc of 10 GtC that contributed to those CO2 emissions (the difference of c6.7 GtC is due to the biotic absorption of CO2 emissions that Matthew England says do not exist).
It is not. It is for you Tim, either here or back in the thread where you are not banned, to explain why the average change in the global system must exist at the locations you specify. I expect that there are many individual locations where this is not true. Finding a few proves nothing. Mauna Loa in particular being at the top of a mountain will not reflect changes at the surface.
It has been explained previously, by myself and others that global change due to CO2 drives changes in the system in an average sense. The atmosphere is highly turbulent. There will be many locations that do not show the mean. As you close in on finer scales the local changes dominate the trend. Today, in front of my mouth the air gets warmer when I breathe out. This does not constitute a problem for radiative transfer physics.
I see no point in addressing all the falsehoods and ad hominem here, but one is so outrageous and based on such ignorance that I will not let it stand. You sa
no ad hominem in my post at all. your "swing door" analogy is false. fact.
Have Mauna Loa temps gone up in synch with Mauna Loa CO2? No. It is for you to explain why not.
a better example than the swing door one, is people playing poker. they win a little, lose a little, and come out around zero at the end of the year, though they have massive imbalances every month.
all post men world wide, now get a wage increase. but paul, who lives at Mauna loa and his a typical poker player, had less money in his pocket this month, than last month. impossible while he got a wage increase? NO! he just a bad month in poker!
. So they devised the method of in effect chopping the integer part of the mean global temperature and plotting the decimal parts called anomalies to exaggerate the perception of change in global temperature by 14 times (for a mean global temperature of 14 deg C, as the range of the anomaly plot is 1 deg C).
your claims are getting more stupid all the time. they did NOT cut the integer part. soon anomalies will include integers. (already happening, when you use fahrenheit)
They also, in effect, donât like the human species. They say, nature can continuously release CO2 along the edge of the tectonics of the earth, but humans cannot. Elephants can bring down trees, humans cannot. Beavers can build dams, humans cannot. Ants can build high-rise dwellings, humans cannot.
all those animal things are NOT new! burning oil and coal at the current level is NEW! mighty difference!
I got two 10,000ml plastic containers. I capped one of the containers, and I capped the other one after adding 1ml of CO2. This 1ml represent the proportion of CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans since the start of the industrial revolution (100 ppm). I exposed both containers to same amount of solar radiation, and measured their temperature as a function of time. My thought experiment tells me that the temperature difference between the two containers is insignificant.
you might want to use a container, that is stretching through the full atmosphere. changes your experiment a little, and gives a completely different result, of course.
I'm trying to understand Tiddles argument from a logical pov. Given his strange obsession with ML and ideas on CO2 production, the best I can do is this - Tiddles thinks that the extra heat in AGW comes from the actual burning of fossil fuels and this heat is carried by CO2 molecules, hence, given the presence of increased CO2 at ML, there should be a corresponding increase in temp at ML.
Wrong, but is this the internal logic??
Yo, before we spend too much time arguing with denialists, I'd like to add this bit of perspective from Ed Brayton:
What is the solution being proposed by those scientists arguing for global warming? The solution is to reduce our use of fossil fuels to generate energy and to reduce the use of technologies that add significant amounts of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. We can do that in lots of different ways, some of which involve conservation and some of which involve investments in new technologies that either use less, pollute less or use different sources of energy to run, sources which don't put more carbon into the atmosphere.
Forget global warming for a moment and ask yourself this: shouldn't we be doing those things anyway? Reducing our use of and dependence on fossil fuels for energy can only be a good thing for the world for a huge range of reasons. Even if global warming is one giant myth, the pollution that results from the burning of coal, oil and gasoline is real and unhealthy. Even if no city is ever flooded due to a rise in sea levels, investing in new technologies to generate power is going to have a hugely positive effect in terms of technological spinoffs.
Just think of the geostrategic benefits alone. If the US was able to cut its dependence on fossil fuels in half, the Middle East becomes a mildly interesting place where people don't like each other rather than a geopolitical powderkeg that could destroy our economy. As it stands, the entire world economy is at the mercy of OPEC and with China ramping up its economy the cost of oil isn't going to go back down any time soon.
Developing solar or wind power generating technologies means less pollution, less reliance on fossil fuels, new technological spinoffs that can create new industries and jobs, more economic security due to lower inflation and much more. Even if global warming is the biggest myth anyone has ever dreamed up, the solutions being proposed are no-brainers. We should be doing those things for a thousand other reasons anyway. Besides, if Spinal Tap believes in it, who am I to argue?
Any comment from the "skeptics" on this? Hmm?
I just conducted a thought 'experiment' in my head.
In this 'experiment' I contacted the institutions that Grima claims to have been educated at. They denied all knowledge of his attendance of course, because their standards are sufficiently high that one such as he would not be passed.
Therefore I conclude that Grima does not exist, or if he does exist, he does not have the qualifications that he claims to have.
Discuss.
I see Mark Morano has been successful in reducing the signal-to-noise ratio of the comment section to near zero. It doesn't take much effort to direct trolls to a discussion to drown out any embarrassing information.
It would be interesting to see some articles about the tactics Morano uses, perhaps about some of his dirty tricks in the past, such as his Swift Boat Veterans for (so-called) Truth. Let's trot his tactics out for the trolls to see and for any serious onlookers to find out just what sort of person he is. Yes the public needs to know the Science behind Global Warming, but they also need to know just what is behind the inaction on it as well.
Girma:
This reminds me of footage of Bob Brown (leader of the Australian Greens) going down one of the big rapids on the Franklin River on a raft WITHOUT helmet, bouyancy vest or wetsuit.
Obviously never even heard the saying "young and stupid".
Girma, you are full of bullshit.
Raging Bee (#392)
Thanks for an EXCELLENT post. I agree.
However, as a science graduate when I see the deception it annoys me and I will do everything in my power to expose it.
Grima.
There are many examples of empirical demonstrations of the greenhouse effect, ranging from [Tyndall's seminal work](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall#Main_scientific_work) in the 1850s to simple contemporary exercises ([here](http://www.cencophysics.com/ig0044518/p/IG0044518/), [here](http://www.nvcc.edu/home/cbentley/geoblog/2009/05/greenhouse-effect-exp…), [here](http://www.rmets.org/activities/schools/greenhouse-effect.php), and [here](http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm)) for high school students.
You know, it staggers me that someone would dare to post so much obvious scientific and mathematical ignorance when, in this day and age, an employer seeking to know more about an applicant could use Google to find the terms Girma Orssengo and professional incompetence in the same sentence. Once they read this thread, you'd be on the "no, thank you" pile faster than the blink of an eye.
post # 392, yes it is necessary to think about diversifying our energy sources (normally a process achieved through technological breaktrough/ new inventions - same case in diversifying our technologies for processing drinking waters). This is important, because our increasing population and ever dependence on the current primary energy source puts a pressure on the environment and economy (competition, scarcity). The current primary source of energy is not renewable.
As noted in this blog fear is an element of survival, but this manifests as our ability to anticipate - when coupled with the right knowledge. Fear itself should not be the basis of decision making, neither should complacency or laziness. It is crucial to further our understanding on climate processes (a hard problem this one - improving climate models can help: to understand the dynamics, and complement scarce observations; observational technologies must also be improved), economy, human society, environment, to determine the fragility of the Earth's climate, and fragility of our economic system. Only then a wise decision can be made (in a distant future?). However, given the evidence/argument on AGW and climate projections (even if there's only 50% certainty), given the evidence that societies in the past may be wiped out by climate-related phenomena/resource scarcity, shouldn't this provide enough urgency for the world to anticipate/act with caution? If there's evidence that smoking (alcohol,gambling) causes lung (liver, pocket) cancer, would you not want to limit these intake/practices? The beginning of this century we hope to see, as a good start, an integrated action towards a sustainable future.
You may label this kind of argument 'Green'? or 'Skeptics'?
It doesn't matter.. name calling would only build a wall of separation, instead we should embrace differences through respects and have a more constructive discussion. Surely, both sides will have opportunists who ride the waves for money, fame, etc.; people can believe whatever they want to believe. Can't help it can we? But what matter most, particularly YOU leaders, is to act with a cool head - not based solely on blind faith, opportunity, convenience but on wisdom and responsibility. This then what will drive our world toward prosperity.
By the way, Girma (post #380), would you plot your body temperature record on the y-axis scale of 0 - 40? If you have some serious fever (39C), you might not spot it on the graph - only if you reference it to 37C (presumably the mean of your body temperature) then you'll see the anomaly. i.e., more sensibly you want to zoom your graph with the y-axis on the range 35 - 40, or equivalently present it in the form of an anomaly plot (referenced to 37C) - unless your body temperature occasionally hits 2C or 15C. What does this tell us then? We should look at variations referenced to the 'normal' or 'expected' value of the system (also referenced to the relevant time scale - obviously if we plot our body temperature over 100 years, it could reach 0C.. in the morgue).
Girma is annoyed by deception - must be some significant self-loathing going on if that's the case.
Raging Bee (#392)
Thanks for an EXCELLENT post. I agree.
However, as a science graduate when I see the deception and the fear mongering it annoys me and I will do everything in my power to expose it.
Joe.
If you want to learn, head on over to www.wattsupwiththat.com (The Best Science Blog on the Web.)
You will also be treated with more respect and courtesy than some of the contibutors here have treated you.
Girma: I just read your "thought experiment" in #380; and I gotta say it's the dumbest fucking thing I've read from a global-warming denialist in a long time. If you really think a small closed container of air is in any way comparable in behavior to a whole planet, then you are simply too stupid to be worth debating. And that doesn't even count the fact that a "thought experiment" doesn't exactly stack up to huge numbers of real experiments and systematic observation of actual events.
This, I suspect, is a central tactic of denialists: drag every adult debate down to a level of unmitigated stupidity and infantilism where absolutely nothing can be accomplished.
Jimmy,
For those that value politness over truth - yes.
@392 Raging Bee
The problem with your post is it represents a switch to a political and socio-economic argument - the anti-AGW brigade posting here are flat wrong on the science, and letting them get away with that rankles.
Its akin to - when faced with someone who disputes the physics that leads us to believe that jumping from a plane naked will result in death (after conducting a thought experiment in which they jumped off a small wall and survived) - tacitly accepting that they may have a point but that the money spent on chartering a flight could be better spent elsewhere. It cedes intellectual ground to gibberish, and needlessly so.
@401 Jimmy Haigh
Joe was been given several opportunities to actually learn, including pointers to excellent books and reference material. This is in spite of being an obvious troll, and indeed one who was deeply (and off-handedly) insulting to scientists while he was here.
But then, if you prefer to think of sitting in an echo-chamber having your groupthink stroked as "learning" then that's your prerogative.
Tiddles, glad to hear that you think it's wrong - cause it is. I was just looking for whatever, if any, underlying internal logic might exist for your very odd statements about CO2.
I see you prefer BGW (Boeing global Warming) to AGW. How quaint. So is this the origin of your completely wrong idea - 'radiative forcing can in no respect be larger than the original energy from which it derived'???
As for your points 1) and 2), you're again confused. What exactly is the problem with those 2 statements. Do you think that they are different things?
>However at the Mauna Loa facility neither (1) nor (2) has resulted in any detectable warming trend,
The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming due to CO2 emissions does not require the temperature at Mauna Loa to increase.
MarkG,
You only think that becuase you don't follow Tiddles-Logic (Pat. Pend.).
This is how it works - Tiddles is told the average height for a person of his gender is 180cm. Tiddles says - 'no that can't be right, I'm 160cm tall' It's an average Tids. 'Yes, but I'm not 180cm, I'm only 160cm'. Umm...you know what an average is, right. 'Yes, but that can't be right as I'm not 180cm tall'
Now aply to AGW, specifically temp at ML.
"Tiddles" was Tim Curtin, breaking the rules under which he was allowed to participate here. I have deleted all of the "Tiddles" posts, banned Tim Curtin and closed the Tim Curtin thread. I'm afraid this has changed the numbers on the comments, so references to earlier comments by number are no correct.
Now there's a surprise!
Tim must try to remember that his brand of stupid qualifies as a unique identifier.
Jeremy C:
I have tried to put my views here to enable people to compare my climate realist views with those of the AGW-advocates who operate this web site. I had not intended to enter debate because (as can be seen here) AGW-advocates rarely address the climate realistsâ message but, instead, they attack the climate realist messengers (as can also be see here). Therefore, I did not respond to your questions to me and, anyway, I thought my explanation of the matter was clear.
However, the professional liar who operates under the pseudonym of Eli Rabbit wrongly stated that I had lied when I said the mean global temperature varies by âalmost 4 °C from January to July each yearâ. Therefore, I now give brief responses to your questions to me that were:
I said:
"The Earth is never in radiative balance in a global scale and it cannot be. The Earth warms almost 4 °C from January to July each year and has equivalent cooling from July to January each year."
And you asked:
âCan you elaborate on this? Are you referring to the eccentricity of earth's orbit? Are you confusing the warming of the northern hemisphere due to the seasonal change in tilt of the earths axis wrt the sun with your statement above? What do you mean by "never in radiative balance" when across a yearly cycle the temperature comes out the same?â
As Truesceptic said, my statement concerning the temperature variation within each year is an empirical fact. His exposition was concise and enables anybody to check the matter with one click, so I merely repeat it. He wrote:
âEli,
I'm sorry but you were wrong in this particular case. From here (Probably won't line up but it's easy enough to count the months!)
Combined Mean Surface Temp. 1901 to 2000 (°C)
J F M A M J J A S O N D Annual
12.0 12.1 12.7 13.7 14.8 15.5 15.8 15.6 15.0 14.0 12.9 12.2 13.9
Jul - Jan = 15.8 - 12.0 = 3.8â
It is clear that the heat input is never in balance with the heat output because the Earthâs temperature varies by nearly 4 °C within each year. Of course the two coincide twice each year but, as I said, this is not a balance except in the meaningless way that a stopped clock is right twice each day.
The âeccentricity of the Earthâs orbitâ and the âwarming of the northern hemisphereâ play their parts in causing this variation.
Radiation from the Sun heats the Earth, and that heat is radiated back to space. The Sun may provide constant heat (some people doubt this) but the distance of the Earth varies throughout a year (i.e. throughout each orbit of the Sun by the Earth), so the heat provided to the Earth varies throughout each year. The Earth is closest to the Sun during Southern Hemisphere summer and, therefore, it gets most solar heating at that time. But the Earth is COOLEST at that time. Clearly, the major cause of the variation in global temperature is the Earthâs climate system.
The Earth does not absorb all the heat that it obtains from the Sun: some of this heat is reflected back to space. Land and oceans absorb and reflect different proportions of the heat, and the Southern Hemisphere (SH) has less land â and more ocean â than the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The Earth exposes more of its SH than its NH to the Sun in the SH summer, and exposes exposes more of its NH than its SH to the Sun in the NH summer. Hence, the amount of solar heat absorbed by the Earth varies throughout the year.
The climate system modulates the return of the absorbed solar heat to space. But the climate system varies with locality over the surface of the Earth as an effect of e.g. the different thermal capacities and different evapourative behaviours of water and land. And the SH and NH have different proportions of water and land. Therefore, throughout each year there is variation to the modulation â by the climate system â of the return of the absorbed solar heat to space.
The observed variation of the global temerature by nearly 4 °C within each year is a result of the climate system modulating the return of the absorbed solar heat to space.
The modulation is severe and demonstrates that the climate system is extremely robust. As I said, 30% increase to the heat from the Sun over geological times has had no discernible effect on global temperature.
It should be noted that â as I also said â the climate system is extremely complex and a mere 1% of increase to cloud cover would mere than compensate for the largest possible warming from a doubing of carbon dioxide in the air. And the climate system is observed to be modulated by clouds. For example, sea surface temperature has a maximimum of 305 K in the tropics, and any additional heat from any source induces the ocean to cool (yes, COOL). This strange effect is because the additional heat induces additional evapouration which cools the sea surface (for the same reason people sweat when hot), and the extra moisture in the air induces extra cloud cover over and near the region of maximum temperature. The additional clouds reflect solar energy that would heat the ocean region near the region of maximum temperature, so the net effect is cooling of the ocean.
Over time small imbalances between the thermal input and output of the Earth occur and are observed as climate cycles (e.g. the Present Warm Period that follows the Little Ic Age). I have my own opinions on why that is, but I do not mention them now because my postings here have been in attempt to avoid this blog being a fact-free-zone.
The important point is that global climate is determined by several interacting effects. The empirical data demonstrates that variations to global climate are not mostly determined by radiative effects, and the Earth having a âradiative balanceâ is a myth which is denied by observations.
(Incidentally, I ponder why an increase to mean global temperature of 2 °C has been decided - e.g. by the UN - as being necessary to avoid catastrophe when nearly double that rise - and commensurate fall - occurs each year.)
"Incidentally, I ponder why an increase to mean global temperature of 2 °C has been decided - e.g. by the UN - as being necessary to avoid catastrophe when nearly double that rise - and commensurate fall - occurs each year." - Richard
One word Richard - oscillation.
Well Girma, how entertaining! I,m away for 24 hour and you've answered my question with a [possible yes](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…)
>"*I am entertained by how bad arguments like yours can be. Could you come up with a worse one?*"
Raging Bee certainly agrees that your little thought experiment is a contender for a worse argument. I think its a contender. But its still hard to go past trying to hide statistically significant change behind inappropriate units. You do realise that this won't make the melting of ice stop, nor stop the record breaking temperatures associated with mega fires, nor the disease killing massive forest ecosystems?
In answer to your silly question:
>"*if the mean temperature changes from 14.3 deg C to 14.6 deg C. 1) What is the percentage change in the mean temperature? 2) What is the percentage change in temperature anomalies?*"
The answer for 1 depends on the units you use (K, C, F). I.e conducting a though experience in Girma world, the warming must be heaps worse in The Answer for 2 is the same for all units. Hence another reason to use number 2.
How far are you going to push this dumb point Girma?
We humans hate any one to challenge our belief or religion.
The abuse I got in this blog include idiot (#107), Crap (#109), innumerate (#118), garbage (#120), jerk (#121), primary school nonsense (#141), bullshit (#107), illiterate (#177), etc. Why? Because I made the following impersonal statements:
1) Let me demonstrate that the global mean temperature anomaly plots magnify the perception of the actual change in temperature.
Let us say the global mean temperature changes from 14.3 to 14.6 deg C. The TRUE percentage change in temperature is (14.6-14.3) * 100 / 14.3 % = 2.1%. If we use the anomalies, for a long term mean temperature of 14 deg C, the DISTORTED change in temperature is a (0.6â0.3) * 100 / 0.3 % = 100%. Which is obviously a massive distortion. Since Science is the antithesis of distortion, all the anomaly graphs must be withdrawn.
2) Why I am a skeptic of CO2 being the knob of Global Warming.
Like Einsteinâs train ride thought experiment, I did the following thought experiment.
I got two 10,000ml transparent plastic containers. I capped one of the containers, and I capped the other one after adding 1ml of CO2. This 1ml represent the proportion of CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans since the start of the industrial revolution (100 ppm). I exposed both containers to same amount of solar radiation, and measured their temperature as a function of time. My thought experiment tells me that the temperature difference between the two containers would be insignificant. Actually, this would be the maximum possible difference in temperature that is possible due to the effect of CO2 on the temperature as there is no cooling due to convection in the container.
From the above FACTS, I conclude that AGW is built on quicksand!
405 Tim,
Wouldn't it be better to leave posts such as Tiddles's for all to see? Then any references to them continue to make sense and we can also learn that "mainstream" science is completely wrong and perverted.
Blog Science is the only _real_ science!
Richard S. Courtney writes:
Clearly you did not read the link I posted. If you had, you would have seen that when I performed Cochrane-Orcutt iteration to compensate for autocorrelation in the residuals,, ln CO2 still accounted for 60% of the variance in temperature anomaly over the 128 years of the data set.
Never accuse someone of not having done the work if they have not only done the work, but posted it on the internet.
Yep Girma, those are the two foolish arguments that are so entertainingly silly!
Thanks for bring them together for us.
Now I need a lie down after you so powerfully "*challenged my belief or religion*".
Girma:
Even your calculation is incorrect. As Bob Armstrong, of all people, pointed out, temperature in physics is measured from absolute zero and a change from 14.3 to 14.6 C, being a change from 287.45 to 287.75 K, is only a change of only 0.1%.
Which matters not at all. Differences in temperature affect climate drastically. As I said to BA, a change of 1 degree in the mean global annual surface temperature is enough to shift agricultural growing belts by hundreds of miles. When someone has a core temperature of 102 F, he has a fever of 3.4 degrees F, not a fever of 0.6%.
Richard Courtney writes, presumably with a straight face,
*I have tried to put my views here to enable people to compare my climate realist views with those of the AGW-advocates*
Your climate realist views?!?! Puh-lease. Give me a break,
Girma:
For the Nth time, that is NOT how anomalies are calculated! They do not "chop[] the integer part." They subtract the mean temperature in the base period from the measured temperature.
Example. The measured temperature at Denver on June 5th is 14.8 C. The mean during 1961-1990 was 14.5 C.
The anomaly is then 14.8 - 14.5 = 0.3 C.
Your way: 14.8, "chop the integer," leaving 0.8 C. Wrong answer.
Barton Paul Levenson (#414)
The anomaly graphs are plotted to communicate a message and they are always plotted in deg C. As a result, there is no need to use any other unit. My main issue is about the perception of the change in temperature one gets by looking at the anomaly plots. They are distorted and they must be removed or identified as deceptive.
Cheers
Eli: Month Anomaly (C) 1 0.2178 2 0.3458 3 0.7054 4 0.4297 5 0.4330 6 0.4829 7 0.5084 8 0.4844 9 0.4568 10 0.6069 11 0.5998 12 0.4808
Three misleads= a lie Richard
RSC: No! Not a lie. A fact.
I cited global temperature variations and NOT monthly anomaly variations. Each monthly anomaly (i.e. the anomaly for January, for February ... for December) is the difference from the mean value of the temperature of the same month for the 30 years of the standard period. (Similarly, each annual anomaly is the difference of the annual temperature from the mean value of the annual temperatures of the 30 years of the standard period.)
Hence, the monthly anomalies cannot show the variation I mentioned because that variation is deleted by the subtraction to create the anomaly values.
RSC: You need to pick up an introductory algebra text, read it, and work the problems. You failed to learn something called "the associative property of addition."
The difference between an anomaly of 0.7 and an anomaly of 0.2 is 0.5 K.
The difference between a temperature of 14.7 K and a temperature of 14.2 K is also 0.5 K.
This is because
0.7 - 0.2 = (14 + 0.7) - (14 + 0.2)
Read that over until you understand what happened. And crack a book!
Girma is proof of a global climate conspiracy. He thinks like Einstein and is treated like Galileo. Why are the IPPC refusing to include [his work](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MountainProfileAndMeanGlo…) in their government revenue raising reports?
Which reminds me that AGW is a conspiracy put out by coal companies to so that governments will compensate them with billions of dollars of free carbon permits.
>The important point is that global climate is determined by several interacting effects. The empirical data demonstrates that variations to global climate are not mostly determined by radiative effects, and the Earth having a âradiative balanceâ is a myth which is denied by observations.
Of course there are long term climate impacts that are not the effect of changes in the radiative balance. Noone denies this. However, your reading of the empirical data is in error. For instance, aerosol emissions from the Pinatubo eruptions were observed to have a net cooling effect for several years. This is an empirical climate impact from changes in the radiative balance, so let us dismiss this nonsense that it cannot happen. The CO2 argument is also strong; we expect from CO2 spectroscopy that CO2 will be significant, and temperature is rising with CO2 concentration. BPL has done the correlation for us and posted the results, there are others in the literature who have done the same.
>Incidentally, I ponder why an increase to mean global temperature of 2 °C has been decided - e.g. by the UN - as being necessary to avoid catastrophe when nearly double that rise - and commensurate fall - occurs each year.
The cycle you refer to ensures that we have a steady state over the medium to long term, summer melting is offset by the following winter freezing. Changing the long term state to a new average temperature is a significant change to the energetics of the climate system. You should expect new climate patterns will appear to better mix this heat throughout; that's bad enough but worse when you take into account increased polar and glacial ice melt.
Grima:
Yeah, Albert! Who said you could knock out Orville and take his place at Kitty Hawk anyway?
Barton Paul Levinson:
I write to apologise to you.
I clearly failed to read you blog correctly and, having checked the matter, it is as you say. You did correct the time series for autocorrelation. Sorry.
And as you say, for that 128 year data set you do obtain the correlation which you claim.
However, that data set has to be suspect because the longest continuous measurement series for atmospheric CO2 concentration is that obtained at Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) which began data collection in 1958 (i.e. 51 years ago). Hence, more than half the data you have analysed is inferred.
CDIC.ORNL provides data sets of measured atmospheric CO2 concentration from MLO, Estevan (Canada)), Alert (Canada) and Shetland Islands. None of these data sets for measured atmospheric CO2 concentration correlates to mean global temperature when compensated for autocorrelation. None of them, not one.
I am grateful for your drawing my error to my attention. Clearly, you are trying to assess available information and this is in stark contrast to the attitude of several here (e.g. see the recent response of Jeff Harvey to his being presented with inconvenient truths).
Barton Paul Levinson:
Upon posting my apology to you I discovered your attack of me. You are plain wrong about annual global temperature variation as both Truesceptic and I pointed out with a link to the actual data. So your silly comment concerning "algebra" is a reason for you to be embarrassed.
Use of unwarranted abuse demonstrates your lack of evidence for what you say. And recognition of that is a major reason why there is a steady flow of people from the AGW camp into the climate realist camp.
I now have much better things to do than challenge the superstition of AGW so I will not be responding to further comments here for some time (if I bother at all).
Richard S Courtney writes:
>The modulation is severe and demonstrates that the climate system is extremely robust.
This assertion is contracdicted by the interglacial/glacial cycles.
Courtney continues:
>As I said, 30% increase to the heat from the Sun over geological times has had no discernible effect on global temperature.
When the sun was 30% weaker, there was a lot more atmospheric CO2 warming the planet.
Richard are you able to provide a source reference for this [earlier claim](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…):
>"Cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid 1980s and late 1990s. Over that period, cloud cover decreased such that if the Sunâs heat were constant the extra surface warming was 5 to 10 Watts/sq metre."
@Girma
> I got two 10,000ml transparent plastic containers. I capped one of the containers, and I capped the other one after adding 1ml of CO2. This 1ml represent the proportion of CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans since the start of the industrial revolution (100 ppm). I exposed both containers to same amount of solar radiation, and measured their temperature as a function of time. My thought experiment tells me that the temperature difference between the two containers would be insignificant. Actually, this would be the maximum possible difference in temperature that is possible due to the effect of CO2 on the temperature as there is no cooling due to convection in the container.
I cannot believe you actually have the nerve to keep reposting this stuff.
A hint: thought experiments aren't really that useful for forming hard and fast conclusions about the outcomes of empirical tests you could actually perform yourself if you could be bothered to do so. A thought experiment is useful for constructing an analogue for basic concepts - all you are doing is parading your prejudices for all to see and also demonstrating that you regard your own opinion as FACT while being too lazy to do any actual work.
Here's alternative to your thought experiment. Run your experiment as before, but instead of disregarding the increase in temperature at the bottom of the container as insignificant, actually measure it. Then, repeat with a container precisely twice as tall, and with 2ml of CO2 in it, and see if the temperature is fractionally greater. Then add another container with a different chemical composition than air at ground level, but more similar to a higher layer of our atmosphere, and repeat the whole lot again. If each of these steps results in a fractionally larger "insignificant" increase in temperature, extrapolate what will in principle be the result if you extend your container to the height of earth's atmosphere, and with appropriate layers of different atmospheric mixes throughout its height.
Or you could read a book. Or hell, use google and find such links as this: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm which provide a nice accessible history of a deep subject that you are denigrating with such an offhand analysis.
Here's another hint: you are being harshly criticised at not so much for being wrong (to err is human) - more for the sheer self-important attitude that not only are you 100% correct, but 150 years of physics is 100% wrong, based on nothing but your opinion - which you regard as FACT - and ignoring all evidence to the contrary that has been pointed out in painstaking detail in this thread. Instead of taking any of this on board, you cry about being personally attacked, disregard anything constructive and *just repeat your original arguments again*. You like Einstein - you keep comparing your atrocious thought experiment to his - but I'm afraid your blind and deaf repetition fits his definition of insanity.
@Girma
I just clicked through and I love your mountaintop analogy. It actually exposes another lie - why are mountain heights always discussed relative to sea level? Why not relative to the ocean floor? In fact, it you compare mountain heights in terms of absolute height from the centre of the earth, you'll see there's virtually no difference between them, and any notion that you might die after falling off one is laughable.
Richard S Courteny,
OK, I read your explanation but you and I must have a different idea of what is a balanced system as it seems to me you were describing a balanced system, related to a recurring cycle. The reason I posed my question to you because your post read as though you hadn't considered what you were actually saying/writing.
I don't see how your other points in your reply were relevant but they didn't hang together with your statement that climate is a very complex system, something I and every poster here i'm sure would agree with, as you seem to move on to confidently asserting particular elements have an effect without reference to your earlier statement. I suppose an obvious question would be why wouldn't something being introduced into the system, in far, far, far less time than your geological times scales, such as a variation in CO2 levels also have an effect?
Its the sort of thinking behind your dogmatic statements i.e. the sort of stuff from denialists that exasperate people and so leads to dismissive comments especially when they have been dealt with time and time again. My reading of denialists is that they start with what they don't like or they know what they don't like and they cast around for something that appears to reflect that and don't question what they have found. Thats not scepticism nor is it realism and you haven't given me any realistic reason to change my use of 'denialist'.
It was a very good talk by Prof. England
TY for bringing it to my notice.
Only 2 nutter questions - both quietly and calmly killed by the Prof. 1 was the old paleo-CO2-lags-temp chestnut wrapped in a long preamble. The second was an oddball - the faster lost of the Artic ice than was modeled in 2001 means that modelling is stuffed and another, unknown heating mechanism rather than CO2 must be at play and we thus we should pollute more.
But other than those 2 I'd say rest of the lecture room was very receptive and appreciative of the Prof's talk as was I.
Richard S Courtney complains about:
and then says:
What a hypocrite.
Chris (#429)
Abuse is personal. AGW is just an idea.
Girma Orssengo:
> Abuse is personal. AGW is just an idea.
While making up any old crap to attack an idea is an abuse, making it up to attack careful research by people who have actually looked and found that the climate is actually warming is a dangerous abuse.
The deniers have a major weakness that is under-exploited. The denial of AGW is a false proposition and a false proposition implies any proposition. Given the right arguments based on their assumptions, they could be made to say and do the most amazing things.
Grima posts a link (to Himslef, I'm sure):"Exaggerated Anomaly for the Public"
Since by your methods for calculating % argument, the warming is infinity % !!!11!ONE! (calculation of 0.60 July 2009 anomaly / 0.00 anomaly baseline) I suppose you think "Infinity + 1 !!!11!ONE! would be larger, and hence an exaggeration.
Richard Courtney wonders:"Incidentally, I ponder why an increase to mean global temperature of 2 °C has been decided - e.g. by the UN - as being necessary to avoid catastrophe when nearly double that rise - and commensurate fall - occurs each year."
It is worse than that. I wonder why an increase in the mean global temperature of 2 °C has been decided - e.g. by the UN - as being necessary to avoid catastrophe when nearly 10x that rise - and commensurate fall - occurs each day.
Grima:
Beer's Law can be expressed as:
T = exp(-k SM)
where k is the mass absorption coefficient of the absorber at the wavelength in question and SM is the specific mass (mass per unit area). Note that there is no term for volume fraction.
Your one milliliter of CO2 would have a mass of about 1.8 x 10^-16 kilograms. Take as an example the wavelength 14.278 microns, at which CO2 has an absorption coefficient of 16.3 square meters per kilogram. If your 10,000 ml container is a cube, it is about 21.54 cm on a side. The specific mass is then 3.88 x 10^-5 kilograms per square meter. The optical depth would then be 16.3 x 3.88 x 10^-5 or 6.32 x 10^-4 and the transmissivity 0.9994. Only 0.06% of the light falling on your cube at that wavelength is absorbed. Naturally you would notice no difference in temperature.
Now, if the entire atmosphere were at standard conditions, it would be about 8,000 meters high. This is 37,100 times the height of your cube, which means the specific mass would be 1.44 kilograms per square meter. The optical depth would be 23.5, and the transmissivity about 6.22 x 10^-11. Nearly 100% of the light at 14.278 microns would be absorbed.
It is the total mass of absorber in the path of the light beam that counts, not the volume fraction.
RSC:
Let's just check that.
Earth's bolometric Bond albedo averages 0.306 according to NASA. Mean cloud cover is about 0.62 (Kiehl and Trenberth 1997). If the average cloud albedo is 0.4 (lower clouds are brighter, very high clouds are nearly transparent), then the albedo of the rest of the planet must average about 0.15.
Let's increase cloud cover by 1%. The albedo of the Earth would then be about 0.308.
Earth's radiative equilibrium temperature is about 254.26 K, from
Te = (S [1 - A] / [4 sigma])^0.25
where S is the solar constant (I assume 1,366 watts per square meter), A the albedo and sigma the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (5.6704 x 10^-8 W/m^2/K^4 in the SI). If we change the albedo to 0.308, this becomes 254.08 K, a cooling of 0.18 K.
A doubling of carbon dioxide is estimated to cause about 2.8 K of global warming (Myhre et al. 1998).
Which is larger? 0.18 or 2.8? Does one "m[o]re than compensate" for the other?
@Berbalang
> The deniers have a major weakness that is under-exploited. The denial of AGW is a false proposition and a false proposition implies any proposition. Given the right arguments based on their assumptions, they could be made to say and do the most amazing things.
I would disagree both that this is a weakness and that it is under-exploited.
For starters, deniers are regularly made to look foolish (to educated eyes) with their creduluous and self-contradictory positions. Witness the speed with which deniers leapt upon an imaginary Basque/Tibetan paper in another thread simply because they believed it was against AGW.
But quite simply, ever more outlandish assertions are not a weakness, but a strength, thanks to the Overton window. The ever increasing shrillness and repetition of the extreme anti-AGW position simply serves to move the perceived middle of the "debate" further away from the measured summary provided by the IPCC. Confusion results in inaction, and inaction is a win for deniers.
The decrease in measured cloud cover is mostly or entirely due to satellite viewing geometry problems.
http://cce.890m.com/solar-gcr/images/cloud-trends.jpg
http://cce.890m.com/solar-gcr/images/cloud-anomalies.jpg
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/NorrisGwattRevised.pdf
Even Girmo has exaggerated the mountain's profile in the left-hand photo.
This is the proper way to characterize the mountain's profile.
Obviously hiking it requires no climbing at all, as proven when it's seen from the proper perspective.
Och, I'm away in 1305 for a weekend and you lot have fun, and I miss Courtney popping up again. Just when we've got more questions to ask him.
@dhogaza
> Obviously hiking it requires no climbing at all, as proven when it's seen from the proper perspective.
You just can't help with your needless and misleading exaggeration can you?
I think you'll find [this is a more appropriate frame of reference](http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/601/PIA00452_md.jpg).
Actually, in my 10,000 ml plastic container thought experiment, I was very generous. Last year, 2008, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere was 1.66 ppm.
[CO2 at Mauna Loa]( http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/)
As a result, the trillion-dollar question is that does the addition of 1.66 ml of CO2 into my, now, 1,000,000 ml plastic container results in catastrophic warming of the air in the container?
Chemists of this world, please set up this experiment and show us the warming, from my hunch, would be insignificant, and save billions of the worldâs poor, who barely survive now, from destruction as a result of the proposed increase in energy price.
It's a perfectly legitimate extrapolation of Girma's idiocy.
368, 370, 371, 373, 407, 418, 423 (current numbering).
I can't let this pass. Regardless of any opinions I might have of RichardSCourtney and his various claims, he was quite correct in his description of global monthly average temperature variations.
You can not compare anomalies for different months to derive differences between the absolute values for those months. The monthly anomalies are relative to the reference temperatures for each month, not to a common reference for all months.
The Jan-Jul variation in absolute global average temperature is indeed about 4°C. The anomalies are irrelevant in this case.
I'd like Eli and BPL to respond as they seem to have let their dislike of Courtney get the better of them in this case. Ignore whatever else he said and address this one point: we need to be rigorous and fair, don't we? Please read the posts referenced above to avoid pointless repetition.
(Of course, if I am open to argument that I might have got it wrong in the same way he did.)
If one wants a textbook example of the sheer offensive lack of intellectual rigour - or even manners - of the common denialist, one need look no further than BPL's patient response to Girma at 434, followed by Girma's complete failure to take this information in, and his expanded arguments from ignorance and appeals to the gallery at 441.
Girma, truly thy faith is unshakable.
Dave (#444)
Why are you afraid of a simple lab experiment to find out whether the addition 1.66 ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml transparent plastic container exposed to solar radiation results in catastrophic warming of the air in the container?
Donât you prefer experimental observation than any theory?
>Chemists of this world, please set up this experiment and show us the warming, from my hunch, would be insignificant, and save billions of the worldâs poor, who barely survive now, from destruction as a result of the proposed increase in energy price.
Grima: There's a couple of pretty good physics departments in Perth. At either one I'm sure you can find someone to explain to in some detail how incredibly wrong you are. Your experiment is wrong. Your total dismissal of physics is wrong. Your ignorance of physics and data analysis is not edifying.
I should add that heating due to CO2 radiative transfer is not due to a chemical reaction. You need to be looking at the spectroscopy of a broad spectrum of radiation to see the effect of CO2. The experiment is not very hard to construct, In fact the maths and experiment is not beyond a third year physics student.
Girma writes:
>*Why are you afraid of a simple lab experiment ...Donât you prefer experimental observation than any theory?*
Forgetting that he is relying on his assumed results from a thought experiment; and that he is trying to hide the obeserved evidence, demanding that charts that show the temperature anomaly withdrawn.
@Dave
Your examples show that it is under-exploited. Denial of Global Warming outweights all else in their mind. Sure they can be made to jump at imaginary papers to justify their belief, but if justifying their belief required them to wear gingam dresses and bark at the Moon, they would do so. Given the right circumstances they would have seizures and memory loss rather than accept Global warming as a fact.
Try some experiments on them.
And forgetting that [the limits](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) of his proposed experiment have [been explained](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…).
I, Girma of Perth, Australia, kindly request all government departments, all journals and all media to desist from publishing [Mean Global Temperature Anomaly graph]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/MeanGlobalTemperatureAnom…), as they are distortions of the [True Mean Global Temperature graph]( http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…) and may mislead the public about global warming.
I also kindly request all existing graphs to be replaced by the True mean Global Temperature graph as soon as possible.
Science is the antithesis of distortion.
Yours Sincerely
Girma:
Please be precise. Monthly average? Yearly average? Calendar year or any 12-months? Some other period? Which series? Name your petard!
Girma: Dude, I don't think "all government departments, all journals and all media" are reading this blog. Still, good luck. You might have more luck contacting the Cabal Who Are Conspiring To Plot Data In Evil Ways directly. They must have a website or something.
Well perserverence counts for something Girma. I dare say you could devote the rest of you life to restating these same claims. However doing so will not improve your argument
Gaz, re Girma's:
>*If in the next ten years the mean global temperature anomaly again reaches or exceeds the 1998 value of 0.55 deg C, I will join the AGW camp.*
I thought Fran had an [excellent response](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…) to this pronouncement by Girma.
We shall save the billions of the world poor, who barely survive now, from destruction as a result of the proposed increase in energy price.
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the blog.
We shall show that the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container does not result in a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the air in the container.
We shall not flag or fail.
We shall never surrender.
Yours sincerely
Girma pretends to be a scientist. He also acts as if he knows all about greenhouse gases and how they work.
Unfortunately, he does not have the knowledge expected of a scientist. His little "thought" experiment shows that he does not understand greenhouse gas theory (note Grima, I did not call it anthropogenic greenhouse gas theory since green house gas theory works the same whether the gas is from a natural source or from anthropogenic sources). If you irradiated your stupid little tube with solar radiation of course it wouldn't heat up. Atmospheric gases are transparent to light of wavelengths found in solar radiation. It is only after the light has been absorbed by something such as earth or rocks that the energy is re-radiated back as infra red radiation. Green house gases are not transparent to IR light. They absorb it and energize the molecules of the green house gas and the air then warms.
How on earth did you ever manage to get an advanced degree? Did you get it in Germany? I see that a large number of profs there are accused of accepting bribes to give students Ph.D degrees. That is the only way you would get an advanced degree.
You are pathetic, are you familiar with the Dunning Kruger Syndrome? You are a perfect example.
We shall save the billions of the world poor, who barely survive now, from destruction as a result of the proposed increase in energy price.
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the blog.
We shall show that the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container exposed to solar radiation does not result in a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the air in the container.
We shall not flag or fail.
We shall never surrender.
Yours sincerely
Girma,
[Here is](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/07/piers_akerman_takes_denial_to.p…) why you should pay attention to the trend in warming.
Ian Forrester (#456)
You are right, and I was wrong. Please replace in all my previous posts the phrase "Solar radiation" with "Infrared Radiation"
Thank you.
"I, Girma of Perth, Australia, kindly request all government departments, all journals and all media to desist from publishing Mean Global Temperature Anomaly graph, as they are distortions of the True Mean Global Temperature graph and may mislead the public about global warming." - Grima.
And what about those terrible medical thermometers? They should go to.
We shall save the billions of the world poor, who barely survive now, from destruction as a result of the proposed increase in energy price.
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the blog.
We shall show that the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container exposed to Infrared radiation does not result in a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the air in the container.
We shall not flag or fail.
We shall never surrender.
Yours sincerely
Billy (#462)
Thanks Billy.
It is sad, from my calculation, the percentage that support me in this blog is less than 0.5%. I copped abuse from the remaining 99.5%. Look what Group-think does to people.
Billy Bob's brave last stand in an attempt to get banned!
Banned for presenting credible information? No.
Banned for providing argument or dissent? No, there is plenty of that here.
Banned for providing repetition of fatuous propaganda?
Girma, have you read any critique of your work here that has caused you to pause and wonder if your arguments are in the least bit problematic?
Based on performance Billy would be ill advised to trust Girma's calculations.
>We shall show that the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container exposed to Infrared radiation does not result in a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the air in the container.
Do you even care that this experiment makes no sense, and that whatever the result will not show what you think it is supposed to show?
Girma, do you get a lot support for your arguement's outside of this blog? If so where?
Have you considered publishing your ideas and putting them through the peer reviewed process?
Can you think of any reason other than Goverenment conspiracy that would explain your argument's not being accepted mainstream?
Eli,
Billy Bob knows that you can find the truth by finding someone who'll give the ansewer you want. QED Girma must be right!
I hope, I have impressed on your mind the fact that the anomaly plots are a magnification of the true mean global temperature profile by 14 times (for a long term global mean temperature of 14 deg C). You may not admit it now, but your subconscious abhors contradictions and will, in time, identify the anomaly plots as distortions.
It is like looking at a profile through a magnifying glass. The general public does not know that the temperature range for the anomaly plots is 1 deg C, but they have vague notion that they represent the mean global temperatures. Why should I, in my spare time, plot the true mean global temperature, while in all the government web sites I could only find the anomaly plots? Are not we paying them to give us the complete information?
>I hope, I have impressed on your mind the fact that the anomaly plots are a magnification of the true mean global temperature profile by 14 times (for a long term global mean temperature of 14 deg C). You may not admit it now, but your subconscious abhors contradictions and will, in time, identify the anomaly plots as distortions.
I'm not sure about my subconscious, but my conscious mind is having a lot of trouble with this. Probably not in the sense you would prefer I think.
Girma is that a, "No", "No", and "No" to each of the questions from Mark Byrne, MAB and MarkG?
The troll invation has had an impact. This thread is currently rated as the 4th most active @ ScienceBlogs!
Is that troll *still* going? Jebus.
Girma:
Sounds great Girma. Just let us know when you've scaled it up to the 8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ml of the troposphere which includes most of the 800,000,000,000,000,000 ml of CO2 that we've added.
"We shall save the billions of the world poor, who barely survive now, from destruction as a result of the proposed increase in energy price" - Grima.
Wonder what Grima was doing to save the billions of poor from the actual dramatic increase in the price of oil over the last few years?
Banging on about graphs?
Hhmmmm......
Richard S Courtney:
I would have thought it showed the exact opposite, i.e. variations in geography relative to insolation are capable of producing changes in global average temperature of nearly 4°C, even though total insolation doesn't change much. So it doesn't take a lot of change in forcing to produce a lot of change in temperature, as has already been pointed out in relation to ice-ages.
This Courtney character is extremely arrogant.
Girma, as implied before, plotting the temperature time series in the form of anomaly plot is not misleading (though perhaps not a very familiar way for the lay people). An equivalent way to the anomaly plot is to plot the temp with the proper y-axis range, so that any 'abnormality' can be more easily spotted. Again, taking the example of your body temperature record, if you plot with 0-40 range, you may not detect a serious fever (39C), but you can plot this by taking out the average body temperature (37) which then shows you the anomalies relative to a normal body temp, or plot with the range 35-40. With your 0-40 C range to monitor your body temperature, you wish to spot significant abnormality (say 30C, or 0C in the morgue) but by that time you'd be seriously sick or already dead. The same with the climate system, by that time, it's already too late... So presenting anomaly timeseries is sensible for detecting signs of climate change.
I herby promise, in front of this blogs members, to deposit 500 AUD into the bank account of anyone who can do the following experiment.
Find out the effect of the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container exposed to infrared radiation on the temperature of the air in the container.
The experimental result must be repeatable by any other person.
Yours Sincerely
AJW (478).
Thank you.
You wrote, "⦠plotting the temperature time series in the form of anomaly plot is not misleading (though perhaps not a very familiar way for the lay people)."
That is my point. Do the "lay people" know the range for the y axis plot for the anomaly is only 1 deg C? Is there a chance for "lay people" to perceive the change in the true mean global temperature as shown visually in the anomaly plots?
I consider it as a fact that the profile of the anomaly plots are magnified 14 times (for a long term mean global temperature of 14 deg C) compared to that of the true mean global temperature plots. This is the only message I want to communicate.
Girma, what is stopping you doing [your experiment](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/matthew_england_challenges_the…)? Your could then publish your results.
Girma (479),
I agree with you, it is sometimes not easy to digest technical information, so scientists need to communicate better. Perhaps, a better way for the lay people is to present the absolute temperature and show the 14C mean overlaid as a dashed horizontal line with the proper range. But then again this is essentially and visually the same to the anomaly plot. It is just about presenting timeseries relative to the relevant quantity (e.g., 37C for normal body temperature, 14C for the global climate, etc.),
so that one can say, while Girma is still alive, 'hey Girma, you've got a fever, watch out.' or 'hey people, the world is starting to warm, what's going on here?'
As with your bottle experiment, it is an interesting idea. Having ideas is good. But in this case, the usefulness may be doubtful, due to the overly simplistic methodology. In any case, Girma, you should try it and let everyone know what you find by publishing it in a scientific journal (as J. Akerman said). All the best.
"I herby promise, in front of this blogs members, to deposit 500 AUD into the bank account of anyone who can do the following experiment.
Find out the effect of the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container exposed to infrared radiation on the temperature of the air in the container." - Grima
What's that about fools and money?
Grima, why does it get cooler on top of mountains? The sun shines just as strongly up there??
>I consider it as a fact that the profile of the anomaly plots are magnified 14 times (for a long term mean global temperature of 14 deg C) compared to that of the true mean global temperature plots. This is the only message I want to communicate.
Your message is wrong. Small changes to mean global temperature are very significant. 2.0C average positive change in mean global temperature is a lot. Residuals are plotted to show this difference. These data are clearly labelled as residuals. It is not hard for people to understand that they represent changes from some longer term mean. The longer term reference means are clearly noted. There is no deception.
Girma: your suggestion will in fact hide this change in data. People have done so in the past in order to deceive the public.
Janet Akerman (#480)
You worte, "Girma, what is stopping you doing your experiment? Your could then publish your results."
Janet, to be honest, I don't know how to get and add exactly 1 ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml transparent plastic container, how to expose it to infrared radiation, and how to measure the temperature.
Girma, by your calculations the temperature in the Arctic has increase by over 300%.
Girma's instructions are:
>Let me demonstrate that the global mean temperature anomaly plots magnify the perception of the actual change in temperature. Let us say the global mean temperature changes from 14.3 to 14.6 deg C. The TRUE percentage change in temperature is (14.6-14.3) * 100 / 14.3 % = 2.1%. If we use the anomalies, the DISTORTED change in temperature is a (0.6â0.3) * 100 / 0.3 % = 100%. Which is obviously a massive distortion. Since Science is the antithesis of distortion, all the anomaly graphs must be withdrawn.
Moving towards the Arctic we approach temperatures with annual mean close to 0 Celsius. Parts of the Arctic have warmed by [7 degrees](http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/Arctic_Warming_ESU.html).
Its reasonable to assume that in the regions that have a mean temp below [1 degree C]( http://www.athropolis.com/arctic-facts/fact-arctic-cold.htm), have experienced warming of at least 3 or 4 degrees.
According to Girmaâs argument we should describe this warming as the âTrue percentage change in temperatureâ >(4-1)*100/(1) . I.e >300%.
Girma, do you believe the âtrueâ warming in the Arctic is already >300%?
MrakG (482)
How come there is NO official plot for the public of the [True Mean Global Temperature](http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…) on the web, but it is filled with the [anomaly plots](http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/g_timeseries.cgi?variabl…®ion=global&season=0112). Why?
Cheers,
Good point observa. Certainly logic needs to be applied when doing comparisons. The keyword is 'relativity', and we need to take the appropriate quantity as our base of reference. Everyone is allowed to make a mistake. We're all learning.
Girma, don't know why... likely because these kind of plot
is commonly used by scientists, statisticians, etc. They're visually and in essence the same thing. However, you've brought up an important point.. scientists need to put things into perspective for the general public easy to digest, regardless how trivial they are. This would prevent confusions in the future.
observa (#484)
The algebra for calculating percentages existed long before the debate on CO2 driven global warming.
The formula to calculate the percentage change from X1 to X2 is (X2-X1)*100/X1 %, and we accept what ever result it gives us.
Obseva, my issue is only regarding the mean global temperature.
Re #484
To make the point stronger, consider the regions where annual mean temp is very close zero celsius, say 0.1 degrees C. with a warming of 3 degrees C the "The TRUE percentage change in temperature" is greater than 2900%
=(3-0.1)*100/(0.1)
Girma, the point is that it's the degree of warming that is the focus, not the degees from H2O freezing point.
Girma Orssengo is a troll, and deserves no further replies until he can address the many rebuttals of his illogical postings.
He either is playing with the board, in which case is simply a mendacious troll, or he truly believes his nonsense and he is therefore quite possibly of a pathological psychology.
And I seriously mean the latter - if he really does have the qualifications that he pretends to, the only way anyone with that training could believe the crap that he does would be to have some serious cognitive dissonance occurring. Dissonance of this scale could be nothing other than a reflection of a pathological state.
Whatever Girma Orssengo's motivation, he is irredemable, and not worth further engagement until he justifies his claims with real science. And we all know that he cannot do this, which is why he simply repeats his statements without any demonstration of evidence.
Gawd, Morano really has the intellectual dregs of society infesting his backwaters, does he not?
Janet, to be honest, I don't know how to get and add exactly 1 ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml transparent plastic container, how to expose it to infrared radiation, and how to measure the temperature.
this is no surprise. other people have done a similar experiment, that shows the warming effect if CO2.
http://glory.gsfc.nasa.gov/globalwarmingexperiment.html
(you can simply fill a small container in a larger one. the sun can supply infrared radiation obviously and the measurement is shown in the NASA experiment description..)
they use more CO2, because they are simulating the whole atmosphere (and are looking for the general CO2 effect).
We shall show that the addition of 1.66ml of CO2 into a 1,000,000 ml of transparent plastic container exposed to solar radiation does not result in a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the air in the container.
there are multiple massive errors in your "experiment":
1. the bottle i a real greenhouse.
2. nobody is expecting "catastrophic" rise in temperature from the annual CO2 increase.
3. your experiment is NOT simulating the whole atmosphere.
let us do a real "thought experiment":
imagine a cubic decimetre of air with some additional CO2, directly above the ground. the majority of infrared light reflected from the ground will pass that volume, without "hitting" the "few" extra CO2 molecules. BUT: there is another cubic decimetre of air with extra CO2 just above it. and above it. and above it.
but all of this has been explained to you multiple times now. you are nothing but a troll.
the most funny thing is this:
the "Girma experiment" will actually show catastrophic warming! (because of the greenhouse effect of the bottle, of course and not because of the added CO2)
but because Girma insists, that the only relevant comparison of his "CO2 experiment" is to 0°C and NOT the anomaly towards another bottle without the extra CO2, in his own little universe, he has demonstrated how catastrophic CO2 is!
>How come there is NO official plot for the public of the True Mean Global Temperature on the web, but it is filled with the anomaly plots. Why?
Because plots like the "True Mean Global Temperature" you link to are used to deceive people. I suggest you take that up with the author of that website. You might ask that person why they are trying to hide the scale of recent changes in global average temperature.
In science we display data to explain the science and enhance the discussion. Small changes in global average temperature are very significant, therefore you must plot the data so that small changes are readily viewable. If you choose to display this data so that small changes are difficult to distinguish then you are being deliberately deceptive or ignorant.
@Girma
This graph:
> http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/TrueMeanGlobalTemperature…
Is by your own logic a complete lie.
a) why is the temperature axis relative to the freezing point of water rather than absolute values in Kelvin?
b) why is the time axis relative to an arbitrary point in time such as 1850? Surely you should account for all time since the big bang if you want to be fair? In fact, why is the time using arbitrary relative units such as earth's orbital period?
Come back when you've replotted your graph with the vertical axis in Kelvin, and the horizontal in seconds since the big bang. Otherwise you're clearly guilty of trying to overstate the warming trend.
I have found in the web a simple lab experiment for global warming!
Comparison of Thermal Properties of Air and Carbon Dioxide
[Global Warming Lab Experiment]( http://www.picotech.com/experiments/global/globalwarming.html)
In this laboratory experiment, students compared thermal properties 2000 mL of air in one bottle to 2000 mL of CO2 in another to conclude:
âEven over a small time period such as 20 minutes we are still able to get a difference of 4 degrees in temperature between the two samples. Students may not be impressed with such a small temperature difference in the lab. However, it needs to be stressed that scientists are in general agreement that an average increase of just 2 degrees Celsius across the planet could have catastrophic effects on crop production and cause sea levels to increase significantly resulting in major flooding.â
This is wrong! To do the correct experiment, they should have compared one 2000mL bottle filled with air to another filled with air and 0.2mL of CO2. This 0.2mL is the 100 ppm addition of CO2 by humans since the industrial revolution. Do you think they would see the difference shown in their graphs with the correct amount of CO2 in the second bottle?
Is the teacher correct to make the conclusion above from the actual experiment?
Cheers
Girma, you've had it explained a multitude of times by the patient folk here at Deltoid. Your proposed experiment is as accurate a model of the atmosphere as the one you are critising.
That you keep repeating this is deception on your part.
LOL at #116:
Are you fucking serious? I mean, really, are you fucking serious? (287.75 K - 287.45 K) / 287.45 K is rather obviously about .1%, not 2.1%. Also unsurprisingly, nobody cares.
At least if you are going to make irrelevant, nonsensical points, perhaps you could so with some middle school understanding of the science involved?
When you want to study changes in something, you subtract off the constant portion so you can see the detais. This is entirely uncontroversial, a useful technique, and happens all the time in every field of study.
>*This is wrong! To do the correct experiment, they should have compared one 2000mL bottle filled with air to another filled with air and 0.2mL of CO2. This 0.2mL is the 100 ppm addition of CO2 by humans since the industrial revolution.*
How can you measure the cumulative effect of CO2 in a 100km thick atmosphere using a 2 litre bottle? You don't. Your experiment would vastly underestimate the warming from the billions of extra tonnes of CO2 put into the atmosphere.
However, Plimer should do the kids experiemnt, as it demonstrates the heat trapping effect of CO2 does not become saturated at 50ppm as Plimer claims.