Continuation of the older threads. Please scan those (even briefly) to see whether your point has already been dealt with. Let me know if there is something worth pulling from the comments to the main post.
In the meantime, read about why peer-review is a necessary but not sufficient condition for science to be worth looking at. Also, before you conclude that the emails have any impact on the science, read about the six easy steps that mean that CO2 (and the other greenhouse gases) are indeed likely to be a problem, and think specifically how anything in the emails affect them.
Update: The piece by Peter Kelemen at Columbia in Popular Mechanics is quite sensible, even if I don’t agree in all particulars.
Further update: Nature’s editorial.
Further, further update: Ben Santer’s mail (click on quoted text), the Mike Hulme op-ed, and Kevin Trenberth.
Norman,
Try here: http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Saturation.html
Hi Gavin
I genuinely appreciate your response, and I do appreciate your advice on framing the question, however I don’t think you can change the DIRECTION of the question….
The fact that you tried suggests that global warming proponents don’t have to prove their case. For skeptics like me, that is a constant frustration.
I constantly hear what constitutes an acceptable level of proof (you gave a few example) but what would have to CHANGE for you to accept that the evidence contradicts the models?
Surely if the earth’s temperature were to fall for a certain number of years, that would give you second thoughts. The only question here is HOW MANY years, right?
So I repeat the question….
What OBSERVABLE climatic events would have to be OBSERVABLE (as opposed to modeled) for you to become convinced that “The DOMINANT cause of climate change is carbon emissions from human activity” statement is NOT true?
Gavin@214
Of course the 90% was out of the hat to illustrate the non linear absorption capabilities of CO2. Word is that CO2 has already utilized its maximum climate forcing potential. I requested step by step explanation on why we should fear CO2 given the above statement.
Please Gavin, be responsive, thanks.
BBC’s Radio 4 has twice suggested that the email leaks suggest that CRU tried to exaggerate the dangers of GW. I wonder which emails they had in mind? As Gavin and others have said, there seems to be a sign error involved. The trouble is that I am not sure that Radio 4 would know what ‘sign error’ means.
Details. 1. If UEA did have a dodgy influence on HadCRU temperatures throwing them away would make the recent warming slightly greater.
2. If they did under-estimate the MWP (as was claimed on BBC2 Newsnight) boosting that would probably make the estimated climate sensitivity rather higher.
W. Manny says:
What we’re afraid of is clowns, criminals and jackasses having an entirely illegitimate influence on scientific discourse and public policy related to stabilizing the climate, to the detriment of the world at large.
And that is of course exactly what skeptics are worried about.
Nobody wants AGW to be true. – gavin
That, sadly, is simply _not_ the case. Most of the political establishment is positively slavering over the new taxes and bureaucracies and social controls that AGW would legitimize, as is everyone whose political philosophy lies towards the totalitarian end of the spectrum – eg Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment:
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
[Response: The existence of perceived co-benefits to climate policies in no way undermines the need for policies to reduce emissions. Are you saying you would support emission reductions only if there were no knock-on benefits? That would really be perverse. And note too that this politician doesn’t want the worst case scenarios to come true. – gavin]
304 “However the phrase in one of the emails “think of RC as a resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put forward by the McIntyres of the world.” is troublesome to say the least. That and the nefarious tone in questioning people’s motives is not helpful as you’ve found out. Stick to the science.”
Are you trolling? For heavens sake, this is such a weak argument. I would say that this email is so gentle that it makes your comment absurd. The McIntyre’s of the world have been keeping us from making the progress we need to make because they have the deep pocketed greedy corporate vested interests behind them. They’ve been able to work AGW science from being settled in the same way that the science of cigarette smoking could never be settled. Where in the PUBLIC domain do we possess the ability to counter their deep pocketed propaganda without the volunteer efforts of researchers like Gavin? It’s a David vs Goliath.
When I think of Dick Cheany confirming that a reporter is an asshole or when he calls Senator Pat Leahy a *&$#*%$% in public I can only imagine what he says in his private emails.
Yes I do believe you’re trolling as others who are “concerned” about the tone. The ability by the right wing to feign righteous indignation is something to see.
Looks like there IS an international climate conspiracy. In addition to the CRU hack, somebody’s been busting in to Andrew Weaver’s U-of-T office:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2300282
Re: 282 Adrian:
Apologies, Adrian – I’m a qualified programmer, not a climate scientist, and I was making a point about the computational side. For that I really wasn’t concerned about chasing datasets so I based my figure on the list of 21896 station which are held /cru-code/linux/obs/_ref/station-list-ncep.txt in the code I was looking at.
If less than 1/4 of those potentially available stations are used in the final datasets then all that does is give an idea of just how much data needed to be discarded. Which reinforces the point that being able to account for what, why and how data has been dropped is essential.
I am NOT suggesting manipulation or fraud by that, because I don’t wear tinfoil to bed. But basic good practice in large data handling requires such things to be accounted for!
of course agree with you on the specific examples. But I think that the people on the AGW have run their share of the spurious regressions of persistent variables.
Comment by Tuomo — 3 December 2009 @ 10:49 PM
(Note the lack of specific counterexamples, but I digress…)
How many papers containing freshman-level blunders have been waved around on the floor of the Senate, on Faux News, talk-radio as proof of AGW?
Bad papers on most scientific topics just molder away quietly without being cited or publicized — but bad AGW “skeptic” papers are different. They often get the fox news headline treatment.
In the past decade, every single paper touted by AGW “skeptics” as disproving AGW either has been misinterpreted by the “skeptics” or is a complete fustercluck. I defy you to come up with any counterexamples.
I defy you to come up with any counterexamples.
#146
“Delete emails”
That comment fails to distinguish between deletion of data and deletion of emails. The latter should not be done with important data but what about the former?
Deletion of emails and keeping the server secure, have exactly the same effect , with one reservation, that the latter has proved to be a bit less reliable. The most obvious lesson from this theft is that all emails should be deleted from the server regularly say once every three months. In addition researchers could be encouraged to delete their emails more frequently or transfer them to folders on their own computers with strongly encrypted passwords.
By the way, next time the leak may consist of telephone calls and spoken conversations recorded by hidden recorders. Will we then be subjected to arguments that anyone working in a university receiving a government grant has no right to private conversations?
The neutral part of the media has not yet woken up to the existence of a campaign of misinformation. It has now reached such a stage that long discredited experts can say anything at all, hang it on the emails and come on to the media. The interviewers are ill equipped to deal with it.
“The fact remains that without feedbacks there is no way that a doubling of CO2 will produce a 3 or 4 degree C warming.” Richard Steckis
Aren’t you leaving out the part “and without those same feedbacks, there is no way that Milankovic forcing can end an ice age, or cause the abrupt rise in temperature in response to slow changes in forcing.”?
note the “sawtooth” shape” of the benthic forams and Vostok temperature record compared to the slowly varying eccentricity in the graphic at http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Milankovitch%20cycles
“The Milankovitch theory of climate change is not perfectly worked out; in particular, the largest observed response is at the 100,000-year timescale, but the forcing is apparently small at this scale, in regard to the ice ages.[1] Various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, cosmic rays or from ice sheet dynamics) are invoked to explain this discrepancy.”
Norman, good question, and the answer is —
Infrared astronomers have in fact put super-cooled infrared telescopes on mountain sites.
http://www.complexclimate.org/2009/05/error-in-olr-model.html?showComment=1259370184223#c6154088727814822034
(I pointed that out to Alastair who didn’t think it was possible for those wavelengths to penetrate the atmosphere at all; they do, but the result is messy and difficult as described for the astronomers to work with — which is why the orbiting infrared telescopes have such popularity)
Norman,
> I am not sure how CO2 could get to the upper atmosphere and stay.
> CO2 and H2O are both heavier molecules than O2 or N2. Shouldn’t
> they tend to stay in the lower atmosphere?
You’re making a “Wegman error” there — using logic instead of the library.
You can look this up. See if you can find this answer for yourself by looking or asking a librarian for help:
CO2 is well mixed by diffusion throughout the atmosphere. H2O vapor is well mixed but H20 condenses to water droplets and freezes, so you get clouds and snow on Earth from water. On Mars, both CO2 and H2O freeze out of the atmosphere.
Richard Steckis (340)
If Wikipedia does not do it for you, then have a go at chapter 1 and 4 of R. Pierrehumbert’s book.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateBook.html
re: 351
The quick rise in temps surrounding the end of a glacial maximum is one of the most disturbing things about our current situation. Temps rise precipitously over ~1000 period in response to fairly weak Milankovich forcings and then subside as Milankovich forcings abate. That is a cautionary example for sure. But (and I have no data or theory behind this) what if the first few degrees of warming are the equivalent of “low hanging fruit” and that there are physical limits — due to geography — on the size of possible feedbacks. IOW, we’ve already experienced most of the feedbacks that the planet Earth is capable of — albedo and the like — and all that’s left of warming will be that provided by the direct forcing from CO2. Not good, but 1.5C of warming is certainly better than 4C.
It’s a thought. Maybe it’s simply wishful thinking.
“1) IF you think the climate has “stagnated” during the last 10 years”
Don’t need an “if” there, it’s a reasonable desription of post 1998.
“2) AND IF you think climate is within its natural variability and is unpredictable ….
“THEN why during this 10 years of stagnation there hasn’t been any _significant_ cooling trend?”
Unless you are nailing down all the components of variability as known quantities you cant rule out a particular trend as possible. If the natural climate variations are unpredictable, then there is not expectation about what would happen in a given year or even decade. It’s natural variability. The only thing to create such an expectation would be a specific climate driver that is assumed, and temperatures trends not lining up with the driver prediction.
We see the same logical fallacy at work when those who say “The IPCC models dont match the temp records when you take out the CO2 forcings ergo the Co2 forcings much be good.” Well … they dont, but all it shows is the IPCC models might not be accounting for all other possible sources of (natural) variability.
Thefordprefect(494), this has likely already been answered, but…. With only few exceptions the emitted frequency is the same as the absorption frequency – a photon coming in and another going out of the same discrete internal energy level. The emission in all directions is correct. The CO2 molecule heating up with absorption is not. The temperature increase ensues when an excited CO2 molecule collides with some other atmospheric molecule and transfers it international energy to the crashee’s translation energy (which determines temperature).
#250 “But where does 100% open and transparent end? ”
It starts and ends with results a scientist deems worthing of sharing. All the supporting materials – raw data, statistical codes, etc – for all peer-reviewed literature and (Government-funded) research reports produced should be 100% publicly available. That’s ‘open and transparent’. All such results should be independently replicatable. Validation of results is the point, not peering into personal emails.
How about: Instead of playing defense, going on the offense? Surely over the course of 13 years of e-mails you can tease out several dozen passages that demonstrate how climate scientists, communicating amongst themselves without any anticipation of it all going public, bemoan the severity of climate change? Wouldn’t this obliterate the idiocy of the skeptic community having found only three words (“hide the decline”) over all that time?
Rob asks:”Of course the 90% was out of the hat to illustrate the non linear absorption capabilities of CO2. Word is that CO2 has already utilized its maximum climate forcing potential. I requested step by step explanation on why we should fear CO2 given the above statement.
Please Gavin, be responsive, thanks.”
We should fear CO2 because your statement is not a given. Understanding in detail requires some reading about atmospheric physics in a textbook, a lesser understanding can be obtained from the basics of light absorption. Gavin’s response was about two molecules absorbing at the same band, but one of them being removed at height. There are subtleties, such as the fact that the primary effect comes from larger changes in IR emission and absorption in the upper atmosphere (because CO2 is not close to what you were thinking as “maximum” at height because of lower gas density). More IR emission above us, more heating down at the surface.
There is NO maximum to the forcing potential, as that depends on log(CO2), and log(infinity) = infinity. There are practical limits, but we are far from those.
RE: 238 “Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming….”
I would fall squarely within that 59%, but not for the apparently implied reason. My opinion is that most or all of the denialist works that Gavin, RayPierre, Tamino, et al have debunked have falsified research data and/or implications from the data. This includes the hilarious ‘CO2 warming violates the 2nd law’ comedy. The apparently hoped-for inference that most Americans doubt the science supporting the reality of AGW fails by the very language of the question. (Maybe most respondents ARE thinking of the denial fizzies!) It’s puzzling how anyone could say that nobody falsifies or misrepresents data, though, given the bizarre representations and conclusions/inferences therefrom that we’ve seen in the deny-o-sphere.
“What is the optimal temperture for human life? Should our aim be static tempertures? In the OH river valley 700 years ago it was much warmer that it is today. We know this from remains found in Indian camps.”
http://courses.csusm.edu/hist337as/hb/h37hbfra.htm
“Mississippian agriculture allowed this tradition to develop a city of thirty to sixty thousand people on the east bank of the Mississippi opposite the present site of St. Louis, at a site we call Cahokia. This city continued to be an urban center until about seven hundred years ago. It was probably brought down by overpopulation and climate change (the usual suspects), but archeologists say the collapse was quick and possibly violent.”
I wonder if someday scholars will say ” Fossil fuel based agriculture allowed this tradition to develop a world population of 6.6 billion people….It was probably brought down by overpopulation and climate change(ironically due to the very fossil fuel use which drove its rapid development), but archaeologists say the collapse was quick, violent, and spread globally.”
Norman says:
4 December 2009 at 12:12 AM
Also I am not sure how CO2 could get to the upper atmosphere and stay. CO2 and H2O are both heavier molecules than O2 or N2. Shouldn’t they tend to stay in the lower atmosphere?
No! It’s called turbulent mixing, look up the ‘homosphere’.
By your logic clouds couldn’t exist water being ~1000x denser than air.
You can find this yourself on the net. The physics showing your claim to be wrong dates back to the 1950s. I’m sure Spencer Weart’s book covers the history of that claim and the work done by physicists that disproved it.
Why should Gavin (or anyone else) spend their time repeating stuff that anyone interested in the science can find out for themselves?
Norman: It does matter which way you’re looking, in terms of what you want to know. If you want to look at asteroids, you’ll want to see the IR coming from the asteroid, without anything in between absorbing it (or without other IR sources adding to the confusion). Hence, you put your telescope in space.
In the other direction: IR is emitted by the earth’s surface (some of which makes it out), but also throughout the atmosphere. The interesting question is the altitude and temperature at which bits of emitted IR make it out to space without being absorbed.
If the written descriptions of the saturation issue and the greenhouse effect in general don’t quite satisfy, perhaps playing with this toy at the same time might help? You can move around in altitude, looking up or looking down, all the while changing the concentrations of the greenhouse gases. You can see the longwave radiation change as you do all those things.
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.orig.html
The article by Peter Kelemen in Popular Mechanics was very well done, and I completely agree with him.
I think the confusion over the 2nd law of thermodynamics comes from how it is stated more then anything else. A cool atmosphere does not warm the earth, the sun does. However, a cool atmosphere causes the earth to cool more slowly then a cold atmosphere does. A warm object will cool more slowly next to a cool object then it will next to a cold object. Of course I’m not a physicist and I may have thought this through wrong so if I have feel free to eschew me.
Gavin (or anyone else)
I’m involved in a discussion elsewhere and someone posted the following
Basically, it interpolates the raw data from the 20th century into a hockey stick shape.
Now why might a CRU piece of code want to do that?
The scandal is not in the e-mails, it’s in the 1,000s of line of FORTRAN77 and Harry’s comments.
They are mucking around with the raw data, destroying correlation, adding fudge factors, splicing in other data with a dubious provenance, bitching about the appalling data integrity, data lost, data with huge gaps.
It is not science, it’s not even close. It’s what I call the spreadsheet wallahs at work of doing 99 times out of 100 – it is goalseeking.
They want a hockey stick shape, that’s what the graph will draw. You could put in lottery numbers into that code and you would get a hockey stick every time.
As I don’t understand Fortran (my programming skills don’t go beyond VBA) can you tell me if he has a point?
[Response: No. See comments passim for the answer. We’ll gather these things into an FAQ in a while for easier referencing. (PS. if he doesn’t know this is IDL and not Fortran, he isn’t much of a programmer). – gavin
Re: #359
Help for for readers who are curious about Hank’s reference to Wegman :
Look at Hank’s earlier comment here :
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/the-missing-piece-at-the-wegman-hearing/comment-page-1/#comment-15877
The earlier comment explains ‘Wegman’ to-day’s provides the physics.
[I hope you don’t mind my butting in , Hank]
Richard Steckis (336) — Read Annan & Hargreaves for an excellent determination that Charney equilibrium climate snesitivity is very close to 3 K.
Rob (353) — Your “word” is wrong or at best misleading. At the top of the page is the Start Here link. Start there, continuing with “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart.
Hello Gavin,
first of all, thank you for your Herculean work here. It is really appreciated.
There is one thing that I never completely understood. I sometimes hear the argument that if there was a stronger MWP this would imply an even higher climate sensitivity, but why is this the case? I know this is only tangentially related to the emails, but it always comes up in discussion: e.g., the emails finally prove that they wanted to get rid of the MWP – and I wonder why they would want to do this in the first place.
Would be great if you could write a few lines explaining this.
cheers
Paz
Jeffrey Jena — 4 December 2009 @ 3:32 AM:
Dumbth.
Steve
@379 Andrew,
You might want to read Tim Lambert’s response at Deltoid.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/quote_mining_code.php
Paz (381) — I am of the opinion that various researchers wanted to extend the paleoclimate reconstruction far enough back in time so that the northern hemisphere (mostly) MWP would be clearly seen to have a beginning as well as an end.
As for size versus climate sensitivity: that appears to be most difficult unless one first understands what the forcings for the MWP were. I suggest starting with climatologist W.F. Ruddiman’s popular “Plows, Plagues and Petroleum”. Indeed, he did a guest post here on RealClimate some time ago.
BPL
To my statement:
“What is also “settled science” is that it has not warmed since the end of the 20th century despite continued all-time record increase in CO2, but has cooled instead by around 0.1°C (same caveat on the temperature record as above).”
You reply (346): “No matter how many times you repeat this classic denialist lie, it still won’t be true. Warming continues”
BPL, calling it a “classic denialist lie” and attaching a bunch of meaningless stuff does not change the physically observed fact based on all four main temperature records, that it has cooled by around 0.1°C since the end of 2000.
You write:
“How many times do people have to tell you warming is still going on before you look at the primary data and do a regression yourself?”
I have downloaded the primary data and done a linear regression of all 4 records:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2600/3670965001_4249d9a68e_b.jpg
The average observed linear rate of cooling since January 2001 was 0.1°C, as you can see.
Looks like you are the “denier” this time, BPL. Pull your head out of the sand.
Max
I know this is only tangentially related to the emails, but it always comes up in discussion: e.g., the emails finally prove that they wanted to get rid of the MWP – and I wonder why they would want to do this in the first place.
Would be great if you could write a few lines explaining this.
If you are referring to the “2000 years needed to contain the MWP” remark, please be advised that data going back 1,000 will “contain” only about half the MWP. Data going back 2,000 years will contain it all (and then some).
The next time that subject comes up in a discussion, ask the individual who brings it up if it is possible to “contain” two gallons of milk in a one-gallon bottle.
Timothy Chase (335)
In your argument against “100% openness and transparency now”, you first question the word “now”, then explain how bothersome complete openness and transparency would be and then quote a December 2, 2008 statement from Gavin to Ben Santer which supports your postulation.
There are two basic flaws in your logic:
1. Gavin’s statement was “pre-Climategate”; get it through your head that the rules have changed. “Now” is not December 2008. (I believe Gavin sees this).
2. Your argument against transparency sounds similar to the early Watergate arguments of the Nixon administration evoking national security and presidential immunity (these arguments got “shot down” as the scandal widened).
Hiding behind excuses for anything other than 100% openness and transparency now will only make things worse for the AGW cause; remember that Watergate only became a serious problem for Nixon when it became clear that there had been a coverup.
Max
In response to #351
It appears the discussion is that an increase in CO2 does not increase the absorption of IR radiation because it is already absorbing all of the IR radiation, IE saturated.
Your hypothesis is that it does make a difference.
To prove your point, you set your initial
“a is the absorptivity of the upper level (which must fall between 0 and 1)”
to 0.5 and then you change it to 0.6 in an attempt to show how it not changing causes warming?
I seem to have missed the logic here. Shouldn’t it have stayed the same so you could prove that by staying the same it changed the temperature?
For Norman, a better reference than my older one:
Here’s the Wegman error, from a NPR program quoting from the transcript:
—-
HARRIS: And the limits of Wegman’s expertise became painfully clear when he tried to answer a question from Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky about the well known mechanism by which carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation – heat – in our atmosphere.
Prof. WEGMAN: Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in the atmospheric profile, I don’t know. I’m not an atmospheric scientist to know that. But presumably, if the atmospheric – if the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the earth, it’s not reflecting a lot of infrared back.
Representative JAN SCHAKOWSKY (Democrat, Illinois): But you’re not clearly qualified to…
Prof. WEGMAN: No, of course not.
Rep. SCHAKOWSKY: …comment on that.
—–
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5569901
Also in response to #351
By changing ONLY 0.1?
0.1 is 10% of the allowed value of 0 to 1. Not an insignificant change. And it changed the temperature by 3 of 300 or about 1%, which is 10% of the change you made.
(People deserve some amusement.)
I’m way behind, but I cannot resist adding a note, for those who recall Prof. Emeritus Howard Hayden‘s comments in one of the closed threads.
I’m sure few will be surprised to find that his book A Primer on CO2 and Climate, 2nd Ed features (p.8-9) none other than a famous paper by none other than E. G. Beck. He also likes Gerlich & Tscheuschner.
The 12 reviews rate this book:
5 10 (pretty good!)
4 1
1 1
I was especially amused that 125 of 128 people found helpful a 5-star review entitled “Remarkable non-technical account of the role of CO2 in the climate.”
SecularAnimist:
Amory Lovins, who I saw speak as a young teenager, is, I think, just trying to be practical. I used to question the way he played into the American free market religion, but now I think it was practical.
The point is, we are where we are. It’s possible that thanks to corporate media and disinfo campaigns that climate science would indeed become weaker. It’s still possible. In its effects. So in that sense, Amory’s comment is actually hopeful and optimistic. If it’s not enough to prevent severe damage, well, that’s the human world for you, and the dominant paradigm. It’s only by being hyper-alert to every possible opportunity that we can turn the tide. Every person convinced, or not unconvinced, to care about the now-near-but-still-future is probably a coral reef saved – maybe even a species.
I hate the way market fundamentalists are forcing us all into Sophie’s Choices every day, but we are where we are. Denial of our predicament won’t solve it.
Really?
I have used the UAH data because that’s the one favoured by those who dispute AGW (presumably because it maximises the warmth of 1998 vs later years). I have even cherry-picked the ending date of the blue series to maximise its slope, making it as hard as possible for the past decade to be “on trend”. (Adding just one more month drops it slightly.) And yet, despite all that, I can’t see any way to describe the past ten years as anything other than “on trend” — the rate of warming actually increases slightly, from 0.116 degrees C/decade to 0.126 degrees C/decade.
Manacker 388: I suppose you realize that in the Watergate scandal, the bad guys were the ones who did the illegal break-in? Have you heard that the means don’t justify the ends.
A post from Tom Harris, Natural Resources Stewardship Project, at Free Dominion :*
Posted: 01/ 10/ 07 2:20 pm
Post subject: If the science is wrong, then nothing else matters
“I completely agree with fourhorses that the ultimate aim is to create a situation where the CPC can say assertively, “The science no longer supports the assumptions of the Kyoto Accord.”
However, politically this cannot be done overnight without the Conservatives taking what they consider to be an unacceptable hit (do people think they would really lose votes with this statement (from Canadians who would otherwise vote for them, that is?).
So, the solution put on this site a little while ago by Tina is one I would support as well – namely, they don’t take sides at all and admit they don’t know and so are holding unbiased, public hearings in which scientists from both sides are invited to testify. The resulting chaos, with claims all over the map, will do enough to thoroughly confuse everyone (which is appropriate, actually, since the science is so immature and, frankly, confusing) and take the wind out of the sails of the “we are causing a climate disaster and must stop it” camp entirely, and the CPC can quietly turn to important issues without really having had to say much at all.
What’s wrong with this approach?
Sincerely,
Tom Harris, Executive Director, Natural Resources Stewardship Project
Web: http://www.nrsp.com
http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=73474&start=15
Ref #395
If the means don’t justify the ends, then why does it take an FOI request to get data long after it’s conclusions have been reached and published?
And why isn’t (paraphrasing)
don’t anybody tell them that the UK has an FOI act
as heinous as hacking emails?
And isn’t the CRU a public funded educational institute?
Phil Felton (#374) and Hank Roberts (#390)
Thank you gentlemen for your information. I did look up the Homosphere and the turbulent air will keep things nice and mixed at least in the Troposphere, Stratosphere and Mesosphere. This turbulent air does bring up other information I have read about. Some making a challenge against the Greenhouse effect at all.
The air inside a car sitting in the sun will be much hotter than the outside air. The interior of the car absorbs the solar energy and is converted to heat. But the air inside the car gets so hot not because of continuous reflection of IR back into the car (visible light in but IR can’t penetrate the glass). It gets hot because convection is cut off.
You have both demonstrated that our atmosphere is very turbulent and well mixed. Is it possible that the warming of the lower atmosphere (as seen via measured temperatures over the past 100 years) is due to patterns of air masses like an inversion that prevent convection. This might explain why the 1930’s were so blazing hot in the U.S. even though we were only beginning to add massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
I also do not know why a saturation point for IR is not valid. Take the oceans for an example. Solar energy will be completely absorbed by a few hundred feet of ocean water, after a certain point it is totally dark. A lot of energy is going into the ocean, it warms the surface layers and that is it. How come light in the oceans does not continue to be emitted and absorbed all the way to the bottom of the sea and in fact warming the ocean floor? I may be absurd but that is what the unlimited absorption of carbon dioxide sounds like to me. The lower layers absorb the ground IR and warm up, emitting more to the air above and so on. Once the sunlight hitting the oceans is absorbed it is done, the energy is used up, it does not continue to warm the ocean below.
Hope I am not making too much of a fool of myself with my reasoning.
#394, by plotting 1979-2009 trends, you’ve answered a different question then whether temps are stable during the last 10 year. If you want to see trend stagnation, do it on the shorter periods, like this 2001-2009 one:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/rss_jan2001_june2009-500×341.jpg
… and btw, if you want to be convincing wrt the long trend, start at 1950, which encompasses full impact of CO2, not 1979, which cherry-picks the start date to maximize trend.
Anybody have a comment on
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11685
[Response: There are so many different threads that are all jumbled up there that it is incoherent. See the first context point for specific details. – gavin]