It's all over but for the sweating?

[TheEnemy]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

The facts about this were quantified by the US Air Force at Hanscom Field right here in MA when they were designing heat seeking missiles. Carbon dioxide blocks a fairly broad piece of the infrared spectrum, but not all of it, and they had to figure that out. Water vapor blocks a smaller and slightly different part of the spectrum, and other GHG also have their own "signatures" in the part of the spectrum.

Actually water vapor absorbs more of the spectrum than CO2, which is why it is considered one of the main feedbacks for global warming. Down at the longer wavelengths there is very little energy in each photon emmitted, so the energy excanged down there is very small. If I remember correctly the 4 micron band is the only region that CO2 really contributes as any smaller wavelength requires a higher temperature (more energy) to become active.

Other than that your post is basically correct, though it is less of effect than the increase in energy input.

Edit to add: below 200ppm or so plants start suffocating due to a lack of CO2, above 1000 incects start suffocating due to too much CO2.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

If that is true then why has warming stopped or slowed as CO2 has risen ?

Simple answer: it hasn't.

Surely if it is the key driver then temps would continue to rise. Surely we should be burning up even now due to feedbacks.

When you put a pot of water on the stove for your tea, does it come to a boil the instant you turn on the flame? The Earth is a big place with a good deal of thermal mass. It will take quite a time - over a thousand years, considering deep ocean circulation - to reach an equilibrium.

And given we only have accurate (thermometer) records since around 1850 can we say with any accuracy that the warming in the 20th century was unusual in the history of the planet ?

Why not actually read up on some of the science yourself? Or do you deliberately maintain ignorance because it's more comfortable? (Personally, I've always found bending over to stick my head in the sand quite uncomfortable.)

Just off the top of my head, a few ways to deduce past temperatures.

1) Plant remains, such as pollen in sediment cores, packrat middens, etc. Plants have preferred growing temperatures: if you find lots of e.g. sagebrush pollen in a lake core, you know the climate was suitable for sagebrush.

2) Oxygen isotope ratios in glacial ice cores, etc.

3) Dendrochronology - studying tree rings gives clues as to temperature & rainfall when each ring was formed. Similar methods can be applied to fossil shells, corals, &c.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by TheEnemy

But the majority of the warming isn't caused by us. The majority is caused by a slight increase in solar output.

Horse manure. There has been no increase in solar output. If anything, there has been a very slight decrease over the period that accurate measurements have been available, but that's very much less than the ~0.1% variation of the solar cycle.

It is also basic physics that if you put more heat into a system that system will warm up.

And likewise, if you put less heat into the system, it should cool down.

[NeilBlanchard]

Water vapor is not able to sustain warming on it's own -- it only contributes after carbon dioxide levels are raised. It is a feedback loop essentially. The reason for this is the albedo/shading of clouds is nearly self-canceling. But when the carbon dioxide levels are raised, and the temperatures get higher, we then get more evaporation and there is more moisture in the atmosphere.

We *are* the primary cause for the current warming of the climate. That is what virtually all the climate science concludes. If the carbon increase was carbon 13, it would be from the volcanoes, and if it was carbon 14 it would be from "new" carbon - but it is carbon 12 which can only come from "old" plant carbon.

Watch these programs with Dr. Richard Alley and many others to find out about the science:

Earth: The Operators' Manual | Earth: The Operators' Manual

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

...(Personally, I've always found bending over to stick my head in the sand quite uncomfortable.)

You have decided to go off on the "I know best route" - please note I'm not responding in kind

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Why not actually read up on some of the science yourself?

I have, quite a bit, so

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Simple answer: it hasn't.

Simple reply - Yes it has.

Pantomime reply - Oh yes it has...

More complex answer - any warming, cooling or steady state depends on the start and end points selected, as the UK Met office recently pointed out. Both sides choose start and end points to try and support their arguments, or even try and suggest an "escalator" which kind of works - for the small period we have temps for, maybe.

Simple bottom line - we still don't know any measured temperatures are outside what has been experienced on the earth before.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

When you put a pot of water on the stove for your tea, does it come to a boil the instant you turn on the flame? The Earth is a big place with a good deal of thermal mass. It will take quite a time - over a thousand years, considering deep ocean circulation - to reach an equilibrium.

Agreed, the Earth is a very big and complex place where a huge number of interractions between different factors take place - CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the oceans ability to hold cold and warmth, clouds, the sun etc. Even with £bn spent on modelling it we still don't understand all of it and we don't have models which fit with what is happening all the time.

The Met office I mentioned above happily claims it uses the same models for weather prediction as for climate modelling - well it has had 2-3 years of major cock-ups in forecasting in the UK and has now decided not to bother. One amusing incident involved the chief scientist being snowed in at Heathrow on her way to the Rio conference to deliver a report on how warm the UK was getting - my how we all laughed.

This also makes a basic experiment - say a glass sphere filled with CO2 warmed by a light bulb Arragonis Junior was asked to perform at school recently - valid from a "basic physics" point of view but invalid when it comes to predicting what is or may be happening to the planet.

I would support more research into this, not a head in the sand stance is it ?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Just off the top of my head, a few ways to deduce past temperatures.

Yep they are reconstructions. You take two periods of known temps and "thing you observe" (TYO). Using one period you create a mathematical model of one to the other - so you can determine temp from TYO. Once you have a model which passes a statistical confidence test you then take the second period and check TYO still predicts temp vs reality. Once this second relationship also passes a confidence test you can then apply it to TYOs from periods prior to known temps to try and calculate what they are.

The real problem lies with the maths. A recent paper on Australian temps fell foul of this - not on the measurement but the maths. The fault was found by a non-scientist after it had passed peer review, the paper is now withdrawn and dead - but will appear in the next IPCC report via another route. Go figure.

But the bottom line is that reconstructed temps are still a (well) educated guess.

Some are more accurate than others, some are more contraversial than others. The Hockey Stick, which seems to have disappeared recently, was one very complex reconstruction using all sorts of data - tree rings, sediments, ice cores. However some evidence seems to suggest it can't be reconstructed due to dodgy maths and some rather strange data handling - such as using one data set upside down. A lot of these questions remain unanswered. I've read both sides, ClimateAudit and RealClimate. I would love to see this resolved with a debate from both sides, but I suspect its not going to happen.

So yep - I've read the science, on both sides. This method

Originally Posted by jamesqf

... 3) Dendrochronology - studying tree rings gives clues as to temperature & rainfall when each ring was formed. Similar methods can be applied to fossil shells, corals, &c.

is especially questionable as the influence of rainfall, sunlight or the action of other animals or plants over time can skew the growth rings but leave no visible record. One tree was found to have a completely different pattern on one side to the other. It is also difficult to establish where the tree line is at any time in the past - there are remains of trees above the current tree line in the USA - it must have been warmer for them to be there ?

There is also not a huge amount of dendochronology going on - or at least not enough to get an accurate world wide record - both sides acknowledge that and both sides suggest more research, which I would agree with. Again head out of sand.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Or do you deliberately maintain ignorance because it's more comfortable?

No, I just like to read both sides of the debate - I have books from both sides on my shelf. I find not having a fixed view seems to less shall we say "head in the sand limiting". I used to be a (and I don't intend to use this word in an insulting manner) believer in CAGW too - honest. Was nearly a member of WWF, Greenpeace, campaigned for Kyoto, voted Green, even thought peak oil was a real threat now - everything in the past.

But as an economist changing his mind once said

Originally Posted by John Maynard Keynes

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

There is another level to the debate relating to the original posting. If we have passed another tipping point (there seem to have been quite a few over the last 20 years) then maybe we would get more return from a focus on mitigation instead of prevention ?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

More complex answer - any warming, cooling or steady state depends on the start and end points selected, as the UK Met office recently pointed out.

Sure, one "side" (see below) takes a reasonable pre-industrial temperature value, the other picks the warmest recent value out of a noisy data set.

Simple bottom line - we still don't know any measured temperatures are outside what has been experienced on the earth before.

Obviously, because the Earth has a long history, including periods like the Permian/Triassic, when (as best we can tell from scanty data) elevated CO2 came pretty close to wiping out all multicellular life.

[QUOTE[One amusing incident involved the chief scientist being snowed in at Heathrow on her way to the Rio conference to deliver a report on how warm the UK was getting - my how we all laughed.[/QUOTE]

And what exactly was the cause for laughter? Because "you all" are so stone ignorant that you don't know the difference between weather and climate?

This also makes a basic experiment - say a glass sphere filled with CO2 warmed by a light bulb Arragonis Junior was asked to perform at school recently - valid from a "basic physics" point of view but invalid when it comes to predicting what is or may be happening to the planet.

Wrong. It is perfectly valid. All that stuff you claim as problems? They're just short-term variations: no more than bumps and curves in the road that may change the ride, but don't affect the destination.

I would support more research into this, not a head in the sand stance is it ?

Yes, it is, because however interesting & potentially valuable such research might be, it doesn't change the basic science. Thus calling for "more research" is really nothing more than a way to convince people to put off dealing with the problem, which is just that same old head in the sand trick. Ignore it, and it won't happen.

Yep they are reconstructions. You take two periods of known temps and "thing you observe" (TYO). Using one period you create a mathematical model of one to the other - so you can determine temp from TYO.

Just as all temperatures are measured by a TYO. It's fundamentally the same as measuring it by the expansion of mercury in a glass tube, or the changing resistance in a bit of silicon. Only difference is that some TYOs become fixed, and can be read back later on.

Some are more accurate than others, some are more contraversial than others. The Hockey Stick, which seems to have disappeared recently, was one very complex reconstruction using all sorts of data - tree rings, sediments, ice cores. However some evidence seems to suggest it can't be reconstructed due to dodgy maths and some rather strange data handling - such as using one data set upside down.

Again, this is just plain horse manure. The so-called "Hockey Stick" has been tested over and over again. The only people who claim to find basic problems is - surprise! - those emotionally/financially wedded to the idea that increasing CO2 won't cause climate change. And (perhaps no surprise) it's their analyses that seem to be full of holes.

I would love to see this resolved with a debate from both sides, but I suspect its not going to happen.

There are no "sides". There are people who observe the science, and those who have a motive to deny the science, or who haven't examined it. Oddly enough, whenever honest skeptics actually examine some of the science, they wind up not being skeptics any more. See for instance the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

[TheEnemy]

TSI Data

Take look at the TSI reconstruction, keep in mind that yes there is a lot of lead lag in the system like James stated.

NASA - Solar Variability: Striking a Balance with Climate Change

Says the slight increase has increased global temperatures by 25% of what has been measured.

NASA - NASA Study Finds Increasing Solar Trend That Can Change Climate

Reports 0.1% increase over the last 24 years...

All of them play down how much warming the sun is responsible, but if you look back where I calculated the solar influence without feedbacks to the CO2 influence with feedbacks. Yes solar activity did decrease to a relatively low solar minimum, but we are now into the next solar maximum, which if you look at my first link you will see it is shaping up to be warmer on average than the last solar maximum (which set record temperatures).

Neil: water, particularly vapor is an interesting and insanely complex issue. On one hand it forms clouds which cool the surface during the day, but insulate from heat loss at night. Evaporation sets up convection currents which carries heat energy higher up into the atmosphere where it can then radiate it out into space. And it is also a very powerfull green house gas.

Whether we or the sun is the cause for the warming increasing water vapor would still be a feedback, but the feedback is only applied to CO2 for comparison, why is that?

[TheEnemy]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Sure, one "side" (see below) takes a reasonable pre-industrial temperature value, the other picks the warmest recent value out of a noisy data set.



Obviously, because the Earth has a long history, including periods like the Permian/Triassic, when (as best we can tell from scanty data) elevated CO2 came pretty close to wiping out all multicellular life.

One amusing incident involved the chief scientist being snowed in at Heathrow on her way to the Rio conference to deliver a report on how warm the UK was getting - my how we all laughed

And what exactly was the cause for laughter? Because "you all" are so stone ignorant that you don't know the difference between weather and climate?



Wrong. It is perfectly valid. All that stuff you claim as problems? They're just short-term variations: no more than bumps and curves in the road that may change the ride, but don't affect the destination.



Yes, it is, because however interesting & potentially valuable such research might be, it doesn't change the basic science. Thus calling for "more research" is really nothing more than a way to convince people to put off dealing with the problem, which is just that same old head in the sand trick. Ignore it, and it won't happen.



Just as all temperatures are measured by a TYO. It's fundamentally the same as measuring it by the expansion of mercury in a glass tube, or the changing resistance in a bit of silicon. Only difference is that some TYOs become fixed, and can be read back later on.



Again, this is just plain horse manure. The so-called "Hockey Stick" has been tested over and over again. The only people who claim to find basic problems is - surprise! - those emotionally/financially wedded to the idea that increasing CO2 won't cause climate change. And (perhaps no surprise) it's their analyses that seem to be full of holes.



There are no "sides". There are people who observe the science, and those who have a motive to deny the science, or who haven't examined it. Oddly enough, whenever honest skeptics actually examine some of the science, they wind up not being skeptics any more. See for instance the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

I have been a skeptic for years, and have gone after the science of the cause over the propaganda and the effects of. I nail either "side" when their science is bad. My position is stronger than it ever has been, and I feel it is important to have your position challenged from time to time to either strengthen it, or to show you that it is time to change. And there are many sides, those who believe it is all human caused, those who believe it is all natural, those who believe it is primarily human, and those who believe it is primarily natural. Of all of those sided the ones who I have seen look more at the science fall into one of the two latter catagories, and the arguments fall to how much is natural and how much is us.

[Arragonis]

Again with respect and no insults

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Sure, one "side" (see below) takes a reasonable pre-industrial temperature value, the other picks the warmest recent value out of a noisy data set.

Slightly agree, start and end points are selected in lots of circumstances from Climate to Corporate Results to show the message that who is doing the selecting wishes to show. Skeptics are just as guilty of cherry picking as non-skeptics.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Obviously, because the Earth has a long history, including periods like the Permian/Triassic, when (as best we can tell from scanty data) elevated CO2 came pretty close to wiping out all multicellular life.

Yep - greater extremes than now were in play.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

[QUOTE[One amusing incident...And what exactly was the cause for laughter? Because "you all" are so stone ignorant that you don't know the difference between weather and climate?

It was amusing because they didn't even predict the snow but made a huge anouncement about how robust their models were on the way to the airport. They still collected their performance bonuses that year though so I suppose they had the last laugh.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Wrong. It is perfectly valid. All that stuff you claim as problems? They're just short-term variations: no more than bumps and curves in the road that may change the ride, but don't affect the destination.

Wrong. If it was as simple as that the models predicting temperature would be spot on which they aren't. Also

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Yes, it is, because however interesting & potentially valuable such research might be, it doesn't change the basic science. Thus calling for "more research" is really nothing more than a way to convince people to put off dealing with the problem, which is just that same old head in the sand trick. Ignore it, and it won't happen.

You misunderstand my motives - 1) credibility in the science needs to be rebuilt after some bad episodes. Maybe you don't agree but for example CAGW was not mentioned in the US election and the UK government tries to avoid mentioning it at all. Also 2) it would be useful to know what prevention / mitigation steps may be needed, what will work and what will work best. And 3) the models could be improved

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Just as all temperatures are measured by a TYO. It's fundamentally the same as measuring it by the expansion of mercury in a glass tube, or the changing resistance in a bit of silicon. Only difference is that some TYOs become fixed, and can be read back later on.

In theory yes, but in practice the proxy approach is more complicated. The famous "mike's nature trick to hide the decline" quote relates to this.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Again, this is just plain horse manure. The so-called "Hockey Stick" has been tested over and over again.

Prof. Mann has never released all of the code citing IPR, and has withheld quite a lot of the data - so it remains a black box. I've just been lent a copy of his recent book on Friday which I haven't started yet - it will be interesting to see how it matches other accounts already out there.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

The only people who claim to find basic problems is - surprise! - those emotionally/financially wedded to the idea that increasing CO2 won't cause climate change. And (perhaps no surprise) it's their analyses that seem to be full of holes.

Again given all of the code and data hasn't been released, how do we know ? Maybe Open Source it ?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

There are no "sides". There are people who observe the science, and those who have a motive to deny the science, or who haven't examined it. Oddly enough, whenever honest skeptics actually examine some of the science, they wind up not being skeptics any more. See for instance the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

Would that be a reference to Professor Muller who thinks other climate scientists were "guilty of fraud" and Al Gore is a "science denier" ? No really he did say that - listen here.

On the Green Front – Dr. Richard Muller – 08/01/12 | Progressive Radio Network

Agree though - "sides" is the wrong word, too combative.

[NeilBlanchard]

Dr. Muller's BEST study concluded that humans are indeed causing this current climate change. Considering that it was (at least partially) funded by the Koch brothers is saying something - they bit the hand that fed them?