What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Jimbo1490]

Yeah, Thomas,

It's having SOOO much effect that even though CO2 releases increased DRAMATICALLY in the 80's, those darn tropospheric temperatures stayed flat or even fell slightly since the 90's. Golly, how inconvenient!

Jimbo

[Pericles]

"That actually has no effect at all....."

Might do, might do! Plants will gratefully use the extra CO2 and grow larger. CO2 is food for plants. They love it!! More CO2 means a greater yield. Colder summers will shorten the growing seasons. Extra CO2 will be beneficial. CO2 is pumped into glasshouses to improve the harvest. 1000 ppm is an average figure.
http://www.actahort.org/members/show...knrarnr=174_59
http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/index.a...005&NewsID=593

[rasorinc]

maybe we should plant these most everywhere.
http://www.sustainableangels.com/kiri.htm

[bntii]

Reading the provided research I see jimbo?

How is everyone this morning?

Cold rainy here.... could ice up.

Anyone in Germany? I am looking into a nice old Diana 65.

[Jimbo1490]

Thomas,

There's absolutely NOTHING in the research showing alarming warming in the tropical troposphere. The latest obfuscation to 'cover' this is to postulate that mebbe greenhouse warming will affect th poles more (WTF?!) even though basic greenhouse theory says otherwise.

Meanwhile the GCM's continue to be programmed on the assumption that greenhouse warming hits the tropical troposphere most, just like theory suggests, since when they tried to model on the novel idea that such warming affects the poles more, the results were so wacky that even AGW alarmists couldn't believe them

I guess it's still easier to come up with another obfuscation than to admit that what warming we do see is not due to changes in the greenhouse heat budget caused by anthropogenic CO2, and all that implies. The lassitude response just doesn't cut it for me; how about you?

Jimbo

[Boston]

oh its freezing ass here
about no degree's out this morning

Jim were did you get this number from

But without water vapor, you are subtracting 96% of the greenhouse effect.

Ild love to read the papers that determined that if you have em

(Singer/Schmidt) Water vapor is essentially in balance with the planet's temperature on annual timescales and longer, whereas trace greenhouse gases such as CO2 stay in the atmosphere on a timescale of decades to centuries. The statement that water vapour is "98% of the greenhouse effect" is simply false. In fact, it does about 50% of the work; clouds add another 25%, with CO2 and the other greenhouse gases contributing the remaining quarter. Water vapour concentrations are increasing in response to rising temperatures, and there is evidence that this is adding to warming, for example in Europe. The fact that water vapor is a feedback is included in all climate models.

G sunlight is the major player in the global climate game
taken together these two articles detail tracking analysis of deep ocean water masses and there fossil circulation patterns in regards to both sunlight and co2

Model suggests Antarctic ice sheets more dynamic than previously believed

Through dated geological records scientists have known for decades that variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun - subtle changes in the distance between the two - control ice ages. But, for the first 2 million years of the Northern Hemisphere Ice Age there has always been a mismatch between the timing of ice sheet changes and the Earth's orbital parameters.

A new model of ice volume change developed by Boston University researchers Maureen Raymo and Lorraine Lisiecki proposes a reason for this discrepancy. Like other models, it is consistent with traditional Milankovitch theory - which holds that the three cyclical changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun (obliquity, precession, and eccentricity) influence the severity of seasons and high latitude temperatures over time. However, the new model differs from earlier ones in that it allows for a much more dynamic Antarctic ice sheet.

According to the researchers, from 3 million years ago to about 0.8 million years ago, Northern Hemisphere ice volume appears to have varied mostly with the 41,000 year period of obliquity - the periodic shift in the direction or tilt of Earth's axis. However, summer insolation (incoming solar radiation), which is widely believed to be the major influence on high-latitude climate and ice volume change, is typically dominated by the 23,000 year precessional period - the slow "wobble" of the Earth on its axis.

"Because summer insolation is controlled by precession, and summer heating controls ice sheet mass balance, it is difficult to understand why the ice volume record is dominated by the obliquity frequency," said Dr. Raymo. "It's not a complete mismatch, but the precession frequency we think should be strong in geological records is not."

The new model proposes that during this time, ice volume changes occurred in both the Northern Hemisphere and Antarctica, each controlled by different amounts of local summer insolation paced by precession.

"The reason the frequency is not observable in records is because ice volume change occurred at both poles, but out of phase with each other. When ice was growing in the Northern Hemisphere, it was melting in the Southern," said Raymo.

The team believes scientists have been operating under the assumption that Antarctica has been exceptionally stable for 3 million years and very difficult to change climatically. "We don't tend to think of ice volume in that region as varying significantly, even on geologic time scales," said Raymo. "However, only a modest change in Antarctic ice mass is required to "cancel" a much larger Northern ice volume signal."

Records used to measure the ice volume, such as sea levels, integrate the whole world. According to Raymo, the new model demonstrates that while the precession frequency is actually strong in ice volume changes at each pole, in geologic records Northern and Southern hemisphere ice volume trends act to cancel each other out at this frequency.

The paper, which was published online today and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Science, proposes that the Antarctic ice sheet is more dynamic and far more capable of change than previously believed.

"If our theory holds true, it is a cause for concern with regard to climate changes not associated with orbital patterns as well," said Raymo.

Water masses are naturally imprinted with a chemical signature that reflects the geology in the land masses surrounding the area where they form. They carry this signature with them as they travel through the oceans, and the signature is recorded by fish skeletal material. If this fish debris is fossilized, so is the signature. MU and UF researchers collected 45 samples of 95- to 65- million-year-old fish debris from the Demerara Rise in the tropical western North Atlantic Ocean. They measured the chemical signature of these samples to estimate the source and circulation of intermediate waters during the Cretaceous Period.


"This technique allows us to track how water flowed in the Cretaceous oceans better than has been possible previously," said Ken MacLeod, a professor of geological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Constraining ocean circulation patterns during greenhouse times, especially across the very large changes in the global carbon cycle that occurred during the interval we studied, is giving us a better understanding of how greenhouse oceans behave."

Late Cretaceous atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were two to four times higher than today, which resulted in a greenhouse climate with tropical sea-surface temperatures rising to more than 34 degrees Celsius, 4 to 7 degrees Celsius (7 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today.

"The chemical signatures we measured presented two surprising findings. Values were extremely low for open-ocean sites for most of the time between 95 and 65 million years ago, but they were interrupted by a shift that was larger and more rapid than anything previously documented in marine sediments. This shift happened precisely at the time of the largest disturbance to the global carbon cycle of the past 200 million years," MacLeod said

folks, we have been over the following
can we move on to something a little more accurate

those darn tropospheric temperatures stayed flat or even fell slightly since the 90's. Golly, how inconvenient!

the previous is completely incorrect
Lower levels of the troposphere are warming; but measuring the exact rate has been an uncertain process, particularly in the satellite era (since 1979). Readings from different satellites need to be tied together, and each has its own problems with orbital decay and sensor drift. Two separate analyses show consistent warming, one faster than the surface and one slightly less. Within the uncertainties of the data, there is no discrepancy that needs to be dealt with. Information from balloons has its own problems but the IPCC concluded this year: "For the period since 1958, overall global and tropical tropospheric warming estimated from radiosondes has slightly exceeded surface warming".
I can provide a detailed analysis of the issue if you need one

regards B

[Boston]

come on Jim
are you sure you want to go over obfuscation

its hard to have a realistic conversation if your going to go on making wild claims

why dont we begin a hole new way of communicating with a basic understanding of how science works
how it collects and collates data
how that data is considered and so on

once you understand that then we can move on to why science has determined global climate change to be an issue

my first point would be to try and explain that climate science is a group effort
a large number of people working together collecting data without prejudice

is everyone willing to accept that point


and if you know were the troposphere lies on this graph
you can clearly see numerous data
from various measurement techniques
and various researchers
clearly shows warming in the tropical troposphere


can we please please please stop making outrageous claims about what the data does and does not show

Global Climate Change is real and its happening now
thankfully
most people realize the dangers
B

[Jimbo1490]

A re-post of some graphed data, as it's clear someone hasn't been paying attention :



And some new stuff, pertinent to a recent post:

http://www.ssmi.com/papers/msu/A_Rea...ure_Record.pdf

An excerpt:

"Over the period from 1979 to 2001, tropospheric trends derived from a widely cited analysis of the Microwave
Sounding Unit (MSU) temperature record show little or no warming, while surface temperature trends based
on in situ observations show a pronounced warming of ~0.2 K decade^-1. This discrepancy between trends at
the surface and in the upper atmosphere has been a source of significant debate. Model predictions of amplification
of warming with height in the troposphere are clearly inconsistent with the available observations, leading some
researchers to question the adequacy of their representation of the water vapor greenhouse feedback.A reanalysis
of the MSU channel 2 dataset, with the objective of providing a second independent source of these data, is
described in this paper. Results presented herein show a global trend of 0.097 +/- 0.020 K decade^-1, generally
agreeing with the work of Prabhakara et al. but in disagreement with the MSU analysis of Christy and Spencer,
which shows significantly less (~0.09 K decade^-1) warming."

Interesting that the authors felt it necessary to distance themselves from the conclusions reached by Spencer and Christy, stating that their work shows "significantly less warming" when in fact their conclusions differ by a mere .007 K from this author's work.

And some more graphed data on the decided lack of warming in the tropical troposphere:



Anyone who approaches this subject without a preconceived conclusion can clearly see that there is nothing at all outrageous about asserting that there is no warming trend in the tropical troposphere anomaly, as AGW alarmist predicted there would be. Those who feel this assertion to be in error are invited to present their contradictory data.

Jimbo

[Meanz Beanz]

What we think about climate change is that a 9.1% oil depletion rate will solve the problem before you can prove one way or the other. Solve for peak oil and you will solve for climate change. Lack of energy is a far clearer and much more present danger to large parts of the human population that climate change is... focus on that issue and you can resolve the other. Ignore peak oil, as we are doing, and ironically you will probably solve the CO2 issue but in a much nastier way.

[Jimbo1490]

Note that a recent post purporting to show warming in the tropical troposphere presented graphed data in support of that conclusion. The most alarming portions of that graphed data was based on a paper by authors Allen and Sherwood, the latest 'Greenhouse Problem Obfuscators", who took on the unenviable task of explaining away why the best satellite and balloon sourced temperature data we can compile shows no warming in the tropical troposphere. Their first order of business was to admit that the satellite and balloon data indeed really do show no warming trend and to further admit that this really is a problem for the theory of AGW via increased CO2.

After this, they kinda go off the deep end in their attempt to explain this glaring problem, rather than just admitting that greenhouse warming is not a good fit for recently observed warming. The gist of their paper is that they can deduce temperature using wind data better than a thermometer can! Thus they call into question the reliability of various satellite and balloon data sets, which data sets, I might add, have been proven highly reliable in a plethora scientific papers.

Furthermore, the methods used are not novel, as the authors imply, but were already employed by Robert Pelke Sr and two co-authors. Pelke furthermore rebuts Allen and Sherwood's conclusions in a recent paper.

To say the least, the idea that anemometers can measure temperature more accurately than thermometers is, well, a little controversial Those who would like to dig deeper into the details of why this idea is little more than another obfuscation, just another overcomplexification proffered by the AGW alarmists to reconcile the irreconcilable problems that result from the junk science of AGW via CO2/greehouse effect, are invited to follow these links:

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/06/sh...diosondes.html
http://climatesci.org/2008/06/04/com...-and-sherwood/

Jimbo

[masalai]

What do you climatologists make of this? - - - http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...section=justin

2 trillion tonnes of ice gone in 5yrs: NASA: - - - - By Dan Karpenchuk

NASA says it has satellite data that shows more than 2 trillion tonnes of land ice in Greenland, the Arctic, Antarctica and Alaska has melted in the past five years.

Scientists say the melting land ice has raised global sea levels by about 5 millimetres.

They say sea levels are also rising as water expands from warming.

Scientists say parts of the Arctic were nine to 10 degrees Celsius warmer this spring.

They also say warming in the far north is accelerating faster than anywhere else on the globe.

Experts say the pace of change is starting to outstrip the human ability to keep up.

Scientists also point to large amounts of frozen methane that is being released.

Methane is another potent greenhouse gas which could dramatically increase global warming.

[Jimbo1490]

Masalai

Greenhouse warming is supposed to warm the tropical troposphere first and most, NOT the poles. This part is incontrovertible. If you tweak the hypothesis and the models to show most of the warming happening at the poles first and most, many other empirical data becomes starkly anomalous.

Whether caused by methane, CO2 or water vapor, greenhouse warming should still look like greenhouse warming, that is, the tropical troposphere should warm first and most. Because we don't see that, we should come to the conclusion that what warming we observe IS NOT greenhouse warming, but warming from some other cause. If the AGW alarm crowd did not concur with this, they would not be working hard to reconcile this discrepancy, which in fact, they are.

Saying "we can't explain the observed warming any other way" does not increase the likelihood that the warming we observe is greenhouse warming, and furthermore these words should be translated "We don't know of any other cause for the observed warming at this time" as an admission that there almost certainly are causes for the warming that we have either yet to discover or properly understand and account for presently.

What we can observe right now with a high degree of certainty, is that the observed warming is not a 'good fit' for greenhouse warming, according to the definitions for said warming the AGW leaners have themselves posited and modeled with their GCM's.

Jimbo

[Boston]

obviously climate skeptics are wrong again with there latest round of disinformation
water vapor does not count for 96% of the greenhouse effect
and clearly there is supporting data concerning tropical tropospheric warming

I would urge the readers to be aware that much of the data presented by climate skeptics in this thread is basic disinformation designed to confuse what is overwhelming evidence in support of the consensus view of global climate change

detractors
must be getting tired of being proven wrong time and time again

I like how detractors dodge admitting they are deliberately misleading the readers with things like

without water vapor, you are subtracting 96% of the greenhouse effect.

which is just completely false
or

There's absolutely NOTHING in the research showing alarming warming in the tropical troposphere.

which the readers can clearly see there is by virtue of five of the six studies graphed in my previous

<--- example of a reprint


its also worthwhile to note that obfuscation is detractors making a patently false statement about the tropical troposphere and then showing a single data set of the lower troposphere as some kind of dodge to admitting they are wrong again

I would point out the following trends common in climate skeptic views that are more than obvious to the attentive reader

A ) climate skeptics statements are based on industry biased research 
 similar to the type of disinformation printed by the Tobacco
industry concerning the health risks of smoking

B ) skeptics claims of a conspiracy among thousands of independent scientific studies are unfounded whereas there is little doubt that the oil and gas industry has funded a disinformation campaign 



C ) climate skeptics understanding of anomalous and individual data vs preponderance of data seems tenuous at best and insist on repeating misleading or outright false data provided by mostly industry sources instead 



D ) climate skeptics have shown themselves to be totally unwilling to admit even the most obvious of errors thus showing the rest of us that the argument they present is not based on logic nor science 



E ) climate skeptics use of Industry provided canned arguments shows an agenda is being followed

F ) Oil and gas representatives and climate skeptics claims of the science is tenuous at best with basic misrepresentations of how science works and a failure to comprehend both the empirical method and the experimental along with there comparisons to the observable 


G ) skeptics have repeatedly distracted from each loosing argument rather than concede the points made by regurgitating previous arguments lost

E ) Exxon-Mobile as well as nearly every other major energy producer has been active in organizing and funding skeptics and providing biased data in an effort to stall climate recovery
Exxon-Mobil alone has spent at least $16 million, between 1998 and 2005, towards 43 advocacy organizations ( front groups ) which dispute the impact of global warming.[44] Reports argue that Exxon-Mobil used disinformation tactics similar to those used by the tobacco industry in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking, saying that the company used "many of the same organizations and personnel to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue."




for more on the troposphere temp data

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...bd5d40fcdc2304

were it is clearly stated

The temperature difference between adjacent 0000 and 1200 UTC weather balloon (radiosonde) reports shows a pervasive tendency toward cooler daytime compared to nighttime observations since the 1970s, especially at tropical stations. Several characteristics of this trend indicate that it is an artifact of systematic reductions over time in the uncorrected error due to daytime solar heating of the instrument, and should be absent from accurate climate records. Although other problems may exist, this effect alone is of sufficient magnitude to reconcile radiosonde tropospheric temperature trends and surface trends during the late 20th century.

please also see

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1114867v1?rbfvrToken=57bfe68dd33136ee413f21221631abf93113a577

given the complexities of the issue at hand and the basic confusion of climate skeptics concerning how science works
it is understandable that they fail to understand the technical issues governing radiosond dynamics
after all it is kinda a new science and these guys seem to take a long long time to catch up to the rest of us in even the simplest of terms
like consensus for instance

love B

[masalai]

Jimbo1490, I am not pushing or promoting either barrow, just seeking a plausible explanation for in my mind, major land-mass Ice melt must be caused by atmospheric warming of a significant level - to increase the temperature of water requires minimal thermal but to melt ice demands significant and measurable levels of heat.... As our "rancid" comedian "pauline pantsdown" may have said "Please Explain????"....

[Boston]

sounds like a reasonable question to the rest of us Jimmy

please explain away one of the most basic and observable elements of Global Climate Change

like

you are melting

and I remind you to please consider

(Singer/Schmidt) Solar variations do affect climate, but they are not the only factor. As there has been no significantly positive trend in any solar index since the 1960s (and possibly a small negative trend), solar forcing cannot be responsible for the recent temperature trends. The difference between the solar minimum and solar maximum over the 11-year solar cycle is 10 times smaller than the effect of greenhouse gases over the same interval.

although I must add that clean air laws have resulted in a slight increase in solar radiation reaching the surface
but its only ~.3% and still less than what it should be given the millions of tons of crap we spew into the atmosphere thats reflecting significant amounts of solar radiation