What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Boston]

post 1667
G offered a paper noting an inordinately high estimate of the contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse gas effect in defense of your claim about water vapor contributing an inordinately high amount
it was in an effort to subvert the value of co2's contribution

that is the paper I deconstructed in # 1678
it contained no complex math
nor did its references

blatant industry spin

and please reread post # 1678 concerning the rag it was published in

you do understand the difference between water vapor and cloud content
ie droplets
they interact very differently in the climate system and are considered as separate entities of h2o in the system

the IPCC has determined through direct experimentation that water "vapor" makes up on average ~50% of the greenhouse gas effect
clouds make up about ~25% and GHG ~25%
the vapor content is directly related to temp
and so is a feedback that can be positive or negative

and no again
vapor tends to lead to warming
and its cooling that leads to precipitation
basic stuff

[Jimbo1490]

The 'iris effect', now observed and quantified, along with the robust negative feedbacks surrounding precipitation, completely negate this effect. Since water vapor is admittedly a much more efficient greenhouse gas than CO2, then why does not water vapor participate in a runaway feeback loop with itself? Were it not for the Irirs Effect and precipitation, it would do so.

So a tiny little bit of extra greenhouse warming from CO2 (and it is a tiny amount in context) can no more cause runaway feedback with water vapor that water vapor itself can, since it is so mush more effective as a greenhouse agent.

The negative feedbacks are so much more robust than the positive, which is just what we should expect. The fact that the climate has never 'run away' despite much higher CO2 levels in the past shows that this understanding is more plausible.

Did you catch the recent posts showing that CO2 levels were higher than today(~450 ppm) for a 'short spike' (~30 years or so) during the 19th century? Seems some researchers threw out those data points assuming they were 'anomalous'(read: not p.c.). But other researchers have found the same 'anomaly' in their data too. My, how curious! The 'spike' looks a lot like the 'post war' period from ~1950 to present.




Jimbo

[Boston]

my god man were do you read this tripe
Jim weigh your sources on the scales of scientific ethics before you take em to heart

water vapor is not a more efficient greenhouse gas than co2
 any day any way you slice it
this is what happens when you read the industry rags for long enough
it is greater in volume but not in effect per molecule
not even close

I think this basic misunderstanding may be why you are clinging to misleading data reconstructions
just like ch4 is 23 times more powerful than co2 and nitrous oxide is about 300 times more powerful as well
a molecule of co2 is off the scale more powerful than a molecule of h2o

there is some quantum mechanics that get involved with why but basically its the spin characteristics of the molecule that determine its abilities to radiate
water has a higher natural frequency than co2 and doesn't radiate well in the necessary wave lengths but it can absorb in the far infrared and radiate through various induced frequency events
but nothing like co2 can
dam we are talking my language now brother
it may have been 25 years ago but its like riding a bike
go look up some stuff on the physics pages
leave the industry rags and he pseudoscience behind and see for yourself
please stay away from your normal sources just go to the physics forums and ask away
dont mention global climate change and you will get the best unbiased response

on average water vapor makes up about 2.75% of the atmospheric mass

co2 makes up about 0.039% and for the most part is evenly distributed
so by mass on average h2o is about 70.5 times more prevalent
now given that the IPCC says water vapor is shown experimentally to be only ~50%
with results ranging from 36% to 66% of the greenhouse effect
and co2 being something like 16%
then its not so hard to calculate how much stronger co2 is as a greenhouse gass than h2o

a kindergarten formula to crunch a few different numbers sets later

a2/ ( a1 / b1 ) = relative effect per unit of h2o = 0.71 or = 1.39 if I use 98%
b2/ ( b1 / a1 ) = relative effect per unit of co2 = 1,142.95 or = 107.14 if I use 1.5%

even if I use your numbers it works out co2 is a hundred times more efficient as a greenhouse gas

dam I shoulda just looked it up
someone go look it up and see if I was in the ball park

a1 = atmospheric mass percentage of h2o = 2.75% on average
b1 = atmospheric mass percentage of co2 = 0.039%
a2 = greenhouse effect of h2o = ~50% or 90% or 98% take your pick
b2 = greenhouse effect of co2 = ~16% or 8% or 1.5% take your pick

but any way you slice it
co2 is lots more effective a greenhouse gas

dam Im rusty could have written it with out the parenthesis

and way wrong again about the “robust negative feedbacks”
your digging another hole for yourself with that hole line of illogic
just let it go and stop reading the industry rags
please dont try to argue any of the other points in that last
its not going to work out for you
all but one was a loosing argument and that one is irrelevant today

[CDK]

Quote from Boston (1712)
"Water Vapour as a positive feedback
As water vapour is directly related to temperature, it's also a positive feedback - in fact, the largest positive feedback in the climate system (Soden 2005). As temperature rises, evaporation increases and more water vapour accumulates in the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, the water absorbs more heat, further warming the air and causing more evaporation."

It may be just a matter of nomenclature, but feedback, by definition, must be negative.
Positive feedback should be called feed-forward.
Feedback stabilizes a loop by reducing the effects of a change in input, while feed-forward enhances the effects and causes a runaway of the output.
This applies to various disciplines like operational amplifiers, chemical and biochemical processes, so I guess it also applies to climate theory.

If a small change in CO2 level cause a large thermal shift, it should be called a feed-forward loop.

[Jimbo1490]

CDK:

Thanks for the much-needed clarification (at least in terminology) on this point!

My point is that CO2 DOES NOT cause a feed-forward loop with water vapor. Neither does water vapor do so with itself. Instead, increased water vapor concentrations alter cloud formation which, seemingly paradoxically, causes net cooling. This in turn causes precipitation, which lowers water vapor concentrations, thus breaking what would be a feed-forward loop.

This is no longer just a theory, but now has been observed and quantified. Some may object to the authors (Lindzen, Spencer and Christy) but then again, the best test of this kind of theory is whether the theory is able to predict what we observe. In that regard, the AGW hypothesis with its understanding of the behavior of water vapor (and the corollary of high climate sensitivity to CO2 concentration), is clearly at odds with the observed atmospheric conditions, both present and past, while the predictive ability of the skeptic's paradigm has proved superior.

The lead author of the first paper on the subject, Dr. Richard S. Lindzen said the climate models used in the IPCC have the cloud physics wrong. “We found that there were terrible errors about clouds in all the models, and that that will make it impossible to predict the climate sensitivity because the sensitivity of the models depends primarily on water vapor and clouds. Moreover, if clouds are wrong, there’s no way you can get water vapor right. They’re both intimately tied to each other.”

Doesn't this sound exactly like what I said in a previous post?

The study was the best empirical confirmation of the powerful negative feedback hypothesis proposed by Lindzen early on in the global warming debate. But it simply confirmed earlier empirical work by Spencer of NASA and William Braswell of Nichols Research Corporation.

Their 1997 study also cast doubt on the assumption of a positive water vapor feedback effect, so it's not just some 'industry hack' on the boat forum asserting this; there has been an ongoing debate about this for about 12 years now. The more recent study by Christy and Spencer have confirmed this hypothesis even more convincingly.

Their study further shows that the tropical troposphere is NOWHERE NEAR as humid as climate modelers previously thought.

Jimbo

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

Their study further shows that the tropical troposphere is NOWHERE NEAR as humid as climate modelers previously thought.

Is that relative humidity ???

[Jimbo1490]

Yes, but the humidity higher up in the atmosphere, not down on the ground where you usually hear about relative humidity being discussed.

Jimbo

[Boston]

average tropical tropospheric vapor content is 4%
that 4% drops by as much as 500% of that in polar regions
ambient vapor content is obviously dependent on temp

each discipline of science has its own special language
in some cases what means one thing in one language means something completely different in another
stat in medical terms means imediately
but stat in engineering short hand means static as in still and not moving
were as static in electronics means noise or residual energy

a feedback in climate terms can be both positive and negative
look it up kids

[Jimbo1490]

Boston,

The discovery of water vapor levels in the troposphere which are lower than previously accepted is significant in that it points to the existence of a sort of 'safety valve' (Lindzen dubbed an 'Iris') which is reducing the water vapor levels. This again dovetails nicely with the observed warming there, which is totally unremarkable.

I keep bringing this up because it was the AGW alarmists who themselves set the bar here, boldly predicting that we would definitely see 'prominent, unmistakable' warming there, yet we do not. A small unremarkable warming won't cut it; that's clearly within natural variability and is not suggestive of a 'feed-forward' loop, and not what AGW alarmists predicted.

When you look at it from the AGW alarmist POV, since they believe there is a 'feed-forward' loop with CO2 and water vapor, OF COURSE there should be dangerous warming going on. But when you add a strong negative feedback which breaks this loop, then no anomalous warming should be expected. The AGW alarmists insist this strong negative feedback does not exist.

But I feel the preponderance of the evidence available RIGHT NOW says that it indeed does exist, and explains nicely the lack of correlation, the AGW alarmist's overestimation of climate sensitivity to CO2, the lower water vapor levels in the troposphere, and the lack of a previous 'runaway' event anywhere in the paleoclimate.

Jimbo

[Boston]

My point is that CO2 DOES NOT cause a feed-forward loop with water vapor. Neither does water vapor do so with itself. Instead, increased water vapor concentrations alter cloud formation which, seemingly paradoxically, causes net cooling. This in turn causes precipitation, which lowers water vapor concentrations, thus breaking what would be a feed-forward loop.

your digging another hole for yourself

a) you've invented language that doesn't exist within the science to define a phenominon that is already described in the literature
b) your denying something which has been shown experimentally and I would point out the obvious about some of the rainiest places on earth are in subtropical and temperate zones
c) there seems to be a basic misunderstanding of phase change and its effects on dipole moments and radiation IE there is no paradox

[Boston]

you wouldnt catch me taking Lindzen seriously on my worst day brother
guy is clearly an industry stooge
he gets paid my Exxon and OPEC for Pete's sakes to defend there views on pollution
kinda like your boy Fred Singer got paid by the tobacco industry to write articles defending smoking

now I ask you

if your right about negative feedback
why is all this ice melting

eh

[Jimbo1490]

Originally Posted by Boston

you wouldnt catch me taking Lindzen seriously on my worst day brother
guy is clearly an industry stooge
he gets paid my Exxon and OPEC for Pete's sakes to defend there views on pollution
kinda like your boy Fred Singer got paid by the tobacco industry to write articles defending smoking

You're clearly putting yourself in the 'wacko' camp with this remark; Lindzen is one of the most eminent men in climate science, a senior advisor to the IPCC and a teniored professor at MIT, heading their climate science department.

Originally Posted by Boston

now I ask you

if your right about negative feedback
why is all this ice melting

eh

As already addressed several times in this debate, glacial retreat does not really tell us much as it is a 150 year old phenomena.
And what about the antarctic ice which is growing? And the arctic ice did not even exist as recently as a few thousand years ago. Did we do that too And greenhouse theory says the poles should not warm much anyway. What's up with that?


Jimbo

[Boston]

if you really were hip to the glacial retreat issues you would not be trying this tact Jim
nor would you be mentioning the antarctic

worldwide the ice is melting and its kinda a thorn in the side of the hole cooling theory

if you can write us the actual theory of climate change
then we can discuss the arctic weather anomalies

as for MIT
my grandfather was a university professor of physics and earned his degree from MIT
my grandmother was a university professor of law
my father and uncle earned doctorate degrees in engineering and physics from MIT
and I went there before I transferred to CU
so I think Im qualified to say a few things about the professor

Lindzen is got to be the highest profile skeptic there is
he basically claims there isnt sufficient evidence to allow for action at this time
he believes the planet is warming and is unsure as to why
his work on lensing was not widely accepted

from: Davidoff Lindzens coauthor

About the IRIS paper- I really can't see what he's complaining about. The paper was published, despite some rather "outlandish claims." For instance, in the IRIS paper, Lindzen argues that tropical surface temperature and polar surface temperature should be assumed to vary in exactly the same way as CO2 concentrations increase. This is based on the idea that baroclinic neutralization maintains a particular critical temperature gradient, an idea that had a brief period of fashionability in 1978. In any case, there's certainly been a lively debate about the paper, and if it's widely viewed as "discredited", then that's the judgement of the climate dynamics community as a hole .

kinda breaks the bank when the guy's coauthor comes out and says stuff like that now doesnt it

the reason papers are made available to review through the peer system is so that controversial theories get a chance to be reviewed by the community at large.

we cant afford to censure a subject as dire as climate change
review is a serious component to any science as it allows for fundamental change to enter that science through a process that screens for quality at each stage
when that review is negative
or rather I should say
when a work is good enough to be published it must yet still pass another muster
it must be accepted as a new norm and it will show this in is it propensity to illicit citation rather than rebuttal

his place on the IPCC is in an effort to give the skeptics a voice
however
he is regularly paid by the oil and gas industries
and in doing so has reduced his standing in the community substantially
knowing how the university system works
were it not for the system of tenure he would likely have lost his job for it

thing is MIT was once the classic good old boys club
now its trying to remain nonpolitical and overlooks much academically inappropriate behavior on the part of the faculty
while trying to stay focused on education

I grew up surrounded by professors
and being a professor at MIT is a high feather in anybodies cap
but
doesnt mean your always right
and given that 97% of scientists disagree with him
and he is on the take
Im going to say he has ruined his credibility
now if he held that view and didnt take the money

sooooo
why is it again the worlds ice bank is melting
if we're actually cooling

Im still dam curious

whats funny is that in other regards you guys tend to agree with me on industry funded or catered information or governing bodies
but when it comes to global warming all of a sudden its ok
why is that kids
any ideas

from G

You're right. Unluckily not only the Moody but several other sailing boats with sliding doors are A categorized. I'm wondering which authority is watching what is happening in the market, watching what Notified Bodies do. It seems national maritime authorities only audit things when a disaster happens. I do not like at all leaving inspections and decissions only in the hands of the NBs, which are paid by the manufacturers and have to commercially compete to get and keep clients. It is very easy to become 'condescending'.
Cheers.

[Jimbo1490]

According to NASA sources, and a few others I've read, a slightly warming climate will lead to more glacial ice due to an increase in evaporation and precipitation. Since the land bound sea ice never melts, any precipitation deposited there just becomes part of the glacier, and is subtracted from the liquid ocean thus reducing sea levels. Again, we've covered all of this earlier, just a few pages back, in fact.

On top of this there's that whole 'we haven't been studying glaciers or polar ice in detail long enough (only about 20 year via satellites) to gather meaningful trends' issue. It's true, too. Funny how the AGW alarmists only bring this point up when referring to the antarctic ice, which, as I said, is growing in mass. But the caveat applies equally to arctic ice.

Oh and on the whole 'The antarctic ice is NOT growing!" thing, please try to get a grip:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science...is-thicker.htm
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may...e/sci-icecap20
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ic_020822.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/env...t/sea_ice.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0130074839.htm


Now the thickening ice does not prove or disprove the AGW hypothesis one way or the other; the reality of how and why glaciers grow seems to be more complex than that, and related mostly to precipitation patterns. Again glacial retreat is a 150 year old phenomena while humans have been releasing climatologically significant amounts of CO2 for only ~60 years. So again, the retreat does not really prove or disprove anything, and certainly it does not prove the AGW via CO2 hypothesis.

Jimbo

[Boston]

wrong again

Oh and on the whole 'The antarctic ice is NOT growing!" thing, please try to get a grip:

the antarctic ice is on a very slow increasing trend
the arctic ice is on a catastrophic declining trend

kinda makes you wonder about Einsteins theory of crustal shift

"thickening ice"

who said anything about thickening ice
glaciers are dropping like flies
the arctic sea ice is thinner than your arguments about climate change
whats this about thickening

sounds like you been drinkin brother
hoist another and have a great time
but you might wait a while before posting
just a idea
cheers
B