What Do We Think About Climate Change

Yes CO2 is the most prevalent greenhoouse agent that also has an anthropogenic component. But that fact does not in any way enhance the very minor role of CO2 in the earth's greenhouse budget. CO2 is responsible for 2-3% of the total greenhouse effect by itself, so not very significant.

Where the AGW alarmists get their scary warming scenarios is by assuming that changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration lead to changes in water vapor concentration. If this is true, then CO2 is really responsible for more like ~25% of the greenhouse budget via its influence on water vapor concentration, so very significant. It is alleged to accomplish this through the unremarkable thermal effect of increasing oceanic evaporation. This means that anything that also thermally 'perturbs' the atmosphere could also awaken additional oceanic evaporation, with resultant effects. This corollary to the assertion about CO2 and water vapor makes the assertions about this alleged positive feedback testable, because we can observe how the atmosphere behaves in response to other thermal perturbations, to see if water vapor serves to amplify those effects, just as the alarmists insist happens with CO2.

Jimbo

 

Guillermo,

I noticed something very interesting in the "climate gate" emails that actually corroborated Beck's temperature data. For years, "The Team" has adamantly denied that there was a warm 'blip' in the 1940's. Beck's graph shows the blip prominently, and also a contemporaneous blip in CO2 concentration. I know we've all seen the graph before, it having been posted to the thread several times, but I've re-posted it here so we don't have to go looking for it:




Now as Ive said, "The Team" has always adamantly denied the existence of the 1940's temperature 'blip', so why then this exchange, between Tom Wigley and Phil Jones:


From: Tom Wigley [...]
To: Phil Jones [...]
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer [...]
Phil,
Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that theland also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).
So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean – but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips—higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.
Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.

It looks as if there are two distinct faces to the 'science' of 'The Team'; a public face of cock-sureness, and a private face of doubt and uncertainty.

Jimbo

 

"The Team"....I like it. It seems in fact to be a team of a few people hiding and massaging data, fooling the entire humankind (not only Boston )

Another pearl from them:

October 26, 2008: email 1225026120
Mick Kelly to Phil Jones: "Hi Phil Just updated my global temperature trend graphic for a public talk and noted that the level has really been quite stable since 2000 or so and 2008 doesn't look too hot. Anticipating the sceptics latching on to this soon, if they haven't done already ... Be awkward if we went through a early 1940s type swing!" Phil Jones: "Mick, They have noticed for years—mostly w[ith] r[espect] t[o] the warm year of 1998. The recent coolish years [we put] down to La Nina. When I get this question I have 1991-2000 and 2001-2007/8 averages to hand. Last time I did this they were about 0.2 [degrees] different, which is what you'd expect." Mick Kelly: "Yeah, it wasn't so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, [I'm] used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer—10[-]year—period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I'll maybe cut the last few points off the [graph] before I give the talk again as that's trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years."

Unbelievable!

 

First of all, can you actually show me some of the statements "The Team" made, in which they denied the very existence of the blip, rather than trying to dismiss it as unimportant, or explain it away?

And here's an interesting article about where that blip probably came from to begin with:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14006-buckets-to-blame-for-wartime-temperature-blip.html

Basically, it says that before the war, marine temperature measurements were taken pretty evenly between the UK Navy and the American Navy. But they used different methods: the Brits usually hauled a bucketful of water on deck, and measured the temperature in the bucket. The Americans, on the other hand, usually took their temperature samples from water drawn into the engine room, before it cooled the engines. Obviously, the bucket-on-deck method would give lower temperatures, on average.

During WWII, the British measurements dropped to only 5% of those taken, and the American measurements went up to 80% of the total. That produced an apparent warming blip. When the war ended and the Brits resumed taking temperature readings in their buckets, the blip in average temperatures disappeared again....a blip which, incidentally, had never shown up on land to begin with.

This is an example of the need to look at the totality of data and the circumstances around it, rather than just narrowly focusing on one anomaly and claiming it derails an entire premise....

 

I love this one

On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

"Hi Tom [Wigley]
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin


Note: The [Wigley] is mine. Italics are mine
Full texts at: http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/1/FOIA/mail/1255523796.txt

Cheers.

 

Probably Jim will answer Troy and I don't want to come in the middle, but for the sake of everybody's knowledge I think it's interesting to observe that when it is said temperature is taken "from buckets" that does not necessarily mean they are taken from water collected in buckets, as it may mean temperatures are measured using "bucket thermometers" which are water-temperature thermometers provided with an insulated container around the bulb. The bucket thermometer is lowered into the sea on a line until it has had time to reach the temperature of the surface water, then withdrawn and read. The insulated water surrounding the bulb preserves the water reading and is also available as a salinity sample. See the attached image.

Cheers.

 

If the article is correct, during that time the Brits were using canvas buckets (not modern 'bucket thermometers'), having switched from the wooden ones they used in the 19th century.

"We know roughly the size of the bucket measurement errors," says John Kennedy of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. "The engine room error is more difficult because it depends on exactly where the pipe that brings water in is."

I don't claim the bucket theory is proof positive, but (again, according to this article) the time during which the Brits weren't measuring, and the Americans were, does seem to correspond with the time frame of the rise. And in 1945 when the Brits resumed measuring and the American measurements became 30% of the total instead of 80%, there was a sudden drop in the average again.

 

Guillermo beat me to that ( I used to work on a research ship in the Aleutians and used one of these STD (salinity/temp./depth) devices a lot. Deeper water is always (with rare, current or volcanic related anomolies) colder.
I think you are asserting here "Obviously, the bucket-on-deck method would give lower temperatures, on average."
that the piping in the engine room would heat the water and slew the temp. But having been aroud an intake pipe or two, my two cent's is that the water travels fast enough (if it is being used) that there would be no appreciable cooling taking place in the pipe, the deep sea temp samples were taken by deep sea vessels, with a draft of 6 to 10 meters where the water temp is usually much colder. A "bucket" of water is full of life-giving surface sun unless they dropped it to a depth equal to the intake depth of the American ships. 2,3,4 meters can make a world of difference in surface temps. I hope that this was accounted for. The most important factor is to assure that depth of sample were equal and that a sunny day could thow off surface temp findings. No big deal, Troy, but AGW is full of assumptions. Making one more does not make for good analysis.

 

You're right. Assumptions don't make for good analysis. Here are pictures of what was used before the 'bucket thermometers.'

As the article noted, the real problem is figuring out how to correlate those measurements with the intake pipe measurements taken by the Americans, because a water intake can be 10 to 60 feet deep, as opposed to being right at the surface.

Here's the blog those pictures came from, at realclimate.org; it goes into more detail.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/of-buckets-and-blogs/comment-page-2/

 

"water intake can be...60 feet deep, as opposed to being right at the surface" - that's a big boat, like a laden tanker or such.
You just made my point. Good - we're in agreement. Did you see anywhere that anyone thot to make the numbers more consistant by specifying the depth of a given sample or are the numbers obtained so much mush?

 

Just a though but where you believe the US samples were from? Reckon closer to USA, but certainly not from the Hebridies or North Sea that's sure. Any records??

 

The records were taken from all over the world, by both Naval vessels and American Merchant vessels. And the temperature readings would obviously be worthless, without detailed records of when and where they were taken.

 

I'm not sure of the details; I haven't had time to look into it that much, and I don't know exactly what data was kept. It does seem reasonable to me that the data would be worth a whole lot less, if there were no records of the depths the intake thermometers were measuring the water from. Again, here's the write-up at realclimate.org:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...omment-page-2/

It goes into some detail about what's been done in the past and what's being done now, about trying to make sense of the numbers. Some of it may be like herding cats, especially since a few of the countries contributing data, like Japan, were apparently using canvas buckets clear up into the 1960's. Whereas the Americans seem to have started using intake water temp's as early as the 1920's.

I'm not putting this forth as solid-gold proof of anything, except that sometimes simply attacking anomalous data, without checking out why it's anomalous, proves nothing.

 

Gents, everyone is using scientific information pro and contra the theory.

And everyone is missing the point: we know now that we cannot even trust the scientists any more. Bunch of liars just like your local politician or priest, being to busy screwing something way to young for them to, for once, tell the truth for a change.

So presenting some "authoritative" links is now futile. it is all back to the square one: you either believe in the ******** or not.

I never believed what other humans say because there are to many liars everywhere. And mentally deranged perverse maniacs who WILL lie just to achieve their personal pleasure (money or sex usually, sometimes just plain power over others).

Bit by bit, the whole planet is going down the crapper, thanks to the humans. May they perish hard, sons and dothers of bitches.

 

After reading your indictment of the whole human race, I'd say there are two possible conclusions: either you hate yourself, or you don't consider yourself to be a human.