What Do We Think About Climate Change

No, they weren't. You're subscribing to a lurid, extremely prejudiced and almost completely false version of what was actually happening, based on misrepresentation of a handful of stolen emails -- that were cherry picked from tens of thousands of emails over a multi-year span.

"Climategate" is a pretty narrow gate, Jimbo. There's only so much horse puckey you can truck through it.

 

You're actually claiming there were no significant anthropogenic CO2 releases before 1950? That's enough to boggle the mind...

 

That FACT has been posted over and over again. Don't be a lazy F___; Go to CDIAC and see for yourself! Aren't you glad someone kept such good records!

Synopsis:

~70 years ago; 1/10 present (the most aggressive carbon cutting we can ever do will not get us back even to here)

~150 years ago; 1/100 of present (forget about it, never gonna happen again!)

~200 years ago; 1/1000 present (what can I say )

Now do you understand why I am pressing you warmers to pick a 'threshold of significance' ? You guys want the world to turn itself inside-out to cut maybe 10 or 20% off of CO2 emissions when we were already WAY BELOW those emissions points in the past, and yet both atmospheric CO2 levels AND temperatures were climbing. What sort of convoluted logic do you employ to suppose that cutting an incremental amount now will magically do what it did not do 70, 150 and 200 years ago? And if present human CO2 emissions are 'in the noise' (they are) what about 70, or 150 or 200 years ago? Do you honestly believe that emissions that were 1/10, 000 of the total CO2 in the atmosphere were climatologically 'significant'? How about 1/1000 of the total, or .1%. Do you think that's significant? Do you not understand that the daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally and longer cyclical and random variations in CO2 concentration totally swamp this paltry amount?

Jimbo

 

ok what is this hogwash about 1/100 and 1/1000 on a graph or some tripe like that
no one is buying into that line of BS Jim sorry but your not making a lick of sense again

but I will post the graph you are suggesting so our readers can see for themselves

here's your graph showing a steady rise of co2 over the period depicted and not simply over the last 60 years or some fictitious 1% or 0.1% since some arbitrary date


and her is the two graphs I presented showing the same rise since the industrial age both in the first time frame presented and the second

the second being shown in order to prove another one of your eronius statements was wrong when you said there was a rise in co2 since before the industrial age
which obviously there was not
exactly as I said and exactly as the data shows

wrong again Jim
why do you force people to rub your nose in your own dodo rather than just admit your error and move on I will never know but
here you go



as you can see right up until about 2000 emissions were relatively steady for about a hundred years previous



are you really so blind as to not be able to see the simple truth that co2 was a flat trend line right up until the industrial age
and is it really necessary to present some fictitious argument about 1/100 and 1/1000 road apples to cover your mistake

obviously when the readers look at the graphs that show emissions and co2 levels, its clear you are wrong on all counts

no amount of worming and squirming will let you off the hook

looks really clear that emissions and co2 mirror one another perfectly there Jimmy old bean and your 1% of present a hundred and fifty years ago is actually ~25% of present emissions
way wrong again there buddy

I think we just named one there Jimmy boy

 

I don't care how many times it's been posted; it's complete bs. Nothing happened the year after I was born that suddenly kicked CO2 production up from not worth noticing to major significance. You're posting a completely arbitrary date.

The information I've seen generally charts human CO production back to the 1700's. I repeat: it boggles the mind that you would actually try to claim it magically appeared out of someone's butt in 1950, or that somehow what was produced before then didn't count.

And again: please get off this "you guys" nonsense, like everyone who disagrees with you about anything whatsoever is part of some massive, lockstep, monolithic movement or conspiracy. If you check every post I've ever made, here or anywhere else on the internet, you'll never find one where I claimed we should cut back CO2 production by some arbitrary percentage of some arbitrary year.

I'm not your mirror image, Jimbo. I don't automatically believe everything you don't believe, or vice-versa.

 

Jimbo,

I only have time to address part of your post quoted above.

My request was that you document your two assertions: 1) that proponents of the AGW hypothesis had, at one time, predicted that "Additional CO2 will wind up in the stratosphere, causing dangerous warming!" and 2) that they also predicted that there will be a “tropical hot spot”. If you could provide an actual link to a primary source that makes those predictions it would be greatly appreciated.

I did start looking at the so called "synopsis" you linked to. First of all, that is not a primary source, but rather an analysis of the the so-called hotspot presented by one of the climate deniers. That document does contain some links that purport to link to primary sources. However, the first of those links that I tried to follow was broken, and I don't have time to try to unscramble the broken link(s), so why don't you supply the links to the primary sources, since it is your assertions that you want to support.

Thanks for the link to http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf. It makes for some interesting reading.

With respect to this document, let's take a look to see if it supports your two assertions that I asked you to document. I did a word search through the entire document. At no point did it ever offer a prediction that stratospheric CO2 would increase. In fact, CO2 and the stratoshpere were mentioned near each other only one single time in the whole document, and even in that case it does not say that stratoshperic CO2 would rise. It only makes a non-specific reference to a rise in atmospheric CO2. Here are the exact words: “These early investigations found that model fingerprints of the stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming in response to increases in atmospheric CO2 were identifiable in observations (Chapter 1, Figure 1.3A).”

Now let us consider the so called tropical hot spot. First, let me say that I am not sure exactly what you mean when you say that there were predictions of a “tropical hot spot.” However, in doing word searches on “tropic” and “tropical” in the document I didn't find anything that could clearly be identified as a prediction that there would be a 'tropical hot spot.” The document does spend a lot of effort on discussing heating effects in the tropics. Much of this effort was in the discussion of some discrepancies between the predictions of model calculations and the observed temperature increases, specifically around the following concept, quoted from the document: “In the tropics, most observational data sets show more warming at the surface than in the troposphere, while most model runs have larger warming aloft than at the surface.” The document also says that this is an area that is most difficult for the models to make accurate predictions.

I am forced to conclude that the document you referenced to support your assertions provides little or no support for your two assertions itemized above.

Furthermore, I can find nothing in the document that supports your assertion that the document makes the point that "the warming signature which neatly proves that recent warming is not due to an increase in the greenhouse effect." Would you please provide the relevant quotes from the document that says that recent warming is not due to an increase in the greenhouse effect?

Now, let us look at a few interesting quotes from the document:

“When run with natural and human-caused forcings, model global-mean temperature trends for individual atmospheric layers are consistent with observations.”

“In summary, the behavior of complementary variables enhances our confidence in the reality of large-scale warming of the Earth’s surface, and tells us that the signature of this warming is manifest in many different aspects of the climate system.”

“This chapter has evaluated a wide range of scientific literature dealing with the possible causes of recent temperature changes, both at the Earth’s surface and in the free atmosphere. It shows that many factors – both natural and human-related – have probably contributed to these changes. Quantifying the relative importance of these different climate forcings is a difficult task. Analyses of observations alone cannot provide us with definitive answers. This is because there are important uncertainties in the observations and in the climate forcings that have affected them. Although computer models of the climate system are useful in studying cause-effect relationships, they, too, have limitations. Advancing our understanding of the causes of recent lapse-rate changes will best be achieved by comprehensive comparisons of observations, models, and theory – it is unlikely to arise from analysis of a single model or observational data set."

If you are trying to use this document to support the case for the climate change deniers I am afraid you are looking in the wrong place.

 

More from JoNova. This piece sums up a lot of the skeptic positions in a reader friendly manner and debunks the bulk of the AGW positions.......



http://joannenova.com.au/2010/05/de...-iii-he-accidentally-vindicates-the-skeptics/

 

So these figures are complete BS? Is that what you're saying, Troy? So whose tabulation of historic anthropogenic CO2 emissions would you prefer instead of these?

You can repeat all you want. The emissions were carefully tabulated in the paper (yes, peer-reviewed) by Boden, Marland, and Andres at Oak Ridge Labs, which covers the period from 1751 to 2005. If you have better data that contests what I've posted, please feel free to post it or provide a link. If such good data as I've posted "boggles the mind", then you should thank me for the cheap thrill

Jimbo

 

Alan,

You're confused once again At no time did I claim that any real published paper makes a claim that 'extra' CO2 will wind up in the stratosphere; that assertion is a purely apocryphal, blogosphere level claim-oh except that it was posted by 'real scientists' over at Surrealclimate on the page I referenced. The claim is totally unverified and conflicts with the observed cooling in the stratosphere. Bu anytime I say 'spectral saturation', that page gets propped up right away in rebuttal, and then all the warmers are happy again.

If you want to go dig up all the papers on the 'hotspot' go ahead. I thought I could do you a favor and post a synopsis. I noted the broken link also, so I dug up the primary source for that one paper. The fact that you actually contest that the warm camp once touted the importance of the tropical hotspot reveals the very shallow depth of your knowledge of the arguments pro and con, or at least your only very recent involvement with the topic in any real depth.



Jimbo

 

It's funny how you could go through that paper and miss the real salient point of the whole thing. I guess it's just a case of missing the forest cause there's so many damn trees in the way!

Anyway, the graphics tell the story, and the story is that the warming that we observe IS NOT the result greenhouse warming from CO2, because the signature is way different. Here's the sentence that synopsizes that finding:

"Another noticeable difference is that the HadAT2 data show a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere, where all four models simulate maximum warming."

I'll post the graphics since you did not:



This first set of graphics taken from the paper I linked to earlier shows the warming signatures for several different climate forcings. The upper left hand one is the signature we would expect if the observed warming were due to the well-mixed greenhouse agent, like CO2.


The second graphic shows the actual observed signature of recent warming, from the Hadley Radiosonde. As you can plainly see, the two are not even close, meaning that recent warming is not due to increased greenhouse warming from CO2.


Jimbo

 

Jimbo,

Now you are saying

"At no time did I claim that any real published paper makes a claim that 'extra' CO2 will wind up in the stratosphere;"

I guess I was confused by what you said earlier which was

"...what they used to say (up to about 2003-2004) was ... Additional CO2 will wind up in the stratosphere, causing dangerous warming!""

If, as you seem to be saying in your last post, you really believe that your earlier "assertion is a purely apocryphal blogosphere level claim... " then why in the world did you post the original assertion? If you are going to attribute positions to the opposition please be careful to refer to legitimate work, not to blogosphere stuff of questionable authenticity (in fact, without citation at all).

As to the "Surrealclimate" website, I am not sure what website that is. Could you clarify?

You also say

"The fact that you actually contest that the warm camp once touted the importance of the tropical hotspot..."

However, please note that I have not yet contested the importance of the tropical hotspot. What I did was request information on that topic, such as relevant references. Contesting can come later, if appropriate. For now what I am looking for is information and documentation.

By the way, reliable information on what the climate believers say cannot come from the climate deniers. It would be like asking a protestant to explain catholic doctrine... some of the information might be right, and some might be wrong, but none can be trusted as being reliable. To find out what the position of a person or group is you need to go to that group, not to the opponents of the group. That is why I asked for the primary sources, not from links to climate deniers such as you posted.

 

Jimbo, go back and read the document again. It specifically states that multiple factors are responsible for global warming, both natural and man made. To suggest otherwise (i.e. that the document proves that anthropogenic global warming is invalid) is to misrepresent the message of the document.

Here is a direct quote from the summary of the document

"This chapter has evaluated a wide range of scientific literature dealing with the possible causes of recent temperature changes, both at the Earth’s surface and in the free atmosphere. It shows that many factors – both natural and human-related – have probably contributed to these changes."

You may disagree with what the document says. That is your right. But you must not misrepresent what the document says.

 

If you're claiming that some compilation of "carefully tabulated" data shows that man-made CO2 emissions were completely inconsequential from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up until 1950, than took some sort of a stunning quantum leap that year and suddenly became 'significant,' you're spouting arbitrary, irrational nonsense.

Don't bother citing sources and links. I think it's been pretty conclusively proven lately that your references commonly fail to back up your claims, and sometimes actually contradict you. Since you have no credibility left, I see no point in continuing to check them. I'm not as patient and methodical as Alan is.

That's one of the reasons he's a scientist, and I'm not. Neither are you, by the way....

 

I graphed the data from that link and the graph clearly differs from the graph Boston posted.

Boston, can you give us your source?

 

The only people that ever suggested that all or most of observed warming is due to one cause or forcing is the warmer camp, Alan. The warmers have suggested that the 'dominant' forcing of the recent climate is rising CO2 and that rise is due to anthropogenic emissions. The fact that that paper admits that there are multiple factors is itself a major change in tone from what has been coming out of the climate alarm camp for the last 15 years.

And again, the salient point is that the paper points out that ALL the GCM's have predicted this 'hotspot' that is now for the first time formally admitted to be missing. What I'm pointing out in no way disagrees with anything in the document. You just want to believe that that paragraph you quoted is the most important thing to be taken from the document, while I say the most important thing is the admission that the GCM's prediction of a 'hotspot' was wrong, with all that implies.

So what does it imply? Basic greenhouse theory dictates that the most prominent area of warming will be in the mid altitudes of the tropical troposphere. All the GCM's account for this, since it is inherent to the basic physics of greenhouse warming. So that fact that it is completely missing in action implies that recent warming is not greenhouse warming.

Jimbo