2010 Global Temps

[skierinvermont]

What does this have to do with water vapor changes? One thing Mentioned, a "Control Knob", of the atmosphere, includes, but does not mention Temperature impact on CO2's heating "viscosity" in this sense.

Changes in Water Vapor would alter the cycle

http://pielkeclimate...6/05/05/co2h2o/

Your posts actually successfully disprove the science. If the forcings were distributed as progged in or "science", the results would show in our warming, being close to +0.9C right now if it were true......instead, we're +0.28C, well within realm.

This is just simply wrong.

Models based on the theoretical 1.2C response per doubling CO2 accurately reproduce the last 120+ years of global temperatures.

[BethesdaWX]

This is just simply wrong.

Models based on the theoretical 1.2C response per doubling CO2 accurately reproduce the last 120+ years of global temperatures.

You mean the temperatures they had to adjust to match the models? Do you wonder why The New Zealand Climate Center is being sued, and is loosing? Do you wonder why research data that OUR money is paying for.....is being refused by NASA via FOI? Why refuse FOI requests? We're paying for it. Why is NASA fighting the Bill that would open up all science to the public, for us to better understand, and for us all to see all the data that does into everything? Is there something wrong with that? Only if you're hiding something!

Yes, lets ignore the fact that Ships sailed further into the arctic in the late 1800's & 1940's than we can now, while subs surfaced in the north pole in the 1950's. Lets forget how warm the 1940's were globally, lets forget the great dust bowl. But most importantly, lets forget the cooling trend that began in 2002, took a pause in warm ENSO09/10, & now continues.....and say that the worldwide blizzards, record cold,and temperature of +0.28C is all gonna kill us.

[skierinvermont]

You mean the temperatures they had to adjust to match the models? Yes, lets ignore the fact that Ships sailed further into the arctic in the late 1800's & 1940's than we can now, while subs surfaced in the north pole in the 1950's. Lets forget how warm the 1940's were globally, lets forget the great dust bowl. But most importantly, lets forget the cooling trend that began in 2002, took a pause in warm ENSO09/10, & now continues.....and say that the worldwide blizzards, record cold,and temperature of +0.28C is all gonna kill us.

The surface temperature records have been adjusted to fit reality. They have been adjusted for UHI, for time of observation bias, and other errors. This has been explained to you many many times, with citations.

[BethesdaWX]

Respond to my entire post skier, and do not Nitpick

You mean the temperatures they had to adjust to match the models? Do you wonder why The New Zealand Climate Center is being sued, and is loosing? Do you wonder why research data that OUR money is paying for.....is being refused by NASA via FOI? Why refuse FOI requests? We're paying for it. Why is NASA fighting the Bill that would open up all science to the public, for us to better understand, and for us all to see all the data that does into everything? Is there something wrong with that? Only if you're hiding something!

Yes, lets ignore the fact that Ships sailed further into the arctic in the late 1800's & 1940's than we can now, while subs surfaced in the north pole in the 1950's. Lets forget how warm the 1940's were globally, lets forget the great dust bowl. But most importantly, lets forget the cooling trend that began in 2002, took a pause in warm ENSO09/10, & now continues.....and say that the worldwide blizzards, record cold,and temperature of +0.28C is all gonna kill us.

[BethesdaWX]

Oh, and they're hiding FOI requests for the work why? Then they somehow "lost" all the work that went into the adjustements?

Good stuff

[nzucker]

Glad to know I am not the only one who loses his cool with some of the more irrational and uninformed posts that go for 'great posts' around here.

Many of these internet sites such as WUWT have a certain disconnect from reality. If you crowd a room with enough idiots they can convince themselves from anything. They will become impervious to facts and reality.

To some extent that is what happens here. Throw around acronyms like PDO and TSI and try and sound smart and you have yourself an argument. Basic physics and logic aside.

That's what great about your posts Rusty.. they are based in the science from the ground up. I wish we saw more of that around here.

It would be nice if we could discuss some of the more uncertain aspects of science like cloud feedbacks. But we can't discuss any of that if we can't even establish basic facts like the surface temperature record or the forcing response per doubling of CO2.

Watts Up With That is no more biased than scientists saying British children won't see snow when they are having record amounts, politicians saying hurricanes are going to increase in a devastating manner when we're at record lows, ad campaigns showing us pictures of stranded polar bears yet neglecting to mention their population is at record levels...I could equally say that a climatologist who thinks Britain, at over 50 degrees N, won't see snow anymore is an idiot surrounded by a roomful of idiots, the Hadley Center. None of these people are true scientists; they are politicians with an agenda that earns them money, and who will do anything to ensure the continuation of that agenda. There's a disconnect from reality among the "climate experts" themselves, those who craft a dishonest message and convince almost no one in the general public to adhere seriously to the global warming cause. These people are also impervious to facts and reality....the fact that we're not warming as much as expected so we can't say warming is accelerating and worse than expected, the fact we're seeing snow and record cold in many highly populated places when they predicted our winters would be warmer. Where is the reality here?

The problem with Rusty's posts is they discuss simple physics equations which we all know, and which can't fully describe a complex climate. I think we all recognize that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere; no one would quibble with Arrhenius' findings as I studied them in high school and am well acquainted with the simplicity of his experiments/theories (although he was a skeptic himself about the impact of AGW, but that's another story). No one is going to argue with the Planck laws regarding radiative emissions from a body, etc. The debate isn't about these things because there's a recognition that humans have at least contributed some warming among all of us. The debate is along these lines: How much have humans contributed? How much will the climate change in the future, and are computer models accurate about these changes? And, are natural factors pointing towards cooling sufficient to reduce the worry about global warming?

[skierinvermont]

Watts Up With That is no more biased than scientists saying British children won't see snow when they are having record amounts, politicians saying hurricanes are going to increase in a devastating manner when we're at record lows, ad campaigns showing us pictures of stranded polar bears yet neglecting to mention their population is at record levels.

So very biased and wrong then.

[nzucker]

So very biased and wrong then.

But they have more of an excuse to be biased than those who claim to be objective scientists and use our tax dollars for nothing...

[skierinvermont]

The problem with Rusty's posts is they discuss simple physics equations which we all know, and which can't fully describe a complex climate.

Then why did you put him through the trouble of giving you citations for the Stefan-Boltzman law and the planck response?

[skierinvermont]

The debate isn't about these things because there's a recognition that humans have at least contributed some warming among all of us. The debate is along these lines: How much have humans contributed? How much will the climate change in the future, and are computer models accurate about these changes? And, are natural factors pointing towards cooling sufficient to reduce the worry about global warming?

And what you fail to understand is that basic physics dictates a 1.2C response per doubling of CO2 and that WV is very clearly a strong positive feedback.

[nzucker]

Then why did you put him through the trouble of giving you citations for the Stefan-Boltzman law and the planck response?

I wanted him to back up his statements as anyone should who claims to have a knowledge of the physics of global warming. But the fact of the matter is that these basic equations and physical laws, which no one denies, are not really at the heart of the debate at all. Rusty has a good knowledge of the general science behind the greenhouse effect but doesn't really seem to see the complex interactions that take place when you start to involve strong solar minimums, ocean cycles, volcanic activity etc. There's a big difference between the physics lab and the planet's climate...but how could I know that, since I never took freshman physics?

[skierinvermont]

I wanted him to back up his statements as anyone should who claims to have a knowledge of the physics of global warming. But the fact of the matter is that these basic equations and physical laws, which no one denies, are not really at the heart of the debate at all. Rusty has a good knowledge of the general science behind the greenhouse effect but doesn't really seem to see the complex interactions that take place when you start to involve strong solar minimums, ocean cycles, volcanic activity etc. There's a big difference between the physics lab and the planet's climate...but how could I know that, since I never took freshman physics?

If we all know the equations and they have been posted dozens of times, asking him for the citations is just annoying.

Saying Rusty just "can't see the complex interactions' is simply condescending.

[BethesdaWX]

And what you fail to understand is that basic physics dictates a 1.2C response per doubling of CO2 and that WV is very clearly a strong positive feedback.

[BethesdaWX]

Yeah I'm done with this thread, otherwise I'll be here all night.

See y'all tomorrow

[WeatherRusty]

And what you fail to understand is that basic physics dictates a 1.2C response per doubling of CO2 and that WV is very clearly a strong positive feedback.

And then we can discuss the more uncertain feedback processes. But we can't take that step because most here DO NOT UNDERSTAND the weight of the basic science and DO DISPUTE IT WITH VIGOR. Sorry for yelling..not.

[WeatherRusty]

I wanted him to back up his statements as anyone should who claims to have a knowledge of the physics of global warming. But the fact of the matter is that these basic equations and physical laws, which no one denies, are not really at the heart of the debate at all. Rusty has a good knowledge of the general science behind the greenhouse effect but doesn't really seem to see the complex interactions that take place when you start to involve strong solar minimums, ocean cycles, volcanic activity etc. There's a big difference between the physics lab and the planet's climate...but how could I know that, since I never took freshman physics?

Strong solar minimums, ocean cycles, volcanic activity are relatively weak or don't impact long term climate change at all. If I don't understand what you say to the contrary then neither does the main stream scientific community. Don't just talk, do something about overturning the scientific conventions if they are so wrong.

[ORH_wxman]

The debate isn't the test tube physical greenhouse effect of CO2...most understand that. The debate is other factors either overwhelming it or uncertain feedback issues that are not modeled well. There was just something that came out last week about how climate models might have severely underestimated the amount of clay dust particles in the atmosphere which have a negative feedback for temperature vs the more typical particles which have a positive feedback. Then you have the whole issue of the oceans heat sink which is only understood partially in theory.

Every single time these debates get going, it always ends up back at the "but the physics of CO2 is already understood"...basically rendering the whole thing useless because it fails to acknowledge the other important points brought up.

If CO2 is the end all, then someone needs to explain why were aren't warming for the past decade or why it cooled between the 1940s and 1970s...all when CO2 has been increasing.

[skierinvermont]

The debate isn't the test tube physical greenhouse effect of CO2...most understand that. The debate is other factors either overwhelming it or uncertain feedback issues that are not modeled well. There was just something that came out last week about how climate models might have severely underestimated the amount of clay dust particles in the atmosphere which have a negative feedback for temperature vs the more typical particles which have a positive feedback. Then you have the whole issue of the oceans heat sink which is only understood partially in theory.

Every single time these debates get going, it always ends up back at the "but the physics of CO2 is already understood"...basically rendering the whole thing useless because it fails to acknowledge the other important points brought up.

If CO2 is the end all, then someone needs to explain why were aren't warming for the past decade or why it cooled between the 1940s and 1970s...all when CO2 has been increasing.

Nobody is saying it's the end all.. just that it is a major and increasingly important factor. We can certainly discuss why the surface temps didn't warm in the 50s and 60s or why we have seen little surface warming the past decade. The problem is that multiple posters here fail to acknowledge the basic physics which dictate a 1.2C surface response per doubling CO2 and that in addition to that water vapor is a strong positive feedback. The earth has accumulated a tremendous amount of heat over the last century and satellites continue to measure far more energy entering the atmosphere than leaving it. This dictates continued warming.

Once everybody acknowledges these basic facts, then we can discuss more nuanced influences on surface temperatures such as the PDO and cloud feedbacks.

[WeatherRusty]

The debate isn't the test tube physical greenhouse effect of CO2...most understand that. The debate is other factors either overwhelming it or uncertain feedback issues that are not modeled well. There was just something that came out last week about how climate models might have severely underestimated the amount of clay dust particles in the atmosphere which have a negative feedback for temperature vs the more typical particles which have a positive feedback. Then you have the whole issue of the oceans heat sink which is only understood partially in theory.

Every single time these debates get going, it always ends up back at the "but the physics of CO2 is already understood"...basically rendering the whole thing useless because it fails to acknowledge the other important points brought up.

If CO2 is the end all, then someone needs to explain why were aren't warming for the past decade or why it cooled between the 1940s and 1970s...all when CO2 has been increasing.

Simple..

Greenhouse warming is a slow process which can be overwhelmed in the short term by higher amplitude factors which however do not affect the longer term trend to the degree that greenhouse warming will. Again, it's about the relative energies produced by each individual factor. Show me one or any combined the equal of 3.7W/m^2 per doubling of CO2. It can't be the Sun because it would need to deviate by 22W/m^2 to produce the same forcing. Ocean cycles? Zero forcing. Volcanoes? Significant but temporary unless we get many massive eruptions situated near the tropics. Anything else come to mind?

[nzucker]

The debate isn't the test tube physical greenhouse effect of CO2...most understand that. The debate is other factors either overwhelming it or uncertain feedback issues that are not modeled well. There was just something that came out last week about how climate models might have severely underestimated the amount of clay dust particles in the atmosphere which have a negative feedback for temperature vs the more typical particles which have a positive feedback. Then you have the whole issue of the oceans heat sink which is only understood partially in theory.

Every single time these debates get going, it always ends up back at the "but the physics of CO2 is already understood"...basically rendering the whole thing useless because it fails to acknowledge the other important points brought up.

If CO2 is the end all, then someone needs to explain why were aren't warming for the past decade or why it cooled between the 1940s and 1970s...all when CO2 has been increasing.

Thank you, Will. This is exactly what I mean. I am not being condescending by saying that Rusty doesn't really get into the complex interactions of the climate, I'm just saying that he is using a reductionist model of how CO2 acts in a laboratory, not the real planet. I think we all have to be aware of ocean cycles, solar effects beyond TSI, volcanic changes, etc. I feel that Rusty has a great knowledge of the physics of the greenhouse effect but believes that can be directly converted into a number for the planet's warming this century, which I disagree with. There's plenty of evidence for this cautious viewpoint given how much knowledge we lack about the Earth's climate. No one is doubting the radiative forcing numbers in a vacuum, Andrew, but we are doubting them in the context of a nuanced climate.

Simple..

Greenhouse warming is a slow process which can be overwhelmed in the short term by higher amplitude factors which however do not affect the longer term trend to the degree that greenhouse warming will. Again, it's about the relative energies produced by each individual factor. Show me one or any combined the equal of 3.7W/m^2 per doubling of CO2. It can't be the Sun because it would need to deviate by 22W/m^2 to produce the same forcing. Ocean cycles? Zero forcing. Volcanoes? Significant but temporary unless we get many massive eruptions situated near the tropics. Anything else come to mind?

It doesn't need to be equal to 3.7W/m2...it just needs to cancel some of it to falsify the IPCC. How much change in forcing did we see during the Maunder from the sun, for example?

Ocean cycles also slow down warming with a -PDO which means society and ecosystems have more time to adapt. Also, the IPCC bases its theory in .2C/decade of surfacing warming accelerating to around .25C by the latter part of the century, so if this doesn't verify there is a problem. Never mind how much heat the ocean is accumulating. This is a problem.

[ORH_wxman]

Thank you, Will. This is exactly what I mean. I am not being condescending by saying that Rusty doesn't really get into the complex interactions of the climate, I'm just saying that he is using a reductionist model of how CO2 acts in a laboratory, not the real planet. I think we all have to be aware of ocean cycles, solar effects beyond TSI, volcanic changes, etc. I feel that Rusty has a great knowledge of the physics of the greenhouse effect but believes that can be directly converted into a number for the planet's warming this century, which I disagree with. There's plenty of evidence for this cautious viewpoint given how much knowledge we lack about the Earth's climate. No one is doubting the radiative forcing numbers in a vacuum, Andrew, but we are doubting them in the context of a nuanced climate.

It doesn't need to be equal to 3.7W/m2...it just needs to cancel some of it to falsify the IPCC. How much change in forcing did we see during the Maunder from the sun, for example?

Ocean cycles also slow down warming with a -PDO which means society and ecosystems have more time to adapt. Also, the IPCC bases its theory in .2C/decade of surfacing warming accelerating to around .25C by the latter part of the century, so if this doesn't verify there is a problem. Never mind how much heat the ocean is accumulating. This is a problem.

The heat sink issue with the ocean is a problem...it can absorb a tremendous amount of heat without sfc temps being changed...in fact it can go so long that we could easily go into another ice age before it can reach its limit from the greenhouse effect.

[skierinvermont]

Thank you, Will. This is exactly what I mean. I am not being condescending by saying that Rusty doesn't really get into the complex interactions of the climate, I'm just saying that he is using a reductionist model of how CO2 acts in a laboratory, not the real planet. I think we all have to be aware of ocean cycles, solar effects beyond TSI, volcanic changes, etc. I feel that Rusty has a great knowledge of the physics of the greenhouse effect but believes that can be directly converted into a number for the planet's warming this century, which I disagree with. There's plenty of evidence for this cautious viewpoint given how much knowledge we lack about the Earth's climate. No one is doubting the radiative forcing numbers in a vacuum, Andrew, but we are doubting them in the context of a nuanced climate.

It doesn't need to be equal to 3.7W/m2...it just needs to cancel some of it to falsify the IPCC. How much change in forcing did we see during the Maunder from the sun, for example?

Ocean cycles also slow down warming with a -PDO which means society and ecosystems have more time to adapt. Also, the IPCC bases its theory in .2C/decade of surfacing warming accelerating to around .25C by the latter part of the century, so if this doesn't verify there is a problem. Never mind how much heat the ocean is accumulating. This is a problem.

The IPCC has large confidence intervals and acknowledged uncertainty so it is doubtful that the lower predictions will ever be falsified by slight variations in solar energy.

The numbers and equations Rusty is giving are not numbers and physics for how CO2 acts in a lab.. they are solid, basic physics for how CO2 acts in the earth's atmosphere which is not really disputable. Certainly not by anything you have brought forth.

[ORH_wxman]

The IPCC has large confidence intervals and acknowledged uncertainty so it is doubtful that the lower predictions will ever be falsified by slight variations in solar energy.

The IPCC's thinking is obviously flawed though...why do they say CO2 overwhelms ocean cycles on a decadal level? There seems to be quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Its hard to trust anything they say when they don't even acknowledge something that is becoming fairly obvious. Their confidence interval at the 95% level is going to be busted in the next couple years almost certainly. I posted the confidence intervals on eastern and this raging Nino only brought it up to the mean (from the brink of being busted in 2008) and it will certainly be out of the lower bound this coming year and who knows for how long after that.

[skierinvermont]

The IPCC's thinking is obviously flawed though...why do they say CO2 overwhelms ocean cycles on a decadal level? There seems to be quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Its hard to trust anything they say when they don't even acknowledge something that is becoming fairly obvious. Their confidence interval at the 95% level is going to be busted in the next couple years almost certainly. I posted the confidence intervals on eastern and this raging Nino only brought it up to the mean (from the brink of being busted in 2008) and it will certainly be out of the lower bound this coming year and who knows for how long after that.

To the bolded: where do they do that? The sections I have read they have merely dismissed them as long term factors in surface temperature (IE 50 or 100 years not 10 or 20)

Regarding confidence intervals.. the confidence intervals will only be busted for the medium and higher sensitivity models and only if you select particular start points. There's some argument to be made for picking something like 2003 or whatever Lucia uses because that is when the models published in the IPCC 2007 were made.. but it also happens to show much less warming than if we pick 1999 or 2000.

What you seem to be describing is not using linear trends to test confidence intervals, you seem to be suggesting using instantaneous values to test confidence intervals. I do not think that is the right way to go about doing it, since you would expect a certain % of instantaneous values to fall outside the confidence interval. It is advisable to test confidence intervals using trends, and even then you have to be careful what start and end points you use.

Regardless of selective endpoints.. I think the confidence intervals for the lower sensitivity models will not be busted in the next few years. In my mind, this lends credibility to the lower sensitivity models.

[WeatherRusty]

Thank you, Will. This is exactly what I mean. I am not being condescending by saying that Rusty doesn't really get into the complex interactions of the climate, I'm just saying that he is using a reductionist model of how CO2 acts in a laboratory, not the real planet. I think we all have to be aware of ocean cycles, solar effects beyond TSI, volcanic changes, etc. I feel that Rusty has a great knowledge of the physics of the greenhouse effect but believes that can be directly converted into a number for the planet's warming this century, which I disagree with. There's plenty of evidence for this cautious viewpoint given how much knowledge we lack about the Earth's climate. No one is doubting the radiative forcing numbers in a vacuum, Andrew, but we are doubting them in the context of a nuanced climate.

It doesn't need to be equal to 3.7W/m2...it just needs to cancel some of it to falsify the IPCC. How much change in forcing did we see during the Maunder from the sun, for example?

Ocean cycles also slow down warming with a -PDO which means society and ecosystems have more time to adapt. Also, the IPCC bases its theory in .2C/decade of surfacing warming accelerating to around .25C by the latter part of the century, so if this doesn't verify there is a problem. Never mind how much heat the ocean is accumulating. This is a problem.

I will call it a night with this..

The nuanced climate you allude to is addressed by the range in equilibrium feedback to a forcing the equal of 3.7W/m^2. That feedback will be positive to within a range of 2-4.5C. This is how past climates appear to have behaved relative to their forcings and of course those climates included Solar variability and coupled ocean/atmospheric cycles or oscillations too. It is expected that the future will behave something like the past has to a prolonged forcing.

[beneficii]

The heat sink issue with the ocean is a problem...it can absorb a tremendous amount of heat without sfc temps being changed...in fact it can go so long that we could easily go into another ice age before it can reach its limit from the greenhouse effect.

It also warms surface temperatures over the long term; there may be short term variations with this, but in general surface temperatures will warm.

[ORH_wxman]

It also warms surface temperatures over the long term; there may be short term variations with this, but in general surface temperatures will warm.

It could take centuries for the sfc temps to respond as is dictated by the energy going in vs out...there's a reason that ocean cycles have sometimes caused mini ice ages that last a thousand years despite no change in forcing from the sun.

[beneficii]

The IPCC's thinking is obviously flawed though...why do they say CO2 overwhelms ocean cycles on a decadal level? There seems to be quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Its hard to trust anything they say when they don't even acknowledge something that is becoming fairly obvious. Their confidence interval at the 95% level is going to be busted in the next couple years almost certainly. I posted the confidence intervals on eastern and this raging Nino only brought it up to the mean (from the brink of being busted in 2008) and it will certainly be out of the lower bound this coming year and who knows for how long after that.

It doesn't for the short and medium term, but when you start getting into looking at decades CO2 will have the actual effect, because it causes a change in the net energy input of earth, as explained by Rusty. The oceans' effect on surface temperature represents internal energy exchanges that will vary a lot in the short and medium term, but not so much in the long term.

[beneficii]

It could take centuries for the sfc temps to respond as is dictated by the energy going in vs out...there's a reason that ocean cycles have sometimes caused mini ice ages that last a thousand years despite no change in forcing from the sun.

My understanding is that such things tend to have local and regional effects a lot more than a global effect, and there's little evidence that anything like that is about to happen. What we've seen lately are short and medium term exchanges of energy between different areas on earth--this is what Trenberth was referring to, for example.

[ORH_wxman]

My understanding is that such things tend to have local and regional effects a lot more than a global effect, and there's little evidence that anything like that is about to happen. What we've seen lately are short and medium term exchanges of energy between different areas on earth--this is what Trenberth was referring to, for example.

That extremely debatable and probably not true. They have been trying to say this about the medieval warm period too but more and more evidence is that it was a global phenomenon and not a regional one. There is a cloud cover and albedo feedback during all of these things. A lot of them are not well understood which is why its silly to just keep printing the company line about CO2...we do not understand the feedbacks very well, nevermind about the ocean heat sink properties.