Slashdot Mirror
Sun Not a Significant Driver of Climate Change
damn_registrars writes "Scientists from Edinburgh, Scotland have recently published a study based on 1,000 years of climate data. They have compared the effects of differing factors including volcanic activity, solar activity, and greenhouse gases to find which has the most profound effect on climate. They have concluded that the driving factor since 1900 has been greenhouse gases."
In related news, angered Sun goes supernova, replies "I'm not a significant what!?"
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
c. 1350-1850 A.D. Increased volcanic activity was noted but is only one of several (possibly compounding) possible factors.
Besides, changes in solar activity levels may have a delayed impact via ice melt, changes in atmospheric circulation, etc.
Sherlock
weather stations near heat vents!
climatologists trying to make a buck off the rest of us!
anti free market hippies!
last time you said it was an ice age!
look at my linear fit to the last 4 years of data!
I posted this same bit as a journal entry and it took very little time to see a standard conservative reply. I don't expect it will be long until we'll see the same one here.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Therefore, the Sun is always the #1 contributor\ driver for climate change. Any changes to the Suns output would significantly and directly impact climate models.
In other words, these guys are loons.
Yeah, ever since Oracle bought them . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm not sure what that sentence means, but I think you are trying to sound superior.
give total control over the economy to the politicians, it is the only way to appease mother earth
... is the question of whether anyone has bothered to do any studies of the southern hemisphere? This study seems to focus on the northern hemisphere. Which makes sense since that's where most of the industry has been set up.
Yep. Science is now for true believers. The method has been abandoned. Anyone who disagrees or is skeptical is to be ridiculed and destroyed. Yay fascism, boo debate.
Seriously? Who didn't knew that already and thought instead the sun was somehow getting hotter?
How did the world warm up and cool down before then? Perhaps that is relevant?
'driving factor" - what _exactly_ does that mean?
So they've never even seen the Sun.
Ouch!
I don't know what that was, but it was sarcastic rather that conservative or liberal.
Now a scientific mind, if one were actually interested in science - well a scientific mind would look at this study and say, well then I guess we can conclude the low period of solar activity we are in has nothing to do with the now decade long pause in global warming.
So even though we've poured many, many tons of CO2 into the atmosphere (well, other countries anyway, the U.S. having done their part in lowering emissions already) we still don't see significant warming increases.
I wonder, is it possible you can draw a scientific conclusion from these interesting facts in combination?
Probably not, for the religious fanatics never have been able to abandon their cherished gods, no matter how bitter the Kool-Aid becomes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Over the last 2 months the Drudge report has been full of climate news. All of it being evidence against AGW. Such as the US just had one of the 10 coldest years on record. The UK getting record snowfall despite AGWers claiming the UK wouldn't see snow after 2008. Antarctica getting within .5 degrees of the coldest recorded temperature on earth. Along with 2000 record low temperatures recorded over the last couple of months. Add that to the IPCC report showing no warming for 17 years.
Its become pretty obvious which side has been lying. Now they are grasping at straws to report ANYTHING that shows their side "might" be right. I'm going to ignore the alarmists and look at the evidence myself. If AGW was real, they wouldn't have to lie as often and at least ONE of their predictions would have happened.
I see you did not actually look at the Nature paper they published. The title is: "Small influence of solar variability on climate over the past millennium". The key word is variability. As in variations in solar activity aren't a major driver in climate change, not the Sun itself.
In other words, you are the loon.
false, the Sun and insolation drives climate and climate change, greenhouse gas effects are secondary. First thing one learns in any serious geophysics course.
Well tell that to my dog Max who only naps in the sun beams.
Our oceans and lakes would boil away.
Therefore I conclude that the sun certainly plays a role.
You'll note this study does not cover any serious fraction of the Earth's history, a couple thousand years is a sneeze.
Do you know how derivatives work? Probably not, so I'll remind you. The derivative of a function is its rate of change. The derivative of a constant is always zero, no matter how big that constant is. So if you have a small function that's rapidly fluctuating, it can have a big derivative, whereas a really large signal that's barely changing at all can have a small derivative.
Yes, almost all of the Earth's energy comes from the Sun. But that doesn't matter, because we're talking about climate change. Is the derivative of the Sun's output power big enough to explain the derivative of the Earth's temperature, and are the two at all correlated? Some people who are much, MUCH smarter than you, have looked at the data, and decided that the answer is no.
As an aside, this is why math education is important even for people not interested in STEM fields. You can't think logically when you don't understand such basic concepts.
Yup. It's crazy, someday they'll feel bad but right now they're just embarrassed.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
I wonder if, in a decade or two, when evidence mounts to even greater certainties, whether AGW deniers will apologize to the rest of us for the damage they caused, or whether they will simply disappear into the mist like GWB supporters did.
Maybe they'll just go Tea Party, and become strident climate-change activists, whose plan of action somehow involves keeping Mexicans out.
Well, there's this thing called the null hypothesis. Once it's significantly disproved, then we pretty much accept the science as is unless someone else comes along and proves the study wrong. I mean, you're free to hem and haw and be skeptical, but you forget the scientists have already gone through that -- The null hypothesis is the ultimate skeptic. So, yeah, folks will ridicule anyone who's irrationally skeptical for the same reason we laugh at folks who have no evidence for their beliefs. Having no evidence for your disbelief is the same thing. Don't forget, we're all looking for new answers and better information. Science isn't a fucking debate you twit, evidence is evidence. You want to have a dialog in the language of science? Bring me some fucking evidence and we'll talk.
The article's title is patently false and provable as such. Time to report reality.
The Earth's orbital changes around the Sun varies from more circular to more elliptical and its axis wobble changes and the net effect is that the different solar inputs are what causes the major climate shift on about a 110,000 year cycle.
The Sun rules. Eventually as the Sun becomes a Red Giant, the Earth will become hotter until all life and water evaporates and eventually the Sun will effectively consume the Earth.
In a very short period of time, other factors may cause climate changes including asteroids, volcanism, forest fires and mankind's creation of soot, CO2 and such.
On a geological time scale there's the ongoing dilemma of what is known as the Faint Young Sun Paradox. So yes, the sun did drive global warming... billions of years ago.
When those who disagree or are skeptical are funded by self-interested oil companies, or blend their criticism of scientific papers with simple political baggage, then yes, they are ridiculed.
When those who disagree or are skeptical do so in a way that raises a point which has already been addressed and discounted by experts in the field, then yes, they are ridiculed.
On the other hand, you are right to feel that the 'agree' side (for lack of a better word) has a mostly politicized and unthinking membership, too. For me, that problem manifests itself in the (as I see it) idiotic opposition to non-GHG-emitting power sources like fission, fusion, tidal, etc. on environmental grounds.
But you shouldn't let the existence of that mob blind you to the fact that the evidence to date supports the theory that human greenhouse gas emissions are warming the climate, and that a warmer climate will entail significant practical problems, on a human scale at least.
But-but- our computer model matches. Believe in the model!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Not to mention "we looked at 1000 years but we're only speaking for 100."
They found that their model of weak changes in the sun gave the best correlation with temperature records, indicating that solar activity has had a minimal impact on temperature in the past millennium.
This methodology does not justify that headline.
do you know how I know you're as dumb as a fucking bag of hammers, shit for brains?
Because a millennium is suuuuch a long period of time.
Not.
false, the Sun and insolation drives climate and climate change, greenhouse gas effects are secondary. First thing one learns in any serious geophysics course.
I made a mistake and read the referenced article. When will I learn...
I think what it says is that the computer models don't show significant change when the solar radiation input is modified. I don't think I'm splitting hairs here. They aren't saying that the climate is not affected by changes in solar radiation.
The computer models are just approximations for the climate. They have been proven to be bad at predicting the future (like the current 10 year lull in warming). Wake me up when the computer models account for the ice ages.
Bah!
Heh, Look at all those moronic posters replying to the headline.
The study says that greenhouse gases were the most significant factor and that the sun was negligible in comparison, not that the sun has no effect on warmth. The sun would certainly tend to contribute heat but we're talking about CHANGE, not stable sources of warmth, over more time than the 11 year solar cycles.
Please tell me the oil companies are paying shills to post here, the posters are seriously challenging my faith in humanity otherwise.
So first you call people dumb. Then you go full dumb. You want calculate the derivative of the Sun's power output? Then how about you calculate it on a big enough period and not just 1000 years or whatever "fits". I'll tell you why you don't do that, or why you don't look at temperature, CO2 and biomes in other ages. It is because it fucks up their models so badly they can't mangle them enough to make the data fit what it should.
If the sun isn't the major driver of temperature then why is it colder at night?
... shouldn't every year have to be warmer than the past?
Also why isn't the effect of carbon dioxide cumulative? How can we have colder years
Somewhere, there are people who took the science out of science --- maybe to argue with religious people or something --- but this social consensus crap isn't how real science is done.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
You've chosen to ignore every fact that's been shown to you. It's become abundant clear, over the past several years, that you have no interest in any rational debate. So yes, you deserve ridicule. You deserve to be shoved aside so that the intelligent people can try to fix this problem before its too late.
Yay science is now a matter of opinion without proof outside of conjecture.
hmm, false! Learn to differentiate time scales. That should be the first you should have learned in any geophysics course.
1000 years is not 1,000,000 years is not 1,000,000,000 years.
Geological timescale is on the right. The human timescale is on the left. The AGW is on the left.
I don't need to calculate shit. The scientists did, and they're better at this than I am.
You don't know what you're talking. Seriously, you have NO FUCKING CLUE. Do you tell the contractors what thickness screws to use in your roof? Do you tell your electrician what gauge wire he should run? Do you tell your doctor which drug he should prescribe? So why the fuck do you think you can tell scientists how to better do their job?
This idiot culture, where we glorify "folksy wisdom" and condemn "book-learnin" is going to be the death of us.
Astronomical objects hate being anthropomorphised.
Yep. Science is now for true believers. The method has been abandoned. Anyone who disagrees or is skeptical is to be ridiculed and destroyed. Yay fascism, boo debate.
Honest skepticism is important to Science: scientific theories are considered reliable not because of the strong arguments in favor of them, but because they survive scientific challenge.
But its equally important to recognize that just because skepticism is important to Science, doesn't make all skeptical commentary equally valid, and more importantly it doesn't make all sides equally valid. Its important for scientists to continue to question General Relativity. But when the rubber meets the road, I'm trusting Relativity over any other skeptical invention intended to overturn it. Relativity has survived a lot of challenges. Upstart competitors haven't.
Climatology is an imperfect Science, and its being refined all the time. But Relativity didn't overthrow Newton: Newton is so well tested and established nothing is going to overturn Newtonian gravity because it explains too much of the world too accurately. Relativity *refines* Newtonian gravity in extreme situations Newton was never checked against. All competitors to Einstein are also competitors to Newton: we all know Newton was close enough in most cases: its extraordinarily unlikely anyone is going to discover a normal situation where Newton just plain fails. Anyone wanting to replace Einstein has to not only do better than Relativity, but also better than Newton. Similarly, Climatology is being refined, but the odds are not high that its going to simply fall apart one day. Thinking that will happen represents a complete misunderstanding of how Science itself works.
OK, so if we have a bowl of water under a heat lamp, and we turn the lamp on and off at a steady rate, say, toggle it twice a minute. Now we measure the temperature of the bowl of water, and it's average over the the week is pretty consistent. Now let's say we came in to measure it one day and there's some plastic wrap across the surface of the bowl. We measure the water and the temperature is increased. We say, Hey, the greenhouse effect caused by the plastic wrap is causing a change in temperature.
Then some morons say, "But the Steady Heat Lamp! The Heat comes from the Heat Lamp!" We're talking about an increase or change in temperature, and you're saying it doesn't make logical sense that variation in the heat lamp activity isn't a major driver of change to the climate because the heat lamp cycle is steady?
Please explain your troll logic, because I need a good laugh.
You need to educate yourself. Start reading about the Jurassic period in Earth's history. Please check the CO2 levels and temperature throughout that time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic
Our issue at work as mainly been that our usability department thinks too much in term of specific devices instead of thinking in term of screen size and input type.
They think "Desktop", "Lap-top", "ipad", "iphone". Thats it.
That omits the fact that there's desktops with less screen than some lap-top, that some laptops have touch screens, some tablets have keyboards (and mouse!), that there's more than 1 kind of iphones, that sometimes desktop OS run on tablets, and the entire android ecosystem (which, while a minority in e-commerce, is still 1/3rd of our traffic).
We're pushing for responsive layouts that ignore what specific environment you're in, and instead adjust to screen size and input type, which will work regardless of what combination of resolution and touch/mouse you have, but its hard to make them understand, instead we end up with features that only work on very specific devices, and look like crap on everything else. And the moment Apple releases a different device form factor, its panic. The mini might be a similar resolution, but its physical size is different, making buttons hard to see/touch, etc.
What journal are you publishing your theories in?
How about a list of your publications on this topic?
................. what?
Really? The seasons don't have to do with our earth orbiting the sun in an oval pattern? Evening isn't relevant?
...Steve
You mean the computer model that has been predicting warmer temperatures for more than a decade that haven't happened? That computer model?
-- Will program for bandwidth
Let me see if I've got where you are coming from right.
Meanwhile every little snowflake holds in their heads the certainty of a true reality but thanks to relativism we can pretend that everyone is correct! Apart from the experts of course. Anybody with a clue has to be denied because then where does that leave the people that want to argue that white is just a lighter shade of black?
I'm sorry but I see such a fuzzy viewpoint as opportunistic bullshit and I'll go with the experts on this one.
Feel free to write something that shows you are not such an idiot as it seems from what you've written.
Yes, publication bias is a pretty huge problem.
then we could destroy the sun, and our climate would be the same, without a sun.
They are looking at a much shorter time frame which does not include your "reality", so, while interesting it's not at all relevant. Such a thing should of course be obvious to anyone aware of it so I can only conclude that you have put it in to be silly or to try to fool the kiddies and make them think an irrelevant argument refutes what is in the TFA. So what is it - joker or slimy manipulator?
I'm really getting sick of this science denial bullshit that started with biology and geology but is spreading through everything like a cancer.
Scientists from Edinburgh, Scotland have recently published a study showing that the sun is not a significant driver of recent climate change.
Of course they think that - there is no sun in Edinburgh.
Look at it this way. The variance in solar radiation over a thousand year period is less than 0.01% of the variability seen in global temperature increase during the same period. In other words, the variability in solar radiative output (insolation) is far too small to explain the wide range of variance in global warming since the onset of the industrial revolution. In contrast, increase in carbon dioxide, as expected from the physics of its absorbtion spectrum explains cha.nge in temperature quite well (in fact it explains it rather well over the past 500 million years if isotope data is evalatuated).
It should be noted that there is no 18 years pause in global warming of sea temperature records. In fact, if one uses the arbitrary 18 year intervals to assess global atmospheric climate change, the record still shows global warming. Its just that within the last 18 years it has not been increasing as fast as the average over the last 100. Consequently, no one should be surprised that November 2013 proved to be the warmest November in recorded human history.
At least denialism is better funded than science. Who needs a future?
"They aren't saying that the climate is not affected by changes in solar radiation."
That's what they're saying. But they're offering absolutely nothing new here. This is merely a review of others' past (perhaps too long past) work.
What they do say (section 6.4, "climate change", which is their conclusive paragraph) is:
"Extensive climate model studies have indicated that the models can only reproduce the late twentieth century warming when anthropogenic forcing is included, in addition to the solar and volcanic forcings [IPCC, 2007]. The change in solar radiative forcing since 1750 was estimated..."
Here is a plain English translation. (This bit is pretty important.)
"Climate model studies by other people can only reproduce the late twentieth century warming when anthropogenic radiative forcing is included."
This paper actually claims no new evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming (CO2 AGW) is actually occurring. Their own statements (their own concluding paragraph above if you read the whole thing) says that they are relying on past studies to come to that conclusion. Other people concluded that. And they cite as a reference, an old IPCC report. The newer IPCC report is much toned down from the 2007 version they cite.
Not much to see here, and certainly nothing new, by their own admission. Move along now.
I should also point out that the entire concept of "radiative forcing" this is based on was refuted a few years ago, and so far that refutation has not been successfully challenged.
we don't have 1000 years of climate data. we know what the conditions were like based on samples found in the earth and even in some living plants, but we do not know enough information to have any real determination on cause. 1000 years is a too small of a sampling size, anyways, for the planet's climate data even if we had enough information. ~4.5 billions years old is the current accepted trend of the earth's age. assume that is still a bit long and make it 1 billion years (math is easier). 1000 years is .0001%. the results of study should be laughed out of the lecture hall.
Computer models to deal with the ice ages have been around for a while. Geocarb III (Bob Berner - Yale) comes to mind, as well as a few others.
Modern climate models essentially are working on an applied problem (anthropogenic forces) over a narrow domain (1900 - 2100). They don't deal with ice ages because they're not relevant to the time period we're trying to model.
Finally, the last decade was the warmest on record. Hardly a lull over historic averages.
http://bit.ly/19mTk7b
Fucking stupid summary! A couple of million miles is all it would take to change how the sun effects Earth's climate. Look, I'm all sold on the effects man has had on our weather, but to say that the sun is not a significant driver of climate is stooping to the depths of the deniers. Stop it!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
That if the Earth was removed from our sun's orbit, that our climate would not change because the sun is not a factor in the Earth's climate?
Because science is for chumps.
That gets a -1, while "science is now for true believers" below gets a +5? I'm glad the moderators are unbiased.
Are you saying the total heat output of the sun is constantly constant making it comparable to a blinking light bulb in a lamp that doesn't vary at all?
I'm curious because your explanation seems to indicate the lamp continues to function the same with or without the plastic wrap and the idea behind the sun being a driving factor is that the total heat output varies to some degree either by processes within the sun itself or in between the sun and the earth. What would you think if the lamp toggled 3 or 4 times a minute instead of just 2 for some periods of time?
The Sun is a primary energy source that is more constant than what the deniers are saying. When the Sun was supposed to reach a high in the 11 year cycle it missed it's mark this last cycle max. Still the climate data continues to show a steady rise in global temperatures. Even elevated CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) are not affecting climate change as most of the energy misses our little spit ball compared to the size of the energy wave. Even a direct CME impact would be a short term effect. The slow elevation of solar emissions would take Milena to affect the climate to the levels we are seeing.
What is left is the rise in carbon and other GHGs we are filling our thin gas envelope with. I don't need to go into the particle physics side of how much energy the element carbon stores Watch the Exxon commercial about the energy output of petroleum products.
Yes, after reading the synopsis I believe your summary is correct. Of course they sort of leave out the other possibility...that their models are not very good.
actually, even 1000 years ago in the "medieval warm period", the average global temperature may well have been as warm or warmer than the recent 15 years, the errors in estimation of magnitude are quite large.
My other post should have been more complete.
They also say:
"A value of 0.24 W mâ'2 solar radiative forcing difference from Maunder Minimum to the present is cur- rently considered to be more appropriate. Despite these uncertainties in solar radiative forcing, they are nevertheless much smaller than the estimated radiative forcing due to anthropogenic changes, and the predicted SCârelated surface temperature change is small relative to anthropogenic changes."
A few things should be noted here.
First, they mention the theory of AGW "radiative" forcing, which as I stated earlier is probably myth, according to physicists and experts in radiative heat transfer.
Second, they explicitly acknowledge the presence of the Maunder Minimum, which other climate scientists in the past have been loathe to admit, and indeed have taken pains to deny.
There's a great video by Bill Nye performing this very experiment.
Check it out at result of carbon dioxide in atmosphere
What the deniers are claiming is that somehow the bulbs really aren't of equal intensity, which in this experiment is easily shown false since one can place a second pair of thermometers on the top of the vessels at equal distances from their respective lamps and readily demonstrate that for these two thermometers the temperature outside the vessels are the same. Not surprisingly the deniers ignore the findings of the scientific article, which demonstrates that at least for the last 1000 years (of which the last 100 has seen the most warming) solar output has been relatively stable by comparison, with very little variation outside of the usual solar cycles that amounts to less than 0.01% difference in output from maximum to minimum.
Then why am I not under water by now, as where the so called 'solid' predictions of just 10 years ago said I would be? Why are only 1% of glaciers melting? and how is that significant? Why has the global temperature not risen in the last 10 years? Why hasn't new ice core data on how fast climate change has happened in the past been put into the climate models? I could go on and on, but your religion won't accept improved data because it may upset what you have already decided.
I do believe the scientific method requires YOU to bring the evidence, and to prove the null hypothesis has been dealt with. The scientific method requires those making the claim (in this case, AGW proponents) to show their work and their evidence.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Crap. I must be tired. Correction:
Not Maunder Minimum. They have not (usually) denied that nearly as much as they have the Medieval Warm Period.
Actual paper behind a paywall.
OK, now ask yourself - Why in the world would a nominal peer-reviewed scientific journal publish a paper about the political funding of an opposing viewpoint? Is that what counts as science? And you wonder why people don't just sit down and shut up?
I should also point out that the entire concept of "radiative forcing" this is based on was refuted a few years ago, and so far that refutation has not been successfully challenged.
Cite?
And one more. Apologies for the multiple posts. Re: the argument about "radiative forcing" in atmospheric gases.
Arguments refuting this idea are available HERE and HERE (pdf).
I'm not saying the sun is causing climate change... but its input to the system so radically dwarfs anything else that it can't help being relevant.
Even a tiny change in that input would have to have an impact. Now has the sun's input changed? Maybe not. I really don't know. But I'm dubious of any claim that its not worth incorporating into models. Especially when all the models didn't account for the pause in AGW that we've had in the last 10 years.
There hasn't been an increase since 1998. None of the models saw that coming. And that alone tells you that the models need to be taken with a grain of salt.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Also the scientific method is more consistent with using a null hypothesis predicted by theory than using one of "the sun has no effect at all". It is an approach to science that started in educational research, spread to psychology and the other social scientists, and is now widespread. It is still unclear to me whether it should be considered science at all if there is no theory capable of precise predictions. It is definitely different from the original approach.
THEORY-TESTING IN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSICS: A METHODOLOGICAL PARADOX*
PAUL E. MEEHL
http://mres.gmu.edu/pmwiki/uploads/Main/Meehl1967.pdf
Below.
ho hum. did the snow melt on the Himalayas. did the hockey stick materialize. did coastal cities disappear. did temps actually rise as predicted, or are you an ass hat. sorry. just tired of listening to groundless bullshit predictions based on models that are always wrong. here is the ultimate truth... hypothesis are reinforced by observable facts. if you keep making claims that are always wrong, you lose credibility.
You must have missed that whole no warming in 17 years thing.
Variations in solar output are not a major driver for the last century. That's what the article's about. It's clear you can't be bothered to read it because you already know the answer, spoonfed to you, no doubt, by the well-funded (http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/billion-dollar-climate-denial-network-exposed/) denialist industry.
You don't think over the millennia the earths atmosphere has stabilized to deal with the output changes that occur quite frequently. Think of it this way, yes the sun's output fluctuates but the percentage of the change is normally quite small. The Earth only receives a tiny fraction of the Suns output, so in essence the differences we feel are mostly blunted by our magnetic field and the rest is smoothed over by the oceans stored heat.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Awesome!
This means we can build huge engines and send the earth off to explore other galaxies! Since we don't need the sun, we can keep burning the oil and in 20 or so years orbit alpha centauri !!
I knew we needed those Nukes for propulsion!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
"What is left is the rise in carbon and other GHGs we are filling our thin gas envelope with."
There are LOTS of things "left". In fact there are so many variables, creating so much "noise", than any "signal" from AGW has been extremely difficult to detect (and indeed, might not even exist).
The Exxon argument is a straw-man. We know that burning fuel adds heat to the environment completely aside from any "GHG" forcing. One is not evidence of the other.
God refuses to give us the data from before he invented us.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I wanna see a diesel-fueled Flash Gordon rocket go to Proxima Centauri. (Because... well... its proximal.)
There is no anomalous "climate change" - the climate has changed many times over the course of history and will continue to do so. Humans are a minor contributor - one volcano pumps 5-10x the amount of CO_2 into the atmosphere as people do in a decade. Humans are like and ant's-fart - of course, the Liberals can't rape you out of taxes on the truth, so they publish non-sense, and popularize BS...
Let's say that I believe this even less than I believe Congress - or the President, and I wouldn't trust either of them if they said, "The sun will rise tomorrow." I would wait and see...
Are we really obliged to refute every manufactured opinion of faux scientists, paid liars and psychotic ideologues float in order to keep the fossil fuel gravy train going ? At what price.
Wikipedia comes through in fine form on this topic. I urge people to everyone reading this to donate 3 bucks a month on an ongoing basis to Wikipedia. It's a commons we all draw upon daily.
Thanks Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
There's this.
http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/
They are also looking for donations:
Right on, the SUN is the only driver.
Remove it, and place earth in plutos orbit, and darm its gona get cold.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"The Sun is not the major driver of the climate..."
"...change." The one word you were forced to elide for some reason was "change". Not climate. Climate change. Climate variation over the last century.
It doesn't get any dumber than this,
that's significant. the sun changes our 'climate' (temp.) 24/7/365. free the innocent stem cells.
Neither one of the fine articles linked to in the summary mention radiative forcing. Neither do either of the two references you cite as proofs that radiative forcing has been debunked. The Wikipedia describes radiative forcing as:
In climate science, radiative forcing is defined as the difference of radiant energy received by the earth and energy radiated back to space.
There is no mention of it being refuted (or even controversial); not in the Wikipedia article and not in the two references you cited. In fact, since radiative forcing is a rather simple definition it is hard to imagine how it could be refutable.
Furthermore, this reference of yours, despite having pretty pictures, seems to be based on utter nonsense with the main point being:
Internal [actual greenhouse] temperature cannot exceed maximum strength of solar heating input.
This is utter nonsense because it makes a direct comparison between heat and temperature. It would be helpful if the article mentioned what the temperature limit of the strength of solar heating was. But if they did that, the utter nonsense would be apparent because the temperature of a solar furnace can be many thousands of degrees (either Celsius or Fahrenheit) so if there is limiting temperature, it must be so high as to be meaningless in discussions of global warming.
Another way to see it is that if you can trap solar energy in a box that has perfect insulation (energy comes in but it does not go out) then the temperature of the box will rise without limit. Of course there is no such thing as a perfect insulator so there are limits to how high a temperature you can achieve but these limits are not a direct property of the solar radiation. There is a temperature limit, of a sort, to solar radiation but the limit is the temperature of the surface of the Sun, which again has no bearing on discussion of global warming.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Earth tilt 23deg, has some effect ya know
Thats why we have summers and winters.
Even with all the clouds sunshine is variable, not constant.
Dude, go check 1000 years of sunspot history by chineese compared to global temps.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
1000 year sample out the last hundred million years (which itself is only 1/10th the time of life on the planet), is just not a good enough sample to conclusively state any facts about the sun vs. man made greenhouse gases as "the major cause". It is preposterous and pseudo-science at best.
Also, where are the charts comparing natural sources of methane (a much greater green house contributing gas) vs. man made CO2? Because there is a lot more methane released naturally then made made CO2 in every report I've read on the subject. Why is this never mentioned in these articles?
Agree that the Sun is the source of all the energy in the climate. The composition of the earth's Atmosphere, oceans and crust, have been likened to the "thermostat" in that they can absorb or reflect that energy to varying degrees.
CO2 has been a major factor in climate for a looooong time, at least as far back as the Cambrian explosion since CO2 is what melted "snowball" earth prior to the Cambrian explosion. CO2 can be both a "feedback" (melting permafrost) or a "forcing" (volcanos, human emissions). When acting as a feedback it always amplifies the direction of the change. We have known about CO2's major role since the 1950's when improved spectrometers finally pinned down it's role in the ice ages, ( Milankovich cycles alone cannot account for the magnitude of the changes observed in the ice ages).
Our best estimates of an important metric called "climate sensitivity" come from Fourier's formula and paleoclimatology (aka-geology). Fourier's formula alone gives ~1.5C rise for a doubling of CO2 but that assumes Earth is an ideal black body, which it is not. Adding geological evidence to estimate the feedback component brings it up to ~3.0C, the error bars are between 1.5c and 4.5C for a doubling of CO2, with the upper limit being far less certain then the lower. The uncertainty at the upper end is due to the lack of knowledge on things like frozen methane in deep ocean beds. The recent IPCC report downgraded the risk from sudden "tipping points" so the current high end estimate of climate sensitivity (whatever it is exactly) has a smidge more certainty than the previous report.
Disclaimer, IANACS, just a layman with a 30yr interest in the subject, don't rely on what my aging neurons tell you, WP is your friend for climate facts and trivia and I'm more than happy to be (politely) corrected.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Over the 5 billion years earth has been in existence, what were the key drivers (top 10 list) of major climate changes? We know for a fact it was not man made greenhouse gases. Do we know for a fact that man made green house gases is for the first time in 5 billion years of earth's history the prime reason for climate variability and change? Or are we perhaps pointing fingers in the wrong direction and one of the culprits from the past is to blame and history is repeating itself?
I'm super happy that the climatology profession has been the longest profession over tallow renderer. Since sun is the catalyst to any multiplier effect i.e. refractory clouds I'm kinda surprised they've calculated it to have sucha tiny effect.
I should also point out that the entire concept of "radiative forcing" this is based on was refuted a few years ago, and so far that refutation has not been successfully challenged.
What? Everything I've seen suggests it is alive and well. I probably fit in the 'skeptic' camp, but I don't see anything wrong with the concept of radiative forcing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Do you tell the contractors what thickness screws to use in your roof?
I sure hope you don't because, uh, you attach your roof with nails.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The thing with Science is that you amend established theory in the light of new evidence or improved analysis of existing evidence. And that's what we see here.
Of course you never bothered to glance at the article before grabbing your keyboard, but if you had, you would have seen that this study tries to see which hypothesis about what factor was the main driver of climate the best fits the reconstructed temperatures over the past 100 years (based on observations).
The reason why we conduct studies like these isn't to identify the drivers of climate in the past hundred million years. It's to identify the main drivers now and in recent times, such as the past 100 years.
The question of what the driver of climate has been in the past 100 years is one open to investigation and debate. To be blunt: that case wasn't closed after you finished your geophysics course.
Counter to your claim, this study finds that assuming insolation was the main driver of climate over the past 100 years is not consistent with reconstructed temperatures.
I think you do a genuine disservice to any informed debate on what the cause of the (observed) global warming by donning a mantle of quasi-authority and (a) confusing the question of climate drivers on a geological timescale with those happening now and (b) dismissing a study you never even bothered read.
You have some catching up to do. Because there are not sufficent permanent temp stations in the Arctic, the amount of warming seen there has been seriously underestimated.
Rapid Arctic warming is one of the features of global warming / climate change and it should have struck the doubters as very strange that the most staggering decrease in the volume of Arctic ice was occurring during a period where there was SUPPOSEDLY no warming.
And, it's always been grossly inaccurate to say "no warming for 17 yrs" as temps have been slowly rising in places where there are adequate numbers of stations.
The correct statement is "no statistically significant warming". That is NOT the same as saying "no warming" or "we're in a cooling period".
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It would affect the probabilities slightly.
Do you tell the contractors what thickness screws to use in your roof?
I actually agree with you, but as an aside, I do know an engineer that ran the numbers himself and asked for a sturdier roof design than what the contractors were planning to do.
Mars used to have plenty of water, a comfortable atmosphere, and perhaps some living microbes.
Mars had undergone a very nasty climate change, and the peculiar thing is, Mars has no human.
Anyone care to explain what happened to Mars (without the involving the Homo Sapiens Sapiens) ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"They aren't saying that the climate is not affected by changes in solar radiation."
That's what they're saying. But they're offering absolutely nothing new here. This is merely a review of others' past (perhaps too long past) work.
This paper actually claims no new evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming (CO2 AGW) is actually occurring. Their own statements (their own concluding paragraph above if you read the whole thing) says that they are relying on past studies to come to that conclusion. Other people concluded that. And they cite as a reference, an old IPCC report. The newer IPCC report is much toned down from the 2007 version they cite.
Ok, I can't get around the paywall from home and I can't tell from the abstract whether it's a survey as your comments kinda indicate or if they're doing fresh analysis on previously collected data which the article and my reading of the abstract indicates.
But in either case the basis of your argument is a bizarre attack on standard scientific practice. I mean your damning criticism is "Other people concluded that."? I get that denialists try to deny the scientific consensus exists, but you're actually trying to claim that consensus in itself is evidence of a problem!
I stole this Sig
The evidence for greenhouse gas forcing comes from the physics of the atmosphere and extensive direct measurements of infrared properties of it from ground, aircraft, balloons and spacecraft.
This is by far the most certain part.
The signal from AGW has not been difficult to detect at all. That's the point of the article.
your citation below was "successfully challenged" below. Any further evidence?
And just a week or 2 ago it was lack of sun spots that was stopping global warming......... So if the sun spots have very little effect, that means this article just disproves man made global warming.
I don't know why solar activity is not part of the sun. My guess is that the scientist is trying to confuse the low information guy into thinking the sun dose not effect climate change when it dose.
Why don't you jump in your time machine and check about 200 years in the future to see that those things happened? If you want instant gratification you're looking in the wrong place.
I thought that this was understood, but good to make it explicit.
No, anybody who disagrees or is skeptical is encouraged to submit their data and reasoning and assumption and physics.
And others will also be skeptical of those as well and examine them.
This "issue" is not an issue any more than the question in cardiology of whether blood circulation arises from the heart or the gall bladder.
Frankly, that "Climate Sophistry" page is absurd. Never mind that two fifths of the article is a section entitled "Modern Philosophical Analysis", the basic premise of the article displays a basic misunderstanding of fact.
The article claims (in the most obtuse way imaginable) that the way the so-called "greenhouse effect" does not mirror the actual observed behaviour of greenhouses here on Earth.
If the authour had even a basic grounding in science he would know that "the greenhouse effect" is NOT how greenhouses retain heat. The greenhouse effect was so named in 1824 by analogy to the effects observed in a greenhouse, not because the mechanism was the same.
Is "greenhouse effect" therefore a bad name for way radiation is trapped in a planet's atmosphere? Maybe, but in almost any introductory text on the subject you will see phrases like "would have a sort of greenhouse effect" that clearly show the term to be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Regardless, I cannot understand how any reasonable person could make that leap from "bad name" to "ALL CLIMATE SCIENCE IS LIEZ OMG".
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
A perfect example of Dunning-Kruger at play.
The "hockey stick" was from actual data! D'oh!
Temperatures have risen, and the changes in atmospheric radiative properties have been observed and confirmed for ever.
There was a major prediction about global warming in a Nature article in 1980. The understanding then was substantially less mature and there was no clear-cut observed signal in the data at that time (as we know now, fossil fuel soot was temporarily counteracting increased greenhouse forcing). Since then, observed data have turned out the way that it was predicted then, and the understanding of the fundamental physics then is the same as now.
The predictions are not groundless, and the models aren't wrong.
The hypotheses HAVE been reinforced and confirmed by observable facts, over and over and and over and over and over.
"Then why am I not under water by now, as where the so called 'solid' predictions of just 10 years ago said I would be?"
Citation needed.
"Why are only 1% of glaciers melting? and how is that significant? "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850
"Why has the global temperature not risen in the last 10 years?"
Citation needed.
"Why hasn't new ice core data on how fast climate change has happened in the past been put into the climate models?"
They're working on it. You need validated physical and biological models to do this. (Of course the denialists will then disbelieve them because they're models). What the consequences of this fact is that natural feedbacks and feedforwards in the climate system possibly could make the climate response to greenhouse alterations much worse and more rapid than predicted now.
Since postscripts seem to be popular in this thread, I will add one here containing direct quotes from that article.
(I will not get into the maths here to keep this article readable for non-math people.)
Judging by the contents of the article, I would suggest that the exclusion of the maths was also to keep the article writable for non-math people.
The climate science version of the greenhouse effect, [is an] example of the creation of a simulacrum [...] And just like the Matrix, only a few people are able to see through it.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
As in variations in solar activity aren't a major driver in climate change, not the Sun itself.
Is this the best reasoning you can come up with? It doesn't even make logical sense.
Where's that '-1, deliberately obtuse' mod when you need it?
"Or are we perhaps pointing fingers in the wrong direction and one of the culprits from the past is to blame and history is repeating itself?"
If it is, where is the experimental evidence?
Do you imagine that people who do this science for a living have never ever once thought about this in the decades that they've worked? Your question is presupposing a scientific capability somewhere near Aristotle.
One of the culprits from the past, present and future is the greenhouse effect. On this, the extra gases emitted by humans increase the magnitude of the existing, natural effect, and this is validated by direct experimental measurements.
It is more oft a School debate where People give the Same tired fucking Ten already debunked Stuff and Cry censorship/endofdebate/scienceisnowfaith when they get rebuffed that on their poorly thought Argument get rejected. So come up with new Shit or stuff you.
There are LOTS of things "left". In fact there are so many variables, creating so much "noise", than any "signal" from AGW has been extremely difficult to detect (and indeed, might not even exist).
One thing I'm not aware that any of the models have accounted for is "wobble" in the Earth's orbital axis-tilt, nor, come to think of it, slight variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun. The slowly-enlarging orbit of the moon and the accompanying lessening of tidal forces would also have to play some role as well.
There's also the reported slowing of the spin of the Earth's iron core, which produces Earth's magnetic field.
You're also correct that a mere 1,000 years of data is orders of magnitude too tiny a sample to make any sort of predictions with any credible/meaningful percentage of assurance they are correct.
No amount of software modeling wizardry or scientific genius can make up for having insufficient data. "I'm sorry Captain, we have insufficient data at this time."
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Oracle?
That is not a plain English translation it is translated into Moron. This is a research paper, not a survey article. The paper analyzes an collection of historical *data*, not a bunch of scientific papers other people have written (although each data set in the collection may have been used in a separate paper.)
I feel. . .so. . .loved.
Thank you!
If only this fraud wasn't getting buried by glaciers.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
You must have missed that whole no warming in 17 years thing.
You must have fallen for the climate deniers' play on public ignorance. The full and correct statement is this: "There has been no statistically significant warming in the past 15 years."
Notice that the word "statistically" is emphasized because it makes all the difference. If you remove it, the statement will be about plain average temperature. But as it is written above with the word "statistically" in place, the statement is about error bars around the average. The longer timespan you measure, the smaller the error bars become. 15 years timespan is just barely too short to make definite conclusions. But 16 years or more is enough and the conclusion is that warming is still ongoing.
God refuses to give us the data from before he invented us
Before we invented him/it/the deity. Just one among humanities endless parade of gods.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Submited the story earlier but wasn't voted. The paper can be found here
I think his problem is that the entire study is an examination of other people's work rather than any new information.
Let's see, that is the last 0.000025% of Terra's 4 billion year age. That is the equivalent of deciding what is normal for a 35 year old man by looking at what he did in last 20 minutes. What would someone decide is normal for you if they looked at the last 20 minutes of your life?
I am very interested to know how this researcher determined solar output for the last 1000 years with no records.
As near as I can tell, this is simply a rehash of other people's research say "I concur with what they said even though I did no actual research"
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
CO2 and other anthropogenic pollution and depletion factors are accelerators and destabilizers. Not fuel - per se. The Sun is a humungous source of energy - but far from the only one.
The difference is tlike that between facing an explosion in a cardboard shanty or in a small concrete bunker with the doors closed. No bathtubs. No baffles.
No laundry chutes. We clogged most of those up pretty well. With trash.
Energy accumulates in the system. Dynamic equilibrium center-points move about. Excursion ranges increase. Patterns change. Energy is more than just heat. All well known facts from the early 80s on.
One thing I'm not aware that any of the models have accounted for is "wobble" in the Earth's orbital axis-tilt, nor, come to think of it, slight variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun. The slowly-enlarging orbit of the moon and the accompanying lessening of tidal forces would also have to play some role as well.
There's no point accounting for Milankovitch cycles unless you're simulating climate across at least several thousand years. The cycles are so long that they have negligible impact on simulations of less than a thousand years.
No, I'm not talking about the article or merits of the study. I'm talking about the fact that we, as a civilization and a species, approach these issues without politicizing them, turning them into a referendum on everything from the existence of God to whether or not blind people should be allowed to buy handguns. We live on the Earth -- the only Earth we are currently able to access and inhabit, given our current technology and resources. So why is it that we constantly cannot reach any sort of consensus on how to proceed on these issues? Is making a few trillion more from fossil fuels that important, for those who attack the idea of climate change? Likewise, is the elevation of science to a religion so important to those on the left that this has become a dogmatic, holy cause where dissent is met with ridicule? I understand that American society is awash in stupidity and complete ignorance of even basic principles of logic (anecdotal evidence is the deciding factor about how most people seem to feel about things), but here has to be some point where everyone says enough is enough and starts approaching the issue with a level head and realizing the implications if the science is right and nothing is done. Yeah, sorry for the rant...I'm tired of humanity's inability to get its head out of its butt and look past more than the next Super Bowl or imperial...err...presidential election.
Solar output has been gradually increasing for a long time, and some "skeptics" claim this is the real reason for the climate changes we've observed (ie: not greenhouse gas emissions). But the emerging consensus is that this increase in solar output is nowhere near enough to account for the warming we've seen in the last century.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I see you did not actually look at the Nature paper they published. ... In other words, you are the loon.
Excuse me?? That anon up there didn't RTFA - he is not a loon, he is just upholding /.'s finest traditions.
There's no point accounting for Milankovitch cycles [wikipedia.org] unless you're simulating climate across at least several thousand years. The cycles are so long that they have negligible impact on simulations of less than a thousand years.
They can't even create models that reliably track with the little climate data we have for the last several thousand years.
Now you expect them to predict to a much more precise degree climate across a mere thousand years or less? That's the equivalent in geological-climate-cycle terms to the argument that short term weather has nothing to do with long term climate.
There are many major contributors to climate change that we simply don't understand sufficiently nor have enough data about to be able to calculate their influences with sufficient accuracy and reliability to make it something that should be cause for inflicting by government force major hardships and condemnation to poverty and suffering for billions, and the stagnation of the progress of human civilization.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A RIAA-financed study proved that the largest cause of global warming is copyright violations.
Do not look directly at the sun!
Or, to put it another way - - "Do not pay any attention to the Sun behind the curtain."
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
One thing I'm not aware that any of the models have accounted for is "wobble" in the Earth's orbital axis-tilt, nor, come to think of it, slight variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun.
Which happens on a scale of 10,000 and 100,000ds of years.
The slowly-enlarging orbit of the moon and the accompanying lessening of tidal forces would also have to play some role as well.
Sure, as the moon does exactly what to warm or cool the earth?
There's also the reported slowing of the spin of the Earth's iron core, which produces Earth's magnetic field.
Hm, strange as a matter of coincident I had checked that yesterday. Nearly burned my fingers, damn hot down there. Now as you mention it, I checked the rotation of the core again. I see no difference.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Nah, we made adjustments to the model and it doesn't do that any more. It explains everything perfectly, once we added a bit more weight to the "fudge factor" variable.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Take your argument up with the folks at the IPPC. Even they admit it.
And you must have missed the little thing about volcanos erupting underneath the Arctic in the past decade.
Invalid, that does not contradict TFS or TFA. The point being made is not that solar activity is a minor influence, but that that changes in solar isolation cannot account for the patterns of climate change over the last millennium in the northern hemisphere, and that effects of volcanism and greenhouse gases fit the data better.
An appeal to authority which has at times been wrong, paid for publish and simply fabricated and passed.
"the temperature of the box will rise without limit"
wow. Total Science Fail
I never understood this side of the argument. Let's say that the "skeptics" are right, and that the reason for the climate changes we've observed is in fact a gradually increasing solar output. Does that mean that we should just throw up our arms, sit back, and wait until the sun cooks us? That it doesn't make sense to try to stem the warming trend? That rising oceans inundating our coastal cities aren't a problem?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
They can't even create models that reliably track with the little climate data we have for the last several thousand years.
Now you expect them to predict to a much more precise degree climate across a mere thousand years or less? That's the equivalent in geological-climate-cycle terms to the argument that short term weather has nothing to do with long term climate.
Would you care to explain how this quote relates to my previous post? I think you should read my post again and much more carefully.
There are many major contributors to climate change that we simply don't understand sufficiently nor have enough data about to be able to calculate their influences with sufficient accuracy and reliability to make it something that should be cause for inflicting by government force major hardships and condemnation to poverty and suffering for billions, and the stagnation of the progress of human civilization.
Actually, we CAN estimate the effect of unidentified influences from how well the simulation of known influences matches observed reality. The better the match between simulation and reality, the less space there is for as yet unknown major contributor. And so far the result is this: Models without man-made greenhouse gases don't match reality no matter what input parameters you use. Models with man-made greenhouse gases can match reality pretty closely for certain values of input parameters.
The guys who published this "scientific work" must be off of there rocker. So all of the previous work that has found a strong correlation between solar activity and climate were flawed.... pull my other leg.
"Greenhouse gases" are insignificant without solar radiation to react with them. I know what they're saying, but it is not an accurate assessment and is obviously intended as a political jab at those of us who seem to have more clarity when evaluating all of the facts absent of a leftist political agenda. Greenhouse gases generated by humans is insignificant compared to your average volcano. Mt. Pinatubo in the early 1990s dumped more "greenhouse gas" pollution into earth's atmosphere than all fossil fuel emissions cumulatively going back to the invention of the internal combustion engine. The "science" of global warming is nothing more than a political agenda fostered by an unscrupulous minority of pseudo-scientists and statist policy-makers to garner more power, and manipulate the vast, uninformed populace to vote/support/lobby for the perpetuation of that power. If "climate change" is truly happening, then it will happen despite what Man does on this planet. The planet has undergone catastrophic climate changes in the past 4 billion years or so, and all without "evil" corporations and their scary smokestacks, and SUVs. Message to all you "Global Warming" fanatics: Get over yourself already. You're not that smart. And you're not that important.
It should say that the Sun was not significant compared to all of the other factors they took into account over the past 1,000 years, including freaking volcanic eruptions. Umm.. ya think?
But it also doesn't sound like it says that much for anthropogenic warming however, because man has only contributed to that in any significant manner in the past 100 to 150 years, just 10% to 15% of their time base sample. Does it still answer whether mankind is putting the same levels of CO2 into the atmosphere, in the same time frame (essentially a burst), that a volcanic eruption does?
Mind you, I have no issue with alternative energy, far from it; I really wish solar were further along in efficiency than it is; oil and coil are filthy and crude (no pun intended) and kinda primitive, we need to outgrow fossil fuels; I just don't quite buy into the alarmist scenario, which has some questionable political motivations behind it.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I think what it says is that the computer models don't show significant change when the solar radiation input is modified. I don't think I'm splitting hairs here. They aren't saying that the climate is not affected by changes in solar radiation.
So they're using existing climate models, which -- judging from the "established consensus" that CO2 is the driving agent of "global warming", are likely to be designed to show that CO2 levels are the primary forcing input for temperature, and minimize the effects of other inputs, so when they put in variations in these other inputs, amazingly the models show little variation, which apparently proves that solar variation is not a major forcing input for temperature. Unfortunately, this merely proves that the models agree with themselves and each other -- which is unsurprising, given that they were all developed around the same set of preconceptions, not that the models accurately predict the climate. Which, judging from all of the climate scientists scrambling to show that the sixteen-year halt in warming is predictable in their models (although it is curious that none of these climate scientists showed that their models predicted a halt in warming until after the halt occurred, much like the charlatan psychics that come out of the woodwork after disasters claiming that they'd forseen this happening).
Is we coded our climate change computer models NOT to respond to changes in sun. And therefore, when we adjust the intensity of the sun there is minimal effect.
And yet, we know that even sunspots and minor things such as that have a pronounced affect on Earth's climates.
Computer Models != Real Life (at least not on the scale of estimating a planetological scale.
You've picked your nit accurately and with great force.
If I were going to pick a slightly larger nit, it would be that sunspot activity likely has a profound effect on EM activity with the earth and it likely produces more Ozone due to increased charging of the magnetosphere -- it's part of the reason I think that increases in solar output are counterbalanced by an increase in the capacity for the upper atmosphere to block radiation.
The sun is actually really, really balanced in output, because any increase in Fusion and heat causes it to expand, which causes it to cool, which reduces fusion and then heat. The entire system is a marvel of self-regulation. To think that a giant ball of burning gas can be stable within a few degrees.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
If it was volcanoes, you would see ice loss year round, not just in Arctic summer.
The IPCC are not researchers and are never on the cutting edge. They evaluate a huge swath of research and come to a compromise conclusion.
As far as ice loss, they've been behind the curve for the past several reports and we're seeing Arctic ice levels that weren't expected for several decades.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
You mean like the very well documented stations that were out in the boonies and are now next to grocery markets and ware house air conditioner vents?
Ya, probably 20%-40% of those stations in the U.S. are in questionable locations.
After Willard Watts' Junior Woodchucks went around identifying good and bad stations, researchers used the "good" stations to derive the temps and got almost exactly the same results - indicating that the correction factors that's been used for decades by the USHCN are reliable.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Has this emerging consensus investigated increase of aerosol particles due to increase of input?
Is the emerging consensus fully versed in mathematical chaos and deterministic unpredictability?
Change means a new reality, new paradigms. History NEVER exactly repeats itself, just rhymes sometimes.
It's the same type of bullshit of the human condition repeating over and over again. This time, the same people are calling it "scientific".
Einstein asked what is the definition of insanity? Few people listens.
How wrong was Leonardo Da Vinci? How inspired and talentful?
How wrong was Einstein? How insightful and progressive?
Consensus doesn't make anybody "right", and other people "wrong", except in people's delusions.
Historically, it's been a fallacy, again and again.
Why? Because the masses and leaders can't take that some people are trend-leaders and more inspired, more insightful, etc. than themselves. So they arrogantly need to define themselves "correct" (whatever that means).
Look, I also think it's horrible what we're doing to our planet. I'm not seeing much action to correct the wrongs though, or fund true understanding of our conundrums. At least not publically. Yes, there are always more than one perspective, and often, historically, the unpopular notions prove to be _more correct_ (not perfect) over time.
But it's not so satisfying to truly investigate and admit that we don't really know that much, as it is to ridicule and marginalize, to cover up one's own flawed and biased thinking.
Captcha: conceive
Where the fuck do you think all of that fuel we burn comes from? The sun is *THE* driving factor, as it is with every other thing on this planet. Plants can't grow and die and break down to become greenhouse-gas releasing fuel without the sun from the get-go. The sun + axial tilt is responsible for driving our weather patterns, which is the biggest form of climate change we have.
Whoever wrote this is one ignorant and short-sighted person. How does this drivel make it past the editors? Perhaps we need editors with brains.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
*sigh* Do you know how to actually look for information? Do you know that weather in one part of the globe is not the same as another? Do you know that Europe is warmer than North America or Siberia because?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early and mid-20th century.
For example, do you know that right now Russia is experiencing record warm December as there is very cold outside my house in North America? Do you know that right now is one of the warmest months on record?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-percentile-mntp/201311.gif
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/
Dude - way to throw a wet blanket on a joke. :/
GGP has a point, though - a sample of only 1,000 orbits (out of what, 4.5 billion?) isn't even acceptable by statistical standards when you're trying to determine what effect the Sun has on our climate.
It's like interviewing one toddler, then using the results to claim that all of North America really hates the taste of spinach.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Mann's hockey stick was created with adjusted data. The unadjusted data looks entirely different. There was nothing actual about it.
Solar output was relatively high from 1950 until about 1985, but has been falling ever since. The following link plots solar output vs temperatures: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp-dts/mean:12/offset:1.40/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:136/scale:0.024/plot/pmod/offset:-1365.35/mean:136/scale:3
Solar output is typically around 1365.5 WM^-2. Every 11 years or so it rises by 0.5 or even as much as 1 WM^-2, but then falls back down to around 1365.5 after a few years. CO2 is currently causing a sustained forcing of 1.9 WM^-2 relative to preindustrial CO2 forcing (given by 5.35 LN(C/C0)). This sustained forcing dwarfs the periodic energy fluxuations from the sun.
Curiously, "skeptics" who argue that these small changes in solar output can cause the changes we've seen in temperature are arguing that the Earth is very sensative to relatively small forcings. If this is the case then it would seem inconsistant to also argue that the sustained forcing from CO2 is insignificant.
Awe.....look. Santa left more Global Warming Crap Science under the xmas tree.
Santa even wrapped it in "Climate Change" to make the present prettier.....so thoughtful!
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
the temperature of the box will rise without limit
wow. Total Science Fail
Given the assumptions of a perfect insulator and constant energy input, what is the limiting temperature? What happens to energy conservation when that temperature limit is reached?
As I said before, there are, of course, limits due to imperfect insulation and the finite temperature of the surface of the Sun but these limits are far above the temperatures reached in the upper atmosphere.
What is the limiting temperature of the strength of solar heating?
What is the limiting temperature of a perfectly insulated box with a constant input of energy?
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
You've picked your nit accurately and with great force.
The Slashdotter Jane Q. Public had repeatedly claimed the Nature article was bunkum because it was based on the concept of radiative forcing. For example:
I should also point out that the entire concept of "radiative forcing" this is based on was refuted a few years ago, and so far that refutation has not been successfully challenged.
To me, it would be rather earth shattering news if a Nature article was based on a theory that was debunked five years ago. I looked up radiative forcing to try to find out what JQP was talking about. JQP was kind enough to supply references for the so-called refutation which should have made my task easier. The references were utter nonsense that defied basic physics with silly hand waving arguments.
Since JQP's erroneous comments were not moderated into oblivion, correcting their spread of grossly unscientific misinformation which cast aspersions on the fine Nature article is about as far from nit-picking as one can get.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
A carpenter that works with my brother attaches everything with screws, but pounds them in with a hammer.
In hurricane- and tornado-prone areas they're attaching the roof decking (plywood) to the trusses with screws, since the roof will be less likely to peel off in extreme winds. There are special screw guns available just for this application.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
No one except the producers of 'Waterworld' said you would be "under water" by now. Ocean levels have risen measurably, on the order of centimeters to millimeters depending on local conditions (no, 'sea level' is not the same everywhere).
One percent of glaciers? Where? Have you seen photos of Glacier National Park from 50 years ago, and today? Or the Alaskan glaciers? I travel in Peru frequently, and the difference between the glaciers of 1987 and today is appalling. The Cordillera Blanca near Huaraz is almost ice-free for the first time in (IIRC) 120,000 years. Our Kenyan friends say that the glacier on Kilimanjaro is almost gone. When my mother was in Switzerland the hotel had photos of the glacier that currently occupies the peak of the mountain, but which was within a couple of kilometers of the hotel when it was built.
Is it difficult to ignore all the evidence refuting your "global temperature not risen in the last 10 years" claim? I would think it must take a certain amount of effort.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
For the first time in over a hundred years, it snowed in Cairo. Yes, Cairo. Jerusalem had three feet of snow, and last week Vietnam had snow. Yes, Vietnam. Also for the first time in a hundred years.
Fact is, none of the computer models accurately predict the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm period (when it was considerably warmer than now, Britain grew very nice grapes and had its own wine industry), and the Dark Ages Ice Age. During the Medieval Warm period, Greenland had grasses and TREES. The Glaciers retreated.
If you want me to believe a theory of Global Warming, it has to account for these known historical climatic periods, as well as the sudden end to the last Interglacial Maximum, around 9,000 years ago, when Earth suddenly got a LOT warmer.
All these dramatic, less than fifty years or so, transitions from very cold to very warm (both quite a bit colder and warmer than today) took place with miminal if any human effect on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or really any effect on the Earth's environment.
It is NOT SCIENCE if it does not adaquately explain both past experience and accurately predict the future. It is merely relgious belief.
If you want to believe in human original technological sin and redemption by rejecting technology, go ahead. Live like a hippy in the dirt. Me, I want science. not baked data, hidden data, "trust us" opaque computer models, no open sourcing, and worst of all, no sharing of raw data, methodoligies, and results.
Science requires experimental proof. See Einstein's theory of relativity, proven over and over again not by a model but by experiments. This is not science. It is not falsifiable or provable. Merely a religious belief.
His experiment only illustrates that CO2 has the ability to absorb energy, which everyone understands. However he used 100% CO2 in his experiment and the earth's atmosphere only has .04%, so it is quite misleading "proof".
"Given the assumptions of a perfect insulator and constant energy input, what is the limiting temperature? What happens to energy conservation when that temperature limit is reached? "
And equilibrium, the "limiting temperature", assuming a black body, is the temperature that corresponds to radiating the same amount of energy as the input. Anything else is nonsensical.
And therefore, (despite your semantic nitpicking). If it is treated as a black body in regard to emissivity and absorptivity, it cannot radiate at a temperature greater than the input. Furthermore, if it is a "gray body" (as are most things in the real word), the differences in emissivity and absorptivity can be accounted for.
There are two things to note about this:
(1) It was an explanation for laymen. While he might have chosen his words better it was not intended to be a rigorous proof. (2) The POINT being made by the author is that the "radiative forcing" model fails, because the "true greenhouse effect" model -- i.e., the one that retains heat due to limits on convection -- by itself adequately explains the actual observed temperature.
The report from is not even written by all of the scientists of Edinburgh, Scotland; much less the world. Your assumptions are as faulty as the person you are criticizing.
"the temperature of the box will rise without limit"
wow. Total Science Fail
So, assuming a perfect insulator (as stated) and continual solar energy input to this box, what do *you* suggest will happen?
"What is the limiting temperature of a perfectly insulated box with a constant input of energy? "
Your question is ambiguous. The temperature where? At the surface of the box, or at the external surface of the insulation? (The external surface of the box and internal surface of the insulation will be the same.) Where is your energy source? Is it external or internal? Is your box and insulation surrounded by vacuum? Etc. etc. etc. This question is too vague and assumes far too many things.
You will have to define your problem better. It's far too vague, and it doesn't resemble Earth at all.
Of course this little mind game is an impossible situation, since there is no such thing as a perfect insulator. In a perfect insulator, there can be no convective heat transfer (that's what an insulator does: it prevents convective heat transfer), and if it is transparent to the radiation at hand, there will be no radiative heat transfer either. So it makes no sense to even discuss the "temperature" of the insulation because there is none: no radiation whatsoever. It could neither absorb radiation or give any off.
But in a more realistic scenario (no perfect insulator), as explained in excruciating detail in the pdf I linked to before:
According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the surface of your sphere (which is what is primarily absorbing and re-radiating your input) will never exceed the radiative temperature of the input. I.e., at equilibrium there is no "flux" or net heat transfer (W/m^2 * s incoming = W/m^2 * s outgoing, net flux is zero) at that surface. There are only 2 other possibilities: the temperature would go up until it outshone the rest of the universe, or it would cool down to zero. But those things simply do not happen: there must be an equilibrium (conservation of energy). And at that equilibrium flux in = flux out = no net flux at all.
The point to note here is that at equlibrium (which must occur), flux in = flux out. That means that under no circumtances will the temperature ever exceed the input.
But what's funny here is that your "insulator" is, in fact, playing the role of the glass in the greenhouse: insulators prevent convective heat transfer. It can prevent convective heat loss, and help retain latent heat, but it won't raise your temperature above that of the input.
And none of that requires any "radiative forcing". We already have other principles of physics which explain it quite adequately.
Here is another scenario: imagine instead that your interior ball is a bit of an insulator, and that your outside blanket is both a perfect conductor of heat and absorbs all the incoming radiation. (Another unrealistic scenario, since a perfect conductor is almost as unlikely as a perfect insulator.) Assume also that your "blanket" occupies a respectable percentage of the overall outside diameter (i.e., it's thick in proportion to the diameter of your ball).
In that case, it is possible for the surface of your ball to be warmer than the external surface of your blanket, for the simple reason that the surface area is much smaller. So the W / m^2 * s (note the m^2 component) impinging on the surface of your "blanket" is being "perfectly" transferred convectively to your ball surface, which has far fewer m^2 to do the absorbing.
This is another unrealistic scenario because there are no perfect conductors. It is also not representative of Earth because our atmosphere is pretty thin compared to overall diameter. But again the point is: even though the surface temperature is higher than the incoming flux at the outside of the atmosphere, at the absorbing outside surface it is still true that flux in = flux out.
And [At?] equilibrium, the "limiting temperature", assuming a black body, is the temperature that corresponds to radiating the same amount of energy as the input. Anything else is nonsensical.
0) Requiring your arguments to be in accord with basic physics is not nit picking.
1) The Earth is not in thermal equilibrium with the Sun. If it were then it would be at the same temperature as the surface of the Sun. The only reason life can exist on Earth is because of the gradient caused by the Earth not being in thermal equilibrium with the Sun.
2) A black body is not the same thing as a perfect insulator. They are opposites in a way. A perfect insulator would block all radiative cooling (or else it would not be a very good insulator). My point is that the limiting temperature is a function of the insulating properties of the Earth. It is not an intrinsic property of the strength of solar heating.
If you treat the Earth as a black body you are explicitly ignoring all insulation effects. IOW you are ignoring all greenhouse effects. In simple layman's terms, how hot something gets when it is left out in the sun depends greatly on how well it is insulated. Even the temperature inside a conventional greenhouse is highly dependent on how well it is insulated.
3) When you say a black body in equilibrium radiates the same amount of energy it absorbs, you seem to be repeating the definition of radiative forcing, not debunking it.
If you believe there is a limiting temperature to the strength of solar heating that is much less than the temperature of the surface of the Sun, please tell us what that temperature limit is.
Neither of the fine articles linked to in the summary nor either or your two references even mention radiative forcing. If you have sources that don't conflict with basic physics which debunk whatever it is you mean by radiative forcing I would like to see them. Perhaps part of the problem is that your definition of radiative forcing differs from the definition given by the Wikipedia. So far you have given nothing more than your opinion that the authors of the Nature article made a serious (and probably job-threatening) mistake.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Which is not surprising at all. If you use raw measurements for anything, you're doing it wrong. There's this cool thing called "calibration table" or "calibration curve" which allows you to compensate for this kind of deterministic measurement error. When somebody builds a heat source next to the measurement station or the sorrounding area gets paved and the measurements suddenly jump up by a few degrees, the person in charge of the station is supposed to recalibrate it so the measurements can be compared against historical values from before the change.
You don't even need to physically visit the station in order to do that. You can recalibrate the station well enough just by comparing the raw measurements against expected values calculated from other stations in the area. Measurement errors introduced by urban development have the nice quality that they don't happen everywhere at the exact same time across a 30 mile radius.
"The references were utter nonsense that defied basic physics with silly hand waving arguments. "
Sorry. YOU are the one doing the hand-waving here. Can you refute Latour's math or not? If not, your own claim that it is "hand waving" is nothing but hand-waving.
You don't get to dismiss a scientific argument by simply disagreeing with it and calling it hand-waving. You must refute it or concede the point. Otherwise you lose the debate.
Anthony Watts of WUWT, Roy Spencer, and others have tried to refute Latour's arguments, and even performed some experiments to test it. As it turns out, the experiments were ill-conceived and did not test what they thought they were testing.
Those are just two examples. But the point is: nobody has yet successfully refuted Latour's science. And you don't get to dismiss it just because you don't like it.
"Since JQP's erroneous comments were not moderated into oblivion, correcting their spread of grossly unscientific misinformation which cast aspersions on the fine Nature article is about as far from nit-picking as one can get. "
I have provided evidence that you are wrong. You have provided NO evidence that I am wrong. All you've done is name-calling (things like "grossly unscientific misinformation"). Guess what, man? Your saying so doesn't make it so.
It's all about evidence. I have it, you don't. If you want to present some, I'd be happy to look at it. But until then, you have no argument.
"f the authour had even a basic grounding in science he would know that "the greenhouse effect" is NOT how greenhouses retain heat. The greenhouse effect was so named in 1824 by analogy to the effects observed in a greenhouse, not because the mechanism was the same."
The author actually devoted a great deal of the article to explaining this very thing. A big part of the point here is that people are speaking of TWO different "greenhouse effects": the "radiative forcing" greenhouse effect promoted by AGW proponents, and the "real" greenhouse effect which is how greenhouses work.
The fact that you didn't get this is really... interesting.
Is "greenhouse effect" therefore a bad name for way radiation is trapped in a planet's atmosphere? Maybe, but in almost any introductory text on the subject you will see phrases like "would have a sort of greenhouse effect" that clearly show the term to be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Again, you miss the point. The article is explaining to people that the "greenhouse effect" being described in the AGW models is NOT the "greenhouse effect" that keeps real greenhouses warm.
And you ALSO missed that the entire article is intended to be an explanation for the layman. It is not supposed to be 100% technically accurate. It is trying to explain the concepts involved. It is an explanatory article; it isn't necessarily trying to prove anything.
If you want the SCIENCE behind the explanation, read the pdf I linked to in the same comment.
"your citation below was "successfully challenged" below. Any further evidence?"
No. It was challenged. But it was by no means, even remotely, "successfully" challenged.
"Judging by the contents of the article, I would suggest that the exclusion of the maths was also to keep the article writable for non-math people."
No. As I explained above, it is intended as an explanation for the layman of the basic concepts. As such (and as is quite appropriate), the math was not introduced.
The math is contained in the pdf I linked to in the same comment. Go ahead, have a look.
If you can refute that math, I would be very interested in your arguments.
"What? Everything I've seen suggests it is alive and well. I probably fit in the 'skeptic' camp, but I don't see anything wrong with the concept of radiative forcing."
Then I suggest you look at the two items for which I provided links.
The paper analyzes an collection of historical *data*, not a bunch of scientific papers other people have written (although each data set in the collection may have been used in a separate paper.)
You would need to look at the other works the paper references. Here is an example from the abstract:
The amplitude of the associated changes is, however, poorly constrained (5, 6), with estimates of solar forcing spanning almost an order of magnitude (7, 8, 9). Numerical simulations tentatively indicate that a small amplitude best agrees with available temperature reconstructions (10, 11, 12, 13).
However, of you go look at the papers they reference for this information (like 7 and 10 just for example), you see that what they are actually saying is:
(A) It's hard to know what solar forcings are because the estimates span almost an order of magnitude. (This is important.) And
(B) Numerical simulations tentatively indicate that a small amplitude best agrees with available temperature reconstructions.
Okay? So far so good. Now: have a look at the paper referenced at (10). It is a paper stating that a particular climate model can simulate forcings that would account for the differences, if the sun did not.
We used a coupled climate system model to determine whether proxy-based irradiance series are capable of inducing climatic variations that resemble variations found in climate reconstructions, and if part of the previously estimated large range of past solar irradiance changes could be excluded.
(This paper also mentions that estimates of solar forcing are all over the map.) The conclusion of the paper, is that yes, they can in fact model observed climate change by using a radiative forcing model and excluding solar forcings.
So what you have, in summary, is a conclusion that because models can simulate forcings rather than the sun, the models are doing the forcings rather than the sun. Pretty much all these papers decry the fact that estimates of solar forcings are widely variable. So instead they are trying to replace it with models that are not widely variable.
In effect, they are using their conclusion as their premise. Because solar forcing estimates are all over the map, they claim their models better reflect reality because they are not all over the map.
But... is this a justified conclusion? After all: I can model wind with a fan, and get rid of all that pesky and hard-to-estimate-because-it-is-too-variable wind. But the fact that fans give more reliable results is not evidence that fans cause wind.
That's exactly what the scientists had been saying but Watts built up a huge following partly on his criticisms of station siting and encouraging people to submit photos of ones that were apparently poorly sited or ones where the surroundings had changed over time, e.g. urban development, new roads, etc.
Of course, if a station had been moved at some point, there was plenty of criticism for that too.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The evidence for greenhouse gas forcing comes from the physics of the atmosphere and extensive direct measurements of infrared properties of it from ground, aircraft, balloons and spacecraft.
This is by far the most certain part.
Funny... it's physicists and recognized experts in radiative heat transfer who are disagreeing with the concept. Since the concept involves physics and radiative heat transfer, I am rather inclined to believe them over "climate scientists".
The point to note here is that at equlibrium (which must occur), flux in = flux out. That means that under no circumtances will the temperature ever exceed the input.
Again, you are confusing heat and temperature. The input is energy (heat), the input is not temperature. No one who has grasped basic thermodynamics would take your argument seriously after that fundamental mistake. You seem to be just stringing together scientific jargon in a nonsensical way to reach a conclusion you like.
In a different post you claim that convection plays a significant role in the heat loss of the Earth. The upper atmosphere is close to being a vacuum. At a high enough altitude the amount of heat transfer due to conduction and convection is negligible. Do yourself a favor and Google(thermosphere).
You claimed the fine Nature article was wrong because it was based on radiative forcing yet you have never defined what you mean by that term. Your definition seems to be at odds with the definition given by the Wikipedia. The term was never used in the article nor was it used in the two references you gave to back up your claim that radiative forcing had been debunked.
Again, I ask, in the Earth-Sun system what is the "input" temperature if it is not the temperature of the surface of the Sun?
And BTW I do have a Ph.D. in physics. A Nobel Laureate was the chairman of my thesis defense and I've study thermodynamics with some of the leading experts in the world.
***click***
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Again I can't see the actual paper but you didn't explain what you meant by that either.
Do you mean it's a review, it's a re-analysis, or it's something else entirely?
I stole this Sig
GGP has a point, though - a sample of only 1,000 orbits (out of what, 4.5 billion?) isn't even acceptable by statistical standards when you're trying to determine what effect the Sun has on our climate.
Actually, he doesn't and it's clear that neither of you know as much about statistics as you think you do. A sample size of 1000 is good, and it doesn't matter how many orbits the planet has made. If you understood statistics you would have been talking about bias in the selection (the last 1000 years) rather than the size. Of course, since they're looking at the current factors driving climate change rather than the factors over the entire lifetime of the planet, the bias is irrelevant because the sample includes all the years we actually care about (minus those that haven't occurred yet, for obvious reasons).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Actually one needs to consider the type of statistical universe used, not just the units used. Considering that planetary processes operate in timeframes of thousands of years and longer, one MIGHT consider a million years worth of data as the appropriate sample size. . .
Jane, I think you've been snookered. The author is playing a game of bait and switch and you fell for it hook, line and sinker. The whole article rests of the supposedly logical assumption that two different effects with the same name can't both exist because they operate differently.
Look, I'll put this in layman's terms. The guy claims the temperature inside a greenhouse is not higher than the temperature inside the greenhouse and therefore climate science is a hoax. Obviously, that's a ridiculous argument. More specifically, there's a false dichotomy (either one or the other must exist but not both) followed by a non-sequitor. Specifically, I don't see why climate science is wrong because an astrologist can't measure the "global greenhouse effect" inside his greenhouse. The conclusions are simply not supported by the evidence or the argument presented.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Sure, as the moon does exactly what to warm or cool the earth?
Let me introduce you to the concept of tidal forces and their effect causing significant heat as as the mass of a planetary body, especially the crust, flexes in response.
Check out Europa and the Jovian tidal forces that generate enough heat energy to keep water liquid that far from the sun, and even cause huge geysers, for an example.
Hm, strange as a matter of coincident I had checked that yesterday. Nearly burned my fingers, damn hot down there. Now as you mention it, I checked the rotation of the core again. I see no difference.
We are actually becoming quite good at being able to analyze and gather data from the passage of shock waves through materials, thanks in large part to military-driven research.
We are just beginning to understand what lies far beneath our feet. In fact, they've relatively recently come up with an almost entirely new structural opposing-spins model for the inner and outer cores.
Here are a couple of articles briefly describing it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110220142817.htm
This part I found interesting:
In particular, as the inner core grows, the heat released during solidification drives convection in the fluid in the outer core.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2423629/Earths-inner-core-spins-eastward-direction-faster-rate-planets-surface.html
Now, where do you suppose all that convection is eventually transferring all that heat energy to? Heck, that's almost an entirely separate climate system in itself which we have extremely little understanding of.
Are you saying that we know and understand enough about this to safely rule it out of climate models?
Look, we simply have not been around to collect enough data or advance our understanding enough about the myriads of systems and even basic structure of the planet to make reliable predictions. The only prediction we can make with certainty is that climate will change on the planet. Anything more is an educated guess, at best.
Humans should be concentrating on becoming a space-faring species that can concentrate most of it's energy collection/generation and resource collection and processing off-planet, along with self-sustaining colonies, possibly either space habitats at Earth/moon La Grange points or on Mars or elsewhere.
The hoarding mentality that would have humans increasingly restricted in their energy and resource consumption is based on assuming that we must continue to only exploit the resources here on Earth and that humans will never live independently off of Earth, nor provide energy or resources to humans on Earth from off-planet.
If you truly want to be "green", push for full-on private and commercial exploitation of space and the establishment of colonies with the goal of eventual self-sufficiency. This will do more to eliminate the negative effects of humans on the Earth in a permanent way than anything else (short of killing ourselves and/or returning to hunter-gatherer level) we could possibly do.
Now, *that's* what I call "forward"!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"Requiring your arguments to be in accord with basic physics is not nit picking. "
As I stated before, he probably could have worded it better. People make mistakes. But yes, in my opinion, requiring 100% technical accuracy in a layman's explanation is asking a bit much.
The Earth is not in thermal equilibrium with the Sun. If it were then it would be at the same temperature as the surface of the Sun. The only reason life can exist on Earth is because of the gradient caused by the Earth not being in thermal equilibrium with the Sun.
Hahahahaha! Nobody said the Earth was in thermal equilibrium with the Sun, for Christ's sake. What a bizarre thing to say. As I already explained, the black body will be at equilibrium with its input. Its input is obviously not direct contact with the surface of the sun, and nobody claimed that it was. The input is the solar irradiance that falls on the Earth system (globe + atmosphere). This is a very, very different thing from the surface of the sun, and nobody here implied otherwise. (Plus a little bit of "cosmic" radiation.)
The examples I gave had, as a premise, that the input was equal all around, to simplify the mental experiment. But I wasn't proposing to increase it, just to distribute it equally.
My point is that the limiting temperature is a function of the insulating properties of the Earth.
Again, a very strange thing to say for someone who is insisting on technical accuracy. No, even if what you are trying to say were correct, it would be the insulating properties of the atmosphere, not of the Earth.
If you treat the Earth as a black body you are explicitly ignoring all insulation effects.
YOUR question called for a perfect insulator. Such does not exist. As I stated before (which you seem to be ignoring): insulators are limiters of convective (and conductive) heat transfer. They don't limit radiative heat transfer. I repeat: if you want a thorough treatment of the thermodynamics of the surface of the Earth, GIVEN that the atmosphere has insulating properties, look at the other article (Latour, pdf) I linked to before.
"If you believe there is a limiting temperature to the strength of solar heating that is much less than the temperature of the surface of the Sun, please tell us what that temperature limit is. "
What does this mean? You are the only one who brought up the surface of the sun. Are you trying to imply that the Earth could somehow be heated to the temperature of the surface of the sun? Why and how? The Sun is about 93 million miles away. Do you think you could get burned, by same temperature as the surface of the burner on your stove, if you were to hold out your hand at the other end of the house? What?
I honestly do not understand what your sentence is supposed to mean, so I have no way to respond to it meaningfully. Except to say that none of this has anything to do with what I "believe". It has everything to do with science.
"Neither of the fine articles linked to in the summary nor either or your two references even mention radiative forcing."
Radiative forcing is the theoretical driver of temperature in the "Greenhouse Gas" models. If you don't know anything about the subject you are discussing, how do you presume to know what is truth and what is not?
"Again, you are confusing heat and temperature."
No, I am not. "Temperature" is a measure of heat radiation. If you don't believe my sources, try Wikipedia:
When a path permeable only to heat is open between two bodies, energy always transfers spontaneously as heat from a hotter body to a colder one. The transfer rate depends on the thermal conductivity of the path or boundary between them. Between two bodies with the same temperature, no heat flows. These bodies are said to be in thermal equilibrium.
Note: "... energy always transfers spontaneously as heat from a hotter body to a colder one". While that statement has a condition, this is still by far the limiting principle. Further, the only permeable paths between Earth and its inputs are radiative.
The input is energy (heat), the input is not temperature. No one who has grasped basic thermodynamics would take your argument seriously after that fundamental mistake. You seem to be just stringing together scientific jargon in a nonsensical way to reach a conclusion you like.
I didn't say heat = temperature. I stated that flux in = flux out = no net flux. For a black body at equilibrium the flux out will equal the flux in, AND the temperature of the surface at equilibrium will be equal to the radiative temperature of the input. I made the qualification that it is a black body. I also explicitly stated that if it is a gray body rather than a black body, the temperature might be different at equilibrium but the net flux will still be zero.
The comment referred to is in reference to an ideal black body. I did say that. There is no confusion here.
"And BTW I do have a Ph.D. in physics. A Nobel Laureate was the chairman of my thesis defense and I've study thermodynamics with some of the leading experts in the world. "
Wow. Ph.D. in physics, and you are somehow claiming the radiative input to Earth is equivalent to the surface of the sun? Really?
Your physics might be excellent, but I think you might want to concentrate on reading comprehension and writing skills then.
"The whole article rests of the supposedly logical assumption that two different effects with the same name can't both exist because they operate differently."
NO, it doesn't. The concept the article rests on is that the "radiative" greenhouse doesn't exist because the other, real, greenhouse effect is already sufficient to explain the temperature. Therefore that other "effect" has an actual effect of zero. Which means it doesn't exist.
And I will repeat: that article is just an explanation of the concept for laymen. If you want the science behind the concept, read the other article I linked to.
According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the surface of your sphere (which is what is primarily absorbing and re-radiating your input) will never exceed the radiative temperature of the input. I.e., at equilibrium there is no "flux" or net heat transfer (W/m^2 * s incoming = W/m^2 * s outgoing, net flux is zero) at that surface. There are only 2 other possibilities: the temperature would go up until it outshone the rest of the universe, or it would cool down to zero. But those things simply do not happen: there must be an equilibrium (conservation of energy). And at that equilibrium flux in = flux out = no net flux at all.
In the first sentence, please note that I wrote "radiative temperature" of your input. That is, the temperature that corresponds to the sum of your input. (I did not say that radiation = temperature, or that heat flux = temperature.)
I admit that at that point, I had not explicitly pointed out that I was discussing a black body; I had assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that my reference to Stefan-Boltzmann made that much clear. But I should have stated it explicitly and I apologize for any confusion.
So to repeat what I wrote elsewhere: for a black body in a vacuum, the surface temperature will never exceed a temperature corresponding to the sum of the radiative input. (This is not the same as saying temperature = radiation or temperature = flux). As I did mention elsewhere, this is not necessarily true of a non-black body (e.g., a "gray" body with emissivity
But even so: the Latour article explains, in some detail, why none of this has any relationship to a supposed warming due to an imagined "radiative forcing" that is assumed in the greenhouse gas models. The equilibrium temperatures mentioned above will be reached without regard to "radiative forcing" or regarding the atmosphere as "insulation".
The point that the kiddie's explanation in the other article was trying to make, is that simple known physical principles already explain the temperature of a greenhouse quite adequately. The imagined "radiative" greenhouse model, then, has zero effect and so can't be said to exist, other than in some climate scientists' minds.
The "less than" character and the remainder of that line got deleted by Slashdot.
That should have read:
(e.g., a "gray" body with emissivity less than one).
The most accurate predictor of weather in the UK does so by watching what the sun is doing.
He mentions that in the film mentioned in "The Great Global Warming Swindle"
As we all know now the Hadley Climate Unit was fudging the data and I am sure
that others were as well, and this is more about the money then some Oil man
board member for Occidental Petroleum making a "Inconvenient" film.
As they used to say long long ago..... Cui bono....aka "Who Benefits" ,
other also like to say follow the money.
When you check out the Carbon Credit Exchange scam and who lined
up to rake in the mega bucks it starts making more sense, and why
big oil will get more of a dodge then small time independent coal operators.
I agree 100% we need to get off fossil fuels, and I believe Iceland already has
shown the way for most of the world, especially nations on the ring of fire and
other highly volcanic areas of the planet.
Geothermal, Wind, Tidal, Ocean Current, Solar Thermal, Vertical Hydroponic Algae Oil,
can solve all our energy needs and much cheaper then the current military adventures
by the Military Industrial Complex tacked onto government subsidized oil prices.
Shingles are fastened to a roof with nails.
One of the popular theories of the demise of Mars is that a solar flare stripped off the atmosphere. Dont listen to thr globalist carbon tax pushing minions and their greenhouse agenda.
I understand what the author was trying to say. I am saying his premise is entirely wrong.
Firstly, there is only one definition of "The Greenhouse Effect", not two as claimed by the article. That is the greenhouse effect of global warming. The mechanism that keeps greenhouses warm is not called the greenhouse effect.
There is no attempt at sophistry, no double-meaning, and you are not living in the Matrix.
Secondly, because of this, OF COURSE the greenhouse effect's impact on the temperature in the greenhouse was minimal. The dominant force in that system would be the trapping of the heat that would normally have been lost by convection, i.e. the normal mechanism by which greenhouses stay hot. Trapped radiation (i.e. the greenhouse effect) would have minimal effect.
As a footnote, that PDF (which appears to be a text paste of a website in order to move the contents up the trustworthyness scale) really doesn't apply to the contents of that page. Regardless, google the title of that document and you will find all the refutations you seek.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Nighttime
"I understand what the author was trying to say. I am saying his premise is entirely wrong."
And I understand what you are saying, and I (and he, and that other author I linked to) are saying that you are wrong.
"Firstly, there is only one definition of "The Greenhouse Effect", not two as claimed by the article. That is the greenhouse effect of global warming. The mechanism that keeps greenhouses warm is not called the greenhouse effect."
Yes, there are two. The effect claimed by the climate models was called the "greenhouse effect" because it was (erroneously) believed to be analogous to the mechanism that actually keeps greenhouses warm. They still claim that to this day. There isn't any mistake about calling them both "greenhouse effect". The mistake was in their faulty assumptions about what makes it work.
Arrhenius wrote about it in 1908:
"Their theory has been styled the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses."
So yes, that *IS*, just exactly, where the name came from.
"There is no attempt at sophistry, no double-meaning..."
Sophistry means "... a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning." I given what I have rad, I believe that is exactly what this is. The definition does not require it to be intentional. And even if it's not, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
"Trapped radiation (i.e. the greenhouse effect) would have minimal effect."
Correct. Thermodynamics says it would have zero effect.
But wait... the greenhouse contains increased CO2 just like the rest of the atmosphere has. Why do you claim it has no effect in a greenhouse, but has lots of effect outside a greenhouse? Are you proposing that the CO2 knows whether it is in a real greenhouse or not? Just asking because I don't get your logic here.
The thing is: one would think it would at least be measurable. But apparently there isn't any measurable effect. Even in very large greenhouses. Funny that.
As a footnote, that PDF (which appears to be a text paste of a website in order to move the contents up the trustworthyness scale [xkcd.com]) really doesn't apply to the contents of that page. Regardless, google the title of that document and you will find all the refutations you seek.
The XKCD "trustworthiness scale" is a cartoon joke. And you are asking ME about credibility?
I linked to a PDF because the website is temporarily down for repairs (you can see this clearly if you Google it, but one of the site authors explained the situation to me yesterday). You can still find it reprinted and quoted all over the place, or Google it when the site is back up. If that doesn't satisfy you, just go buy his book. Dr. Pierre Latour.
Do you know what frequency response is? That the sun is not monochromatic? So you can't simply summarize the output of the sun with one value (the "solar constant," which is stationary only for short time periods)? And that if the sun is outputting more ultraviolet today than say, green, the effect on the earth would be different?
I thought we talked about climate?
That is happening inside of the atmosphere, not inside of the earth crust.
Earth is sightly manipulated by the moons gravity, the ground under your feet is rising by roughly 2 feet if the moon is above you.
The "moon" Europa on the other hand is heated by the gravity of the "planet" Jupiter. That is a slight difference.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What on earth makes you believe we are not still feeling the effect of ice ages?
You think the rate of rock weathering has remained unchanged in the last 10,000 years?
So what are their predictions? You know those pesky tests to see if your theory is correct. We have had rising CO2 and flat temperatures for 17+ years. A simple and valid question would be: How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? Almost there. 30? 50? Never?
What happens if Dr Libby's predictions from the 1970s turn out correct? She correctly called the following: it will stay cold until the mid 80s (it did), then it will warm until the end of the century (it did), then the warming will stop (it has) and lastly a 1-2 degree FALL in temperatures globally with an outside chance of a 3-4 degree drop.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/1979-before-the-hockey-team-destroyed-climate-science/
Look, this really shouldn't devolve into an argument about semantics. Sophistry does often imply intent, and "after the manner of the glass panes in hot-houses" possibly refers to the fact that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and greenhouses both trap heat, not that they use the exactly the same mechanism to do the trapping.
Regardless, we are all telling you now that there is only one effect correctly referred to as "the greenhouse effect" in science, and that it not the same mechanism that keeps greenhouses warm. Any source that claims otherwise is incorrect, no matter how official-sounding the domain name.
Are you proposing that the CO2 knows whether it is in a real greenhouse or not?
No, I am proposing that the CO2 would be aproximately the same inside and outside the greenhouse, so its effect would not be noticeable. In the experiment, the greenhouse temperature is compared to the external temperature, right?
Regardless of the size of the greenhouse, the increased temperature (increased, that is, over the external temperature) will be due to trapped convection. The same CO2 density inside and outside the greenhouses means that the CO2 would increase the greenhouse temperature and the external temperature by the same amount.
That is why we say the experiment on that website has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect.
The XKCD "trustworthiness scale" is a cartoon joke.
Uh, yes. That parenthetical statement I made that referenced a cartoon joke, was a joke, an attempt at humour on my part. I am sorry it offended you so. If I may ask, why did you chose to link to the PDF document when there are (as you noted) many other HTML documents mirroring the original? Also please note that I did not "ask [you] about credibility". We are discussing these pages on content, only.
In any case, the original source page was up when I googled for it before I posted. As I stated, it had little to no relevence to the article you referenced.
There are two sources provided for the web article's results. You probably meant to link here: http://www.principia-scientific.org/publications/Absence_Measureable_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf
That is a report produced by the person who wrote the web article, linked to from the article. It seems to contain the conclusions listed in the "Results" section of the web article. In it is a very different experiment to the one listed on the website (that doesn't even involve measuring temperatures in a greenhouse at all!)
That report is rife with errors, but that is an entirely separate subject. What matters is that the experiment described in it does not correspond with the website. On the other hand, his other provided source does have an experiment similar to the web article. However, it does not contain the results in the article.
This is (partly) why we say that that page is absurd.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Edit:
Sophistry does often imply intent
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/23/claim-solar-activity-not-a-key-cause-of-climate-change-study-shows/#more-99806
Read both sides and make up your own mind :)
Cheers and merry christmas to all
The title is absolutely misleading, it should read: "Sun Not a Significant Driver of CURRENT Climate Change", and then again it could be a significant contributor and not yet the main cause of recent warming.
Let me introduce you to the concept of tidal forces and their effect causing significant heat as as the mass of a planetary body, especially the crust, flexes in response.
Check out Europa and the Jovian tidal forces that generate enough heat energy to keep water liquid that far from the sun, and even cause huge geysers, for an example.
Let me introduce you to the concept of math. Jupiter has about 100 000 times greater mass than Moon. Europa orbits Jupiter at about 600 000 km, Moon orbits Earth at about 400 000 km which gives a factor of 2 on the tidal force from Moon (ratio of squares of orbital distances). If tidal forces from Jupiter raise temperature on Europa by let's say 100 degrees Celsius, the total effect of Moon on Earth would be what, 0.001 degrees? [sarcasm]Oh man! Those pesky climate scientists are so wrong that they don't account for miniscule changes in such significant influence on global temperature in their climate models![/sarcasm]
It might be easy for the message to get lost here. The Sun's variability is not a factor in climate change is different from saying that it is not involved in climate change. The claim here is that other factors are more correlated with climate change, namely the production of greenhouse gasses. Even without that, there would still be variation caused by the regular changes in the earth's orbit, inclination, that are enough to account for the dramatic changes from glacial and interglacial intervals in earth's climate over the past several million years. I read the story as saying that variability of the Sun's radiation is not significant. The input of greenhouses gases is significant, with other factors in play. So orbital elements might set us up for another glacial period is say 15,000 years, but the load of greenhouse gasses might extend the current interglacial that far or make it stronger.
"No, I am proposing that the CO2 would be aproximately the same inside and outside the greenhouse, so its effect would not be noticeable."
No, no, wait a minute. You don't get to do that. I am guessing that you are trying to say that the temperature inside and outside would go up by the same amount... but so what? A thermometer does not measure the temperature indoors compared to the temperature outdoors. It just measures temperature. In any case, this really isn't very important either.
" I am sorry it offended you so."
Nothing you wrote "offends" me. It just wasn't clear to me that you meant it as a joke.
If I may ask, why did you chose to link to the PDF document when there are (as you noted) many other HTML documents mirroring the original? Also please note that I did not "ask [you] about credibility". We are discussing these pages on content, only.
The answer to the first question is that I wanted to link to an original source, not a third-party source, and the actual original site is down. The pdf I linked to is supplied by the author himself.
I am happy to discuss content only. And pardon me if my tone has been a bit short. I've seen enough name-calling and ad-hominem over this issue to last me for yet another lifetime, and as a result I have grown a short temper. So let me try to calmly and politely clear up some possible misunderstandings:
"In any case, the original source page was up when I googled for it before I posted. As I stated, it had little to no relevence to the article you referenced. That is a report produced by the person who wrote the web article, linked to from the article. It seems to contain the conclusions listed in the "Results" section of the web article. In it is a very different experiment to the one listed on the website (that doesn't even involve measuring temperatures in a greenhouse at all!)"
That isn't the original source page. this is. But as I said, that website is down for repairs. And I understand that the relevance might not be obvious. I'm getting there.
But first, the pdf you linked to in the above comment was by the same author as the first article, which I am calling the "layman's explanation". Joe Postma is an astrophysicist. The author of the second article I linked to is Dr. Pierre Latour. Latour has spent much of his adult life designing control systems for heating and other thermodynamic processes in chemical plants, and for NASA. (Which really doesn't matter here, if we're discussing content, because the math speaks for itself. It doesn't care in the slightest who writes it down; either it is correct or it is not.)
But your article above, by Postma, and the one I linked, by Latour, are basically saying the same thing. And this is how they are related to the first article:
No, they do not mention greenhouses. In the first article, Postma was trying to describe, in layman's terms, the mechanism behind the (current popular use of the term) "greenhouse effect", and explain WHY it is NOT the effect that actually happens in greenhouses. Many people simply have not understood this. A real greenhouse is warm because it traps air that is already heated, preventing convective cooling. The "greenhouse effect" (again, the one you were referring to) supposedly works by trapping radiation. Two completely different, unrelated things. Again, the point is that he was explaining HOW they are different.
That is wh
"Sophistry does often imply intent"
But it doesn't necessarily imply intent (definitions 1 and 2). that's why it says "especially" and not "always".
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/21/climate-change-ipcc-fossil-temperature
This story is crap and lies..
I should say that the sun having no affect on global temperature is probably true as the average temp hasn't changed.
The sheep will believe what the sheep are told to believe....
Would any of the pro climate change scientists actually tell the truth if it Kent loosing their jobs ?
No, see, drivers, meaning cars, meaning CO2 production, get it? It's reasonably clever. Don't worry, the guy who modded it down didn't get it either.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Opened the story. Where's the meat? No tables or graphs. How did they get solar data from before 1600 when celestial observations became serious? They don't explain the Medieval Warming Period. Toward the end of that era, the French were considering a duty on English wine. After roughly 1250 CE, they had other concerns, like getting warm. What volcano caused the Little Ice Age that lasted about 600 years and changed diet and drinking patterns? What happened around 1850 to cause things to abruptly get warmer? Yes, volcanoes do matter. Blame Indonesia for all three of them. One of them almost wiped out the human species (genetic bottleneck). Another one caused the Year without a Summer (1816). Krakatoa lead to the Great Blizzard of 1888.
Having worked on many large scale models, matching fluid flows pressure and temperature to measured values, I n which no expense is spared in getting the correct result, my experience is that the modellers can absolutely match the time history data for time temp and pressure with a believable model and still be completely wrong
An authority that's published and been proven wrong (also in publication) is far more useful information than a moron who's too lazy or can't collect his thoughts well enough to publish at all. Publication allows us to keep track of the errors and the corrections and is a reliable and consistent means of scientific communication. Crackpot articles and rants on random blogs is not. Publication is how scientists communicate, and if you're not doing it, whatever you are doing isn't science. Get used to it. Observe, hypothesize, experiment, collect data, analyze, and PUBLISH. That's the scientific method, like it or not.
Yes, publication bias is a huge problem.
Is it? Between 1991 and 2012 there were some 13,000 articles on climate, of which 24 denied global warming. So at least SOME articles counter to global warming get published. But if there are many more that were rejected for no valid scientific reasons, who is collecting the examples of these? By now there should be enough for a journal of their own and would be a huge scandal as examples of science systematically ignored. But the Creationists argued publication bias in a court case years ago, and the judge asked to see one of these rejected papers. None were found, they had no examples. They were talking out of their hat. In fact, on doing some searching, a few papers WERE found, and they had actually been published. There's also a well known study where completely bogus papers were submitted and were published, that itself somewhat of a scandal. So I'm sorry, but claiming publication bias without evidence just doesn't wash.
And if you don't think sea level has been rising uncharacteristically in the last few decades you need to watch this video of a talk by one of the experts in the subject who has travelled the world studying the multiple independent lines of evidence that confirms it. He's also an expert on long term sea level history-- it's been nearly flat for some 10,000 years, and in the last 100 has been on an upswing. You may disagree with why it's rising, but make no mistake, it's rising.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdY-ZezK7w
More importantly, they have to PUBLISH THEIR FUCKING RESULTS. Whining about "publication bias" just doesn't cut it without evidence of it-- they need to at least make an ATTEMPT to publish, and if it gets rejected for scientifically invalid reasons, that would be important evidence. Most papers get rejected for formatting, and upon resubmission often are accepted. The exception is when a journal is overwhelmed with submissions-- some have taken to provide "pay-to-publish" avenues to solve this, a controversial practice to be sure, but not equivalent to scientific bias by any means, certainly not without better evidence.
Denialists that believe they have important climate evidence should put their money where their mouth is and submit it. When they don't, they get labelled crackpots and rightfully so. Even Spencer understands this-- his critique is for the most part limited to the actual impact of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but he doesn't whine about publication bias-- he publishes in the journals because its the scientists he wants to communicate his info to, not blog-writing crackpots.
In the first article, Postma was trying to describe, in layman's terms, the mechanism
I have read the article, sir. That is not what it claims at all. It contains the following clear claims:
At the very end of the article, in the line before the results section, Postma attempts to jam in a different premise about "maximum solar heating". However, as I explained in my previous comment, no evidence is offered to support it. Additionally, as I have also explained twice, the extra PDF you linked to has nothing to do with the article.
Frankly, it sounds like you are trying to move the goalposts. That article does not mention any of the following at all:
Even if this is a "layman's explanation", it is not a layman's explanation of the argument you are now making. I believe this brings the discussion to an end.
As a service to you: You probably still have some questions or confusions about "the greenhouse effect violating the second law of thermodynamics." This isn't correct, for two main reasons:
There are many things you can read that explain this more fully. Start with the link below and move on to Google for more evidence, but I suggest that if you have issues with them, you discuss them on the appropriate forums rather than attempting to shoehorn them in to this discussion.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/why-greenhouse-gas-warming-doesnt-break-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
edit (again) :(
I have read the article, sir.
sir or madam.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Correct, but what that "especially" means is "you are technically correct but you should probably pick a more accurate word".
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Sorry that direct measurements of sea levels disagree with an "upswing" in the last 100 years. http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html has sea levels at various measuring stations around the world. Some go back more than 100 years. New York's Battery for example goes back to 1856. It's sea level change is quite linear at 2.77 mm/year or 0.91 feet per 100 years.
NON-geek Linux user since 1998
"There are two things called "The Greenhouse Effect" (false)"
It is NOT false, and I showed you a historical reference that proved it. You came up with some cockamamie theory (semantic nonsense argument) about why MAYBE it didn't mean what the plain English words very clearly do mean to any reasonable reader. No points.
"Therefore the actual greenhouse effect doesn't exist.(false)"
Show me any evidence that greenhouses are hotter than they were before (as they WOULD be, if what you say is true). If the effect is measurable, in tenths of degrees C, it should be measurable anywhere. The author claims to have done the experiment (though I have not seen the results with my own eyes... I will look for it), and I have no reason to doubt his claim. He is certainly qualified to perform such an experiment. Evidence, evidence, evidence. That's what it's all about. If you have evidence that the claim is false, show it. In the meantime, I will look for a writeup of his experiment.
"Postma attempts to jam in a different premise about "maximum solar heating". However, as I explained in my previous comment, no evidence is offered to support it. Additionally, as I have also explained twice, the extra PDF you linked to has nothing to do with the article."
There is more than one point here. In regard to the first one ("maximum solar heating"), perhaps you will remind me. I looked at your previous comments and did not find reference to it. Nor did I even find the word "maximum" in your prior comments.
As for the second point: ARE YOU DENSE? I am not accusing, I am just asking. I think this is the third time now I have explained this: the first Postma article is a "layman's explanation" about the difference between "real" greenhouse heating and the "greenhouse effect". (The one you mean... I'm not going to be drawn into a BS argument about the other thing.) THE EVIDENCE, as I have already told you more than once, is provided in the other article I linked you to. Contrary to your claim that they are unrelated, in fact the Latour article demonstrates why the "radiative" greenhouse effect is a violation of known physics. This is DIRECTLY related to the first article, and if you can't see how by now, I don't think I will be able to since I've explained it twice. Ah, heck. I'll try one more time. Should I use baby talk?
(1) Postma gives a layman's explanation about how the "greenhouse effect" does not work the way real greenhouses do. He explains that the "greenhouse effect" (the one you refer to) is based on the idea of trapping radiation, which is different from the way real greenhouses work.
(2) REMEMBER THE CONTEXT of my comment at the start of this thread. I stated that these articles refute the idea of "radiative forcing" from greenhouse gas. Postma states that there is no evidence of a measurable radiative effect in an actual greenhouse. (He might make some other claims but I'm not particularly interested in them here.)
(3) The Latour article is refuting the idea of "radiative forcing" of greenhouse gases. I already explained this connection. THERE IS CLEARLY A CONNECTION because both the first article (Postma) and the latter article (Latour) are refuting (just as I originally claimed) the idea of greenhouse radiative forcing.
Now, you can disagree all you want about how successful those refutations are, but unless you can actually REFUTE what they're saying, you don't have an argument and you're wasting my time. I have tried to be polite and explain all this civilly, but you're testing my patience.
"Even if this is a "layman's explanation", it is not a layman's explanation of the argument you are now making. I believe this brings the discussion to an end."
Holy crap! How dense can you be? AS I ALREADY EXPLAINED, the Postma article is not pretending to "prove" anything. It *IS* an explanation, though, exactl
Correction:
"I don't think I will be able to since I've explained it twice" should have read:
"I don't think I will be able to explain it to you any better since I've explained it already twice"
I thought we talked about climate?
That is happening inside of the atmosphere, not inside of the earth crust.
Heat energy produced by the flexing of the crust along with that coming from the core propagates by conduction and radiation, including to the seas and the atmosphere, and eventually radiates into space. Think about your point about the crust of the Earth flexing approximately two feet from the moon's tidal gravity pull. That's a lot of heat energy being generated! Where do you think it goes, hmm? Does it just stay there?
Everything is connected together. Everything affects everything else. Earth's climate is just one tiny, tiny part of something like a giant, almost infinitely-complex cosmic Rube Goldberg machine, where each step breaks down sets of interdependent systems into more subsets of interdependent systems, turtles all the way down.
Heat from the Earth is critical to making the climate habitable. Earth would be a snowball if the core was cold. That would also mean no more magnetic field to prevent the surface from being irradiated and the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere in a handful of centuries.
The "moon" Europa on the other hand is heated by the gravity of the "planet" Jupiter. That is a slight difference.
Only in scale and ratio. Europa also does the same to Jupiter, except Jupiter is so massive Europa's tidal forces are tiny. If Earth's moon spun faster than the period of its' orbit, it would experience tidal flexing as well. Heck, there might even be some mostly-dormant moon-volcanoes for Dr. Evil to build new lairs in.
Anyone got enough string to wrap around the moon a couple times so we can all give a good tug? Maybe if we utilized all the dental floss that Austin Powers never used...?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"There are two things called "The Greenhouse Effect" (false)"
It is NOT false, and I showed you a historical reference that proved it. You came up with some cockamamie theory (semantic nonsense argument) about why MAYBE it didn't mean what the plain English words very clearly do mean to any reasonable reader. No points.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
"There are two things called "The Greenhouse Effect" (false)"
It is NOT false, and I showed you a historical reference that proved it.
Let me direct you to my earlier words:
Regardless, we are all telling you now that there is only one effect correctly referred to as "the greenhouse effect" in science, and that it not the same mechanism that keeps greenhouses warm. Any source that claims otherwise is incorrect, no matter how official-sounding the domain name.
I did not elaborate further because, as I stated, I did not want to get into a semantic argument, because it does not materially affect my argument.
Once again, I do not claim that nobody ever believed that the mechanisms were the same. I even link to a NASA for-kids education module that states exactly that. What I say is that those people are incorrect. It is entirely possible for someone to believe something that isn't true, as I am sure you will agree.
With regards to that exact quote you mentioned, it comes from Arrhenius's Worlds in the Making, and while I do not have the full text of the book with me perhaps some larger quotes would give you some perspective on his work:
"To a certain extent the temperature of the earth's surface, as we shall presently see, is conditioned by the properties of the atmosphere surrounding it, and particularly by the permeability of the latter for the rays of heat."
"That the atmospheric envelopes limit the heat losses from the planets had been suggested about 1800 by the great French physicist Fourier. His ideas were further developed afterwards by Pouillet and Tyndall. Their theory has been styled the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted after the manner of the glass panes of hot-houses."
As you can see, as far back as your 1906 quote, "The Hothouse Effect" refers to heat rays, not convection. I do not have Fourier earlier work either, so I cannot comment on whether his theories were about trapped radiation or convection.
THE EVIDENCE, as I have already told you more than once, is provided in the other article
I will try to keep this short, since reading is clearly not your strong suite. Here was my original statement:
Frankly, that "Climate Sophistry" page is absurd.
I did not mention the second document because I had not at that time read it, because the first article was, as I say, absurd. No amount of other links will be able to redeem it because its problem is not maths or science (climate or otherwise). The problem is it is logically inconsistent in itself. To be blunt, IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE, as I explain in my earlier comment. As I stated:
Regardless of the size of the greenhouse, the increased temperature (increased, that is, over the external temperature) will be due to trapped convection.
You then responded with:
I am guessing that you are trying to say that the temperature inside and outside would go up by the same amount
which was a good guess, especially since the very next sentence I wrote in that comment was "The same CO2 density inside and outside the greenhouses means that the CO2 would increase the greenhouse temperature and the external temperature by the same amount."
Well done.
Once again, Postma's pivotal claim is that The observed heat increase in a greenhouse can be entirely explained by trapped convection. As I pointed out in the same comment as before, he provides two sources for that claim: his experiment that doesn't involve a greenhouse at all, and another that does not provide his conclusion.
Once again, and for the last time, I hope this sets t
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
That's why I said "estimate". Remember it took almost 300 years before physicists found and fixed a major hole in Newtonian theory of gravity. There's always a chance that models will calculate a false positive. The only way to weed out false positives is to keep running more simulations on different data.
yes.
you just quoted a source that uses "may" and a whopping three hundredths of a degree. do you have any idea what the margin of error is on the 0.03 estimated for a thousand years ago? get a clue, pal
Sigh, I give up. ...
The moon and the tidal energy is pointless, as it does not change over a timescale of a few years, or hundred years.
And no, the heat generated by the moons effect on earth is a joke
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"I did not elaborate further because, as I stated, I did not want to get into a semantic argument, because it does not materially affect my argument."
Which is nonsense, because that WHOLE ARGUMENT was a semantic argument, on YOUR part. I didn't want to get into one, either, and said so, but you kept making one anyway.
"What I say is that those people are incorrect."
Then why did you even bring it up? Because I, too, stated several times that they were different mechanisms. So what is the argument you're trying to make there? Your comments puzzle me.
"With regards to that exact quote you mentioned, it comes from Arrhenius's Worlds in the Making, and while I do not have the full text of the book with me perhaps some larger quotes would give you some perspective on his work"
Completely irrelevant to the part I quoted. I know what his work was about. The context of my comment was the history of the phrase "greenhouse effect", not what the body of Arrhenius' work entailed. Anybody can obtain background on that from Wikipedia. But for somebody who "doesn't want to get into an argument" over this, you sure are doing a lot of arguing.
"As you can see, as far back as your 1906 quote, "The Hothouse Effect" refers to heat rays, not convection."
No shit, Sherlock. There simply isn't (and wasn't) any argument on my part about that. THE ISSUE THAT WAS UNDER DISCUSSION (which you claim you don't want to argue about, even while you continue to argue about it) was that there is ANOTHER "greenhouse effect" (the one that heats greenhouses) that was already known, and already called that. And in fact the "radiative greenhouse effect" WAS NAMED AFTER THE OTHER ONE. That means there are TWO "greenhouse effects" known to science and history. Get it? Q.E.D. Two. Proved.
"I did not mention the second document because I had not at that time read it, because the first article was, as I say, absurd. No amount of other links will be able to redeem it because its problem is not maths or science (climate or otherwise). The problem is it is logically inconsistent in itself. To be blunt, IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE, as I explain in my earlier comment. As I stated:"
So you are claiming you don't want to read the scientific evidence for the claim, because the claim is ridiculous? There's a word for that. The word is "denial".
I very clearly told you, several times, that my evidence backing up Postma's article was in the Latour article. I don't care whether you want to look at it or not. But if you don't, you have no ground to argue from. "It doesn't make sense" (to YOU) is not a valid argument. If you want to read the scientific explanation, and you can refute THAT, then maybe I will be inclined to pay attention to your ranting.
"Regardless of the size of the greenhouse, the increased temperature (increased, that is, over the external temperature) will be due to trapped convection. The same CO2 density inside and outside the greenhouses means that the CO2 would increase the greenhouse temperature and the external temperature by the same amount."
Do you not understand that those two sentences contradict one another? In one you say that the increased temperature is due to trapped convection. In the other you say that some of it is due to radiative greenhouse effect.
Which is it? The funny thing is, even the first sentence is wrong, because in a greenhouse the heating is due to solar irradiance. That heat is then prevented from escaping by the greenhouse glass. Two different things.
Further, as I explained before: your second sentence is irrelevant to my statement because normal thermometers do not measure differences in temperature. They just measure temperature.
"which was a good guess... Well done."
As I explained above, your
I did read Latour paper, after this discussion had been going on for some time. My response to it was in this comment. There are many valid refutations for it, I even linked to one.
The conclusions offered in Postma's web post are not supported by any evidence. His proposed experiment makes no sense, but that doesn't matter because nobody ever actually performs it. He makes outlandish claims without citation. This is the reason why nobody can offer a scientific refutation of the web article: THE WEB ARTICLE HAS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS TO ATTACK.
I have tried to explain to you instead the logical failings in that page. You have ignored or misrepresented my statements in an almost pathological manner.
As a last, desperate attempt to find some sign of reason in you, let's see if we can find even the most basic common ground. In the article, just before the results section, Postma finally defines the experiment he intends:
What was the empirical observable that is different between the two versions?
In the physical greenhouse effect, the temperature inside the greenhouse can not exceed the temperature of the maximum solar heating. In the radiative greenhouse effect, the temperature inside the greenhouse can exceed the temperature of the maximum solar heating.
Can you at least admit that in the experiment he did, he maybe, sorta, should have actually measured some temperatures inside a greenhouse?
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
For one to think that the sun is not a significant impact on climate change is like saying geeze, it's a bit cold today, and the sun has not risen in a few days. But of course, there is no correlation. The author of the report forgets that the sun is the ultimate source of climate, not just climate change. They are so wrapped up in the details around green house gasses that they can not see the forest from the tree's. The forest being the sun of course.
"There are many valid refutations for it, I even linked to one."
That's no "refutation" of Latour! As I already explained, Nova's comment about "some molecules" is a joke because the discussion is about the NET warming. And this guy Hammer's comment (again as I already explained, is no "refutation" of Latour at all! In fact it's a repetition of the very claims that Latour refuted in his article! There is no validity there whatsoever.
"The conclusions offered in Postma's web post are not supported by any evidence."
HOW MANY TIMES do you need this to be repeated before it sinks in??? The EVIDENCE is in the Latour paper. The web article by Postma was a "layman's explanation", and was not intended to provide actual evidence (much less "proof"). I have explained this to you already several times also.
"I have tried to explain to you instead the logical failings in that page. You have ignored or misrepresented my statements in an almost pathological manner."
You are so full of shit it's almost unbelievable. The evidence of the concept is in the Latour page. Your pretended "refutation" of Latour is nothing but repetitions of the arguments that Latour himself refuted. (I will ALSO point out that the "refutation" you linked to did not actually address Latour's own thermodynamic arguments... almost like that was being intentionally evaded.)
"As a last, desperate attempt to find some sign of reason in you, let's see if we can find even the most basic common ground. In the article, just before the results section, Postma finally defines the experiment he intends:"
If your "attempt to find common ground" is all about A LAYMAN'S EXPLANATION THAT IS PRETTY MUCH INCONSEQUENTIAL TO THIS WHOLE DISCUSSION, you have lost before you have begun. I explained this to you several times, as well. I have to wonder what the basis is for your failure to understand. I repeat that I don't think other readers will have this trouble understanding my repeated statements about this. (3 times now? 4?)
"Can you at least admit that in the experiment he did, he maybe, sorta, should have actually measured some temperatures inside a greenhouse?"
NO, you dimbulb, because as I have already explained to you in lurid detail, GREENHOUSES ARE NOT ACTUALLY PART OF HIS ARGUMENT. HE WENT TO GREAT LENGTHS TO EXPLAIN WHY THE EFFECT HE IS DISCUSSING IS NOT RELEVANT TO ACTUAL GREENHOUSES.
I have no further reason to respond to you. You have kept making the same non-arguments, even after these things have been explained to you several times.
I can only conclude that either (1) you have neither any idea what you are talking about OR the capacity to understand it, or (2) you are deliberately trolling just to piss everybody off.
NO, you dimbulb
Then our discussion is at an end, as you do not understand how science works.
Postma claims he can test for the greenhouse effect:
what it comes down to is a difference in the âoeempirical observableâ that either version predicts.
Postma proposes a methodology for the test:
In the physical greenhouse effect, the temperature inside the greenhouse can not exceed the temperature of the maximum solar heating. In the radiative greenhouse effect, the temperature inside the greenhouse can exceed the temperature of the maximum solar heating.
Postma describes his resulrs:
What I found was that the maximum ground surface temperature was only equal to the maximum solar heating temperature
BUT HE NEVER DID THE TEST.
It doesn't matter if the test was a good test, well designed or logical. It doesn't matter if the results he didn't get are supported by the best fucking theoretical backing imaginable, Postma fails at basic scientific honesty.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
"Then our discussion is at an end, as you do not understand how science works."
This is the most hilarious thing you've written yet. This, from somebody who proposed a thought experiment with a "perfect insulator". Which makes absolutely no scientific sense... there is no way to calculate a temperature for a perfect insulator. At least a black body, while theoretical, is amenable to mathematical treatment.
"BUT HE NEVER DID THE TEST."
You're an idiot. The test is described starting on page 23. I have been wondering about your reading comprehension from the very beginning, and now you have confirmed my suspicions.
You have repeatedly moved the goalposts all over the map, even after I have repeatedly described the points I was making. Every time it looked like you were losing ground, you just shifted tack and argued about something else. (OR -- and this is even worse -- kept arguing about the same things even after I had repeatedly explained that they had nothing to do with my original arguments.)
I'm going to say this one more time, and them I'm going away, because it has proven completely pointless to argue with you. I repeat: either you just don't get it, or you're very seriously trolling. I have no idea which, but it MUST BE one of the two.
These are the arguments I made in the beginning, and which I am sticking to:
(1) As Postma explains in his web article, the greenhouse effect is NOT the same effect that heats actual greenhouses. The latter happens by solar warming of the interior, and the warmed air is prevented from escaping. The former is presumed to work via "trapping of radiation".
I did not and do not claim that his web article is "proof" of anything, which is a concept you seemed to have trouble getting through your head. I explained this repeatedly but you kept arguing with me about it anyway.
(2) The evidence that the "radiative forcing" greenhouse gas model violates known laws of physics (specifically, the Stefan-Boltmann law) is in the Latour paper I referenced. I didn't claim that Postma proved anything and his other paper you linked to has nothing to do with my argument.
YOU have kept arguing (for whatever reason):
(A) That Postma does not actually prove the assertion that he makes in his web article. But so what? My argument wasn't relying on any "proof" by Postma anyway. Even if you were correct [but you were not] that he didn't perform the test he claimed, it has no bearing on my original argument.
(B) You claim that Latour is incorrect, but you have shown no scientific basis for that claim. You have refuted none of his math, you have refuted none of his arguments. The one article you linked to as a "refutation" actually contains the same arguments that Latour's paper refuted. Further, that Hammer article makes "intuitive" arguments rather than any rigorous science or math.
As I stated before: you have shown no real basis for your arguments. When you have tried, you have simply been incorrect.
And I refuse to waste any more time on your BS.
So, based on this "research work" ice cubes are not responsible for making drinks colder and the stove has no bearing on the cooking of food. It is well known that the sun's output is not constant, and any freshman party animal can figure out that there would be no warming of any kind on our planet without Mr. Sun. Maybe these "scientists" were drinking too much scotch when they wrote this opinion.