University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) claims to only keep “value added data” and destroyed raw data (I can get a 2 TB drive for $70)
Back when they discarded the raw data that they did you couldn't get a 2 TB drive for any amount of money. If you tried to build on it might have been the size of a semi-trailer.
Um... the models essentially use no data at all. When you are using them for reanalysis (testing against past known climate) you may use the actual levels of insolation and greenhouse gases, etc. but the past temperature measurements don't matter to the models. They're just a database to compare the model output to.
Because anything that doesn't fall lock step into the religion that says we are on a path to human extinction within this century unless we start taxing corporations heavily, is obviously seriously flawed. If only environmental science had the same rigorous processes as the rest of the sciences...
Another strawman argument. I'm not aware of any climate scientists saying we are on a path to human extinction or that we have to start taxing corporations heavily because of global warming. What makes you think climate sciences are any less rigorous than any other hard science?
Each increment of the "self-reinforcing feedback system" is less reinforcing than the previous increment. Eventually it peters out or other feedbacks overwhelm it.
In the link the article quotes Dr. Spencer as saying "“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show." The question I would ask him is "Do they show there is much less energy lost to space during and after cooling than the climate models show?" Is there a balance between the two situations? How well do climate models simulate the long term balance?
All human heat production from cars to heating buildings to industrial activities to bonfires produces about 0.028 Watts per square meter. The Sun averages around 250 W/m2 across the planet (it's around 1000 W/m2 at noon with the Sun directly overhead). So if you round the human contribution down to 0.025 that's 4 orders of magnitude difference. Human waste heat is insignificant globally. It can be significant locally though. Hence urban heat islands.
Not so much ground data as radiosonde data, the weather balloons they launch every day. Satellites don't measure surface temperature very well (better when it's clear), instead they measure the temperature in various layers of the atmosphere mostly by detecting microwave radiation given off by oxygen (O2).
... and the proportion caused by mankind is insignificant compared to volcanoes and sunspot activity.
Every time I read that human CO2 output is insignificant compared to volcanoes I ROFLMAO. In a normal year volcanoes output about 1% of human emissions. Even the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo (the biggest eruption since 1912) only added about 0.2% to that. It would take a massive eruption like Tambora to even make 5% of human emissions.
Then I got another giggle out of sunspots. The Sun's output has been well measured since the 1950's and precisely measured since the satellites went up in the 1980's. No changes have been observed big enough to account the temperature changes we've seen on Earth.
Milankovitch Cycles and we're further from the Sun.
Milankovitch Cycles change the amount of sunlight hitting the surface by changing the distance from the Sun and varying the angle at which sunlight hits. Along with the features of the Earth's surface (like the fact that most of the land area is in the northern hemisphere) that varies the forcing at the surface of the planet.
We're not like Venus for several reasons but one of the big ones is we're further from the Sun.
I'm not aware of any consensus that we don't understand the carbon cycle. It's very complex and there are lots of details to be filled in but I believe we understand it fairly well on a large scale. I looked through the first 6 pages of Google Scholar - carbon cycle and didn't see anything that made me reconsider that. If you have something specific to point out to me please do. For over a million years the atmospheric CO2 level has varied between 180 ppmv and 300 ppmv, now all of a sudden, after remaining around 280 for thousands of years, in less than 200 years it's over 390 ppmv. Why? The last time CO2 was 390 ppmv was over 15 million years ago, long before the genus homo evolved. The obvious answer is that human burning of fossil fuels is responsible for most of it. Putting carbon that's been sequestered for many millions of years back into the active carbon cycle where it spreads out into the various sinks (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere & geosphere) and creates a new higher balance in all of them. Where else is it going to go?
Water vapor and clouds are of course closely related but they are two different things when it comes to the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is always a positive feedback. Clouds on the other hand can be positive or negative feedbacks. Low fluffy clouds reflect more energy in the visible range than they absorb in the infrared range, high wispy clouds capture more infrared energy than they reflect visible light energy. But at night clouds capture infrared energy emitted by the surface. Ever notice how much colder it gets on clear nights as opposed to cloudy nights? That makes thinking of them as only a negative feedback hard to swallow. And around the terminator clouds can actually reflect sunlight down to the ground adding a bit. As I said, the latest study I've seen says clouds are most likely a slightly positive feedback with the uncertainty ranging from slightly negative to moderately positive.
Well, higher water vapor in the atmosphere would be a result of higher temperatures, not the cause (although the additional water vapor would add it's own increase to the temperature). In the long run things like plate tectonics can have a substantial effect on the climate. For instance it is generally believed that the closing of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago, cutting off the flow of water between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was a major cause of the present Ice Age. It's true that CO2 will be released from carbon sinks as temperatures rise but that doesn't prove anything about CO2's ability to raise temperatures if the level is raised by other means.
Hmm... I think you generally have it right but saying humans only emit 3-4% as much as natural sources while true is misleading. If you understand the carbon cycle you know that every year the natural sinks absorb about the same amount of CO2 as the natural sources emit so the long term average level of CO2 in the atmosphere remained at 280 ppmv for thousands of years until humans started adding significant amounts of carbon to the cycle about 200 years ago. In fact the carbon cycle processes absorb more than half of the human emissions so the year to year increase in atmospheric CO2 levels amounts to about 42% of human emissions.
Water vapor and clouds together amount to ~70% of the greenhouse effect but water vapor is well understood and is always a positive feedback. Clouds are less well understood and have both positive and negative feedbacks. The overall net effect of clouds on the greenhouse effect appears to be slightly positive according to the latest studies I've seen.
The only things that can change the average level of water vapor in the atmosphere are atmospheric temperature and the availability of water to evaporate into the air. There is nothing else that has much effect on atmospheric water vapor levels. Even if you put a big mirror in synchronous orbit and beamed sunlight into a particular spot on the ocean 24/7 (barring the occasional eclipses of the Sun by the Earth) it wouldn't affect worldwide water vapor that much, just regionally. You just can't overload the air with water vapor, if it gets to be more than the air can carry it precipitates out and becomes water on the surface.
The most powerful greenhouse gas is sulfur hexafluoride. It is not present in quantities large enough to be significant on the short term. But I suspect you're talking about water vapor. Yes, it is the largest single contributor to the greenhouse effect. But since it only has an average lifetime of 9 days (compared to at least a decade for other significant GHG's) it can't force climate change, it can only be a feedback.
It was just a snarky comment. If you read the published papers over the years they outline the methods. I guess you want it all handed to you on a silver platter.
We could if we wanted to. Their GDP was only $26.4 billion in 2010 according to Wikipedia. Hardly a rounding error in the current deficit limit discussion.
No, but you can copyright your collection of them. I think as a small nation Trinidad and Tobago probably look for anyway they can to pick up a little cash.
Slashdot Mirror
University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU) claims to only keep “value added data” and destroyed raw data (I can get a 2 TB drive for $70)
Back when they discarded the raw data that they did you couldn't get a 2 TB drive for any amount of money. If you tried to build on it might have been the size of a semi-trailer.
Um... the models essentially use no data at all. When you are using them for reanalysis (testing against past known climate) you may use the actual levels of insolation and greenhouse gases, etc. but the past temperature measurements don't matter to the models. They're just a database to compare the model output to.
Because anything that doesn't fall lock step into the religion that says we are on a path to human extinction within this century unless we start taxing corporations heavily, is obviously seriously flawed. If only environmental science had the same rigorous processes as the rest of the sciences...
Another strawman argument. I'm not aware of any climate scientists saying we are on a path to human extinction or that we have to start taxing corporations heavily because of global warming. What makes you think climate sciences are any less rigorous than any other hard science?
If you think all they are doing is curve fitting you're pretty clueless about how GCM's work.
Ronald Reagan would be considered a RINO in today's Republican Party.
Each increment of the "self-reinforcing feedback system" is less reinforcing than the previous increment. Eventually it peters out or other feedbacks overwhelm it.
In the link the article quotes Dr. Spencer as saying "“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show." The question I would ask him is "Do they show there is much less energy lost to space during and after cooling than the climate models show?" Is there a balance between the two situations? How well do climate models simulate the long term balance?
All human heat production from cars to heating buildings to industrial activities to bonfires produces about 0.028 Watts per square meter. The Sun averages around 250 W/m2 across the planet (it's around 1000 W/m2 at noon with the Sun directly overhead). So if you round the human contribution down to 0.025 that's 4 orders of magnitude difference. Human waste heat is insignificant globally. It can be significant locally though. Hence urban heat islands.
Maybe he's a YEC and believed that humans coexisted with dinosaurs before the flood. That would be his ancestors.
Not so much ground data as radiosonde data, the weather balloons they launch every day. Satellites don't measure surface temperature very well (better when it's clear), instead they measure the temperature in various layers of the atmosphere mostly by detecting microwave radiation given off by oxygen (O2).
Great analogy. I'm going to use it.
... and the proportion caused by mankind is insignificant compared to volcanoes and sunspot activity.
Every time I read that human CO2 output is insignificant compared to volcanoes I ROFLMAO. In a normal year volcanoes output about 1% of human emissions. Even the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo (the biggest eruption since 1912) only added about 0.2% to that. It would take a massive eruption like Tambora to even make 5% of human emissions.
Then I got another giggle out of sunspots. The Sun's output has been well measured since the 1950's and precisely measured since the satellites went up in the 1980's. No changes have been observed big enough to account the temperature changes we've seen on Earth.
Milankovitch Cycles and we're further from the Sun.
Milankovitch Cycles change the amount of sunlight hitting the surface by changing the distance from the Sun and varying the angle at which sunlight hits. Along with the features of the Earth's surface (like the fact that most of the land area is in the northern hemisphere) that varies the forcing at the surface of the planet.
We're not like Venus for several reasons but one of the big ones is we're further from the Sun.
You be dead long before the next ice age is scheduled to start in around 20,000 years (as calculated from Milankovitch Cycles).
I'm not aware of any consensus that we don't understand the carbon cycle. It's very complex and there are lots of details to be filled in but I believe we understand it fairly well on a large scale. I looked through the first 6 pages of Google Scholar - carbon cycle and didn't see anything that made me reconsider that. If you have something specific to point out to me please do. For over a million years the atmospheric CO2 level has varied between 180 ppmv and 300 ppmv, now all of a sudden, after remaining around 280 for thousands of years, in less than 200 years it's over 390 ppmv. Why? The last time CO2 was 390 ppmv was over 15 million years ago, long before the genus homo evolved. The obvious answer is that human burning of fossil fuels is responsible for most of it. Putting carbon that's been sequestered for many millions of years back into the active carbon cycle where it spreads out into the various sinks (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere & geosphere) and creates a new higher balance in all of them. Where else is it going to go?
Water vapor and clouds are of course closely related but they are two different things when it comes to the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is always a positive feedback. Clouds on the other hand can be positive or negative feedbacks. Low fluffy clouds reflect more energy in the visible range than they absorb in the infrared range, high wispy clouds capture more infrared energy than they reflect visible light energy. But at night clouds capture infrared energy emitted by the surface. Ever notice how much colder it gets on clear nights as opposed to cloudy nights? That makes thinking of them as only a negative feedback hard to swallow. And around the terminator clouds can actually reflect sunlight down to the ground adding a bit. As I said, the latest study I've seen says clouds are most likely a slightly positive feedback with the uncertainty ranging from slightly negative to moderately positive.
Well, higher water vapor in the atmosphere would be a result of higher temperatures, not the cause (although the additional water vapor would add it's own increase to the temperature). In the long run things like plate tectonics can have a substantial effect on the climate. For instance it is generally believed that the closing of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago, cutting off the flow of water between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was a major cause of the present Ice Age. It's true that CO2 will be released from carbon sinks as temperatures rise but that doesn't prove anything about CO2's ability to raise temperatures if the level is raised by other means.
Hmm... I think you generally have it right but saying humans only emit 3-4% as much as natural sources while true is misleading. If you understand the carbon cycle you know that every year the natural sinks absorb about the same amount of CO2 as the natural sources emit so the long term average level of CO2 in the atmosphere remained at 280 ppmv for thousands of years until humans started adding significant amounts of carbon to the cycle about 200 years ago. In fact the carbon cycle processes absorb more than half of the human emissions so the year to year increase in atmospheric CO2 levels amounts to about 42% of human emissions.
Water vapor and clouds together amount to ~70% of the greenhouse effect but water vapor is well understood and is always a positive feedback. Clouds are less well understood and have both positive and negative feedbacks. The overall net effect of clouds on the greenhouse effect appears to be slightly positive according to the latest studies I've seen.
The only things that can change the average level of water vapor in the atmosphere are atmospheric temperature and the availability of water to evaporate into the air. There is nothing else that has much effect on atmospheric water vapor levels. Even if you put a big mirror in synchronous orbit and beamed sunlight into a particular spot on the ocean 24/7 (barring the occasional eclipses of the Sun by the Earth) it wouldn't affect worldwide water vapor that much, just regionally. You just can't overload the air with water vapor, if it gets to be more than the air can carry it precipitates out and becomes water on the surface.
I have looked at the pertinent emails. They provide no evidence for your assertions.
The most powerful greenhouse gas is sulfur hexafluoride. It is not present in quantities large enough to be significant on the short term. But I suspect you're talking about water vapor. Yes, it is the largest single contributor to the greenhouse effect. But since it only has an average lifetime of 9 days (compared to at least a decade for other significant GHG's) it can't force climate change, it can only be a feedback.
It was just a snarky comment. If you read the published papers over the years they outline the methods. I guess you want it all handed to you on a silver platter.
Well over 90% of the CRU data was available. Just not in a convenient form for people that don't know how to gather it.
Having the raw data isn't going to change a thing.
We could if we wanted to. Their GDP was only $26.4 billion in 2010 according to Wikipedia. Hardly a rounding error in the current deficit limit discussion.
No, but you can copyright your collection of them. I think as a small nation Trinidad and Tobago probably look for anyway they can to pick up a little cash.