Hmm... I like it, but it sounds very similar to "pseudoscientist" which I think is more common. Also, I'm not clear on the precise difference between the two terms.
Cool, that's an awesome website! I especially liked the graphic here. I think the "Phil current" curve describes me well. I agree with Phil that the IPCC's error bars seem a little narrow, but not by much.
I've never heard of him before today, but your summary makes him sound like someone I could agree with. That's mainly because I think most of the "green" movement is irrational, and one manifestation is that they've blocked the advancement of nuclear power for decades. Their myopic naivete kept us dependent on coal, and even today continues to sour public sentiment regarding the best practical solution.
I completely agree with thesecomments when they say that the article demonstrates that Friel doesn't do a very good job. I also mostly agree with this sentiment regarding the shrill nature of these debates.
I tend to use the word skeptic (as a gift, for precisely the reasons you say) because I'm tired of dealing with the anger that I often find in the general public. It's an undeserved compliment I give them to avoid headaches, but I think you and the gp are right that this tactic smears the word "skeptic" which (if genuine, of course) is a very good word. I think the word "contrarian" might be better at averting a Godwin defense, and it captures the general attitude I've seen pretty well.
Nope, 85%. Also, this might be the debate she was talking about. I tend to agree with CapitalistImperialistPig: dendrochronology seems kind of spooky. Research involving living matter just strikes me as softer and somehow ickier than "pure" physics like boreholes, ice cores, instrumental records, etc. For instance, the divergence after 1960 makes me uncomfortable, but mainly because I don't know much about it. I also don't know how many cores are "enough" for reliable temperature reconstruction (even aside from all the other considerations), and the thought of taking enough time to try to understand that question makes me shiver. I'm comfortable relegating tree ring data to the status of "supporting evidence" which happens to correlate well (before 1960) with other proxies.
If the decay can be caused by something outside of our backward light-cone, it is for all practical purposes acausal, and always will be, unless you believe time travel is possible. I don't, personally.
I also think that time travel is likely to be impossible. You're probably aware of this, but others might be interested to hear that FTL automatically implies time travel, unless a preferred frame exists... which wouldn't exactly conflict with special relativity's predictions but certainly would cast doubt on the elegance and universality of the principle of relativity.
I just thought that was really cool when I first heard about it. Warp drives automatically double as time machines, as long as you have fairly powerful "normal space" delta-v capability. Then it further worsened my suspension of disbelief during scifi shows where scientists hop around the galaxy in spaceships and then act surprised when they find a time machine. Even more disappointingly, all the time machines involve additional technobabble (above and beyond the already established FTL: slingshot around the sun, wormhole through solar flare, blah blah reverse polarity blah), when I've described a fairly simple maneuver in the first comment that can send almost any FTL ship in any show back in time.
... Apparently you think *I* am an idiot. Try reading the goddamned thread.... If you really don't want to be perceived as a "brainwashed idiot", maybe you could bother to figure out what the argument is about before you put in your irrelevant 2 cents.... As for the rest, you are one of those lazy asses I mentioned.... But you are too damned lazy to look any of them up?... And yes, that to me means "brainwashed idiot".... get off your lazy ass and LOOK IT UP YOURSELF!!!... since you insist on being spoon-fed... There are many more, very easily found, but I am not going to do your homework for you. Now go away. You disgust me.... [Jane Q. Public]
... There's really no need to be so uncivilized. I'm just saying that all your posts on this subject clearly imply that scientists are either so stupid that they overlook trivially obvious "problems" with their own research, or are willing members in a global conspiracy. Based on your (mistaken) assumption that I haven't read this thread, I don't have to guess which of these alternatives you've chosen in my case. Pity. I bet conspirators get jetpacks!
And I most certainly do not think you're an idiot. At worst, I think you're making mistakes while talking about a highly advanced subject that lies far outside of your own professional experience. Everyone does that. It'd be a different story if I was saying that you were pathetically wrong about your own life's work... the subject that you've studied since childhood with the passionate intensity of a monk. I'd never insult you like that; at most I'd simply ask polite questions to try to understand your subject of expertise better.... [Khayman80]
... I am not citing some "conspiracy theory", though I will admit that it may seem that way. Having a political agenda is not necessarily a "conspiracy". It is quite possible for groups of quite well-meaning people, given similar agendas, to appear to be conspiring when in fact they are not. On the other hand, some people might indeed be conspiring, or at least deviously planning: the companies Al Gore set up stand to make a grand fortune in trading carbon credits if caps are legislated. Some of those deals were in the works before he made his movie.... [Jane Q. Public]
... Notice that I wasn't attempting to use my research to support any particular cause of climate change. I aimed that statement squarely at your conspiracy theory. You might be able to convince nonscientists that there's a massive conspiracy (unintentional or not) among scientists, and ironically any reference I produce to show that ~84% of scientists oppose your position would probably just solidify your belief in an evil conspiracy. My personal anecdote was only intended to show you that I've personally verified glacier melt through its effect on time-variable gravity above the glaciers in Greenland and Alaska. Because of this first-hand experience, I'm very skeptical that there's any large-scale incompetence or data manipulation in the scientific community.... [Khayman80]
From: Laura Biagioni
To: Dumb Scientists's real email
Date: Feb 22, 2010 at 8:24 AM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Duplicated figure?
Dear Dumb Scientist's real name,
Thank you very much for your message.
The good version of the figures 2.3 and 2.5 of the AR4 WG I are on line now.
Thank you for the interest on the work of the IPCC.
With best regards,
Laura Biagioni
Found another error in the WG1 report!
To: IPCC-Sec@wmo.int, Feb 20, 2010 at 2:35 PM
subject: Duplicated figure?
To Whom It May Concern,
First, thank you for your very helpful report. I'm writing because I recently tried to direct someone to the AR4 WG1 chapter 2, figure 2.3 (CO2 isotope ratios plot). But the relevant link is this.
However, that's actually a copy of figure 2.4. Something similar happened with 2.5 and 2.6.
Sincerely,
Dumb Scientist
I confirmed the ~1.5E21 J/K estimate for the upper 1m, but Lukas 1991 estimates the depth of the upper mixing layer at ~30m in the Western Pacific. It may be more shallow elsewhere, but an area-weighted average is likely to be close to that of the Pacific. So the more relevant figure is likely to be ~4E22 J/K.
As promised, I copied most of my comments to Dumb Scientist but removed your words and replaced them with paraphrased versions attributed to "Someone".
As usual, I've removed your insults in an attempt to make this look like a more civilized conversation, and to focus on the science. Specifically, I removed the part where you interpreted "I just haven't seen any papers that fit this (obviously fraudulent/ridiculous) description" as though I meant "I [Jane] am the only one who could have made a "fraudulent or ridiculous description".
I really did just mean that I haven't seen any papers that look extremely questionable (your words) or ridiculously incompetent (my words... which seem pretty similar). In fact, the situation you've been describing sounds so serious that it implies scientists are outright frauds. All I meant is that I haven't seen such ridiculous and fraudulent papers. I've repeated that exact sentiment multiple times throughout our conversation, so I'm puzzled as to how you immediately jumped to a more sinister interpretation that's inconsistent with the way I've used those phrases in the past.
Maybe if you'd asked me what I meant instead of (among other things) calling me a stupid, insufferable, hypocritical asshole... I might have been inclined to apologize for any vagueness in my statement. I will anyway, though: I'm sorry for any confusion my statement could have caused. I'll try harder to be less ambiguous in the future.
The conversation as posted on Dumb Scientist also doesn't draw attention to the contrast between these accusations (which really doesn't seem like it could possibly be misinterpreted) and reality. Like I said in my reply to your previous accusations, that's because I'm much more interested in discussing physics than humiliating people.
Stratospheric ozone blocks UV, which is good for animals and plants because sunburns and skin cancer are dependent on the energy in each photon, which is inversely proportional to the photon's wavelength. Because UV has a shorter wavelength than visible light, each UV photon individually has enough energy to break the chemical bonds in our DNA.
Thermodynamic effects, though, are dependent on the total energy in all the photons summed together. So when I say that ozone's radiative forcing (i.e. global warming effects) are small, that's because sunlight has less UV than visible light. Ozone's absorption of UV can warm the stratosphere, but only because of its low heat capacity.
They you say that the ozone is important because it blocks UV (and mention sunburns). But elsewhere you say that it has little effect on surface temperature (which logically would imply that UV strong enough to cause sunburns would have little effect on surface temperature).
Stratospheric ozone blocks UV, which is important for animals and plants. Its radiative forcing (i.e. global warming effects) are small, though. That's because sunlight has less UV than visible light. Ozone's absorption of UV can warm the stratosphere, but only because of its low heat capacity.
Again, ozone's radiative forcing at the surface is much, much smaller than CO2. In fact, notice that the error bars on stratospheric ozone actually lie on both the positive and negative sides of the forcings chart, implying that modern science can't distinguish its effect from "zero".
... the sole point I have been trying to make is that none of the mainstream models account for the phenomena observed here, whether that be ozone recovery or just the temperature trend.
The prediction of ozone recovery isn't the province of GCMs. As I said, that's a forcing, not a part of the model. And it's believed to be happening because of the ban on CFCs.
Strangely enough, I've been agreeing with your "sole point" about the temperature trends for weeks:
"In contrast, stratospheric temperature trends aren't as well understood."
"Yet again, I'm saying that stratospheric trends aren't as well understood as surface trends..."
But, as I said at the end of this comment, I must have gotten the wrong impression about your sole point from previous comments. Like I said at the end of that post, my bad. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to misinterpret your position as though you were trying to use this paper to demonstrate that GCMs are fundamentally flawed. That's completely my mistake, and I'd like to apologize once more.
And I object in the strongest terms to the use of the word "fraudulent". That is going much too far. I don't care a whit if you disagree with me, but if you have any evidence of fraud on my part, I challenge you to present it right now. I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you won't get away with that kind of garbage.
I didn't mean that you were engaging in fraud. I meant that your description of this "bristlecone pine" situation clearly implies that you think scientists are either ridiculously incompetent or literally faking their data (i.e. fraudulent). Isn't that what you were saying?
This statement is just yet another of your many disingenuous remarks. I have already explained to which papers I refer, and if you cannot make some small logical inferences about exactly which papers I mean, then I question your ability to do it about anything else.... In fact, I find their methods far more convincing, in a statistical sense, than those used to develop the HadCRUT3 dataset. If you have reservations about THIS satellite data, then why don't you have reservations about other data that is statistically weaker? I have asked you this several times, in different ways, and you have ignored me every time.
If by "ignore" you mean that I've asked you to show me the faulty papers in question, yeah. Please note that I'm not telepathic, so I don't know what paper you're talking about. Yes, this means I'm too stupid to do research. I understand that you think I'm an idiot or a conspirator, so there's not much point in repeating that stateme
Solar radiation is remarkably invariant, as Warmers point out every time Denialists mention it. Now suddenly it's an important variable?
A good reference regarding solar variability is section 2.7.1 on pages 188-193 of chapter 2 in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. "Remarkably invariant" wouldn't be my first choice of words. Solar output varies cyclically, mainly at an 11 year cycle. But the satellite network hasn't detected a long term trend in solar output over the past ~40 years to match the surface temperature trend over that timespan.
Also, isn't it curious that there's no evidence of warming in the past 15 years but we keep on hearing about how Arctic ice is melting at record rates. What do you suppose is driving that? If global temperatures have not increased, yet Arctic melting is not only going on but going on at a rate far faster than anyone predicted (which is what I always see reported) what is driving it? Clearly not anything to do with the Earth's overall heat budget, which you have just admited
has been very nearly neutral in the past 15 years.... since there has been no significant increase in the Earth's atmospheric heat content in the past 15 years... if we all agree the Earth's heat budget has been almost perfectly neutral over that time.
Again, it's better to think about the heat content of the ocean+troposphere system. That eliminates the spurious ENSO heat redistributions which seem to confuse so many nonscientists. Plus, the internal energy of the Earth certainly includes the heat of fusion of melting glaciers and sea ice, so I don't agree that the Earth's heat budget has been neutral over the past 15 years.
That's because you need more than 15 years to get statistically significant figures.
You do realize you're just making that up?
Wow! In that case, why do climatologists bother to take initial condition ensembles, if climate models have the accuracy you're claiming they do? Is it because they enjoy increasing the run time on expensive supercomputers by an order of magnitude?
GCMs with better skill than those available to modern science will eventually be able to make predictions that require less temporal averaging. But right now I'd say his figure is on the low side; climate is only meaningful when discussing averages over ~20 years.
If that is so, then why do the actual measurements (as calibrated) agree with the observed ozone concentration?
If what is so, specifically? It almost sounds like you're asking me to justify the statement "If you're implying that scientists detected the possible increase in stratospheric ozone without realizing it would have a warming effect on the stratosphere, that's not true."
But that would be silly. Atmospheric physicists have long known that ozone warms the stratosphere by absorbing UV from the sun. As a side effect, we get protected from severe sunburns. That's why governments banned CFCs to protect the ozone layer. And that's probably why we're seeing ozone recovery today.
So maybe you meant: "the stratosphere has an extremely low heat capacity compared to the lower atmosphere (let alone the ocean)."
The heat capacity of the ocean can be approximated by neglecting deep water because heat rises, and ocean mixing is too slow to matter on a human timescale. The heat capacity of the upper 1 m of the ocean turns out (p 126) to be ~1.5E21 J/K.
Now compare that to the stratosphere. To start with, assume it's an ideal gas and integrate the density from the tropopause to the mesopause. Then compare the heat capacities of the stratosphere and ocean. They're crude approximations, of course, but look at the differences in the exponents. Then consider that global warming is a boundary value problem concerning a decades-long energy imbalance. That's why Dr. Pielke advocates using ocean heat content rather than air temperatures.
... why do the actual measurements (as calibrated) agree with the observed ozone concentration?... but apparently it is not so difficult to pull fairly consistent data out regardless of those forcings.
What sentence in the paper gives you this impression? Every relevant sentence I can find is loaded with qualifiers like "may relate", "may provide evidence", "may suggest", etc. That's not an accident; scientific language is used like a scalpel.
I agree with the authors; their research is good reason to suggest that stratospheric temperatures are increasing because of ozone recovery. It's interesting research. I just don't see any other point to be drawn from it.
I don't think those other forcings are affecting this data as much as you would have us believe. I am not saying they don't exist...
Scientists have known about sudden stratospheric warmings since 1971: Matsuno,T., 1971 : A dynamical model of stratospheric warmings. J. Atmos. Sci., 28, 1479-1494.
They've been studied for almost 40 years, but still aren't well understood because of the complexity of the stratosphere, multitude of forcings, and difficulty/sparseness of measurements.
Again, I find it interesting how you pick at what you perceive to be statistical uncertainties in the "counter" evidence, when you don't seem to have such problems accepting extremely questionable data from a paltry few ancient tree rings...
Again, what are you talking about? I just haven't seen any papers that fit this (obviously fraudulent/ridiculous) description. I'd like to at least see these extremely questionable papers that you've repeatedly accused me of accepting.
And while you have stated before that the temperature
The interesting scientific question is regarding the validity of the models, which are radically unphysical parameterizations of a very complex, nonlinear physical system. Why is no one asking that question?
I replied to a similar statement you made recently, showing that model validation most certainly is a question that scientists are asking (and answering.)
... what data would make you change your beliefs regarding global warming/climate change?
Good question. Since climate is an average over at least ~20 years, a sustained 20 year trend below the IPCC WG1 AR4 model ensemble's 95% confidence level would be powerful evidence. Note that the model output depends on forcing inputs, so if the sun suddenly got dimmer that would push temperatures and the models down. As would a reduction in emissions or volcanic activity.
I'd also like to see some kind of plausible argument as to how it's possible for CO2 to rise but not increase temperatures. For instance, to the best of my knowledge no one's ever made a model that matches observed temperatures and forcings in the 20th century while failing to predict that increasing CO2 increases temperatures. That's not terribly surprising, because the physics of the greenhouse effect have been established for decades.
But the temperature trends, which should reasonably have been connected to that ozone recovery, were not predicted at all, and not found until last year. Why?
If you're implying that scientists detected the possible increase in stratospheric ozone without realizing it would have a warming effect on the stratosphere, that's not true. The problem is that ozone and CO2 and volcanoes aren't the only forcings strongly affecting stratospheric temperatures, so the connection isn't that clear.
Again, the stratosphere has an extremely low heat capacity compared to the lower atmosphere (let alone the ocean). Because of this, small amounts of energy can send its temperature through the roof. Plus, it's more exposed to the solar wind than the lower atmosphere. So it's buffeted by many different forcings. Yet again, I'm saying that stratospheric trends aren't as well understood as surface trends, and their temperature trends aren't useful indicators of an energy imbalance (unlike surface temperature trends).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... I like it, but it sounds very similar to "pseudoscientist" which I think is more common. Also, I'm not clear on the precise difference between the two terms.
Also, gkai and I agree with this sentiment.
Cool, that's an awesome website! I especially liked the graphic here. I think the "Phil current" curve describes me well. I agree with Phil that the IPCC's error bars seem a little narrow, but not by much.
I've never heard of him before today, but your summary makes him sound like someone I could agree with. That's mainly because I think most of the "green" movement is irrational, and one manifestation is that they've blocked the advancement of nuclear power for decades. Their myopic naivete kept us dependent on coal, and even today continues to sour public sentiment regarding the best practical solution.
I completely agree with these comments when they say that the article demonstrates that Friel doesn't do a very good job. I also mostly agree with this sentiment regarding the shrill nature of these debates.
One of the new postdocs in my lab is from the Czech Republic. He says that everything's more advanced in America, including the idiots.
I tend to use the word skeptic (as a gift, for precisely the reasons you say) because I'm tired of dealing with the anger that I often find in the general public. It's an undeserved compliment I give them to avoid headaches, but I think you and the gp are right that this tactic smears the word "skeptic" which (if genuine, of course) is a very good word. I think the word "contrarian" might be better at averting a Godwin defense, and it captures the general attitude I've seen pretty well.
Nope, 85%. Also, this might be the debate she was talking about. I tend to agree with CapitalistImperialistPig: dendrochronology seems kind of spooky. Research involving living matter just strikes me as softer and somehow ickier than "pure" physics like boreholes, ice cores, instrumental records, etc. For instance, the divergence after 1960 makes me uncomfortable, but mainly because I don't know much about it. I also don't know how many cores are "enough" for reliable temperature reconstruction (even aside from all the other considerations), and the thought of taking enough time to try to understand that question makes me shiver. I'm comfortable relegating tree ring data to the status of "supporting evidence" which happens to correlate well (before 1960) with other proxies.
I also think that time travel is likely to be impossible. You're probably aware of this, but others might be interested to hear that FTL automatically implies time travel, unless a preferred frame exists... which wouldn't exactly conflict with special relativity's predictions but certainly would cast doubt on the elegance and universality of the principle of relativity.
I just thought that was really cool when I first heard about it. Warp drives automatically double as time machines, as long as you have fairly powerful "normal space" delta-v capability. Then it further worsened my suspension of disbelief during scifi shows where scientists hop around the galaxy in spaceships and then act surprised when they find a time machine. Even more disappointingly, all the time machines involve additional technobabble (above and beyond the already established FTL: slingshot around the sun, wormhole through solar flare, blah blah reverse polarity blah), when I've described a fairly simple maneuver in the first comment that can send almost any FTL ship in any show back in time.
Atm. mass is ~5E18 kg, and ~75% is below the tropopause: http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap2.html
Yes, a very reasonable analogy. Let's reminisce:
From: Laura Biagioni To: Dumb Scientists's real email Date: Feb 22, 2010 at 8:24 AM Subject: Re: Fwd: Duplicated figure? Dear Dumb Scientist's real name, Thank you very much for your message. The good version of the figures 2.3 and 2.5 of the AR4 WG I are on line now. Thank you for the interest on the work of the IPCC. With best regards, Laura Biagioni
Found another error in the WG1 report! To: IPCC-Sec@wmo.int, Feb 20, 2010 at 2:35 PM subject: Duplicated figure? To Whom It May Concern, First, thank you for your very helpful report. I'm writing because I recently tried to direct someone to the AR4 WG1 chapter 2, figure 2.3 (CO2 isotope ratios plot). But the relevant link is this. However, that's actually a copy of figure 2.4. Something similar happened with 2.5 and 2.6. Sincerely, Dumb Scientist
I confirmed the ~1.5E21 J/K estimate for the upper 1m, but Lukas 1991 estimates the depth of the upper mixing layer at ~30m in the Western Pacific. It may be more shallow elsewhere, but an area-weighted average is likely to be close to that of the Pacific. So the more relevant figure is likely to be ~4E22 J/K.
Gee, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable analogy. When you put it like that, I totally see your point.
As promised, I copied most of my comments to Dumb Scientist but removed your words and replaced them with paraphrased versions attributed to "Someone".
As usual, I've removed your insults in an attempt to make this look like a more civilized conversation, and to focus on the science. Specifically, I removed the part where you interpreted "I just haven't seen any papers that fit this (obviously fraudulent/ridiculous) description" as though I meant "I [Jane] am the only one who could have made a "fraudulent or ridiculous description".
I really did just mean that I haven't seen any papers that look extremely questionable (your words) or ridiculously incompetent (my words... which seem pretty similar). In fact, the situation you've been describing sounds so serious that it implies scientists are outright frauds. All I meant is that I haven't seen such ridiculous and fraudulent papers. I've repeated that exact sentiment multiple times throughout our conversation, so I'm puzzled as to how you immediately jumped to a more sinister interpretation that's inconsistent with the way I've used those phrases in the past.
Maybe if you'd asked me what I meant instead of (among other things) calling me a stupid, insufferable, hypocritical asshole... I might have been inclined to apologize for any vagueness in my statement. I will anyway, though: I'm sorry for any confusion my statement could have caused. I'll try harder to be less ambiguous in the future.
The conversation as posted on Dumb Scientist also doesn't draw attention to the contrast between these accusations (which really doesn't seem like it could possibly be misinterpreted) and reality. Like I said in my reply to your previous accusations, that's because I'm much more interested in discussing physics than humiliating people.
Have a nice day.
Thank you for your reasonable and insightful comments. I've learned a lot from our pleasant conversations.
Actually, here's a better explanation:
Stratospheric ozone blocks UV, which is good for animals and plants because sunburns and skin cancer are dependent on the energy in each photon, which is inversely proportional to the photon's wavelength. Because UV has a shorter wavelength than visible light, each UV photon individually has enough energy to break the chemical bonds in our DNA.
Thermodynamic effects, though, are dependent on the total energy in all the photons summed together. So when I say that ozone's radiative forcing (i.e. global warming effects) are small, that's because sunlight has less UV than visible light. Ozone's absorption of UV can warm the stratosphere, but only because of its low heat capacity.
Stratospheric ozone blocks UV, which is important for animals and plants. Its radiative forcing (i.e. global warming effects) are small, though. That's because sunlight has less UV than visible light. Ozone's absorption of UV can warm the stratosphere, but only because of its low heat capacity.
Again, ozone's radiative forcing at the surface is much, much smaller than CO2. In fact, notice that the error bars on stratospheric ozone actually lie on both the positive and negative sides of the forcings chart, implying that modern science can't distinguish its effect from "zero".
The prediction of ozone recovery isn't the province of GCMs. As I said, that's a forcing, not a part of the model. And it's believed to be happening because of the ban on CFCs.
Strangely enough, I've been agreeing with your "sole point" about the temperature trends for weeks:
"In contrast, stratospheric temperature trends aren't as well understood."
"Yet again, I'm saying that stratospheric trends aren't as well understood as surface trends ..."
And in this post I agreed with that claim.
But, as I said at the end of this comment, I must have gotten the wrong impression about your sole point from previous comments. Like I said at the end of that post, my bad. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to misinterpret your position as though you were trying to use this paper to demonstrate that GCMs are fundamentally flawed. That's completely my mistake, and I'd like to apologize once more.
I didn't mean that you were engaging in fraud. I meant that your description of this "bristlecone pine" situation clearly implies that you think scientists are either ridiculously incompetent or literally faking their data (i.e. fraudulent). Isn't that what you were saying?
If by "ignore" you mean that I've asked you to show me the faulty papers in question, yeah. Please note that I'm not telepathic, so I don't know what paper you're talking about. Yes, this means I'm too stupid to do research. I understand that you think I'm an idiot or a conspirator, so there's not much point in repeating that stateme
You're kidding, right? Beta decay of a neutron inside Pa233 turns it into U233, just as he said.
s/mesopause/stratopause
A good reference regarding solar variability is section 2.7.1 on pages 188-193 of chapter 2 in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. "Remarkably invariant" wouldn't be my first choice of words. Solar output varies cyclically, mainly at an 11 year cycle. But the satellite network hasn't detected a long term trend in solar output over the past ~40 years to match the surface temperature trend over that timespan.
Again, it's better to think about the heat content of the ocean+troposphere system. That eliminates the spurious ENSO heat redistributions which seem to confuse so many nonscientists. Plus, the internal energy of the Earth certainly includes the heat of fusion of melting glaciers and sea ice, so I don't agree that the Earth's heat budget has been neutral over the past 15 years.
Wow! In that case, why do climatologists bother to take initial condition ensembles, if climate models have the accuracy you're claiming they do? Is it because they enjoy increasing the run time on expensive supercomputers by an order of magnitude?
GCMs with better skill than those available to modern science will eventually be able to make predictions that require less temporal averaging. But right now I'd say his figure is on the low side; climate is only meaningful when discussing averages over ~20 years.
If what is so, specifically? It almost sounds like you're asking me to justify the statement "If you're implying that scientists detected the possible increase in stratospheric ozone without realizing it would have a warming effect on the stratosphere, that's not true."
But that would be silly. Atmospheric physicists have long known that ozone warms the stratosphere by absorbing UV from the sun. As a side effect, we get protected from severe sunburns. That's why governments banned CFCs to protect the ozone layer. And that's probably why we're seeing ozone recovery today.
So maybe you meant: "the stratosphere has an extremely low heat capacity compared to the lower atmosphere (let alone the ocean)."
The heat capacity of the ocean can be approximated by neglecting deep water because heat rises, and ocean mixing is too slow to matter on a human timescale. The heat capacity of the upper 1 m of the ocean turns out (p 126) to be ~1.5E21 J/K.
Now compare that to the stratosphere. To start with, assume it's an ideal gas and integrate the density from the tropopause to the mesopause. Then compare the heat capacities of the stratosphere and ocean. They're crude approximations, of course, but look at the differences in the exponents. Then consider that global warming is a boundary value problem concerning a decades-long energy imbalance. That's why Dr. Pielke advocates using ocean heat content rather than air temperatures.
What sentence in the paper gives you this impression? Every relevant sentence I can find is loaded with qualifiers like "may relate", "may provide evidence", "may suggest", etc. That's not an accident; scientific language is used like a scalpel.
I agree with the authors; their research is good reason to suggest that stratospheric temperatures are increasing because of ozone recovery. It's interesting research. I just don't see any other point to be drawn from it.
Scientists have known about sudden stratospheric warmings since 1971: Matsuno,T., 1971 : A dynamical model of stratospheric warmings. J. Atmos. Sci., 28, 1479-1494.
They've been studied for almost 40 years, but still aren't well understood because of the complexity of the stratosphere, multitude of forcings, and difficulty/sparseness of measurements.
Again, what are you talking about? I just haven't seen any papers that fit this (obviously fraudulent/ridiculous) description. I'd like to at least see these extremely questionable papers that you've repeatedly accused me of accepting.
I replied to a similar statement you made recently, showing that model validation most certainly is a question that scientists are asking (and answering.)
Good question. Since climate is an average over at least ~20 years, a sustained 20 year trend below the IPCC WG1 AR4 model ensemble's 95% confidence level would be powerful evidence. Note that the model output depends on forcing inputs, so if the sun suddenly got dimmer that would push temperatures and the models down. As would a reduction in emissions or volcanic activity.
I'd also like to see some kind of plausible argument as to how it's possible for CO2 to rise but not increase temperatures. For instance, to the best of my knowledge no one's ever made a model that matches observed temperatures and forcings in the 20th century while failing to predict that increasing CO2 increases temperatures. That's not terribly surprising, because the physics of the greenhouse effect have been established for decades.
If you're implying that scientists detected the possible increase in stratospheric ozone without realizing it would have a warming effect on the stratosphere, that's not true. The problem is that ozone and CO2 and volcanoes aren't the only forcings strongly affecting stratospheric temperatures, so the connection isn't that clear.
Again, the stratosphere has an extremely low heat capacity compared to the lower atmosphere (let alone the ocean). Because of this, small amounts of energy can send its temperature through the roof. Plus, it's more exposed to the solar wind than the lower atmosphere. So it's buffeted by many different forcings. Yet again, I'm saying that stratospheric trends aren't as well understood as surface trends, and their temperature trends aren't useful indicators of an energy imbalance (unlike surface temperature trends).