I have been making my way through the series of lectures by David Archer based on his book Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast.

http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/lectures.html

I'm not sure who on OLO originally recommended it but thank you. Certainly giving my bandwidth a hiding.

For someone who did year 12 physics over 2 decades ago I have had to blow a few cobwebs off certain parts of the brain to start to digest them properly but thoroughly recommend them to anyone wishing to take their understanding to the next level.

For me personally I thought the issue is too important to let only my ideology dictate my stance so if I could make the time to extend my knowledge then I needed to make the effort.

I am about half way through the series and was wondering if a discussion or q&a might be had on some of the ideas?

One of those early concepts was the fact that David Archer seemed to be saying the earth only loses heat to the universe via light because space is a vacuum. I understand much of the light out is in the IR frequency but is there any other way of heat loss occurring? It is a little hard to get ones head around the notion this is the only path.

The other concept I'm struggling a little with is the need for a difference in temperature to be present for there to be a greenhouse effect.

I'm pretty keen to stick with the science, or in this case the basic physics, rather than the politics if that's okay. If anyone has seen them all, or who is making their way through them and wants to kick a few of the concepts around, or know the answers to the above regardless, then any input would be welcome.

Hi, I'd love to be in a discussion that was purely about science. He's right about heat loss only occurring into space via radiation. Three ways heat is lost is conductance, convection and radiation. For the first two you need reasonably dense particles, and the first works best with compounds in a crystalline lattice structure, like metals. The second works with liquids and gases, and the third with anything that doesn't block radiation.

I think it was in Grade 10 when we went into the physics of the vaccuum flask. Do you remember it had a glass inside vessel surrounded by a vaccum, which took care of conductance and convection, and then a silver lining on the inside of the outer-skin to reflect the radiation back into the liquid.

Similar principle to the greenhouse effect really, with the greenhouse gases as the outer-skin, except the greenhouse gases absorb and re-rediate rather than reflecting. You don't have much, if any conductance happening, but lots of convection as well.

Not sure what your second issue is. Can you explain it a little more?

Csteele

This link (GrahamY knows about it) will help explain a few things better than 350 words can do.

http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/syllabus.html

Work your way through the syllabus, or go straight to the topic that interests you.

Although somewhat dated, it is still relevant and is still being taught.

A few wannabe 'climate scientists' are going to lob in here, why not get back after a bit of home grown research - be glad to continue the discussion then.

I like real science discussions. It would save a lot of time and bandwidth time though, if we are going to discuss particular concepts mentioned in the series, if you (we) could in future reference the specific lecture the concept first appears and the approximate time it is mentioned, this helps to give some context for the question.

In the meantime I myself shall start from the beginning (when I find the time).

Dear Graham and others,

I am up to lecture 15 and although I get most of what I have viewed there is some of it I have only just got a slim grasp of. I realise he has had to cram a hell of a lot into a course and it is a little frustrating not being there to ask questions so thanks for the input.

Probably showing my scientific shallowness but I had the sense that the Earth was bathed to varying degrees with solar wind, i.e. steams of different sized particles that rushed past us, and I thought a warm body might have contributed to their energies thus removing heat. Not correct it would seem.

My second query came from Lecture 9. I think he is possibly just stating the obvious but in a way that makes it complicated. From the 3:00 minute mark to the 4:45 he talks about the layer having to be colder than the ground to have a green house effect but I thought the difference came about because of the green house effect. Seemed to be putting the cart before the horse, or am I missing something critical?

One impression from David's lectures was that all the light we received from the sun was then turned into lower frequencies after striking the ground and it was these that were interacting with the various GHGs in the form of IR. I didn't realise until I looked further that 49% of the Sun's heating of the Earth is due to direct IR from it.

I am also struggling a little with the notion that it gets warmer after the troposphere leaving it the coldest layer of the atmosphere. Perhaps the mechanics might be explained a little later.

I'm not sure why the troposphere is cooler than the layers either side. Someone else will have to fill that gap.

As most of the sun's energy passes through the air then it can't heat it more than it heats the earth. There is also a question of thermal mass. There is not a lot of mass in the air to hold much heat. And if the atmosphere was hotter than the earth the heat wouldn't escape from the earth. The fact that the earth cools means that the atmosphere has to be cooler than the earth because energy moves from high to low states, i.e. hotter to colder in this context. If the atmosphere were warmer then the earth is going to keep heating until it reaches a temperature which is higher and then the heat loss will start again.

I would have thought that the solar wind would have some small effect on temperature, but my understanding is that most of it is deflected. There is the Svensmark theory about solar wind and cosmic rays modulating cloud formation, but I know you're not asking about that.

lewts stick with basics...light include's..uv..[heat]..heat rises..space is called a vacume..but more rightly,..is a freezer

the core of the earth is..supposedly a molten core...yet we live on this hot blob..radiating uv/heat..outwards into the freezer..

so there is a fire in the sky...and a fire below..yet we in between these two heat sources...have yet evolved...life..

as children..we know the relief..of returning to a shady classroom..or standing in a shade tree...we have day light..when its warm...and night time when the temp drops,..,near ten degrees of difference

yet we have these nutters..saying a two degree increase in temp will destroy the reef...will result in great extinctions...pretending the true/facts arent real..only their models are real...and their selective..records..of local climatic vairiations

yet their local tree rings are valid...but our real numbers..are called local..recall its global cooling/warming ..then finally change...yes there is a daily change..[near ten degrees]

here is an egsample..of the numbers...see every day masses of PREDICTIVE numbers..are generated..under the guise...forcasting/weather..

for a long time i tried to make sense of this vast quantlty of numbers..till i realised they are all predictive fictions...predictions...that were patently deceptive..if/when called science

so here we are...plenty of numbers..but all of them fiction..and the actual numbers..are clasified secret..

we are sitting here in a freezer,..,being told we must believe their numbers..on faith..this from the same nutters..who inject us with scalene/fleuride our waters..and aids in our polio/vacine..and poluted the planet..to near extinction...in/with/by..their industrialised consumerism

that the new tax will subsidise the poluters..with carbon credit is a fact...that it will be lent..under ursurous terms is a certainty..al/la argentina...by the same world bank

that the neo/new industrialisation..will be paid..subsidised by carbon tax surities...by the same securities traiters..who gave us debt swaps/derivitives..now clogging up our compulsory super..is a certainty

that you been decieved is certain..evolution was sold to us as kids..go see your leaders talking to the kids..who will become hitler yugen..policing thier parental..non compliance...is the final betrayal...by their deeds..will they be revealed

Well i have been around since the 50's and it is cooler now than it was then,The only diference is there seems to be a bunch of accountants trying to run the weather.White people are at ware with nature you don't see the natives getting upset it's all natural to them.

csteel,

It was examinator who put them up. I have now watched all 16 hours of them. I have said this before elsewhere, but if you are comfortable with grade 12 maths and physics, and like Discover Channel types shows you will most likely enjoy them. Although the 16 hours sounds like a lot you watch them like cricket - with 1/2 a eye, rewinding when you miss something. I watched them while working.

I see GrahamY dealt with your first question pretty well.

> The other concept I'm struggling a little with is the need for a difference in temperature to be present for there to be a greenhouse effect.

He did explain the science, but if the science is difficult think of being under a blanket. Regardless of whether the blanket is there is not, the temperature of the surface exposed to the air in the room is about the same - ie room temperature. Thus if you don't want you skin to be that temperature you hide from the air by putting a blanket over you. The temperature of the thing exposed to the air is still the same, but in this case the thing exposed is the surface of the blanket, not you.

The Earth's blanket is the atmosphere. The "room temperature" in this case is determined by the amount of energy (heat) the Earth must radiate. Too hot and the Earth will radiate more than the sun supplies and we will cool down, too cold and we will radiate less heat than the sun supplies and will heat up. Right now, when the Earth "appears" to be at -30 degrees C or so, we radiate exactly the right amount of heat. If we didn't have that blanket of air above us whose surface appears to be -30, we would have to be -30 and that would not be nice.

Dear Graham,

I'm sorry but that should have been the tropopause. The troposphere loses 6.5 C for every kilometre of height but through the tropopause it remains fairly stable until we hit the stratosphere where we start gaining temperature with height.

It seems the coolest layer in our atmosphere lies over the equator.

So when you said “If the atmosphere were warmer then the earth is going to keep heating until it reaches a temperature which is higher and then the heat loss will start again.” the question needed to be asked – 'Why doesn't the warmer stratosphere heat the troposphere as the heat can't escape?'

In fact at 500kms up at the top of the thermosphere the temperature can reach 1727C.

I thought differences in atmospheric temp were mainly a function of pressure i.e. decreasing with height. It appears not to be so.

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/atmosphere/layers.html

Water vapour is the obvious culprit in the troposphere but what of higher up?

The water vapour – CO2 connection is interesting. WV is a stronger greenhouse gas and so delivers a positive feedback result of increases in CO2 i.e. it amplifies the temperature increase.

The other concept of note was that climate forcing from CO2 scales as a log. Therefore an increase from 10 to 20 ppm has the same effect as 1000 to 2000ppm.

BTW I feel I will have to just accept that the Earth only loses heat through light/radiation. Just seemed not quite right to me.

One of the questions I had after Ch 14 was whether weathering of CaSiO3 + CO2 to CaCO3 + SiO2 occurred under sea water? But perhaps the answers will come in a later lecture.

Thus far the physics says to me that all things being equal increases in global CO2 will result in an increase in global temperature and that the corresponding increase in water vapour is a compounding factor. However it is a very complicated picture. I'm looking forward to the next lecture.

Dear rstuart,

My thanks to Examinator and thanks for your answer but how does it work with a hotter stratosphere?

This discussion leads to a question I've been thinking for a while.

We learned at school that overnight temperatures are higher on cloudy nights, because the escaping radiation hits the cloud layer and bounces back into the atmosphere. So, why doesn't the extra heat in our atmosphere (that is causing global warming) leak into space on clear nights?

Is it postulated that the extra concentration of greenhouse gases acts as a fog or cloud that permanently traps in the extra heat? If so, is this fog uniform across the globe and is it really permanent? And what are the natural earth mechanisms that could dissipate this fog if we were to stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow?

I think I was to blame RStuart I've been touting the site for a while.
My recommendations is to pick on lecture the latter lectures that give how it fits together particularly 18/19 and the ones that critique the books 21/22/23.

I'm with Pacnet and have a limited speed package 5gigs during the day but at night its unlimited full bore. No surprises I down load at night. $49 per month. I've yet to be stopped or cut back and clearly I hammer the band width on lectures etc.

Q&A Thanks for your site currently working through it.
BTW thanks for the site that examined Plimer's 'Chariots of the Gods' style book.
Did you see his performance on late line....what did you think. I thought it sad.

csteel: "but how does it work with a hotter stratosphere?"

For two reasons. Firstly temperature measures the speed of the speed of the molecules and that determines frequency it radiates. The higher the frequency the more energy is lost with each photon emitted. This is what you are focusing on. However what is important here is the rate at which energy is emitted. That also depends on the rate photons are emitted, which it turn depends on the number of molecules per unit space. The stratosphere is so thin there are bugger all molecules, so bugger all photons are emitted.

The second reason is the presence (or rather absence) of black bodies. If there are no black bodies, the stratosphere can't absorb or emit radiation. The other name for a black body gas is a greenhouse gas. The biggest greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water, but there is no water in the stratosphere.

The answer to the third (implied) question re why is the stratosphere is so hot, is because the major temperature regulator in the atmosphere is water vapour. And again there isn't any.

He did explain why there isn't any, but the reason escapes me for now. It is probably because at a certain temperature the vapour pressure of water drops to zero, so it all condenses out.

RobP: "We learned at school that overnight temperatures are higher on cloudy nights"

I know the answer, because I watched the videos. Would you believe the answer is fairly critical to this entire global warming thing? But it is rather complex. As usual there is more than one thing going on. And, since it is the videos we are discussing here - it is probably best you watch them, then ask - or supply the answer.

An after thought,

If you want to question him directly he edits some of Real climatehttp://www.realclimate.org/ they have a chat site. I have under a different name asked some questions and other climatologists have patiently answered my questions dumb though they may have been.

another site for breaking scientific news is http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php. Can be a bit New scientisty but it covers all topics
GY, they have editors access to unreleased/embargoed stuff too, which I can't get at.

csteele

Can I ask, why have you put this thread up on OLO?

You must know that there are far better web sites, that are much better a resource than this 'opinion' site, and have archived topics on many of the 'climate sciences'.

Have you checked out the on-line courses/syllabuses? The answers to your question/s are there. I gave you one that requires much less bandwidth - really good for beginners. Obviously, not all students get 100%, some even fail - as we have seen :)

You might find this interesting:

http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html

Some blinkered 'sceptics' still don't accept the science and will try anything, anything at all, to justify inaction on climate change. These people are best ignored, but byjeezus, it sure rankles me sometimes - that's one reason I post under a pseudonym, I can let off 'steam'.

Ok, you lose some authority on the subject, but that's ok, especially on a site like this. Besides, the pressure relief from not dotting the 'i's' or crossing the 't's can be fun.

___________

Examinator,

Yep, I squirmed all through Plimer's responses - I really felt embarrassed for him. He's dug himself an open-cut mine/mind field that would be almost impossible for him to extricate from, even with his mining mates help.

Dear Robp.

Explaining to others is always a good way to see if one has a grip on the concepts so permit me to have a crack. Hopefully I'm pulled up if I get it wrong.

>>So, why doesn't the extra heat in our atmosphere (that is causing global warming) leak into space on clear nights?<<

You kind of answered it already. Greenhouse gases do act like a kind of cloud but while normal clouds are deemed 'black boxes', CO2 and Methane are a lot more choosy about what they absorb and emit. On my understanding if you wore a pair of infra-red glasses you would see the CO2 in the atmosphere as a visible cloud obstructing your view of things further out.

Their choosiness is a function of what frequency they vibrate as molecules.

Archer uses the analogy of a partially blocked sink. Although the same amount of water is entering it (sunlight) the blockage forces the water level (temperature) higher until a new equilibrium is reached and the same amount of water leaves it as before.

It isn't permanent but the time scales for its dissipation would appear to be in the order of 100,000 years. He talks about weathering represented by the equation CaSiO3 + CO2 to CaCO3 + SiO2. This occurs when water moves over igneous rocks, reacts with CO2 in the atmosphere and the resultant CaCO2 + SiO2 (calcium carbonate and silicon dioxide) is washed into our oceans. Plate tectonics does the rest and the material is taken underground and returned to us via things like volcanoes where the high temperatures reverse the equation.

Without any of these processes occurring, at room temperature CO2 should be at around 10ppm where as in the natural atmosphere is at 280pm. Higher now of course.

Lecture 14 covers this pretty well.

Hope this helps.

Dear Q&A,

I've been an OLO participant for a while and kicking things around with a few of the crew is something I'm comfortable with. Taking a little of the rancour from the issue was indeed a goal. Sorely needed I felt.

Just wanted to say thanks for this thread will watch it and learn.
My understanding is not near those taking part but I do understand as a ham radio operator the different layers around the earth.
And some of the changes that take place.
Ionization of the E layer can be great fun for me.
Too much sunspot activity can be as bad as too little.
Thanks again will watch with interest.

csteele, fair enough - especially the bit about "taking a little of the rancour from the issue ..."
best wishes
qanda

>>Archer uses the analogy of a partially blocked sink. Although the same amount of water is entering it (sunlight) the blockage forces the water level (temperature) higher until a new equilibrium is reached and the same amount of water leaves it as before.<<

csteele,

Thanks for the explanation - that makes sense from a physics point of view. Without having watched the videos (and I probably won't get a chance to be honest), I would imagine that as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere, the gravitational effect of the earth will more tightly bind the CO2 molecules into a new layer which will, in turn, act like a cloud that traps heat.

-- -- -- --

I'd like to probe into the politics of the debate a little and play devil's advocate. Over geological time there have been many volcanic events (during rifting phases of continental and oceanic plates) that have spewed many tonnes of noxious gases into the atmosphere. The atmosphere has done a pretty good job of dealing with these gases and finding an equilibrium that sustains life today. Isn't it likely that what we're doing to the atmosphere today will also reach equilibrium that sustains life down the track?

Even if the temperature did go up a few degrees globally, some places would get very hot certainly and become less habitable, but other places that are currently very cold might just become more habitable. Isn't this just swings and roundabouts? And is this really the disaster it's made out to be given that the temperature rise will play out over the next century or so?

PS: I do not have a strong view one way or the other on what the global community should do about global warming but am interested in exploring some ideas and arguments on both sides of the debate.

Sorry csteele, RobP - that's it, I'm outa here.

Let the games begin, have fun.

Dear rstuart,

Thanks for the explanation of the hotter stratosphere. Interestingly Q&A's link (thanks) talks about the cooling effect of greater levels of CO2 on it. Worryingly that cooling may have consequences for making the formation of an Artic ozone hole more likely.

I am still not quite there yet on how a cool layer can exist between 2 warmer ones even given the lack of water in the stratosphere. It seems to go against the notion that water vapour has a global warming impact. More research from myself is obviously needed.

But I might need you to tease out the notion that the stratosphere is hotter because of the fact there is no water in it. In its absence one would have thought the dropping in pressure as you went higher would have also dropped the temperature. Remembering of course as gases expand they cool.

I have just finished lecture 16 which was primarily about the chemistry of carbon. I found it fascinating that continental crusts can be over 4 billion years old but ocean crusts are never more than 100 million years old and undergoing subduction all the time.

Dear RobP,

As I said with the OP I'm keen to keep the politics at bay, at least on this thread. Obviously I'm viewing the course so I can have a more informed 'political' position but I'm just as happy for someone to have an opposite position as long as it is informed.

What I am gaining from the exercise is the ability to dismiss certain arguments that might be put to me. For instance if someone says methane and CO2 make up such a small percentage of the atmospheric gases they must not be capable of significantly changing the environment at all I now know otherwise and can explain why.

Leaving everything else aside I think it is brilliant how many people are prepared to put in countless hours getting their head around global warming. I feel it has probably lifted the gross scientific literacy of our country quite significantly.

That's my 4 x 350 limit.

it strikes me that the error in modeling..comes about by excluding night/time temp drop...we have no doudt watched their models..where the earth gets redder and redder..but the reality is..it gets red in the day...and not red at all..in the night..but not in their models

its the advantage of going..on year..[theory]..not day/night[fact]..same with the gore statements of no ice on the pole a few years ago..but the reality being..there is 25 percent more ice today

then there is the money...UK's richest man..could make more than £1bn from carbon trading scheme.
http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/international-news/12971-uks-richest-man-could-make-more-than-%C3%821bn-from-carbon-trading-scheme.html

laughing all the way to the bank..with his carbon credits?

New analysis released by climate change NGO Sandbag has revealed that the UK’s richest resident, Lakshmi Mittal, CEO and major shareholder of the steel giant ArcelorMittal,..could make over £1 billion between now and 2012 from his company’s participation in the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme.

ArcelorMittal has over 14 million emissions permits that it does not need in 2008, a figure which Sandbag estimates will rise to 80 million by 2012..making it by far the biggest beneficiary of the scheme across the EU.

The carbon market..will only deliver what politicians ask it to,..so it’s up to our leaders to make it tougher and to enable it to make a much greater contribution to tackling climate change.”

the permits undeniably have huge monetary value,..they were received for free..think about who gets the money...little wonder you cant get the science...its a tax...get it...a tax for you..so the poluters can get free subsidy

RobP: "Isn't it likely that what we're doing to the atmosphere today will also reach equilibrium that sustains life down the track?"

This is covered in the lectures, lecture 15 I think csteel said. The answer is it not likely, it is certain. In roughly 100,000 years the carbon cycle will pull the CO2 levels back into balance. This issue is, 100,000 is far too long to help us.

csteele: "Thanks for the explanation of the hotter stratosphere."

Yeah, well I was wrong. Last night I went away and did some background reading because on thinking about it, what I said didn't make sense. Yes water vapour is the biggest heat carrier in the troposphere, but it acts to keep the upper layers warmer not cooler. It does this because as it condenses into clouds it releases its latent heat, then falls to the ground. This is why the layer above the troposphere, the tropopause is so cold - there is no water vapour in it to keep it warm. At least we have an answer for that bit.

So the next outstanding question is why is the stratosphere hot. Part of the answer is it contains O3 (Ozone), which is another greenhouse gas has that absorbs UV and makes it hot. Unlike the troposphere, the stratosphere doesn't mix (much) vertically so the upper layers heat up and because hot air rises they stay up the top.

And so the final question is why is the stratosphere stratified and the troposphere well mixed. I don't know. I could make guesses, but it would be better it someone else gave a more authoritative answer.

Archer, does a series of graphs that shows the peak and an extremely long decay (Absorption) of CO2 from the atmosphere.

He uses 280 ppm (Year 1700)as the base and shows the rise to peak levels then the 'rapid' fall to 25% of remaining of the peak in 1000 years. (a process known as Ocean Invasion);
a further reduction of 15% (due to Calcium Carbonate) taking between 3-10 k years;
the the remaining 10% takes 500k years. (a process he calls weathering thermostat)
i.e. It shows a peak then a long long tail.

However, when overlayed with a graph of the temperature, that remains high with a corresponding gradient drop in CO2 for the first 1000 years, of perhaps a 25% from the peak. Then a steady, but slower reduction for the reminder of the 500k years. i.e.It shows a longer peak and a shorter tail.

I know it has something to do with the chemistry, but I still don't fully grasp why the massive disconnect between the two decay rates.

Archer makes the point that filling our car with petrol today has an effect on the world for 500k years (albeit, in proportion to the graph and the effect the individual action has. Camel and straw)

Can anybody explain the why the disconnect(perhaps the chemistry) to me...I've tried to research it but no luck.

Dear rstuart,

Thanks for doing the homework. It is a little clearer and I think we are getting closer to a more complete answer. I'm still puzzled by the idea of a cold layer existing between two warmer ones.

I started thinking along the lines of the following.

In a steady system such as a body of water the warmer layer is on the top and it is cooler on the bottom. We have been conditioned to think of our atmosphere the other way but 1200C at the outer stratosphere says otherwise. Without the greenhouse effect the ground would be far colder and gases, including water vapour, heated by sunshine would make their way right through the atmosphere.

In a pot on the stove the heat applied on the bottom rises to the top to be replaced by colder water which in turn heats up. But if a barrier to that heat rising was in place the lower section would heat up considerably and there would be a cold section above the barrier grading to higher temps closer to the surface. As you point out “the stratosphere doesn't mix (much) vertically so the upper layers heat up and because hot air rises they stay up the top.”. Not only that the UV from the sun heats the stratosphere's ozone in a uniform manner increasing the temp.

So I thought because our sun is capable of warming the 'bottom of the pot' without warming the contents on the way through and we have a barrier in our green house gases that reflect the vast proportion of that rising heat into the lower atmosphere rather than out, thus driving a circulating heat engine.

However I'm wrong, at least in part. I can't escape the fact that the temperature of a rising parcel of air decreases with height in the troposphere regardless of whether it carries water, although the presence of water vapour does slow the temperature drop because of the release of latent heat.

So the answer seems to lie in the 'lapse rates'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate#Environmental_lapse_rate

My next port of call.

Touche'

Dear Examinator,

I too am struggling a little with the chemistry, especially in David's primary field, seawater CO2 chemistry.

While more than happy to go with the problems caused by atmospheric carbon the seawater stuff is the area of climate change predictions I have the greatest issue with. I have just sat through Lecture 19 and still fail to see how adding 2.5GTons of carbon annually to an ocean presently containing 38,000GTons is going to have a discernible impact on its acidity. Perhaps he will explain it more fully later.

Dear UOG,

For reasons already stated I am going to let the bulk of your post pass but you did ask;

“it strikes me that the error in modeling..comes about by excluding night/time temp drop...we have no doudt watched their models..where the earth gets redder and redder..but the reality is..it gets red in the day...and not red at all..in the night..but not in their models”

In the spirit of the thread if you wanted to provide a link to the model you are referring to I am willing to take a look.

Rather than wade through all the technical information, may I respectfully suggest you ALL google 'Professor Bob Carter' then find and WATCH '7 torpedoes' both informative and funny. He will explain the 'scam' perpetrated by political entities and inform you all of facts I'll bet you didn't know. A real eye opener. Do it for yourself and everyone else who thinks the world is heating up with human contributed CO2.

Csteel,

I think the latency of the heat is the answer to night time cooling.
As I understand it(?), more heat is added that than escapes at night.
I think of it like a heater in a thermos flask once the water is hotter the clouds atmosphere slow the cooling untill the next bout of heating.
The differential is is positive but marginally so. thus we have as an average a small increase in over all temperatures.
At least that's, sort of how, it was explained to me.

The graphs are in lecture 20/ 23 I think (ok, I cheated, I got to about 9 then jumped to the end, now I'm filling in the blanks) naughty corner?

While doing measurements in the bay, as a volunteer, I was told the issue of water chemistry i.e. PH, was an incremental thing, again part of the process and topping up. The 2.5 Gt refers to the Carbon taken out (naturally) sequestered.

NB there is a difference between CO2 saturation and sequestered C.
4 to 1 (?). the additional unprocessed CO2= PH change. Hence the long time lag (I think)

_________________________

Pepper,

Bob Carter is a geologist, and his book has been roundly panned, as he is out of his field and like Plimer, his relevant science is wobbly.
Keep in mind, Geologists work in time spans of eras, eons etc not centuries.
Ask a geologist to give you a century either way on anything and he'll rightly tap dance.

As I pointed out earlier, on the 15/12/09 alone there were 20 relevant papers released pertaining to fields involved in AGW . I can assume there would be a mass of Geology too so it is reasonable to conclude that he isn't a full book on all the science involved. Apart from which, he is a lecturer in geology therefore he's busy enough with his own field.

I distrust all mega or multi discipline conspiracy theories, they lack credibility. The system is far too robust.

csteele: "So I thought because our sun is capable of warming the 'bottom of the pot'"

Since I was wrong initially I didn't make a guess. But they were my thoughts too. The troposphere is stired by the land heating it from the bottom, whereas the stratosphere is heated from the top and is stable.

Given that is the case you end up with a situation where the top and the bottom are both hot, and the middle colder. There has to be a boundary, and it is the tropopause.

csteele: "I can't escape the fact that the temperature of a rising parcel of air decreases with height"

Yes you can. Because if it keeps rising it will hit the stratosphere, and it is hotter than the parcel. At that point it stops rising because the air above is lighter than the parcel.

examinator: "corresponding gradient drop in CO2 for the first 1000 years, of perhaps a 25% from the peak. Then a steady, but slower reduction for the reminder of the 500k years"

He doesn't say. But I will make a guess. By definition CO2 enters the ocean at the surface only. The limestone (calcium carbonate) being a rock, lies on the bottom of the ocean. Those two have to come into contact before the reaction can proceed. The thing that brings them into contact is the deep ocean currents which have a cycle time of 2 thousand years.

csteele: "fail to see how adding 2.5GTons of carbon annually to an ocean presently containing 38,000GTons is going to have a discernible impact on its acidity"

Again he doesn't say. But from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle#In_the_ocean

"Since this ion is three steps removed from atmospheric CO2, the level of inorganic carbon storage in the ocean does not have a proportion of unity to the atmospheric partial pressure of CO2. The factor for the ocean is about ten: that is, for a 10% increase in atmospheric CO2, oceanic storage (in equilibrium) increases by about 1%"

examinator,

Maybe I can put it more clearly. There are three effects operating. From fastest to slowest:

1. Over a period of 1k years the CO2 dissolves into the ocean, producing carbolic acid and thus raising the pH. This process continues until part of the ocean in contact with the atmosphere (the surface) is saturated, then "stops". This removes 25% of the CO2.

2. Over a period of 5k years, the acid water reacts with limestone, getting rid of the dissolved CO2 and replacing it with carbonate ions. The removal of the dissolved CO2 means it can be replaced by more CO2 from the atmosphere. The net result is the removal of another 65% of the original CO2. I don't know why this takes so much longer than step 1, although I gave a guess above.

3. The remaining 10% of the CO2 has to be removed by the geological carbon cycle. Ie the CaSiO3 + CO2 <--> CaCO3 + SiO2 thingy, whose rate is controlled by rainfall. That takes 100,000's of years.

pepper, one under god, manguel,

This thread is not about discussing whether the established science orthodoxy is right or not. It is about trying to understand it. I, and presumably the others here think taking a position without understanding what you are talking about is putting the cart before the horse.

The messages from Cater and his ilk are fairly simple. If doesn't take much effort to get your head around what they are saying. It turns out that the science is dammed complex. Understanding it is difficult and very hard to do on your own. This is why we are discussing it here - it is a group effort in trying to to grips with it.

To contribute positively, look at the lectures and make a honest attempt to understand it, ask questions here about the bits you don't understand, and then help others with bits they are having difficulties with.

If you wish to compare and contrast the climate science orthodoxy with other theories as to what is driving the planets climate, start another thread.

Rstuart,

Aha now I comprehend. Thanks.(Well better, anyway) :-)

Well said.. if scientists can't understand it, what makes you think anyone HERE can ??. Bob Carter is saying just that [ if you care to listen ] why should we send the planet broke [ or be dictated under one world government ] just because some "pointy heads " tell you they DO understand it - which is a blatant lie

pepper: "if scientists can't understand it, what makes you think anyone HERE can ??"

Do you take the attitude "it looks hard, so I won't even try" to every hurdle you face in life, pepper?

What prompted this discussion is the lecture series we are discussing here is for 1st year under-grads. Thus it is designed to be understandable by kids fresh out of high school. Except where he talks about his area of expertise (ocean chemistry) I think the lecturer manages to hit his target fairly well. Very well, actually. The bit about ocean chemistry is a difficult because like all experts, he does not realise how much background knowledge he has, and he fails to impart some of it.

As for generic "scientists", don't over estimate them. Just like any person who has done the same thing for decades, long serving scientists are very, very knowledgeable in their particular area. But remove them from that area and they flop about like fish out of water, just like us. I have said this elsewhere but I will repeat it here: if you doubt this just listen to Peter Doherty, Nobel laureate and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne at the start of this video. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/06/26/2609568.htm He is the very epiphany of a scientist, yet you will hear him say he finds papers outside of his realm of expertise dammed near impossible to read.

Dear rstuart and Examinator,

Sorry to be so dogged on this but I feel I have invested too much of my time to turn around with the summit in sight plus if I don't end up getting it nailed it sort of taints the rest.

Rstuart, you said >>This is why the layer above the troposphere, the tropopause is so cold - there is no water vapour in it to keep it warm. At least we have an answer for that bit.<<

Should it have read 'the stratosphere keeps it from getting colder as it should (since with pressure and therefore temperature easing that's what would normally occur)'? Even then it can't be the whole answer.

Do you remember from Lecture 9 the 'lapse rate' i.e. the rate at which temperature drops with pressure? If it were only set by radiation the change in temp over the change in height would be -16C per every kilometre upward.

Convection by itself drops that change in temp to -10C/km and Moist Convection (where the relative humidity is 100%) to -6C/km because of the release of latent heat as it ascends.

Cont

Cont

So here is the picture I'm getting. Light and IR radiation heat the ground and the air near it and UV heats the atmosphere from above.

Gases warmed at the ground level are sent aloft through convection aided by latent heat derived from condensing water vapour and by the fact that even though it is cooling it is still relatively warmer than the surrounding atmosphere.

The limit of this process is the point where no further condensation is possible to drive the convection, remembering it is dependent on pressure and temperature. When the gas is cooled and contracted sufficiently it then drops taking up latent heat as its newly formed ice crystals thaw into rain which further warm as they fall.

I think it might be the case that the only way for heat to get across this boundary is in the form of light including IR.

This cool layer is a separate to the one I had in my brain which consisted of concentrated green house gases. They do not really form a layer and are more just part of the gas composition of the troposphere. I also need to remember the difference between latent heat and temperature.

What they are doing is restricting the amount of IR that reaches the boundary to cross over and escape.

I'm hoping this makes sense.

David Archer says that the atmospheric layer must must be colder than the ground for a greenhouse situation to occur. My confusion was in thinking of this layer as where the GHGs resided. Not so.

Whew! Thanks for you patience.

in the spirit of the thread...if you havnt seen them ANIMATION/projections of the globe..going redder and redder...i really dont thgink your trying

..im not getting what your getting..because im not decieved by polititions..seeking their new tax...built on a lie

where as your smater..than an average 5 th grader...they get it and you dont..because..they accept fools telling them lies..,

your just not getting..there are those who get off..on new taxes...and instilling us with fear..and lies..to push it through

its almost,..as if..you been blind sided..because you have been...

just as you swallow..sars/y2k/pigs-fluw/911..and children over board..your con-science..seems uneasy...and logic dosnt seem to be working for you..because its insane...just like rubbing your hands together...dont change the temp of the room one iota

yes there are horrible polutants/mutagenes and poisens emmited from industry/mining and other human activity..but civil servants..arnt doing jot about gmo/radiat-ions/poisens/fraud..etc...

but with carbon guilt...there..is something..they can police..because we do the carbon/polution..simply via the act of breathing..thus no one is guilt free

yesterday there was a program..on sbs..carbon/..PUBLIC ENNEMy NUMBER ONE..

it was eye opening..the way the euro/union..got sukkered in..to being policed..for their carbon based..murdering of all life..or rather an implied collective guilt..

they put commercial/carbon value..on this'public enemy'...that you cant even grasp..the science basics of...think why..

lol..there you go,...use your scientifficly..de/frauded mind to think...

is carbon..the worst thing..

..[REALLY}

..you cant think of any worse thing..for officials to police?

i really cant be botherd any more

Barton: We Won’t Let Obama Destroy American Jobs..For..“Some Esoteric Environmental Benefit..100 Years From Now”
U.S. Congress..were outside those meetings..urging him not to bother.

Obama Forced To Address Climate Skepticism..In Bad Tempered Tantrum

A visibly frustrated..President Barack Obama..desperately claiming that man-made climate change was..“not fiction,”..a view not shared by the majority of Americans..he has failed to represent as he attempts to ram through..a huge transfer of wealth..to the new world order.



Final Copenhagen Text..Includes Global Transaction Tax..as President Obama prepares to bypass Congress..by approving a massive transfer of wealth from America into globalist hands.

Copenhagen climate summit:..‘most important paper ..in the world’..is a glorified UN press release..Copehagen circus..ending with a lame act..A last-minute deal..at Copenhagen is proposed..that seems no deal at all.

Flag-Waving Communists/Socialists..March in Copenhagen to Stop Global Warming..Network journalists who were quick to see racists,..haters and extremists amongst the..“tea party”/protesters..were oblivious to communists..in the..“climate justice”/march in Copenhagen whose cause they trumpeted.

Climate plan a $3,000 con..Would you be upset..if you knew your government was about to get duped..in a con that would cost your family at least $3,000 a year in new taxes?..That is exactly what is happening in Copenhagen right now.

Pope Speaks on Church’s..“Grave Misgivings”..about Modern Environmentalism..the Pope agrees..there is an..“ecological crisis,”..but there is no doubt..that he sees this crisis very differently from those who are calling for a global one-child policy.

The Most Important Insurance..Scientists Considered Pouring Soot..Over the Arctic in the 1970s..to Help Melt the Ice..In Order to Prevent Another Ice Age#Some scientists and the press..have been warning about an ice age off and on..for over 100 years.

EverGreens:..After Failure,..Warmists Will Change Hats..And Move On

Government ministers..can’t agree on the best way to take money from their own citizens,..give it to an opaque,..above-the-law organization,..and yet still control it.

So where are these weapons..of mass warming really?

Why didn’t they tell us..before the science wasn’t half as settled as they pretended.. Did they lie to build the case for war against warming?

http://www.prisonplanet.com/#

cs...STEEL...steel yourself

here is one..for made just for you
that might..[lol]...
that might..wake you up

yesterday rio..announces..it has a new contract..to supply..iron ore[to india]..

noting..that iron ore exports..are at record levels

a few weeks ago?

..the news was british/govt..handouts..TO SHUT DOWN STEEL production..in briton..part of the eu..

that have refined the art of carbon accreditisation..to big poluters..to a fine art

[1700 steel making jobs..gone in britain..

BUT
..new jobs..made in india...

get it

but it gets worse..
see..the british.. steel production..has carbon credits..get it

they sell them..use the money..to move to india..[get it?]

do some research for yourself...
or deney mine...

1700 jobs in britain gone..
1700?..'new'..jobs .....created..in india...

yet there is ...increased demand ..for steel...
as rio's NEW CONTRACT confirms...

were/YOU.. are being decieved.. buddy..

you have a mind..like a steel trap buddy..
so you better steel yourself...for more deception

what is these green jobs...when the steel jobs..are getting stolen
[or rather moved...thanks be to EXTRA/credits gained from...lol..reducing carbon..LOCALLY..not globally..

get it

no... i suppose closed minds... cant get ...simple truths

believe as you will...

but know..you will never understand..
how truely evil..your leaders and their media/machine men..
and thier mindless/bloggers..
..really are

you been conned son
carbon credits..where only con-dem-nation is due

csteele: "Sorry to be so dogged on this"

Sorry? This is a nerds idea of fun. And I am most definitely a nerd.

csteele: "Should it have read 'the stratosphere keeps it from getting colder as it should"

Yes, it should read like that. For some reason I keep thinking the tropopause is a layer with some thickness. It isn't.

csteele: "The limit of this process is the point where no further condensation is possible to drive the convection"

Yes, I think that is it.

csteele: "I think it might be the case that the only way for heat to get across this boundary is in the form of light including IR."

Like you I don't know for sure. But it sounds reasonable. Since there is no mixing there is no convection. There could be conduction. However thin air is a good insulator so there is probably stuff all of that. Which only leaves radiation.

csteele: "What they are doing is restricting the amount of IR that reaches the boundary to cross over and escape."

I am not sure the boundary matters that much from a radiation point of view. It is after all just an imaginary line. The cool pane of glass discussed in the first few lectures is the entire atmosphere. It isn't uniformly cool. It is just on average cool. Some bits are hotter, some bits a colder but if you average the temperature over all air molecules, it is -20 degrees C or whatever the magic number is.

csteele: "David Archer says that the atmospheric layer must must be colder than the ground for a greenhouse situation to occur. My confusion was in thinking of this layer as where the GHGs resided."

No, I think you had it right the first time. The pane of glass is the GHG's. The other gasses - eg O2, N2 have no effect as they are not black bodies. Thus it is only the temperature of GHG's that matter.

I guess what I don't understand is relative importance of GHG's (CO2, Methane, etc), water vapour and clouds. Well, I do know one thing. The effect of the original GHG's is minor compared to the water in its two forms. But does the principle effect come from clouds changing the planets albedo, or is the GHG effect of water vapour.

Possibly more important - what stops the effect. I mean the initial trigger is the GHG's moves the temperature somewhat. That causes water to enter atmosphere and because water vapour is potent GHG we get a feed back loop.

If I were to guess, it would be that eventually so many Cirrus clouds develop that it shuts the entire thing down. It is frustrating not knowing. Did he say?

it should be noted ...that blanket of COLD..white stuff on the northern hemi/sphere...

..has the north pole..got more of it...or less of it.?

..so clever..changing global warning..to climate change....eh?
walking with one foot..on both sides of the carbon barbed/wire fence?

lets face it..this carbon tax/credit...is a subsidy/dispensation/to poluting industry..to gear up its global..industrial-isation's.....

its these growth factors...what..is the direct cause...of why..china is needing to build more industry...to build..your..'low emmision'..low energy..NEW PRODUCT...needing the new EXTRA poluting..power generations..TO BUILD IT

how much more energy,..,has them new fluero/low energy bulbs..cost us to make..let alone govt subsidy..to build them?

..how much of our tax has gone into putting..your NEW/solar cells on ya roof?

how much extra industry../carbon polution..to build and transport them arround the globe...your being conned...big timer

we are being conned...

stopping the industry/..means stopping..it emmiting carbon instantly...

BUT..still means 100 years of carbon die-oxide..being emmited from the polar currents

lets immediatly..put a new tax on all coal/petro...mined/exports

that way our emmisions...are revenue neutral...
cause govt collects tax from the exports...not..the new peoples tax

[and we save extra carbon credits....
by not having to gear up..the ports/rail infastructure etc.

..and by mining less..extract less..of the other gasses..not caught up in this hysteria...like methane..[20 times worse than carbon]

understanding forcasts...must of nessisity include the extra...thus are sckewed...by current growth factors...

no growth factors..the models more closer match..the reality...

currently they are completly delusional..[due to the growth factors]...when..the reality of continual growth..ignores the boom/bust cycle..

thus the delusion of expendential growth../creating further changes..of weather...stops scaring you so

Rstuart - that is the nub of the problem. They have a very poor understanding of exactly what drives the water cycle, which is exactly why the models are garbage at the moment.

However, you can infer from the fact that the planet has never over-heated from a runaway water vapour effect(which is what some of the more extreme AGW hysterics are effectively postulating), that it's not going to happen this time either.

Spencer and Christie have found that the clouds are not forming in the ways predicted, and there is very recent CSIRO research showing that relative humidity is not increasing.

So I'm quite comfortable with the potential rise in temperature driven by CO2 alone - it's well within natural variability and is occurring more slowly than in previous times. Would be good if it could move us to a temperature that would make ice ages less likely.

rstewart

I must respond to Graham Young's comments - it is easy to misinterpret or distort the science, intentionally or otherwise.

For what it’s worth (reproduced here) the water vapour feedback has long been expected to strongly amplify climate changes because of the expectation that the atmosphere's relative humidity would remain roughly constant. Ergo, specific humidity would increase at the rate of the equilibrium vapour pressure, which rises rapidly with temperature. However, observational evidence has been harder to come by and the effect has been controversial (much to Graham’s and his ilk’s delight). Much of that controversy can be laid to rest, thanks to new observations.

Ten/twenty years ago there was little observational or theoretical understanding of atmospheric humidity and how it varied with global climate. As a result, debate raged over whether the water vapour feedback would really occur, with some very influential proposals (championed by Dick Lindzen) that it would not. In particular, many believed that atmospheric humidity and the water vapour feedback were controlled by cloud dynamics and microphysical processes that are not sufficiently well understood and inadequately represented in climate models (this time championed Graham’s heroes, Spencer and Christie).

Successive reports from the IPCC have suggested increasing confidence in our understanding of the water vapour feedback, but they have remained cautious in defending its magnitude. However, recent advances in computing power and satellite data gathering have placed the traditional view of the (positive) water vapour feedback on a stronger footing than is widely appreciated, something that Graham cannot seem to grasp – he is an amateur, after all.

The water vapour feedback mainly results from changes in humidity in the tropical upper troposphere, where temperatures are far below that of the surface and the vapour is above most of the cloud cover. The distribution of humidity in this region is well reproduced by "large-scale control" models, in which air leaves stormy regions in a saturated condition, but with negligible ice or liquid content.

Cont’d

Cont’d

Water vapour is then transported by the large-scale circulation, which conserves the specific humidity (the ratio of the mass of water vapour to the total mass in a unit volume of air), except during subsequent saturation events, when loss of water occurs instantaneously to prevent super-saturation.

Despite the simplicity of this idea, which entirely neglects detailed microphysics and other small-scale processes, such models accurately reproduce the observed water vapor distribution for the mid and upper troposphere. One recent study (S. C. Sherwood, C. L. Meyer, J. Climate 19, 6278 - 2006) estimated the uncertainty in the water vapour feedback associated with micro-scale process behaviour at less than 5%, as a result of the overwhelming control of humidity by the large-scale wind field.

The water vapour feedback is essentially controlled by the large-scale dynamics and the saturation specific humidity in the outflow of the tropical deep convective systems. Convective outflow temperature should, on average, warm along with the mean atmosphere, thus producing the feedback.

Given these considerations, there are good reasons to expect global climate models to accurately simulate the water vapour feedback: The large-scale wind and temperature fields that mainly control the humidity are explicitly calculated from the basic fluid equations, unlike small-scale processes that must be represented by crude parameterizations.

Although the water vapor feedback is strong in all global climate models, its magnitude varies somewhat due to differences among the models in the amount of upper tropospheric warming (and hence the increase in specific humidity) per unit of surface warming. The spread among models in the water vapour feedback is, however, largely compensated by an opposite spread in the "lapse-rate feedback," a negative feedback that occurs because a warmer atmosphere radiates more power to space, thereby reducing net surface warming.

Cont’d

Cont’d

As a result, the sum of the two feedbacks is insensitive to errors in predicted warming of the upper troposphere, and to quantify the sum accurately, one only needs to know how relative humidity (the ratio of specific humidity to that in a saturated condition) changes as the climate warms. The sum of the feedbacks is also smaller than the water vapour feedback--about half the magnitude--and more consistent among climate models, because no model predicts substantial and systematic changes in relative humidity.

Despite these advances, observational evidence is crucial to determine whether models really capture the important aspects of the water vapour feedback. Such evidence is now available from satellite observations of the response of atmospheric humidity (and its impacts on planetary radiation) to a number of climate variations. Observations during the seasonal cycle, the El Niño cycle, the sudden cooling after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and the gradual warming over recent decades all show atmospheric humidity changing in ways consistent with those predicted by global climate models, implying a strong and positive water vapour feedback. A strong and positive water vapour feedback is also necessary for models to explain the magnitude of past natural climate variations.

Both observations and models suggest that the magnitude of the water vapour feedback is similar to that obtained if the atmosphere held relative humidity constant everywhere. This should not be taken to mean that relative humidity will remain exactly the same everywhere. Regional variations of relative humidity are seen in all observed climate variations and in model simulations of future climate, but have a negligible net impact on the global feedback.

Cont’d

Cont’d

Therefore, although there continues to be some uncertainty about its exact magnitude, the water vapour feedback is virtually certain to be strongly positive, with most evidence supporting a magnitude of 1.5 to 2.0 W/m2/K, sufficient to roughly double the warming that would otherwise occur. To date, observational records are too short to pin down the exact size of the water vapour feedback in response to long-term warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

However, it seems unlikely that the water vapour feedback in response to long-term warming would behave differently from that observed in response to shorter-time scale climate variations. There remain many uncertainties in our simulations of the climate, but evidence for the water vapour feedback, and the large future climate warming it implies, is very strong.

I hope the above posts/comments clears some things up. I am reluctant to engage with the likes of arm-chair wannabe scientists like Graham Young because he is not a sceptic, in the scientific sense anyway. He has adopted and ideological stance based on both his political and religious persuasion – which ‘clouds’ the issue. Besides, it does require time and effort to debunk short, sweet, specious and arcane claims – time of which we can better spend with more important things in our life. However, I do understand OLO is very much a part of Graham’s life – life’s choices I guess.

My choice is now to have a wonderful Christmas break and safe and happy New Year. I wish all else here the same – you too Graham : -)

Well Q&A if you were a real scientist I might have some respect for you, but you're not, so you can copy and paste all you like, it doesn't prove anything.

There is no evidence from the history of earth that there is any sort of a runaway water vapour effect. Otherwise it would have occurred when the temperature was much higher as it has been in the past. That water is a greenhouse gas and modifies climate is non-controversial. But to suggest that it does it to the extent that you claim is. But then, someone who would claim that a warmer atmosphere actually increases cooling of the planet's surface obviously has no understanding of basic physics.

Which is typical of your post which essentially says because large scale convection works more or less as understood, then the models must be right - a complete non sequitur.

A major tactic of alarmists like yourself is to denigrate anyone who asks sensible questions and overcomplicate the issue so that people give up trying to understand it and say "whatever". What you've posted here is a good example.

According to you I apparently always act in bad faith because of my politics and my religion. I think one can gauge your level of intelligence and integrity from that sort of a slur. Particularly given the Christian church's vocal advocacy of your point of view.

I follow this issue from an empirical basis and used to worry about global warming. I don't anymore because all of the real world evidence is that it is not a problem. Perhaps empiricism is an ideology, but if it is, in the real world it is the only one worth following.

Dear rstuart,

Thanks for the response. I'm going to have to do a revision of my notes to see exactly what he says on the subject but I don't feel he had the time to give us the detail I would have liked.

Obviously low clouds are going the have a cooling effect because of their albedo during the day.

I found this graphic instructive.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhouse_Effect.png

Basically it shows that only 1/6 of the radiation emitted into space comes directly from the surface. The rest comes from heat and energy in the atmosphere. In a way a low cloud acts like a polar ice cap.

So I think you are right to focus your attention on the high cirrus clouds which do have a warming effect. Obviously being higher they have a far better chance of capturing some of the 195W/m2 heading into space from our atmosphere.

Something I have come across which struck me as counter intuitive was that drier air has a greater density than moist so when it loses its moisture through rain falling from it the parcel of air then sinks.

This is another wikipedia graphic that thanks to the lectures I can sort of get my head around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png

The different blips in the CO2, water vapour and methane graphs I think relate to the different ways each molecule can vibrate and therefore what part of the spectrum they capture. It is worth noting that the bulk of the water vapour effect (blips) is in the thermal radiation (outgoing) range, those in the solar radiation (in coming) wavelength are not saturated yet.

Cont

Cont

The point Graham makes is a valid one, not to the extent that it makes the models rubbish as he claims, but as the latest New Scientist puts it “When the IPCC says doubling levels of carbon dioxide will probably raise the temperature by 1.5C to 4.5C most of the error bar is a result of uncertainty over clouds.” I feel the frustration will continue for a while.

The article does go on to say that new work released in July by the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research “showed global warming is resulting in fewer clouds over the oceans – boosting warming.” Why on earth that would be is anyone's guess.

In Lecture 9 David talks about the water vapour in the air being controlled by the hydrological cycle. Rain and evaporation have a stabilising or negative feedback on it. But temperature is different in that vapour concentrations increase with temp (through increases in GGs) which in turn have a positive or amplifying effect on temperature.

Perhaps the question about where does it stop lies in the spectrum graph. Should we be asking at what point, if ever, do the increases in water vapour concentrations begin to have a greater effect on the solar radiation side of the spectrum compared to the thermal side?

The agreement also gives the green light for carbon trading markets, which as we have documented are all owned by climate kingpins like Maurice Strong and Al Gore, to be more heavily financed and expanded.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/research-reports-obama-intimately-tied-to-phony-environmental-movement.html

Many elements of the final text have been watered down and the agreement has little teeth in terms of enforcing national limits on CO2 emissions, which is why many in the skeptic camp are celebrating the apparent failure of the conference.

The Club For Growth organization said that Obama’s failure to get developing nations to agree to more draconian measures has “probably saved thirty million jobs” in America.

“I am greatly relieved that the last-minute agreement President Obama negotiated is being widely described as ‘meaningful.’ When politicians call something ‘meaningful,’ that means it isn’t,” states their press release.
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/perm/?postID=12216

However, Copenhagen delegates have already promised to convene another series of meetings next year to strengthen what is spelled out in the final agreement. Globalists are persistent and they will continue hammering away until they get what they want, not because the environment is on the verge of collapse, but because their agenda for world government is stalling as more people find out the true agenda behind the global warming scam.

This is why we need to be more vigilant than ever and keep the elite on the back foot. While it’s true that the globalists have failed to achieve the entirety of what they set out for, they are still moving forward with their agenda by taking baby steps rather than giant leaps.

We have slowed the juggernaut of global government, but it continues to grind forward, which is why we need to continue to awaken more people so that we can have greater strength in pushing back and resisting the tyranny that the globalists want to enforce by taxing and regulating the very life-giving gas that we all breathe.

Read the final version of the Copenhagen Accord here (PDF).

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/20091219-climate-text.pdf

http://www.tagesschau.de/klima/aktuell/kopenhagen190.html

100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146139

global warming ’caused by sun’s radiation’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear.....ation.html

http://youpi.me/realindex.html

Although the final Copenhagen agreement is largely being dismissed as a failure..by both the mainstream media..and climate skeptics,..it does establish the framework for a global governmen.. which will control climate finances via taxes on CO2 emissions,..as Lord Monckton warned on The Alex Jones Show this week.

Monckton said that the main goal of Copenhagen was to “establish the mechanism, the structure, and above all the funding for a world government.”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/exclusive-british-peer-copenhagen-summit-has-established-a-world-government.html

“They are going to take from the western countries the very large financial resources required to do that.” Monckton said, adding “They will disguise it by saying they are setting up a $100 billion fund for adaptation to climate change in third world countries, but actually, this money will almost all be gobbled up by the international bureaucracy.”

The final text of the accord states that funds obtained from climate financing will be controlled by a “governance structure,” and that a “High Level Panel” will be appointed to decide where the money will come from.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fl9fESYVFY&feature=player_embedded

In effect, this means that a UN-controlled structure of global governance will override the sovereignty of nation states in collecting and doling out funds obtained under the justification of climate change.

As Monckton explained, these funds will come from a global tax on financial transactions and a tax on GDP. Earlier draft versions of the agreement spelled this out in detail, but the final version leaves it more vague, merely stating the funds will be collected “from a wide variety of sources, public and private, lateral and multilateral.”

As information that was leaked in the first few days of the conference revealed, the money will not even go to the UN,
http://www.prisonplanet.com/final-copenhagen-text-includes-global-transaction-tax.html

but it will go straight to the IMF and World Bank who will then lend it at loan shark rates to poorer countries,..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

..thus further indebting them to the global government and advancing climate colonialism.
http://infowars.net/articles/december2009/111209Soros.htm

Frankly Graham, I don’t give tinker’s cuss whether you think I’m a scientist or not ... we’ve been down that track too many times before and you still don’t get it, you never will.

“There is no evidence from the history of earth that there is any sort of a runaway water vapour effect.”

What’s this got to do with anything - I didn’t say there was?

I understand physics very well Graham (much more than you think) – read the posts again.

“Which is typical of your post which essentially says because large scale convection works more or less as understood, then the models must be right - a complete non sequitur.”

The models are not perfect Graham, but they are more robust than you, Joanne Nova, Jennifer Marohassy or Anthony Watts think they are – and they are getting better all the time, whether you like it or not. Perhaps you are the “non sequitur”.

“A major tactic of alarmists like yourself is to denigrate anyone who asks sensible questions and overcomplicate the issue so that people give up trying to understand it and say "whatever". What you've posted here is a good example.”

A classic circular argument from our moderator – it goes like this:

. A scientist provides a ‘simplified’ explanation of water vapour feedback (e.g. put energy into a system, it heats up, if there is water around it evaporates and in equilibration, falls out as rain/snow => warmer and wetter world)

. An AGW doubter states “this begs the question (insert your own) ... and attempts to qualify it

. The scientist explains why the question/qualification is incorrect and provides a more detailed explanation (see my 4 connected previous posts)

. The AGW doubter argues the science is too complex to understand and accuses the scientist of obfuscation , appealing to authority or “whatever”

. The scientist attempts to provide another ‘simplified’ explanation to the doubters rebuttal ... and around and around we go.

Cont’d

Cont’d

Well no Graham, I’m not going to play these games with you – despite the fact you joined the fray with these remarks:

“I'd love to be in a discussion that was purely about science”

One of the most vacuous and disingenuous statements I’ve seen from you, just gold.

I am not an “alarmist”, Graham. On the contrary, I am just an ordinary scientist who just happens to work in a field that you have adopted as your “hobby horse”. Yes, the science is complicated, but following your logic - one may as well say AGW is bunkum, and someone else responds by saying it’s not. Just because you can’t understand the way real science is written (dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s) does not make it any less true.

As far as slurs go, I reply in kind – you have done nothing but denigrate and cast slurs against me ever since I originally challenged you and called you to account on the cells in the Walker Circulation, way back.

Yes, politics and religion does muddy the waters (you have recognised this yourself in other threads). God forbid that ‘Man’ is adversely impacting His creation – they proclaim from the pulpit.

His Holiness is aware of AGW Graham (the Vatican even has a 'seat' on the UNFCCC) - it's a pity the Church doesn’t address the ‘elephant in the room’. Yep, our very own Cardinal Pell is a self confessed 'denier' of AGW and the Mad Monk opposes for the sake of opposing – just wonderful policy. And the US bible belt’s point of view is legendary - but you know all this.

If you do follow this issue “from an empirical basis”, I suggest you take your blinkers off.

UOG “establish the mechanism, the structure, and above all the funding for a world government.”
Ah Lord Monckton is someone else who sees the UN and the machinations of AGW and ETS and all the other bunkum for what it is

a smokescreen for what I have repeatedly referred to as

“Socialism by Stealth”

Now doubtless, our own pseudo-scientist and “emeritus wannabe”, Q&A, will try and lay scorn on my observation and claim only scientists are allowed to comment on Global warming and the rest of us, who have real jobs and work to pay for the holy elites of academia to regale themselves in floppy velvet hats should shut up.

Just another tactic of the left.. seek to silence the opposing view

Typical of the collectivists.. demanding, through their entryism of the environmentalist movement that they have their way

Their “way” despite the proven failure which lead to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the transition of China from the poverty of a collectivist oligarchy to the economic recovery which ensues from becoming a quasi-capitalist state (I said “transition” because China still has a long way to go along its journey of change).

AGW is a left wing hoax

The world has warmed and cooled cyclically for millions of years

Nothing humans can do will either stop or encourage it…

certainly not the ranting hysterice of a bunch of bodgey scientific theorists, driven to promote their perverted political values and egos.

It might have been a vain hope on an opinion site such as this but I thought a conversation might have been had on the science of global warming forecasting as presented by Mr Archer.

I had made this clear in my original post and reinforced it subsequently.

I felt it presented an opportunity to advance mine and others knowledge of global warming without the clouds of controversy and vitriol obscuring that learning.

I certainly had no objection to robust debate on GW occuring elsewhere within the OLO forum and have on occassions availed myself of those opportunities. The hope was that an admittedly layman's discussion of Mr Archer's lectures might have informed that debate a little further.

I suppose the fact that posters seem unable to help themselves even on a thread such as this speaks of the intensity of the discourse but also, I would have thought, a little about people's manners.

csteele: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png

Until this lecture series came along that diagram summed up my entire knowledge of how CO2 effected the atmosphere. It makes the blanket analogy obvious. I personally find the physics EnergyIn==EneryOut equations in the lecture series easier accept. I feel much more comfortable with maths and physics deriving the situation from first principles and with relatively few assumptions than I do diagrams where the underlying assumptions may not be obvious.

csteele: "In Lecture 9 David talks about the water vapour in the air ..."

I have now viewed that lecture 3 times, looking for answers to some of my questions. I don't think they are there.

Q&A's explanation was somewhat beyond me, but I think it gave me a starting point for further investigation. I summarise what Q&A said in my own words, in the hopes that if I have it wrong someone will shoot it down:

- The principle cause of water's GHG effect in the atmosphere is from the vapour, not the clouds. (That at least answers one of my questions).

- The place that takes effect is the upper troposphere. There is a section above the Cirrus cloud layer contains water vapour. The existence of this section was news. This section is where the action occurs. It makes some sense, because we have to drag the Earth's apparent surface temperature to -20 or so to get the energy budget in balance. The layer we are talking about is the coldest, so GHG's in there would have the biggest effect.

So far Q&A has eliminated one major complication - the clouds. You might recall clouds were very complex. Their hight, the droplet size, the conditions they formed at all were impossible to calculate from first principles. Worse, their effects highly variable. They could cause cooling or warming and by a large amount. And now Q&A tells us their effects are minor. Maybe they cancel each other out? I don't know. I just hope he is right because would makes the model understandable.

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

But then he goes further and says:

- The amount of water vapour in the upper atmosphere is not highly complex like the clouds, but in fact can be predicted by fluid dynamics. There are big words there, so I will try to put it in terms you already know about. Recall how the entire atmosphere was replaced in the first lecture by a pane of glass? It wasn't a perfect model of the atmosphere, but it got close. The beauty of the pane of glass is compared to the atmosphere with its temperature variations, parcels of air moving about, water condensing in and out and god knows what else is the pane is dammed simple. A couple of small physics equations described the entire thing. Even so, it got to within a few degrees of the real answer. While the equations describing fluid dynamics aren't near as simple as that pane of glass, they are still just equations and compared to the effort of predicting what happens with the clouds they border on trivial. Yet, even so, Q&A says they get to within 5% of the correct answer!

Despite all that, Q&A's answer still leaves questions open for me. Like what is the nature of the negative feed back loop here. He gave hints about it being the temperature of the upper troposphere, and that makes sense. If it increased, it would shut down the warming (because again it is the coldest GHG's that have the most effect). And besides, as I said Q&A's wonderful response is a little beyond me - I need a David Archer like dumbing down before I can understand it fully. Fortunately, the lecture titles from Q&A's first link give hope they might do just that, so they will be my next port of call.

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

As for the ongoing discussion here about whether the climate science consensus is "valid science" or indeed the best model we have. The first point is the whole point of physics is to build models of how the world works. Even f=ma (force = mass x acceleration) is just a mathematical of our world. We gained confidence in it centuries ago not because it is sounded better than "Jesus did it" or whatever, but simply because every time we looked at what happened, it was always true. We lost confidence in it when observations showed Einstein's relativistic equivalents were a better fit. All physics is in some sense just a model of reality. And what is more we know all of it is in absolute terms wrong, and will remain so until we join somehow square Quantum Mechanics with General Relativity. Wrong or not, it is clearly the best model of reality we have now. And that same criterion, ie "the best model of reality we have now" is all that we can ask of climate science. To criticise it as some have (but not here) because it is just a model is absurd.

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

But it is being attacked as not being the "best". Well, in one of his latter lectures David Archer said something came pretty close to sealing that they are the best for me. He said the current models have been run over the last 800k(?) years, where the major forcing was not CO2 but rather changes in the Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun. Thus the sunlight hitting the Earth was the trigger. The models predict temperature, CO2, other GHG levels and what not from there until the present. He said they are are pretty accurate - showing for example the CO2 levels trailing the temperature rise. Unless the critics can come up with some other model that does a better job than the current ones at doing this, I don't see how they can claim they have a better model for the climate. Until they do, such a claim makes no sense. Even the claim that the current models "lack predictive power" looks pretty weak if what David Archer said is true.

That is the one weakness in what David Archer said however. He just said it. He didn't give citations, did not show graphs with sources, or indeed provide any other assurance what he said was correct. They only think I have is during his 16 hours of speaking, he managed to convince me he was presenting the state of play as fairly as he could. So looking up those models is another port of call to me. Some links from our more knowledgeable mates here would be real helpful.

csteel, it is a pity that Q&A feels the need to play the man and not the ball, and then gets upset when his trolling and bullying is called.

The information he has provided really has little bearing on the argument, which isn't whether water feedbacks are positive, but to what extent they are positive or whether there are other negative feedbacks that overwhelm the positive ones.

One of the interesting things is that the increase in temperature over the last 100 years can be accounted for just on the mathematics of the warming which would be attributed to CO2 on its own. So where does that leave water?

The notion that we have catastrophic global warming occurring is based on the idea that water vapour increases will lead to a runaway increase in the temperature. But you cannot find any experimental evidence for this because if it was going to happen it would have already happened as temperatures have been far higher in the past.

If you look at the Vostok cores you'll see that CO2 at the moment is higher than it has been in the past, but given its logarithmic relationship to temperature the additional warming that it would be creating is trivial. So how do we get to a projected temperature that is many degrees higher than anything in the Vostock record even if you allow water to have a net positive forcing?

You have to apply Ockham's razor and real world tests to these notions, which is what Q&A appears to be objecting to. The computer models can't tell you anything on their own. And I'd also be interested in the references to the model that explains 800,000 years of climate variability.

I agree with RStuart that there nothing wrong with modelling, and that one ought to model. What I have a problem with is models that produce results that don't appear to agree with what has happened in the last 100 years, let alone a longer period and a continuing adherence to these models when their output is clearly wrong.

"it is a pity that Q&A feels the need to play the man and not the ball, and then gets upset when his trolling and bullying is called."

Hypothetical:

Should I be suspended for calling Graham Young a liar and hypocrite?

(No, you don't have to answer)
_______

Sorry Csteele, good try.

This is Graham Young's site, he is chief editor and moderator. In my opinion, he was always going to take control of this thread, and all that implies.

No Q&A you can get away with calling me any name you like, but you knew that. I'm the moderator and it's not a good look to be too thin-skinned. Do it to anyone else and I will cheerfully bounce you. Your last post is a pretty good demonstration of what I was talking about with respect to your behaviour.

Now, can we get back to discussing the science and away from personal abuse?

Go here . hee hee hee

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html

Gee whizz, geemanently, why am I NOT surprised. this is the last nail in the coffin - can we bury this crap for all time ?

Pepper “http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html

Gee whizz, geemanently, why am I NOT surprised. this is the last nail in the coffin - can we bury this crap for all time ?”

The old and reliable UK Daily Telegraph have reveal another scam

Whilst the Gruaniad (UK Guardian), famous for its lack of proof reading, is seen as accomplice in perpetrating one.

But of course the opportunist swill, who feed their faces and off the publically funded yet unaccountable plate of the UN, have been up to their armpits in doggie doo for so long, they have lost not only their sense of smell but all sense of ethics.

To Global Warming in general and AGW in particular

No one from the environmentalist (including the associated political entryists) school of thought has ever come clean and told me how much warming is due to natural cyclical measures and how much is due to human activity.

I am now hearing from other “informed sources” that human activity is possibly accountable for 3 % of the total warming influences, a bit like domestic users of water in Australia, those who pay 90% of the costs, account for 3% of the water consumption.

When I hear statistics like that I have to conclude

What are we getting so excited about?

Why all this hype

Unless someone is playing us with a hidden agenda?

I am a skeptic. My profession has trained me to be so.

As far as AGW is concerned I am no longer sceptical

I am certain the whole AGW / ETS theory is a fraud

Just as Bernard Madoff is a fraud and Enron was a fraud, L Ron Hubbard was and his pet, Scientology is a fraud.

Just because someone suckers everyone into beleiveing what they want to believe does not make it the truth, nor does it make the “deniers” worthy of scorn

All it means is

A lot of people have been suckered

and the deniers are among the ones who were not.


Nothing which Q&A can say will redeem the IPCC or the UN

Dear rstuart,

A very fair summary thank you.

I remember as a youngster being taken down in a decompression chamber by my father for fun (don't ask, it was an interesting childhood). We pressurised to the equivalent of about 4 atmospheres (40mts) and as it increased the chamber became quite hot. An quirky side note, my father had brought some Donald Duck comics which where a hilarious read at pressure. As we depressurised the temperature fell markedly and a quite thick fog enveloped the interior. All in all a very graphic example of the relationship between water vapour, relative humidity, temperature and pressure.

I understand the impulse to bundle up the whole issue of lower to middle atmosphere clouds and water vapour into a constant to better explain things and it might be that the negative feedbacks allow it.

What I am having a little trouble with is the empirical data. We have globally rising temperatures, that at least is not in dispute and I currently have around equivalent of 25mm of liquid water in the column above my head in the form of water vapour, equivalent to 25kgs/m2. That appears to be increasing by around 0.4kgs per m2 per decade.

I'm sort of coming at this from another angle now. Evaporation has the effect of cooling the Earth by moving heat from the surface to the atmosphere so temperature increases are taken care of by this mechanism. A negative or stabilising feedback. One might think of it as a radiator in a car whose flow rate is determined by a temperature gauge.

For there to be more water vapour in the air one would have thought the cooling of this process would have taken care of the temperature. So what is stops it working 100% effectively? Is it that the air 'outside the car' is warmer? Does this mean the 'flow rate' is unable to keep up with the increase in temperature?

What has decided that it should be at a particular level anyway, what acts as the thermostat? And what is meant by resetting of the world's thermometer?

Dear GrahamY,

I think the notion of a runaway greenhouse effect has been a product of climatologists such as David Archer using Mars and Venus to illustrate how the mechanisms work. While they take a scientific approach in not entirely ruling it out it is hardly something they tout with vigour. It is more those outside the field who have admittedly over-hyped the likelihood of something so drastic happening.

I admit feeling a little sorry for the climate scientists. An unexpected set of warming data comes across their desk and as any scientists worth their salt they look for reasons why. What else is showing a positive or negative trend? They find CO2 and methane then do the physics to see if these gases could indeed be the answer. The results said yes, quite possibly. They then do modelling to see the possible repercussions for the future and they are of concern. When asked what might be done to lessen the impact their answer is to limit GG increases. All perfectly reasonable in my book.

Modelling has a proud history. The planet Neptune was discovered only because mathematicians had worked on the perturbing of Uranus and asked the astronomers to train their telescopes to a certain section of the sky and there it was, within a degree of their calculations.

I have not found anything yet that undermines David Archer's physics or conclusions although I've not finished the lecture series and so should refrain from passing judgement until I do. If CO2 and methane are indeed doing temperature forcing then we are we not in unexplored territory compared to any other part of the Vostok data?

GY

Have you put your concerns to Real Climate in the form of a question? If not why not? The collective resources are there.
If you have or you have the science to 'repudiate' (JH's legacy)Q&A's answer then post it.

Your comment about him c&p was obfuscatious at best.i.e. Counter the the explanation (the science involved) not how it arrived.
Do you have a scientific rebuttal?(after all, you said you wanted to debate the *science*.

As a side issue, IMO Q&A's 'attack' was as lacking in relevance as was yours.

It seems to me, that either you have access to science we aren't aware of (except perhaps Q&A)that is colouring your views or you are playing a *political* oppositional role similar to Shadow Minister.
Implying that a single factor therefore invalidates *All* the science.

My reading of the models indicate that they are fundamentally sound but the results are due to the miss match of statistical assumptions and actual raw data.i.e. what do we leave out? how do we compensate?

In truth the science analysis is a learning curve and is more valid that the black art of economics the major parties put so much faith in.

If I were to choose to back either a 20 year economic forecast V a AGW one, I know which I would back the one with more actual science. That doesn't mean there isn't a risk.

csteele: "I currently have around equivalent of 25mm of liquid water in the column above my head in the form of water vapour, equivalent to 25kgs/m2. That appears to be increasing by around 0.4kgs per m2 per decade."

Hmmm. That is one hell of a growth rate.

csteele: "Evaporation has the effect of cooling the Earth by moving heat from the surface to the atmosphere so temperature increases are taken care of by this mechanism."

I have come up with a list of ways this could work myself. Most are probably harebrained. The bottom line is I don't have a clue. I am going to have to find the time to look at that lecture series Q&A posted.

Q&A, GrahamY,

I trust you are inflicting this display on us some good reason. At the very least I hope you are both enjoying yourselves.

Should you decide to take a break from the current hostilities some links to help csteele and myself out here would be real nice. Plots of model data for historical times versus reality would be good. In fact even just raw numerical predictions from the models and the equivalent historical data would be OK. It would not be hard to do the plots myself.

i for one am glad grayham has a thick skin...it helps us know the believability of our fellow posters...many have stated they dont read my posts for egsample...so my name lets them know...what im likely to be saying

but i have the same thing with other posters

but back to topic
if you believe in modeling
read this
http://www.prisonplanet.com/economists-are-trained-to-ignore-the-real-world.html

it has many links proving every point

if you want to know why..read this
http://www.prisonplanet.com/health-care-bill-is-a-huge-tax-heist.html

if you need to know why
http://www.prisonplanet.com/#

its important to see globally govt is sucking us dry...deliberatly/systematiclly..by the on going scares/beatups...they have had ever since they gave away the fed/bank..and the rights to issue govt s own money..

so the fed bankers could steal our gold then silver then our copper...now soom even our nickle...and the iron/copperplated coins

think who pays for govt's generous super..
think who needs ever more taxes to pay off our public service...serving their buddies

try to wake up that we are being tricked/decieved..its time we found out by who..and told them ...no more lies...switch off the haarp and the chem trails..[and stop controling/tweaking..the weather...]

yes the sun does the heating...
but we been controling the weather for years..
if you dont know that...stay asleep

rstewart

"So far Q&A has eliminated one major complication - the clouds."

Nope, they are still a complication - BUT, we are 'understanding' them a lot better.

This is not to say people like Roy Spencer should stop looking for some large but elusive negative forcing.

Have a good Christmas everyone.

Btw: my apologies, I am human after all :)

rather than study fraudulent and confusing science detail

go to a real scientist
who explains it a little better than a deciever

http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/pv.asp?p=wact10&fsize=0

no expensive volumous downloads..in 19 parts
to decieve you into accepting a new tax

but that wouldnt destract..
like this thead has destracted

if the bulky ''science'' hasnt explained it clearly...
you just gotta think why not..

thats if you can still think..through all that deciet..your trying so hard to comprehend...the basics dosnt take that much study..only lies need to decieve and make it complicated

Hi all,

Hoping Christmas was kind and of good cheer for you all.

I have only just sat down to start viewing the rest of David Archer's lectures my next being number 22.

I spent part of Christmas eve discussing cloud base heights with a pilot who was convinced temperature not pressure was the driver for condensation. With my new found knowledge I was able to beg to differ and he finally conceded the point. If nothing else David has provided the opportunity for one-up-man-ship over a few beers, always satisfying.

As much as these lectures have informed me I, like I suspect many others, ultimately take the perspective from which we view the GW predictions by what is happening locally.

We are told that the earth has cooled over the last few years however early this year my state of Victoria had numerous maximum temperature records tumble.

Now three days ago two towns to my north, Swan Hill and Bendigo eclipsed their December overnight minimums by 5 degrees. That bears repeating, 5 bloody degrees. Another three also broke records.

In the face of these there is no way I can be complacent about the issue and have got to the point where I need good solid reasons why CO2 is not the driver of temperature increases to shift my thinking.

If these records turn out to be a statistical blimp then well and good but to say no action is needed I think is taking a very optimistic view. But for now I am being presented with a well researched, scientifically supported, peer reviewed argument of why I should be concerned, and I am.

csteele,

I agree, that was my conclusion too. I think it's time we as a species started to look at the way we do things.

Some of the reading I've been doing of late is into Nuke power. However, Common reasoning there seems to be a worry too they're advocating big reactor technology that requires lots of fresh water. Indicating that we need to build them near permanent water... Given the predictions re water shortages, rising sea levels, storm surges, wild weather etc. cynically, I would ask where would that be exactly?

Add to that we are still going to have additional waste to deal with be it nuke waste or radioactive dead bits of a reactor.

But anyway at least maybe Santa will be grounded because of the polluting vapour trails and rein deer poo on every roof...I did leave some big "doggy bags" on the roof this year. Have a good one. Cheers

csteele, you're confusing climate and weather.

In the first place we have good Australian temperature records going back in most cases less than 60 years. So "records" aren't particularly compelling evidence of anything in that context because your dataset is not significant.

But anyway you have to look at the magnitude. How does a +0.6 degree maximum increase in global temperature translate into +5.0 degree increase? What you experienced was an unusual weather pattern that channelled hot air from the interior into your area over a prolonged period. Which is what caused your temperature record. It's probably just averagely hot at the source of your hot air.

But even if it was a global phenomenon (which it isn't this year) it is a non-sequitur to go from that to saying the reason for the temperature increase had to be CO2. Why not any of a number of other potential forcings, including ones that are known, such as the fact that solar activity has been higher in the late 20th Century than for quite some time, or ones that haven't been discovered yet?

We know that it has been hotter in the last 10,000 years than now. The fact that CO2 could not be implicated then suggests that the "only CO2" thesis is negatived. Which doesn't mean CO2 doesn't play a part.

Dear GrahamY,

I will be the first to acknowledge the weather patterns over Victoria have me a little spooked.

Even after examining the evidence I initially took some of the climate change predictions with a grain of salt but over the last decade the change in weather has continued to tick the required boxes in my state for me to give them some real credence.

When you lose a large number of your fellow Victorians in weather conditions that exceeded what I experienced during Ash Wednesday a certain focussing of the mind occurs.

This decade has been quite warm in itself and for some December overnight minimums to exceed previous records by 5 degrees certainly got my antenna twitching. I'm afraid I can not dismiss it as easily as you seem to be able to do. One or two degrees maybe but by FIVE?

We seem to have taken different paths on the issue since by your own admission you have become less concerned about the possible impacts of rising CO2 and temperatures while I have become more so. It is part of the reason for me doing more research.

I have been recently playing with some of the Cape Otway Lighthouse temperature figures. My area of interest is overnight minimum temps as I see them as less solar dictated than maximums. These records go back nearly 130 years and from the location would have little to no urban heat effect.

It can be found through this link.

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml

Just type in Apollo Bay and it will come up in the selections. Try running the min temps and graph them off.

I find the data both 'significant' and 'compelling'.

I am more than willing to explore other potential forcings and had looked at solar activity earlier but was not particularly convinced. If you have a link or two I could examine I would be interested.

C, this is the graph for the one you are looking at http://tinyurl.com/yjxepey. Doesn't look too alarming to me. But I'm also not sure why you would prefer it to the mean maximum, which is http://tinyurl.com/yzkk7kk and shows a sharp decline in temperature since the end of the 19th Century. This graph of highest temperature is also interesting http://tinyurl.com/yzkf749. I've used excel to fit a trend line to the mean max data and it is down since the 1800s, and even since the beginning of the 20th C.

This seems to be the pattern with a lot of the long-term remote weather stations in Australia, and is a measurement issue which further clouds the issue of correlation in climate science. Suggests that the Urban Heat Island effect is not properly corrected for.

As for solar forcings Plimer's book gathers together a lot of references to papers which support solar forcings and I'm happy to trawl the footnotes when I get a chance and give you some references, but I want to finish the book first. The sun has to be the only source of global warming, so most of what we experience has to be solar driven. Which makes me wonder again why you would be trying to eliminate it by choosing minimum temperatures (although you can't eliminate it anyway).

While I'm finishing Plimer you could check out Svensmark's work, which provides an amplification mechanism for solar forcings. Although as it depends on clouds and Plimer also points out that there has been warming on other planets lately, there are probably other mechanisms at work as well.

C, just doing my morning reading. Another mechanism for amplifying solar activity http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8012. This one relies on cosmic rays and their effect on ozone. The amount of cosmic rays reaching the earth is affected by solar winds. Come across anything else new I'll lob it in here.

Frankly I doubt that even the stats for Cape Otway show what CSteele would like them to show --this is from his favoured source:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/weather-data.shtml

CAPE OTWAY LIGHTHOUSE

Statistics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Years[1861 to 2000]
Mean MINIMUM temperature (°C) 13.3 13.9 13.2 11.6 10.0 8.5 7.5 7.8 8.5 9.5 10.7 12.0 [Mean -- 10.5]

Statistics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Years [ 1971 to 2000]
Mean MINIMUM temperature (°C) 13.5 14.3 13.6 11.8 10.5 8.6 7.7 8.1 8.8 9.7 11.0 12.2 [Mean -- 10.8]
An increase.

But, if you consider the other end of the spectrum

Statistics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Years [ 1861 to 2000]
Mean MAXIMUM temperature (°C) 21.4 21.6 20.3 18.0 15.6 13.7 13.0 13.8 15.2 16.9 18.3 19.9 [ Mean -- 17.3]

Statistics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Years [1971 to 2000]
Mean MAXIMUM temperature (°C) 20.7 21.5 19.8 17.7 15.6 13.4 12.9 13.5 14.7 16.4 17.7 19.1 [ mean -- 16.9]
A decrease

Now if you consider a more recent year --since 2000 (say 2007) --as some will suggest: You get an increase --yes.
Statistics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Years [for year 2007]
Mean maximum temperature (°C) 21.2 22.1 21.1 18.3 17.1 12.5 12.8 14.1 15.6 16.5 18.2 21.3 [ Mean for 2007 ---17.6]
above the 145 year mean of 17.3

But, likewise, if you consider earlier years against the 145 year mean ( say 1870)
Statistics Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual Years [for year 1870]
Mean maximum temperature (°C) 23.9 23.6 21.1 19.5 16.0 14.0 13.4 14.1 15.5 18.4 18.1 20.6 [ Mean for 1870 --- 18.2]

Even higher!
Has the temperature trended down since 1870?

?

Dear GrahamY and Horus,

Isn't this a great set of data and a great tool from the BOM too.

A place like the Cape Otway Lighthouse should be a lot more influenced by the dampening effects of the ocean, far less influenced (if at all) by the urban heat island effect and quite a bit more susceptible to solar irradiance (SI) as a driver.

I'm in fierce agreement with you about the temperatures presented. My playing with the data showed a very slight trend up reflecting the small increase in global temps.

As the CSIRO says “Warming is projected to be lower near the coast and in Tasmania and higher in central and north-western Australia. These changes will be felt through an increase in the number of hot days.”

Indeed that seems to be what it shows with the jump SI in the mid to late 1800s corresponding to a similar leap in temps.

But the two do diverge after 1970 when a stable to decreasing SI not explaining the temp spike we have had since 1980.

So for those attributing the increases in global temps to SI would seem to have a problem with the Cape Otway Data although I'm open to an explanation. Earlier correlations seem to have withered. If you have other data sets it would be good.

Graham,

I had seen the ozone piece before. I think it needs a fuller explanation on how it works and it is a pity it is over such a small time scale but it deserves some attention.

C, what dataset are you referring to for solar irradiance? I'm also not sure why the temperature increase should be larger away from the coast. You might like to explain that part of the theory.

Yes, the ozone paper covers a short period, but then so do all these datasets, relatively speaking.

Csteele, GY,

I might be off beam here but.....
As I understand the explanations from some climatologist scientists, I have recently been email introduced to, current measurements exclude those data points that have historically been abhorrently high, possibly influenced by the urban island effect.

They told me that the likes of Cape Otway Light night temps would be affect reliability by prevailing sea currents and the temps there of. They referred me to satellite temps as being more reliable.(particularly some of the newer or upgraded ones.

Another factor they raised was that temperatures will have variance between place to place i.e. historical temp % rises from Cape Otway would be different from say ones from mid Coast NSW depending on prevailing wind directions.(overland or off the Sthn Ocean).

One expressed some concern about the accuracy of historical data in micro climate comparisons. i.e. factoring in changes of one environment when compared to another that may not have had the same changes.
He referred to CSIRO paper on changes in Victoria that showed as the trees went the land temp unevenly raised. Essentially they said measuring one or two sites may or may not actually show much.

They indicated that temperature from at the same latitude won't necessarily show the same degree (%) increase(s), more factors need to be considered, then the conversation went into computations etc beyond my comprehension. The temp increases will be different in different places.

They knew of or read Plimer's book and weren't impressed , apparently
one knew the author of one of Plimer's mis-quoted citings. Beyond that they dismissed the book as being largely as unscientific, more a polemic. I let it drop because I was more interested in the argument about + or - feedback with water vapour in the air.( Plimer and Carter's torpedo). One agreed to write me an answer explaining that one.

Cont

Cont.
CSteele, GY

BTW I asked them to submit an article to OLO via GY and if it was published could they monitor the responses with comments further info etc. They said they'd look at it. I made much the same request on Real Climate boys. (NB in both cases I stressed I was a lowly commenter and had absolutely no authority to promise anything. it will be up to GY) I
simply thought it would be an interesting exchange.

This contact was through someone I know here who has worked with these scientists O/seas. I'll follow them up for my own interest but if they're interested they'll presumably contact GY direct.

I haven't got any further in understanding the water cycle, but I did come across this link (well a related one anyway), posted by michael_in_adelaide in another thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTUcxYdMmj4

It is a video of Professor David Rutledge talking about how much organic carbon (ie the stuff we burn) is left in the ground. He gives lots of stats and graphs to back up his estimates, and they look plausible to me.

In the video is Rutledge says there is less than 500 Gt of recoverable coal left in the ground. You may recall David Archer said their was around 5000 Gt +/-50%. In the predictions being out by a factor of 2 does not change things overly, meaning we still have to take voluntary action (such as the ETS) to avert an uncomfortable amount of warming. But if the 500 Gt figure is correct things like the ETS really won't matter as its entirely probable they won't be able to reduce the total coal consumed to below 500 Gt, even if they were wildly successful.

The one caveat is Rutledge's estimates are controversial, in the same way Peak Oil is controversial. No only do his estimates go against conventional expert option given by business and governments, Rutledge admits he doesn't have a clue what basic physical and economic principles drive his curves for coal.

Rutledge's web site:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~mmic/people2/Rutledge.html

Similar comments from another scientist:
http://www.energybulletin.net/50905