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?