willard,
Maybe you are confusing assumption with prediction. A twelve year old child can predict the Sun will rise, or that Winter will be colder than Summer.
I prefer useful predictions. Predictions that are better than those which can be made by a twelve year old child, merely by extrapolating the past into the future.
I predict you can’t come up with a useful prediction. Think about it, and give it a try if you like. Any fool can predict, and many do.
JCH,
There doesn’t seem to have been much global warming for the past 18 years or so.
Seeing as how the ice shelves are floating, they don’t actually appear to be holding anything back. Brightly coloured arrows labeled “hydrostatic pressure ” pushing the ice back up the hill, are disconnected from reality.
Notwithstanding the above, how much will the sea levels rise if the Larsen ice shelf melts completely? Against this, how much will sea levels fall as the Himalayas rise at about 10mm per year? As they rise above sea level, there has to be an equivalent fall of mass somewhere else.
Where, how much, and what is the impact on local sea levels? I pay attention to potential disasters, but I don’t want to waste a good worry.
Except that the oceans didn’t outgas net 300 GtC, they outgassed maximum 6 ppmv = 13 GtC for 0.8°C temperature increase.
Bart,
Before pointing to others that they don’t understand dynamic systems, you should examine your own knowledge of such systems in the case of disturbances.
Like e.g. an increase in temperature where the oceans-atmosphere dynamic carbon system doesn’t react on the increased pressure in the atmosphere, against all rules for a dynamic feedback system…
The modern scientific method is this hypothetico-deductive method, which basically is: make a guess or hypothesis about a problem based, deduce testable predictions assuming that your hypothesis is correct, and then make observations which could disprove your hypothesis. If all these observations confirm your hypothesis instead, your hypothesis is strengthened and might advance into a theory. A single observation in disagreement with your hypothesis, however, will overthrow it.
Newton wrote, “I conjure no hypotheses”, “and hypotheses .. have no place in experimental philosophy” (i.e. science).
Yes, science has advanced since Newton, but we must not think we’ve reached the apex of scientific method, that how we do it today is the golden standard of all future. The pendulum might shift towards more inductive methodology again, or something else. I think climate scientists could do well in reading Newton. I think Newton was wrong, though. It’s impossible not to make hypotheses consciously or not. But what Newton tells us is that observations, as free as possible from assumptions, is the key to science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheses_non_fingo
Ragnaar,
The full variability is from the influence of temperature on vegetation: that is a variability of about +/- 1 ppmv/year around the trend. Extreme events like the 1991 Pinatubo and 1998 El Niño somewhat more.
Changes in vegetation are not responsible for the increase in the atmosphere, vegetation is a small, increasing sink for CO2.
The slope in rate of change from vegetation in the above graph is zero to slightly negative.
The full offset and slope in the above graph is from a different process than the cause of the variability. You may choose between human emissions (at twice the offset and slope) as cause or some other, unknown source. But in the latter case, show the observations on which that is based…
Noisy creatures gorging at others’ expense due to global warming? I think they call that COP 21.
Bart,
You may be a master in calculating high frequency systems, but you only demonstrate that you have no idea what a slow dynamic system like the oceans do.
Henry’s law is applicable at every moment for any gas/liquid system, locally and globally.
If the ocean temperature increases everywhere, the pCO2 of the oceans at all places will increase with ~8 ppmv/°C. That is what Henry’s law gives for the solubility of CO2 in seawater.
As the influx and outflux are directly proportional to the pCO2 differences (ΔpCO2) between ocean and atmosphere, the influx of CO2 at the upwelling places is increased and at the sink places reduced. That gives a net extra influx in the atmosphere. Thus the CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase.
What you completely ignore in a dynamic system, is that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere counteracts the original disturbance.
When the CO2 levels reach the above ~8 ppmv/°C, the original in and out fluxes are restored, as the ΔpCO2 difference gets exactly the same as it was before the temperature change.
The new equilibrium after a temperature change is exactly the same for a dynamic or static system per Henry’s law.
But is it sustainable?
“trends” suffer from similar distorting and data inverting effects that apply to running averages:
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/triple-running-mean-filters/
This the frequency response of the sliding trend that you are using (15y trend in this case)
The red lobes are where it INVERTS the data. If you want to look a rate of change and “smooth” the data by removing higher frequencies use a decent low pass filter ( for example gaussian ) on the first difference ( month to month difference ) of the data.
Climatology seems obsessed with this idea the a “trend” over some arbitrary period.
This is a perfect example of motivated reasoning. They “know” that there is a steady rise due to CO2 and that all other processes are “random” noise that will average out.
Ferdinand, I do not see why you should be so fixated on Henry’s Law. That would govern an equilibrium that is a component of a much larger system. Others have pointed this before. The metabolic rate of various biota within the carbon cycle system is likely to affect decomposition rates (resulting in methane and CO2) and growth rates unequally depending on the climate conditions.
You have 2 arguments that I think weaken your point of view:
– adherence to the mass balance argument. It may all come to the same thing in the end, but I think Bart and others who have said the same thing are dead right that that is NOT the way to approach it.
– Henry’s Law/equilibrium/fixation on the ocean as sink and source. I don’t know where I read it, but my understanding is it is actually land based biota that contributes most to the carbon cycle, not the oceans. This will not be governed by Henry’s Law.
Your best argument is with the extent of variability in the recent past on centennial scales. But there are problems with that as well: poor representation globally, uncertainty over diffusion, and high variability
It’s supporting the temp leads CO2 argument over millennial time scales where diffusion (which acts as a smoother on shorter time scales) is possibly less of a problem.
“Is there any need for a dike to save Melbourne from the rising seas?”
I live in Melbourne, so I was interested. I to have speculated that I dike isolating our Bay might work, if needed. And A Parker is claiming that that is actually proposed (cost $10B – seems cheap?) by Dep’t Environment. But I looked through his documents and could not see any such proposal. And I have not heard of one.
From the article by Richard Betts
‘However, the truth is very different natural variability was always of interest to scientists as part of understanding how the climate system works, and Climate Services and the ambitions for short term forecasting are now major research drivers. ‘
I note that Willard has referenced this paragraph in another place. I have a great deal of time for Richard Betts who seems to have less of a closed mind than others, who display their biases openly.
However, I have mentioned here several times that the Met Office themselves maintained until recently, that until man took a hand, climate variability operated within very tight bounds. Also in 2006 Phil Jones wrote an article on the rapid and substantial thirty year warming that ended in 1740 and noted that natural variability was greater than hitherto expected.
If anyone-such as Willard-wants the precise quotes, I will dig them out.
What Dr Betts PERSONALLY believes about natural variability may be a different thing. Without wishing to put words into his mouth, on the two occasions I have met him and discussed past climates I think he is fully on board with the idea of substantial natural variability and that past climates such as the MWP and the LIA demonstrated this.
However, that is a different thing to what the officially sanctioned or approved position might have been until recent years.
tonyb
For what it’s worth Bartemis, I understand what you are saying completely. For me, the key thing is simply to think of human emissions as simply an input within a much larger and complex system. The system is traditionally self regulating always struggling and never finding equilibrium.
I think what we CAN say is that we are contributing to making the carbon cycle LARGER, by unlocking hitherto trapped carbon, and possibly damaging sinks, (deforestation) although that might be counter balanced by agriculture.
It may come to the same thing, that we are perturbing the system sufficiently to be responsible for more of the rise than there would be naturally, and by significant amount, but I completely agree and understand that the way you have to start looking at it in the first instance is e way you have outlined.
rosie odonnell and oprah are available if you really need help nick.
One reason climate experts have been forced to look away from extensive scholarship on past civilisations is the likely connection of major drought and cooling. Climate will only ever be one factor in civilisational collapse, but it can be a big one. The Old Kingdom wilted under Bond Event drought, the pre-Hyksos Egyptians had big problems from destructive flooding in succeeding centuries (so it’s not just drought/cooling you have to worry about). It’s a different story for Harappans, Mesopotamians, Myceneneans etc, but climate change is in the mix. Cooling does different things to different parts of China, but none of it is negligible. I’m happy to be told I don’t know much about these things, and that others only know a bit more…but I can’t figure out why they’re not front and centre in climate studies. (Or maybe I can figure it out.)
There are lots of other reasons for decline and collapse, and “natural” climate change has to get in a queue. It’s highly unsettled scholarship. But for modern climate experts to assure us that they have always been interested in “natural variability” is a bit like your mechanic telling you he has always been in favour of steering wheels. We kind of assumed!
In each, Gandhi (as was his wont) sought to impose his views on others through indoctrination etc; when his view changed, he insisted that those around him change too. He wasn’t interested in helping people to develop their own understanding, only to impose his own views. This attitude, seen in some climate scientists, is very dangerous.
Perhaps because of my (hazy?!) recollection (and admiration) of Ben Kingsley in the movie Ghandi – no doubt long before the time of many here – I had always wondered about Pachauri’s (relatively) recent proclamations of adulation (and attempted emulation?!)
Keep in mind IPCC AR5 projects Antarctic’s contribution to GMSL rise by end of century to be 2 inches. All laid out in chapter 13.
In reading the Betts piece, it was easy to see who is wearing the Big Boy pants.
