Barry
The lack of tropospheric hotspot is a problem for warmists. If the surface warms faster than troposphere that’s indicative of increase in short-wave at the surface not long-wave. In other words it supports Lindzen and Spencer and many other skeptics who say clouds throttling how much short wave reaches the surface to warm the ocean is The Big Kahuna. I tend to agree with them.
“If the surface warms faster than troposphere that’s indicative of increase in short-wave at the surface not long-wave”
No it isn’t, the reason the troposphere warms faster is due to lapse rate feedback, which also makes the troposphere warm faster under an increase in short-wave too.
Models forced by increased solar output also show a hotspot.
GaryM,
Its just when its climate is it? Then any talk about “unaccptable risk” is political. But it’s not political when it’s about anything else. I get it now.
No, give Pierrhumbert credit – he does genuinely seem to be drifting towards openness and honesty for the first time, saying the alarmist drumbeat has been overhyped.
And it does seems more than coincidence that scientists that preach CAGW are found to be in the pocket of government, the very organization that stands to gain so much from public belief in CAGW..
Web
…refusing to accept that a doubling in concentration of one of the important non-condensing components will have any kind of effect.
The increase in CO2 is a result of the warming. The relationship between GMST and and the logarithm of CO2 is not a one way equation that applies only during the warming. As a result, if the GMST falls by 1.2 deg C, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere halves. It goes into the oceans were it came from during the warming.
As a result, trying to control the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is like trying to control gravity. It is a fools errand. Any money spent on it is a total waste in a world where millions going hungry everyday NOW.
Pay attention for a change, LOLTWAT.
If the surface warms FASTER than the troposphere that’s SW warming. If the troposphere warms faster that’s LW warming. The mechanisms are different. SW arrives at the surface, warms it, and then warms the atmosphere. The surface warms more in this case. LW warming caused by increased greenhouse gas warms the troposphere first by the gases absorbing upwelling LW from the surface then the excited GH molecules spread the warmth to non-GH molecular neighbors through collisions. This indirectly causes the surface to warm but not as much as the troposphere.
That’s the IPCC’s story. It’s not universally accepted but I tend to agree with the IPCC fingerprint narrative. Roy Spencer, for instance, doesn’t agree. It’s funny seeing you take Roy Spencer’s side to say the least. You probably need to reconsider in light of that. A tough choice, no doubt. Agree with me and the IPCC or Roy Spencer and the mainstream skeptics. You’re f*cked either way. Classic case of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/10/hotspots-and-fingerprints/
Max,
So the usual contrarian line that “a true scientist is never absolutely sure of anything” unless they are “advocates, not scientists” isn’t to be taken too generally?
They can be sure of all sorts of things – providing that they have no connection with climate change that is. Then everything is full of uncertainty and doubt? Even carbon dioxide as a GH gas is ‘not proven’.
Have I got that right now?
Derivation of climate sensitivity for zero-feed back is given by Shaviv:
Barry Elledge
Excellent response for Web.
Like all the alarmists, web does not want clarity, he wants obfuscation.
Very sad.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-1.html
From the horse’s mouth. Or possibly the other end of the horse.
IPCC AR4 still promotes the tropical tropospheric hotspot as the fingerprint of anthropogenic warming. (a) solar forcing, (b) volcanoes, (c) well-mixed greenhouse gases, (d) tropospheric and stratospheric ozone changes, (e) direct sulphate aerosol forcing and (f) the sum of all forcings.
Only (c) and (f) show a tropical tropospheric hotspot. This is from Santer 2003.
Now, loltwat, if you want to make a case that the IPCC and Santer are silly arses that got it all wrong and have stuck by their mistake at least up through AR4 that’s your business but it probably won’t win you any friends amongst the usual suspects in climate boffinry. I happen to agree with Santer and the IPCC here. I could be wrong to agree with them.
Webster, “Until Cappy understands the utility of statistical thinking, he will be fighting phantom demons for the rest of his life.”
Actually, the limits of statistical thinking are the key to understanding the system. The biggest problem I have with the climate science “norm” is unrealistic confidence intervals.
Temperature anomaly can have a zero margin of error if you have an infinite number of thermometers. But the interpolation of those thermometer readings over variations in altitude and area with a variable temperature gradient will have a limit. +/- 0.125 C is likely the realistic limit of surface anomaly accuracy. The “global” temperature change from 1900 is on the order of +/-0.4 C with a margin of error greater than +/-0.125 C. You have to pick the noisiest data to “fit” your CO2 curve in order to get the 3C which gives you a larger margin of error.
I believe that is “statistics” which involve human and instrumental errors.
“Robustness” requires arriving at the same answer from different baselines. That is equivalent to thermodynamic “frame of reference.” If your answer is correct, it will be correct in all frames of reference. Your 3C is limited to NH land so it is not “robust” statistically or thermodynamically.
Barry,
I have my PhD from physics. I felt I have to understand something about climate change as a person with physics background working with energy economics.
It didn’t take long to understand the transmissivity of the atmosphere and it’s dependence on the GHG concentrations. For a while I thought that I had understood all the essential, and that the rest follows smoothly. Only gradually I learned about the physics of the atmosphere, how it’s temperature profile (lapse rate) gets determined, and that the transmissivity of the atmosphere for the radiation from the surface to space is actually a minor factor in the effect. It’s more important to understand the role of the upper troposphere and how the combination of the temperature profile and transmissivity over shorter distances than the whole height of tropossphere.
For a physicist interested in learning on the issue there are two good approaches. One is reading some textbooks or lecture notes, some of which are freely available on the net. The other is going to sites that concentrate on describing the issues that can be fully understood by any person interested enough and with fair understanding of physics. One of those sites, and the only one I really know, is Science of Doom. SoD is not a climate policy oriented site that has a political agenda. It avoids largely overstatements and tries to keep to understanding science. One consequence of that is that it may be impossible to find there much about the full climate sensitivity. Determining it’s value seems to be impossible from arguments of the level presented on that site. You can find the explanation for the value 5.35 W/m^2 but probably not for any specific value for full climate sensitivity.
As you have noticed, the it’s not possible to discuss these issues on this site without violent disagreement between commentators. This is presently more a policy oriented site than a science site. Here you can find a wide spectrum of views and attitudes, and that’s a virtue, but that makes deeper discussion impossible. it’s always interrupted by something else.
I must agree. That more CO2 instantly turbocharges plant metabolism and hence their transpiration of H2O, shunting LHV to the upper atmosphere and into space and water vapour into cloud formation and, as recently reported, their production of natural aerosols which also promote cloud formation and enhance their albedo is hardly rocket science and the first two effects are high school level knowledge. And then there is the sun and solar cycles etc etc etc.
What I do not get is how many allegedly intelligent scientists can actually believe that they can get away with peddling such utterly simplistic crap.
That said, I watch the antics of politicians and celebrities and understand that there are people out there of some nominal intelligence who are utterly addicted to the crack cocaine of publicity, accolades and free travel around the world.
Pure rubbish, Edim.
Heya i’m for the first time here. I found this board and I in finding It truly useful & it helped me out a lot. I am hoping to offer one thing again and help others such as you aided me.
A scientist may be eminently qualified to say that the risk of something or another is x, but being a scientist does not qualify them to say whether or not x represents an unacceptable risk. That is for society to decide.
That’s not to say that the scientist is disallowed from saying it’s an unacceptable risk, but he or she is not talking as a scientist when they say it, but rather as a member of society – and is no more qualified than anyone else to make such a pronouncement.
like I pointed out to bartemis, the trend you have plotted is not statistically significant. Too short a time period vs noise.
Smoothing over a longer time period helps to show that CO2 is accelerating over the LONG TERM.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:120
Bartemis you’ve plotted the 2ND DERIVATIVE.
The fact that the 2nd derivative is above zero means CO2 rise is accelerating.
Here’s the 1st derivative:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:120
See it’s going up? That’s ACCELERATION. It means the rate of CO2 rise is INCREASING.
What you’ve plotted is the 2ND DERIVATIVE: Change in acceleration.
Dear god, get a clue.
