Another way to ask my question regarding GHE theory. Based on the current understanding of science, how would a Skeptic answer the question. At levels of 1,000 ppm, what would be your best guess on resulting temperatures: (A) Very significant increase; or (B) We have no idea of what, if any, increase there would be.
Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Stephen Segrest
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by manacker
Jim D
I think you are missing the point here.
You (and Mosh) are concentrating your attention on the outgoing LW impact of added GH gases, primarily CO2 (i.e. the greenhouse effect).
This effect results in around 3.7 W/m^2 forcing with a doubling of CO2.
At the same time you are totally ignoring the incoming SW impact of added cloud cover (i.e. the albedo effect).
Clouds reflect around one-fourth of all incoming solar radiation, on average.
If cloud cover increases by 5% this has the same forcing impact as a doubling of CO2.
There was an observed reduction of cloud cover over the period 1980-2000, which coincided with a period of sharp warming. Since 2000 the cloud cover has recovered partially, which coincided with a period of slight cooling. (Palle et al. Earthshine data)
IPCC has conceded that clouds remain the “largest source of uncertainty”. However, despite this “uncertainty”, it considers the effect of clouds simply as a “feedback” to (anthropogenic) forcing, and has ignored any natural forcing effect from clouds themselves.
I think this is a basic mistake, as we have seen from the Palle data.
It could be that clouds are the “control knob” over 30+ year periods or longer, rather than just GH gases.
If so, all the estimates of 2xCO2 transient climate response or equilibrium climate sensitivity may be grossly exaggerated.
Max
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by manacker
Wagathon
Don’t count on it. These guys have their own agenda (and it is “kill King Coal”, while slowing down oil and gas exploration/development as well).
Max
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Curious George
Perhaps you should concentrate on Huffington Post. Please bother to read an article you recommended to our attention in an earlier post -http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/wind-power-emissions_n_5087308.html, boasting that wind power cut 4.4 % of 2013 emissions.
That is one strange article. It only discusses an installed windmill capacity in megawatts – but of course an installed turbine does not reduce any emissions when it stands idle. The savings come from megawatt-hours, and those numbers are sorely missing. It reads like an advertisement for a wind energy industry association. Did you notice?
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Vaughan Pratt
@MRM: <i> The examples I write about most commonly are flood control and irrigation in California, Texas and the Indus Valley. Reduction of CO2 output should certainly not come first in those areas.</i>
Quite right. Section 3.1 of the Wikipedia article on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons" rel="nofollow">tragedy of the commons</a> cites global warming as an example.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by manacker
Stephen Segrest
In your search for the empirically validated “CO2 signal”, you must be very careful not to overlook other factors, which may be influencing our climate, for some of which we do not understand the mechanisms all that well at present.
Look at statistically significant (i.e. 30-year+) periods of good CO2/temperature correlation, to be sure, but do not overlook periods of similar length during which there was no correlation (the mid-century period of slight cooling, the current pause, etc.).
Only if you have a good understanding of why there was no CO2/temperature correlation during these periods can you begin to develop a good understanding of what the empirically validated “CO2 signal” really is.
Theory is very nice.
But nothing beats empirical evidence from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation.
And this evidence is very slim so far (Jim Cripwell’s position, as I understand it).
A word of caution: be skeptical of rationalizations, which attempt to “explain” periods of no CO2/temperature correlation, but are not based on empirical data.
A second word of caution: be skeptical of subjective interpretations of dicey paleo proxy data from carefully selected periods of our planet’s geological past – especially if these are based on the “argument from ignorance” (i.e. “we can only explain this if we assume…”).
Your journey will be a slippery path.
There will be those along the way that promise you all sorts of false wisdom based on theoretical deliberations and model outputs.
There will be some that claim (without any real justification) that the whole greenhouse effect is simply hokum, dreamed up by politicians who want to tax and control energy.
Be skeptical of both groups.
Insist on empirical evidence following the accepted scientific method before accepting any hypotheses cloaked as scientific truth.
Lots of luck.
Let me know what you find out – because I’m searching, too.
Max
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Curious George
Pekka – “[Adaptation] may also be preparing to what’s expected to happen, or what’s possible to happen.” I differ a little. Too many things can possibly happen. We should only deal with threats that are likely to happen.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Mike Flynn
Bob Ludwick,
I should apologise. People design perpetual motion machines, solar powered flashlights without batteries, and all sorts of other things.
The US military employed psychics to discover the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and also spent millions of dollars on the program known as Stargate – remote viewing using ESP, which would give the US military and the CIA access to foreign secrets, both military and political.
I have no doubt they may have believed Mosher’s bizarre covert communication plan. Unfortunately, no trace exists, and everybody has been sworn to secrecy, apparently
In the same vein as the crazy self heating properties of CO2, easy to claim, but not so easy to demonstrate. Impossible in fact. Ray Pierrehumbert and the IPCC give the insulating value of the atmosphere as roughly equivalent to one seventh of an inch of polystyrene. Not just the CO2, the whole atmosphere. I am almost inclined to believe the IPCC figure. How’s that for even handedness? No self heating in evidence, but certainly claimed.
So no, Bob, no doubt from me that anything can be designed, in theory.
Some Greek said that if you gave him a fulcrum, with a lever long enough, he could move the Earth. Perfectly true. And the point?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
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Comment on Week in review by GaryM
pokerguy,
“But I can also see such an approach used as a kind of obstructionism, for example in the civil rights realm.”
That’s an excellent example of the progressive revisionism that has permeated western education since the progressives gained control of it in most western countries.
Conservatives started a new party, and fought a civil war, to end slavery.
After conservatives took away their slaves, progressives enacted what were called Jim Crow laws to prevent black Americans from voting. When the Republican Party under Eisenhower proposed the first civil rights legislation, the Democrats, including Lyndon Johnson, stopped it dead in its tracks.
When Johnson finally saw the writing on the wall and proposed a new version of the Republican policy, his fellow Democrats filibustered it as they did the GOP version earlier. Republicans broke the filibuster and voted in greater numbers for the civil rights laws than did the Democrats.
Once progressives decided that blacks voting was inevitable, they enacted policies specifically designed to force them to become dependent on government. Davis Bacon kept blacks out of the construction and many other trades (and still does). They turned inner city schools from centers of education, to permanent jobs program for Democrat activists and a money laundering scheme for turning tax dollars into campaign contributions. They instituted tax policies in virtually every major US city that destroyed the climate for industry and small business development.
And best of all, they const4ructed the big lie, abetted by a stupid progressive Republican campaign consultant, that there was a mass exodus of racists from the Democrat Party to the GOP.
Like so much that is taught by the progressive education industry, the myth of conservatives trying to stop civil rights just ain’t so.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Mike Flynn
Michael,
I take your point about time frames. I’ll be a little more specific.
During the decade 1900 – 1910, what was the variation in the global sea level?
During the same period what were the overall vertical variations for the individual tectonic plates, and upon which datum was this based?
During the same period, what vertical displacements were measured on the sea floors supporting the oceanic waters, and how were these measurements verified?
If you cannot provide answers to these simple questions in verifiable scientific terms, you might be adjudged by some to be a fool, a fraud, or purely delusional for claiming that sea levels have either risen or fallen due to global warming during the period 1900 – 1910.
I would be severely underwhelmed if I were offered a Nobel Prize for anything pertaining to man made climate change. This would place me in the same category as such luminaries as Al Gore, and the unsung heroes of the IPCC.
I do not aspire to become the Michael Mann of Climate Science.
Nominate me if you must. I will decline the offer. I hope you don’t mind.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
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Comment on Week in review by GaryM
Oh, and welfare policy, the most racist of all. Progressives enacted massive transfer payments they called “welfare.” But they only paid benefits f there were no father n the home. An unemployed black father, faced with no job prospects due to Davis Bacon and progressive tax policy, and a p*ss poor education had to choose between remaining in the home within no income, or leaving the home and his wife and children receiving transfer payments as a result of the beneficence of the white racist progressives who implemented the policy..
This single progressive policy, based on their racist view of black men, did more to decimate the black family structure in the US than anything else.
Back before Hollywood gave up all pretense of thought, they even made a movie about it called Claudine. Progressive icon Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a book about it, then spent the rest of his career fighting any real reform of the welfare state.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Roger A. Pielke Sr.
Hi Jim D. – I am back on line. With respect to your estimate of the radiative imbalance as between 0.5 and 1 W/m2 positive imbalance.
Levitus et al. [2012] reported that since 1955, the layer from the surface to 2000 m depth had a warming rate of 0.39 Wm-2± 0.031 Wm-2 per unit area of the Earth’s surface which accounts for approximately 90% of the warming of the climate system. Thus, if we add the 10%, the 1955-2010 radiative imbalance = 0.43 Wm-2± 0.031 Wm-2. This does have uncertainty values assigned to it.
For the TOA analyses, Stephens et al . [(2012]) reports a value of the global average radiative imbalance [which Stephens et al calls the “surface imbalance”] as 0.70 Watts per meter squared, but with the uncertainty of 17 W m-2 !
The more robust estimate is close to your lower value of 0.5 W/m2.
You also wrote in one of your earlier e-mails that
“by far the biggest driver of the clearly seen climate change in the last century or two has been the nearly 2 W/m2 from increased CO2,”
What do you estimate is the water vapor feedback in Watts per meter squared (which also must be positive)? This water vapor feedback is supposed to amplify the effect of the added CO2.
How do you reconcile the radiative imbalance diagnosed from Levitus’s work, or even with your values of 1 to 0.5 Watts per meter squared, in terms of each of the radiative feedbacks and forcings (i.e. using the 2014 IPCC values)? Can you show where they sum to the radiative imbalances that we both report?
On the other issue of the summer mean temperature change where you refer to Hansen’s work, you did not present evidence regarding the siting quality of the locations where he concludes there has been the large increases. The satellite lower tropospheric temperature data does show some warming but of a magnitude that is not as high (in terms of standard deviation) as in the surface analyses.
Our work on siting quality (although for other geographic locations) shows systematic biases when the siting quality is poor. As a necessary condition to accept Jim Hansen’s analysis as robust, at a minimum they should provide photographs of the observing locations as we have urged for years; e. g. see
Davey, C.A., and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2005: Microclimate exposures of surface-based weather stations – implications for the assessment of long-term temperature trends. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., Vol. 86, No. 4, 497–504. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-274.pdf
Are the stations that he uses unaffected by local changes in their immediate area (note: this issue is distinct from larger land use change which can have a non-local change on temperatures).
We have concluded that local changes in the observing site over time (even in otherwise pristine locations) can result in non-spatially representative sampling. This is due to a vertical redistribution of heat which is in addition to any deeper layer change in heating, if that occurs. We discuss this is our paper
McNider, R.T., G.J. Steeneveld, B. Holtslag, R. Pielke Sr, S. Mackaro, A. Pour Biazar, J.T. Walters, U.S. Nair, and J.R. Christy, 2012: Response and sensitivity of the nocturnal boundary layer over land to added longwave radiative forcing. J. Geophys. Res., 117, D14106, doi:10.1029/2012JD017578. Copyright (2012) American Geophysical Union. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/r-371.pdf
In our paper we wrote
“it is likely that part of the observed long-term increase in minimum temperature is reflecting a redistribution of heat by changes in turbulence and not by an accumulation of heat in the boundary layer. Because of the sensitivity of the shelter level temperature to parameters and forcing, especially to uncertain turbulence parameterization in the SNBL, there should be caution about the use of minimum temperatures as a diagnostic global warming metric in either observations or models.”
In the higher latitudes, whenever the surface layer is stably stratified (which is all day for large parts of the year), this would, based on our conclusions, lead to a warm bias when the data are used to interpret the effect of global warming.
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Comment on Week in review by Jim D
This one is more up to date, but is drawn in a more obvious way with both against time.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/mean:12/offset:0.05/plot/gistemp/from:1950/mean:12/offset:-0.05/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.3
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Jim D
Robert Ellison, you need both forcing and temperature to define sensitivity.
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Comment on Week in review by Herman Alexander Pope
I do think that measured CS (allowing all other factors to vary) will come in around ZERO plus or minus some undetermined amount. First off, you cannot measure CS. You can only use your favorite bias and guess in you favor. There IS NO MEASURED CS. ALL CS COMES FROM CLIMATE MODELS OR THEORIES. NONE OF THESE HAVE PROVIDED PROJECTIONS FOR TEMPERATURE OR SEA LEVEL THAT MATCHED REAL ACTUAL DATA.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by B,Moore
The comm
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Comment on Week in review by Mike Flynn
Michel,
I like it.
Maybe you have been a bit cautious.
Wouldn’t it be more logical to do away with yourself just in case the tissue thickening turned out to be a sign of secondary disseminated metasteses, (I hope I got that right), and not only were you going to suffer a long lingering painful demise, but also your insurance might run out, and your spouse, offspring, aged parents and grandparents, yea, even unto the grandchildren would be cast into abject poverty because of your obstinate refusal to apply the well understood precautionary principle.
Phew, what a sentence! I feel wrath about to envelop me!
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Robert I Ellison
F = α ln(CO2/CO1)
dT = λdF
Irrelevant to the wrongness of the formula you are using.
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Comment on End of climate exceptionalism by Jim D
Hi Roger, normally I am in US time zones, but it is currently late where I am, so a quick response for now. The imbalance depends on the time period you average over, so these numbers will never be comparable unless we have made sure that is true. To me, the imbalance from the recent OHC increase is the best estimate because satellite data are noisy. I don’t have numbers other than the ones you started with which sound right to me.
I would estimate water vapor feedback from transient sensitivity and that crudely from temperature and CO2 increases since 1950. From this we get TCRs of 2 C per doubling, implying ECS somewhat higher and therefore water vapor feedback about doubling the CO2 effect.
Hansen’s plots are global maps based on the GISTEMP analysis. The ratio of temperature change to standard deviation holds as much for populated and unpopulated regions, and is quite uniform and significant over continental areas like northern Canada and parts of Russia where little is expected from population effects.
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Comment on Week in review by beththeserf
Dwight Eisenhower, there was a man for the open society.
Thankfully it’s on the record. Beware the memory hole,
the medjia’s vorpal blade … …
http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.net/president.html
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