Presumably someone will ask Gleick directly if he faked the document..
And why.
ie the one with the clues that led Mosher, et all to Gleick.. These clues were ONLY in the document that Heartland state is a fake…
Whether any particular event drove him to it (moment madness) or was it a planed calculated action on his part.
This is serious – DeSmogblog claim ‘authenticated’… by themselves
Dr Curry,
Teaching (?) the controversy is very likely one of your most important threads.
There is a lot of disagreement on what should be taught. I hope we get this right.
Nobody from Heartland !
“I do not remember ANY current controversies taught in my high school biology, chemistry or physics classes”
Didn’t you get the Darwin vs. religious views? The Monkey Trial?
In chemistry, didn’t you have the history of the discovery of oxygen? Rutherford and the cannon-ball against tissue paper? The dew-drop model?
In physics didn’t they at least mention Watt and the industrial revolution and the reason for the development of thermodynamics (to make better steam engines)?
Do you have no history of science?
Just wait until carbon capture is widespread and people start feeding liquid CO2 in huge quantities to deep sea locations 
TonyB, you’re supposed to say “straw man” here, aren’t you?
Or didn’t you know that?
Jim D
Regarding clouds, another Judy (Collins) sang “I really don’t know clouds at all” – and this could well have been the theme song for climate science today.
The Chief has given you some thoughts on the impact of changes in SW reaching the surface due to clouds when he wrote: “I’ll give you a clue – it all happened in the SW” (and he most likely knows much more about this subject than you or I do)
You certainly must know that it is estimated that the reflection of incoming SW radiation represents around -79 W/m^2 in the so-called “global energy balance”. A 5% change in reflected incoming SW radiation (-4.0 W/m^2) would have a slightly greater impact than a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (+3.7 W/m^2).
IPCC concedes in AR4, “cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty” but, based on model simulations, concludes nevertheless that the net feedback from all clouds is strongly positive.
Spencer + Braswell have shown us subsequently, based on CERES satellite observations that, over the tropics, the net overall feedback from all clouds is strongly negative with warming.
http://blog.acton.org/uploads/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
S+B conclude that this is because the added reflection of incoming SW radiation from lower altitude clouds with warming is greater than the added absorption of outgoing LW radiation from high altitude clouds (IPCC models had previously estimated just the opposite net effect).
We do not know from this study whether or not this net negative feedback also occurs over regions outside the tropics (which only cover around 40% of Earth’s surface, but account for most of the incoming solar warming), nor do we know whether or not this negative feedback will operate over multi-decadal and longer time periods.
So is this simply a negative feedback or a separate forcing?
We know from ISCCP observations (Pallé et al.) that the global monthly mean cloud cover decreased by around 4.5% between 1985 and 2000. As a result the Earth’s global albedo decreased by the equivalent of around –5 W/m^2, i.e. decrease of reflected SW radiation (= heating of our planet). Over the period after 2000 the cloud cover recovered by around 2.5%, with an increase in reflected SW radiation of around +3 W/m^2 (= cooling).
http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2006_EOS.pdf
Interestingly, these periods coincide well with a period of rapid global atmospheric warming followed by a period of no warming, as measured both at the surface and in the troposphere.
Spencer has since written a paper showing a correlation between cloud cover and the PDO, and the Chief has written here on apparent correlation with ENSO. This work would indicate that clouds do not only act as a feedback (to warming from human GHGs, for example) but represent an independent forcing factor in themselves, possibly driven by ocean current oscillations or whatever has caused these oscillations.
And then there is the observed long-term correlation between global temperature and solar activity/cosmic rays reported by Henrik Svensmark et al. This has led to the CLOUD experiment work at CERN, which has recently reported an experimentally observed link between cosmic rays and cloud nucleation in a controlled experiment, but more work is still required know to what extent this will play out in our atmosphere, IOW to validate this mechanism experimentally.
So I’d say it’s an exciting time.
We may soon know more about clouds than we do today.
But to me it appears likely that there is a connection between clouds and cyclical ocean currents as well as the sun – but we still do not know for sure how this works.
It seems less likely to me that clouds only act as a positive feedback to GHG warming, as was assumed by IPCC.
Max
tonyb, there are no safe limits, only safe rates of change. Driving a car at 200 mph is only dangerous if you run into something.
Markus, you scored an own goal. It was CH that disagreed with my statement that effectively the ocean has a higher heat capacity. Take it out with him.
No, you have misunderstood the mathematics in the paper. The change in entropy due to the phase transition is accounted for.
Yes, the term for the volume of liquid phase is not included. But the term for the volume of the gaseous phase is included. Since the change in the former is trivial, and the change in the latter is large, this is a reasonable approximation.
So the entropy due to the change in volume is accounted for. The assumption and basis is clearly stated in the paper.
It is an approximation, so perhaps we could be wary of it (a numerical check should be easy to conduct), but I see no subsequent operations that might cause problems (e.g. further differencing, raising to an exponential). The differentiation to obtain the maxima needs care, but the rates associated with VG are also large in comparison to changes VL, so to a first order it does not concern me.
Since we can be satisfied that the consequence of this would be some error term, and we can see the result yields a good match to observations, this suggests to me that the error term remains small. If someone *really* wanted to show there was a problem, it would be easy to do so with numerical analysis of worked examples to show how the error due to the approximation propagates. But such an analysis would not yield the answer you expect.
In summary: you have misunderstood the paper. Read it again.
Soulmate, CH? Or Geographically Impossible? Odds are not great, most people live north of the equator.
Vaughan
Where tempterrain is concerned, I have a little device that automatically tweets a specially written ‘Strawman’ song as soon as the first three letters of his name appears here.
tonyb
kch,
I said in a previous thread that Gleick was wrong to do what he did given the position he is in. What I object to is people feigning outrage at supposed unlawful behaviour when they have applauded such behaviour by others.
Either we are prepared to sometimes condone unlawful actions which result in the release of information which is in the public interest or we are not. Personaly I am prepared to do so, it would seem from their reaction to “climategate” that most skeptics are as well. So I’m not buying any claims that the skeptics have any kind of moral high ground here.
Spence,
Learn some thermodynamics.
The smallness of the molecular volume in the liquid is important to the derivation as it’s directly related to the size of the binding energy. They go together and including one while excluding the other is fundamentally wrong. That second term is explicitly excluded in the formulas and that’s an error.
Clouds can’t be a long-term forcing as they have no memory of their previous state. They are therefore a response to forcing or to natural variation (such as from the ocean). If low-cloud cover is decreasing during a time of warming, it could easily be seen as a positive feedback whether the forcing is from AGW or the oceans. Spencer has hinted that ENSO may be caused by clouds, but few would agree, and I believe he himself has been trying to “clarify” that perceived position.
Kim Cobb
It looks like your students captured the key “take homes” from Dr. Curry’s lecture.
I personally think that’s what “teaching the controversy” is all about.
Ideally it would be to give them enough information on all possibilities with a discussion of the many uncertainties that still exist and let them draw their own conclusions.
Then check to see whether have grasped how it all hangs together, NOT whether they came up with the “orthodox” conclusion.
Max
While I enjoyed the indulgences story, I’m prompted to ask where the indulgences go in the respective cases of catholic and CO2 indulgences.
If they both go into the pockets of those who dreamed up the scam then I buy the analogy.
However if any of the CO2 indulgences are used to offset the harm created by CO2, then I don’t find the analogy so convincing.
My apologies if I inappropriately inserted a serious note into what was only intended as humor, cynicism, or satire.
Well put, hunter. I’m as guilty as Gleick in that regard.
So I suggest we do some numerical analysis to resolve the differences we are talking about here and your response is “learn some thermodynamics”?
We can safely conclude you are lazy as well as arrogant then.
Never mind, Pekka. You continue complaining about models which match observations, while supporting models that disagree with observations, and I will continue to do science.
@vaughan pratt
‘“Trenberth was talking about the ongoing problem of getting Earth’s energy budget to balance, which is not something that happens all by itself’
Vaughan. I have exciting news for you. The Earth’s energy budget does indeed balance itself. And has done so since it first came to pass as a planet 4.5 Bn ya. All the time.
It may be that all the intellectual might ( ) of Trenberth and his gang haven’t been able to figure out how it does it yet. But that is a different argument.
As the great George Carlin so perceptively remarked
‘The planet is fine. It is the people who are f*****d’
