1.

RootlessSays:

November 18th, 2011 at 7:26 pm

In the following your excerpts of my comments are in quotations. My excerpts of your comments are in orange. My replies

to your comments are in black.

murrayv, you wrote:

"There is no hard evidence that the factor is proximate in an open system like the atmosphere."

Proximity means that A and B are close enough in space and time so that cause and effect can be mediated.

Nonsense, proximate in this sense means that cause and effect are directly linked. In an open system with

numerous other effects in play, direct causation is very hard to establish. The earth swims in a sea of broad

spectrum energy emitted by the sun. Some of the incoming energy (uV) is absorbed in the stratosphere,

some (mostly visible light) is reflected by clouds in the upper and lower troposphere, some penetrates to

the surface where it warms land during the day, but sea not so much. The heat from the warmed land is

reradiated as IR, and a small portion of the reradiated bandwidth is absorbed by CO2 molecules, briefly

raising their energy state. Most of the rest radiates back into space. A CO2 molecule is struck by a

reradiated IR photon and moved to a higher energy state. It then collides with a nitrogen (or other)

molecule and gives up the energy it received, so is again available to intercept another photon. With

enough such interactions to absorb all emitted photons within the applicable energy window, increasing

the CO2 concentration will have no additional effect. That is just about where the atmospheric

concentration is today, and given well mixed CO2 in the atmosphere, we are well past that state at high

latitudes. Therefore warming at high latitudes occurs because of heat transport through convection from

lower latitudes, and from ocean circulation with some delay, not from increased CO2 concentration. That

can scarcely be called proximate. AGW advocate scientists agree with this science.

"even if the factor were proximate the response of temperature to increasing CO2 concentration is

logarithmic and doubling CO2 now would only increase temperature 0.3 degrees C maximum. not

the 2 to 7 degrees the catastrophists claim".

Where does this denialist claim about the 0.3 degrees come from? From any scientific research? Or where

from? And how would you know this number was right, in contrast to what the results from in peer-

reviewed journals published studies of mainstream science are?

AGW scientists agree that the warming response to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is

logarithmic in a closed system. That is undisputed science. If you don’t know that, then the rest of your

arguments have little value. Accept that and you can use agreed data, and a sheet of log paper, and do your

own projection. The doubling from ca 280 ppm concentration pre-industrial era to 560 ppm would raise

the temperature 1.1 degrees C in a closed system. The increase so far is about 0.8 degrees C, leaving o.3

degrees C to go. Given the amount of fossil fuel available, and the rate of absorption by the oceans there

just might be enough additional CO2 to get to 560 ppm.

"The catastrophic increase comes only from models,"

No, it doesn’t. The scientific statements about the expected temperature increase for an increased CO2-

concentration, all other climate drivers staying the same, are also based on observations. On

measurements and paleo-data. Your claim is not based on facts

And just how do you get a projection of future conditions from current and past observations and paleo

data? We don’t have data for the future yet. Even a straight line projection from past data into the future is

a model, and depends on the usually unstated assumption that the future will be like the past. All models

depend on assumptions, and for the model to be dependable the assumptions have to be justifiable. We

have no paleo data giving temperatures 7 degrees C warmer than the present even with CO2

concentrations a large multiple of the present, and we have never had catastrophic or runaway warming,

or we would not be here to be collecting the data. Please state your source of observations. All model

projections diverge dramatically from actual post ca 1998.

"and they require a fudge factor to get there. The fudge factor is positive feedback via water vapor."

It is news to me that the positive water vapor feedback simulated by the climate models was introduced

into these models by a "fudge factor". Please could you reveal the source of your claim? Or did you make

this up yourself? Perhaps you can show me where I find this alleged "fudge factor" in the NASA GISS Earth

System model ModelE? I would say this claim by you is also not based on facts.

Simply look at the history of model projections going back to the early 1990s. First they used an

assumption of no deep ocean mixing to get the needed warming. When they couldn’t backcast cooling they

introduced aerosols. Then, in order to get more serious warming, the models were "improved" by adding water vapor feedback.

"There is no scientific evidence for such feedback,"

There isn’t? Are you saying there isn’t any scientific evidence for the validity of the Clausius-Clapeyron

equation, from which directly follows that a volume can hold more water vapor with increasing temperature before saturation occurs? Are you saying there isn’t any scientific evidence that water vapor is radiatively active in the thermal range of the radiation spectrum? Both establishes important aspects of the theoretical physics basis for the water vapor feedback.

Of course raising the surface temperature increases evaporation and raises the amount of water vapor in

the atmosphere, and of course water vapor is a much more powerful GHG than CO2. That doesn’t assure

positive feedback in an open system with many complex mechanisms functioning. Making the leap from

the physics to the feedback requires ignoring all other related effects. (That might be good enough for

"Climate Science". – sarc off). In the real world, surface warming also powers convection which lifts the

increased water vapor into the cooler upper troposphere, creating reflective clouds and leading to cooling

and recondensing which releases the latent heat to space, and frees the now cool water to fall back to the

surface, cooling the surface. Because of air circulation, the warming and cooling occur at different latitudes, allowing the machinery to keep running. If the cooling effects in the upper troposphere and higher latitudes exceed the warming effect at the surface and lower latitudes then we have negative feedback, empowered by the very water vapor you so condescendingly insist on. See following excerpt.

"but there is both theory and some (albeit not overwhelming) evidence for negative feedback via cloud formation".

The mere existence of negative feedbacks doesn’t invalidate AGW, or any of the criteria above. No one says

there weren’t any negative feedbacks, involving clouds or others variables. So just stating the fact that there were such feedbacks isn’t sufficient to make this a relevant argument for the question at hand.

Irrelevant arm waving. No comment.

"Since Q4 1997 temperature has declined slightly"

Show me the data. Your statement is un-scientific nonsense.

Here is a good one stop source for a lot of graphs, Hadcrut3, UAH, RSS, GISS.  

http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Recentglobal satellite temperature 

There was

a global temperature offset during 1997. Starting at the midpoint of that increase, to avoid start point bias, they all show slight cooling to now. The reasons for the choice of starting point are twofold, the change in trend and the beginning of the major divergence of actual from model projections.

and even if a trend analysis is done with all the data, the results needs to be statistically robust, which is

not the case for such a short time scale, to make a valid statement.

Scientific papers in the early 1970s focused on global cooling. By the late 1980s the focus was warming,

1975-1988. (First IPCC report was 1990). Same short time scale. And since we are dealing with only a

multi-decadal time scale at best, why do the AGW "scientists" dismiss other explanations with little to no

discussion of what part may be attributable to known multi-decadal processes such as ENSO, AO, PDO,

AMO, solar radiation, volcanoes, land-use change, etc.

"although CO2 continues to rise, even faster than from 1944 to 1975. Clearly the correlation is not statistically valid for these periods".

Since no one says that CO2 was the only climate driver that had an effect on the global temperature so that

there would be a linear correlation, and no one says that a correlation needs to be found on every times cale, even on short ones, not finding a linear correlation only disproves a straw man argument that is your own invention.

Pick your time scale. Cooling from Holocene optimum to now, (8000 or so years) or from Minoan warm

period to now (3000 or so years), or Medieval warm period to now (1000 or so years, or 1944-75 (30 yrs)

or 1997-2011 (14 yrs so far). By 2035 we will probably say 2005 – 2035 30 yrs). Warming from LIA to now

(300 + years) or 1910/15 to 1938/44 (30 years), or from ca 1975 to ca 2005 (30 years). We only have a

reliable record of rising CO2 from 1952, and it has been rising steadily, with slight acceleration, with no

pauses or decreases, unlike temperature. There was no similar rise from 1910 to 1944 to correlate with that

warming period. Curious that CO2 only became "causative" from a selectively started low temperature

period. Let’s start in 1938 and measure from a high to a high.

"The models apply a fudge factor of aerosols to explain the 1944-1975 period "

The same as for the water vapor feedback. What "fudge factor" where in the models, e.g., in ModelE, and

what is the source for your claim?

See 

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ackerman/Kiehl_2007GL031383.pdf as only one good source.
Kiehl is too politic to refer to a fudge factor, but given at least 10 different IPCC models, with widelydifferent sensitivities, all back casting similarly due to a 3:1 difference in aerosol forcing, what should it be called?

"but there are no papers that quantify the aerosols, identify their source(s)"

Again, a baseless, non-factual claim as following abstract should be sufficient to show:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/meetings/pollution2002/d2_koch.html

Your reference uses only simulations, not measurements of aerosols, and includes no information on the

assumptions used in the modeling . However, I quote from the reference "Results show that the global sulfate

burden doubles from 1875 to 1950, and again from 1950 to 1990. Black carbon, which has a substantial biomass

burning fraction, increases by about 30% between 1875 and 1950, and by another 50% between 1950 and 1990.

Since sulfate increases faster than the carbonaceous aerosols, the global fraction of the aerosol mass that is sulfate

also increases (doubles) from 0.2 to 0.4 during the century."

So why did the aerosols become ineffective after 1975 as I asked before?

"describe why they ceased to be effective after 1975".

Of course there aren’t any papers for this, since no one claims that aerosols "ceased to be effective after 

1975・・. You just have made up your own reality, again.

The aerosols are the "plug" that accounts for the cooling from ca 1944-1975, while CO2 increased. Then the

cooling stopped. Why did the aerosols cease to contribute effective cooling? See the quote above.

"Solar variation (the clearly present ca 60 year cycle) explains both of the anomalous periods".

How would you know this is the case? Just because you assert this? This assertion clearly contradicts the

findings of mainstream science, doesn’t it?

I don’t "know it". I know that there are several solar system cycles, ranging from the 11 year sunspot cycle

through 60 year period of the sun’s circuit around the SSB, to the approximately 180 year Jose cycle and

the probable 363 year deep grand minimum cycle. There is a clear near 60 year climate cycle, most

recently showing warming from ca1910 through 1944, then cooling to ca 1975 then warming again to ca

2005 (Using moving averages), and now flat to cooling. The 60 year solar cycle seems like too good a

match to be coincidence and therefore can explain both anomalous (in AGW terms) coolings. For recent

confirmation see   http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/233 and

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682611002872

Note - Scafetta does not include possible effect of current
DGM so it will probably get cooler.

"Finally the surface instrument data is not adequately corrected for all of the warming biases that

are known to exist even for HADCRUT",

Again, a claim for which no evidence is provided. What is the source for this assertion? Any scientific

publications? Or just the assertions made by other pseudo-skeptics, which they tell each other in their

opinion blogs?

I can send you several pages of urls providing such evidence if you send your e-mail address. Or you can

check hard data for yourself for a good selection of rural sites that have metadata showing no major

changes and no likely UHI effect. High latitude sites are best. You will find recent max temperatures are no

higher than the decade from 1934 to 1944 maximums.

"and the NASA GISS data has been severely manipulated to get the last decade to be warmer than

1934-1944".

I call such an accusation libelous against the GISS scientists involved in the analyses. There is no basis in

reality for such an accusation. Although it is a known strategy applied by the denialists to defame the

scientists on personal grounds, because the scientific findings aren’t liked, but can’t be refuted on scientific

grounds.(

(Nonsense)

Call it what you like. See

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/ and

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.gif and check how 1930s got cooler and 1998 much
warmer between 1999 and 2011. What do you call revising history? You can find more examples if youhave the open-mindedness to look. And if you think climatologists are above fudging data I leave you onefamous quote:
"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest." Dr Stephen Schneider (interview for "Discover" magagzine, Oct 1989). And then, of course, there is "Climategate", with a second release just out, (
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/breaking-news-foia-2011-has-arrived/ ) and this http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/11/22/fix-it-or-fold-it/ and this
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mckitrick-ipcc_reforms.pdf

"You can go to

http://www.agwnot.blogspot.com for some treatments of solar cycles,"

What could an opinion blog written by a pseudo-skeptic layman offer me to learn about solar cycles? I

have higher standards for my sources of knowledge than what can be found there.

Forget opinion. The cycles listed are those generally accepted by "science", in a convenient summary. So

far you have shown no evidence of any standards.

"and review the following for GISS manipulation".

Yet another pseudo-skeptic opinion blog.

With links to countless scientific references and data sources, a

couple of which I have provided for you above, because you simply reject a source you disagree with,without checking it out. Are you afraid your cherished belief will be challenged?.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/05/ncdc-data-shows-that-the-contiguous-usa-has-not-warmed-in-the-past-decade-summers-are-cooler-winters-are-getting-colder/#more-50527

The fact that data used and methodology applied have been revised in the course of time, which led to

slight changes in the results of the analysis? More data become available in time, sometimes data are

corrected, methodologies are improved, sometimes scientists also make mistakes, which are being

corrected. All this is a normal part of the scientific process. You don’t seem to think so.

Try finding any description by NASA/GISS of new data, methodologies, corrections for the changes in

their urls that I have provided above. They don’t even issue a change announcement. When all changes are

in the same direction (exaggerating warming) and are not used by others relying on the same raw data

sources (eg HADCRUT), and are vital to a committed storyline I definitely don’t find it normal science.

And that the temperature in the contiguous US hasn’t increased over the last decade doesn’t invalidate the

global long-term warming trend due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases either. It’s just another pseudo-

skeptic straw man argument.

Who said anything about the contiguous US. The curves I have referenced for you are global

The contiguous US cover only about 1.5% of Earth’s surface. To conclude from the trend in US about the

global trend is a logically fallacious generalization. So is basing a conclusion about the global warming

trend on about only a decade of data.

Talk about fallacious!!. See above points.

"there is a lot of data that eliminates the statistical validity of AGW."

. You only have delivered the usual mix of straw man arguments, arguments that lack relevance, assertions

that aren’t based on facts, and libelous accusations of forgery against scientists. But no data.

Ok – see above for data. You are strong on accusations, but present no data or useful references yourself. If

you had based your cherished belief on >15 years of objective and holistic study as I have you wouldn’t

need my data.

All tests failed. Murray

Chaotic Climate and the Next Ice Age

Four items appeared on WUWT recently that started me on a small project.
1) Someone insisted that climate is chaotic. I think the drivers of climate are deterministic, but their combined results may appear chaotic.
2) There have been recent mentions of the end of the Holocene from Loutre & Berger (2003) at 50,000 years to Piers Corbyn - we are back in an ice age.
3) Don Easterbrooke contributed a somewhat controversial paper that included as Fig 5 an excellent GISP2 ice core graph.
4) Someone posted this link: http://www.roperld.com/science/currentmajorinterglacial.pdf to a paper by Roper that included as fig 2.1 an intriguing comparison of the Eemian with an Antarctic ice core, but GISP2 looks like a better comparison.
These inputs made me wonder if the recent Holocene could be approximated by a few simple variables, and if it might look a bit like the end of the Eemian. I chose 3 regularities that I had identified here: http://www.agwnot.blogspot.com/ that are long enough to give very visible change, that appear with little variability for the last few thousand years, that have widely different frequencies, and that could be reasonably approximated with sine curves; the 60, 179 (Jose) and 1050 year cycles..
To generate a composite curve, I then had to choose both phase offsets and amplitudes, that wouldn’t be too arbitrary. I set the 60 and 179 year cycles to peak in the 1940 to 1945 period, with the 60 year leading a bit so that the recent 1938-1944 peak warming would be a bit higher than the more recent 1998-2006 peak warming. (I believe that if all of the warming biases in the surface instrument global average temperature calculations were corrected 1938-44 would be warmer). I then set the 1050 year cycle to peak about 1150 (MWP) and to bottom about 1675 (LIA). I then set amplitudes to be fairly similar, with a targeted increase of 0.45 degrees C from 1910 to 1944. Then using “MathGV” I was able to fiddle the following formulae and generate the curves as:
60 year cycle y = .15sin[5.23[x-.4]], Jose cycle y = .145cos[1.75[x+.3]] and the 1050 year cycle as y = .22sin[.299x], giving the following composite: 

The 1910-1944 excursion (just before the vertical axis) looks about right, and the MWP to LIA excursion is close to the spaghetti graphs and less than the Loehle reconstruction.
There is still too much regularity in the composite, but it looks pretty chaotic on a 300-400 year time scale. We can see the 1940-45 peak just before the Y axis, and the smaller 1998-2006 peak just after the Y axis, and both the MWP and LIA . Part of the problem is that in the real world these regularities are not sinusoidal. Based on the 20th century the 60 year cycle trend is more like - up for about 20 years then flat for 10 years, then sharply down for 10 years and flat for 20 years, with considerable fluctuation around the trend. Given the scale I have used, such detail would have little effect on the composite curve. From Geoff Sharp’s work the 179 year cycle seems to be a near 80 year high mean segment followed by a near 100 year low mean segment, with 20 year oscillations around the mean. Using such a representation would change the shape of the major peaks, but not the overall pattern. Now there are 2 more elements that need to be added that cannot be represented (approximated) so easily.
Here I need help from one of the computer whizzes out there. I need to add the Deep Grand Minimum (DGM) cycle of approx. 364 years (near 33 sunspot cycles), and a linear trend. I have done this manually on paper, and the results have a couple of very suggestive surprises. Can one of you wizards add these two elements so the resulting composite can be displayed electronically?
To get the trend, I simply took the downtrend from the Minoan optimum shown in the GISP2 curve, and halved it to represent a world trend. That gave me a downslope of 0.01 degrees C per century, applied from the peak of the MWP. The DGM is a little trickier. I took a 30 year linear temperature plunge at the beginning of a cycle (from +0.1 degrees C to -0.2 degrees C), followed by a ca 334 year linear rise to the peak before the next plunge. I located the current DGM by considering the peak of the 60 year curve, just to the left of the Y axis above, as 1940, and then moving right a little more than one cycle to start the 30 year down at about 2009. I then simply reproduced that cycle forward and back, using the 60 year curve to scale time on the X axis. With these two additions we have just 5 variables, (all of which are somewhat more regular than reality), and we start to get a temperature curve that looks pretty chaotic on any scale less than 500 years, and isn’t so far from reality. The biggest problem that appears is a severe cooling about 1850, that just didn’t happen, but then, looking at some of the SSB (careful, forbidden term) drivers there seems to have been what has been referred to as a “phase catastrophe” about 1850, which I have no way to factor in, so I have simply smoothed out the 1850 downspike in my manual composite, leaving the Dalton and the 1910 bottoms fairly clear. Given the different “spaghetti graph” depictions of the Holocene, this curve looks fairly good

For comparison of the MWP/LIA with an historic reconstruction see:


Some of the interesting results:
• The MWP and LIA extremes are clearly represented, with the LIA being relatively severe, and the MWP/LIA excursion is very close to the Loehle reconstruction.
• The 1998-2006 peak moves a little closer to the 1938-44 peak, but stays slightly cooler, which is probably realistic.
• The 1976-2006 supposed AGW is just a little insignificant shoulder on the long rise from the LIA, and we don’t max out until about 2300. The warmers “ain’t seen nothin’ yet”.
• The cooling we are now entering looks to be slightly colder than the Dalton, but way short of the LIA, with about 80 years of cool, followed by 280 more years of warm.
• At about AD 2300 we see the last warm peak before descending into cold about as deep as the LIA, but lasting unremittingly a lot longer, perhaps enough for the northern hemisphere albedo to grow to a “tipping point”, leading to the next glacial period.
So, here is a third ice age prediction. Should it be given even more than a moments consideration? Well there is one comparison that is kind of spooky. Go back to http://www.roperld.com/science/currentmajorinterglacial.pdf, fig 2.1, and zoom in to see detail for the Eemian. Consider that the Younger Dryas event, (I like the meteorite shower/Atlantic conveyer shutdown theory) simply blew the peak off the Holocene, without which we would look like an Eemian repeat. Looking at the GISP2 curve, we have 10 spikes at near 1000 year intervals. (The Minoan to the Roman is about 1300 years and the MWP to 2300 is about 1300 years). It is pretty easy to find 10 similar spikes of the Eemian. Just before the 10^th Eemian peak, the downslope goes from about 0.04 degrees C/century to a bit more than 0.1 degrees C/century (.02 to .06 if divided by 2 as I did for the Holocene trend). My downslope from the Holocene Optimum  (ca 8000yrs BP) to 2300 is about 0.01 degrees C/century, and then it goes to about .07 degrees C/century.  My oversimplified model is better for curve shape than magnitudes and the slope change may be too abrupt, but the similarity to the Eemian is at least suggestive.

Note that Roper ascribes the long Holocene cooling trend to gradual reduction of polar summer insolation, particularly north polar, in his Fig 2.3. The total polar summer insolation is about to turn down as the north flattens at the bottom, and the south goes into the steep part of its decline. Since the Holocene Optimum north pole summer insolation has declined from about 565W/m2 to 521 W/m2, a drop of almost 8%, accompanying a GISP peak temperature cooling of nearly 1%K. Roper also suggests that we could be on the brink of the next major ice age.
My prediction – 2300-2310 for the last warm peak before we head into the next ice age.
My request – someone create the composite curve electronically, including the long cooling and the DGM effect as I have described above.
My hope – some good discussion, picking all of this apart, or adding something to it. Other reconstructions/projections welcome.