Climate change: 2015 will be the hottest year on record 'by a mile', experts say

[Old Rocks]

The AGU put their annual lectures at the yearly San Francisco meeting on video for free public viewing. And those videos are easy to get to.

 

[Wuwei]

Worse still is the BEST pile of crap.. if we simply take the unadjusted numbers the lie is easily exposed... The upwards adjustments to present day and the downward adjustments to the past... The model they use to make adjustments and make up data is crap..

Billy Bob. Quit your whining. Nobody is interested in the crap you get from blogs.

 

[flacaltenn]

Climate science claims a radiative greenhouse effect....clearly radiation is not the main force at work moving energy from the surface to beyond the troposphere...therefore there is no radiative greenhouse effect...there is an atmospheric thermal effect, but CO2 is irrelevant to it.

I understand that most skeptics believe that the radiative greenhouse effect is real, but a very minor forcing. Do I understand you to also say the same thing, that the CO2 radiative greenhouse effect is actually real but minimal? How does this relate to the gravito-thermo effect that you mentioned earlier? It seems that was abandon in this follow-on discussion.

Very accurate statement on "skeptic" view with the caveat that Man-Made CO2 emissions have a minimal effect on GreenHouse warming. Certainly water vapor is a DOMINANT player. And the actual power of CO2 to warm the planet has been given powers above and beyond what Physics says a doubling of the gas alone can do.. Because of the theoretical "multipliers" and "accelerations" that are the CRUX of the GW theory..

Except the physicists who taught you all this stuff say there is no question AGW is real and will become a major problem in the future.

Climate Change Statement Review

Perhaps you haven't followed this topic for 20+ years as i have. But if you did --- you'd know that all of the initial hysterical projections regarding "climate sensitity" and those "magical multipliers" for the ACTUAL warming power of CO2 have been scaled WAAAAAY back since this party started.

The recent science is rapidly approaching what the basic Physics ALWAYS said. And that is that the warming power of CO2 in the Atmos is about 1.1degC/ doubling of concentration. At that rate -- projections out to 2100 don't indicate an apocalypse. And strangely enough -- means that skeptics like me have ALREADY won over public hysteria and ulterior political motives.

IN FACT --- the observed warming since the Industrial Age has pretty much followed the 1.1degC / doubling. And THAT MEASURED evidence is worth more than models that can barely keep 20 year credible estimates.

 

[flacaltenn]

Very accurate statement on "skeptic" view with the caveat that Man-Made CO2 emissions have a minimal effect on GreenHouse warming. Certainly water vapor is a DOMINANT player. And the actual power of CO2 to warm the planet has been given powers above and beyond what Physics says a doubling of the gas alone can do.. Because of the theoretical "multipliers" and "accelerations" that are the CRUX of the GW theory..

Yes, I understand that "skeptic" view, and it's a very simple argument. But what puzzles me is why there are skeptics who torture the laws of physics to try to prove their point. There are a whole slew of them who pontificate in blogs, etc. I see no need for them to do that. So I think it is an obsessive game with them to argue amateur physics.

I don't take any strong stance on AGW. Neither the warmers, nor deniers have made a strong point.

There are some problems that I have not seen discussed enough:
Yes water vapor is predominant, but CO2 and CH4 absorb IR in some gaps in the H2O spectrum. This will increase energy entrapment and cause warming. Those two GHG's exist only as gasses (except semisolid CH4 that occurs in the depths of cold water.) However there is an endless supply of H2O which exists in three phases and is continually changing between water, vapor, and ice. That complicates the radiation dynamics because H2O has such different properties than the other two.

So, just how strong is the CO2 in GW? Are scientists on a bandwagon or are there really calculations which are robust. Most of the skeptics simply say CO2 doubling doesn't do much. What are they basing that on? If the calculations are not robust, do the skeptic scientists have better calculations? It's hard to go to the original research unless you pay several hundred dollars for journal subscriptions. If there is a solid reason to believe one way or another about AGW, I have not seen it.

Wuwei ---- my belief is that they don't want to win arguments the hard way. They want to invent "secret weapons" to try and impeach basic accepted science. One of the ugliest things I've ever seen was when Dr Roy Spencer was viciously attacked by the skeptic community for simply acknowledging that Radiative transfer from the atmos was "flowing from a colder source to a warmer surface" . In fact, the net transfer ALWAYS obeyed the 2nd law Thermo, but trying to explain that to them was a fool's errand..

 

[flacaltenn]

LOL.

Yeah. Science is hard.

Imagine the effort of the people who actually wrote and edited it!

It's funny how you said it's hard to go to the original science because it's paywalled, but a whole lot of it is compiled in that long report. Not only that, but it's collected and contextual iced and reviewed for completeness and accuracy by the very scientists who participated in the research.

So the IPCC does give one a solid reason to believe AGW is a serious issue. You say you haven't seen a reason....and you also state you couldn't read the IPCC because of the volume of material.

I think we can conclude you haven't seen the reason because you didn't bother to read it!

If you are going to be so snippy, I will lump you in with the usual idiots on this board who think scoffing is the way to make a point.

A lot of the IPCC report references articles that are $20 a pop. I mostly saw summaries and generalities of the articles references in that report. Trenbreth's famous diagram shows an energy balance with a 0.9 watts/m^2 excess hitting the earth. You simply can't subtract large numbers with large error bars and rely on a small residual. So where did he get that number? Simply from the current rate of GW? How do they handle the issues that I outlined in post 513 above.

There are 5 full reports in the Fifth Assessment Report. I'm not interested in the summary reports. Since you read the IPCC report let me know, if you remember, where you found the physics background behind the energy budget. I am trying to download Working group II Full Report but is taking 10 minutes so far. Their server might be down.

Anyone working in a science endevour knows that balancing HUGE uncertain numbers as Trenberth did and coming to a tiny answer that fulfills the requirement to show an imbalance as it WAS THEORIZED --- is likely not believable. And this happens REPEATEDLY throughout the barrage of spiced up Abstracts and Conclusions that are not supported by what's in the papers on GW.

Such unlikely probabilities of outcomes is illustrated in the constant massaging of the land based temperature records. A long 20 year chain of "corrections and adjustments" are certainly not bloody likely to leave the 1960s virtually unadjusted and result in pushing down the 40's temps and raising the recent readings in order to set more monthly/yearly records.

This tendency to detach the Abstract and Conclusions and the ALL MIGHTY Press Release from the ACTUAL work done in study -- has given us some of the biggest lies in science that I can remember. Like the numerous Global Hockey Stick studies that released headlines that our RATE of warming was the highest in 2,000 or 10,000 years. Except that -- those studies would never SEE any coherent data that had time resolution better than 400 or 500 years and CERTAINLY couldn't project Mins or Maxes for these periods.

BTW --- Trenberth's "Energy" Diagram is NOT measured in energy units. Something the Physics Dept probably chided him about. In fact, Trenberth hardly took account of ocean storage -- which is NOW HIS EXCUSE for the slowing of the temperature climb. His "result" missed what he now calls --- the 90% of "excess heat" ends up in the water.

 

[flacaltenn]

Even if I WANTED to switch sides --- the "stench" of the surrounding hype and propaganda would keep me frrom doing so.. I NEVER want to be "one of them"....

 

[Wuwei]

Anyone working in a science endevour knows that balancing HUGE uncertain numbers as Trenberth did and coming to a tiny answer that fulfills the requirement to show an imbalance as it WAS THEORIZED --- is likely not believable. And this happens REPEATEDLY throughout the barrage of spiced up Abstracts and Conclusions that are not supported by what's in the papers on GW.

Such unlikely probabilities of outcomes is illustrated in the constant massaging of the land based temperature records. A long 20 year chain of "corrections and adjustments" are certainly not bloody likely to leave the 1960s virtually unadjusted and result in pushing down the 40's temps and raising the recent readings in order to set more monthly/yearly records.

This tendency to detach the Abstract and Conclusions and the ALL MIGHTY Press Release from the ACTUAL work done in study -- has given us some of the biggest lies in science that I can remember. Like the numerous Global Hockey Stick studies that released headlines that our RATE of warming was the highest in 2,000 or 10,000 years. Except that -- those studies would never SEE any coherent data that had time resolution better than 400 or 500 years and CERTAINLY couldn't project Mins or Maxes for these periods.

BTW --- Trenberth's "Energy" Diagram is NOT measured in energy units. Something the Physics Dept probably chided him about. In fact, Trenberth hardly took account of ocean storage -- which is NOW HIS EXCUSE for the slowing of the temperature climb. His "result" missed what he now calls --- the 90% of "excess heat" ends up in the water.

Well, I certainly take more of a middle ground than you. I look at the skeptics as creating a stench. With the screw-ball theories, and posts with constant inane yelling with no information content.

As I think about it, Trenberth may be just trying to make sense of things, and showing estimates to illustrate the degree of energy flow, using more solid numbers where available, like the sun input, and the earth's IR output. (I checked the IR output using Stefan-Boltzmann law on the average 15 C temperature. It agrees with Trenberth.) The less secure numbers are no doubt adjusted for conservation of energy. So it shouldn't be taken too seriously.

I don't condemn Trenberth for now using the water as part of the energy budget, but I do think it was negligent not to include it in the first place. Also I think the phrase "global warming" misses the mark. The field should not use temperature as a measure. Energy as a measure would overcome the wild difference in specific heat between air and water. But the public doesn't relate to energy as it does to temperature. Energy flow (Watts per m^2) doesn't bother me because it is a closer measure of energy than temperature.

As far as the long chain of data adjustments, you can view it as fraudulent manipulation, or a simple updating as methods are refined. Your view depends on your bias.

 

[threegoofs]

LOL.

Yeah. Science is hard.

Imagine the effort of the people who actually wrote and edited it!

It's funny how you said it's hard to go to the original science because it's paywalled, but a whole lot of it is compiled in that long report. Not only that, but it's collected and contextual iced and reviewed for completeness and accuracy by the very scientists who participated in the research.

So the IPCC does give one a solid reason to believe AGW is a serious issue. You say you haven't seen a reason....and you also state you couldn't read the IPCC because of the volume of material.

I think we can conclude you haven't seen the reason because you didn't bother to read it!

If you are going to be so snippy, I will lump you in with the usual idiots on this board who think scoffing is the way to make a point.

A lot of the IPCC report references articles that are $20 a pop. I mostly saw summaries and generalities of the articles references in that report. Trenbreth's famous diagram shows an energy balance with a 0.9 watts/m^2 excess hitting the earth. You simply can't subtract large numbers with large error bars and rely on a small residual. So where did he get that number? Simply from the current rate of GW? How do they handle the issues that I outlined in post 513 above.

There are 5 full reports in the Fifth Assessment Report. I'm not interested in the summary reports. Since you read the IPCC report let me know, if you remember, where you found the physics background behind the energy budget. I am trying to download Working group II Full Report but is taking 10 minutes so far. Their server might be down.

WG1, obviously.

So you doubt the physics behind what the physicists are writing in the report?

Newsflash: if it was wrong, the APS would probably know. After all, those guys were the one that taught YOU physics.

 

[threegoofs]

Even if I WANTED to switch sides --- the "stench" of the surrounding hype and propaganda would keep me frrom doing so.. I NEVER want to be "one of them"....

Thanks for letting us know your thinking comes more from your gut than your brain.

We kinda figured it out anyway, but it's nice of you to tell us you are unmoved by reason.

 

[flacaltenn]

Anyone working in a science endevour knows that balancing HUGE uncertain numbers as Trenberth did and coming to a tiny answer that fulfills the requirement to show an imbalance as it WAS THEORIZED --- is likely not believable. And this happens REPEATEDLY throughout the barrage of spiced up Abstracts and Conclusions that are not supported by what's in the papers on GW.

Such unlikely probabilities of outcomes is illustrated in the constant massaging of the land based temperature records. A long 20 year chain of "corrections and adjustments" are certainly not bloody likely to leave the 1960s virtually unadjusted and result in pushing down the 40's temps and raising the recent readings in order to set more monthly/yearly records.

This tendency to detach the Abstract and Conclusions and the ALL MIGHTY Press Release from the ACTUAL work done in study -- has given us some of the biggest lies in science that I can remember. Like the numerous Global Hockey Stick studies that released headlines that our RATE of warming was the highest in 2,000 or 10,000 years. Except that -- those studies would never SEE any coherent data that had time resolution better than 400 or 500 years and CERTAINLY couldn't project Mins or Maxes for these periods.

BTW --- Trenberth's "Energy" Diagram is NOT measured in energy units. Something the Physics Dept probably chided him about. In fact, Trenberth hardly took account of ocean storage -- which is NOW HIS EXCUSE for the slowing of the temperature climb. His "result" missed what he now calls --- the 90% of "excess heat" ends up in the water.

Well, I certainly take more of a middle ground than you. I look at the skeptics as creating a stench. With the screw-ball theories, and posts with constant inane yelling with no information content.

As I think about it, Trenberth may be just trying to make sense of things, and showing estimates to illustrate the degree of energy flow, using more solid numbers where available, like the sun input, and the earth's IR output. (I checked the IR output using Stefan-Boltzmann law on the average 15 C temperature. It agrees with Trenberth.) The less secure numbers are no doubt adjusted for conservation of energy. So it shouldn't be taken too seriously.

I don't condemn Trenberth for now using the water as part of the energy budget, but I do think it was negligent not to include it in the first place. Also I think the phrase "global warming" misses the mark. The field should not use temperature as a measure. Energy as a measure would overcome the wild difference in specific heat between air and water. But the public doesn't relate to energy as it does to temperature. Energy flow (Watts per m^2) doesn't bother me because it is a closer measure of energy than temperature.

As far as the long chain of data adjustments, you can view it as fraudulent manipulation, or a simple updating as methods are refined. Your view depends on your bias.

But that's the point WuWei -- to MODEL the earth as an ideal 15degC Black Body would NEVER give you an answer with acceptable tolerances to FIND that 9W/m2. Problem with an "energy" budget a la Trenberth is that it virtually ignores temporal effects of storage. Which climate science has only seemed to discovered lately. NOW there is more of a recognition that the Climate System includes some rather time constants on thermal transfer. A concept that was sickly missing from the early hysteria...

You're right about reducing the "master metric" to a Mean Annual Surface Temperature". Like ONE NUMBER is supposed to represent the sum total change in Climate. Climate science tends to make a lot of things GLOBAL -- when they should be understanding the local and regional thermal energy flow. Biggest example of reduction to absurdity is this global "climate sensitivity" number that magically multiplies the power of CO2 for the entire planet. Not only insufficient as a single number topographically -- but it ignores the different temporal time constants involved..

 

[flacaltenn]

Even if I WANTED to switch sides --- the "stench" of the surrounding hype and propaganda would keep me frrom doing so.. I NEVER want to be "one of them"....

Thanks for letting us know your thinking comes more from your gut than your brain.

We kinda figured it out anyway, but it's nice of you to tell us you are unmoved by reason.

Folks who operate from logic, reason and science have NO NEED for hype and propaganda. That's the point you predictably are missing. And that shameless promotion of a cause is a clear tip-off -- that everything needs to be questioned.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

LOL.

Yeah. Science is hard.

Imagine the effort of the people who actually wrote and edited it!

It's funny how you said it's hard to go to the original science because it's paywalled, but a whole lot of it is compiled in that long report. Not only that, but it's collected and contextual iced and reviewed for completeness and accuracy by the very scientists who participated in the research.

So the IPCC does give one a solid reason to believe AGW is a serious issue. You say you haven't seen a reason....and you also state you couldn't read the IPCC because of the volume of material.

I think we can conclude you haven't seen the reason because you didn't bother to read it!

If you are going to be so snippy, I will lump you in with the usual idiots on this board who think scoffing is the way to make a point.

A lot of the IPCC report references articles that are $20 a pop. I mostly saw summaries and generalities of the articles references in that report. Trenbreth's famous diagram shows an energy balance with a 0.9 watts/m^2 excess hitting the earth. You simply can't subtract large numbers with large error bars and rely on a small residual. So where did he get that number? Simply from the current rate of GW? How do they handle the issues that I outlined in post 513 above.

There are 5 full reports in the Fifth Assessment Report. I'm not interested in the summary reports. Since you read the IPCC report let me know, if you remember, where you found the physics background behind the energy budget. I am trying to download Working group II Full Report but is taking 10 minutes so far. Their server might be down.

WG1, obviously.

So you doubt the physics behind what the physicists are writing in the report?

Newsflash: if it was wrong, the APS would probably know. After all, those guys were the one that taught YOU physics.

I think you represent more than just three.

 

[SSDD]

Climate science claims a radiative greenhouse effect....clearly radiation is not the main force at work moving energy from the surface to beyond the troposphere...therefore there is no radiative greenhouse effect...there is an atmospheric thermal effect, but CO2 is irrelevant to it.

I understand that most skeptics believe that the radiative greenhouse effect is real, but a very minor forcing. Do I understand you to also say the same thing, that the CO2 radiative greenhouse effect is actually real but minimal? How does this relate to the gravito-thermo effect that you mentioned earlier? It seems that was abandon in this follow-on discussion.

Very accurate statement on "skeptic" view with the caveat that Man-Made CO2 emissions have a minimal effect on GreenHouse warming. Certainly water vapor is a DOMINANT player. And the actual power of CO2 to warm the planet has been given powers above and beyond what Physics says a doubling of the gas alone can do.. Because of the theoretical "multipliers" and "accelerations" that are the CRUX of the GW theory..

Except the physicists who taught you all this stuff say there is no question AGW is real and will become a major problem in the future.

Climate Change Statement Review

Another one who doesn't grasp that there is a difference between the political head of an organization and the membership of said organization. One is concerned with funding....one is concerned with science. The APS actually held a council to determine what their statement on climate change would say...they brought in skeptics as well as those on the bandwagon and promptly ignored everything that came out of the council in favor of a politically correct and expedient statement....typical politics.

 

[SSDD]

Yes water vapor is predominant, but CO2 and CH4 absorb IR in some gaps in the H2O spectrum. This will increase energy entrapment and cause warming.

So where is the tropospheric hot spot that would necessarily exist if that hypothesis were correct....it is the "smoking gun" the proof that the hypothesis is correct...and yet, it doesn't exist. With any other hypothesis failure of predicted phenomena to materialize is grounds to scrap it and look for one that can actually make sound predictions...but the radiative greenhouse hypothesis isn't held to such standards. It has apologists who incessantly talk around its many blatant failures. How many failures must a hypothesis experience in your opinion before it's falsified?

 

[SSDD]

Wuwei ---- my belief is that they don't want to win arguments the hard way. They want to invent "secret weapons" to try and impeach basic accepted science. One of the ugliest things I've ever seen was when Dr Roy Spencer was viciously attacked by the skeptic community for simply acknowledging that Radiative transfer from the atmos was "flowing from a colder source to a warmer surface" . In fact, the net transfer ALWAYS obeyed the 2nd law Thermo, but trying to explain that to them was a fool's errand..

And yet that flow from cool to warm has never been observed....it is a mathematical construct....unobservable....untestable.....unmeasurable.

 

[Geaux4it]

In other news...

Another Climate Prediction Fizzles: DC Climate Rally for Pope shrinks from expected 200,000 people to just ‘hundreds’

Washington DC: The hopes were so high back in August for a massive climate rally to support Pope Francis’ climate push. But reality has now sunk in .

Climate Prediction: August 25, 2015: WaPo: ‘For Pope Francis’s D.C. visit, environmental rally of up to 200K planned’ – Several environmental groups are planning a major climate rally that will draw hundreds of thousands to the National Mall on Sept. 24, the day Pope Francis speaks to Congress and is expected to address the public afterwards. The permit for the gathering — which will make the moral case for reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming — is for 200,000 people. The Moral Action on Climate Network, along with the Earth Day Network, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and other groups, have timed the rally on the Mall the same day of the pope’s speech.

Another Climate Prediction Fizzles: DC Climate Rally for Pope shrinks from expected 200,000 people to just 'hundreds'

 

[Wuwei]

Yes water vapor is predominant, but CO2 and CH4 absorb IR in some gaps in the H2O spectrum. This will increase energy entrapment and cause warming.

So where is the tropospheric hot spot that would necessarily exist if that hypothesis were correct....it is the "smoking gun" the proof that the hypothesis is correct...and yet, it doesn't exist. With any other hypothesis failure of predicted phenomena to materialize is grounds to scrap it and look for one that can actually make sound predictions...but the radiative greenhouse hypothesis isn't held to such standards. It has apologists who incessantly talk around its many blatant failures. How many failures must a hypothesis experience in your opinion before it's falsified?

We covered this already in post #508 where I said,

"Again I don't understand what you are getting at. I would say that if radiation is a very minor bit player, then a radiative greenhouse effect does exist, but it is a minor effect and would have negligible influence on the hot spot. That is not a reason to say the greenhouse effect does not exist at all."
​

 

[Wuwei]

And yet that flow from cool to warm has never been observed....it is a mathematical construct....unobservable....untestable.....unmeasurable.

We also went through that once before in a different thread.
Warmest March on record according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency | Page 35 | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

I will repeat the conclusion here:
The Cosmic Microwave Background has a temperature of 2.7 degrees K. Radio telescopes are hundreds of degrees warmer. Yet the CMB was able to penetrate the warmer atmosphere and strike a warmer reflector dish and be detected by a slightly warmer (4 deg K) sensor.

That is an “observable … testable … measurable” counterexample to your misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics.

 

[Wuwei]

But that's the point WuWei -- to MODEL the earth as an ideal 15degC Black Body would NEVER give you an answer with acceptable tolerances to FIND that 9W/m2. Problem with an "energy" budget a la Trenberth is that it virtually ignores temporal effects of storage. Which climate science has only seemed to discovered lately. NOW there is more of a recognition that the Climate System includes some rather time constants on thermal transfer. A concept that was sickly missing from the early hysteria...

You're right about reducing the "master metric" to a Mean Annual Surface Temperature". Like ONE NUMBER is supposed to represent the sum total change in Climate. Climate science tends to make a lot of things GLOBAL -- when they should be understanding the local and regional thermal energy flow. Biggest example of reduction to absurdity is this global "climate sensitivity" number that magically multiplies the power of CO2 for the entire planet. Not only insufficient as a single number topographically -- but it ignores the different temporal time constants involved.

I'm not aware if Trenberth ever considered his model as a instrument for predicting the future. I consider it a back-of-the-envelope sort of snapshot of the current dynamics. And yes temporal response of the various elements of any theory are an integral part of understanding the long-term non-equilibrium thermodynamics of the atmosphere and it can't be done yet.

I cant' find the references now, but one approach was for satellites to measure the short wavelength radiation entering the earth and the wide band of short to long waves leaving the earth. The difference would be on a global average scale and a direct measurement that would obviate any model like Trenberth. As I understand it there was a rather large difference where a non-trivial excess was hitting the earth - more than most people expected or accepted. I didn't look for viewpoints on the veracity of that finding - if satellites were in error or what. I'm sure it's controversial. If anyone has any further info on that, I'm sure they will tell me.

 

[flacaltenn]

Wuwei ---- my belief is that they don't want to win arguments the hard way. They want to invent "secret weapons" to try and impeach basic accepted science. One of the ugliest things I've ever seen was when Dr Roy Spencer was viciously attacked by the skeptic community for simply acknowledging that Radiative transfer from the atmos was "flowing from a colder source to a warmer surface" . In fact, the net transfer ALWAYS obeyed the 2nd law Thermo, but trying to explain that to them was a fool's errand..

And yet that flow from cool to warm has never been observed....it is a mathematical construct....unobservable....untestable.....unmeasurable.

Measured all the time.. I've given you several studies with the results. ALMOST similar to pointing a IR thermometer at the sky..

PS --- Last time we discussed this -- you tried to BS the studies by attacking the measuring device without knowing that one of my specialties is multi-spectral imaging. Wanna try again???