[Mongoose]

Way to SCIENCE!

[watsisname]

Thank you very much for that information Beskargam.  Very interesting!

[BloodEagle]

HE WANTS TO DEVOUR MY SOUL!!!! 

[Grizzly]

Climategate

I'll just leave this here. It seems appropriate..

rest of post

and this too. The coffin has been shipped back.

Also, not sure if Goober is a) Poe's law, B) really into this, or C) Trolling us to get the best out of some of this forum's members, who have some splendid ways of explaining things.

[Phantom Hoover]

goober doesn't concern me, he's just being his reactionary conservative self and it's unlikely he'll ever change; it's luis whom i find worryingly evocative

[karajorma]

Luis has always expressed these kinds of views and failed completely to back them up with anything even remotely approaching science or even valid discussion techniques.

This is a great example.

[Luis Dias]

I do recognize that criticism and take it. I do have very little time to peruse, list and aggregate the things I've been reading and the papers I've been exposed to regarding this issue. I do not ask anyone to believe what I say at face value and accept wholeheartedly that you in fact do not precisely for the lack of sources that I provide, etc.

I also notice that despite the recent requests for me to "back up" my criticisms to what has been said, what has been said in this thread is either non-controversial or irrelevant. I do accept whatsisname's lists of explanations for the pause but with the giant grains of salt that I mentioned. If you do not understand my criticisms or only accept them if they have the seal of peer-review approval that is your problem, not mine.

I just leave this here and then leave to work: the IPCC does indeed ignore one very big hypothesis for the pause, which is about the sensitivity of CO2 being lesser than the one they calculated before. Innumerous papers have been claiming this for the past year and two (I am indeed sorry for not providing them), and I have yet to find any answer to Nic Lewis' really relevant criticisms for the IPCC's wrongheaded bayesian analysis of the models and the CO2 sensitivities, which when properly corrected takes a big bunch of the warming out of the picture (even reaching values below 2.0º). See here his relevant paper: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1

I haven't found a non-cryptic answer to this perhaps because I haven't had the time to find it. That is indeed possible.

e: (Oh and of course then there's the social phenomena of this: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Meteorologist-Breaks-Down-In-Tears-After-Climate-4853538.php?cmpid=twitter

which is insane if you calculate how many miles any low brow GW activist fly every year, let alone the big shots).

[Grizzly]

which is insane if you calculate how many miles any low brow GW activist fly every year, let alone the big shots

Most don't, actually. Most climate science is done in local weather stations. The "big shots" do go to the artic ocasionally, although that's travelling by boat, and staying there for 6 months.

[Luis Dias]

I said "activists", not "scientists" Joshua. Some of the high brow are also scientists.

[Mika]

I sort of agree with Nuke, if the last May was of any indication, then bring on the climate change!

On a more serious note, it is still sort of unclear to me whether I'll agree with IPCCs findings or not. So far I have taken the attitude that since I really don't have time to figure this myself, I'll have to (grudgingly) trust what they say. However, a lot of the message has been diminished the way it was brought up to the general public, not to mention some of the loudest policymakers recommending actions against it owning shares of companies that rely on technology that (supposedly) reduces CO2 emissions. This is a conflict of interest, and something like that is too good at driving up any sort of suspicion of the motivations behind.

Also, I haven't seen a scientifical review of the real world actions caused by the IPCCs recommendations. Now this is all completely speculative, but I'm sort of thinking that what actually happened to industry in Europe increased the world's total CO2 emissions than reduced them. Now that they have composed a 2200 page document, how long would it take them to analyze what has actually taken place?

You see, I think that the way they approached the CO2 issue seems to be completely wrong. They went to politicians, instead of industry first. Or perhaps they went to industry, but failed to realize that the industry is usually quite conservative by default. So instead of prohibitions and regulations, I think they would have been better accepted had they shown there are some other gains being possible by using processes that produce less CO2.

I'm also a bit curious if we took a bit more dickish attitude towards the rest of the world in what it comes to the greenhouse effect and said screw it, it only makes OUR lives better; this place being one of the few of them that actually benefits. This thought comes from acknowledging that jealousy is a powerful motivator They might not like us after saying something like that, but perhaps that would cause a bigger change. And besides, I wouldn't mind having a Riviera beach next to my door.

[watsisname]

I just leave this here and then leave to work: the IPCC does indeed ignore one very big hypothesis for the pause, which is about the sensitivity of CO2 being lesser than the one they calculated before. Innumerous papers have been claiming this for the past year and two (I am indeed sorry for not providing them), and I have yet to find any answer to Nic Lewis' really relevant criticisms for the IPCC's wrongheaded bayesian analysis of the models and the CO2 sensitivities, which when properly corrected takes a big bunch of the warming out of the picture (even reaching values below 2.0º). See here his relevant paper: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1

As I pointed out earlier, the IPCC does not perform original research -- they report the current state of knowledge about climate change according to the most recently available literature.  The paper you have linked is an example of the very same kinds of studies that the IPCC is referencing when describing why the lower bound for climate sensitivity was reduced from 2°C to 1.5°C.  (Look at the report, and you even see that very study being referenced!) The consensus about climate sensitivity is that it is extremely unlikely to be below 1°C, very unlikely above 6°C, likely between 1.5° and 4.5°C, and most likely around 3°C.  The 3°C is also the best fit to paleoclimate data.  The IPCC also has this to say:

The rate and magnitude of global climate change is determined by radiative forcing, climate feedbacks, and the storage of energy by the climate system. Estimates of these quantities for recent decades are consistent with the assessed likely range of the equilibrium climate sensitivity to within assessed uncertainties, providing strong evidence of our understanding of anthropogenic climate change.

Which is exactly what the study I gave earlier shows -- an accounting of natural variability with internal and external forcings yields a steady signal of global warming.  Whereas to only examine tropospheric/surface temperature trends is to neglect over 90% of the energy flow.

[Grizzly]

I'm also a bit curious if we took a bit more dickish attitude towards the rest of the world in what it comes to the greenhouse effect and said screw it, it only makes OUR lives better; this place being one of the few of them that actually benefits. This thought comes from acknowledging that jealousy is a powerful motivator They might not like us after saying something like that, but perhaps that would cause a bigger change. And besides, I wouldn't mind having a Riviera beach next to my door.

The problem is that ocean's ecosystems are very fragile, and built around very gradual temperature changes. The IPCC predicts that the closer we get to 3c, the more the ecosystems there start getting damaged, with catastrophic and irreversible damage starting from roughly two degrees, and with quite a lot of bad stuff happening from three degrees onwards. With the continued accidification of the ocean due to higher CO2 levels and the rising temperature, several of the organisms that live at the bottem of the food chain (pterapods, IIRC) are already at risk.

[Luis Dias]

I'm happy to know they did reference Nic Lewis' corrections on the last report, although the numbers they provide (3ºC as the main prediction) still fall higher than his own calculations and what is observed. Again, the rationale is that the warming is currently being stored in the oceans and that a big El Nino in the future will bring the warming speed up to their predictions (like in 98 or something to that effect).

What is also true is that the models have been constantly predicting a warmer world than what we have been having, and if this trend keeps going for too long they will have been seen as crying wolf too many times and too harshly.

It also does not help that any real measures to downsize CO2 are actually bemoaned and vilified by the greens, who are very much still in bed with the editorial edifice of the IPCC, and all the political shenanigans that go with it (the usual green lobby who are paid by governments to lobby the governments and the EU), like shale gas or nuclear power. The ignorance on basic facts is astonishing. Just yesterday I had to suffer a Lawrence Krauss (I'm really getting tired of that guy on innumerous vectors) piece saying that shale gas would be responsible for the increase of CO2. Let's forget the obvious fact that mankind needs power as never before and that if we don't get it by the low-density CO2 power source that is gas, we will get it with coal.

Constant BS like that always written in editorial pieces and so on, always aligned with moralistic lessons from the high priesthood of the IPCC... we will wake up from this idiocy with a lot harm done but only one or two decades from now. By then everyone will have forgotten the zealotry and the idiocy being done and propagandized today and new forms of fearmongering and "anti-science war" will be waged.

Sigh.

[watsisname]

I'm happy to know they did reference Nic Lewis' corrections on the last report

Yes, they reference and discuss his work in several sections.  In the future I would advise fact checking before claiming with such confidence that the IPCC is ignoring stuff.

although the numbers they provide (3ºC as the main prediction) still fall higher than his own calculations and what is observed.

Lewis is not the only one who studies climate sensitivity, nor is it estimated only by modelling and instrumental data.  The 1.5 to 4.5 degree range of likelihood is arrived at by looking at all available studies and methods:


Also, recall from the OP that even a 1.5°C value for climate sensitivity still yields over 2°C of temperature rise under a wide range of emissions scenarios, so all the focus on the reduced lower estimate is truly missing the point.

[watsisname]

Ad w.r.t. this

What is also true is that the models have been constantly predicting a warmer world than what we have been having, and if this trend keeps going for too long they will have been seen as crying wolf too many times and too harshly.

Why do you feel justified in making this argument when it has been demonstrated repeatedly now that the Earth is accumulating heat at a steady pace consistent with an understanding of natural variability and internal/external forcings?  A review of posts 11, 18, and the second half of 30 would be helpful here.

[Luis Dias]

Ad w.r.t. this

What is also true is that the models have been constantly predicting a warmer world than what we have been having, and if this trend keeps going for too long they will have been seen as crying wolf too many times and too harshly.

Why do you feel justified in making this argument when it has been demonstrated repeatedly now that the Earth is accumulating heat at a steady pace consistent with an understanding of natural variability and internal/external forcings?  A review of posts 11, 18, and the second half of 30 would be helpful here.

"posts"? I don't have the same understanding of "demonstrated" that you do. To me "demonstrated" is a hard concept that only gets its own authority when sufficient empirical testing was made, and non-trivial predictions being shown to work. They haven't. What happens again and again is that models are made, proclamations about the future are said with "very high degree of confidence", and then as the years go on we find these absolutely lacking and failing. But of course they haven't failed at all, because the "real" explanation is that a dog sea ate the homework the warming, and if we account for the whole ocean + air, we then see that the warming goes on as before.

Except that this accounting is novel and ad hoc, and it only came to light as a way to explain the absence of the actual thing we should be so concerned about: the warming of the atmosphere. It all "makes sense now", the same way that in 2007 "all made sense" then. This ad hoc(ian) approach and the constant change of goalposts and metrics (if we add this and that to that metric we used to point as the final evidence for our theory it works! Who denies this?!) validates my deep rooted skepticism about not only the main theory (I consider the "main theory" not the idea of Greenhouse Gases warming up the atmosphere, but the idea that we are looking at a catastrophic anthropogenic phenomena) but also the ways we are looking at the problem.

Of course, we can all be multitudes in our various degrees of skepticism and acceptance and this would mean little in the way of actually dealing with the risk which I agree is non-zero and should be tackled. I am extremely much more skeptical on that front about all the things the UN and all the international bodies are conjuring up, and that would be a really different discussion, one where I suspect we would get a wider consensus here than in this particular discussion.

[Beskargam]

*head scratch* what you are describing sounds exactly like science. Propose model for complex system. => run model, find results slightly different than observed phenomena => re-evaluate model, find phenomena that were not counted on in the model => refine model, incorporating new bits => model now closer to observed results. Sounds like running a chemistry experiment. Sounds like honing a theory.


Correct me if I'm off base, but the point of climate change theory is not warming of the atmosphere. The atmosphere itself will be the very last thing to warm. Think of it instead as an increase in energy of the system, or more heat is being retained by the system

[watsisname]

Correct me if I'm off base, but the point of climate change theory is not warming of the atmosphere. The atmosphere itself will be the very last thing to warm. Think of it instead as an increase in energy of the system, or more heat is being retained by the system

Precisely; global warming is not only the warming of the atmosphere.  

In general, though, the additional energy actually goes into the lower atmosphere first, as that's where the radiative imbalance leads to heating. (The upper atmosphere also cools by the same mechanism, but that's a different subject.  I can talk more about that in a later post if anyone is interested.)  The key is that the additional heat doesn't only go into the atmosphere or stay there.  It also goes towards heating the surface, heating the oceans, evaporation of water and melting of ice.  The heat accumulated and retained by the atmosphere accounts for less than 10% of the total, and because so much of it is in the oceans (high heat capacity), transformations between ocean and atmosphere are very important.

@Luis:
Is the heat uptake by the oceans an ad hoc explanation?  Not at all.  Atmospheric and climate scientists have known about the importance of the ocean for quite a while now.^{1, 2}  It's also observable and quantifiable.  Quite frankly I don't think you have any good argument against it, and so far it seems that you're simply regurgitating the criticisms from skeptical websites without actually giving them much critical thought.

[Beskargam]

(The upper atmosphere also cools by the same mechanism, but that's a different subject.  I can talk more about that in a later post if anyone is interested.

I am! I was going for the air in the trophosphere is heated by the ground. Additionally by where the upper atmosphere cools by the same mechanism, that is past where ozone generates heat?

[watsisname]

@Beskargam:

Sure!  Let's start with a basic yet oft-forgotten principle of radiative physics:
Any substance which is a good absorber of some wavelength of radiation is also good at emitting it.
The idealized version of this statement is what leads to the concept of a blackbody.

It is often said that CO2 is a good absorber of infrared wavelengths of light, but what is also true is that it is an equally good emitter of those same wavelengths.  But if that's the case, then why is it a greenhouse gas at all?  The reason is because the atmosphere is not a two-dimensional object; it has depth.  Sunlight, peaking in the visible spectrum, penetrates the Earth's atmosphere easily (and thankfully for us), with some of it absorbed by the ground and heating it.  The ground then emits radiation back up to space, and by Wein's Law that radiation is longer-wavelength infrared.  On its path upward, some of this radiation is absorbed by the greenhouse gases.

Those greenhouse gases aren't just going to hold on to that energy, as we noted that they emit just as easily as they absorb.  Some of it get re-radiated back downward, heating the ground further.  Some of it also goes upward, and then a portion of that again is absorbed by the layers above it, then getting re-radiated again.  You can probably see where this is going: if you treat the atmosphere as being made up of a bunch of thin layers, then the temperature at any layer is determined by how much flux it is absorbing from above and below vs. how much it can freely radiate away.  At low altitudes a slice of atmosphere absorbs more from the surface as well as from the layers above, so it is hotter than it would be without greenhouse gases.  At high altitudes there is less absorption, but efficient emission since there is a clearer path to space.  Therefore the upper atmosphere is cooler than they otherwise be. 

The result then is that the presence of greenhouse gases in a planet's atmosphere increases the temperature near the surface and decreases the temperature higher up.  There should be some particular altitude where the fluxes balance and the temperature is equal to the equilibrium temperature that you would calculate for the planet if it did not have an atmosphere.  (Though clouds and other atmospheric chemistry, e.g. ozone, can complicate this further).

A very nice way to show this observationally is by looking at the strongest greenhouse atmosphere we know of -- Venus.  Everyone knows that Venus sports the hottest surface anywhere in the solar system (she's a sexy goddess), despite not being the closest planet to the Sun, because of its dense CO2 atmosphere.  But look at the temperature profile:



The upper atmosphere is really cold, in fact about equally as cold as the coldest parts of Earth's atmosphere, despite being closer to the Sun.

Thus by increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere, we should expect to see an altitude-dependent change in temperature; with a warming of the surface and a cooling higher up.  Sure enough, this is just what we observe.

Additionally by where the upper atmosphere cools by the same mechanism, that is past where ozone generates heat?

It contributes a cooling effect at the height of the ozone layer as well as altitudes above that.  There is also an additional cooling effect at the ozone layer due to reduced ozone concentrations, among other sources, and it is possible to disentangle these effects by examining altitude dependence and relevant chemistry. 

Here's a good website for more information.  Surprisingly (or perhaps not) the cooling of the upper atmosphere is a topic that does not receive a great deal of study, though there are a few journal articles about it here and there.