Dung

For the CO2 hypothesis to stand (as the only cause of warming) it has to be seen to be true in all situations.

Firstly it is not true at the moment, CO2 is rising and global temperature is not rising hence the famous email from climategate. For about 30 years from the 1940s to the 1970s CO2 rose quickly but temperatures fell.

CO2 is emerging as the dominant forcing. Prior to the 1970s, natural variation was capable of over-printing it. NV still can, althought the extent to which it does so is diminishing. You might want to think about the last decade a littel differently:

- we have a 'quiet sun', with some even claiming the onset of a solar minimum

- La Nina conditions are dominant

And it's not cooling.

'Controversy' about the recent flat trend in surface temperature needs context. Look at short-term cooling trends in BEST.

Imagine that you had claimed that warming had stopped, AGW debunked etc in:

1980

1988

1995

2001

2005

In every case, you would have based your statement on less than a decade of cooling.

In the present case, we have less than a decade of warming (yellow trend line).

Finally note the diminishing slope of the cooling trends over time. Interesting, that.

But now doubt your 'sceptical' super-powers will allow you to deny all this (and more) and continue to insist that the scientific consensus is the mistaken work of lesser minds than your own.

Dung

For the CO2 hypothesis to stand (as the only cause of warming) it has to be seen to be true in all situations.

Firstly it is not true at the moment, CO2 is rising and global temperature is not rising hence the famous email from climategate. For about 30 years from the 1940s to the 1970s CO2 rose quickly but temperatures fell.

CO2 is emerging as the dominant forcing. Prior to the 1970s, natural variation was capable of over-printing it. NV still can, althought the extent to which it does so is diminishing. You might want to think about the last decade a littel differently:

- we have a 'quiet sun', with some even claiming the onset of a solar minimum

- La Nina conditions are dominant

And it's not cooling.

'Controversy' about the recent flat trend in surface temperature needs context. Look at short-term cooling trends in BEST.

Imagine that you had claimed that warming had stopped, AGW debunked etc in:

1980

1988

1995

2001

2005

In every case, you would have based your statement on less than a decade of cooling.

In the present case, we have less than a decade of warming (yellow trend line).

Finally note the diminishing slope of the cooling trends over time. Interesting, that.

But now doubt your 'sceptical' super-powers will allow you to deny all this (and more) and continue to insist that the scientific consensus is the mistaken work of lesser minds than your own.

Thanks for the link, Dung.

The point is that even over the entire satellite period since 1979 i.e. 32 years

the average of the surface based estimates suggests a slightly (<0.1oC) larger global temperature increase, compared to the average of satellite based observations

http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing%20surface%20and%20sattellite%20temperature%20estimates.

And I again say: if both the climate models and atmospheric theory insist that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface then we have room for doubt here, because the measurements state otherwise.

The inescapable conclusion is that something is happening here that is neither catered for in the theory, nor in the models.

matthu

The inescapable conclusion is that something is happening here that is neither catered for in the theory, nor in the models.

Or there could be a problem with the satellite 'measurements', which are indirect reconstructions for TLT.

I think you are placing rather too much confidence in the UAH/RSS methodologies for calculating TLT temperatures. There's a very interesting discussion of the likely errors here:.

Two teams using essentially the same or similar methods are producing trends of around 0.14°C/decade for TLT. Three other teams using three different methods are producing significantly higher values, suggesting 0.18 to 0.22°C/decade. Can we be certain which is correct? No.

(I originally linked to this in a response to Philip, on this thread, at Nov 10, 2011 at 11:41 AM)

Matthu

It wos Philip wot provided the link :)

BBD

Amazingly (well to me anyway) I can agree with some of what you say :)

CO2 did not start the warming in the interglacials. (as you say nobody argues this)
CO2 did "kick in" and support/prolong/increase the warming after about 800 years.

However nobody argues against the fact that once the interglacial warming ended and cooling returned, CO2 was still rising and at the end of some of the interglacials CO2 rose for 2000 years and the earth cooled through that period and stayed cold/icy for another 100,000 years.
Rising CO2, falling temperatures.

I can not claim to know what exactly was happening for the years when CO2 rose and still the planet cooled. However it does support the hypothesis that because of the logarithmic relationship between temperature and CO2, adding CO2 was no longer warming the planet.

Nobody argues against the statement that CO2 is rising at the moment and has been for over 100 years. However the only cause of this is stated to be human activity. Unless something has changed we should have expected CO2 to be rising now, just as it did during 750,000 years of ice core records, about 800 years after a warming of the earth. That warming was the Medieval Warm period that friends Mann, Bradley and Hughes struggled manfully to disprove.

Interestingly, during the interglacials, when the planet started to cool, temperatures were similar to today (the last one was higher) but atmospheric CO2 was in fact lower. So if the warming effect of CO2 had plateaued when cooling started and CO2 is higher today then once again there is support for the suggestion that CO2 is not currently warming the planet.

Daft Dung

Some more opinion about the UAH data.

Dung

You are missing something vital.

CO2 levels today are significantly higher than previous glacial/interglacial climates (~180ppmv/280ppmv) - and still rising fast.

Glacial terminations are triggered by Milankovitch forcing. Once the lagged peak warming (mediated by OHC) is past, temperature gradually begins to fall. The process is slowed by the warming effects of CO2 and CH4, but eventually they are overwhelmed and the NH ice sheet begins to grow once again. At this point, ice albedo feedback begins to amplify the cooling and the decent into the next glacial begins in earnest.

Nothing in this process justifies your statement:

So if the warming effect of CO2 had plateaued when cooling started and CO2 is higher today then once again there is support for the suggestion that CO2 is not currently warming the planet.

Another serious error:

However it does support the hypothesis that because of the logarithmic relationship between temperature and CO2, adding CO2 was no longer warming the planet.

Past CO2 concentrations were too low for the 'saturation effect' to have been significant in the way sceptics claim. And it's wrong anyway, as you would know if you read the links provided upthread.

Also

Responses overdue for:

- Nov 16, 2011 at 6:35 PM

You state that unless someone can show exactly what has been warming the planet recently then the hypothesis that CO2 is warming it must stand. This statement is scientifically illiterate.

Why?

- Nov 17, 2011 at 7:17 PM in proper detail

- Nov 17, 2011 at 7:43 PM in proper detail

Logarithmic relationship between CO2 and temperature means that each doubling of CO2 concentration results in a similar temperature increase. So if 1 K results from CO2 rising from 250 ppmv to 500, then it also results for 500 to 1000, 1000 to 2000 and so on. I believe this formula results from numerical solutions of the RTE and so should be reliable in the sense that the effect is calculated in isolation.

TTS has around 40% of its signal coming from the lower Stratosphere! And it is showing negligible trend. So… if 40% of its signal is coming from a layer showing strong cooling, doesn’t that mean that … the signal for the other 60% must be coming from a region showing strong warming?

Lets do a rough calculation using RSS and Zou to estimate an upper Troposphere temperature trend (Tut)

For RSS we have:

(0.4 * -0.303) + (0.6 * Tut) = 0.001

is that mathematically robust?
to take a weighted average of 2 trends because some proportion of the signal comes from one dataset and the remainder from another?
Where does the least squares come into that? the mind boggles.

has this stuff had the benefit of peer review?

Thanks, Dung - yes it was Philip who provided the link. My mistake.
Thanks for the link, Philip.

Philip

Yes, I've seen that before. It's rather empty. And once again you dodge the questions raised by Fu et al. Vinnikov & Grody, Zou et al. etc. Further summary here.

It's obvious to most that RP Snr is more agenda-driven and biased than those he criticises/defends. You may imagine yourself to be a dispassionate seeker after truth, but it is very evident that you are not, as your constant use of the term 'alarmist' demonstrates.

I asked you a long while back why you hide behind a pretence of accepting the mainstream when in fact you are clearly a sceptic. I'm asking again. Let's have a straight answer this time.

"unless someone can show exactly what has been warming the planet recently then the hypothesis that CO2 is warming it must stand. "

That is not scientifically literate if I demonstrate a correlation between the rise in comics and Alzheimers - that does not mean comics cause Alzheimers unless someone else can show exactly what has been causing Alzheimers.

It is sufficient to falsify the original hypothesis by any other means.

BBD

You need to talk to the IPCC and realclimate scientists, they both say that "we dont know what causes the earth to start warming in the interglacials" so if you actually DO know then I think you should share your knowledge with them.
I am sure they know as much as is known about the Milankovitch Cycles but perhaps realise that they dont know enough to be certain how much influence they have.

"You state that unless someone can show exactly what has been warming the planet recently then the hypothesis that CO2 is warming it must stand. This statement is scientifically illiterate."

Only an idiot believes he knows everything, it takes a very intelligent man to understand that he probably knows nothing.

matthu

It is sufficient to falsify the original hypothesis by any other means

And nobody has done this, so it stands.

BBD

ups I almost forgot to comment on another issue in which your knowledge surpasses the IPCC,

"Past CO2 concentrations were too low for the 'saturation effect' to have been significant in the way sceptics claim."

The above statement implies that YOU know at what levels CO2 levels WOULD be significant, could you enlighten me pls?

Dung

Only an idiot believes he knows everything, it takes a very intelligent man to understand that he probably knows nothing.

The problem here is that you clearly believe that you know better than the world's climate scientists (and the many decades of work upon which current understanding is based).

But everything you say in comments here demonstrates no understanding at all. And when you come out with this sort of stuff, well, I have to hide my eyes:

I believe that as a highly intelligent man with an analytical mind I can add more than many scientists or mathematicians to the argument.

I see you are now starting to ask more questions to distract from the fact that you have not responded in any detail to my earlier comments. This is a childish and irritating evasion.

Dung

ups I almost forgot to comment on another issue in which your knowledge surpasses the IPCC,

What prompts you to say this? Please reference with a link to the relevant page(s) in AR4 WG1.

BBD

There is NO page in AR4 in which there is a statement giving the level at which CO2 ceases to warm the planet. Since YOU appear to know that level I was hoping you would share your knowledge with both the IPCC and myself .

BBd says:

matthu

It is sufficient to falsify the original hypothesis by any other means
And nobody has done this, so it stands.

Good: at least we can move on. This means you agree that the original statement was scientifically illiterate so we have made a little progress.

Regarding whether "the hypothesis" has been falsified or not: please remember that the warmist side revise their "hypothesis" on an almost continual basis.

Note that the warmist camp also loves to be vague about what the hypothesis truly is. hence we get: 99% of scientists say that global warming is happening. (As if that supports the hypothesis in some way.)

In its simplest form i.e. that the world has warmed, that man has been having some impact, that CO2 is probably contributing to this impact - no this has not been falsified, hence it still stands.

But the original hypothesis keeps being exanded by various so-called alarmists. Perhaps you remember all the claims about disappearing snow, increasing hurricanes etc? There are many others.

Each and every one of these alarmist projections has been justified by the original hypothesis - and very many of them have subsequently been shown to be false. At what stage does the sheer weight of all this rubbish falsify the entire hypothesis? I expect public and scientific opinion will soon tell, and it will be sooner than you like to think.

BBD @ Nov 17, 2011 at 10:13 PM

Which terms would you prefer? A recent social science paper I read suggested 'Convinced' and 'Sceptic' in the middle and 'Believer' and 'Denier' at the extremes. Probably labels are a bad idea anyway, because people's ideas are often more nuanced than the labels suggest. Therefore, the labels describe a cartoon position, and are best not applied to most actual people, certainly not me or you.

I'm not trying to hide or disguise my opinions at all, rather the opposite I'd hoped. I'm also trying hard to understand other people's as well. I keep on mentioning Hartwell, because that corresponds very closely to what I think, and that includes their comments about the science. With my background, I'm also rather naturally interested to understand the way in which dynamics - esp complex and chaotic - apply to climate theory.

I'm concerned about how the climate and oceans will respond to increased CO2, but I think the detailed responses are not well understood. Therefore, I want to see decarbonization. I'm concerned by the way in which arguments about politics have become too frequently conducted through science. Therefore, I want to see a clearer distinction between the two in public life.

When it comes to discussing climate science or science in general, I've no doubt that I make some mistakes and get some things right. I certainly try to be accurate and truthful as far as I can.

Believer and Denier etc. are meaningless terms unless the associated hypothesis is published at the same time. Smacks too much of the media surveys:

Scientists are unequivocal: global warming is happening.
or
Climate change is happening and it's happening now.

What does that mean? Even if they mention a time scale: what does that mean?
The hypothesis is kept suitably vague just to allow pronouncements like this.

Even when they ask a scientist: are temperatures significantly higher than they have ever been before?
they know that the public will interpret this as meaning "substantially" or "worryingly" higher, whereas the scientist will be using the meaning in a statistical sense, however marginal the difference.

And then they also take care to edit out all of the uncertainty expressed by the scientist in order to get the news bite. (The BBC have demonstrated that they are particularly good at doing this.)

Dung

There is NO page in AR4 in which there is a statement giving the level at which CO2 ceases to warm the planet. Since YOU appear to know that level I was hoping you would share your knowledge with both the IPCC and myself.

Aha! Now shouldn't that tell you something? Specifically, that you are flat-out wrong about the 'level at which CO2 ceases to warm the planet' because there isn't one? Why don't you read the links provided upthread that explain this, instead of persisting in wilful ignorance?

It is YOU who keeps claiming that saturation matters, over and over again, after all:

I can not claim to know what exactly was happening for the years when CO2 rose and still the planet cooled. However it does support the hypothesis that because of the logarithmic relationship between temperature and CO2, adding CO2 was no longer warming the planet.

There is no such hypothesis Dung. Your commentary has become silly and evasive.

And you STILL haven't responded substantively to my previous comments in proper detail:

- Nov 17, 2011 at 7:17 PM

- Nov 17, 2011 at 7:43 PM

- Nov 17, 2011 at 10:04 PM

I have to conclude that you aren't going to because you cannot. At what point do you admit that your knowledge is extremely poor and your arguments incorrect?

matthu

Good: at least we can move on. This means you agree that the original statement was scientifically illiterate so we have made a little progress.

Are you joking? You have utterly (deliberately?) misrepresented my comment.

Will you please explain, in crystal clear language, why what I said was scientifically illiterate? Because I cannot for the life of me see it myself.

All I'm getting here is your pettifogging and distortions.

Philip

Which terms would you prefer? A recent social science paper I read suggested 'Convinced' and 'Sceptic' in the middle and 'Believer' and 'Denier' at the extremes. Probably labels are a bad idea anyway, because people's ideas are often more nuanced than the labels suggest. Therefore, the labels describe a cartoon position, and are best not applied to most actual people, certainly not me or you.

'Consensus' or 'mainstream' vs 'contrarian' or 'lukewarmer' for those insiting on a low climate sensitivity despite the complete absence of evidence. 'Denier' should reserved for the idiots who deny the greenhouse effect actually exists. They merit the pejorative. One should not be kind to fools when they make public noise on matters of global importance.

Are people's ideas more nuanced that labels suggest? I think not. You either accept the mainstream view that CS is ~3C for 550 ppmv CO2 or you don't. You are either of the mainstream, or a contrarian/lukewarmer, or a denier.

There is no middle ground.

Which is why I hope you will be dropping 'alarmist' from your lexicon. It's a false definition, like 'CAGW'.

Both provide semantic wriggle-room for contrarians and deniers to avoid facing the facts. See matthu's comment at Nov 18, 2011 at 10:59 AM for a fine example of this double-think.

Here's matthu letting the mask slip at Nov 17, 2011 at 10:49 PM:

Each and every one of these alarmist projections has been justified by the original hypothesis - and very many of them have subsequently been shown to be false. At what stage does the sheer weight of all this rubbish falsify the entire hypothesis? I expect public and scientific opinion will soon tell, and it will be sooner than you like to think.

He must think I'm an idiot, which is ironic in the light of his commentary on this and other threads.