Global warming

mhaze said:
Let me use an air conditioned/central heated home as an analogy to the planet.

We've got some thermometers scattered around the house and they read differently within a range. We know if we add some insulation the house will retain more heat in the winter or keep it out in the summer. The exact change in a thermometer on going from 3" to 6" insulation isn't known, but everyone would agree there would be a change. We can calculate what the result should be but we also know from practical experience that the actual results will differ.

co2 == insulation.

Our central AC/heating unit has output measured in BTUs or watts. The thermometers only give us an indirect measure of the effectiveness of the "Insulation" on the BTUs.

Now consider the usefulness or lack of in proxies - tree rings, ice cores, etc. Scientists do their best to derive "temperature" from these proxies. So we have an estimate of past temperature (an indirect measure of heat capacity of the system) being compared with current thermometer readings (plus adjustments but let's not go down that road for now).

I'm thinking temperature is the wrong metric for global climate. Actual heat capacity in the system is the metric, right?

So why are scientists trying to get temperature proxies?:confused:
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Because your initial premise is wrong. The world is like it is, a body in space for which the heating is entirely from an external source. What happens next is the complex part, how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just that.
 
a_unique_person said:
Because your initial premise is wrong. The world is like it is, a body in space for which the heating is entirely from an external source. What happens next is the complex part, how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just that.
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There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875

Let the ad hom attacks begin!
 
David Rodale said:
There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875

Let the ad hom attacks begin!
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No need. It IS interesting to note the overlap between anti-AGW proponents and Intelligent Design proponents. It isn't cause to dismiss everything a person says out of hand, but it should be cause to stop and consider whether the person should be taken with a grain of salt.
 
Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".
JoeEllison said:
No need. It IS interesting to note the overlap between anti-AGW proponents and Intelligent Design proponents. It isn't cause to dismiss everything a person says out of hand, but it should be cause to stop and consider whether the person should be taken with a grain of salt.
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a_unique_person said:
Because your initial premise is wrong. The world is like it is, a body in space for which the heating is entirely from an external source. What happens next is the complex part, how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just that.
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Because my simple analogy uses largely convective rs. radiative, the issue of the correct metric charges?

how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just tha

​
that is energy balance (BTUs) not temp right?

So the measure from proxies should be which?
 
mhaze said:
Because my simple analogy uses largely convective rs. radiative, the issue of the correct metric charges?

how much of the heat stays with that planet, and how much escapes. We are measuring the temperature to find out just tha​

that is energy balance (BTUs) not temp right?

So the measure from proxies should be which?
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I do not think that a pure energy balance would give you the whole story either. You are correct that total heat of the system is important (not of all earth, but of the surface where we live). This is not the heat capacity. Heat capacity is the amount of energy needed to raise a material 1 degree of temperature(whatever unit you prefer).

the only way that total heat doesn't scale with temperature is if we have a reason to assume that the heat capacity of the environment has changed. This may be an interesting question, and one that may have been addressed.

But even if it wasn't addressed, the temperature actually aslo makes a difference as well. temperature relates to the speed of molecular motion/vibration. Higher temperatures relate to increased reaction kinetics due to increased energy of collisions. A reaction at equal temperature in medium of two different heat capacities are not expected to possess a significant difference in reaction rate. However, a reaction at two different temperatures will.
 
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".
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What's interesting is that you completely missed my point.
 
David Rodale said:
Errors found in NASA temperature records.

Who was it again that said Steve McIntyre was not a "scientist"? Ha! Once again a statistician finds the errors. The question is, how many more "errors" are there?

These errors affect several details, including 1998 not being the warmest year in U.S. recorded history as well as decadal rankings.


What does this mean? Not a lot since we're talking about tenths of a degree, but the public (including forums such as this) has been inundated with "the hottest _______ since ________" mantra. Can we be spared that at least? Yes it's been warm, but nothing beyond natural variation. Higher temperatures wouldn't be either. What is especially interesting is NASA is scrambling right now and the finger pointing has likely already begun.

And just as a small jab, who is in charge of all this? That's right, Dr. James Hansen.
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That’s what the peer review process is for, finding and fixing errors. The fact that errors are found does not reflect poorly on the process, and in this case the errors that were found don’t change the picture at all.

This only effects US temperatures to the tune of 0.15 deg C and global temperatures to the tune of 0.003 deg C. The topic is *global* warming and globally the warmest year on record remains 1998, or 2005 depending on what data set you use.

The bigger news this week is the fact that we have already matched the shocking lows established for Arctic sea ice in 2005. Those lows were huge news when they were announce and we already reached them with 6 weeks of melting left and are well ahead of the fastest melting predicted by global climate models.

This means we are on pace to see an ice free artic well before 2050, which was previously thought to be the soonest reasonable date.
 
rockoon said:
He has done climate science a great service on more than one occasion, and inspite of not being a climate scientist, is now well respected by most of
the field. An official reviewer of the IPCC's fourth assessment report, and is now responsible for finding a major problem with NASA's publicly accessable climate data from the year 2000 to the present (a Y2K bug.)

I have no doubt that he will prove to be a notable figure in history. There are several climate scientists who wish he would just go away but its really their fault that their work is so shoddy.
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It’s not a Y2K bug. The data needs to be corrected for things like tome of day in order to be useful, but there was an issue with the way this correction was applied in the US data from 2000-2006 resulting in a small error in the mean temperature during that time. The error had negligible effect on the calculation of global mean.

IOW it changes nothing as far as the global climate debate goes other then to give people the opportunity to throw ad-hominems at one of the worlds leading climate researchers.

My question is why are people touting this if it has no impact on global temeprature calculations?
 
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
Interesting. If you review the threads (or everywhere for that matter) , the AGW'rs are the ones using that method.
Now, there is a known fact that there are not ID papers in peer reviewed magazines. There are lots of "anti AGW" (as you call them) in peer reviewed magazines. There are not well known scientists in the ID field. For just ONE you can check Lindzen background. There are lots of other well known and respected meteorlogists and climate scientists in the "anti AGW" camp.
Is not serious to equate ID with "anti AGW".
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There really isn’t many anti-AGW appearing in peer reviewed literature. Anyone who scans the major peer review journals will easily note the lack of anti-AGW papers. Lindzen is actually a good example, but not in the way you think. He hasn’t published on climate change in a peer review journal in over a decade.

Oreskes-2004 In a paper itself published in Science she reviewed 10 years of papers published in Science with the words “climate change” of the 928 papers not one was anti-AGW while 75% either explicitly or implicitly accepted the view that climate change was occurring and was caused by humans. Peer review came up with a handful of papers which may have vaguely been ant-AGW, but this still pales in comparison to the 100s on the other side.

In other words the peer review literatrue is very hevily weighted to one side in this debate. Hence the claim "our work is being surpressed" but how often have we hears that from people peddling fake science?
 
joobz said:
I do not think that a pure energy balance would give you the whole story either. You are correct that total heat of the system is important (not of all earth, but of the surface where we live). This is not the heat capacity. Heat capacity is the amount of energy needed to raise a material 1 degree of temperature(whatever unit you prefer).

the only way that total heat doesn't scale with temperature is if we have a reason to assume that the heat capacity of the environment has changed. This may be an interesting question, and one that may have been addressed.

But even if it wasn't addressed, the temperature actually aslo makes a difference as well. temperature relates to the speed of molecular motion/vibration. Higher temperatures relate to increased reaction kinetics due to increased energy of collisions. A reaction at equal temperature in medium of two different heat capacities are not expected to possess a significant difference in reaction rate. However, a reaction at two different temperatures will.
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No kidding. Here in Texas depending on the color, an item left outside in the sun can have a surface temperature ranging in the summer from 140 to 180 degrees. No GW needed!

But you and AUP may have missed my point so let me restate it.

Current method -
1. It is desirable to compare the past with the present.
2. So we analyze ice core and tree rings very carefully.
3. From that analysis we know the energy balance of that era measured.
4. From that we infer temperature.
5. Now we can compare the indirect measurement of energy balance indirectly transformed to temperature to modern temperature.

Preferred
1,2,3 as above.
4. Compare historical energy balance with present.

Right or wrong ("WTF? Who knows" also a possible response:))
 
lomiller said:
That’s what the peer review process is for, finding and fixing errors. The fact that errors are found does not reflect poorly on the process, and in this case the errors that were found don’t change the picture at all.

This only effects US temperatures to the tune of 0.15 deg C and global temperatures to the tune of 0.003 deg C. The topic is *global* warming and globally the warmest year on record remains 1998, or 2005 depending on what data set you use.

The bigger news this week is the fact that we have already matched the shocking lows established for Arctic sea ice in 2005. Those lows were huge news when they were announce and we already reached them with 6 weeks of melting left and are well ahead of the fastest melting predicted by global climate models.

This means we are on pace to see an ice free artic well before 2050, which was previously thought to be the soonest reasonable date.
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No disrespect intended, but this does sound like a rehash of Gavin (spelling??)'s take on the matter over at Realclimate.

But what exactly is this that we should worry about concerning sea ice? I thought the final nail on Greenland's coffin was hammered shut around page 6 or 7 in this thread. Granted there is more ice up there than Greenland, but why is this reallly important?
 
lomiller said:
The error had negligible effect on the calculation of global mean.
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What does that have to do with anything?

lomiller said:
IOW it changes nothing as far as the global climate debate goes other then to give people the opportunity to throw ad-hominems at one of the worlds leading climate researchers.
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Lets give bad science on one issue a pass because it doesnt significantly effect a different issue. :rolleyes:

It is clear that climate science needs independent auditing since many problems have been discovered via independent auditing. Agreed?

How can the peer review process even begin to work when the scientists involved in a paper obstruct attempts to gather the data they used, even though the policy of the publication they are submitting to is infact that their data must without question be archived and made available?

This is a clear problem with the peer reiew process in climate science. The scientists dont even have to follow the policies which are meant to allow the peer review process to work. Some of the scientists are guilty of not complying with these policies (Jones et al, for example), and most of these publications are guilty of not enforcing their own policies.

I would dare say that many of these "peer reviewed" papers were NEVER peer reviewed because it simply was not possible to peer review them at the time of publication.

As far as NASA, they still refuse to reveal their methodology for making "corrections" to their data. Any paper which uses the data cannot be in compliance with peer review standards which require this methodology to be open.

Now, how many papers do you suppose used the inaccurate data? How many papers cited papers that used the uncorrected data? How many papers cited those papers? and so on.. a tangled web with bad data at the core. You might want to dismiss the problem, but real science doesn't.

A lot of work needs to be revisited, and rightly so, because of an "oil executive"

lomiller said:
My question is why are people touting this if it has no impact on global temeprature calculations?
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Headline Whores.

Something to consider though is that if problems like these are common enough to be found by an "oil executive" but not by "real scientists" then there is a very good chance that there are many more problems to be discovered and we have to wonder about the veracity of those "real scientists"
 
Suppose someone wants to verify a study that used the old NASA data.

Oops. That data seems to have vanished. There is no data retention policy.

But, hey, surely they realize this and will fix it?:boxedin:
 
mhaze said:
Suppose someone wants to verify a study that used the old NASA data.

Oops. That data seems to have vanished. There is no data retention policy.

But, hey, surely they realize this and will fix it?:boxedin:
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Would you do me a favour? Go through all the papers published in all the journals over the past 100 years in all areas of science, and see how many sets of source data are still available for them.
 
a_unique_person said:
Would you do me a favour? Go through all the papers published in all the journals over the past 100 years in all areas of science, and see how many sets of source data are still available for them.
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Do me a favor, go through all the dendroclimatology papers published in the last 20 years and see how many complete sets of source data have ever been made available. Ditto for detailed methodology.
 
David Rodale said:
There is much more involved that just "measuring the temperature". New research from Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875
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Looking at the review, and not having access to the actual article, it is indeed interesting. They've studied cirrus clouds under a proxy of global warming, a 30-60 day tropical weather cycle. Going from memory here (being currently disgusted with the IPCC reports I ain't looking stuff up therein) the computer models don't deal with clouds very well, but presume cirrus is a positive feedback in GW, while low level cumulus is a negative feedback-which sounds roughly reasonable.

Spencer asserts that there may be little or no positive feedback from cirrus, hence clouds would predominately create negative feedbacks. That in turn implies that if temperatures go up, clouds moderate that temperature increase, instead of accelerating it.
 
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