Merged AGW without HADCRUT3

[jimbob]

Here is an interesting paper about glacial retreats;

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/114125034/abstract

Abstract
During the hot summer of 2003, reduction of an ice field in the Swiss Alps (Schnidejoch) uncovered spectacular archaeological hunting gear, fur, leather and woollen clothing and tools from four distinct windows of time: Neolithic Age (4900 to 4450 cal. yr BP), early Bronze Age (4100-3650 cal. yr BP), Roman Age (1st-3rd century AD), and Medieval times (8-9th century AD and 14-15th century AD). Transalpine routes connecting northern Italy with the northern Alps during these slots is consistent with late Holocene maximum glacier retreat. The age cohorts of the artefacts are separated which is indicative of glacier advances when the route was difficult and not used for transit. The preservation of Neolithic leather indicates permanent ice cover at that site from ca. 4900 cal. yr BP until AD 2003, implying that the ice cover was smaller in 2003 than at any time during the last 5000 years. Current glacier retreat is unprecedented since at least that time.

It should answer the heat island question.

 

[BenBurch]

Interesting jimbob, and it does show warming independent of modern temperature readings, but it does not specifically show how you factor out urbanization from the meteorological network - but we do know that if you compute using only rural stations the results are consistent with the corrected readings from urban areas, so there is really nothing to explain.

 

[jimbob]

Of course there is precious little urbanisation in Antarctica or Greenland, either.

 

[Trakar]

how exactly have they dealt with such problems?

Reality Check states the situation well with regards to the need to explain a lot climate research methodology before going into an even more detailed explanation of applying these methods to the heat island effect upon some measurements and the accounting for those elements in the overall assessment of local, regional and global temperature averages. Without knowing your particular level of understanding it is difficult to know which references would benefit you most. I'm always reluctant to recommend websites, but the Skeptical Science site does have a particularly good treatment of this subject with multiple solid publicantion references for more detailed investigation and study.

Skeptical Science - Does Urban Heat Island effect exaggerate global warming trends?

If this doesn't help answer your questions, or raises issues that you aren't clear on, please come back to me and I will do my best to address the issues either personally or through direction to additional, more specific references.

 

[jimbob]

Have we mentioned stratospheric cooling in this thread yet?

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/index.php?report=global&year=2006&month=ann

Now I'd say that the stratosphere is cooling because it is getting less IR re-radiated from the ground. This could be because the Sun is getting cooler... Except that the Sun's increasing output is often invoked to explain rising land temperatures.

If the region under the greenhouse is getting warmer, and the region outside the greenhouse that is mainly heated by the greenhouse is getting cooler, then I suggest that this is because the greenhouse is getting more insulated.

 

[BenBurch]

Yeah, stratospheric cooling is what is expected when you increase CO2.

EDIT: http://www.wunderground.com/education/strato_cooling.asp

 

[macdoc]

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....

Now I'd say that the stratosphere is cooling because it is getting less IR re-radiated from the ground. This could be because the Sun is getting cooler... Except that the Sun's increasing output is often invoked to explain rising land temperatures.

I'd say you are incorrect on both counts.
The strat is cooler because less IR is getting through the carbon so more heat is trapped less heat to reach the stratosphere and that phenomena is observed ( it's more complicated than just that however )
The sun has not changed it's output

If the region under the greenhouse is getting warmer, and the region outside the greenhouse that is mainly heated by the greenhouse is getting cooler, then I suggest that this is because the greenhouse is getting more insulated.

my head is hurting
the greenhouse is getting more insulated we have a winner....

The greenhouse has changed it's IR transmission characteristics to reflect more IR back in.....= C02 in atmosphere ( amongst others )

 

[jimbob]

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....

Now I'd say that the stratosphere is cooling because it is getting less IR re-radiated from the ground. This could be because the Sun is getting cooler... Except that the Sun's increasing output is often invoked to explain rising land temperatures.

I'd say you are incorrect on both counts.
The strat is cooler because less IR is getting through the carbon so more heat is trapped less heat to reach the stratosphere and that phenomena is observed ( it's more complicated than just that however )
The sun has not changed it's output

If the region under the greenhouse is getting warmer, and the region outside the greenhouse that is mainly heated by the greenhouse is getting cooler, then I suggest that this is because the greenhouse is getting more insulated.

my head is hurting
the greenhouse is getting more insulated we have a winner....

The greenhouse has changed it's IR transmission characteristics to reflect more IR back in.....= C02 in atmosphere ( amongst others )

The bits you highlighted were my point macdoc.


EDIT: The stratosphere could cool if the sun cooled...
But this wouldn't warm the troposphere.

Similarly the sum warming should warm both the stratosphere and troposphere

I am involved in a parallel discussion on a cycling forum, where someone keeps posting about global warming being due to the sun increasing its output....

 

[BenBurch]

The link I posted discusses the role of the sun.

 

[jimbob]

The link I posted discusses the role of the sun.

Pretty reasonable link, I have a couple of nitpicks:

Firstly it is not possible for Venus's upper atmosphere to be

a startling 4-5 times colder than Earth's upper atmosphere

or indeed for anything to be several times colder than anything else. 20% of the temperature is a logical possibility. A fifth of the temperature is also possible.

Five times hotter is also possible; but not five times colder. This is due to the fact that temperature is always positive.. It is possible to get very close to absolute zero (several mili-Kelvins but not to get to absolute zero).

Looking at google I get figures of about 200K for the Earths stratosphere, and 165K for Venus, which is still a significant difference, but only 80% of the temperature of the Earth's stratosphere at its coldest. Given that Venus is closer to th Sun, this is still a good indicator of the strength of the greenhouse effect on Venus.

Secondly:

The explanation of this greenhouse gas-caused surface heating and upper air cooling is not simple

The maths are not simple to work out the sums, but the explanation is pretty simple: Blocking IR radiation from the Earth close to the Earth stops it heating the Stratosphere so much.

 

[davefoc]

I disagree. They tend to be Libertarians, or Republicans who fall in with Libertarians on economic philosophy.

...

Along with A.A.Alfie, I disagree with this a bit. My sense of it is that there is a range of the politically conservative who dispute AGW.

But I do suspect that self described libertarians make up a component of the AGW disputers. I think, people who hold libertarian type views, often underestimate the problem of third party consequences. This fits in with their idea that government is almost always harmful and if there aren't third party consequences government isn't necessary to protect third parties.

I am something of a libertarian, but I think libertarians often adopt the view that third parties don't need protection more out of ideological blindness than objective thought. That there are self described libertarians who have knee jerk reactions to the idea that AGW is bogus doesn't surprise me at all.

 

[CoolSceptic]

Sorry folks, after posting this some time ago I got very busy indeed (doing some measurements out in the field) and just didn't have time to engage in this banter. But hey, I'm back now.

Do you not know the answer to the question?

I'm well aware of the answer (sheesh, it can be found in a quite a few places on the web). The problem is that you simply claim attribute 30 degrees to the greenhouse effect. But the problem is that answer is quite variable - with no change in CO2 levels, we can get answers ranging from as little as 20 degrees to as high as 40 degrees.

Neither CO2 nor orbital forcing - nor any kind of reasonable CO2 plus feedback - can explain these. Which means you have a BIG gap in your knowledge. The papers I cited (which you probably haven't read) provide one possible explanation, with supporting evidence; and it transpires that when you include this effect, you no longer need CO2 changes to explain the 20th century temperature rise.

In fact, the unexpectedly large natural variability is a far greater concern than the (somewhat smaller) effect of CO2 - but your ideological attachment to CO2 being the dominant factor prevents you from seeing this.

 

[CoolSceptic]

And you have the graphs with the error bars and CI's to back up your claim I suppose?
or does that just apply to those that have something relevant to say.

References, with *properly calculated* CIs can be found in my post #54, start with Cohn + Lins.

 

[CoolSceptic]

If the people you claim to be the majority are actually anything more than a tiny minority, why do we not see them arguing with the outright deniers?

That's an astonishingly weak argument Cuddles. You usually manage better than that. Because someone doesn't argue with person X they must be wrong? Yuk.

People who accept warming but dispute the cause no doubt exist, but they are a tiny minority.

I'm glad you're so certain about this. I've never tried counting. The mind-reading bit necessary to get good data somewhat precludes it.

 

[BenBurch]

It does not pay to argue with cranks. It only makes the cranks seem respectable.

 

[AlBell]

It does not pay to argue with cranks. It only makes the cranks seem respectable.

Yes, it's much easier to label everyone who disputes your viewpoint as a "crank". Does this approach seem to be working, with more and more people agreeing with you, and controversy lessening?

 

[macdoc]

There is no lack of dim bulbs about...

Science is not about popularity, or are you parking yourself with virgin birth crowd on this.

and in the climate science circles....questions about the reality of AGW are long past answered.

What to do about it, the current topic du jour in Copenhagen.

Do keep up.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Ah... wonderful. The age old argument-from-ignorance. "I can't think of any other explanation, therefore it MUST be god - oops sorry - CO2".

Problem with that Ben. I've already shown you articles from the peer reviewed literature which show an alternative mechanism - the Hurst phenomenon in the hydrological cycle - which appears quite capable of producing trends of this magnitude. (cf. "Naturally Trendy", Cohn and Lins 2005, Rybski et al, Koutsoyiannis et al etc. etc.)

Hmm, IIRC Rybski et al. argued that the Hurst phenomenon could not account for the rapid warming of the last few decades. Halley also argued this

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...210&md5=1ea6b42b06e8239b9ef14d27bbfcf6b6#bb10

I personally have a problem with the Cohn and Lins approach because they compute all their statistics from a time series in which the forcings are not constant. Maybe naivety on my part?

Another concern that might be a reflection of ignorance is whether it is simply enough to establish that the mean annual global temperature change is within the bounds of natural variability or if one has to also establish that regional changes are within the bounds of natural variability. Changes in polar regions are greater than the global average. Do these fall within the range of natural variability? Does thuis matter? Nighttime temperatures are increasing faster than average temperatures. Do these fall within the range of natural variability? Does this matter?

 

[macdoc]

CS trotted out

Naturally Trendy", Cohn and Lins 2005,

capable of producing trends.....funny., I thought physics was the underlying science for physical phenomena like trends in the real world...not statistics.

Planetary temperatures are governed by physics, and it is crucial that any hypotheses regarding their behaviour are both physically as well as statistically consistent

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/naturally-trendy/

You are dated and your knowledge on the current climate science is in keeping with your current hero Randi's - little or none.

You scratch at outliers with little credence or of marginal import which you gleaned from some denier site when the climate science community has moved on.......and get this......you're proud of it ....

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

CS trotted out
capable of producing trends.....funny., I thought physics was the underlying science for physical phenomena like trends in the real world...not statistics.

You don't still believe in that silly theory that in order to warm something you have to add heat to it (or remove mass), do you?