Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Acleron]

Trouble is, humans have only had the faintest what stars are and how they work in the last 100 years.

So nuclear reactions, emission spectra, magnetism etc didn't happen until we found them?

We have direct observations of solar variation (sunspot counts) from the last few hundred years.

The Chinese were observing sun spots over two thousand years ago.

Like climate cycles generally, the confidence limits around estimates of significant departure from the mean level depend on the amount (and quality) of information.

Yes, 101 statistics and?

 

[Acleron]

...

Recall Dyson's criticism of climate models. Here, Skeptical Science takes one instance of solar variability and compares its effect to their calculated CO₂ effect. The strength of the CO₂ effect is the central point of contention in the argument between skeptics and believers.

Yes, we recall it very well, he said he didn't understand them, perhaps you had forgotten.

 

[Reality Check]

can you understand that you need a hotter sun to warm the Earth

Lot's of Skeptical Science here.

Lots of climate science there

• Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming?
• Are we heading into a new Ice Age?

A pity that you show no sign of understanding it and have to rely on lying about Dyson again (he has no problem with climate models because he accepts their results) and dropping the names of climate deniers.

Here's another quote from one of your cites:

Simulations of the climate response if the sun did fall to Maunder Minimum levels find that the decrease in temperature from the sun is minimal compared to the warming from man-made greenhouse gases (Feulner 2010).
Simulations. Recall Dyson's criticism of climate models.

Recall that you have been continuously and still are deluded about Dyson's criticism of climate models. He has stateted that he knows little about them. His opinion is thus irrelevant and obsessing about it is a bit dumb.
And ignoring the science: How reliable are climate models?

While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.

P.S. Most used climate myths (your parroting in red)
Climate's changed before
It's the sun
It's not bad
There is no consensus
It's cooling
Models are unreliable
Temp record is unreliable
Animals and plants can adapt
It hasn't warmed since 1998
Antarctica is gaining ice

Here, Skeptical Science takes one instance of solar variability and compares its effect to their calculated CO₂ effect. The strength of the CO₂ effect is the central point of contention in the argument between skeptics and believers.

You even have the delusion that there is more than one Sun so that here can be more than one solar variability !
Here you show that you cannot understand what Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming? states. For example

• You think that Skeptical Science that is doing the comparisons. Wrong - it is the scientific literature that they cite that do the comparisons.
• You think that that there is only "one instance of solar variability".
  Wrong - it is multiple measurements of the total solar irradiance.

Here is the science for you to ignore (yet again ):

1. The Sun's output has decreased slightly over the last 35 years.
2. Global temeratures have increased over the last 35 years.

Malcolm Kirkpatrick, can you understand that you need a hotter sun to warm the Earth?
A cooler Sun means that the Earth should get cooler. This has not happened. So the solar input is not the dominating effect in global warming.
First asked 18 September 2012

 

[Reality Check]

What do you think will happen to Foraminifera when CO2 changes over decades

Still unanswered,

Originally Posted by Reality Check
Malcolm Kirkpatrick: Species of Foraminifera could not adapt to CO2 changes that took millions of years to happen.
What do you think will happen to Foraminifera when CO2 changes over decades?

First asked 10 September 2012
8 days and counting!

 

[aleCcowaN]

<snip> We have direct observations of solar variation (sunspot counts) from the last few hundred years. <snip>

And sunspots are important to any climate-significant solar output, how?

 

[aleCcowaN]

And I suggest you practice civil discussion before you return to this forum,

Yeah, Malcolm, discussions come up to be uncivil according to you every time you don't have an answer or elemental notion.

-It's déjà vu all over again
Yogi Berra

 

[CapelDodger]

I tend to agree with that, but I tend to avoid naming it Tyndall Effect as it is widely known as strictly causing light scattering in particles and the skies looking blue -or yellowish, reddish at dawn-. Calling them Tyndall gases doesn't explain a iota, and calling it Tyndall gas effect promotes it mixed up with Tyndall effect.

I think I can guess all the distortions that may come from the united estates of denialsphere, like wattsupyourhat, the lone star estate, and similar crowd by exploiting that confusion:

• The sky is blue but the surface doesn't look blue, so what happens in the skies stays in the skies.
• The Tyndall effect depends on the fourth power of the frequency, so you have blue skies and blue irises in melanin-poor people, but long wave radiation goes easily through, so there's not "trapped heat" at all in the atmosphere as infrared goes through the atmosphere the same way radio waves go through walls.
• Ours is called the blue planet because it looks as blue from space as the skies look blue, so there's nothing bouncing down in the atmosphere
• ...

and surely a lot more I am too lazy to imagine now. Besides, it is common knowledge that when educated intelligence finds a way stupidity finds a myriad more.

I take your point. Perhaps a sequel name - the Tyndall Imperative?

Having to explain it is actually a good thing, since it gives you a chance for a quick resume of the science and the history and establish the direction of the conversation. Which I do like to do . If the deniers go off on it at least it's a change from that damn' "greenhouses don't work like that" refrain. It was funny the first time, but enough already .

 

[CapelDodger]

Ummm...Which is it? You're starting to look like a reflexive critic.

Ummm...Which is it? You're starting to look like a reflexive critic.

My statements were

"CO2 does not affect the relationship between thermometers and air."

followed some way later by

"...Temperatures here depend on how easily heat gets from up to the effective radiating surface, and the Tyndall Effect acts to make this passage more difficult, hence raising temperatures."

These statements are not even related, let alone antithetical, so your point is lost. Perhaps you could explain how you see them being related?

 

[aleCcowaN]

I take your point. Perhaps a sequel name - the Tyndall Imperative?

Having to explain it is actually a good thing, since it gives you a chance for a quick resume of the science and the history and establish the direction of the conversation. Which I do like to do . If the deniers go off on it at least it's a change from that damn' "greenhouses don't work like that" refrain. It was funny the first time, but enough already .

If you put it that way, Tyndall effect of boredom, you're quite right, Tyndall effect it is. But you have to agree that the average fellow trying to counteract denialism has an asbestos patience. Who else would greet welcome to the next fly bouncing against a window glass and patiently explain to it that it is not air though it looks transparent, all of that to start it over again with an improved explanation as the last fly didn't get it either?

 

[CapelDodger]

to some degree, and if it's not overwhelmed by variations in the solar flux.

It happens whatever the Sun is doing. Other forcings don't go into suspension if one is changing. The subject of the lesson is the greenhouse effect, now concentrate.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

It happens whatever the Sun is doing. Other forcings don't go into suspension if one is changing. The subject of the lesson is the greenhouse effect, now concentrate.

Let's go back to the BBs in the swimming pool analogy: other things being equal, adding one BB heated to a greater temperature than the water will move the thermometer reading upward. Can you measure such an influence against day/night cycles, air currents, and people splashing around? Now, shun disdaindful imperatives,

 

[CapelDodger]

But you have to agree that the average fellow trying to counteract denialism has an asbestos patience. Who else would greet welcome to the next fly bouncing against a window glass and patiently explain to it that it is not air though it looks transparent, all of that to start it over again with an improved explanation as the last fly didn't get it either?

It's an odd pursuit, I must admit. It's a shame we don't have anyone here explaining why what's actually happening isn't caused by AGW, if it's happening at all. Instead it's like the last fifteen years never happened (except for the stolen emails) and we get models and a 1998 temperature reconstruction and greenhouses don't work like that and hidden data yadda yadda. I want the slow train-wreck which is the denialati's world brought straight to my laptop in real-time. All I'm getting is "Previously on You Couldn't Make It Up" ...

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

My statements were "CO2 does not affect the relationship between thermometers and air"
followed some way later by "...Temperatures here depend on how easily heat gets from up to the effective radiating surface, and the Tyndall Effect acts to make this passage more difficult, hence raising temperatures."

So "A", "followed some way later by "not-A" is not a contradiction if there's enough space between them? A new rule of logic?

These statements are not even related, let alone antithetical, so your point is lost. Perhaps you could explain how you see them being related?

The "greenhouse" (Tyndall) effect, which all you...people insist is "basic physics" relates infrared radiation, CO₂ and warming (thermometer measurements) of surface air.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

So nuclear reactions, emission spectra, magnetism etc didn't happen until we found them?

We don't know how much sunlike stars vary in radiation output. Also, the equilibrium we observe may be very unstable, such that any solar-variation-induced perturbation sends the system wobbling around. Perhaps that's all we have measured in the last 100 years.

 

[CapelDodger]

Let's go back to the BBs in the swimming pool analogy

Let's not, for it is a foolish thing. Let's go back to what you said and I was replying to. You said (give or take) that CO₂ affects the way thermometers interact with the air, which it doesn't. Within sensible bounds, not even the temperature affects that.

My second point was part of an explanation of the greenhouse effect, and why it can warm on the surface without the Sun getting any brighter, something you expressed confusion about. I hope my explanation cleared that up? If you have any problems with it just ask and I'll do my best to explain.

 

[CapelDodger]

So "A", "followed some way later by "not-A" is not a contradiction if there's enough space between them? A new rule of logic?The "greenhouse" (Tyndall) effect, which all you...people insist is "basic physics" relates infrared radiation, CO₂ and warming (thermometer measurements) of surface air.

Yes it does. It doesn't do it by the CO₂ changing the way a thermometer takes a measurement.

AGW will warm the air (on average) and thermometers measure that warming. They have been for decades.

And no, it's not because the Sun has coincidentally gone into some state where it sends extra energy to the planet undetectable by any instrument smaller than the planet. Just when warming was predicted to happen by people using known physics.

 

[aleCcowaN]

It's an odd pursuit, I must admit. It's a shame we don't have anyone here explaining why what's actually happening isn't caused by AGW, if it's happening at all. Instead it's like the last fifteen years never happened (except for the stolen emails) and we get models and a 1998 temperature reconstruction and greenhouses don't work like that and hidden data yadda yadda. I want the slow train-wreck which is the denialati's world brought straight to my laptop in real-time. All I'm getting is "Previously on You Couldn't Make It Up" ...

More than a train-wreck it seems like the distant echoes of a ship-wreck, and each storm leaving ashore pieces of the same old debris in even worse condition. The arguments haven't changed, but every new denier that shows here is more intelligent than the next one. The quality of their reasoning is now very similar to Yrreg's actions in the religion forum, who tries to make you agree about some common ground that quicly reduces to accepting "god is the uncreated creator of all things". The same way, lately we are being exposed here to the "common ground" of accepting a tiny warm thing warming just a bit a big cool something, just for the sake of selling that "it is tiny, isn't it?". I hold that the real boredom is not in the repetitive denialist arguments but in the even poorer variety of approaches and techniques of the denialists who resort to exploit the same ambiguities in vocabulary (basic, elemental, fundamental), cast every branch of physics as the same physics (Tyndall effect brings hot CO2) and play the reflexive and level-headed as if they were the creators of common sense -patent pending- (there weren't devices measuring variables five hundreds years ago).

 

[Acleron]

We don't know how much sunlike stars vary in radiation output. Also, the equilibrium we observe may be very unstable, such that any solar-variation-induced perturbation sends the system wobbling around. Perhaps that's all we have measured in the last 100 years.

You dropped the sun spot claim. You have failed in biology and especially evolution. You don't seem to realise that except for very minor variations, any output change by the sun will be accompanied by a lot more than just an change in temperature, changes that are not found in the rocks. You are floundering in understanding the physics of the climate. You certainly have no idea how real scientists work or what are their motivations.

Don't you think you might just admit to yourself that you are trying to argue in an arena to which you are ill trained? That perhaps the time has come to retire and actually learn a lot more before you try to tell scientists they have got it wrong?

 

[Reality Check]

Also, the equilibrium we observe may be very unstable, such that any solar-variation-induced perturbation sends the system wobbling around. Perhaps that's all we have measured in the last 100 years.

You have presented no evidence that "solar-variation-induced perturbation" in the past has sent the climate system "wobbling around".

We know that this is not what we have measured in the past 100 years: Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming?

 

[lomiller]

Let's go back to the BBs in the swimming pool analogy: other things being equal, adding one BB heated to a greater temperature than the water will move the thermometer reading upward. Can you measure such an influence against day/night cycles, air currents, and people splashing around?

That analogy would best fit solar cycles, but even there it's not a great fit because as always we are dealing with energy over time (power) not a set amount of energy. Solar cycles are the closest fit because they contribute too little energy to be noticeable over an 11 year cycle.

It certainly doesn't fit CO2 which traps insanely massive amounts of energy in the atmosphere each year. (on the order of 10^22J per years, which is a ridiculously large amount of energy.