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We're saying there's a positive feedback, not that it has infinite strength.
Global warming
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CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
.psyexplorer
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Global Warming is real. Al Gore said so! Actually I've never seen proof.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
When it comes to the El Nino/La Nina variation one possible explanation springs to mind. During a La Nina (and to a lesser extent during a La Nada) deep cold water upwells along the eastern coast of Latin America, bringing a wealth of dissolved nutrients. This nourishes phytoplankton which absorb CO2 from the ocean (which in turn absorbs it from the atmosphere). The vast biomass that results is evidenced by the wealth of fish in the region. Not all of it is eaten before it dies, of course, so some of the absorbed carbon sinks to be sequestered in sediments. That's a "carbon sink" for you.
During an El Nino, warm water flows east across the Pacific and slows down (perhaps turns off) the upwelling. Phytolankton die back and less CO2 is absorbed and sequestered. This is evidenced by the dearth of fish at such times.
Another point : the upwelling cold water can absorb more CO2 than warm surface water, firstly because cold water can hold more CO2, and secondly because the deep water is pretty old - centuries at least - and so hasn't been exposed to the high atmospheric CO2-load that's been around more recently.
That's off the top of my head. I'm sure the science is right, but I don't have numbers to run.
I've nothing on the intriguing volcano effect, apart from a recent paper suggesting that volcanoes leave a longer-lasting signal in oceans than they do in the atmosphere. (Where I came across it I can't recall.) This suggests a relatively strong cooling of oceans by volcanoes, thus dissolving more CO2. That's pretty rough, though. I hope somebody has something better.
At least this bar-chart puts the "eruptions emit more CO2 than humans do in a decade" meme to sleep.
Given that every year saw an increase in CO2 whatever the conditions, it certainly doesn't imply a short one. Perhaps medium - a 30 year half-life seems reasonable. We could perhaps narrow it down from the rising trend-line, but ballpark terms are good enough I'd have thought.
AGW is entirely consistent with all branches of science. And with observations made over the last few decades.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Wow, a splatter-post. All gore and no plot.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Quite. As I understand it, the feedback is logarithmic, not linear, so each unit increase has a smaller effect. This leads us to the mathematical concept of a limit.
It's the same on Venus (that's mathematics for you), but of course Venus isn't the same as the Earth-Moon system.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Have you looked for the evidence?
mhaze
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Two comments after reading the article.
1. It may well be that the reporter didn't do too good a job - that's not unusual - but I didn't get clearly what was proven and how from the writeup. Basically, my response after reading it was not "ah HAA" but "Huh?"
One thing is very clear, though, this is more computer modeling, not actual atmospheric experiments.
2. I've quoted and mentioned that Wentz 2007 seemed like an important article. Wentz showed that atmospheric water increase for a given temperature rise was almost 3x that shown in IPCC models, obviously invalidating those models. Also appears that the feedback effect nets out at negative (reasonable) vs. positive (unreasonable).
Brief conclusion: A lot is going on with the water and cloud cycle that we don't understand (we already knew that) and people are seriously trying to figure it out (a good thing) and they are making some progress.
Is the DOE/Livermore study related to one of the several challenges made to AGW believers? That wasn't clear to me.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
They used the modelling to explain the measurements. I don't know what sort of experiment you think will satisfy you, given there is only one planet, and we don't have any spare ones handy to work with. We can create a virtual planet with models, however. Models are used throughout science and engineering, with great success.
Wentz does not invalidate the models. The models were known from day one to be deficient, and they are constantly being improved. They predicted an increase in water vapour content, and that has been measured. According to Wentz, the amount that falls as rain is larger than anticipated, but rain is also a cycle, so you can have both, more rain, and more water content.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
There's only one atmospheric experiment going on at the moment.
You'll surely have noticed that there's a lot of observation in there.
That's a lot of people signing-up to a career-breaker, don't you think? They seem to be pretty convinced. You may not understand why, but I'm sure they do. As do I.
IPCC models? I thought the IPCC collated research and model results, rather than run models themselves. Are you sure this guy wasn't referring to the 22 models mentioned above? You may have read it as "IPCC models", but I doubt that's what was said.
If this guy's right it only invalidates the models insofar as they will underestimate the equilbrium temperature, given that H2O is a greenhouse gas. No refuge there, I'm afraid.
(comforting)
(alarming)
Is the article peppered with anti-fnords that I can't see? (OK, that is obscure.) How exactly does this appear from the article? (For which thank you, varwoche; just keep loading and passing on up for the cock-and-fire stuff
)There's a lot going on in the banking world that we don't yet understand. There's also a lot that we do understand. Given those two facts, the credit market has seized-up horribly. Caution is the watchword, as it always has been when this sort of thing has happened before. Of course, when it comes to AGW there isn't the same level of experience to go on.
Meanwhile there are record downpours from the Midlands through Africa, India and China, other regions are suffering droughts, and cyclonic activity is remorselessly increasing. Whatever the precise interplay of mechanisms may be, the observed outcome is not good. Which surely suggests caution even in the political world.
More accurately, that would be "atmospheric scientists from LLNL and eight other international research centers". One blessing of being "international" is to be beyond the dread clutches of Al Gore.
It was and is what it was. Nothing to do with your so-called challenges. I hope you're not suffering from ring-master delusions.
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CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
The H2O component of the atmosphere is always tiny compared to the H2O throughput. Of course, as humans it's the throughput - rain and dessication - that we care about. We call it "weather". When it comes to climate, it's that tiny component that makes a difference. And the climate dictates the rate of throughput.
It's a point worth making, I think. It's why, in general, wet places will become wetter and dry places will become drier.
There are, of course, larger movements. The same pole-ward shift of rainbands seems to be bringing floods to central Africa while it brings drought to Australia.
Time to quit Australia and move to the greening Sahara. Heck, isn't that how humanity has coped so adequately with climate change in the past? It's no big deal. People can always move
.psyexplorer
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Yes I have but it's irrelavent. From the looks of the thread, the issue is so polarized. People have already made up their minds one way or the other and you're either driving a hybrid or you're not.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
You could look up the IPCC for the scientific evidence. That's what scepticism is all about evidence.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
It's nothing of the sort. It doesn't even report anything of the sort.
I can see two candidates for "this statement" : "natural variability in climate just can't explain this moisture change" and "The most plausible explanation is that it's due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases."
Neither requires some other link to make sense.
The most plausible explanation for the warming is AGW. Got anything else?
The Venusian climate is in equilibrium, so the greenhouse never ran away.
If you're postulating a 1500-year warming period you'll find yourself on your own, even in this company.
It is for you, though.
"Life" isn't you. Life will sail on through what's coming. Whether it includes iPod-wearing life is another matter.
Now you have. Care to serve me up another of your primary reasons?
Chose to leave out? If you want one paragraph that will somehow encapsulate the process for an otherwise ignorant audience, you're asking far too much.
You may not understand, but that doesn't mean others don't. You may not survive AGW, but that doesn't mean life won't.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Life is not about your ride. Really. At your age it might seem to matter enormously, but it's really not the issue.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
It's an interesting state of affairs, by just creating enough doubt, even if much of it is self-contradictory, the deniers win.
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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Oi. Take it to Politics. M'kay? This is Science. No hate, no love, no good and evil, no personalities, just the facts.
Mycroft
High Priest of Ed
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Great! So what are the mechanisms that temper this feedback loop?
mhaze
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Well, I certainly have not made my mind up. That's why I've repeatedly asked the Believers to provide simple, direct scientific evidence. And why these questions arose -
Unanswered Questions and Challenges
1. A challenge for AGW believers to cite a scientific atmospheric study that provided empirical evidence of the hypothesized greenhouse effects of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It's not one paper, that would be impossible, since the subject is so complex. Ref IPCC reports.
2. This is a link to a summary of Singer's theory of the 1,500 year climate cycle, excerpted from his book. Debunk Singer's core theory, of the 1,500 year climate cycle.
There are so many woo papers, it would be impossible to debunk them all using the scientific process, without extra funding. Hang on, you just said that was all that motivated them. Give them more funding.
3. Can a AGW believer show correlation or causation, or any relationship, between global temperature and global atmospheric CO2 levels?
mhaze
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Perhaps this discussion by Christy will help as a introduction to why cloud and precipitation systems operate as a negative, not a positive feedback.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm
Precipitation Systems: Nature's Air Conditioner?
It is well known that precipitation is an important process in the atmosphere. Besides being necessary for life on Earth, all of the rain and snow that falls to the ground represents excess heat that has been removed from the Earth's surface during the evaporation of water. That heat is deposited in the middle and upper tropopshere when the water vapor condenses into clouds, some of then produce precipitation.
I believe it can be demonstrated that precipitation systems ultimately control most of the Earth's natural greenhouse effect. Most of the atmosphere (the lower 80%, called the troposphere) is continuously being recycled through precipitation systems (see Fig. 7), on a time scale of weeks. Winds in the troposphere's 'boundary layer' pick up water vapor that has been evaporated from the surface, and then transport this vapor to precipitation systems, where an equal amount of vapor (on average) is removed as rain or snow.
Partly because precipitation systems cover only several percent of the Earth's surface at any given time, even most climate researchers do not appreciate the controlling influence these systems have on the climate system. All of the humid air flowing into precipitation systems in the lower troposphere ends up flowing out of those same systems, mostly in the middle and upper troposphere. (The only exception is thunderstorm downdrafts, which you have likely experienced before). That air flowing out has moisture (water vapor and cloud) amounts that are controlled by precipitation processes within the systems. This constitutes the direct effect that precipitation systems have on the Earth's natural greenhouse effect.
Partly because precipitation systems cover only several percent of the Earth's surface at any given time, even most climate researchers do not appreciate the controlling influence these systems have on the climate system. All of the humid air flowing into precipitation systems in the lower troposphere ends up flowing out of those same systems, mostly in the middle and upper troposphere. (The only exception is thunderstorm downdrafts, which you have likely experienced before). That air flowing out has moisture (water vapor and cloud) amounts that are controlled by precipitation processes within the systems. This constitutes the direct effect that precipitation systems have on the Earth's natural greenhouse effect.
- Detecting Tropical Cyclones Using AMSU
- Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations
- Cirrus disappearance: Warming might thin heat-trapping clouds
- Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat Roy Spencer revised Aug. 9, 2007
- Star Search by Roy Spencer
- Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years
- Spencer, Roy W.. "NOT THAT SIMPLE / GLOBAL WARMING: WHAT WE DON'T KNOW", New York Post, 2007-02-26. Retrieved on 2007-04-07.
- Spencer, Roy W. (2007-03-19). STATEMENT TO THE COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (PDF). House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Retrieved on 2007-03-0