Simple Question About AGW

[Pipirr]

No. I'm saying that your post is sad.

I can't begin to imagine why you think there is a problem here, nor why you seem to want to 'out' a JREF forum poster.

For heaven's sake, its a list of three abstracts. Anyone can find this information. I don't see why you think this needs 'insight', or is 'interesting'. You really want to know if this is the same person, send a PM to them. I don't see the point, but it would be at least more respectful than making snide insinuations.

 

[CapelDodger]

No. I'm saying that your post is sad.

And you spoke for me.

 

[CapelDodger]

Your assertion(s) are unprovable.

Your posts are increasingly Delphic.

Since CO2 continues to accumulate, and the climate response is cumulative not immediate (CO2 doesn't create heat), then we are most certainly not at climate equilibrium with today's CO2-load.

 

[CapelDodger]

CapelDodger has stated that a tropospheric hotspot is a bona fide requirement of the current AGW hypothesis.

I have stated that a greater rate of mid tropospheric temperature increase vis-a-vis the surface is the result of any warming forcing. It's not specific to AGW.

All I'm looking for is confirmation that this predicted effect is not happening.

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest. You won't find it. This argument emerged ten years ago and was shot down; now it's re-emerged but focused on the tropical troposphere. Do you ever get the feeling that the walls are closing in on you?

Mind you that I don't believe that the lack of a tropospheric hotspot is the deathknell of AGW. I've been after Capel Dodger and others to desist from hanging on to the various "secondary" predictions of the AGW GHG mechanics because I believe that all is not known about the expression of this mechanism

Let us know how that works for you.

After all, the physics underlayment of the hypothesis is elegant and compelling. I must caution everyone in extrapolating too far from this basis, though. IOW, I disagree that the lack of such tropospheric hotspot as falsification.

But boy do you believe it's lacking.

In my experience, I can count the number of times that a prediction has gone according to theory on one hand. My personal opinion is that the beauty of science si not in the knowing but in the discovery. The very fact that a model of the abnormal climate based such a simple mechanism has eluded very talented physicists is evidence that there are unrealized influences, IMHO.

The ugliness of nature is that it doesn't give a fig for beauty, or opinions, or anything mystical.

 

[a_unique_person]

I visit a couple sites that discuss A/GW. I found this to be interesting. For it to be coincidence would be extraordinary.

Luke's comment March 8, 2008 10:53 PM Australia time found in this thread is identical with a_unique_person's comment found just above. If you ignore the two word preface and make allowance for different software handling of blank lines.

I'm unsure of the time difference between EST and Australia. So I'm wondering if they might be the same person, or if one of them is making use of the efforts of the other without attribution.

Insight, anyone?

You are sad. I found the information there, posted by Luke, and posted it here. What is your problem? It's a list of abstracts.

 

[CapelDodger]

I'm trying to find out if mhaze accepts the CO2 greenhouse effect but with minimal contrbution to the recent temperature rise, or doubts it altogether.

Both and neither.

We've all been there with mhaze and it's like trying to nail down jelly. Think of it as an initiation, and you've passed muster .

 

[CapelDodger]

You are sad. I found the information there, posted by Luke, and posted it here. What is your problem? It's a list of abstracts.

Ad Hominem actually seems appropriate in this case.

 

[CapelDodger]

I'll write it again: field measurements always trump modeling.

WTF has that got to do with what you quoted? If you're going to quote me, please address your response to what I said.

Field observations by their nature include all working mechanisms. What you are arguing against is the application of thermodynamics to observations.

Gibberish

They hold. I know they hold. I spent a better part of my life doing research on the dissipation of xenobiotics in the environment and pseudo-first order is king there.

Well bully for you but I majored in the real world and retired at 50.

Warming would continue for a short time until the s-curve or equilibrium completes.

Why would it be a short time, and relative to what scale? Human, geological, CERN?

Like I've stated before, the AGW effect does not seem all that scary to me in this context.

Heaven forfend that you be alarmed.

BTW, why is no one addressing the missing tropospheric hotspot? mhaze has mentioned it various times and I've asked about it twice with no response from the AGW experts here.

There's no "hotspot", there's a different (and more rapid) mid-troposhperic rate of warming relative to the surface, clearly observed everywhere but the tropics, where there's some uncertainty. You're clinging to that uncertainty.

 

[a_unique_person]

There's no "hotspot", there's a different (and more rapid) mid-troposhperic rate of warming relative to the surface, clearly observed everywhere but the tropics, where there's some uncertainty. You're clinging to that uncertainty.

Actually, Spencer et al have made the same claim twice. Once they claimed it was a global issue, and were proven to be wrong, it was their measurements that were in error. This time they have come back with a much reduced scope in their claim, it only applies to one layer of the tropics.

Measurements are good, but the satellite record is not nearly as accurate as has been claimed. The measurements are very precise, but they are not directly measuring the temperature record that is being published. It has to be inferred from other measurements, since the satellites cannot directly measure the troposphere.

When that is taken into account, the measurements and predictions are within the error bounds.

 

[Slimething]

Of course they do field measurements. Do you think they are stupid? There are satellites with instruments that can measure the radiation coming from the earth, there are instruments that can do the same looking up from the surface.

There's more

Thank you for that, AUP. Your responses to me are always informative and constructive.

I shold have been clearer in my statement. What I meant was that the equation posted by mhaze used direct temperature measurements. As tmeperature is what we're ultimately concerned with in this debate, I see it as a first-level relevant prediction. The radiation measurements you are citing are what I consider of second-level relevance as the radiation measurements are relevant only towards the causation or hypothetical casuation per GW models. Yes, they are measurements but they are not as valuable as direct temperature measurement.

Thanks.

 

[Slimething]

I have stated that a greater rate of mid tropospheric temperature increase vis-a-vis the surface is the result of any warming forcing. It's not specific to AGW.

Thanks for clarifying.

This argument emerged ten years ago and was shot down; now it's re-emerged but focused on the tropical troposphere. Do you ever get the feeling that the walls are closing in on you?

No. Could you give a short recap of the argument and how it was resolved? I am unaware of this.

But boy do you believe it's lacking.

No. I'm just following the particular claim. mhaze has claimed there is no hotspot and has not been effectively rebutted. When you replied you stated that the hotspot must be present if any warming occurs. Most people, including myself, believe there has been warming so why no hotspot? Or I'm looking for your rebuttal that there is a hotspot.

WTF has that got to do with what you quoted? If you're going to quote me, please address your response to what I said.

Sorry if I misrepresented your position. I was simply stating that direct temperature measurements trump anything the models spit out. The former is what the latter is hoping to predict.

Gibberish...

Well bully for you but I majored in the real world and retired at 50.

Why is it that no one wants to believe alarmists? Could it be their condescending attitudes? Surely not!

Why would it be a short time, and relative to what scale? Human, geological, CERN?

As I've pointed out to you, you need to establish your k's. By this point, you should be able to answer that question, not me.

Heaven forfend that you be alarmed.

So the AGW hypothesis depends on fear for validity? That really bespeaks an underlying agenda. Well, I don't care. I listen to science. Science includes falsifiability, testing, refinement, and so on. If you're satisfied with what you have right now, you've failed. What's on the table for AGW right now is not science.

There's no "hotspot", there's a different (and more rapid) mid-troposhperic rate of warming relative to the surface, clearly observed everywhere but the tropics, where there's some uncertainty. You're clinging to that uncertainty.

I'm not cliniging to anything. I'm looking for explanations. You appear to be one of the more knowledgeable posters regarding present AGW modeling. I want to know how serious this lack of a hotspot is to present modeling.

So, from what you're saying, there is a tropospheric hotspot. You should have said this before. It's too easy to dislike you and your regal attitude. Try to stick to the issue. Let me know how that goes for you.

 

[BobK]

You are sad. I found the information there, posted by Luke, and posted it here. What is your problem? It's a list of abstracts.

Maybe you're still unfamiliar with the purpose of the quote function here. Or maybe you consider yourself an exception because you have so many posts to put up and so little time.

I'm the type of person who thinks it is discourteous to the reader and the true author to leave the impression the idea and compilation is your own when all that was done is a simple copy/paste of another person's idea and effort. The information may all be public, but that is not the point. The idea for and organization of the post was the product of another and some effort was involved. This leaves the reader with a skewed impression of the thought process and effort used by the person doing the copying.

When noticed I see nothing wrong with pointing it out. It reflects on how much actual thought and effort a person is willing to use in support of their position versus how much they want the reader to believe they used. After all it would only take one sentence to give attribution.

As this search of JREF shows, at least I'm willing to put some thought and effort into my posts.
Here we have you chastising another person for an unattributed copy/paste of part of a post from a blog. You used stronger language than I did, but even you seem to think it isn't right and should be pointed out.

If you take umbrage when someone comments about such things, I would suggest you might be overly sensitive or the comment may have hit close to the mark.

 

[a_unique_person]

Maybe you're still unfamiliar with the purpose of the quote function here. Or maybe you consider yourself an exception because you have so many posts to put up and so little time.

I'm the type of person who thinks it is discourteous to the reader and the true author to leave the impression the idea and compilation is your own when all that was done is a simple copy/paste of another person's idea and effort. The information may all be public, but that is not the point. The idea for and organization of the post was the product of another and some effort was involved. This leaves the reader with a skewed impression of the thought process and effort used by the person doing the copying.

When noticed I see nothing wrong with pointing it out. It reflects on how much actual thought and effort a person is willing to use in support of their position versus how much they want the reader to believe they used. After all it would only take one sentence to give attribution.

As this search of JREF shows, at least I'm willing to put some thought and effort into my posts.
Here we have you chastising another person for an unattributed copy/paste of part of a post from a blog. You used stronger language than I did, but even you seem to think it isn't right and should be pointed out.

If you take umbrage when someone comments about such things, I would suggest you might be overly sensitive or the comment may have hit close to the mark.

Still sad. Google threw up a link to that post. The post is mostly a list of abstracts. The abstracts contain attribution to the authors of the work. I could have quoted the list, but they are not "Lukes" words. If I had thought it worthwhile including Luke's actual comments, I would have done so, but they were irrelevant.

The continual presentation of charts and graphs that are not the authors own work are presented here, with no attribution, is completely different.

 

[soylent]

Mid-late 60s: The population bomb: we were going to have a SRO world by sometime in the 1990s resulting in global famines, etc.

See the work of Norman Borlaug et. al.

Early 70s: we would be OUT of oil (completely out) by the early to mid-90s.

Wrong. The claim was peak oil, not running out of oil. M.K. Hubbert who successfully predicted the timing of the peak extraction rate of oil in the US put it somewhere around the year 1990-2000, using two different estimates of ultimately recoverable resource. This prediction was made under the assumption that we gobble it up as fast as we can, which did not happen(remember the oil shocks? They put a significant dent in the growth of oil consumption).

Have you looked at the oil situation lately? Production rates have plateaued. The inflation adjusted price of oil is now higher than what it was at its worst in the early 80's. We're increasingly relying on previously uneconomical heavy, sour crudes and tar sands. It appears to have been a fairly good guess to me.

Mid to late 70s: The coming Ice Age. Global climate was growing dangerously...colder, and we were entering a new ice age.

This was always a minority view.

 

[mhaze]

Your posts are increasingly Delphic.

Since CO2 continues to accumulate, and the climate response is cumulative not immediate (CO2 doesn't create heat), then we are most certainly not at climate equilibrium with today's CO2-load.

A. CO2 continues to accumulate

B. we are most certainly not at climate equilibrium with today's CO2-load

Two statements.

B does not follow from A.
B is, as I have already noted, Unprovable.
A is irrelevant to the issue.

 

[mhaze]

I want to know how serious this lack of a hotspot is to present modeling.

So, from what you're saying, there is a tropospheric hotspot. You should have said this before. It's too easy to dislike you and your regal attitude. Try to stick to the issue. Let me know how that goes for you.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/12/douglass-christy-pearson-singer.html

"In the International Journal of Climatology,David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson, Fred Singer (full-text paper in PDF, backup)show, in their article "A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions", that the previously discussed "fingerprint" predicted by 22 greenhouse-dominated models disagrees with the observed data summarized in 10 datasets."



"The models and observations are compatible near the surface. However, about 5 kilometers above the surface (where the greenhouse effects starts to become relevant) in the tropical zones, models predict between 2 times and 4 times higher warming trend than what is observed. Above the altitude of 8 kilometers, the theoretical and empirical trends have opposite signs....the true mechanisms driving the changes of temperature are not understood and the overall effect of greenhouses gases is being overestimated - between 2 times and 4 times - by all existing models. ...... reduced to the standard 1 °C climate sensitivity which means that the additional greenhouse-induced warming by 2090 will be less than 0.5 °C."

Which indicates that the number we derived earlier of 1.85C for 2xCO2, an absolute high estimate of climate sensitivity based on years 1900-2000 and CO2 of 295 ppm and 365 ppm, was in fact too high. But that was obvious, because it presumed a perfect correlelation between 20th century co2 and temperature.

 

[Alric]

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/12/douglass-christy-pearson-singer.html

Its funny how in this paper the urban island effect is dispelled in a sentence when discussing surface temperatures:

The three observed trends are quite close to each other.
There are possibly systematic errors introduced by urban
heat-island and land-use effects (Pielke et al., 2002;
Kalnay and Cai, 2003) that may contribute a positive
bias, though these are estimated as being within
±0.04 °C/decade (Jones and Moberg, 2003).

The contrarians always make a huge issue of the models and any deviation from what is predicted. Even if its only the tropics and other areas are in good agreement.

Regardless of the models and theories, the empirical observation is that there is warming based on glacier retreat, coral growth, tree ring data, measured temperature and others. Note that its not a matter of whether there will be an increase in temperature. The conversation is around how much.

 

[mhaze]

Its funny how in this paper the urban island effect is dispelled in a sentence when discussing surface temperatures:



The contrarians always make a huge issue of the models and any deviation from what is predicted. Even if its only the tropics and other areas are in good agreement.

Regardless of the models and theories, the empirical observation is that there is warming based on glacier retreat, coral growth, tree ring data, measured temperature and others. Note that its not a matter of whether there will be an increase in temperature. The conversation is around how much.

Okay, you seem to think you have made some kind of a point about "the contrarians", whatever that is remains fairly undefined, as well your obscure point if any.

You are trying to argue against some peer reviewed research here, with what exactly? Some kind of alleged point on personalities?

Don't waste my time.

 

[a_unique_person]

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/12/douglass-christy-pearson-singer.html

"In the International Journal of Climatology,David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson, Fred Singer (full-text paper in PDF, backup)show, in their article "A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions", that the previously discussed "fingerprint" predicted by 22 greenhouse-dominated models disagrees with the observed data summarized in 10 datasets."

http://bp1.blogger.com/_4ruQ7t4zrFA/R14vtJ7162I/AAAAAAAAAOc/-V_JV7Bpv8E/s400/douglass-singer.JPG

"The models and observations are compatible near the surface. However, about 5 kilometers above the surface (where the greenhouse effects starts to become relevant) in the tropical zones, models predict between 2 times and 4 times higher warming trend than what is observed. Above the altitude of 8 kilometers, the theoretical and empirical trends have opposite signs....the true mechanisms driving the changes of temperature are not understood and the overall effect of greenhouses gases is being overestimated - between 2 times and 4 times - by all existing models. ...... reduced to the standard 1 °C climate sensitivity which means that the additional greenhouse-induced warming by 2090 will be less than 0.5 °C."

Which indicates that the number we derived earlier of 1.85C for 2xCO2, an absolute high estimate of climate sensitivity based on years 1900-2000 and CO2 of 295 ppm and 365 ppm, was in fact too high. But that was obvious, because it presumed a perfect correlelation between 20th century co2 and temperature.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL029875.shtml

We examine the sensitivity of modeled and observed tropical tropospheric temperature trend amplification (the ratio of T2LT “lower troposphere” to surface changes) to several sources of uncertainty. Model behaviour is robust across a large perturbed physics ensemble of HadCM3, yielding a smaller amplification range (1.44 ± 0.06) than a previous multi-model ensemble (1.41 ± 0.24). The uncertainty of inter-satellite calibration implied by available MSU T2 (mid-troposphere) estimates (σ = 0.035K) is much greater than that required to adequately resolve the trend (σ < 0.01K), or the amplification behaviour (implied amplification range ±0.95). Trend amplification uncertainty in both models and observations decreases as the timescale increases. Depending upon choice of dataset and time period, uncertainty in trend amplification estimates over 21 years lies between ±1.5 and ±0.2.

The satellite errors are too great to make a call. Don't forget, the satellites can't directly measure the temperature, it has to be derived, there are several complications such as orbit changes, and it has taken several attempts to get to the accuracy they have now.

 

[Slimething]

"The models and observations are compatible near the surface. However, about 5 kilometers above the surface (where the greenhouse effects starts to become relevant) in the tropical zones, models predict between 2 times and 4 times higher warming trend than what is observed. Above the altitude of 8 kilometers, the theoretical and empirical trends have opposite signs....the true mechanisms driving the changes of temperature are not understood and the overall effect of greenhouses gases is being overestimated - between 2 times and 4 times - by all existing models."

Thanks for clarifying, mhaze. I wonder what will come first, a popular abandonment of AGW or an admission by adherents that environmental modeling is not as straightforward as looking up physics equations in a book. Of the various environmental models I work with (erosion, convecton in large water bodies, leaching, etc), none of them predict nature. We use their predictions as indices, not predictions. They are all well founded in all known relevant physics.

Still, though, this does not mean that AGW doesn't exist. It just mean that it's not following what's been set down on paper.