We would like to apologize to our loyal readers who have provided us so much support since we first went online in December 2004. However, after listening to the compelling arguments of the distinguished speakers who participated in the Heartland Institute's recent global warmingcontrarian conference, we have decided that thescience is settled in favor of the contrarians. Indeed, even IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri has nowadmittedthat anthropogenic climate change was a massive hoax after all. Accordingly, RealClimate no longer has a reason for existence. The contrarians have made a convincing case that (a) global warming isn't happening, (b) even if it is, its entirely natural and within the bounds of natural variability, (c) well, even if its not natural, it is modest in nature and not a threat, (d) even if anthropogenic warming should turn out to be pronounced as projected, it will sure be good for us, leading to abundant crops and a healthy environment, and (e) well, it might actually be really bad, but hey, itsunstoppableanyway. (Can we get our check now?)
Science is an evolving process. Data, models, and methods all evolve in time, correcting errors along the way, and building more questions or robust conclusions in the process. It is necessary for people with expertise in a particular area to keep up with the data and any changes that may be made to it, as well as the underlying problems that may exist within the data. In some unfortunate cases, people lose objectivity and will use only a particular dataset (or version of that dataset) that re-inforced some point they are trying to make. In presenting information, not telling people outside of their field what the possible caveats are in a dataset, or explaining revisions that were made to data they show is not generally taken well in academic setting. So it is with a recent example.
Richard Lindzen has made his presence felt at Anthony Watts blog inLindzen on Negative Climate Feedback. Accuweather also has a recentblog poston it. In the comments, it is being hailed as the new found gospel truth of negative climate feedbacks and low sensitivity. Unfortunately, the problem with most skeptical arguments is not what we are told, but rather what we are not told. So what arent we told?
Lindzens method is easy to understand. You can read it at Watts blog. The image of emphasis is,
Lindzens emphasis is on the outgoing LW flux at the top-of-the-atmosphere, and the fact it is large compared to models. This is inferred to mean less of a blanketing effect from greenhouse gases, and therefore feedbacks which are less positive than models suggest (or negative in this case). AtRealClimate, gavin pointed out a fixed graph that appeared in Science after a comment by Kevin Trenberth. The changed figure is,
However, there have been major revisions to this data since 2002. Specifically, there was a significant correction for changing satellite altitude in the computer code that was not turned on which led to erroneous results in the earlier work (Bruce Wielicki, personal correspondence). In many other cases, this kind of thing would be something WUWT would be on top of, so it is unfortunate that it is not mentioned. There is an inverse square dependence on the amount of energy received at the Nonscanner WFOV instrument and the distance from the planets center; improperly accounting for altitude change led to spurious results for the TOA longwave and shortwave fluxes. This has been documented inWong et al 2006, Journal of Climate, a paper not even mentioned by Lindzen.ERBE S10N_WFOV ERBS Edition3 Data Quality Summaryis available to cover further issues. They state
Algorithm Changes between New Edition3 and Previous Edition2 Release The main difference between new Edition3 and previous Edition2 release is in the treatment of TOA radiative fluxes resulting from changes in the ERBE nonscanner processing algorithm to account for decay in satellite altitude over the data period.
During an instrument performance study, Lee et al. (2003) discovered that the ERBE nonscanner inversion algorithm did not correctly account for the decay in the ERBS altitude over its mission lifetime; this can have a small but significant effect on the reported decadal changes of nonscanner TOA fluxes. The ERBE nonscanner inversion algorithm is used to convert nonscanner measurements at satellite altitude (approximately 611 km at the start of the mission) to TOA measurements at a reference altitude of 30 km. While these altitude changes over the 15-year period are small (on the order of 25 km) and do not affect the overall quality of the large regional fluxes, they do, however, have significant effect on the smaller changes associated with the observed large scale decadal changes in Earth radiation budget (Wong et al., 2005).
This satellite altitude related problem is unique to the ERBS nonscanner instrument and does not affect the quality of the ERBS scanner data product. The nonscanner is a hemispheric instrument which views the entire Earth disk along with the small portion of the deep space surrounding the Earth itself. As the satellite altitude dropped over its mission, the small portion of the deep space partially viewed by the nonscanner began to be filled in by the Earth view itself, resulting in more energy being recorded by the nonscanner instrument. Since the original and the Edition2 release data did not account for these subtle altitude changes, there is a small effect of artificially increasing the reported longwave, shortwave, and net fluxes over the mission lifetime. Specifically, the overall effect of this altitude change is a small increase (~0.6%) in both longwave and shortwave radiation over the 15-year period.
To minimize errors in the ERBS nonscanner data product, an altitude correction algorithm to the Edition2 data was developed and applied to the entire Edition2 data set. The result is the new Edition3 data set.
Actual ERBS Edition 3 data is available at Nasa langley. I will leave readers to explore further details. Assuming he was familiar with these updates, Lindzen should have at least told his readers why he felt the older version was better for his analysis. The experts working on it apparently do not think so. An examination reveals that these corrections eliminate most of the signal that Richard Lindzen was using (see figure 5).
Section 5 of the 2006 paper also does comparison with ocean heat storage data, where the two agree within the uncertainty of the ocean data sampling. This is pretty neat given the independent nature of the ERB data and ocean heat content measurements, an example ofrobustnessthat distinguishes results appearing in peer-reviewed documents vs. those in blog protocol.
In short, Lindzens analysis is based on outdated data that has been revised since 2002, and these revisions are not exactly recent, so he should have been aware of them. Using the more recent data would not allow him to make his argument as presented as WUWT. It would be nice to see an update at WUWT reflecting these changes.
Ive said quite a bit about feedbacks lately and its a little old now, but many WUWT commenters still seem confused about how postive feedbacks relate to an unstable system. Lindzen has recently been using the gas pedal analogy (not only in Watts post, but at theskeptic conference) in which positive feedbacks are supposed to be analogous to someone changing the gas and brake pads in your car. If you want to slow down, you actually speed up. Apparently it follows that climate does not act this way. Actually feedbacks dont really act this way either. If we let the moving car roll on a flat, frictionless surface (with no influence from the tires or air resistance) in the absence of any net force change, it will roll forever by Newtons laws. Think of this as some equilibrium condition, with the climate analog being radiative balance. Pushing your gas or brake is more like the radiative forcing on the car which essentially puts it off of its current course. Positive feedbacks simply let the planet equilibriate at a higher temperature than the sensitivity from CO2 alone, but the same principle that balance is acheived still applies. Feedbacks go up like a converging power series and therefore never get strong enough to override the fourth power dependence of thermal radiation and trigger a runaway. In short, positive feedbacks can be stable and dont require any runaway scenarios.
positive feedbacks can be stable and dont require any runaway scenarios
If thats the case, why do we hear so much from the likes of James Hansen and James Lovelock about tipping points and time running out?
Response Tipping Points and runaway are different in scientific meaning. In both cases, the public and blogs often use them in sloppy ways, but the impossbility of a runaway (which I mean to use in the Venusian sense) do not exclude tipping points (loss of seasonal artic ice, permafrost release of carbon/methane, large scale Amazon loss, THC weakening, etc) chris
Lindzen has recently been using the gas pedal analogy in which positive feedbacks are supposed to be analogous to someone changing the gas and break [sic] pads in your car. If you want to slow down, you actually speed up.
I dont think Lindzen said whats in that last sentence. In fact, there are little pieces from Lindzens statement all mixed together to score some kind of point, I guess.
To get back on point, Lindzen was providing a simple [and effective] analogy of positive feedbacks. Besides, with CO2 rising steadily, at the same time the planet cools steadily, the AGW/CO2 hypothesis has taken about 4 - 5 torpedoes. That ship is going down.
With the AGW/CO2 hypothesis sinking fast, the entire AGW/global warming argument is falsified by the planet itself. Except, of course, in the minds of those wackos who still believe that black is white, down is up, evil is good and global cooling causes global warming.
In that case, they have my sympathy; cognitive dissonance that extreme is generally incurable.
[Oh, and congrats on the multiple responses! You can thank WUWT for doubling your hits.] Response Well you can keep being wrong and actually look at the data, or you can take somebodys word for it. The planet has only been verifying the mainstream view of scientists, and the mainstream view has evolved based on the actual data. The planet is not cooling, the ice is still melting, and sea levels are still rising or are you in denial of all of this? Maybe you should review the primary literature and actual data to see how silly you sound chris
Even with the corrected data there is still more outgoing LW than the models show.
Response It is within the range, except for 1998 and variations associated with Pinatubo. Please read the cited paper. There is no longer evidence for a neutral or negative feedback, and in fact the authors explicitly state they find no evidence for IRIS chris
WUWT has succeeded in brainwashing a lot of people, its kind of sad. Ive never seen a single site host more confused comments and erroneous analyses.
Response I usually agree. Its also very reliant on the views of outliers in the field, in the cases where he has qualified people post. Being an outlier doesnt necessarily make one wrong, but few people over there even know what the science of AGW says, and so if youre just learning from deviant views without understanding what the literature says, youre probably going to be misled. Putting much weight on one person in the face of 99 others is not a good idea.
Have you had a chance to look at the references Lindzen said backed up the original data? Presumably they dont now back up the corrected version, or have they all been corrected too?
Response Im familiar with just the first study. I dont see how their results are dependent at all on this change. Really, it was not even a major point in the paper. It may come as a surprise to some, but actual studies do more than make a couple of pretty graphs with no kind of analysis, no discussion of observation or model uncertanties, no physics, etc and then fall apart when someone finds an error. See the RC post under robustness. Im also aware of some of the authors (like Tony Del Genio and Brian Soden) and their work and views on climate change. I know Wielicki was not amused when I e-mailed him, and had some harsh comments about what Lindzen and the skeptical movement as a whole has done.
That ocean heat content data which is now apparently comparable - within the uncertainties - is the same data that was also corrected for apparent cooling errors isnt it? Ive not heard yet of a data correction made due to an instrument showing too much warming, ie does it make sense that the corrections always seem to go only one way - towards the prevailing theory.
Response Huh?!?! There are warm and cold biases in data that need to be adjusted for. Both exist. Correcting for problems is not an elaborate conspiracy by all of these groups. Judging by your tone, youre only making yourself aware of those corrections which apparently show more warming. Did it ever occur to you that the prevailing theory is what it isbecauseof what data shows? I cant believe what I hear.
Id need to read that calibration study you mention but Ive a funny feeling the corrected algorithm was defined with respect to a model output because thats how the radiosonde corrections were made. After all, if you knew what the answer should be then you wouldnt need the instrument measurements in the first place would you?
Response This is not WUWT. I expect seriousness
Its all sort of cart before the horse. In that light, can these corrections truly be objective? Ill be interested in Lindzens response to the charges mind you.
Response Im sure the folks at ERBE are doing what they can to make the data as best as possible. Fitting it to the theory is not what people spend their time doing. Youre spending way too much time listening to deviant views on the subject.
Why is it Chris, that every time there is a contradictory piece of evidence (empirical evidence that is), someone comes along and (trys to) re-write all the empirical data so that it comes closer to the theory.
Im assuming these were very carefully designed experiments to start with since they were so important. Billions of dollars would have been spent.
The other examples:
- Temps are not keeping up with the models predictions.
Answer: rewrite the historical temperature record and add 0.5C to the trend. Answer: rewrite the Aerosols data so that there is a -0.3C to -0.5C impact from Aerosols.
- Humidity is not keeping up with the predictions.
Answer: discredit the data so that there is no actual humidity data anywhere that can be relied on despite humidity being measured by half the weather stations across the planet over the last 100 years.
- PaleoClimate reconstructions do not support the +3.0C per doubling estimate.
Answer: rewrite the historical CO2 numbers so that they come closer to conforming.
- There are dozens and dozens of climate and meteorological satellites up there right now and not one is showing the data that the theory expects.
Answer: orbital drift sensor problems bury the data Answer: none of the satellites are providing the basic data we really need - Hansen every few months - why are we spending Billions of dollars for the wrong data.
- The models consistently over-estimate the temperature trends by a factor of two.
Answer: re-write the previous predictions each time a new set is produced. Answer: never produce climate predictions that can be checked on any timescale (Hansen twice made this mistake now so Im assuming he wont do it again - the IPCC certainly understands this).
This pattern is getting harder and harder to ignore, dont you think.
Now that is just my little strawman regarding how to shoot-down your analysis. It is not fair because perhaps your points are valid.
What I want to see for the pro-AGW crowd is to at least look at the contradictory evidence for once instead of:
- ignoring it; - discrediting it through strawmen; or - rewriting it whenever it doesnt conform.
Response Well half of this you are just making up. Most of these observations dont fit theory lines are based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what observations,models, or theory actually show. For me, the pattern that is hard to ignore is that most of this comes from people who only read one or two blogs, (WUWT happening to be a top one). The nonsense comes mainly from fake experts and occasionally a handful of real experts who sit on the outlying edges of their subject, and is then amplified by cheerleaders who have no idea what people are talking about, but are convinced its a hoax. The claims are rarely in accordance with what experts say, or they dont seem to want to tell the whole story. This is why skeptics have their own climate conference because they cant get much through peer-review from experts in the field. Its not conspiracy, its just very one-sided science. The sooner you realize the denier position is full of crap the better off you will be. chris
Now please, this is a science blog. This doesnt need a strawman and conspiracy component to it chris
Wow. Its very easy to just admit that Lindzen was either ill-informed or he tried to pull a fast one. If you admit it and move on, rather than sit here and complain and make excuses and twist it into well the real experts changed the data to fit than your lives will be much easier.
Bill,
ignoring it; - discrediting it through strawmen; or - rewriting it whenever it doesnt conform.
Thanks for your summary above. I wrote this on WUWT
Surely the climate is a metastable system as indicated by ice core records etc:
Super ice age (snow ball earth)(?) Ice age -2degC warm age 0degC Hot age(?) +2degC 40Mybp +8degC 400Mybp
Positive feedback is not an unlimited effect GHGs have logarithmic effects enabling the negative FBs (plant growth, radiation balance etc) to re-take control.Methane trapped in frozen tundra may be released if the temperature increases. CH4 in the atmosphere has a life of about 4 years. So the tipping point when these are released may only produce a pulse of high temeratures for a couple of decades. However this may be long enough to melt land based ice reducing the albedo and adding to the positive FB. However these effects are self limiting - plant growth, radiation balance (a hotter earth = more heat radiated but same heat input) will attain a new stable temperature. The question is what will this be? and what will reduce the climate back to the current metastable state?
The earth definately has 2 reasonably stable states iceage and non-iceage (the other states have only occurred in periods where land masses were differently located.
GHGs will have little effect as the absorption bands saturate (logarithmic saturation) This will limit the effect of this positive feedback (hotter earth = more CH4 from clathrates, less absoption of CO2 in sea = more GHGs = higher temps) The GHGs will also affect temperature negatively with positive feedback (lower GHGs leads to cooler temperature leads to more CO2 dissolved in sea leads to lower GHGs - note that this is still a positive feedback!) Negative feed back on CO2 would be plant growth. Higher CO2 leads to more plants leads to less increase in CO2 (neg feedback lowering temp) AND lower CO2 leads to less plant growth leads to less lowering of CO2 (neg feedback raising temp)
Ice surface presented to the sun will affect albedo which will affect outgoing radiation which affects energy balance. Ice is a positive feedback thing - low temp leads to more iceleads to lower temp and vice versa. As the ice melts it retreats to the poles where solar radiation is smaller and so will have less effect on the energy balance. Howerver an increasing ice sheet will have a negative effect on temperature (again positive feedback more ice=lower temp=more ice). Why does the ice not continue to grow till snowball earth is reached? Does it simply stop growing where the temperature finds an equilibrium between the solar radiation melt and the albedo effect on temperature? Or is there some other effect?
The difference in temperature between too hot and too cold is only a surprising 2degC just some thoughts which may clarify positive and negative feedback effects.
Mike
Response Actually its more in the 5 C range between today and the last glacial period.
I still dont understand why people think positive feedbacks mean that a runaway greenhouse (or a snowball earth) or some sort of extreme is necessary. All it means in the climate literature is that the sensitivity is greater than 0.30 C/W/m2. Lindzen got that number from taking the temperature change 1.1 C divided by the radiative forcing, 3.7 W/m2. Theres nothing magical about sensitivty being higher than this; successive terms in a power series become progressively smaller when the feedback term is less than one. Its the weird same logic as asking why negative feedbacks dont lead to a system where nothing ever changes. chris
Accuweather has finally reached its bottom.Here is a quote from a Dr.Richard Lindzen: Isnt this amazing, as the temperature goes up, negative feedback goes up. As the temperature goes down, the feedback starts going positive. Has anyone heard of this jerk. A feedback mechanism is an effect of a positive Forcing. It creates a feedback loop.Like as there is less Ice in the arctic,less reflectivity. More absorption,water warms. This guy has to be some kind of nut. I cant believe that AccuWeather would post this bullshit. The colder it gets the more water vapor there is.The warmer it gets the less water vapor there is.The sun cools,so the Earth is warm. The Earth Warms the sun, so the Sun cools the Earth.Makes perfect sense if your Anthony Watts or Dr.Richard,Exxon Mobil,Lindzen.
Response To be fair, Lindzen is a very bright guy. However, he seems to be a scientist who cannot admit he is wrong, and will likely continue on defending deviant hypotheses. I dont really know or care about any sources of funding he might have. He had an older idea concerning a strong negative feedback from water vapor, which observations and physics have invalidated over the last several decades. He had an IRIS hypothesis some years back in which the science community has seems to have moved on from. chris
0.3C per W/m2 is what is built into the climate models right now, isnt it? Response No. Feedbacks and sensitivity are not built into models, they are emergent properties. In any case, 0.3 is the no feedback (net neutral) sensitivity. The estimated sensitivity from mainstream estimates (e.g., documented in IPCC AR4) is 0.54 to 1.22 C/W/m2 which corresponds to 2 to 4.5 C per doubling. Its an unfortuantely large uncertainty, but its positive chris
Chris: In a recent Article you said that water vapor accounted for 7% of thhe Earths Warming . Or was that for all GHGs. When you have a positive feedback, such as water vapor how do you determine its value. The Warming Arctic is a good example. The Arctic could be warming by natural and Anthropogenic Global Warming. If it is warming by AGW in the smallest way, there must always be a positive feedback component however small.As the AGW increases in time, the Ice will melt more and the feedback value will be higher.From warming a decrease in ice, means a decrease of reflectivity or a positive increase in absorbtion. Now for this positive feeedback loop to reach a tipping point, how could you make that measure. You cannot assume a tipping point will occur.Wouldnt you have to make many assumptions.Just because AGW is the signal, that doesnt negate natural variations. Any thoughts?
Well I believe Lindzen himself has made the same point (I believe referring to a slightly different context):
Once the implications of the observations were clearly identified, it was only a matter of time before the data were corrected. The first attempt came quickly (Vinnikov et al, 2006) wherein the satellite data was reworked to show large warming in the upper troposphere, but the methodology was too blatant for the paper to be commonly cited14. There followed an attempt wherein the temperature data was rejected, and where temperature trends were inferred from wind data (Allen and Sherwood, 2008). Over sufficiently long periods, there is a balance between vertical wind shear and meridional temperature gradients (the thermal wind balance), and, with various assumptions concerning boundary conditions, one can, indeed, infer temperature trends, but the process involves a more complex, indirect, and uncertain procedure than is involved in directly measuring temperature. Moreover, as Pielke et al (2008) have noted, the results display a variety of inconsistencies. They are nonetheless held to resolve the discrepancy with models.
But this has had me thinking: the issue of data correction ought to be resolvable in a scientific way by simply counting through recent history the number of corrections to data that have occurred, and noting the direction of their change (i.e. in support for AGW or in contradiction of AGW). From the law of averages wed expect that errors in the data would 50% of the time support more warming and 50% less warming. Lindzen seems to be claiming that theyre falling in favour of more warming significantly more than 50% of the time. If that was true, then youd surely agree that he has a valid point.
At any rate, can you actually name some of the occasions where the data has been corrected significantly to show that there is less warming than the data first showed?
Id also be curious to know of your thoughts on a paper that I havent actually been able to read myself yet as its not available online but its this one:
Rondanelli, R., and R.S. Lindzen (2008). Observed variations in convective precipitation fraction and stratiform area with sea surface temperature. J. Geophys. Res. 113. doi:10.1029/2008JD010064.http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD010064.shtml.
From the abstract it appears to be discussing evidence for the Iris. It seems to have passed the peer-review at any rate.
chris, you said: Now please, this is a science blog. Please explain how that comports with the lines you wrote immediately preceding this assertion. Such as The sooner you realize the denier position is full of crap the better off you will be.
That makes this blog more of a walled castle than a science blog. Broad brush insults are the technique of advocates, not scientists. Where is your curiosity? And where in any of your reply to Bill Illis is there an acknowlegment that confirmation bias is a natural human phenomenon even among conscientious scientists?
Besides there is no such thing as a denier position. In fact there are several. Im sorry you must spend so much time swatting at flies. Im sure it must feel like an inconvenience. However, that is how science is done.
Chris, Excellent summary. I gave up on Lindzen when he stopped caring whether what he said was true or note.g. when he alleged that there was a common cause of warming for several moons and planets in the solar system. He knows well enough that climate on the other planets is quite different from that on Earth. You are entirely too patient with the half-wits from Watts-up-his-arse. The sooner we get these loons back into their asylum, the better. They add nothing to the discussion and are ineducable besides.
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It doesnt work and it annoys the pig. Mark Twain
Richard Lindzen is most certainly more credible than Chris sombody.
Bill is perfectly correct here, after the clearly fradulent garbage from the AGW cult over the last few years (Hansen, Mann etc) you guys have no credibility left at all.
I can see from the comments that no one can admit that Lindzen was just out-of-date or is trying to mislead. Instead, this has turned into the typical denial tactic of twisting it around on the Pro AGW side (whatever this means) and making it out to look like conspiracy or fixing the data. None of you seem to know how data adjustements work. In fact these ERSE updates are pretty old news in the radiative transfer community and Lindzen should have been made aware of them. His citation to Clement and Soden apparently would have made him aware of it, but he didnt feel his readers deserved to see the Edition3 series.
Essentially you guys have made it clear that youd rather leave in obvious errors which reduce the global warming trend. The fact is that Watts blog has no quality check whatsoever. Hell put up any misleading or outdated nonsense that appears to add something to the debate. Apparently none of the angry commenters here are honest enough to read the primary literature and see this.
What SYl calls curiosiy is rapidly evolving into the next creationist movement or Flat Earth Society. Im going to need to take Ray Ladburys advice in order to keep my sanity. Further comments on nonsense will be posted but ignored by me. The scientific community has long moved away from them, and I need to as well.
he fact is that Watts blog has no quality check whatsoever. Hell put up any misleading or outdated nonsense that appears to add something to the debate.
In fact, he recently put up the abstract from Lus most recent paper. Watts put it up claiming that maybe cosmic rays, not CFCs cause ozone depletion. Totally unaware that the paper proposes another mechanism by which CFCs cause ozone depletion.
Watts has a history of scoring own goals of that sort, and the crowd there managed to flood the thread with steady stream of see! CFC ozone depletion is now proven to be a fraud!
I wonder if Lu is aware of this gross misrepresentation of his work? If so, I imagine the wall of his office has a few dents from all the head-banging that results from such ignorance.
I would like to second the comment made above about auditing the direction of adjustments to the measurements over time. If a large majority of the corrections are in one direction as opposed to another, this would be pretty good evidence IMO that something besides the desire to present a valid picture of reality is driving the corrections.
IAC, it seems that for a wide variety of these sorts of issues the point is that the models predictions cant be said to be falsified *yet*. It is not as though the models are doing well at all.
Very enlightening, Chris, thank you! src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif">
You made the point there: who among this skeptical crew has made any comment about the article? Just one, I think. The rest is just off-topic and with such a label should be ignored. Besides, it really looks like a socio-moral punishment; negative reinforcement by electroshock therapy. Nasty. Please, dont let them succeed and keep up with this good work src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif">Thanks again!
Alex Harvey above raised perfectly valid points yet your response is the classic we hear from the pro-AGW crowd every time they are remotely cornered: hurl invective and abuse at your critics. You get away with this because you have managed to scare the public into supporting your side of the story. Thats fine, but its not science.
Thanks Chris for the counter argument against Lindzen. I regard myself as a skeptic, and reads WUWT and CA regularly.
I guess most of the skeptics have an odd fealing that data with support for some counter argument against the CO2 hypothesis tend to bend to neutral after some time.
I do not agree with Ray above. You atleast got my ears and brain something to think about. Keep up the good work!
Bill Illis, you claim that, I fully know what is built into the models and they have not built in any changing feedbacks or sensitivity whatsover.
Fromthis linkyou can browse the entire source code of the iteration of the National Center for Atmospheric Researchs Community Climate System Model which was used to submit runs included in the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report. Would you please identify where forcings and feedbacks are explicitly scripted in the code? Im particularly interested in where the temperature is calculated straightaway as a logarithm of [CO2].
over the past 5 million years, the West Antarctic ice sheet transitioned between full, intermediate, and collapsed states in just a few thousand years. This means that the ice sheet is likely to disintegrate if ocean temperatures in the area rise by 5 C.
Gee, and here I thought data ought to be corrected in a way that makes it more correct. Gosh, you guys over at Watts up his arse sure have a revolutionary approach to science. Maybe you can help out the Answers in Genesis folks, too, huh?
The evolution of a theory describing a complex physical system will necessarily involve a focus on resolving first larger and then progressively smaller inconsistencies, and unless theres something fundamentally wrong with the theory the corrections will tend to bolster rather than undermine it. That this is so should be less than amazing.
I believe that my post above was serious, and is deserving of a more serious response.
Lindzen, as you have said yourself, is a very smart guy. He is probably the most expert scientist alive on the theory of atmospheric tides and planetary waves. He provided the explanation of the diurnal and semi-diurnal tides that we accept today as fact. He also provided the theory of the quasi-biennial oscillation that we today accept as fact. He points out rightly that todays GCMs still cant model the QBO; perhaps he has a better right than most to have an opinion on whether or not this failure is serious. He has provided one of the leading theories to explain the superrotation of Venus. He provided the convection parameterisation that is implemented in some of todays GCMs (e.g. ECHAM3). He was the first to develop models for ozone photochemistry and its interaction with radiation in the stratosphere.
It is possible, as you say and as others have suggested that he just wont admit that hes wrong. Perhaps thats because hes been right so many times in the past. Or perhaps its because hes not wrong. Have you actually read through his 200 or so papers? If not, I would thoroughly recommend that you do.
Response Well hes been wrong plenty of times too. As I understand, the theory of Venusian super-rotation is not completely gone, but is not the leading theory. I dont have the background to comment though. Hes been wrong about water vapor and IRIS feedbacks. Hes been wrong about many things below the stratosphere, especially in the realm of climate feedbacks. His expertise has been more in dynamics rather than radiative transfer/climate change (two different things). He also has an undeniable sloppy record in Op-eds and non-scientfic venues. Youll get no argument that hes very bright and has made many contributions (Id be very happy if my CV ever looked like his), but hes clearly not infallible, and lets face it: he made up his mind already about feedbacks. Personally I dont think hes a reliable source at all for info on climate change chris
The fact that he still finds co-authors (in this case, R. Ronandelli) to publish with on Iris, suggests that hes not as isolated on the issues as the AGW camp is making out. Although, his arguments for negative feedbacks do notrequirethe Iris mechanism to be valid.
Response Well I have talked to experts as well who have wanted to work with Lindzen in evaluating IRIS and they did not get even an e-mail reply. I will not disclose information beyond that, but its a strange situation. There are many papers in the literature showing no evidence for IRIS, or at least a much weaker feedback than his original writing. It is in fact the modern basis for his arguments but is not widely supported. You must be aware his views are very deviant from the mainstream, so the major emphasis on just his thoughts is quite strange to me chris
At any rate, my challenge was a pretty simple one: if the data is just as often corrected in favour of less warming as it is in favour of more, can you provide some examples? Otherwise, your readers would have to assume that youre simply assuming this is true.
Response My readers dont need to assume anything, and Im not either. UHI corrections, Bucket corrections for SSTs and other things can reduce the trend while dealing with various biases in station location moves, time of observation etc increase the trend. These things are well documented. If you think the ERBE people are making things up, then you can either e-mail them and tell them they are all frauds or you can e-mail them and tell them what theyre doing wrong. Honestly, people in science (whether in organization or universitiy) have much better things to do than create artificial data to get in line with the consensus. Many of them have no concern about the reality of AGW in the process and much of the data may be used for very different reasons than climate change discussion.
Personally I actually wish I had data to debunk AGW. It would take concern off my chest, and lets face it, Id love to get famous and be in the textbooks.
I was hoping we could talk about Lindzens choices and methodology, and instead this turns into a host of comments about accusations. Please people. chris
From the law of averages wed expect that errors in the data would 50% of the time support more warming and 50% less warming. Lindzen seems to be claiming that theyre falling in favour of more warming significantly more than 50% of the time. If that was true, then youd surely agree that he has a valid point.
Assuming this claim is true for a minuteif more corrections were instead in the direction of less warming or lower climate sensitivity, contrarians like Lindzen would claim that climate scientists knew they had it wrong from the beginning and were hoping nobody saw their warm bias in the data and estimates. In fact, thats a common theme of the WUWT crowd, often with regards to their obsession over NASA and Dr. Hansen. Both arguments fit well with contrarians. Its a win-win.
But as others have pointed out, if Lindzen had a legitimate problem with the corrections, he would be better served submitting a peer-reviewed comment on it. Ignoring the corrections or making general comments that imply conspiracy is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy.
I have an honest question that Ive been trying to do some calculations on and, perhaps, Ray Ladbury could answer it for me.
What is the average length of time that a photon from the Sun spends in the Earth system before it is lost to space? Or what is the average length of time that the energy represented by a photon from the Sun spends in the Earth system?
I guess the question would be predicated on no ocean absorption and no ice sheet absorption for now unless there are estimates that incorporate the likely impact of this as well.
This is also clearly related to the Earth Radiation Budget question as well and it is an honest question.
I work at Langley and was wondering when someone in the blog world was going to point out the obvious wrt Lindzens quite outdated analysis. Wielicki is a very competent and honest scientist. I can imagine his response to Lindzen continuing to use outdated data. Gah.
WUWT has become tiresome. I follow it in hopes of finding a subset of skeptics that are truly curious about the science but if they exist, not many are there. Theyre quite good at skimming the cream off of others work (without understanding the mechanics behind it) and they make what they will of it, but very few have the patience or knowledge required to dig into real science.
Im not prepared to sacrifice the time dedicated to blogging real science, so Im very grateful when I run across folks who are. Thanks.
I think MarkB and Steve Bloom both hit the nail on the head.
Indeed, it is true as MarkB noted that the contrarians are the first to crow when an estimate of warming or sea level rise or whatever is revised downward. However, when it is revised upward, they automatically start questioning the revision (usually not on the basis of compelling physical arguments but simply innuendo). So, a revision downward is a sign that the warming has been overestimated and a revision upward is a sign that the scientists are biased.
And, as Steve Bloom noted, the nature of a well-established theory is that when data are found that seem to contradict it, future work to resolve that discrepancy will often result in understanding of problems with and subsequent revision of the data. This is not at all surprising because by the time a theory has gained strong status in a field, it is because there are multiple lines of evidence supporting it. This is a point that seems to often be lost on the contrarians. For example, every time Roy Spencer comes up with some new notion about clouds being a strong negative feedback, they embrace it while ignoring the myriad of ways in which it contradicts other well-established independent evidence pointing to a much higher climate sensitivity.
You are certainly right that positive feedbacks are no guarantee of instability. They simply move the differential equations closer to instability.
The current sat info is reasonable but there are many possible steps in the data as pointed out by the clear and significant trend difference between RSS and UAH. This doesnt make a difference as to why someone wouldnt use a corrected version. Certainly the authors should mention a reason why they dont accept the correction or otherwise accept it. What is also important to understand is that this sat data was taken by several sources and is guaranteed to have unknown step biases in the data. How large they are is anyones guess.
In Anthony Watts defense, (something I dont do by trade) he simply put the post of a known scientist up. Gavin replied with an advocacy post which IMO was entirely inappropriate and a clear case of Pot calling the kettle black.
From The Times April 1, 2009 Chill winds take heat off global warming LA Notebook: Climate change scepticism is going mainstream Chris Ayres
Well, that didnt take long, did it? After six months of economic hardship and one unusually chilly winter, it seems that Americans are beginning to conclude that perhaps global warming wasnt such a big deal after all. Blowing $30,000 on a solar roof doesnt seem such a great move these days. And for the price of a Toyota Prius you can now buy a three-bedroomed house in Detroit with enough left for a pick-up truck (this isnt a joke - the median house price in Motor City is $7,500).
The ranks of Americas climate sceptics have been growing quietly for some months now. And at the weekend a watershed was reached: the usually left-wing New York Times put the British-born physicist Freeman Dyson on the front of its Sunday magazine. The article inside revealed that Professor Dyson - 85 years old and based in Princeton - not only possesses one of the finest noodles on Planet Earth, but also happens to think that most of what Al Gore and his band of Unmerry Men preach amounts to little more than yuppie self-loathing.
All the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated, is how Professor Dyson puts it. He adds that while its true that human-caused carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, the Earth is still going through a relatively cool period in its history, and that most of the evolution of life took place in a warmer era. Professor Dyson is also fond of pointing out that carbon dioxide helps plants to grow - so having too much of the stuff hanging around might not be such a bad thing.
Out in the blogotwittersphere, the Greens can hardly believe that the same media that once helped Mr Gore to win both an Oscar and a Nobel prize are now promoting such heresy. To make matters more infuriating, Professor Dyson isnt even a conservative: hes a left-wing, Obama-voting, peace-marching, boho-academic genius who argues that coal-produced electricity has liberated millions in China from poverty, and that greens are people whove never had to worry about grocery bills. Background
* Tesla Motors unveils luxury electric car
* Green Vroom
* Ministers pore over green energy incentives
* Energy plan chaos as wind giant backs out
I suspect that, as we all get used to our relative poverty over coming months and as it becomes politically impossible for President Obama to bankrupt power stations and impose carbon tariffs on imports, such scepticism will become ever more mainstream. Only last week a suggestion by California to outlaw black cars because they absorb too much heat and therefore require too much air conditioning was met with almost universal ridicule. All of which is both satisfying and unsettling - satisfying to see debate triumph over heavy-handedness, but unsettling because even if what Mr Gore was peddling was a lie, it was a convenient one, in that it seemed to be finally weaning the US off Saudi oil.
Still, honesty is always the best way.
And in America at least, its always so much more appealing when delivered by an awkward Brit.
Bsneath, Dont you have any science youd like to discuss? Youve pasted in one columnists opinions/rant about the high relative cost of green fixed-asset investments this past season. All the points you quoted are, to say the least, arguable, and some are downright embarrasing. Do you really count this as scientific evidence against global warming?
Lindzen said in the article.. if the observations were only 2-3 times what the models produce, it would correspond to no feedback
Well now that the corrected observed data shows precisely that, what do the contrarians have for us? Conspiracy theories. and off-topic diversions. Its simple really - The initial graph implied large negative forcing. The revised graph doesnt. The initial graph used flawed data, the revised used corrected data.
Someone please challenge this logic with something other than cowardly accusations of data manipulation.
Response Keep in mind that my post simply dealt with the data-side of the issue. The other issue is the physical interpretation. In the case of Lindzens analysis, even if we use the older data, you still need to look at the shortwave component of the picture (E.g., albedo feedbacks) and a broader view outside the tropics to really make such dogmatic statements about sensitivity. His IRIS hypothesis revolves mainly on the tropical, longwave side of the issue. He did no analysis to justify his conclusion chris
Ladbury, I see that you were after all unable to relinquish your full-time job as commenter on AGW blogs, without which your life would evidently not be complete. Well, you have it a try. Its good to see you again. Youre like my blue lagoon in a stormy sea, and I often like to harbor my ship in your redundant comments. I find them strangely life-affirming. And yet, as difficult as it is to fathom, I believe seriously that your arguments, epistemological and otherwise, have degenerated even further into a buccal-fecal carnival of watts-up-your-arse rodomontade, signifying, in the end, nothing. Very poorly done, Ladbury, very poorly done indeed. If youll permit me to say, peoplearenoticing the listlessness of your remarx, and your inability to quell this obsessive commenting both at Goddard, I mean, and here in Fort Collins, where you once lived.
Colose, you are correct: its not a conspiracy. Its an explicit political philosophy which is to say, an entire worldview, since political philosophy is only a species of the genus ethics, which in turn is a species of the genus epistemology, all of which are branches of the science of philosophy, which as you know is the science of foundations and fundamental convictions. Thus, the fundamental political questions are these: is each individual free by nature? If so, why? Can each individual be free if her property is not private? Freedom is fundamentally the absence of compulsion. The stated worldview of AGW is a worldview which believes that the right to life and property arenotinalienable but may be transferred or revoked at any time by government bureaus. It is a worldview that believes these same government bureaus, via an elite group of centralized planners, are better able to run individual lives and manage individuals property than the individuals themselves. It is a worldview that believes tort law should be replaced by government edict and special-interest rule, and that the primacy of private property should be replaced by statism, which of course operates by means of authoritarianism. It is for this precise reason that the arrantly politicized science which you are a devoted proponent of need not operate by means of conspiracy or cabal, as you point out, insofar as this entire political philosophy explicitly espouses majority rule, which is to say, rule by consensus, which is to say, the rule of the mob. As long as the majority believes it, conspiracy is unnecessary.
Well, the graphs posted above show that the models underestimate the changes of LW emission by a factor of 2-3 which, as Lindzen said, corresponds to no feedback - and sensitivity around 1 deg C. That means less than 1 deg C in the following century, less than other random contributions.
Whether Richard is right that the sensitivity is 0.3 deg C and whether the negative feedbacks are strong is not really important. I think that only a loon would argue that a change of 1 deg C per doubling (1800-2100) is dangerous in any way. We have observed exactly half of this warming in the 20th century, too, and the negative consequences of this global warming have been exactly zero. So it is sensible to assume that the same change done once again will have zero consequences, too.
I dont believe you would sell any threats based on the neutral assumption that the net feedbacks are zero. Still, I dont think that theyre zero. Theyre negative and note that you have supported your statements by much more limited literature (1) than Richard did.
Response Nonsense Lubos. Exactly half the warming relative to when? A doubling of CO2? 2100? Forever? For one thing, ln(560/385) > ln(385/280) and you need to include any uncommited warming from ocean uptake, so for a doubling, We have observed exactly half of this warming in the 20th century is wrong. Using a doubling of CO2 is not even a good metric in this case since we can go way beyond a doubling by 2100, 2150, etc. Your statement on negative consequences makes you seemingly unaware of the literature on the rapidly changing cyrosphere, sea level rise, ecological and agricultural concerns, etc. or are you in denial of all of this?
This post was not meant to make a case for positive feedbacks or high sensitivty, but to show Lindzens analysis does not make a case for negative feedbacks. Aside from outdated data, I also have issues with the physical interpretation as well. Im glad you support this tactic in your comments, blogs, and other widely read media, but I cannot. You say Lindzen better referenced his material when several do not even agree with his viewpoint. chris
Footnote heres an extract from an exchange on the WUWT thread, a site which claims to tolerate dissenting voices, and frequently hosts accusations of censorship against the likes of RC and Open Mind
Either Prof Lindzen is unaware of the correction, which I find impossibly unlikely, or he has knowingly circulated incorrect information to support his case, an act that one might normally expect would attract severe opprobrium from the posters of an objective science blog such as this. Neither possibility does much for the pursuasiveness of his argument, in my view. Certainly if the Professor were to submit this article for publication, it would be rejected on these grounds alone.
REPLY: There is a third option, perhapss he doesnt trust the correction. I know that many of us here dont trust corrections applied to data.
The correction was largely the result of step in the computer code that caters for satellite altitude being effectively switched off. Details were published in the Journal of Climate and also by the Data Product provider. All other researchers who use this dataset use the revised version. The onus is therefore on anyone citing the 2002 version to at least mention that the originators of the dataset have revised it and explain why they prefer the uncorrected dataset, especially if the corrected version removes a central plank of their argument. From Prof Lindzen, not even a footnote. Does this qualify as the good and transparent science quite rightly promoted by WUWT?
REPLY: John I have deleted your response, and I resent the smear you made against me for publishing this informal essay from Dr. Lindzen. You get a 24 hour timeout. If you wish to continue, lose the ad homs. Otherwise off to the troll bin permanently for you. Anthony
Smear? Ad hom? Troll?
Double Standard?
Response WUWT only attacks AGW for the sake of attacking AGW, they have no interest in being right or wrong. It isnt even a matter of trusting data, its just whether it agrees with any viewpoint they already made up their minds on. TheApril Fools humorstarting with The contrarians have made a convincing case that at that link is essentially a description of the collection of posts/comments youll find there. chris
The main problem with this science is the sheer complexity of it all. This is worse than economics, the planet is really complex, and we dont have perfect thermometers. I lean to the skeptic side, not because of reading WUWT, which I agree with the author and commenters here, is a one-way echo chamber (a true runaway positive feedback of skepticism :p), but because I tend to see climate as the big final chaotic non-linear thing ever to be studied, and it gives me pains to see that models are so weak explaining or even try to explain such doh things like the oceans. Thus, while I take seriously the efforts of most scientists, I think most people are overreacting, and taking models for granted and as if they were evidence of the very thing they are advocating.
Having said this, it doesnt surprise me that you find out another grievous error of reporting by WUWT. The nets have something funny about it, they tend to audit stuff, and thats great, and then youll end up auditing the auditers, etc. Its all fine by me. As long as things are discussed and out in the open, better models of reality and specifically of climate, will be eventually sussed out.
Yes, Ive looked at CA. Most of the folks there tend not to see the forest for the trees. Case in point is the GISS temperature 2000 problem, which is held up as a shining example of how they have made an important contribution to science, when in the big picture it is trivial. Good on them for finding it, but recognize it for what it is. Trivial. It didnt change global average temperatures beyond the noise, nor did it significantly impact US average temperatures. The focus on attacking a select few climatologists there is also tiresome. I do keep reading it from time to time, however. You are right - there is some focus on mathematics and statistics, though the science tends to break down when they are attempted to be applied to climate science.
I wasnt clear. I am an atmospheric scientist and have no personal doubts as to the validity of AGW theory. I am only looking for truly curious skeptics because I have personally been so horrified at the apparent preset agenda of skeptics (reflected in a shallow understanding science and arrogance), and I am fighting to convince myself that there do exist some honestly curious folks somewhere who are skeptical for the right reasons. I have no problem with skepticism. I am a scientist so I practice skepticism every day. I would be delighted to discuss climate change with someone who had spent time looking at the data and had honest questions. Like our host, Id be even MORE delighted to find a skeptical argument that had merit. I would be thrilled to find that climate change was something I could forget about. However, there are not many in the so called AGW skeptics that I classify as true skeptics. They are so biased toward one outcome that things like Lindzens inappropriate data use is forgiven and hes held up as some kind of amazing scientist. (FWIW, his Iris hypothesis was taken seriously enough by the climate science community that several papers have been devoted to it. Most of these have shown that his theory is unsupportable. I have not seen that hes even recognized these criticisms much less addressed them.)
Apologies. Ive mostly deviated from the intent of this thread
if the observations were only 2-3 times what the models produce, it would correspond to no feedback
And no feedback would be fine. It would give us the Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity of 1C, fully 1/3 of the consensus number and 1/10 of the more extreme alarmist claims.
On the point made by Alex Harveyabove: I tried to read Allen and Sherwoods paper purporting to use wind data to adjust the temperature record. Like many empirical climate science papers it belongs in the Journal of Irreducible Results. As Lindzen says, their correction process is more uncertain than the original direct measurements.
Despite the correction, there still is a difference in behaviour between the 1985-1991 period and the 1993-1999 period: More LW is released to space and less SW is reflected. That means that less clouds were present in the 20N-20S band. This does give more release of heat to space ánd more heating of the oceans by direct sunlight.
Is that a positive feedback? Hardly, as any response to GHGs should be more smoothly up with temperature, not stepwise as is seen here. And models and observations still differ significantly in incoming sunlight, but less in outgoing and net radiation balance. Thus models still dont grab the right balance of cloud cover in the tropics.
The main question remains: is the change in cloud cover a result of temperature, or is temperature/heat content a result of a change in cloud cover. And what causes that change. As we have a recent switch in several main players (PDO, NAO, flattening temperature and ocean heat content,) that may show interesting changes in radiation budget
Wong et al 2006 show in figure 1 a step wise change in satellite altitude. I would expect a gradual change in altitude due to atmospheric drag. Why is this step, and why precisely at that date. The paper does not explain, could anybody give a plausible explanation? Thanks
Science is an evolving process. Data, models, and methods all evolve in time, correcting errors along the way, and building more questions or robust conclusions in the process. It is necessary for people with expertise in a particular area to keep up with the data and any changes that may be made to it, as well as the underlying problems that may exist within the data. In some unfortunate cases, people lose objectivity and will use only a particular dataset (or version of that dataset) that re-inforced some point they are trying to make. In presenting information, not telling people outside of their field what the possible caveats are in a dataset, or explaining revisions that were made to data they show is not generally taken well in academic setting. So it is with a recent example.
Richard Lindzen has made his presence felt at Anthony Watts blog inLindzen on Negative Climate Feedback. Accuweather also has a recentblog poston it. In the comments, it is being hailed as the new found gospel truth of negative climate feedbacks and low sensitivity. Unfortunately, the problem with most skeptical arguments is not what we are told, but rather what we are not told. So what arent we told?
Lindzens method is easy to understand. You can read it at Watts blog. The image of emphasis is,
Lindzens emphasis is on the outgoing LW flux at the top-of-the-atmosphere, and the fact it is large compared to models. This is inferred to mean less of a blanketing effect from greenhouse gases, and therefore feedbacks which are less positive than models suggest (or negative in this case). AtRealClimate, gavin pointed out a fixed graph that appeared in Science after a comment by Kevin Trenberth. The changed figure is,
However, there have been major revisions to this data since 2002. Specifically, there was a significant correction for changing satellite altitude in the computer code that was not turned on which led to erroneous results in the earlier work (Bruce Wielicki, personal correspondence). In many other cases, this kind of thing would be something WUWT would be on top of, so it is unfortunate that it is not mentioned. There is an inverse square dependence on the amount of energy received at the Nonscanner WFOV instrument and the distance from the planets center; improperly accounting for altitude change led to spurious results for the TOA longwave and shortwave fluxes. This has been documented inWong et al 2006, Journal of Climate, a paper not even mentioned by Lindzen.ERBE S10N_WFOV ERBS Edition3 Data Quality Summaryis available to cover further issues. They state
Algorithm Changes between New Edition3 and Previous Edition2 Release The main difference between new Edition3 and previous Edition2 release is in the treatment of TOA radiative fluxes resulting from changes in the ERBE nonscanner processing algorithm to account for decay in satellite altitude over the data period.
During an instrument performance study, Lee et al. (2003) discovered that the ERBE nonscanner inversion algorithm did not correctly account for the decay in the ERBS altitude over its mission lifetime; this can have a small but significant effect on the reported decadal changes of nonscanner TOA fluxes. The ERBE nonscanner inversion algorithm is used to convert nonscanner measurements at satellite altitude (approximately 611 km at the start of the mission) to TOA measurements at a reference altitude of 30 km. While these altitude changes over the 15-year period are small (on the order of 25 km) and do not affect the overall quality of the large regional fluxes, they do, however, have significant effect on the smaller changes associated with the observed large scale decadal changes in Earth radiation budget (Wong et al., 2005).
This satellite altitude related problem is unique to the ERBS nonscanner instrument and does not affect the quality of the ERBS scanner data product. The nonscanner is a hemispheric instrument which views the entire Earth disk along with the small portion of the deep space surrounding the Earth itself. As the satellite altitude dropped over its mission, the small portion of the deep space partially viewed by the nonscanner began to be filled in by the Earth view itself, resulting in more energy being recorded by the nonscanner instrument. Since the original and the Edition2 release data did not account for these subtle altitude changes, there is a small effect of artificially increasing the reported longwave, shortwave, and net fluxes over the mission lifetime. Specifically, the overall effect of this altitude change is a small increase (~0.6%) in both longwave and shortwave radiation over the 15-year period.
To minimize errors in the ERBS nonscanner data product, an altitude correction algorithm to the Edition2 data was developed and applied to the entire Edition2 data set. The result is the new Edition3 data set.
Actual ERBS Edition 3 data is available at Nasa langley. I will leave readers to explore further details. Assuming he was familiar with these updates, Lindzen should have at least told his readers why he felt the older version was better for his analysis. The experts working on it apparently do not think so. An examination reveals that these corrections eliminate most of the signal that Richard Lindzen was using (see figure 5).
Section 5 of the 2006 paper also does comparison with ocean heat storage data, where the two agree within the uncertainty of the ocean data sampling. This is pretty neat given the independent nature of the ERB data and ocean heat content measurements, an example ofrobustnessthat distinguishes results appearing in peer-reviewed documents vs. those in blog protocol.
In short, Lindzens analysis is based on outdated data that has been revised since 2002, and these revisions are not exactly recent, so he should have been aware of them. Using the more recent data would not allow him to make his argument as presented as WUWT. It would be nice to see an update at WUWT reflecting these changes.
Ive said quite a bit about feedbacks lately and its a little old now, but many WUWT commenters still seem confused about how postive feedbacks relate to an unstable system. Lindzen has recently been using the gas pedal analogy (not only in Watts post, but at theskeptic conference) in which positive feedbacks are supposed to be analogous to someone changing the gas and brake pads in your car. If you want to slow down, you actually speed up. Apparently it follows that climate does not act this way. Actually feedbacks dont really act this way either. If we let the moving car roll on a flat, frictionless surface (with no influence from the tires or air resistance) in the absence of any net force change, it will roll forever by Newtons laws. Think of this as some equilibrium condition, with the climate analog being radiative balance. Pushing your gas or brake is more like the radiative forcing on the car which essentially puts it off of its current course. Positive feedbacks simply let the planet equilibriate at a higher temperature than the sensitivity from CO2 alone, but the same principle that balance is acheived still applies. Feedbacks go up like a converging power series and therefore never get strong enough to override the fourth power dependence of thermal radiation and trigger a runaway. In short, positive feedbacks can be stable and dont require any runaway scenarios.
positive feedbacks can be stable and dont require any runaway scenarios
If thats the case, why do we hear so much from the likes of James Hansen and James Lovelock about tipping points and time running out?
Response Tipping Points and runaway are different in scientific meaning. In both cases, the public and blogs often use them in sloppy ways, but the impossbility of a runaway (which I mean to use in the Venusian sense) do not exclude tipping points (loss of seasonal artic ice, permafrost release of carbon/methane, large scale Amazon loss, THC weakening, etc) chris
Lindzen has recently been using the gas pedal analogy in which positive feedbacks are supposed to be analogous to someone changing the gas and break [sic] pads in your car. If you want to slow down, you actually speed up.
I dont think Lindzen said whats in that last sentence. In fact, there are little pieces from Lindzens statement all mixed together to score some kind of point, I guess.
To get back on point, Lindzen was providing a simple [and effective] analogy of positive feedbacks. Besides, with CO2 rising steadily, at the same time the planet cools steadily, the AGW/CO2 hypothesis has taken about 4 - 5 torpedoes. That ship is going down.
With the AGW/CO2 hypothesis sinking fast, the entire AGW/global warming argument is falsified by the planet itself. Except, of course, in the minds of those wackos who still believe that black is white, down is up, evil is good and global cooling causes global warming.
In that case, they have my sympathy; cognitive dissonance that extreme is generally incurable.
[Oh, and congrats on the multiple responses! You can thank WUWT for doubling your hits.] Response Well you can keep being wrong and actually look at the data, or you can take somebodys word for it. The planet has only been verifying the mainstream view of scientists, and the mainstream view has evolved based on the actual data. The planet is not cooling, the ice is still melting, and sea levels are still rising or are you in denial of all of this? Maybe you should review the primary literature and actual data to see how silly you sound chris
Even with the corrected data there is still more outgoing LW than the models show.
Response It is within the range, except for 1998 and variations associated with Pinatubo. Please read the cited paper. There is no longer evidence for a neutral or negative feedback, and in fact the authors explicitly state they find no evidence for IRIS chris
WUWT has succeeded in brainwashing a lot of people, its kind of sad. Ive never seen a single site host more confused comments and erroneous analyses.
Response I usually agree. Its also very reliant on the views of outliers in the field, in the cases where he has qualified people post. Being an outlier doesnt necessarily make one wrong, but few people over there even know what the science of AGW says, and so if youre just learning from deviant views without understanding what the literature says, youre probably going to be misled. Putting much weight on one person in the face of 99 others is not a good idea.
Have you had a chance to look at the references Lindzen said backed up the original data? Presumably they dont now back up the corrected version, or have they all been corrected too?
Response Im familiar with just the first study. I dont see how their results are dependent at all on this change. Really, it was not even a major point in the paper. It may come as a surprise to some, but actual studies do more than make a couple of pretty graphs with no kind of analysis, no discussion of observation or model uncertanties, no physics, etc and then fall apart when someone finds an error. See the RC post under robustness. Im also aware of some of the authors (like Tony Del Genio and Brian Soden) and their work and views on climate change. I know Wielicki was not amused when I e-mailed him, and had some harsh comments about what Lindzen and the skeptical movement as a whole has done.
That ocean heat content data which is now apparently comparable - within the uncertainties - is the same data that was also corrected for apparent cooling errors isnt it? Ive not heard yet of a data correction made due to an instrument showing too much warming, ie does it make sense that the corrections always seem to go only one way - towards the prevailing theory.
Response Huh?!?! There are warm and cold biases in data that need to be adjusted for. Both exist. Correcting for problems is not an elaborate conspiracy by all of these groups. Judging by your tone, youre only making yourself aware of those corrections which apparently show more warming. Did it ever occur to you that the prevailing theory is what it isbecauseof what data shows? I cant believe what I hear.
Id need to read that calibration study you mention but Ive a funny feeling the corrected algorithm was defined with respect to a model output because thats how the radiosonde corrections were made. After all, if you knew what the answer should be then you wouldnt need the instrument measurements in the first place would you?
Response This is not WUWT. I expect seriousness
Its all sort of cart before the horse. In that light, can these corrections truly be objective? Ill be interested in Lindzens response to the charges mind you.
Response Im sure the folks at ERBE are doing what they can to make the data as best as possible. Fitting it to the theory is not what people spend their time doing. Youre spending way too much time listening to deviant views on the subject.
Why is it Chris, that every time there is a contradictory piece of evidence (empirical evidence that is), someone comes along and (trys to) re-write all the empirical data so that it comes closer to the theory.
Im assuming these were very carefully designed experiments to start with since they were so important. Billions of dollars would have been spent.
The other examples:
- Temps are not keeping up with the models predictions.
Answer: rewrite the historical temperature record and add 0.5C to the trend. Answer: rewrite the Aerosols data so that there is a -0.3C to -0.5C impact from Aerosols.
- Humidity is not keeping up with the predictions.
Answer: discredit the data so that there is no actual humidity data anywhere that can be relied on despite humidity being measured by half the weather stations across the planet over the last 100 years.
- PaleoClimate reconstructions do not support the +3.0C per doubling estimate.
Answer: rewrite the historical CO2 numbers so that they come closer to conforming.
- There are dozens and dozens of climate and meteorological satellites up there right now and not one is showing the data that the theory expects.
Answer: orbital drift sensor problems bury the data Answer: none of the satellites are providing the basic data we really need - Hansen every few months - why are we spending Billions of dollars for the wrong data.
- The models consistently over-estimate the temperature trends by a factor of two.
Answer: re-write the previous predictions each time a new set is produced. Answer: never produce climate predictions that can be checked on any timescale (Hansen twice made this mistake now so Im assuming he wont do it again - the IPCC certainly understands this).
This pattern is getting harder and harder to ignore, dont you think.
Now that is just my little strawman regarding how to shoot-down your analysis. It is not fair because perhaps your points are valid.
What I want to see for the pro-AGW crowd is to at least look at the contradictory evidence for once instead of:
- ignoring it; - discrediting it through strawmen; or - rewriting it whenever it doesnt conform.
Response Well half of this you are just making up. Most of these observations dont fit theory lines are based on a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what observations,models, or theory actually show. For me, the pattern that is hard to ignore is that most of this comes from people who only read one or two blogs, (WUWT happening to be a top one). The nonsense comes mainly from fake experts and occasionally a handful of real experts who sit on the outlying edges of their subject, and is then amplified by cheerleaders who have no idea what people are talking about, but are convinced its a hoax. The claims are rarely in accordance with what experts say, or they dont seem to want to tell the whole story. This is why skeptics have their own climate conference because they cant get much through peer-review from experts in the field. Its not conspiracy, its just very one-sided science. The sooner you realize the denier position is full of crap the better off you will be. chris
Now please, this is a science blog. This doesnt need a strawman and conspiracy component to it chris
Wow. Its very easy to just admit that Lindzen was either ill-informed or he tried to pull a fast one. If you admit it and move on, rather than sit here and complain and make excuses and twist it into well the real experts changed the data to fit than your lives will be much easier.
Bill,
ignoring it; - discrediting it through strawmen; or - rewriting it whenever it doesnt conform.
Thanks for your summary above. I wrote this on WUWT
Surely the climate is a metastable system as indicated by ice core records etc:
Super ice age (snow ball earth)(?) Ice age -2degC warm age 0degC Hot age(?) +2degC 40Mybp +8degC 400Mybp
Positive feedback is not an unlimited effect GHGs have logarithmic effects enabling the negative FBs (plant growth, radiation balance etc) to re-take control.Methane trapped in frozen tundra may be released if the temperature increases. CH4 in the atmosphere has a life of about 4 years. So the tipping point when these are released may only produce a pulse of high temeratures for a couple of decades. However this may be long enough to melt land based ice reducing the albedo and adding to the positive FB. However these effects are self limiting - plant growth, radiation balance (a hotter earth = more heat radiated but same heat input) will attain a new stable temperature. The question is what will this be? and what will reduce the climate back to the current metastable state?
The earth definately has 2 reasonably stable states iceage and non-iceage (the other states have only occurred in periods where land masses were differently located.
GHGs will have little effect as the absorption bands saturate (logarithmic saturation) This will limit the effect of this positive feedback (hotter earth = more CH4 from clathrates, less absoption of CO2 in sea = more GHGs = higher temps) The GHGs will also affect temperature negatively with positive feedback (lower GHGs leads to cooler temperature leads to more CO2 dissolved in sea leads to lower GHGs - note that this is still a positive feedback!) Negative feed back on CO2 would be plant growth. Higher CO2 leads to more plants leads to less increase in CO2 (neg feedback lowering temp) AND lower CO2 leads to less plant growth leads to less lowering of CO2 (neg feedback raising temp)
Ice surface presented to the sun will affect albedo which will affect outgoing radiation which affects energy balance. Ice is a positive feedback thing - low temp leads to more iceleads to lower temp and vice versa. As the ice melts it retreats to the poles where solar radiation is smaller and so will have less effect on the energy balance. Howerver an increasing ice sheet will have a negative effect on temperature (again positive feedback more ice=lower temp=more ice). Why does the ice not continue to grow till snowball earth is reached? Does it simply stop growing where the temperature finds an equilibrium between the solar radiation melt and the albedo effect on temperature? Or is there some other effect?
The difference in temperature between too hot and too cold is only a surprising 2degC just some thoughts which may clarify positive and negative feedback effects.
Mike
Response Actually its more in the 5 C range between today and the last glacial period.
I still dont understand why people think positive feedbacks mean that a runaway greenhouse (or a snowball earth) or some sort of extreme is necessary. All it means in the climate literature is that the sensitivity is greater than 0.30 C/W/m2. Lindzen got that number from taking the temperature change 1.1 C divided by the radiative forcing, 3.7 W/m2. Theres nothing magical about sensitivty being higher than this; successive terms in a power series become progressively smaller when the feedback term is less than one. Its the weird same logic as asking why negative feedbacks dont lead to a system where nothing ever changes. chris
Accuweather has finally reached its bottom.Here is a quote from a Dr.Richard Lindzen: Isnt this amazing, as the temperature goes up, negative feedback goes up. As the temperature goes down, the feedback starts going positive. Has anyone heard of this jerk. A feedback mechanism is an effect of a positive Forcing. It creates a feedback loop.Like as there is less Ice in the arctic,less reflectivity. More absorption,water warms. This guy has to be some kind of nut. I cant believe that AccuWeather would post this bullshit. The colder it gets the more water vapor there is.The warmer it gets the less water vapor there is.The sun cools,so the Earth is warm. The Earth Warms the sun, so the Sun cools the Earth.Makes perfect sense if your Anthony Watts or Dr.Richard,Exxon Mobil,Lindzen.
Response To be fair, Lindzen is a very bright guy. However, he seems to be a scientist who cannot admit he is wrong, and will likely continue on defending deviant hypotheses. I dont really know or care about any sources of funding he might have. He had an older idea concerning a strong negative feedback from water vapor, which observations and physics have invalidated over the last several decades. He had an IRIS hypothesis some years back in which the science community has seems to have moved on from. chris
0.3C per W/m2 is what is built into the climate models right now, isnt it? Response No. Feedbacks and sensitivity are not built into models, they are emergent properties. In any case, 0.3 is the no feedback (net neutral) sensitivity. The estimated sensitivity from mainstream estimates (e.g., documented in IPCC AR4) is 0.54 to 1.22 C/W/m2 which corresponds to 2 to 4.5 C per doubling. Its an unfortuantely large uncertainty, but its positive chris
Chris: In a recent Article you said that water vapor accounted for 7% of thhe Earths Warming . Or was that for all GHGs. When you have a positive feedback, such as water vapor how do you determine its value. The Warming Arctic is a good example. The Arctic could be warming by natural and Anthropogenic Global Warming. If it is warming by AGW in the smallest way, there must always be a positive feedback component however small.As the AGW increases in time, the Ice will melt more and the feedback value will be higher.From warming a decrease in ice, means a decrease of reflectivity or a positive increase in absorbtion. Now for this positive feeedback loop to reach a tipping point, how could you make that measure. You cannot assume a tipping point will occur.Wouldnt you have to make many assumptions.Just because AGW is the signal, that doesnt negate natural variations. Any thoughts?
Well I believe Lindzen himself has made the same point (I believe referring to a slightly different context):
Once the implications of the observations were clearly identified, it was only a matter of time before the data were corrected. The first attempt came quickly (Vinnikov et al, 2006) wherein the satellite data was reworked to show large warming in the upper troposphere, but the methodology was too blatant for the paper to be commonly cited14. There followed an attempt wherein the temperature data was rejected, and where temperature trends were inferred from wind data (Allen and Sherwood, 2008). Over sufficiently long periods, there is a balance between vertical wind shear and meridional temperature gradients (the thermal wind balance), and, with various assumptions concerning boundary conditions, one can, indeed, infer temperature trends, but the process involves a more complex, indirect, and uncertain procedure than is involved in directly measuring temperature. Moreover, as Pielke et al (2008) have noted, the results display a variety of inconsistencies. They are nonetheless held to resolve the discrepancy with models.
But this has had me thinking: the issue of data correction ought to be resolvable in a scientific way by simply counting through recent history the number of corrections to data that have occurred, and noting the direction of their change (i.e. in support for AGW or in contradiction of AGW). From the law of averages wed expect that errors in the data would 50% of the time support more warming and 50% less warming. Lindzen seems to be claiming that theyre falling in favour of more warming significantly more than 50% of the time. If that was true, then youd surely agree that he has a valid point.
At any rate, can you actually name some of the occasions where the data has been corrected significantly to show that there is less warming than the data first showed?
Id also be curious to know of your thoughts on a paper that I havent actually been able to read myself yet as its not available online but its this one:
Rondanelli, R., and R.S. Lindzen (2008). Observed variations in convective precipitation fraction and stratiform area with sea surface temperature. J. Geophys. Res. 113. doi:10.1029/2008JD010064.http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008JD010064.shtml.
From the abstract it appears to be discussing evidence for the Iris. It seems to have passed the peer-review at any rate.
chris, you said: Now please, this is a science blog. Please explain how that comports with the lines you wrote immediately preceding this assertion. Such as The sooner you realize the denier position is full of crap the better off you will be.
That makes this blog more of a walled castle than a science blog. Broad brush insults are the technique of advocates, not scientists. Where is your curiosity? And where in any of your reply to Bill Illis is there an acknowlegment that confirmation bias is a natural human phenomenon even among conscientious scientists?
Besides there is no such thing as a denier position. In fact there are several. Im sorry you must spend so much time swatting at flies. Im sure it must feel like an inconvenience. However, that is how science is done.
Chris, Excellent summary. I gave up on Lindzen when he stopped caring whether what he said was true or note.g. when he alleged that there was a common cause of warming for several moons and planets in the solar system. He knows well enough that climate on the other planets is quite different from that on Earth. You are entirely too patient with the half-wits from Watts-up-his-arse. The sooner we get these loons back into their asylum, the better. They add nothing to the discussion and are ineducable besides.
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It doesnt work and it annoys the pig. Mark Twain
Richard Lindzen is most certainly more credible than Chris sombody.
Bill is perfectly correct here, after the clearly fradulent garbage from the AGW cult over the last few years (Hansen, Mann etc) you guys have no credibility left at all.
I can see from the comments that no one can admit that Lindzen was just out-of-date or is trying to mislead. Instead, this has turned into the typical denial tactic of twisting it around on the Pro AGW side (whatever this means) and making it out to look like conspiracy or fixing the data. None of you seem to know how data adjustements work. In fact these ERSE updates are pretty old news in the radiative transfer community and Lindzen should have been made aware of them. His citation to Clement and Soden apparently would have made him aware of it, but he didnt feel his readers deserved to see the Edition3 series.
Essentially you guys have made it clear that youd rather leave in obvious errors which reduce the global warming trend. The fact is that Watts blog has no quality check whatsoever. Hell put up any misleading or outdated nonsense that appears to add something to the debate. Apparently none of the angry commenters here are honest enough to read the primary literature and see this.
What SYl calls curiosiy is rapidly evolving into the next creationist movement or Flat Earth Society. Im going to need to take Ray Ladburys advice in order to keep my sanity. Further comments on nonsense will be posted but ignored by me. The scientific community has long moved away from them, and I need to as well.
he fact is that Watts blog has no quality check whatsoever. Hell put up any misleading or outdated nonsense that appears to add something to the debate.
In fact, he recently put up the abstract from Lus most recent paper. Watts put it up claiming that maybe cosmic rays, not CFCs cause ozone depletion. Totally unaware that the paper proposes another mechanism by which CFCs cause ozone depletion.
Watts has a history of scoring own goals of that sort, and the crowd there managed to flood the thread with steady stream of see! CFC ozone depletion is now proven to be a fraud!
I wonder if Lu is aware of this gross misrepresentation of his work? If so, I imagine the wall of his office has a few dents from all the head-banging that results from such ignorance.
I would like to second the comment made above about auditing the direction of adjustments to the measurements over time. If a large majority of the corrections are in one direction as opposed to another, this would be pretty good evidence IMO that something besides the desire to present a valid picture of reality is driving the corrections.
IAC, it seems that for a wide variety of these sorts of issues the point is that the models predictions cant be said to be falsified *yet*. It is not as though the models are doing well at all.
Very enlightening, Chris, thank you! src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif">
You made the point there: who among this skeptical crew has made any comment about the article? Just one, I think. The rest is just off-topic and with such a label should be ignored. Besides, it really looks like a socio-moral punishment; negative reinforcement by electroshock therapy. Nasty. Please, dont let them succeed and keep up with this good work src="http://s.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif">Thanks again!
Alex Harvey above raised perfectly valid points yet your response is the classic we hear from the pro-AGW crowd every time they are remotely cornered: hurl invective and abuse at your critics. You get away with this because you have managed to scare the public into supporting your side of the story. Thats fine, but its not science.
Thanks Chris for the counter argument against Lindzen. I regard myself as a skeptic, and reads WUWT and CA regularly.
I guess most of the skeptics have an odd fealing that data with support for some counter argument against the CO2 hypothesis tend to bend to neutral after some time.
I do not agree with Ray above. You atleast got my ears and brain something to think about. Keep up the good work!
Bill Illis, you claim that, I fully know what is built into the models and they have not built in any changing feedbacks or sensitivity whatsover.
Fromthis linkyou can browse the entire source code of the iteration of the National Center for Atmospheric Researchs Community Climate System Model which was used to submit runs included in the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report. Would you please identify where forcings and feedbacks are explicitly scripted in the code? Im particularly interested in where the temperature is calculated straightaway as a logarithm of [CO2].
over the past 5 million years, the West Antarctic ice sheet transitioned between full, intermediate, and collapsed states in just a few thousand years. This means that the ice sheet is likely to disintegrate if ocean temperatures in the area rise by 5 C.
Gee, and here I thought data ought to be corrected in a way that makes it more correct. Gosh, you guys over at Watts up his arse sure have a revolutionary approach to science. Maybe you can help out the Answers in Genesis folks, too, huh?
The evolution of a theory describing a complex physical system will necessarily involve a focus on resolving first larger and then progressively smaller inconsistencies, and unless theres something fundamentally wrong with the theory the corrections will tend to bolster rather than undermine it. That this is so should be less than amazing.
I believe that my post above was serious, and is deserving of a more serious response.
Lindzen, as you have said yourself, is a very smart guy. He is probably the most expert scientist alive on the theory of atmospheric tides and planetary waves. He provided the explanation of the diurnal and semi-diurnal tides that we accept today as fact. He also provided the theory of the quasi-biennial oscillation that we today accept as fact. He points out rightly that todays GCMs still cant model the QBO; perhaps he has a better right than most to have an opinion on whether or not this failure is serious. He has provided one of the leading theories to explain the superrotation of Venus. He provided the convection parameterisation that is implemented in some of todays GCMs (e.g. ECHAM3). He was the first to develop models for ozone photochemistry and its interaction with radiation in the stratosphere.
It is possible, as you say and as others have suggested that he just wont admit that hes wrong. Perhaps thats because hes been right so many times in the past. Or perhaps its because hes not wrong. Have you actually read through his 200 or so papers? If not, I would thoroughly recommend that you do.
Response Well hes been wrong plenty of times too. As I understand, the theory of Venusian super-rotation is not completely gone, but is not the leading theory. I dont have the background to comment though. Hes been wrong about water vapor and IRIS feedbacks. Hes been wrong about many things below the stratosphere, especially in the realm of climate feedbacks. His expertise has been more in dynamics rather than radiative transfer/climate change (two different things). He also has an undeniable sloppy record in Op-eds and non-scientfic venues. Youll get no argument that hes very bright and has made many contributions (Id be very happy if my CV ever looked like his), but hes clearly not infallible, and lets face it: he made up his mind already about feedbacks. Personally I dont think hes a reliable source at all for info on climate change chris
The fact that he still finds co-authors (in this case, R. Ronandelli) to publish with on Iris, suggests that hes not as isolated on the issues as the AGW camp is making out. Although, his arguments for negative feedbacks do notrequirethe Iris mechanism to be valid.
Response Well I have talked to experts as well who have wanted to work with Lindzen in evaluating IRIS and they did not get even an e-mail reply. I will not disclose information beyond that, but its a strange situation. There are many papers in the literature showing no evidence for IRIS, or at least a much weaker feedback than his original writing. It is in fact the modern basis for his arguments but is not widely supported. You must be aware his views are very deviant from the mainstream, so the major emphasis on just his thoughts is quite strange to me chris
At any rate, my challenge was a pretty simple one: if the data is just as often corrected in favour of less warming as it is in favour of more, can you provide some examples? Otherwise, your readers would have to assume that youre simply assuming this is true.
Response My readers dont need to assume anything, and Im not either. UHI corrections, Bucket corrections for SSTs and other things can reduce the trend while dealing with various biases in station location moves, time of observation etc increase the trend. These things are well documented. If you think the ERBE people are making things up, then you can either e-mail them and tell them they are all frauds or you can e-mail them and tell them what theyre doing wrong. Honestly, people in science (whether in organization or universitiy) have much better things to do than create artificial data to get in line with the consensus. Many of them have no concern about the reality of AGW in the process and much of the data may be used for very different reasons than climate change discussion.
Personally I actually wish I had data to debunk AGW. It would take concern off my chest, and lets face it, Id love to get famous and be in the textbooks.
I was hoping we could talk about Lindzens choices and methodology, and instead this turns into a host of comments about accusations. Please people. chris
From the law of averages wed expect that errors in the data would 50% of the time support more warming and 50% less warming. Lindzen seems to be claiming that theyre falling in favour of more warming significantly more than 50% of the time. If that was true, then youd surely agree that he has a valid point.
Assuming this claim is true for a minuteif more corrections were instead in the direction of less warming or lower climate sensitivity, contrarians like Lindzen would claim that climate scientists knew they had it wrong from the beginning and were hoping nobody saw their warm bias in the data and estimates. In fact, thats a common theme of the WUWT crowd, often with regards to their obsession over NASA and Dr. Hansen. Both arguments fit well with contrarians. Its a win-win.
But as others have pointed out, if Lindzen had a legitimate problem with the corrections, he would be better served submitting a peer-reviewed comment on it. Ignoring the corrections or making general comments that imply conspiracy is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy.
I have an honest question that Ive been trying to do some calculations on and, perhaps, Ray Ladbury could answer it for me.
What is the average length of time that a photon from the Sun spends in the Earth system before it is lost to space? Or what is the average length of time that the energy represented by a photon from the Sun spends in the Earth system?
I guess the question would be predicated on no ocean absorption and no ice sheet absorption for now unless there are estimates that incorporate the likely impact of this as well.
This is also clearly related to the Earth Radiation Budget question as well and it is an honest question.
I work at Langley and was wondering when someone in the blog world was going to point out the obvious wrt Lindzens quite outdated analysis. Wielicki is a very competent and honest scientist. I can imagine his response to Lindzen continuing to use outdated data. Gah.
WUWT has become tiresome. I follow it in hopes of finding a subset of skeptics that are truly curious about the science but if they exist, not many are there. Theyre quite good at skimming the cream off of others work (without understanding the mechanics behind it) and they make what they will of it, but very few have the patience or knowledge required to dig into real science.
Im not prepared to sacrifice the time dedicated to blogging real science, so Im very grateful when I run across folks who are. Thanks.
I think MarkB and Steve Bloom both hit the nail on the head.
Indeed, it is true as MarkB noted that the contrarians are the first to crow when an estimate of warming or sea level rise or whatever is revised downward. However, when it is revised upward, they automatically start questioning the revision (usually not on the basis of compelling physical arguments but simply innuendo). So, a revision downward is a sign that the warming has been overestimated and a revision upward is a sign that the scientists are biased.
And, as Steve Bloom noted, the nature of a well-established theory is that when data are found that seem to contradict it, future work to resolve that discrepancy will often result in understanding of problems with and subsequent revision of the data. This is not at all surprising because by the time a theory has gained strong status in a field, it is because there are multiple lines of evidence supporting it. This is a point that seems to often be lost on the contrarians. For example, every time Roy Spencer comes up with some new notion about clouds being a strong negative feedback, they embrace it while ignoring the myriad of ways in which it contradicts other well-established independent evidence pointing to a much higher climate sensitivity.
You are certainly right that positive feedbacks are no guarantee of instability. They simply move the differential equations closer to instability.
The current sat info is reasonable but there are many possible steps in the data as pointed out by the clear and significant trend difference between RSS and UAH. This doesnt make a difference as to why someone wouldnt use a corrected version. Certainly the authors should mention a reason why they dont accept the correction or otherwise accept it. What is also important to understand is that this sat data was taken by several sources and is guaranteed to have unknown step biases in the data. How large they are is anyones guess.
In Anthony Watts defense, (something I dont do by trade) he simply put the post of a known scientist up. Gavin replied with an advocacy post which IMO was entirely inappropriate and a clear case of Pot calling the kettle black.
From The Times April 1, 2009 Chill winds take heat off global warming LA Notebook: Climate change scepticism is going mainstream Chris Ayres
Well, that didnt take long, did it? After six months of economic hardship and one unusually chilly winter, it seems that Americans are beginning to conclude that perhaps global warming wasnt such a big deal after all. Blowing $30,000 on a solar roof doesnt seem such a great move these days. And for the price of a Toyota Prius you can now buy a three-bedroomed house in Detroit with enough left for a pick-up truck (this isnt a joke - the median house price in Motor City is $7,500).
The ranks of Americas climate sceptics have been growing quietly for some months now. And at the weekend a watershed was reached: the usually left-wing New York Times put the British-born physicist Freeman Dyson on the front of its Sunday magazine. The article inside revealed that Professor Dyson - 85 years old and based in Princeton - not only possesses one of the finest noodles on Planet Earth, but also happens to think that most of what Al Gore and his band of Unmerry Men preach amounts to little more than yuppie self-loathing.
All the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated, is how Professor Dyson puts it. He adds that while its true that human-caused carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, the Earth is still going through a relatively cool period in its history, and that most of the evolution of life took place in a warmer era. Professor Dyson is also fond of pointing out that carbon dioxide helps plants to grow - so having too much of the stuff hanging around might not be such a bad thing.
Out in the blogotwittersphere, the Greens can hardly believe that the same media that once helped Mr Gore to win both an Oscar and a Nobel prize are now promoting such heresy. To make matters more infuriating, Professor Dyson isnt even a conservative: hes a left-wing, Obama-voting, peace-marching, boho-academic genius who argues that coal-produced electricity has liberated millions in China from poverty, and that greens are people whove never had to worry about grocery bills. Background
* Tesla Motors unveils luxury electric car
* Green Vroom
* Ministers pore over green energy incentives
* Energy plan chaos as wind giant backs out
I suspect that, as we all get used to our relative poverty over coming months and as it becomes politically impossible for President Obama to bankrupt power stations and impose carbon tariffs on imports, such scepticism will become ever more mainstream. Only last week a suggestion by California to outlaw black cars because they absorb too much heat and therefore require too much air conditioning was met with almost universal ridicule. All of which is both satisfying and unsettling - satisfying to see debate triumph over heavy-handedness, but unsettling because even if what Mr Gore was peddling was a lie, it was a convenient one, in that it seemed to be finally weaning the US off Saudi oil.
Still, honesty is always the best way.
And in America at least, its always so much more appealing when delivered by an awkward Brit.
Bsneath, Dont you have any science youd like to discuss? Youve pasted in one columnists opinions/rant about the high relative cost of green fixed-asset investments this past season. All the points you quoted are, to say the least, arguable, and some are downright embarrasing. Do you really count this as scientific evidence against global warming?
Lindzen said in the article.. if the observations were only 2-3 times what the models produce, it would correspond to no feedback
Well now that the corrected observed data shows precisely that, what do the contrarians have for us? Conspiracy theories. and off-topic diversions. Its simple really - The initial graph implied large negative forcing. The revised graph doesnt. The initial graph used flawed data, the revised used corrected data.
Someone please challenge this logic with something other than cowardly accusations of data manipulation.
Response Keep in mind that my post simply dealt with the data-side of the issue. The other issue is the physical interpretation. In the case of Lindzens analysis, even if we use the older data, you still need to look at the shortwave component of the picture (E.g., albedo feedbacks) and a broader view outside the tropics to really make such dogmatic statements about sensitivity. His IRIS hypothesis revolves mainly on the tropical, longwave side of the issue. He did no analysis to justify his conclusion chris
Ladbury, I see that you were after all unable to relinquish your full-time job as commenter on AGW blogs, without which your life would evidently not be complete. Well, you have it a try. Its good to see you again. Youre like my blue lagoon in a stormy sea, and I often like to harbor my ship in your redundant comments. I find them strangely life-affirming. And yet, as difficult as it is to fathom, I believe seriously that your arguments, epistemological and otherwise, have degenerated even further into a buccal-fecal carnival of watts-up-your-arse rodomontade, signifying, in the end, nothing. Very poorly done, Ladbury, very poorly done indeed. If youll permit me to say, peoplearenoticing the listlessness of your remarx, and your inability to quell this obsessive commenting both at Goddard, I mean, and here in Fort Collins, where you once lived.
Colose, you are correct: its not a conspiracy. Its an explicit political philosophy which is to say, an entire worldview, since political philosophy is only a species of the genus ethics, which in turn is a species of the genus epistemology, all of which are branches of the science of philosophy, which as you know is the science of foundations and fundamental convictions. Thus, the fundamental political questions are these: is each individual free by nature? If so, why? Can each individual be free if her property is not private? Freedom is fundamentally the absence of compulsion. The stated worldview of AGW is a worldview which believes that the right to life and property arenotinalienable but may be transferred or revoked at any time by government bureaus. It is a worldview that believes these same government bureaus, via an elite group of centralized planners, are better able to run individual lives and manage individuals property than the individuals themselves. It is a worldview that believes tort law should be replaced by government edict and special-interest rule, and that the primacy of private property should be replaced by statism, which of course operates by means of authoritarianism. It is for this precise reason that the arrantly politicized science which you are a devoted proponent of need not operate by means of conspiracy or cabal, as you point out, insofar as this entire political philosophy explicitly espouses majority rule, which is to say, rule by consensus, which is to say, the rule of the mob. As long as the majority believes it, conspiracy is unnecessary.
Well, the graphs posted above show that the models underestimate the changes of LW emission by a factor of 2-3 which, as Lindzen said, corresponds to no feedback - and sensitivity around 1 deg C. That means less than 1 deg C in the following century, less than other random contributions.
Whether Richard is right that the sensitivity is 0.3 deg C and whether the negative feedbacks are strong is not really important. I think that only a loon would argue that a change of 1 deg C per doubling (1800-2100) is dangerous in any way. We have observed exactly half of this warming in the 20th century, too, and the negative consequences of this global warming have been exactly zero. So it is sensible to assume that the same change done once again will have zero consequences, too.
I dont believe you would sell any threats based on the neutral assumption that the net feedbacks are zero. Still, I dont think that theyre zero. Theyre negative and note that you have supported your statements by much more limited literature (1) than Richard did.
Response Nonsense Lubos. Exactly half the warming relative to when? A doubling of CO2? 2100? Forever? For one thing, ln(560/385) > ln(385/280) and you need to include any uncommited warming from ocean uptake, so for a doubling, We have observed exactly half of this warming in the 20th century is wrong. Using a doubling of CO2 is not even a good metric in this case since we can go way beyond a doubling by 2100, 2150, etc. Your statement on negative consequences makes you seemingly unaware of the literature on the rapidly changing cyrosphere, sea level rise, ecological and agricultural concerns, etc. or are you in denial of all of this?
This post was not meant to make a case for positive feedbacks or high sensitivty, but to show Lindzens analysis does not make a case for negative feedbacks. Aside from outdated data, I also have issues with the physical interpretation as well. Im glad you support this tactic in your comments, blogs, and other widely read media, but I cannot. You say Lindzen better referenced his material when several do not even agree with his viewpoint. chris
Footnote heres an extract from an exchange on the WUWT thread, a site which claims to tolerate dissenting voices, and frequently hosts accusations of censorship against the likes of RC and Open Mind
Either Prof Lindzen is unaware of the correction, which I find impossibly unlikely, or he has knowingly circulated incorrect information to support his case, an act that one might normally expect would attract severe opprobrium from the posters of an objective science blog such as this. Neither possibility does much for the pursuasiveness of his argument, in my view. Certainly if the Professor were to submit this article for publication, it would be rejected on these grounds alone.
REPLY: There is a third option, perhapss he doesnt trust the correction. I know that many of us here dont trust corrections applied to data.
The correction was largely the result of step in the computer code that caters for satellite altitude being effectively switched off. Details were published in the Journal of Climate and also by the Data Product provider. All other researchers who use this dataset use the revised version. The onus is therefore on anyone citing the 2002 version to at least mention that the originators of the dataset have revised it and explain why they prefer the uncorrected dataset, especially if the corrected version removes a central plank of their argument. From Prof Lindzen, not even a footnote. Does this qualify as the good and transparent science quite rightly promoted by WUWT?
REPLY: John I have deleted your response, and I resent the smear you made against me for publishing this informal essay from Dr. Lindzen. You get a 24 hour timeout. If you wish to continue, lose the ad homs. Otherwise off to the troll bin permanently for you. Anthony
Smear? Ad hom? Troll?
Double Standard?
Response WUWT only attacks AGW for the sake of attacking AGW, they have no interest in being right or wrong. It isnt even a matter of trusting data, its just whether it agrees with any viewpoint they already made up their minds on. TheApril Fools humorstarting with The contrarians have made a convincing case that at that link is essentially a description of the collection of posts/comments youll find there. chris
The main problem with this science is the sheer complexity of it all. This is worse than economics, the planet is really complex, and we dont have perfect thermometers. I lean to the skeptic side, not because of reading WUWT, which I agree with the author and commenters here, is a one-way echo chamber (a true runaway positive feedback of skepticism :p), but because I tend to see climate as the big final chaotic non-linear thing ever to be studied, and it gives me pains to see that models are so weak explaining or even try to explain such doh things like the oceans. Thus, while I take seriously the efforts of most scientists, I think most people are overreacting, and taking models for granted and as if they were evidence of the very thing they are advocating.
Having said this, it doesnt surprise me that you find out another grievous error of reporting by WUWT. The nets have something funny about it, they tend to audit stuff, and thats great, and then youll end up auditing the auditers, etc. Its all fine by me. As long as things are discussed and out in the open, better models of reality and specifically of climate, will be eventually sussed out.
Yes, Ive looked at CA. Most of the folks there tend not to see the forest for the trees. Case in point is the GISS temperature 2000 problem, which is held up as a shining example of how they have made an important contribution to science, when in the big picture it is trivial. Good on them for finding it, but recognize it for what it is. Trivial. It didnt change global average temperatures beyond the noise, nor did it significantly impact US average temperatures. The focus on attacking a select few climatologists there is also tiresome. I do keep reading it from time to time, however. You are right - there is some focus on mathematics and statistics, though the science tends to break down when they are attempted to be applied to climate science.
I wasnt clear. I am an atmospheric scientist and have no personal doubts as to the validity of AGW theory. I am only looking for truly curious skeptics because I have personally been so horrified at the apparent preset agenda of skeptics (reflected in a shallow understanding science and arrogance), and I am fighting to convince myself that there do exist some honestly curious folks somewhere who are skeptical for the right reasons. I have no problem with skepticism. I am a scientist so I practice skepticism every day. I would be delighted to discuss climate change with someone who had spent time looking at the data and had honest questions. Like our host, Id be even MORE delighted to find a skeptical argument that had merit. I would be thrilled to find that climate change was something I could forget about. However, there are not many in the so called AGW skeptics that I classify as true skeptics. They are so biased toward one outcome that things like Lindzens inappropriate data use is forgiven and hes held up as some kind of amazing scientist. (FWIW, his Iris hypothesis was taken seriously enough by the climate science community that several papers have been devoted to it. Most of these have shown that his theory is unsupportable. I have not seen that hes even recognized these criticisms much less addressed them.)
Apologies. Ive mostly deviated from the intent of this thread
if the observations were only 2-3 times what the models produce, it would correspond to no feedback
And no feedback would be fine. It would give us the Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity of 1C, fully 1/3 of the consensus number and 1/10 of the more extreme alarmist claims.
On the point made by Alex Harveyabove: I tried to read Allen and Sherwoods paper purporting to use wind data to adjust the temperature record. Like many empirical climate science papers it belongs in the Journal of Irreducible Results. As Lindzen says, their correction process is more uncertain than the original direct measurements.
Despite the correction, there still is a difference in behaviour between the 1985-1991 period and the 1993-1999 period: More LW is released to space and less SW is reflected. That means that less clouds were present in the 20N-20S band. This does give more release of heat to space ánd more heating of the oceans by direct sunlight.
Is that a positive feedback? Hardly, as any response to GHGs should be more smoothly up with temperature, not stepwise as is seen here. And models and observations still differ significantly in incoming sunlight, but less in outgoing and net radiation balance. Thus models still dont grab the right balance of cloud cover in the tropics.
The main question remains: is the change in cloud cover a result of temperature, or is temperature/heat content a result of a change in cloud cover. And what causes that change. As we have a recent switch in several main players (PDO, NAO, flattening temperature and ocean heat content,) that may show interesting changes in radiation budget
Wong et al 2006 show in figure 1 a step wise change in satellite altitude. I would expect a gradual change in altitude due to atmospheric drag. Why is this step, and why precisely at that date. The paper does not explain, could anybody give a plausible explanation? Thanks
edited again to add more bad news for AB and the deniers in the chorus.
"Arctic sea ice is melting so fast most of it could be gone in 30 years," according to a new government-backed study. "The Arctic is often called the Earth's refrigerator because the sea ice helps cool the planet by reflecting the sun's radiation back into space," said researcher Muyin Wang. "With less ice, the sun's warmth is instead absorbed by the open water, contributing to warmer temperatures in the water and the air."
This message has been edited by j2saret on Apr 3, 2009 7:52 PM This message has been edited by j2saret on Apr 3, 2009 6:55 PM
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