In 1902, the father of global warming predicted that burning coal would make the Earth boil.
Earth had an ice age during the Ordovician Era – before the coal beds formed, with CO2 at 4,000 PPM. Global warming alarmists have been morons since day one.
“Earth had an ice age during the Ordovician Era – before the coal beds formed, with CO2 at 4,000 PPM.”
If science has anything to do with observation, that fact alone calls CAGW into question. CO2 has been way higher than today in times that were much colder than today — and that supports the skeptical postilion (not lukewarmer) that CO2 does not warm the planet. It does not warm at all.
The global climate changers just claim the sun was weaker then.
But AGW fanatics also claim that sun activity has NOTHING to do with global warming.
Worse than that, we have no climate records from weather stations during the period in question!
I LOVE this crackpot theory; that carbonic acid is a magnifying glass that will fry humans with concentrated sunlight. This is a theory that would excite any boy. Frying ants with a magnifying glass is a rite of passage for every American male.
“carbonic acid is a magnifying glass that will fry humans with concentrated sunlight”
Exactly! That is why using a CO2 fire extinguisher just makes the fire burn hotter!
🙂
Apparently you don’t know that “carbonic acid” stands for CO2 in that article. He is talking about the greenhouse effect, which is actually settled science.
Why not look up his name and see what he actually said, instead letting Steven Goddard sucker punch you with yet another of his loony newspaper articles? Why would you choose to read about the basic research of a famous scientist in an old newspaper article? How about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
Settled science my ass!
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
Here is the complete response to both your requests as of 2013: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Of course, the science has advance quite a lot in the year and a half since that summary was published. You should be reading the intervening papers yourself.
And what is unusual and unprecedented is not the climate itself but what is happening to it. It is changing, becoming warmer, and we are causing that change. It is happening much more rapidly than it would change naturally.
😆
Have you forgotten your earlier mistake dumbass?
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:41 pm
…And since you failed so misearbly the last time, let’s review some basic climate science again.
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
Martin Smith says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:48 pm
Thank you for repeating your questions yet again, gator. Here is the answer to both of them yet again:https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 4:03 pm
You really should read links before posting them, because you posted the wrong link, again.
If you believe the answer is in that link, you will need to attempt to show everyone where it is, because it isn’t there.
Are you really as dumb as you pretend?
Hello Marty!
Where did you go? 😆
I asked you once again to show me where in you silly IPCC link we can find answers to these…
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
You wouldn’t be fibbin’, would you Marty? You can admit an honest mistake, can’t you?😉
Marty, you are the dumbest troll I have ever met.
Here is the complete response to both your requests as of 2013: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Of course, the science has advance quite a lot in the year and a half since that summary was published. You should be reading the intervening papers yourself.
God you are such a liar!
Show everyone where your link satisfies my queries! You cannot!
You are a liar, just like those to whom you refer as “experts”.
Thanks for the ammo liar. 😆
gator, your reply is childish.
Marty, lying is childish, and you are a liar.
Asked and answered (5).
Another lie, I would say how many, but I have lost count.
Asked and answered (10).
Yes, the typical alarmist reply, another lie.
When anyone has to use Wikipedia as the source for “facts” I quickly run the other way.
Ditto for the UN’s biased outputs on Global Warming, which serve only the self interest of its principal power hungry sponsors and their insatiable hunger for taxing every industry.
Martin, chemically, CO2 and carbonic acid are separate chemical species, governed by the following equilibrium:
CO2 + H2O H2CO3 H+ + CO3-
So the CO2 and H2CO3 exist at the same time, and under atmospheric conditions, most of the CO2 stays in that form and does not convert to carbonic acid. So if Arrhenius meant that CO2 and carbonic acid were the same, he is wrong, and if you are putting words in this mouth, you are wrong.
My equilibrium symbol did not translate in the equation above, try this one:
CO2 + H2O H2CO3 H+ + CO3-
No go, just assume there is an equilibrium symbol between the H2Oand H2CO3 and H+
I think you mean this:
CO2 + H2O HCO3- + H+
Wow, that was weird. Try this:
CO2 + H2O ===== HCO3- + H+
Thanks, for the try, Morgan. I should become more conversant in the ASCII symbol codes.
I think it’s more to do with HTTP mark up codes. You can’t put a < to close to a …oh shit I don't want to use the other one that's a backwards <.
How about this for chemical equations: {=====} let's see what that does…
You realize that Arrhenius fInally determined as much as 1.5°C warming might occur from CO2, not the original 3-4.5°C that he originally thought which the IPCC is hell-bent on keeping.
Since Jason and I and a few others are cavers. HenryP and I are chemists, we are well aware of what “carbonic acid” is.
Think about it. Carbonic acid is why one of the main legs that CAGW stands on is false.
The first speech I gave as a Toastmaster was on limestone cave formation, something about which I was abundantly familiar, allowing me to give a stutter-free presentation my first time out.
It wasn’t just and ice age, the hole damn planet froze.
So crackpot doomsday “scientists” have been around a long time. Only the modern day ones have been capable of raiding the treasury to the tune of multiple billions a year. One election cycle away from raiding not billions, but trillions.
And that is up to a Trillion A YEAR! (Interesting that the link to that disappeared since October.)
Here are other links
Senate Republican Policy Commitee: Developing countries meeting in Paris say they could want at least $5.4 trillion by 2030 for climate mitigation and adaptation projects. — Senator John Barrasso, Chairman
Creation of a $1 Trillion US-Indian Subcontinent Climate Fund TO BE Conceptualized,Created,Proposed, Managed in USA by Syed Akbar Hashimi
WORLD BANK — Climate Finance Is Flowing, but It Isn’t Enough – Yet
IFC Sees Possibility of US$1 Trillion in Climate-Smart Investment Potential in EMENA Region
http://www.sindicatum.com/where-is-the-money/
(Assaad W. Razzouk is Lebanese. He is Group Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Sindicatum Sustainable Resources, a global clean energy company headquartered in Singapore; a Board member of the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia (ASrIA); a Board member of the Climate Markets & Investment Association (CMIA))
In Boulder, we are surrounded by bitter clingers of the Arrhenius doomsday cult.
There ain’t no such thing as “settled science.”
Pick up a copy of “Evaluating Police Tactics: An Empirical Assessment of Room Entry Techniques” by Blair and Martaindale and look on pages 68 and 69 for this statement on science:
“Science, however, is never complete. It never definitively proves something: rather, science represents the best knowledge that we currently possess on a topic. One of the best features of science is that it provides a system for challenging (and, where necessary, replacing) existing beliefs.” https://www.elsevier.com/books/evaluating-police-tactics/blair/978-0-323-28066-2
The steps in the Scientific Method do not end with “communicate results.” Next is constant peer review. The odds of getting the mind-numbed sheep to chant “Gore lied! Kids died!” are close to zero, but perhaps pointing out that science can NEVER be settled will at least leave them speechless and confused.
Odd that the burning coal issue in 1902 would take 10,000 years to boil Planet Earth. Where was his peer review? How much coal was there to burn in 1902? I have a Disney “Science Factual” called “Our Friend, the Atom” which claims that we were running out of coal and oil. Scientifically speaking, the 1902 article talked about something that wouldn’t happen because known coal reserves were too limited to last 10,000 years at the 1902 consumption rate.
Heh. Leaving them “speechless and confused” is the best we can hope for with the Progressive bitter clingers. Most of them are incorrigible. In some ways it’s like dealing with career criminals. You can’t right them so you should at least try to briefly disorient and bewilder them.
“Speechless and confused”? If only it were so! No, they are definitely and continually confused, but I have yet to see one speechless — even though they should be.
It’s worse than we thought! Atmospheric acidification!
>Earth had an ice age during the Ordovician Era – before the coal beds formed, with CO2 at 4,000
>PPM. Global warming alarmists have been morons since day one.
Good grief, Steven. That really is idiotic. Why not read the science before making a complete fool of yourself? Start here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-was-higher-in-late-Ordovician.htm
I thought you were touting science. Why would anyone read a lying cartoonist’s propaganda?
The recent censorship episode at the skepticalscience.com brings an often overlooked aspect to the forefront. The target of deletion Prof Roger Pielke Sr, runs a blog. The actions of Skepticalscience were revealed because he posted them there.
What if a scientist or a lay person, interacted with websites like Skepticalscience and did not have a blog?
Consider what Skepticalscience did in reader Paul and AnthonySG1’s cases. In 2007, the website had an article explaining Antarctica’s cooling —a thorn in the pitch for a clean story about global warming— as an “uniquely” regional phenomenon. It talked of how ‘Antarctica was overall losing ice’, citing a peer-reviewed paper Velicogna et al 2003 for support.
The response in the comments section from Cook’s readers was simple: ‘Antarctic ice is increasing. You cannot take a paper that has three years worth of data and conclude that the continent was losing ice’. They cited references that Skepticalscience neglected – which showed an overall increase in Antarctic sea ice.
The rewriting that John Cook undertook is now recounted at Bishop Hill. In the first step Cook changed the entire article, taking off from the criticisms. Next, he deleted his original ‘responses’, and added new ones that made it appear as though these commenters did not know what they were talking about.
Now let’s discuss actual science! And just to bring everyone up to speed…
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:41 pm
…And since you failed so misearbly the last time, let’s review some basic climate science again.
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
Martin Smith says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:48 pm
Thank you for repeating your questions yet again, gator. Here is the answer to both of them yet again:https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 4:03 pm
You really should read links before posting them, because you posted the wrong link, again.
If you believe the answer is in that link, you will need to attempt to show everyone where it is, because it isn’t there.
Are you really as dumb as you pretend?
Hello Marty!
Where did you go? 😆
I asked you once again to show me where in you silly IPCC link we can find answers to these…
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
You wouldn’t be fibbin’, would you Marty? You can admit an honest mistake, can’t you?
gator, please use any scientific source you choose on the Ordovician era, and any scientific source you want on the work of Svend Arhenius. Then be man or woman enough to admit that Steven Goddard deliberately tried to mislead you again.
Marty, you are an idiot, and have no clue what you are talking about…
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:41 pm
…And since you failed so misearbly the last time, let’s review some basic climate science again.
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
Martin Smith says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:48 pm
Thank you for repeating your questions yet again, gator. Here is the answer to both of them yet again:https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 4:03 pm
You really should read links before posting them, because you posted the wrong link, again.
If you believe the answer is in that link, you will need to attempt to show everyone where it is, because it isn’t there.
Are you really as dumb as you pretend?
Hello Marty!
Where did you go? 😆
I asked you once again to show me where in you silly IPCC link we can find answers to these…
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
You wouldn’t be fibbin’, would you Marty? You can admit an honest mistake, can’t you?😉
Sorry, gator, but unlike you, I have a job and social responsibilities in the real world, so I don’t have time to follow your replies to my comments. You really never do respond intelligently to my comments anyway. But I have responded to your requests. Please find my response further up in the discussion. It is the correct response to your requests, so you won’t be getting anything more from me about them.
Your job, as far as we can tell, is to lie constantly.
gator69 says:
December 29, 2015 at 10:08 am
Settled science my ass!
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
Reply
Martin Smith says:
December 29, 2015 at 10:21 am
Here is the complete response to both your requests as of 2013: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Of course, the science has advance quite a lot in the year and a half since that summary was published. You should be reading the intervening papers yourself.
And what is unusual and unprecedented is not the climate itself but what is happening to it. It is changing, becoming warmer, and we are causing that change. It is happening much more rapidly than it would change naturally.
gator69 says:
December 29, 2015 at 10:24 am
😆
Have you forgotten your earlier mistake dumbass?
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:41 pm
…And since you failed so misearbly the last time, let’s review some basic climate science again.
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
Martin Smith says:
November 22, 2015 at 3:48 pm
Thank you for repeating your questions yet again, gator. Here is the answer to both of them yet again:https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/
gator69 says:
November 22, 2015 at 4:03 pm
You really should read links before posting them, because you posted the wrong link, again.
If you believe the answer is in that link, you will need to attempt to show everyone where it is, because it isn’t there.
Are you really as dumb as you pretend?
Hello Marty!
Where did you go? 😆
I asked you once again to show me where in you silly IPCC link we can find answers to these…
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
You wouldn’t be fibbin’, would you Marty? You can admit an honest mistake, can’t you? 😉
Marty, you are the dumbest troll I have ever met.
Martin Smith says:
December 29, 2015 at 10:25 am
Here is the complete response to both your requests as of 2013: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Of course, the science has advance quite a lot in the year and a half since that summary was published. You should be reading the intervening papers yourself.
gator69 says:
December 29, 2015 at 10:32 am
God you are such a liar!
Show everyone where your link satisfies my queries! Youcannot!
You are a liar, just like those to whom you refer as “experts”.
Thanks for the ammo liar. 😆
gator, again your reply is simply childish.
Marty again, lying is childish, and you are a liar.
Your reply is gibber, gator.
Truth is gibberish to liars.
Asked and answered (4).
Another lie.
Asked and answered (9).
Yes, the typical alarmist reply, another lie.
+1000.
When people start citing SkS or Wikipedia regarding ‘global warming’ I know they don’t have any facts.
Wasn’t it Bugs Bunny who said, “What a maroon!”
That site has no science!
Steve
A couple of O/T’s
http://notrickszone.com/2015/11/20/german-professor-examines-nasa-giss-temperature-datasets-finds-they-have-been-massively-altered/#sthash.1iQteqPT.aMl3AVZQ.dpbs
And down towards the end of comments at
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/12/10-reasons-we-know-global-warming-is-not-man-made-physics-prof-explains-his-switch-to-skepticism/
Rod Stuart
December 29, 2015 at 3:35 pm · Reply
Christopher Booker on the biggest ever science scandal
links to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html
On which there is a survey. When I poked 85% of a considerable number had voted that global warming was exaggerated.
/s “We need to better communicate the message” /s
It is truly incredible to watch the Marty’s of this world continue to boldly lie in the face of facts. Marty knows that AR5 does not list all climate forcings, does not rank them, and does not quantify them. Marty also knows that AR5 does not refute natural variability, but look at this thread and see how many times he says that it does all of the above.
What a world class liar.
gator, the IPCC AR5 WG-1 report does discuss all the known forcings and it does quantify them by their respective contributions to the increase in the greenhouse effect. I don’t have the knowledge required to meet your specific requirements, because I am not a climate scientist. You know that, of course, so you know I don’t have the skills to jump through your hoop. That’s why you made your demands the way you did. Nevertheless, the facts you demand are all available in the IPCC AR5 WG-1 report. Knock yourself out.
See how the worm twists the answer now.
Let’s try again…
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
Come on liar, you claimed AR5 does all of the above. Now prove it! 😆
Asked and answered (1).
Another lie.
Asked and answered (6).
Marty, you are lying. Your continued lying does not change that.
Asked and answered (13).
Yes, the typical alarmist reply, another lie.
Where in AR5 Marty? You have yet to answer, you little liar.
Yes he is a world class liar. At first I responded in a serious manner with peer-reviewed papers and was completely ignored. (A bit of sexism perhaps?)
On to the IPCC.
The IPCC makes it very clear they are NOT looking for the factors that affect the climate. They are only looking at CO2. The paper I reference at the bottom also makes that clear.
The IPCC mandate:
So it never was about understanding the climate. It was really about ‘options for mitigation and adaptation. ‘ and this is the change wanted by the Globalists like the UN, the World Bank, and the WTO.
The IPCC’s ROLE
So there it is again. ONLY “human-induced climate change” is of interest and that is why you see very little work done on natural climate change.
Also the IPCC itself, has seen the light , thrown up its hands, and given up on calculating a meaningful climate sensitivity – the AR5 SPM says ( hidden away in a footnote)
…………………….
So here once again is a peer-reviewed paper that shows the IPCC, as they admit, are NOT looking at climate.AND that the Climate models do not take into account the variable sun and variable ozone in many cases.
Of course the IPCC already knows the climate models are completely worthless and even says
The paper Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling (2013) has some other interesting points.
The first point is that the IPCC and the ClimAstrologists in general have ignored anything but the CO2 effect on the climate. The conclusion of the paper makes it clear the sun has been ignored.
WTF! The IPCC and Hansen and everyone else has been screaming ‘The science is settled!’ and they haven’t even bothered to look at the effects of the sun on the climate???
Not only are taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars for ‘Global Warming’ and yet ClimAstrologists can’t site, calibrate and maintain the temperature measuring devices nor can they do decent long term measurements on the factor most likely to be the REAL control knob the variable sun.
Update! Marty thinks science and truth is childish. 😆
You reply is silly.
You are a liar. I win.
Asked and answered (2).
Another lie.
Asked and answered (12).
Yes, the typical alarmist reply, another lie.
Where in AR5 Marty? You have yet to answer, you little liar.
Asked and answered (7).
Marty, you are lying. Your continued lying does not change that.
Asked and answered (11).
Yes, the typical alarmist reply, another lie.
So Marty, where in AR5 can we find the answers to these questions?
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
Come on liar, lie some more! 😆
Asked and answered.
Another lie! 😆
Asked and answered (3).
Another lie. How stupid are you?
Asked and answered (8).
No you didn’t answer me. How stupid are you, liar?
Sorry, gator, gotta go. I don’t know why Steven allows you to post here. You and gail and Andy clog up his blog with childishness.
😆
Why Tony allows me to post? 😆
God you dumbasses really do have serious mental issues.
Yes, the typical alarmist reply is another lie.
Where in AR5 Marty? You have yet to answer, you little liar.
Marty demonstrates the alarmist debating technique. Lie, lie some more, then project and run away.
Martin-
Gail “clog(s) up his blog” with countless extensive quotes from scientific journals and research papers. She brings more science to this discussion than I’ve seen anywhere else, from anyone, on any subject. If you can refute her evidence, by all means, add something to our knowledge. Simply dismissing her mountains of research, without so much as an acknowledgement that she posted it, is the epitome of blind arrogance. Some might even call that childishness. I certainly would.
Ted, Martin has a busy social life. If he had to respond to the posted papers he couldn’t go to the lake!
No, Ted. Most of what Gail posts is just cherry-picked snippets of sciencey stuff that often has nothing at all to do with the subject of the thread she is trying to contribute to. I have the impression she thinks that posting a lot of verbiage will make her look like she knows what she is talking about. Isn’t that how you see it?
Col, I don’t have a busy social life and never said I did. Please stop misrepresenting what I have said. I said I have a life. I see that must be strange to you, but I have no idea what your life must be like, given that you spend so much of it attacking anyone who disagrees with the author of this obscure blog.
Oh, calm down, Marty, I know you said you had “social responsibilities”. We don’t really think you have a “social life” outside this blog. It was just a tease. We like you.
How was it at the lake?
OH WOW!
So peer-reviewed papers are now “cherry-picked snippets of sciencey stuff “
Seems M.Winston Smith can’t even be bothered to notice that the “sciencey stuff ” is peer-reviewed papers. And the snippets are generally the authors abstracts or conclusions.
THIS from someone in the group who considers us Science Deniers? Some one who can’t even do anything but post a link to the Connellated WIki or to a cartoonists website or wave a vague hand towards an IPCC report he hasn’t read one word of?
http://fsymbols.co/pictures/thumbs/1/thumb-rotflmao-gif-1254.jpg
You don’t publish whole papers here, Gail. It would be illegal if you did, I think. You extract snippets from blogs about papers, but what you post is kind of impossible to follow, because it usually has little, if anything, to do with the subject of the thread you post it in.
And then you post that Tom &Jerry toon. You often do that too.It’s inappropriate in a scientific discussion. Don’t you know that? Are you 12?
“You don’t publish whole papers here, Gail. It would be illegal if you did, I think.”
So Martin says backing up your claims to his satisfaction would be illegal, but you’re cherry picking if you don’t. I guess the science IS settled, or you’re under arrest.
Martin-
Most of Gail’s cites come with links to the originals. You’re simply making up complaints, to avoid addressing the research.
“My answers to your questions are correct.”
BULLSHIT !
your Base-level ignorance and incoherence of rational thought is there for all to see.. except yourself.
The only reason SG lets you keep posting your moronic, waste of time and space nonsense, is for comic relief.
OK, just for the record, Marty posted at least 26 lies on this thread alone. And they wonder why they are losing public support…
Marty admits that he is not climate scientist, and from his defensive pejorative responses to criticism I suspect his science background of any kind is minimal. So his understanding of the subject is based on what he chooses to read, and demonstrates little interest in exploring the subject beyond those articles and media stories that agree with what he chooses to believe.
.
“his understanding of the subject is based on what he chooses to read”
I disagree. He has no understanding of the subject. Mindlessly repeating what you’re told is obedience, not understanding. The current “consensus” is that a climate which has been remarkably stable for 4.5 billion years, is subject to unbounded positive feedbacks. Even the most minimal understanding would force one to question the probability that liquid water could survive for so incredibly long, in such a fragile system.
That.
Of all arguments I tried on my Progressive Boulder neighbors and acquaintances, the long-term climate stability and the improbability of catastrophic “runaway” anthropogenic warming leaves them most frequently in a state of mind that Jason Calley calls “confused” if not “speechless”. It’s the moment where they typically switch to the “precautionary principle” argument.
It’s mindless. They have no understanding.
Ted, I’m pretty sure I understand climate science and AGW better than you do.
Then can you demonstrate some of that understanding? I’ve repeatedly tried to engage you in discussion, but you’ve always refused. The biggest problem that I can’t get past, in my understanding of the current “consensus” position, is the same as Jason’s:
By all accounts, without exception, the increased insolation from a doubling of CO2 can not increase the global average temperature more than about 1C. An additional 3-5 times that amount is added, because of claimed positive feedbacks. Are those feedbacks dependent on CO2 specifically, or temperature in general? My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of those feedbacks are temperature dependent. Is that correct? If so, then how was the earth able to cool down from the penultimate interglacial, which, again, by all accounts, peaked at a temperature higher than today’s? Or, if those feedbacks are dependent specifically on CO2 as opposed to temperature, then can you suggest a mechanism?
I’m willing to discuss the holes in my understanding. Jason plainly is, as well, and he’s been unwaveringly polite to you. If everyone else agrees to stay out of it, will you agree to discuss that one point with either him, or me? More generically, would you be willing to debate anyone, one on one? No ganging up, no personal insults. Just a calm discussion with your choice of any single skeptic on this site, on the topic mentioned above. I don’t want to speak for Tony, but he might even be willing to give you a closed forum for such a debate, with only you and your choice of skeptic able to comment. If this could be arranged, would you be willing?
Maybe you should repost your offer Ted, Marty seems to have somehow missed his golden opportunity. I’m sure he can set you and Jason straight.
Ted, I don’t know the complete list of feedbacks, but there are several. Some depend on temperature. Others don’t (if I understand correctly). Water vapor is one. CO2 makes the air warmer; warmer air holds more water; More water in the air blocks more heat. Positive feedback.
Another one is albedo. When the Arctic ocean is covered with white ice, it reflects most of the light back to space. The CO2 doesn’t block reflected light, only reflected heat. When the ice melts because the water and air are warmer, the surface changes from white to dark blue/green. It then reflects less light, absorbs more of it as heat. Most of the heat warms the water, but some is re-emitted as heat. But the increased CO2 blocks more of this heat. Positive feedback. The warmer air and water melt more ice. Positive feedback.
A third is methane and CO2 frozen in the tundra as biomass. As the rising temp thaws the tundra, this biomass rots and releases more CO2 and methane. Positive feedback.
>If so, then how was the earth able to cool down from the penultimate interglacial, which,
>again, by all accounts, peaked at a temperature higher than today’s?
The changes that start and end ice ages/interglacials are mainly changes in earth’s orbit and orientation toward the sun. The Milankovitch cycles. There are three. One takes about 22,000 years, one is about 40,000 years, and the longest one is about 100,000 years. The combine in different ways. http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154612/ Because they act over tens of thousands of years, their effects on climate are minute over the 100+ years since the industrial revolution began. That’s how we know they are not causing the current warming. But they are key to beginning and ending ice ages.
Martin-
The effects of the Milankovitch cycles are considerably less than the calculated direct effects of CO2 changing from 190 to 280 PPM. How do they overcome the combined effects of CO2, and it’s associated feedbacks? I fully understand what you’ve said so far, (concerning this discussion) and I have no particular objection to any of it. I’m far from convinced that any of the positive feedbacks in question are directly CO2 driven, but I think we’re in agreement that the majority are not, leaving current temperature as the primary driver of said feedbacks. I’m working under the assumption that century scale temperature changes are generally unrelated to Milankovitch cycles, so I’d agree that any warming or cooling today is from a separate cause. But my question is regarding the peaks and troughs specifically. Is there any theoretically described mechanism capable of reversing the feedback loop? If the Milankovitch cycles can cause, for instance 2C of warming from a glacial trough, and CO2 and it’s related feedbacks contribute another 8C, how is it possible to drop back down to the trough? If, at the peak of an interglacial, the Milankovitch cycles suddenly pulled back their entire 2C, would you not still have most of the 8C rise from the feedbacks? The initial trigger for those feedbacks was a rise of 2C, a condition that’s still more than met. Are you proposing some sort of directional equilibrium to the feedbacks, whereby the current Milankovitch state determines whether feedbacks are positive or negative?
Ted, the Milankovitch cycles have maxima and minima, where, for this discussion, a maximum can refer to when earth is farthest from the sun and a minimum refers to when earth is closest to the sun, and a maximum can refer to when the north pole is tilted most toward the sun and a minimum refers to when the north pole is tilted most away from the sun. These are inflection points, where the trend changes from cooling to warming or from warming to cooling.
Say we are at the coldest inflection point; we are at the coldest point of an ice age. Now the orbit of earth begins to change back, to move earth closer to the sun. It’s an inflection point. All it does in the climate is slightly change the system so that the dead vegetation freezes a little later in Autumn and thaws a little earlier in Spring. Just a minute or two. And the sea ice starts forming a little later in Autumn and starts melting a little earlier in Spring.A minute or two.
We’re talking about statistically, not every year. It isn’t monotonic like the changes in sunrise and sunset times each day throughout the year. You can’t see the change in trend from negative to positive, or from positive to negative, if you look at the graph for only a few years. You have to look at the graph for a thousand years.
But at the inflection point, the climate system changes from being a net storer of CO2 to being a net releaser of CO2. That’s when the change in the greenhouse effect changes from being slightly negative to being slightly positive. Then the positive feedback of CO2 begins. This explanation is the best I have seen:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Martin-
After all that, we’re right back where we started. If CO2 can increase temperatures catastrophically, without any change in solar input, how do the interglacials end? We have two elements causing temperatures to increase; Orbital variations, and atmospheric physics. The orbital variations, by themselves, have the power to increase temperatures. The atmospheric changes, by themselves, have the power to increase temperatures. When you remove the orbital changes, the result is that the warming due to atmospheric physics is reduced by that same amount. If the atmospheric physics produces more warming than the orbital variations, then temperatures continue to rise even if the solar forcing is reversed. The consensus position is that the warming power of the atmospheric physics is roughly an order of magnitude greater than that of the Millankovitch cycles.
“What you refer to as “its own temperature effects” directly depends on the energy input from the sun. When the Milankovitch cycles reach the inflection point, the total energy reaching earth decreases ever so slightly, which means “its own temperature effects” CAN NO LONGER “support the elevated temperature.” The energy required is no longer there. The CO2 is not a source of energy. It allows energy from the sun to reach earth as light, and it prevents that energy from radiating back to space as heat. When the amount of light coming in decreases because the inflection point is reached, the amount of heat trying to get out decreases, so the temperature begins to fall again, and the CO2 level begins to drop.”
“Think about waking up in bed on a very cold night. You need another blanket, but when you pull the new blanket on, it takes some time for the temperature under the blankets where you are to increase. Your body doesn’t generate more heat. It outputs the same amount of energy it was generating before you added the new blanket, but now more of the heat is prevented from escaping because of the thicker cover.”
Do you not see the contradiction there? That contradiction is the basis of my belief that the current consensus is mistaken. For both of those statements to be true, we must accept that, upon any long term increase in temperature, regardless of the cause, the CO2 cycle will magnify that increase until it runs out of warming capacity. More heat causes more CO2. More CO2 causes more heat. The only possible way to reconcile that cycle with the observed glacial cycle is to assume that the peak Eimian temperature represented the maximum warming capacity of CO2. Unbounded positive feedbacks can not exist. There must be a boundary. Observations demonstrate very clearly that said boundary is roughly 2C warmer than current temperatures.
Hey Ted! “The current “consensus” is that a climate which has been remarkably stable for 4.5 billion years, is subject to unbounded positive feedbacks. ”
Nicely put! There were several points that pushed me toward a sceptical view of the CAGW hypothesis, and what you mention there is one of them. We all start out not knowing the evidence or the reasons, but when I first ran across the claim that positive feed backs would increase the warming from not-too-bad to catastrophic, I was deeply puzzled. The positive feedback was not a primary response to the CO2, it was a response to the proposed warming from CO2. The CO2 warms things up (which seemed plausible at first blush) and then the warming puts more water vapor into the atmosphere, which warms us some more and then THAT warming puts MORE water vapor, and so on. Wait a minute! The cycle described would apply not only to CO2, but to ANY warming! Every random natural fluctuation would push us into positive feedback of water vapor. Any added warmth would tip us into catastrophe if mere warming was the cause of more warming. So, how come we were not already spiraling into thermagedon millions of years ago? It did not make sense from a system stability standpoint. It still does not make sense.
I don’t grasp what you are getting at, Jason, but it sounds like you are stressing “catastrophe” too much. See my reply to Ted above. Natural fluctuations have causes. What you are calling random is treated as noise in statistical analysis, and it is factored out.
Martin-
I think you’re missing the point Jason is making. He’s not referring to random fluctuations at all. He’s referring to the fundamental nature of a positive feedback. It can only go in one direction. A steady ratcheting up, in this case. If every temperature rise itself causes still more rise, then either the initial conditions must be maintained forever, or the system can never return to them. In my view, there are only three ways around that feedback problem.
First, the feedbacks are simply an artifact of measurement errors, and don’t exist. That seems highly unlikely to me, and probably to you as well. I doubt you’ll object to me ruling that one out without further discussion.
Second, the feedbacks cancel each other out. This one would seem to have some level of support to it, as all parties can point to both positive and negative feedbacks. But this also seems less than acceptable, considering the level of change we do see. ~10C from peak to trough in a glacial cycle is considerably more than any known mechanism can explain, by itself. Without some new understanding, I think this one can only be part of the answer, at most.
The third would be something akin to bounded chaos. Our current understanding is that temperatures slowly drift downward toward a lower limit for tens of thousands of years, only to shoot very quickly back to an upper limit, then repeat the cycle. Both the lower and upper limits appear fairly stable, which suggests a very strong mechanism constraining the movement. I don’t claim to know the nature of those limits, but I’d suggest they could be related to the depth at which ocean water hits maximum density. If 4C water starts 10 feet below the surface at the equator, there’s not much room for circulation, and the poles get really cold. But as that depth increases, an ever growing mass of water needs to be heated, and that heat can only come from the atmosphere. With little actual change in the solar insolation, runaway heating would hit a fairly solid boundary as the oceans tried to catch up. Cooling, on the other hand, would be comparatively gradual.
Assuming the boundary option correct, (ignoring my guess as to it’s cause) the question becomes one of whether a few hundred PPM difference in CO2 concentration, by itself, can cause enough of a temperature rise to lift the planet above that upper limit, which is still at least 2C away. I suggest that it’s entirely correct to ignore the temperature directed feedbacks, as those applied equally to the previous times the upper limit was tested. That’s why it’s important to know whether individual feedbacks are products of temperature, or CO2. So if we assume the natural state is gradual cooling, which all sources appear to agree on, warming caused directly by CO2 is immune to the upper limit, which is a worst case possibility, and 1C per doubling of CO2, which is the current consensus position, we’re left with a need for at least an additional 1,200 PPM of CO2, just to reach that limit. From there, it seems unlikely that the limit would just crumble, and runway warming would take over, but I admit that the possibility exists.
So, from my reading of currently accepted theory, even if global warming is a problem, we should have several hundred years left before there’s any chance of catastrophic changes. What mistakes have I made?
You are misunderstanding the nature of feedbacks in the climate system. Each feedback effect gets weaker, if the original cause doesn’t keep increasing. That’s why we have to stop adding CO2 to the system: See this explanation:
Does positive feedback necessarily mean runaway warming?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/positive-feedback-runaway-warming.htm
Martin-
I think you’re off by a derivative in your description of the feedbacks. It’s not necessary for temperatures to keep increasing, in order to maintain a given level of feedback. It’s only necessary for temperature to remain the same. I assume that’s what you meant. As you described it, they would be negative feedbacks.
Note that I’m not arguing the point of runaway warming, and I don’t believe you are either. I mentioned it only for the sake of stating that I don’t think it’slikely, which appears to be your position as well. My understanding of the theory is that the feedbacks would act as a linear multiplier, rather than an exponent, at least for the small input changes we’re discussing.
As to those feedbacks, what you describe is why it’s important whether those feedbacks are dependent on CO2 directly, or just on temperature. If they’re temperature dependent, then a 1C rise from any cause would lead to a 4-6C total increase. Once you’ve achieved that 4-6C total, the initial input change could be removed, and you’d still keep the large majority of the 3-5C feedback, because the temperature is still elevated. Most of the extra water vapor remains in the air, the ice caps are still reduced, etc. It’s only if those feedbacks are directly CO2 driven that they’d disappear with the input change. And that’s where I find fault in the theory. The main feedback appears to be water vapor. I’m unaware of any mechanism by which increasing CO2 would directly increase water vapor. It appears to be entirely temperature driven. In fact, because water and CO2 are sucking up overlapping bandwidths, warming caused by CO2 should cause less water feedback than warming from other sources would. This would tend to slightly cancel out the forcing effect of changing CO2 levels, making it even harder to explain the peaks and troughs of glacial cycles.
In regards to the article you linked to, it basically makes the same point I made above, that the climate is in a state similar to bounded chaos, with clear limits to possible temperature fluctuations. The ice core records show that we’re currently about 2C below the upper boundary, given pre industrial conditions. If the only change from there is CO2, then we’re in the position I described above, and need 1,200 PPM more CO2 to reach that boundary. The article agrees with my assessment that we wouldn’t crash through it.
I understand the Milankovitch cycles very well. I plead nolo contendere on the input strength of those cycles, and on the mechanism of CO2 lagging temperature, as I don’t believe those subjects alter my questions. (Interesting, yes. But as your linked article doesn’t mention any mechanism beyond the basic ocean CO2 sink, it’s of no use to this discussion) I think we’re in agreement that the direct Milankovitch forcings, by themselves, don’t have anywhere near the effect necessary to explain the glacial cycles, leaving the large majority to the feedbacks. The fact remains that, at the peak of an interglacial, all of those feedbacks are at their maximums, at least for that particular cycle. Removing orbital input forcings doesn’t remove the CO2 or water vapor from the air. Think of the glacial cycle trough as the ground. Put down a 1 foot brick. That’s the Milankovitch input. That causes feedbacks. We’ll represent those feedbacks as an additional 5 bricks, stacked on top of the first. When the cycle reverses, that first brick is removed. But that still leaves 5 bricks sitting there. As those bricks are there because of the temperature increase caused by orbital changes, and not by the orbital changes themselves, any input will sustain them. They still have their own input propping them up. And that’s still my fundamental question about this theory. What mechanism removes those other 5 bricks, at the end of an interglacial?
“It’s only necessary for temperature to remain the same. ”
“The fact remains that, at the peak of an interglacial, all of those feedbacks are at their maximums, at least for that particular cycle.”
Both those claims are wrong, Ted. Your understanding of the mechanism of feedbacks is wrong:
Understanding Climate Feedbacks
http://www.skepticalscience.com/understanding-climate-feedbacks.html
“I think we’re in agreement that the direct Milankovitch forcings, by themselves, don’t have anywhere near the effect necessary to explain the glacial cycles,”
We are not in agreement. All they have to do is cause the amount of solar energy reaching earth to begin increasing, which begins the warming process, and cause the amount of solar energy reaching earth to start decreasing, which begins the cooling process.
“Glacials and interglacials occur in fairly regular repeated cycles. The timing is governed to a large degree by predictable cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit, which affect the amount of sunlight reaching different parts of Earth’s surface. The three orbital variations are: (1) changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun (eccentricity), (2) shifts in the tilt of Earth’s axis (obliquity), and (3) the wobbling motion of Earth’s axis (precession).”
The beginnings and endings of the glacials and interglacials correspond to the Milankovitch cycles.
If you have an alternate explanation that fits the data, post it here.
http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/
“Removing orbital input forcings doesn’t remove the CO2 or water vapor from the air.”
Yes, it does. It happens over a very long time. The amount of energy reaching earth from the sun begins to drop very slowly. That missing energy is required to maintain the water vapor and CO2 levels.
“As those bricks are there because of the temperature increase caused by orbital changes, and not by the orbital changes themselves, any input will sustain them. They still have their own input propping them up.”
Again that is a fundamental misunderstanding. The CO2 and water vapor don’t “have their own input propping them up.” They only trap heat trying to leave earth. The heat is energy that came from the sun as light. When it struck the earth, it was converted to heat and re-radiated out, but the CO2 and water vapor block it, trapping it in the atmosphere and the oceans.
But when the Milankovitch cycles begin reducing the amount of energy reaching earth from the sun as light, the CO2 and water vapor trap less re-radiated energy. BTW, when that happens, the water vapor level will fall rapidly. The CO2 level will take a very long time to reduce.
And, I forgot to say, as the CO2 and water vapor prevent less heat from escaping, the atmosphere and oceans begin to cool, very slowly, and then the natural CO2 balance begins to decline as less CO2 is added to the atmosphere and, eventually, the CO2 level begins to decline again.
Martin-
“Both those claims are wrong, Ted. Your understanding of the mechanism of feedbacks is wrong”
I fail to see how anything in the linked article is relevant to either claim, so I don’t understand your objection well enough to either agree or disagree. I can only go back to my own understanding. If a constantly increasing input is necessary to maintain stable temperatures, how does that qualify as a positive feedback? And if feedbacks are temperature driven, then wouldn’t the maximum feedback correspond with the maximum temperature? I don’t mean the maximum possible feedback, only the maximum observed, for that particular cycle. I’m open to any alternative you present, but I can’t think of any myself. Perhaps you could quote the specific statements from your link that make your case. I agreed with those claims without contest, so it’s not even a factual dispute. I simply can’t identify the information on that page which you believe supports your assertion.
“We are not in agreement. All they have to do is cause the amount of solar energy reaching earth to begin increasing, which begins the warming process, and cause the amount of solar energy reaching earth to start decreasing, which begins the cooling process. ”
I don’t understand your premise in this statement. The “warming process” to which you refer IS the feedbacks. Let me phrase it differently. If there were no CO2 or water on earth, would the Milankovitch cycles still cause the observed ~10C temperature swings? The SKS article you linked to explicitly states that they wouldn’t:
“In the case of warming, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained as follows: as ocean temperatures rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend, leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the cause and effect of further warming. This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
If your position differs from theirs, could you explain yours in a little more depth?
I also have no objection to anything in the linked UGS article, But again, I see nothing in it addressing the questions at hand. You’ll note that article has no mention at all of CO2 or water vapor. Atmospheric physics is entirely absent from that article.
No, I absolutely don’t have a better explanation for the inflection points of glacial cycles. My problem is that I don’t understand the mechanism by which the Milankovitch cycles overcome the feedback inertia, once the cycle described in your SKS link is started. Temperatures increase very rapidly, then hit an apparently impenetrable barrier. My question is about the mechanism by which that barrier causes a feedback reversal. If the feedbacks are positive, I don’t understand how removal of the orbital forcings can remove the CO2 and water vapor from the atmosphere, once they’re there.
“If a constantly increasing input is necessary to maintain stable temperatures, how does that qualify as a positive feedback?”
I’m sure I didn’t say that, but if I did, that’s not what I meant. A constantly increasing input of CO2 is not necessary to maintain a stable global average surface temperature. But it is necessary to maintain the positive feedbacks. If we stop adding CO2 now, so that the level stays at 400 ppm from now on, then the global average surface temperature will continue to rise for many years, because of the positive feedbacks. But the feedbacks themselves will decrease over those same many years, and the rate of temperature increase will decrease too, down to 0, and a new equilibrium will be reached. Then, as long as we keep the CO2 at 400 ppm, the equilibrium will be maintained by nature, subject to the natural forcings of Milankovitch cycles and variations in solar irradiance. That was the situation before the industrial revolution.
“The “warming process” to which you refer IS the feedbacks.”
No, “warming process” here refers to the changes in the Milankovitch cycles that bring earth closer to the sun, or that tilt the northern hemisphere more toward the sun. An increase in solar irradiance can also start the process. The feedbacks then are the natural processes on earth that result, first, in less CO2 being captured in frozen vegetation and less ice being formed, then, second, that result in more CO2 being released because of earlier thawing of frozen vegetation and earlier melting of sea ice around the edges, resulting in a darkening of more sea surface causing more energy to be absorbed by the water, etc. But these are very gradual process that require many thousands of years. Once the warming process get started, the increasing CO2 becomes the forcing, but it would reach equilibrium were it not for the continuing change (very gradual) of the Milankovitch cycles.
In fact, the earth was cooling before the industrial revolution, and it would be cooling right now because total solar irradiance has dropped slightly over the last few decades during the period of most of the anthropogenic warming.
“If there were no CO2 or water on earth, would the Milankovitch cycles still cause the observed ~10C temperature swings?”
No, there would be nothing to trap the heat. The average surface temperature would be about 30C lower, and we would not have evolved.
“My problem is that I don’t understand the mechanism by which the Milankovitch cycles overcome the feedback inertia, once the cycle described in your SKS link is started. ”
There is no feedback inertia here. I think you are referring to something like the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus, but that won’t happen here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/positive-feedback-runaway-warming-advanced.htm
“Temperatures increase very rapidly, then hit an apparently impenetrable barrier. My question is about the mechanism by which that barrier causes a feedback reversal. If the feedbacks are positive, I don’t understand how removal of the orbital forcings can remove the CO2 and water vapor from the atmosphere, once they’re there.”
The barrier is simply that when the Milankovitch inflection point is reached, the amount of energy reaching earth from the sun decreases slightly. Once that happens, the positive feedbacks will decrease. If the amount of energy reaching earth then remained constant, the feedbacks would eventually decrease to 0, and a temperature equilibrium would be reached. But the Milankovitch cycles continue to move earth away from the sun so that the poisitive feedbacks become negative. CO2 begins to be stored as frozen vegetation and sea ice begins to turn the surface of more of the northern hemisphere white so that it reflects more light back into space. Eventually there is another ice age.
“the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus,”
ROFLMAO.
Your absolute ignorance again shos itself , from the SkS moron site, of course.
There is NO greenhouse effect on Venus.
It is an atmospheric mass effect.. pure and simple.
At the same atmospheric pressure as on Earth, the temperature of Venus is almost exactly what it should be relative to its distance from the Sun, despite having an atmospheric almost totally CO2
Martin is WRONG, WRONG , WRONG.. as he ALWAYS is.
He is a LIAR and a propaganda monkey, with zero understanding of anything to do with climate science.
It will be HILARIOUS to watch him scurry back under his cesspool of a rock as the global temperatures start to drop over the nex few years 🙂
Martin-
I think I see where we’re talking past each other. You appear to have missed it, or misunderstood, when I conceded the feedbacks as linear, rather than exponential:
“My understanding of the theory is that the feedbacks would act as a linear multiplier, rather than an exponent, at least for the small input changes we’re discussing.”
You’re emphasizing the amount of time involved, when humans weren’t in the process, while I’m jumping past the process, to the equilibrium point. When I say “feedback”, I’m referring to the total difference in global temperature caused by changes in atmospheric physics, rather than solar input. When I say the feedbacks continue after the increased insolation from orbital forcing is removed, I’m referring to that already established delta T, not the processes which would continue to in crease temperatures. It’s sloppy language, but I don’t know of any better way to say it. I guess “the results of the feedbacks” might be a more appropriate term. Basically, my contention is that, by my understanding of the theory, 1C of warming, regardless of how it’s induced, will create feedbacks which will eventually stabilize at around 4C of total increase, once equilibrium in achieved. From there, no further changes in input or chemistry are required to maintain that 4C. Are we on the same page now, am I still murky?
Because I’m speaking of the equilibrium state, I’ve referred to the feedbacks continuing after the initial input is removed. I didn’t mean that the temperature keeps going up. I meant that the elements of atmospheric physics keeping that temperature elevated are still there. Only the initial trigger has been removed. So the poles still have decreased albedo, and the air still has elevated water vapor and CO2, among other things. Those changes continue to cause the same net effects after the orbital changes as they did before. In order to return to the glacial trough, those elements need to disappear. Yet the total effect of those elements is more than an order of magnitude greater than any known effects of the Milankovitch cycles. Of those, only eccentricity actually changes the total energy the earth receives from the sun, (obliquity and precession only change how that energy is spread) and the total effect is less than .5W/m2, which is roughly a quarter of the claimed direct effect of human produced CO2. Ignoring other feedbacks, the CO2 change from glacial trough to peak should cause several times the warming that eccentricity can cause. How does a reduction in solar insolation totaling less than .5W/m2 erase the atmospheric insolation, which has by then been increased more than ten times that amount?
I guess the most important question then becomes, do you believe that warming from orbital changes is somehow more powerful than an equal amount of warming from atmospheric changes?
Referring to the “barrier” at the upper temperature limit of interglacials, your description seems statistically incompatible with the observations. The maxima are remarkably steady, with the last several all topping out within a degree or two of each other. The Milankovitch cycles show no such consistency. Looking at the total solar forcing, we’re at a very unremarkable spot right now, toward the middle of the range, while almost at the peak of an interglacial:
https://www.withfriendship.com/images/d/16439/milankovitch-cycles.gif
The heights of previous interglacial temperature peaks also show little relationship to the magnitude of solar forcing. While this would definitely support the contention that atmospheric physics is the dominant player (compared to orbital variations) in the magnitude of temperature swings, it’s not at all compatible with the contention that Milankovitch cycles are able to fix the maximum temperature. There appears to be no correlation at all. Something is plainly missing. And that something appears to cause a sharp reversal when temperatures rise to about 2C above current conditions.
“But the Milankovitch cycles continue to move earth away from the sun so that the poisitive feedbacks become negative.”
The Milankovitch cycles can have no effect on orbital distance. They affect obliquity, precession, and eccentricity. The energy required to move a planet to a more distant orbit would be, quite literally, astronomical. Milankovitch cycles are gravitationally neutral.
And finally, on your posts I missed yesterday, (I clicked post, then left for work. I didn’t see your second and third responses until this morning) :
“Again that is a fundamental misunderstanding. The CO2 and water vapor don’t “have their own input propping them up.” They only trap heat trying to leave earth. The heat is energy that came from the sun as light.”
You’re correct that “input” wasn’t the proper word to use there. “Effect” would have been better. Of course neither water nor CO2 can produce their own energy. But the entire basis of this discussion is the assertion that their presence in the atmosphere increases the net global temperature. And that fact remains. Once the atmospheric chemistry is altered, it’s own temperature effects should tend to support the elevated temperature that caused the change. Because those effects are considerably greater than the effects of the Milankovitch “trigger”, they would tend to become self supporting. Consider my shop as an example of what I’m saying. I started with money. I used that money to buy 1 machine. That brought in enough profit to buy more machines, which themselves increased my profit. Those additional machines would be the feedbacks. My first machine cost me about $8,000. If I were to now lose $8,000, I wouldn’t suddenly lose the capacity to support myself. Even if I had to sell that first machine to raise the money, I’d still have the other machines I bought with the profits I made off the first. The “feedbacks” would live on, and I’d continue to have more income than I had at the beginning of the cycle. The cycle can only go back to the bottom if I lose all the machines. (been there, done that, forest fires suck) That’s the part I’m trying to understand. How does the loss of the first machine (increased solar insolation) cause those new machines (CO2, water vapor, etc) to disappear from the atmosphere, particularly when every one of them produces more profit than the first?
“Basically, my contention is that, by my understanding of the theory, 1C of warming, regardless of how it’s induced, will create feedbacks which will eventually stabilize at around 4C of total increase, once equilibrium in achieved.”
I don’t know what the actual expected numbers are, but they are properly expressed as ranges as opposed to discrete values. However, the actual numbers don’t matter when we are talking about how the process changes from cooling to warming and from warming to cooling. I’m pretty sure that the real mechanism is much as I have described it.
“When I say the feedbacks continue after the increased insolation from orbital forcing is removed, I’m referring to that already established delta T, not the processes which would continue to in crease temperatures.”
That’s correct, or that is also my understanding.
“From there, no further changes in input or chemistry are required to maintain that 4C. Are we on the same page now, am I still murky?”
I think we are on the same page, but we must add that the energy input must not change, if the system is to maintain the equilibrium temperature.
“I meant that the elements of atmospheric physics keeping that temperature elevated are still there.”
“Those changes continue to cause the same net effects after the orbital changes as they did before.”
Yes, but we have reached the equilibrium temperature, so we are many years after the energy input stopped increasing. The global average temperature has reached its maximum for this warming.
“In order to return to the glacial trough, those elements need to disappear. Yet the total effect of those elements is more than an order of magnitude greater than any known effects of the Milankovitch cycles. ”
That doesn’t matter. Nor do “those elements need to disappear.” They only need to begin decreasing. That process begins as soon as the energy input begins to drop, which will happen when the Milankovitch cycle(s) begin moving earth further from the sun and/or tilting the north pole more away from the sun. Note that the hemispheres are not equal here. Glacials/interglacials come down from the Arctic and retreat to the Arctic.
“How does a reduction in solar insolation totaling less than .5W/m2 erase the atmospheric insolation, which has by then been increased more than ten times that amount?”
It doesn’t. It only beings the process, Once there is less energy entering earth’s system, it begins to move off the maximum it achieved. But the process is very slow. The sea ice minimum will occur a little earlier in September; the sea ice maximum will occur a little later in march. A little more vegetation will remain frozen all year instead of rotting and returning its CO2 to the atmosphere. Over tens of thousands of years, these minute changes will result in another glacial.
“I guess the most important question then becomes, do you believe that warming from orbital changes is somehow more powerful than an equal amount of warming from atmospheric changes?”
First, I think it’s a mistake to compare them that way. At the Milankovitch inflection point, when temperature equilibrium has been reached. At that point, the greenhouse effect isn’t changing anything because it isn’t changing. Then the orbital/orientational changes begin moving in the “opposite direction,” so they will be the only cause of long-term change at the inflection point (I put “opposite direction” in quotes because, as your graph shows, there are three waves that interact in irregular ways, but there is a wave shape over the long term). But once the inflection is passed and the climate changes from warming to cooling (because the energy input has decreased slightly), then the CO2/methane/H2O forcing begin to take over. The don’t reach equilibrium because as the feedbacks dampen out, the Milankovitch cycles continue and the total energy decreases a bit more. It is only after the inflection points that the long-term equilibrium can be reached and the process reversed.
“The Milankovitch cycles can have no effect on orbital distance. They affect obliquity, precession, and eccentricity.”
I should have said average distance from the sun. Obliquity affects that.
“Once the atmospheric chemistry is altered, it’s own temperature effects should tend to support the elevated temperature that caused the change. Because those effects are considerably greater than the effects of the Milankovitch “trigger”, they would tend to become self supporting.”
That’s the fundamental misunderstanding. What you refer to as “its own temperature effects” directly depends on the energy input from the sun. When the Milankovitch cycles reach the inflection point, the total energy reaching earth decreases ever so slightly, which means “its own temperature effects” CAN NO LONGER “support the elevated temperature.” The energy required is no longer there. The CO2 is not a source of energy. It allows energy from the sun to reach earth as light, and it prevents that energy from radiating back to space as heat. When the amount of light coming in decreases because the inflection point is reached, the amount of heat trying to get out decreases, so the temperature begins to fall again, and the CO2 level begins to drop. But once that starts happening, the changes in CO2 become the stronger forcing.
I don’t know what else to tell you.
Martin-
Happy New Year!
“But the process is very slow. The sea ice minimum will occur a little earlier in September; the sea ice maximum will occur a little later in march. A little more vegetation will remain frozen all year instead of rotting and returning its CO2 to the atmosphere. Over tens of thousands of years, these minute changes will result in another glacial.”
Yes, you’ve sufficiently stressed that it’s slow. But slow is a time scale, not a process. Those changes you describe are effects of cooling that’s already started. Yes, they can add to that cooling, (except for the frozen vegetation, which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, as a CO2 sink) but they can’t begin the process. CO2 and presumably water vapor continue to rise for hundreds of years after temperatures peak. The consensus is that, even ignoring water, the CO2 alone should increase the global temperature by several times more than the direct effects of the MIllankovitch cycles. How does 2 degrees of CO2 warming not have the ability to maintain the water vapor changes caused by half a degree of Millankovitch warming?
Additionally, according to your UGS link,
http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/
the temperature swings we’re discussing aren’t necessarily slow:
“On a shorter time scale, global temperatures fluctuate often and rapidly. Various records reveal numerous large, widespread, abrupt climate changes over the past 100,000 years. One of the more recent intriguing findings is the remarkable speed of these changes. Within the incredibly short time span (by geologic standards) of only a few decades or even a few years, global temperatures have fluctuated by as much as 15°F (8°C) or more.”
“I should have said average distance from the sun. Obliquity affects that. ”
No, obliquity can have no bearing at all on distance from the sun. Nor can axial precession. (apsidal precession can have a very slight effect, depending on the position of Jupiter) The only significant players in the total energy received by earth are eccentricity, and solar output. Interestingly, IPCC5 lists total solar output variation in a typical 11 year cycle as fully a third of the total peak to trough variation calculated for the Millankovitch cycles.
“That’s the fundamental misunderstanding. What you refer to as “its own temperature effects” directly depends on the energy input from the sun. When the Milankovitch cycles reach the inflection point, the total energy reaching earth decreases ever so slightly, which means “its own temperature effects” CAN NO LONGER “support the elevated temperature.” The energy required is no longer there. The CO2 is not a source of energy. It allows energy from the sun to reach earth as light, and it prevents that energy from radiating back to space as heat. When the amount of light coming in decreases because the inflection point is reached, the amount of heat trying to get out decreases, so the temperature begins to fall again, and the CO2 level begins to drop. But once that starts happening, the changes in CO2 become the stronger forcing.”
If I understand that correctly, you’re saying that the feedback effects can’t maintain themselves without the increased solar forcing from the Millankovitch cycles. Because they can only trap the energy provided by the sun, they can’t maintain elevated temperatures without elevated solar input. I think I’m starting to get it.
correction-
“Interestingly, IPCC5 lists total solar output variation in a typical 11 year cycle as fully a third of the total peak to trough variation calculated for the Millankovitch cycles.”
That should read:
Interestingly, IPCC5 lists total solar output variation BETWEEN typical 11 year cycles as fully a third of the total peak to trough variation calculated for the Millankovitch cycles.
“No, obliquity can have no bearing at all on distance from the sun. Nor can axial precession. (apsidal precession can have a very slight effect, depending on the position of Jupiter) The only significant players in the total energy received by earth are eccentricity, and solar output.”
Sorry, you’re right. I confused obliquity with eccentricity. I mean eccentricity. Here is the explanation: Eccentricity of Orbit: Earth travels around the Sun along a flat surface called the plane of the ecliptic, called that because eclipses occur when the Moon intersects this plane. The path taken along this plane is almost a circle, but not quite. It is elliptical, with the Sun just off center as one ‘foci’ of the ellipse. Gravitational pull of other planets causes the path to become slightly more or slightly less elliptical. In other words, it becomes more or less of a flattened circle. Venus, because it is close to Earth, and Jupiter, because it is so massive, have the greatest effect on the eccentricity. There are peaks in eccentricity every 95,000 years, but superimposed on those are larger peaks at 125,000 and 400,000 years. When the orbit is more elliptical, the perihelion is closer to the Sun and the aphelion is farther away than when the orbit is more circular.
Note that regardless of the eccentricity, the period of the orbit is the same: 1 year. With the sun at one focus of the ellipse earth travels around, the constant one year period means that when the orbit is most eccentric, earth moves faster when it passes near to the sun and slower when it passes the opposite focus of the ellipse.That means earth is moving slowest in its orbit when it is furthest away from the sun. As explained above, these peaks in eccentricity come at 95,000, 125,000, and 400,000 years. These periods when earth is farthest from the sun correspond to the glacial periods.
When earth’s orbit is most circular, earth is closer to the sun for the entire orbit than it is for most of the eccentric orbit. The key point here is that when the Milankovitch cycles reach an inflection point, where the orbit is circular and now begins to become eccentric, the amount of energy reaching earth is at its maximum. We have agreed that the global average temperature reaches its maximum at this point, and it reaches a state of equilibrium. The amount of energy reaching earth as photons is at its maximum, and the feedbacks are in equilibrium. They are no longer increasing the temperature. The system is maxed out.
We have to agree on that before proceeding.
Assuming we agree. The Milanlkovitch cycles now begin making earth’s orbit less circular, more eccentric. As each orbit becomes more eccentric, earth spends more time going around the focus at the opposite end of the ellipse from the focus where the sun is, so each year for the next many tens of thousands of years, earth spends more and more time further from the sun, and less time at the other end when it is near the sun. Effectively, each winter becomes a little longer and each summer becomes a little shorter. Less energy reaches earth as photons during those long winters. This is what changes the process from warming to cooling. It doesn’t have to overcome anything, because to maintain the maximum global average temperature requires maintaining the maximum energy input, which only happens with the most circular orbit. As the orbit becomes more eccentric, earth receives less energy from the sun for a longer and longer part of the year.
Therefore the maximum temperature cannot be maintained. As it decreases, the feedbacks will become weaker, faster, until they go negative. CO2 begins to be stored in frozen vegetation, etc, and the eventual result is another ice age.
Then there will be an absolute minimum, when the orbit is most eccentric. This is the other inflection point, when earth is deepest in the glacial period. The cooling ends, and the global average temperature again reaches equilibrium, as well as the feedbacks. Now the orbit begins to become less eccentric, more circular, and the warming begins again.
“Interestingly, IPCC5 lists total solar output variation in a typical 11 year cycle as fully a third of the total peak to trough variation calculated for the Millankovitch cycles.”
Yes, but that doesn’t matter because 11 years is very short compared to 95,000 years. It is simply noise in the long-term signal, so it is factored out in the graph you showed.
“If I understand that correctly, you’re saying that the feedback effects can’t maintain themselves without the increased solar forcing from the Millankovitch cycles. Because they can only trap the energy provided by the sun, they can’t maintain elevated temperatures without elevated solar input. I think I’m starting to get it.”
That’s essentially correct. At the inflection point, the energy reaching earth as photons stops increasing. It starts decreasing as soon as the inflection point is passed, but we can think of it as being stable for some time. Then the average temperature stops increasing because of increasing energy (the energy is no longer increasing), but the feedbacks continue to raise the temperature for some time, until they reach equilibrium as well.
You can think of the feedbacks as being the vibrations you hear, when they bang the gong at the end of “Nights In White Satin” by the Moody Blues. As the vibrations become smaller, the sound dies away. If you don’t keep banging the gong, the sound ends. If you don’t keep adding more energy, the feedbacks reach equilibrium. The difference between my gong analogy and temperature feedbacks is the temperature feedbacks are still there, but they are constant because the energy reach earth from the sun is constant.
Then the orbit starts becoming eccentric, and the energy input decreases ever so slightly. The temperature and the feedbacks then must decrease as well. The system keeps trying to reach a new equilibrium, but because the orbit is slowly becoming more eccentric, as soon as a new equilibrium is almost reached, the energy reaching earth decreases a tiny bit more, and the process continues.
Martin-
If, in the absence of elevated solar forcing, atmospheric changes don’t have enough power to maintain an already established temperature, then how can CO2 by itself have the power to increase the global temperature on it’s own, beyond any level seen in the past 3 million years? Even the very ambitious RCP4.5 scenario projects that level of warming within the next several decades:
http://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/uploads/AR5_temps_1850_faq.png
http://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/uploads/Hansen_65_million_temp_rate.png
“If, in the absence of elevated solar forcing, atmospheric changes don’t have enough power to maintain an already established temperature, then how can CO2 by itself have the power to increase the global temperature on it’s own, ”
I’m not sure what you mean. It is true that total solar irradiance has dropped slightly over the last decades, during the period when the global average temperature has risen the most. Earth would be cooling if we were not adding 30+ gigatons of CO2 to the system each year. But the solar forcing isn’t absent. It’s just not increasing. I don’t know where we are in the Milankovitch cycles, so I don’t know whether they are causing warming or cooling, but their effect is so small over the period of the industrial revolution that we can ignore it.
That leaves the greenhouse effect. The solar forcing is there, but it is constant. What is changing rapidly (geological time) is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Think about waking up in bed on a very cold night. You need another blanket, but when you pull the new blanket on, it takes some time for the temperature under the blankets where you are to increase. Your body doesn’t generate more heat. It outputs the same amount of energy it was generating before you added the new blanket, but now more of the heat is prevented from escaping because of the thicker cover. Eventually, the temperature reaches a new equilibrium and the temperature under the blankets stops rising, but it takes some time to reach that equilibrium.
If we stopped adding CO2 to the system right now, the global average temperature would continue to rise for many years because the feedbacks will take that long to reach equilibrium. But we are still adding more CO2 to the system, so the blankets are getting thicker.
That much we know. That much is settled science. The amount that the global average temperature will rise (usually called climate sensitivity) is not settled science, but we can project ranges of possible temperatures based on different scenarios (usually 3) of how much CO2 we keep adding. I think the numbers you have been using are the most likely outcome based on continuing our current rate of adding CO2.
I can’t show you the math here. You have to read the papers on climate sensitivity. I think this is the best source for those papers: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm
OMG….. seriously???
The moronic link to the climate illiterates at SkS.
And the even more MORONIC blanket analogy.
Tell me Martin, how does a blanket cool you when you get too warm?
Because that is what the atmosphere does.
Its a childish, kindergarten analogy that shows your total lack of any sort of understanding of anything….
but CHILD-LIKE WILFUL IGNORANCE is all you have, as you keep amply demonstrating.
On December 29, 2015 at 6:43 pm you said
“I’m not posting comments in this thread anymore”
YOU ARE A LIAR … even to yourself.
Andy-
Martin came back to this thread because he finally relented to my incessant begging for a debate. At this point, it’s looking like the debate really IS over, since we’ve come full circle. I never expected to convince him, but I held out hope that he could add something to my understanding. So far, that hasn’t happened either.
Pretty sure I have answered all your questions, Ted, except your last one about climate sensitivity. All I can do there is point you to the scientific papers that explain it, which I have done. This page contains links to pretty much all the research on climate sensitivity: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm
What has not happened in this “debate” is you showing the scientific basis of your “understanding.” As far as I know, there is no scientific basis that explains your understanding. So this hasn’t been a debate. It has been a Q&A session. You have asked questions, and I have answered them. All my answers have been firmly based in climate science. Now it is time for you to reveal the science that supports your “understanding.” That science must at the same time account for the increase in the greenhouse effect that must be cause by anthropogenic CO2.
Martin-
Somehow my last post didn’t show up. I responded to you immediately after I responded to Andy. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll try to piece it back together.
Yes, you’ve answered some of my questions. But the answers you’ve given are mutually exclusive:
“Less energy reaches earth as photons during those long winters. This is what changes the process from warming to cooling. It doesn’t have to overcome anything, because to maintain the maximum global average temperature requires maintaining the maximum energy input, which only happens with the most circular orbit. As the orbit becomes more eccentric, earth receives less energy from the sun for a longer and longer part of the year.”
“Think about waking up in bed on a very cold night. You need another blanket, but when you pull the new blanket on, it takes some time for the temperature under the blankets where you are to increase. Your body doesn’t generate more heat. It outputs the same amount of energy it was generating before you added the new blanket, but now more of the heat is prevented from escaping because of the thicker cover.”
Do you not see the contradiction there?
1) An interglacial period ends because the increased solar forcing ceases, and without it, the CO2 can’t trap enough energy to maintain an already established temperature.
2) Elevated CO2 can increase temperature without any additional solar forcing.
Those are mutually exclusive postulates, therefore it’s impossible for both to be correct. As the entire AGW theory rests on the assumption that both are correct, I conclude that AGW theory is invalid. Again I ask, where is the flaw in my logic?
Your position is that warming causes increased CO2, which causes still more warming. You now have two different sources of warming. Solar forcing, and atmospheric physics. If you reverse either warming element, the net warming is reduced by that same amount. As the effects of atmospheric changes are given as roughly an order of magnitude greater than those of orbital changes, reversing the solar forcing only slows the warming. It doesn’t even bring it to a stop, and certainly doesn’t reverse it. As such, the only limit to CO2 induced warming is it’s own maximum potential. It just gets there a little more slowly, once the orbital effects are reversed.
From your own source:
“The initial changes in temperature during this period are explained by changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, which affects the amount of seasonal sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface. In the case of warming, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained as follows: as ocean temperatures rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend, leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the cause and effect of further warming. This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation. Additional positive feedbacks which play an important role in this process include other greenhouse gases, and changes in ice sheet cover and vegetation patterns.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
It’s a feedback loop, with the feedback itself having considerably more effect than the warming which started it. In order to reverse that feedback loop, a cooling mechanism of still greater effect is necessary. Note that this passage above is descriptive of, “the case of warming”. Conceding that explanation entirely, I’m looking for a description of the case of cooling, which doesn’t contradict that for warming. That has been my only request from the start of this discussion.
As a side note, when you cut and paste someone else’s work, it’s generally considered good practice to label it as a quote, and cite the source:
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154612/
Ted, I am a bit astonished that you make this claim:
“Do you not see the contradiction there?
1) An interglacial period ends because the increased solar forcing ceases, and without it, the CO2 can’t trap enough energy to maintain an already established temperature.
2) Elevated CO2 can increase temperature without any additional solar forcing.
Those are mutually exclusive postulates, ”
No, they are not! They are not contradictory at all. Item (1) refers to the fact that as the orbit becomes more eccentric, less energy reaches earth from the sun for more of the year. There is less energy to trap by the CO2 that is in the atmosphere. Call that amount X.
Item (2) refers to the fact that when the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases above X, call it X + Y, the CO2 becomes more of an obstacle to the energy being radiated upward. More of the energy is re-radiated back down because there is more CO2 to block it. There is also more water vapor to block it.
There is no contradiction between 1 and 2. I explained it with the “extra blanket” analogy. When you put another blanket on your bed at night, you stay warmer. Why is that? There is no additional forcing from y9ur body. It generates the same amount of heat but you get warmer be3case the extra blanket blocks more of the heat.
I continue to suspect that you think CO2 generates heat. It doesn’t. It blocks heat. The CO2 is just an obstacle to infrared energy. That’s all.
“Your position is that warming causes increased CO2, which causes still more warming. You now have two different sources of warming. Solar forcing, and atmospheric physics.”
No! Energy from the sun causes the warming in both cases. In one case, earth;’s orbit changes resulting in more energy reaching earth. In the other case, increasing CO2 prevents more energy from leaving earth. In both cases, the increasing warmth is caused by solar energy. We call orbital changes and increasing CO2 “forcings,” but in both cases, the increase in temperature comes from energy from the sun.
“If you reverse either warming element, the net warming is reduced by that same amount.”
What is the scientific basis for that claim? You have to show it, because it doesn’t make sense. What is a “warming element” ?
“As the effects of atmospheric changes are given as roughly an order of magnitude greater than those of orbital changes, reversing the solar forcing only slows the warming. It doesn’t even bring it to a stop, and certainly doesn’t reverse it. As such, the only limit to CO2 induced warming is it’s own maximum potential. It just gets there a little more slowly, once the orbital effects are reversed.”
Again, please provide a scientific basis for your claims, because they appear to be gibber.
Then you write this:
“From your own source:
“The initial changes in temperature during this period are explained by changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, which affects the amount of seasonal sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface. In the case of warming, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained as follows: as ocean temperatures rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend, leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the cause and effect of further warming. This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation. Additional positive feedbacks which play an important role in this process include other greenhouse gases, and changes in ice sheet cover and vegetation patterns.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
“It’s a feedback loop, with the feedback itself having considerably more effect than the warming which started it. In order to reverse that feedback loop, a cooling mechanism of still greater effect is necessary. Note that this passage above is descriptive of, “the case of warming”. Conceding that explanation entirely, I’m looking for a description of the case of cooling, which doesn’t contradict that for warming. That has been my only request from the start of this discussion.”
You haven’t understood a word I have written. You appear to be saying that once the atmosphere warms and the CO2 builds up, reversing the orbital change that started it in the first place can’t reverse the warming. You are saying this despite yourself posting a graph that disproves what you are saying.
Have I misrepresented anything you have said?
Ted, here is the point I think you are not seeing, when the Milankovitch cycles place earth in the position where natural warming has reached its maximum, everything maxes out. The maximum amount of heating has occurred. The maximum amount of CO2 has been released from the oceans and from vegetation. The maximum amount of methane. the maximum amount of H2O. The climate reaches its maximum global average temperature. The feedbacks have reached equilibrium. All the “orders of magnitude” you keep referring to are operating. The CO2 “blanket” covering earth is now at its thickest. The feedbacks are as large as they can be, but they are in equilibrium. Everything is in equilibrium.
Do you agree that point must be reached in the Milankovitch cycles? You have to.
Now the Milankovitch cycles begin making the orbit more eccentric.
There is nothing to overcome. Orders of magnitude don’t make any difference. Do you see why?
The amount of energy from the sun reaching earth as photons begins to decrease. That must happen as the orbit becomes more eccentric. Do you see why?
Then the global average surface temperature must begin to fall because the amount of energy entering the system is dropping. Only slightly, but it is dropping. Do you see why?
If you don’t accept this, then you really haven’t understood anything I have written.
Martin-
“What has not happened in this “debate” is you showing the scientific basis of your “understanding.” As far as I know, there is no scientific basis that explains your understanding.”
You’re correct. I can show you zero scientific basis for my understanding. My understanding is that the consensus position is self contradictory, and therefore invalid. It’s a position based in logic, not in experiment. Your understanding is that the consensus position is valid. As such, my request has been, and remains, that you explain how a feedback dominated warming can be reversed by a trigger of lesser magnitude than that of the feedback mechanisms. I offer no scientific explanation because my understanding is that none exists. In science, the default position is that the theory is wrong. That position is the null hypothesis, and therefore requires no proof. It also requires no alternate explanation. It’s not necessary for me to prove why grass is green, to prove that it’s not purple. It’s not even necessary for me to prove that it’s green. The simple observation that it’s not purple invalidates the hypothesis that it is.
“I continue to suspect that you think CO2 generates heat. It doesn’t. It blocks heat. The CO2 is just an obstacle to infrared energy. That’s all.”
“No! Energy from the sun causes the warming in both cases. In one case, earth;’s orbit changes resulting in more energy reaching earth. In the other case, increasing CO2 prevents more energy from leaving earth. In both cases, the increasing warmth is caused by solar energy. We call orbital changes and increasing CO2 “forcings,” but in both cases, the increase in temperature comes from energy from the sun.”
Can you accept, for just a moment, that I’m not a blithering idiot? I’ve never said that CO2 produced heat. I’ve repeatedly conceded your claim that it traps heat. I think the problem in this discussion is that you can’t accept that someone who disagrees with your position can have the intelligence required to understand it. I understand your position completely. I’ve repeatedly restated it for you, to make sure we were on the same page. Conceding everything you’ve said, your argument your argument boils down to:
Orbital changes–>increased solar input–>increased temperature–>increased CO2+H2O–>more increased temperature–>still more increased CO2+H2O
and
increased CO2–>increased temperature–>increased H2O–>more increased temperature–>more CO2+H2O
Are those chains correct?
Your own SKS link insists that the effects that the effects of the CO2 and H2O are far greater than the effects of the orbital changes.
To use your own analogy, X=present temperature, Y=CO2+H20, Z=increased energy from the sun
You accept that X+Y raises temperatures.
You accept that X+Z raises temperatures.
You accept that X+Y+Z raises temperatures.
What I’m saying is that, because Y>Z, X+Y-Z must be greater than X, in all cases. As long as Y remains, the net forcing is always positive, in comparison to X, therefore temperature can never return to the value of X, once Y is introduced.
Either atmospheric changes have the power to raise temperatures on their own, or they don’t. I would hope at least that statement stands without contention. Your position requires that CO2 can raise temperatures, but can’t maintain the current temperature. If you’re not strong enough to lift a barbell off the ground, you’re certainly not strong enough to raise it above your head.
““If you reverse either warming element, the net warming is reduced by that same amount.”
What is the scientific basis for that claim? You have to show it, because it doesn’t make sense. What is a “warming element” ?”
I don’t have to prove math. 7+4-4=7. If that’s beyond your comprehension, we can go no further. A “warming element” is that which contributes to increased temperature. You had no problem with that phrase several posts ago, so I don’t see why it should become a point of contention now. No, it is not required for that element to actually create energy. Trapping additional energy from another source also produces warming.
““As the effects of atmospheric changes are given as roughly an order of magnitude greater than those of orbital changes, reversing the solar forcing only slows the warming. It doesn’t even bring it to a stop, and certainly doesn’t reverse it. As such, the only limit to CO2 induced warming is it’s own maximum potential. It just gets there a little more slowly, once the orbital effects are reversed.”
Again, please provide a scientific basis for your claims, because they appear to be gibber.”
As I’ve repeatedly reminded you, that claim is explicitly supported by one of the SKS links YOU posted:
“This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Off the top of my head, I don’t remember where I found the specific numbers, and SKS rarely actually quantifies it’s claims. But their explanation, the very one you sent me to, is entirely consistent with the claim I made. You, yourself re-quoted the exact same passage in the very next paragraph of your last response. The juxtaposition is rather striking, if you understand what the SKS quote says.
“You appear to be saying that once the atmosphere warms and the CO2 builds up, reversing the orbital change that started it in the first place can’t reverse the warming. You are saying this despite yourself posting a graph that disproves what you are saying. ”
That statement accurately describes my position, but stops before the explanation. I would add that reversing the orbital changes can’t reverse the warming because the vast majority of said warming was caused by atmospheric physics, not by the orbital changes. Reversing the orbital changes can most certainly reverse the warming THEY caused, but that still leaves the much greater warming caused by the atmospheric changes. Because that warming was caused by atmospheric changes, which were themselves caused by warming, as long as the temperature remains elevated, the causes of that elevation remain in effect. As to the graph which disproves what I’m saying, could you be more specific? I see nothing to support that contention.
Incidentally, I found my lost post from earlier today. I responded in the wrong place:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/simple-physics-settled-science/#comment-563292
” As such, my request has been, and remains, that you explain how a feedback dominated warming can be reversed by a trigger of lesser magnitude than that of the feedback mechanisms. ”
I explained it more than once. My last reply explained it again. But your use of the term “feedback dominated warming” still indicates that you have misunderstood the process. Warming is not dominated by feedbacks. Warming is dominated by energy from the sun.
When the system reaches its maximum warmth, the energy reaching earth from the sun is at its maximum. This energy, and this energy alone is keeping the planet at its warmest. The feedbacks have reached equilibrium. The are no longer raising the temperature. They are maintaining the temperature at its maximum. To do this, they are preventing heat from leaving earth. The heat they are preventing from leaving earth is heat that is continually coming from the sun. It comes in as light, is converted to heat, and re-radiated back toward space. But the CO2 and the methane and the water vapor block it, and the dark surface of the Arctic ocean absorbs it. and the dark surface of the land where the ice used to be absorbs it.
As always, because the earth climate system is not closed, some of the heat does escape back to space. But at equilibrium, the energy coming in from the sun is equal to the energy escaping back to space. That’s what equilibrium means: The total amount of energy coming from the sun is equal to the total amount of energy escaping back to space.
Now the Milankovitch cycles begin to make the circular orbit eccentric. That means the total amount of energy coming in decreases. Then the total amount of energy coming in from the sun is LESS THAN the total amount of energy escaping to space. That is what cooling means.
That is the explanation you are asking for. That is the reversing of the process. It has nothing to do with the magnitude of the feedbacks. They must decrease because the energy entering the system decreases.
You simply can’t deny that. You posted a graph earlier in this thread that shows exactly this happening. If this explanation were not correct, the graph you posted would be wrong. The Milankovitch cycle graph. It isn’t a “trigger.” It is a process of decreasing energy that persists for tens of thousands of years. As the energy decreases, the feedbacks must also decrease. They run on the energy from the sun that is decreasing.
I do apologize for making this sound like I think you are an idiot, but you your request at the top of my reply makes you look like an idiot.
Martin-
Do you know what an order of magnitude is? It’s an increase or decrease on the order of a power of 10. It implies that one value is MUCH greater than another.
“Do you agree that point must be reached in the Milankovitch cycles? You have to. ”
I guess I’m breaking the rules then, because I don’t agree. The glacial cycle shows no equilibrium states. Frankly, the glacial cycle shows almost no correlation to the Milankovitch cycles either, but somehow everyone seems intent on overlooking that fact. I’m trying to discuss this within your premise, so I won’t go deeper in to that. But your premise provides no basis upon which to reach an equilibrium point, except the maxing out of the potential warming caused by atmospheric physics. Once that point is reached, no amount of additional CO2 can further increase temperatures. So if we’re at that equilibrium point already, this entire subject is moot. And if we’re not, we need some mechanism to explain how an equilibrium position is possible in a positive feedback environment, while none of the limits has been reached.
Let’s try it this way. The theory states that without GHGs, the earth would average about -18C, and with pre-industrial levels, it averaged about +14C. At the coldest point in the glacial cycle, that average was about 4C. The difference between those temperatures consists of about 1C of warming from orbital changes, which triggered an additional 9C increase from atmospheric changes. So what happens when those orbital changes are reversed? Initially, the temperature drops by 1C, or the amount caused by the orbital changes. At that moment, the temperature remains at 9C above that of the bottom of the glacial cycle. Remember, that first degree was enough to cause a chain reaction that eventually added enough GHGs to the atmosphere to produce 9C of additional warming. Why is a temperature 9C above the baseline not sufficient to maintain the GHG concentrations that were caused by 1C of Milankovitch warming?
“I explained it more than once. My last reply explained it again. But your use of the term “feedback dominated warming” still indicates that you have misunderstood the process. Warming is not dominated by feedbacks. Warming is dominated by energy from the sun. ”
I don’t know how many times I can post this same link:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
I’M QUOTING YOUR OWN SOURCE.
“This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation.”
I asked days ago to explain your differences with that SKS position, if you didn’t agree with it.
“You simply can’t deny that. You posted a graph earlier in this thread that shows exactly this happening. If this explanation were not correct, the graph you posted would be wrong.”
I don’t even know what you claim I’m denying. And I still have no idea what graph you’re referring to.
“As the energy decreases, the feedbacks must also decrease. They run on the energy from the sun that is decreasing.”
THAT’S MY POSITION. That GHGs are secondary players to the sun. My entire argument has been based on the fact that all interglacial temperature spikes have peaked, and that the existence of those peaks, particularly when they’re all at the same level, is incompatible with your contentions that GHGs contribute more to warming than solar forcings, and that the potential warming effects of GHGs have many more degrees to go before they max out. Those are the contentions made by the SKS article you sent me to, in order to explain your position. I had read that article before, as well as much of the base material it’s built upon, and I accept that it accurately conveys the current consensus position. If you disagree with those contentions, your argument is with the climate science community, not with me. I’ve been conceding these premises for the sake of discussion, in order to point out the logical flaws inherent to them. I though that was clear to both of us from the outset. If you can answer my one and only question, what causes the ice ages to end, without contradicting those premises, then I’ll be logically forced to accept the possibility of your position. To this point, your argument is that the sign if the relative solar forcing dictates the sign of the feedbacks, which I reject as unsupportable. At a given solar input, either increased CO2 increases temperature, or it doesn’t. Solar forcing is an entirely independent variable. In fact, it’s THE ONLY independent variable, in most theories.
“I do apologize for making this sound like I think you are an idiot, but you your request at the top of my reply makes you look like an idiot.”
Your inability to explain how an interglacial temperature spike can reverse itself, without contradicting your own claims as to the nature of that spike, has no bearing at all on my intelligence. We were doing so good. I’d really prefer not to delve back in to personal insults.
“I guess I’m breaking the rules then, because I don’t agree. The glacial cycle shows no equilibrium states. ”
You ARE breaking the rules. Your belief obviously can’t be true, Ted, because it would mean, if we were in a glacial period, it would never end. It would keep getting colder until we were at absolute zero. Or if we were in an interglacial, it would keep getting warmer until we burned up. Apparently, you don’t understand what equilibrium means.
“Frankly, the glacial cycle shows almost no correlation to the Milankovitch cycles either, but somehow everyone seems intent on overlooking that fact.”
You are wrong. The correlation is strong. You can’t just eyeball the graph, which is what you are doing. Here is the science that proves you are wrong. Note that you and I have only been talking about eccentricity. It’s not that simple. You have to look at all the orbital factors:
Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages
Author(s): J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N. J. Shackleton
http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hays1976.pdf
And here is a replication of that work, in an easier to understand form:
Milankovich vs the Ice Ages
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/milankovich-vs-the-ice-ages/
“But your premise provides no basis upon which to reach an equilibrium point, except the maxing out of the potential warming caused by atmospheric physics. Once that point is reached, no amount of additional CO2 can further increase temperatures.”
First, I DID NOT SAY “no amount of additional CO2 can further increase temperatures.” I said no more CO2 is added, and I showed you why. Second, the BASIS for reaching the equilibrium point is the changes in the Milankovitch cycles.
“Let’s try it this way.”
No. Sorry, but you can’t introduce complexity until you understand the basic physics of orbital mechanics. No matter how much you protest, you simply don’t understand the effect of the Milankovitch cycles.
“I don’t know how many times I can post this same link:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
I’M QUOTING YOUR OWN SOURCE.
“This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation.”
I asked days ago to explain your differences with that SKS position, if you didn’t agree with it.”
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY POSITION AND THE SKS POSITION. They are identical. The quote you posted above refers to the feedbacks AFTER the equilibrium has been passed. The passage you pulled the quote from is explaining what happens when earth is at the coldest point of a glacial period (i.e. EQUILIBRIUM) and the global climate changes from cooling to warming. It says the change in Milankovitch cycles start that warming changing earth’s orbit so that more energy from the sun reaches the surface. The feedbacks, which until now have been making earth colder, now reverse and begin warming instead of cooling. Or, they cool less and less until they begin warming. Then they warm more and more. The SKS piece is saying that the effect of the feedbacks becomes stronger than the change caused by the Milankoivitch cycles. The feedbacks overwhelm the orbital changes in the warming process. They also overwhelm the cooling process when the cycle reverses. The points at which the cycle reverses, cooling to warming and warming to cooling, are the equilibrium points.
“Your inability to explain how an interglacial temperature spike can reverse itself, without contradicting your own claims as to the nature of that spike, has no bearing at all on my intelligence. We were doing so good. I’d really prefer not to delve back in to personal insults.”
I apologize for my inability to explain this to you, but I have explained it correctly several times now.
Martin-
“Your belief obviously can’t be true, Ted, because it would mean, if we were in a glacial period, it would never end. It would keep getting colder until we were at absolute zero. Or if we were in an interglacial, it would keep getting warmer until we burned up. Apparently, you don’t understand what equilibrium means. ”
It really serves no purpose to lie about what I’ve said, when all anyone has to do is scroll up and see for themselves. I’ve said nothing anywhere close to what you’ve just made up. My position has always been, and remains, that a force other than the CO2 cycle (as described by the IPCC) is keeping temperatures bounded between the peaks and troughs observed in the glacial cycle. I do not claim to know the nature of that force, though I have suggested a few possibilities.
Equilibrium:
a state in which opposing forces or actions are balanced so that one is not stronger or greater than the other
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equilibrium
Please point to the spot where the forces are balanced, in the temperature graph below:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Ice_Age_Temperature.png
The forces are NEVER balanced. The temperature is ALWAYS changing.
“You are wrong. The correlation is strong. You can’t just eyeball the graph, which is what you are doing. Here is the science that proves you are wrong. Note that you and I have only been talking about eccentricity. It’s not that simple. You have to look at all the orbital factors:
Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages
Author(s): J. D. Hays, John Imbrie, N. J. Shackleton
http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hays1976.pdf
And here is a replication of that work, in an easier to understand form:
Milankovich vs the Ice Ages
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/milankovich-vs-the-ice-ages/”
To start with, the second paper is most definitely not a replication of the first. Both use entirely different methods. In fact, the second one even throws in an entirely new variable, inclination, to explain the fact that modern observations don’t match up with Hays’s 40 year old analysis:
“As far as the 100 kyr period goes, which is the periodicity of the glacial cycles, this analysis confirms much of what is known, namely that we can’t say for sure. Eccentricity seems to line up well with a periodicity of approximately 100 kyr, but on closer inspection there seems to be some discrepancies if you try to understand the glacial cycles as being forced by variations in eccentricity. The orbital plane inclination has a more similar Gabor transform modulus than does eccentricity.”
Not exactly a definitive proof of settled science, is it? Once again, your source agrees with my contention that, “we can’t say for sure.” Did you even read those papers? To paraphrase the great Inigo Montoya, “I don’t think that paper says what you think it says.”
The astronomical theory of climate change has been a stretch from the beginning. Anyone who’s done any reading on the subject knows that it has serious, and widely acknowledged, shortcomings. Here are a few links in further support of my doubts about the all powerfulness of Milankovitch:
http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Causality.pdf
http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/100,000-year_problem
And no, WE haven’t been talking only about eccentricity. YOU have been talking only about eccentricity. Your contention has been that variations in the total amount of solar energy reaching earth are the dominant factors in the glacial cycle. I merely pointed out, in correction of your erroneous statement to the contrary, that neither obliquity nor precession can alter the total energy the earth receives. They only change the distribution of that energy. Inclination can have some effect, but this is the first time you’ve brought it up, and only in a linked paper, which you plainly didn’t even bother to read.
“First, I DID NOT SAY “no amount of additional CO2 can further increase temperatures.” ”
No, I SAID THAT. Maxing out an effect is the only mathematically feasible endpoint to any positive feedback system.
“No. Sorry, but you can’t introduce complexity until you understand the basic physics of orbital mechanics. No matter how much you protest, you simply don’t understand the effect of the Milankovitch cycles.”
Perhaps your lecturing to me about your vastly superior knowledge of the Milankovitch cycles would carry more weight if I hadn’t already had to repeatedly correct you on the simplest details of orbital mechanics, and demonstrated that your description, when you finally got the basics right, was blatantly plagiarized. Aside from that, I introduced no complexity. I simply quantified the warming, using numbers that you would easily recognize if you had even the most basic grasp of your own position. I guess that was a stretch on my part, since you’ve already called your SKS handlers liars, while screaming about how there’s no difference at all between your position and theirs:
Ted:
“I think we’re in agreement that the direct Milankovitch forcings, by themselves, don’t have anywhere near the effect necessary to explain the glacial cycles,”
Martin, in direct response to the above:
“We are not in agreement. All they have to do is cause the amount of solar energy reaching earth to begin increasing, which begins the warming process, and cause the amount of solar energy reaching earth to start decreasing, which begins the cooling process. ”
And later (still Martin):
“I explained it more than once. My last reply explained it again. But your use of the term “feedback dominated warming” still indicates that you have misunderstood the process. Warming is not dominated by feedbacks. Warming is dominated by energy from the sun. ”
SKS:
“In the case of warming, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained as follows: as ocean temperatures rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend, leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the cause and effect of further warming. This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Martin:
“THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY POSITION AND THE SKS POSITION.”
Later in that same paragraph:
“It says the change in Milankovitch cycles start that warming changing earth’s orbit so that more energy from the sun reaches the surface. The feedbacks, which until now have been making earth colder, now reverse and begin warming instead of cooling. Or, they cool less and less until they begin warming.”
Svante Arrhenius would be disgusted by your butchering of his work. The entire position of the IPCC is based on the assumption that CO2 and water vapor ALWAYS act to warm the planet. I could name a few possible ways water vapor could cool the planet, but I’m not aware of any physical process by which CO2 could. And neither SKS nor the IPCC has ever described one, either.
Whether or not those feedbacks are the primary movers in the glacial cycle is not a trivial question, either. (I don’t mean to imply that you said it was) The mathematical certainty that the Milankovitch cycles CAN’T alter earth’s energy balance anywhere near enough to explain the ice age cycle, was the genesis of modern AGW theory. This entire scam evolved out of an attempt to reconcile the glacial cycle with the only known natural cycles exhibiting vaguely similar periods.
I admit it. You’ve worn me down. I can take your utter imperviousness to logic. I can take your cringe worthy unfamiliarity with the basic tenets of the theory you so religiously espouse. I can take your mindless arrogance and condescension. I can even take your inability to follow your own arguments. But you’ve veered into outright lying about what I’ve written, in a pathetic attempt to impugn my intelligence. It’s all there in the posts above, for anyone to see. I’m done. Even after conceding, for the sake of argument, ALL of your contentions, your position still remained self contradictory. Frankly, I was surprised by the ease with which you simply denied your logical fallacy. (CO2 can’t cause warming without increased solar input, but it’s doing it right now) I guess I shouldn’t have been. My faith in your capacity to reason turned out to be unjustified. As such, this discussion can serve no purpose.
I’m sure you’ll want to add your own final rebuttal. I’ll let whatever you write next stand. You might as well make the lies good, because I won’t respond to them. I leave it to anyone patient enough to read through this thread to decide for themselves which one of us has been more consistent, knowledgeable, and truthful.
Thank you for attempting to debate me. I’m sorry we weren’t able to come to an agreement.
Ted, this was never a debate. You asked questions; I answered them. My answers to your questions are correct.
“My answers to your questions are correct.”
BULLSHIT !
your Base-level ignorance and incoherence of rational thought is there for all to see.. except yourself.
The only reason SG lets you keep posting your moronic, waste of time and space nonsense, is for comic relief.
Ted, I just saw this in your reply: “(CO2 can’t cause warming without increased solar input, but it’s doing it right now).” Are you attributing that statement to me? I never said it or implied it. It is false. If solar input remains constant, adding CO2 to the atmosphere will trap more heat, so CO2 does cause warming without increased solar input. I am sure I explained how that works more than once. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Increasing the amount of CO2 increases the greenhouse effect. That is the fundamental fact of the greenhouse effect, so I can’t see how you could possibly misunderstand it.
In fact, total solar irradiance has been dropping slightly over the last few decades, during the period of most of the temperature rise since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The ONLY explanation that can explain that is the increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere, and most of that (pretty much all of it) comes from burning fossil fuels.
In case you still misunderstand me:
(1) The Milankovitch cycles change earth’s orbit and orientation toward the sun so that the amount of energy reaching earth’s surface from the sun increases. This increase in solar input is one of the causes of global average temperature increase. It initiates the warming process at the deepest point of a glacial period, and it continues throughout the end of the glacial and the beginning of the interglacial, but it is very slow.
(2) After (1) begins the warming process, feedbacks begin that also increase global average temperature. One of the feedbacks is increasing in CO2. The feedbacks themselves also increase in magnitude as the warming process proceeds, and the magnitude of the increase in temperature the feedbacks cause becomes much greater than the magnitude of the warming caused by (1).
(3) wherever we are now in the Milankovitch cycles and in the glacial/interglacial transition, both the total warming caused by the Milankovitch effect and the feedbacks effect is so small over the period since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we KNOW it is insignificant. For all intents and purposes (except yours, apparently), the solar input has been constant over the period in question. i.e. ALL the warming we have seen over the last 100+ is caused by AGW, and AGW is caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels without any increase in solar energy input.
That has been the explanation I have posted here multiple times. It has not changed, so I did not say or imply this: “(CO2 can’t cause warming without increased solar input, but it’s doing it right now).” If, on the other hand, that statement is your own, then you are simply wrong.
Marty lies… “ALL the warming we have seen over the last 100+ is caused by AGW
1- List all climate forcings, order them from most to least effectual, and then quantify them all.
2- Please provide even one peer reviewed paper that refutes natural variability as the cause of recent, or any, global climate changes.
There is nothing unusual or unprecedented about our climate, or how we got here. For 4,500,000,000 years climates have always changed, naturally. This means there has been a set precedent, and the burden of proof falls on natural climate change deniers like yourself.
For Ted: The bottom line with CO2
There are two ways CO2 can force a temperature increase:
(a) Hold the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere constant, and increase the amount of solar energy reaching earth.
(b) Hold the amount of solar energy reaching earth constant, and increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
We know (b) is happening now. I’m not saying the amount of solar energy reaching earth is actually constant now; I’m saying that, which ever way it is changing, up or down, it is happening so slowly that it can not be causing anything but a small fraction of the warming we have seen and which is happening right now.
Thanks for your patience, Ted. I can’t see how even Andy or gator could possibly misinterpret or misunderstand this post, but I know they will try. I hope you won’t.
rach, your suspicions are wrong. I have an extensive science background. My understanding of climate science is based first on my studies of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, and second, on much reading of peer-reviewed scientific papers spanning all aspects of climate science, and third, on much reading of blog posts on climate science, including this blog. Didn’t you notice that I read this blog? How would you even know about me if weren’t for me being here reading this blog?
You seem like a bitter man. I hope you have a good life. But this blog will only deepen your bitterness, so my advice, which I know you will reject, is to stay away from here and try to get your life back on track again. You can make. You can become a mature, compassionate person and have a life of abundance. But if you stay here, you will continue to be sucked into the muck from gotor and Gail, and the other people who spew long columns of nothing but dross or short rejoinders that say nothing.
Good luck, son. You deserve to win.
You don’t “read this blog”. As gator documented, you post abundantly here without reading anything.
Colorado, I read the blog posts I criticise. That’s what “read this blog” means.
Heh. You don’t read and comprehend the posts you do “criticise”. There is plenty of evidence in this thread alone.
Besides, refusing to answer simple questions, dismissing arguments without proof and just contradicting others is not the definition of “criticise”.
Did you read climate science under Cleese? 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnTmBjk-M0c
Colo- there’s a difference between reading, and comprehending. That science IS settled.
He posts here and reads his own posts, so he actually does read this blog
Who is gotor?
Cut him some slack. He just came back from the lake.
So that’s why he’s all wet.
GOTOR RADAR ROBOT 😉
? Tell us about your extensive science background please.
I will bug you about this until you answer. We should all question MS on this until he answers.
“But this blog will only deepen your bitterness,”
The only bitterness here is the rancid bitterness that YOU bring here.
And YOUR bitterness is certainly increasing, because you know you don’t have anywhere near the brainpower to go anywhere but backwards.
For your own health, I strongly suggest that you find some child’s blog to play on, where you might just have a small chance.
“so my advice, which I know you will reject, is to stay away from here and try to get your life back on track again.”
This is from Martin.. the bitter and twisted little gorebot.
He really should heed his own words, before he reaches an even sicker mental state.
Andy, I really love this Marty the Gorebot quote:
“… But if you stay here, you will continue to be sucked into the muck from gotor and Gail, and the other people who spew long columns of nothing but dross …”
So Peer-reviewed science is now long columns of nothing but dross
So say the SCIENCE is SETTLED parrot!
Oh, for a really good journalist who could have a blast with the quotes from the last month or so.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SCIENTIST: My calculations show the earth travels around the sun
WITCH BURNER: BURN the HERETIC!
…………………
SCIENTIST: Modern continents formed a single landmass in the past., broke-up and then drifted apart.
WITCH BURNER: STONE him STONE him!
…………………
SCIENTIST: Peptic ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori
WITCH BURNER: Reject his papers! Ostracize him! fire him!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AHHHhhh yes, the joys of ‘Settled Science!
Martin Smith says:
December 29, 2015 at 6:02 pm
I have an extensive science background.
====
The how do you justify still supporting global warming…
…with all of the qualifiers for it…that either have not happened, or the exact opposite happened?
Martin says:
Here is the complete response to both your requests as of 2013: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
Of course, the science has advance quite a lot in the year and a half since that summary was published.
Could you please explain how ‘settled science’ is able to advance, which implies that it isn’t settled like we’re being told it is.
Yeah I wondered about that too, but I was trying to get our little liar to focus, and keep telling the same lie over and over. To fanatics, the facts do not matter, only the overhetaed rhetoric. Marty would fit in well with ghost and bigfoot hunters, who are sure that their quarry exists, in spite of all of the evidence that they do not.
Settled religion.
This is another thread of Martin Smith’s absurdities to bookmark. Jason Calley got it right even before Smith started on his binge. They are never “speechless” no matter how befuddled they are by the reality around them.
Already bookmarked, and yes, Jason nailed it (again).
“…They are never “speechless” no matter how befuddled they are by the reality around them….”
Of course the Alarmists like M. Winston Smith are never “speechless” all they ever do is erect strawmen to blow down. They never actually look at evidence and facts and then hold a rational discussion about them.
Gail, Brave Sir Robin rode off. He’s fighting a new battle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYFefppqEtE
I think Martin really wanted to go to the lake! Why can’t you do it for him? He wants to go to the lake!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AXf5vjQV-w
Yes, Marty cannot go to the lake because he has a job (fliping burgers) and social(ist) responsibilities in the real (modeled) world, so he doesn’t have time to follow my replies to his comments. I really never do respond intelligently (the way he wants) to his comments anyway. But he has responded to my requests (with nonsense). Please find his response (hand waving) further up in the discussion. It is the correct (alarmist) response to my requests, so I won’t be getting anything more from him about them (until his next big lie).
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/simple-physics-settled-science/#comment-561928
Bookmarked! 😆
Gator-
I know how you can win this argument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17ocaZb-bGg
I like how he always shows up for the Wabbit Season-Duck Season arguments, but he somehow never finds any time for actual scientific discussions.
What argument? We are dealing with someone who is incapable of putting forth an argument. All Marty can do is lie.
Sorry. I meant “argument” as John Cleese describes it, not as Terry Gilliam does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnTmBjk-M0c
I understand completely, that is one of my Python favorites, and it does apply.
pin, the greenhouse effect is settled science. Are you really confused about which aspects of AGW are settled and which aren’t? I’m happy to help here, if you want me to. If you have any specific questions about which facets of AGW are settled and which are not, ask me about them, and I will do my level best to help.
You might have to catch up with me on some other thread. I can’t follow everything. You understand.
Well, ok, pin, I guess you’re out mowing the back 40. My offer to answer your questions about what is settled science and what isn’t will remain open, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this thread. It’s just a lot of stink ass garbage, isn’t it. Catch up with me on a later blog post.
Farewell, my freind.
Come on, Marty, don’t have a meltdown. Can’t you wait even 13 minutes? He’ll be back. Isn’t there something you can occupy yourself with? Maybe answer a few of gator’s questions?
When Marty wants something, you better be ready, with the answer Marty wants. How do you think he got back from the lake so fast?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlBozCbV1Q
Martin says: “the greenhouse effect is settled science”
Which is completely beside the point. Here is why. Gravity is a “settled science.” Sure, sure, we can argue certain fine points, depending on whether we are rooting for Newton or Einstein, but to an overwhelming degree, we can say ahead of time what the gravitational effects of a given mass will be on other masses nearby. So, let us agree for the sake of pragmatism, that gravity is settled science, or at least as settled as science every gets.
OK, here is a problem in gravity for you; a hailstone forms at an altitude of 8 km. It has an initial mass of .5 grams but is adding more ice as a function of local temperatures and humidity as it falls. There are changing wind sheer values in all directions, with values between zero and 10 meters per second per meter along its path. You do not have actual measurements of temperatures, humidity or wind — but you know what the gravitational constant is to six decimal places. How long will the hailstone take to hit the ground, how fast will it be going when it hits and where will it hit? How hard can it be? After all, gravity is settled science!
Not to be too subtle about it, but simple physics is simple only because physicists have studied long and hard to be able to determine what factors can be left out, what factors can be estimated “close enough”, and what factors absolutely must be included. For most problems (not just some problems but for MOST problems) we cannot calculate a correct answer when working from first principles and the laws of physics. In the real world, the systems are enormously complicated. Unless we have some method of knowing what to ignore or guess we are stuck. Climate? The real world effects of adding CO2 to the atmosphere? Enormously, mind mindbogglingly complex. Is the greenhouse effect settled science? In very limited simplified settings maybe — but any person who spends even a few minutes on it can tell you why the real world is a very different proposition.
Heck Jason,
Instead of the hailstone use a human pilot….
Rider on the Storm
OK so how long will it take Lt Col Rankin to fall to the breathable altitude of 10,000 feet so his parachute deploys? How long before he sets foot on earth again?
Hey Gail! Cool story! I remember reading that in Readers Digest way back when I was in grade school! I remembered the basic story but had completely forgotten the name of the pilot involved. Thanks!
Yes, the real world gets messier than basic physics can follow. Take something as simple as water vapor. As near as I can tell most estimates of the CO2 doubling factor place it around one degree per doubling, based on measuring the characteristics of CO2 in a lab chamber. Wrong wrong wrong. The overlap of water vapor lines with the CO2 means that in the real world, the absorption curve for CO2 wavelengths is already so enormously saturated by H20 that there is little effect left over for additional CO2. The thought experiment I like is as follows: imagine that there is another gas, called ECO2 (ersatzCO2) that has exactly the same radiative properties as CO2 and a concentration in the atmosphere that is 100 times that of CO2. As far as IR goes, IR cannot tell the difference between the two. Assume that the doubling factor of CO2 is 1 degree. OK, double the CO2 and you get, what, 1 degree warmer? No, you get squat because the ECO2 has the same radiative properties and if you want to calculate the effects of doubling the CO2 it is the same change as going from 101 parts CO2 to 102 parts CO2, definitely NOT the same as going from 1 part CO2 to 2 parts CO2. Of course, in the real world, ECO2 does not exist — but H2O does, and to the extent that its properties overlap CO2, the effect of CO2 is greatly decreased — even if we have true and verifiable knowledge of what the properties of CO2 are.
“pin, the greenhouse effect is settled science”
NO IT ISN’T !
You are WRONG again.
The absolute IGNORASNCE on Martin the goreboy is AGAIN EXPOSED.
No science is ever “settled”
That is the very essence of REAL science…
But REAL science and REAL data is something little, brain-washed Martin knows nothing about.
Sorry, I hate to be that guy, but I find it funny when someone spells a word wrong, while using it as an insult to another’s intelligence. I know, the “A” and the “S” are right next to each other, and spell check doesn’t work in caps. But it’s still funny.
No comment on your contention, however, as Martin and I are currently having a rather pleasant discussion, and I don’t want to taint it. I’m not even looking at other threads right now, so I’m sure to only respond to arguments Martin makes to me. I don’t think either of us is making any headway. I hope we’re getting to the end of the terminology mismatches, at least. I’ll keep talking until he either convinces me, or he stops responding. After being told for so long that the debate is over, I’m just happy to finally be HAVING a debate. He and I have both admitted that others would be better equipped for this debate, but I think there’s something to be said for two amateurs trying to hack out common ground. Frankly, I hope he can convince me. If I’m wrong, I’d rather be corrected than continue being wrong. We shall see.
Thank you everyone, particularly Tony, for just letting the two of us amuse each other. I hope the show is worth watching.
In case anyone is expecting a reply from me in this thread, I’m not posting comments in this thread anymore. There is just too much trash talk.
Heh. You drop trash all over the thread and then you complain and leave.
You are funny. Inadvertently so.
It’s your garbage, not ours.
Good! Now the question is, “Do you mean what you say?”
Great.
Your feedbacks are NOT MEASURED, just bad assumptions.
“I’m not posting comments in this thread anymore”
Of course you aren’t … COWARD
You know you have been ABSOLUTELY eviscerated YET AGAIN.
You have NO COUNTER to the REAL DATA and REAL FACTS presented here..
So you RUN, RUN, RUN ..
“I’m not posting comments in this thread anymore.”
Today, you just made a LIAR out of yourself.. YET AGAIN.
Yes he did.
Martin Smith says:
“You don’t publish whole papers here, Gail. It would be illegal if you did, I think. You extract snippets from blogs about papers, but what you post is kind of impossible to follow, because it usually has little, if anything, to do with the subject of the thread you post it in.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It would seem that Martin does not understand what the word ABSTRACT means. Also the ONLY stuff he does understand is the stuff Dr. Idso, dumbs down for the lay person/ high school & grammer school students
So Dr Idso has plenty of experience in ‘writing at the sixth grade level’ like the USDA.
Martin also admits he is incapable of following a logical line of thought with evidence to back it up.
gator69 says: Marty lies… “ALL the warming we have seen over the last 100+ is caused by AGW.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are correct That statement of Marty’s is a lie. All you have to do is read Dr Richard Alley’s email which I have already posted twice.
He gets to the heart of the matter about why the Hokey Stick is looked upon as dodgy.
Since Marty has demonstrated he doesn’t know much about the subject here is who Dr Alley is.
Richard B. Alley of the U. Penn. was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, chaired the National Research Council on Abrupt Climate Change for well over a decade and in 1999 was invited to testify about climate change by Vice President Al Gore. In 2002, the NAS (Alley chair) published a book Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises ( 2002 )
From the opening paragraph in the executive summary:
Did you get that Marty the ” ..local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into… the last ice age.“
Since the earth is a century or two over due for that slide into an ice age, ” ..local warmings as large as 16°C” are not unexpected, and yet we have had a very stable climate so far.
THAT is the natural climate variability that has to be explained and removed as the NATURAL cause of the recent mild warming. Since the IPCC and all funding is exclusively focused on CO2 it has not been done as this paper shows.
Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling (2013)
So the IPCC and Hansen and everyone else has been screaming ‘The science is settled!’ and they haven’t even bothered to look at the effects of the sun on the climate???
And that is just one of a myriad of possible knowns and unknowns that cause climate change none of which have actually been rigorosly investigated.
Gail, I like your comments, but this is all off point.
The warmists know they are wrong. But without
CO2 they have no hook, no reason,to control our
energy, and every other aspect of our lives. You
have to hit a mule between the eyes with a 2×4 to
get his attention. The warmistas aren’t listening.
I prefer tar, feather and pitchforks. I doubt a 2×4 is sufficient to get their attention.
I am a little concerned that the plant-CO2 system
is not being given enough notice. How is it possible
that the CO2 level in the atmosphere was stable for
so many years? How did the plants know how much CO2
volcanos were putting into the atmosphere?? That plants
are a powerful negative feedback system seems clear.
A lot of CO2 settles to the bottom of the oceans each
year. Calcium carbonate sequesters the CO2, for a LONG
time. If volcanos stopped their output, CO2 levels would
start to drop, but the system would stabalize. Human CO2
is just another “volcano” as far as the plant-CO2 system
can tell. “Chill OUT”, folks, and let the plants do their job.
“How is it possible that the CO2 level in the atmosphere was stable for
so many years?”
They were not it is another one of the lies told by the ClimAstrology.
SEE: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/CO2-ice-HS.htm
and
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
Thanks for the links, Gail, well done. I knew about the ” can’t use ice cores
until they are 90 years old”, and the 280 ppm could be an artifact of the
process, giving the illusion of steady CO2 content. Reading some of the
links you listed, it really seems the “scientists” found what they were
looking for.(But it was “such a beautiful theory”) and of course, they wanted
that outcome.