We're trying, however badly, to get to the facts to support or refute the OP's contention that calculating one's 'carbon footprint' is a load of bollocks. The OP meant it in the sense that the website mentioned gives roughly the same answer with highly-variable input data, suggesting either very sloppy design or implimentation, or a desire to coerce people into changing their modus operandi in favour of a lower 'footprint'.
If it can be shown that GW due to CO2 in its variable forms is itself an irrelevance to 'climate change', then the provenance of the website becomes irrelevant...Hence the bunfight....;-)
The message from Terry Fields contains these words:
No. What I am suggesting, and which you flatly denied, is that their findings refute Moncktons Bogus claim to a record extent of polar ice.
Pull the other one. The underlying message in the news report is that the arctic ice is still a pale shadow of its former self . I haven't the time to check but wasn't it only last year that Larsen B upped sticks and left? So Monckton is wrong on both counts.
No more time to devote to the question atm. Mixing concrete all morning and just in for a quick coffee break.
one was a Met Office publication, showing how little ("very low level of scientific understanding") was known about eight forcing mechanisms out of twelve; Data source: Hadley Centre.
one was a graph of satellite data 'suggesting', to put it mildly, that planetary temperatures had fallen for a number of years; Data sources: Hadley Center, University of Alabama
one showing over a 600 million year timescale the values of atmosperic CO2 and mean planetary temperatures - in which the planet reached a maximum of 22 degC mean temperature and with peaks of 7000ppmv CO2, far out of line, in the wrong direction, from the proponents of 'global warming'; Data source: Temperature reconstruction by C.R. Scotese; CO2 reconstruction after R.A. Berner; see also IPCC (2007).
The Hadley Centre, the University of Alabama, and the IPCC are not known for their 'denier' stance.
The message from Terry Fields contains these words:
So? Polar ice has been shrinking for decades but Monckton would have it that during the last arctic and antarctic winters both poles saw a record extent of ice.
Meanwhile back in the real world:
"Clearly, we're seeing the ice coverage rebound back to more near normal coverage for this time of year," said Gilles Langis, a senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa.
Thanks, I will. The weather is great and the concrete mixing was over quicker than I thought it would be.
But they are only forecasts and not absolutes as any ships captain will tell you.
You decided that it proved your point when it does not. It just adds to the evidence that you have very little understanding of science or natural processes. However that doesn't stop you searching for quotes in the hope it will prove to be too much trouble for us to post real facts if you keep up the avalanche of cr@p..
*You* have yet to post anything meaningful to support your views. All you have done so far is show that you can't understand what you post. You are like the born again christians with their little book of facts and arguments to use whenever their beliefs are questioned.
I had a punt about to find an answer for you, but I kept coming across references to sea-ice growth of 9 percent in 2007/8. As these were not scientific papers, but more along the lines of interested parties exchanging emails and blogs, I mention it for interest only.
One such is here:
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seems unhappy with some aspect or other of the Hadley Centre's work.
Another reference here:
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four different estimates of the Temperature Anomaly, all of which show a (dramatic?) drop in temperature from January 07 to January 08. Of interest is the statement "The difference between these metrics is of course the source data, but more importantly, two are measured by satellite (UAH, RSS) and two are land-ocean surface temperature measurements (GISS, HadCRUT)", so that would appear to rule out bias by the satellite measurements.
Another here:
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an interesting mention at No. 8 of ocean currents that have seemingly been only recently discovered, the impact of which remains unknown - perhaps bad news for the modellers?
Taking a leaf out out your own book, Wikipedia turned up an aritcle on satellite sensing of temperatures:
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obvious reasons, I fell over laughing when I read this:
"The satellite records have the advantage of global coverage, whereas the radiosonde record is longer. There have been complaints of data problems with both records, and difficulty reconciling the observations with climate model predictions."
It goes on to say:
"The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers states:
"New analyses of balloon-borne and satellite measurements of lower- and mid-tropospheric temperature show warming rates that are similar to those of the surface temperature record and are consistent within their respective uncertainties, largely reconciling a discrepancy noted in the TAR."
"However, as detailed in CCSP SAP 5.1 Understanding and Reconcilling Differences, neither Regression models or other related techniques were reconcilable with observed data. The use of fingerprinting techniques on data yielded that "Volcanic and human-caused fingerprints were not consistently identifiable in observed patterns of lapse rate change." As such, issues with reconciling data and models remain."
One may make of this what one will, but at the very least one gets the impression of a certain frisson concerning satellite data and model predictions that don't agree - perhaps because the latter have not yet taken account of the newly-discovered ocean currents, but satellite data, by its nature, would.
You may be happy to know that:
"The process of constructing a temperature record from a radiance record is difficult. The best-known, though controversial, record, from Roy Spencer and John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), is currently version 5.2, which corrects previous errors in their analysis for orbital drift and other factors. The record comes from a succession of different satellites and problems with inter-calibration between the satellites are important, especially NOAA-9, which accounts for most of the difference between the RSS and UAH analyses [15]. NOAA-11 played a significant role in a
2005 study by Mears et al. identifying an error in the diurnal correction that leads to the 40% jump in Spencer and Christy's trend from version 5.1 to 5.2.[16]"
...which should at least partly answer your question.
Perhaps the growth in sea-ice of nine percent was a record *increase*, while the *total extent* (absolute value) of the sea-ice coverage remained lower than previously.
For the purposes of its effect on trapping re radiation I think water vapour can be considered a permanent effect but I'm open to arguments on this. As far as I understand it, with a clear sky, the amount of water molecules depends on the relative humidity, which will always be less than 100% but what will the minimum be? The conjecture is that there will always be sufficient water molecules to trap those wavelengths that it can absorb whereas this is not true of CO2. What puzzles me is that the CO2 will be fairly equally distributed through the whole depth of the atmosphere, because of the gas laws and to do with partial pressures, whereas, given the clear sky, the water molecules will be concentrated in the warmer layers next to the earth because otherwise their dew point would have been reached.
The big pollutant, from poor secondary combustion, that has a short life in the atmosphere is soot or particulates. These seem to have an effect of blocking incoming solar energy when in the air and absorbing it, reducing albedo, once they settle or are washed out.
Not to mention exploiting finite resources, most renewable energy deployment requires more concrete, steel and other "stuff" than our current generation capacity per installed kW.
The last part of your sentence can be read both ways:
The message from Terry Fields contains these words:
You could be right on that 2 million square km is a very large area.
Incidentally Wikipedia has so interesting information on polar ice including the rather strange notice that the extent includes sea with only 15% ice.
Seems I was wrong about the antarctic ice. Conditions in the Antarctic are very different and much of that sea ice there comes and goes on an annual basis and has been close to or at maximum extent in the recent past. Arctic summer ice OTOH is mostly (or at least was) at least several years old.
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graph would appear to be a plot of the value every month unlike the Met Office Jan graph but leaving aside that steep drop at the end for a moment the graph does show a generally rising trend. 1998 as always sticks out like a sore thumb but that is followed by a drop of similar magnitude to that between Jan 2007 and Jan 2008 so there is some expectation that the temperature should bounce back..
You mean the side issue posted by A Skepic esq.?
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compares four different estimates of the Temperature Anomaly, all of
Met Office data.
Depends. 40 metres per hour is almost snails pace. If they have a significant effect they should have been discovered earlier.
general agreement the trend has been upward.
The models aren't perfect in the first place and figures from satellites are derived and thus much more open to accidental error in interpretation than a thermometer directly reading temperature. So long as the general agreement isn't down to collusion the more different methods ending up with similar results the more certain we should be that they are all on the right track.
The message from Terry Fields contains these words:
I go into more detail in my other response but I don't think that washes as there has been very little increase in the Antarctic.
The growth of arctic sea ice may well have been a record coming as it did off a record summer low but the situation was very different at the other end.
An interesting point, perhaps the relative stability of the Antarctic ice-cover is the reason that much of the discussion is about the Arctic - which has the benefit of being fairly close to populated centres, etc, allowing easier coverage, on the ground or in the air, that its sister Pole.
I didn't read the discussion, as I wanted to stick as closely as possiblle to the original comments, so I#'ve no idea what Mr Skepic said....
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>> compares four different estimates of the Temperature Anomaly, all of
Given the 'can of worms' that the information abourt satellite data appear to have uncovered, this is perhaps an observation of note.
Well, I'm not so sure. One problem that might arise is that the models, which take something like a thousand different inputs, and which to some extent then get tweaked in order to avoid wild swings in output - implying great sensitivity to input conditions - have not taken this into account. I know extremely little about chaotic systems modelling, but what does come across is how tiny adjustments to the initial conditions (of which there are so many) have this disproportionate effect on output.
Data-collection methods such as satellite and ground observations will take readings that incorporate the effects of these currents, whatever the scale of their effect. The comment that these currents "may be the discovery of the decade" suggests at the very minimum they are worthy of study, and should certianly be considered for inclusion in the modelling when more is known about them. After all, the discrepancies between the data and the models predictions is currently leading to a great deal of discussion; perhaps everyone is looking in the wrong direction.
Isn't it just?
On the topic of recent data, I found a reference here:
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(scroll down to the first two graphs)
which states that the data for one of the graphs we looked at earlier
- the one showing the Temperature Anomaly from ~1861 - 2004 and about which we exchanged some data-reduction - has now been amended to include figures up to January 2008, and published by the Met Office. The author of the reference alleges that the data is not easy to find, and that none of this new data appears to have been incorporated into any MetO publication. His conclusion is that the MetO find this apparent levelling-off in the recent TA figures somewhat inconvenient to explain. I'm not suggesting I agree with him - or the trend-lines added to the second graph, for that matter - but it is interesting that such data is available but seems not to have been used so far.
One could read all sorts of things into that, and we could also discuss this until we'd thrashed the possibilities to death. Would you like to continue this interesting debate, or do you think we have exchanged enough information for now for both of us to mull over? We must have bored the group's other readers to death. I'm sure that more data - and TV programmes! - will be along soon for us to pick up where we left off.
The message from Terry Fields contains these words:
A site written by a self confessed skeptic.
I followed the link through to the Met Office site and found this:
"In order to extend the simple smoothing to the very ends of the time series it is necessary to either extend the data series, or shorten the filter. Howsoever it is done, the data near the endpoints will be treated differently to data in the middle of the series. Extending the data series can be done in a number of ways, but the method used on these pages is simply to continue the series by repeating the final value."
All I can say to that is ouch. It magnifies the effect of any anomaly as can be seen with the deviation the other way in the prediction based on the previous years figures.
Going back to the cited site you only need to look at the bold red line added to Anthony Watts chart to see that the message is what is important, not the data.
I think we have more than exhausted this topic for now but I for one will be extremely interested to see where the Met Office smoothed trend goes if 2009 does bounce back. The way their smoothing filter works the last 3 or 4 years in the series don't tell us very much so 2012 may be the year to look back at 2008.
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