Briefly, one says that the current green models for climate change (an artist previously known as Global Warming) do not match recorded measurements and use unsupported 'fiddle factors' to try and get their conclusions about CO2 to match the facts.
The other says that temperatures are proven to be rising at a rapid rate and will continue to do so unless we do drastic things about greenhouse gasses. "So what - geologically speaking - can we look forward to if we continue to pump out greenhouse gases at the current hell-for-leather rate? With resulting global average temperatures likely to be several degrees higher by this century's end, we could almost certainly say an eventual goodbye to the Greenland ice sheet, and probably that covering West Antarctica too, committing us - ultimately - to a 10-metre or more hike in sea levels."
The gloom and doom article is a magnificent piece of populist writing - but it does seem to rely on the accuracy of the predicitive models. Short on timescales, long on a puff for a book.
well that's the usual "Guradina" drivel, isn't it?
Awe, shock big scare, it's going to be worser than the worsests thing there ever was..
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no maths for the readers, just big brightly coloured concepts with high emotional content...
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Yes, its a lot of research crammed into what looks like a power point presentation, and needs someone to talk alongside it.
nevertheless it is pretty much a summary of my own misgivings..
This is particularly telling, in view of what I have been trying to say about the lambda factor
"We see that all the *models* are characterized by positive feedback factors (associated with amplifying the effect of changes in CO2), while the satellite data implies that the feedback should be *negative*. Similar results are being obtained by Roy Spencer."
Now what they are saying is that IF there is some poistive feedback there should be a detectable relationship between - say sea surface temperatures, and upper level troposphere temperatures that would show that - e.g. troposphere temps did not rise as fast as SSTs for positive feedback, therefore showing more heat being retained. The hot earth gets an extra blanket, so the far side if teh blanket should be a little cooler showing a better insulator.
But the satellite data is (allegedly) showing the reverse, that hot seas make for hotter upper atmosphere which means more heat lost to space, which NEGATES some of the effect of the extra blanket. Like water BOILING and losing heat as steam , convection and baroclinic eddies in a more active atmosphere lead to GREATER heat loss than before, so rising CO2 might be seen to be associated wit small ocean temperature rises, but a more active weather system and the greater heat loss - the whole water vapour system acting as a global thermostat.
So more weather yes, but more global temps on a catastrophic scale? No.
Then he makes my other point clearly
"The feedback factor is almost certainly not a true constant since cloud radiative properties depend on aerosols and cosmic rays among other things. If climate sensitivity is currently large, it is unlikely that over the 4.5 billion years of the Earth?s history that it would not have exceeded one, and then we would not be here discussing this."
In other words if there is anything like the positive feedback implied by the IPCC and similar models, the earth would always be in imminent danger of flipping to wildly high temperatures, or freezing over.
Despite huge fluctuations in CO2 in the past, this has not happened. It has happened at other times for other reasons, but not from CO2.
The another nail in the IPCC model coffin
"Our recent work on the early faint sun may prove particularly important. 2.5 billion years ago, when the sun was 20% less bright (compared to the 2% change in the radiative budget associated with doubling CO2), evidence suggests that the oceans were unfrozen and the temperature was not very different from today?s. No greenhouse gas solution has worked, but a negative cloud feedback does."
Once again the role of water vapour is seen to STABILISE temperatures, not AMPLIFY them.
I dunno what that is or where it comes from, but it is a good starting point for a a proper well reasoned sceptical position.
It raises all the salient point and shows that the IPCC model cant be correct.
It doesn't tell us what is going on or why, but it does tell us that the IPCCs claims to have the handle on it are bunk.
Whatever has been going on over the last 50 years is not only due to CO2. That becomes a trivial element in a picture which is still disturbing, but more because we DONT know what is going on, than because we think we do.
For me? Or my great grandchildrens' great grandchildren? [Not that my two are showing any inclination to breed in the foreseeable future.] The timescales are unclear.
Need to check that when the ice melts it will still be land, as well :-(
Err, no. His points are not facts, they are competing theories. I can follow what they are when expressed in simplistic form as they are in that presentation, but that does not make them facts. I understand the theory that the world is flat - it is not difficult to do so. But, it isn't.
Many many more climate scientists disagree with him than agree with him. Which isn't to say that he might not be right. Contrarians can be. I'm not expert at all, certainly not enough to have a primary view either way. I don't believe you are either.
I haven't expressed a view either way. I've just said that you have taken his assertions as fact, and that says more about what you want to believe than it does about the content of what he said.
I don't know what this strawman is, but if the suits fits you...
Nor have I said that anyone should not accept criticism. You are now off beyond reason and just burbling.
No, there is data there that actually completely shows that any particularly strange climate change is going on at all.
Ther is data theer to show that at leats obne s[acet of AGW that ought to have produced a prticular change, simply has not done soe.
In other words he is NOT advancing a competimng theory with that, he is REFUTING the AGW theory.
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I am sorry: you cannot simply take satellite data from, NASA and say 'its just a matter of opinion'
Well I suppose as a proponent of AGW that is *exactly* what you have just done.
Are you aware og hopw much weaker you make your won case appear by doing so?
Any person with enough background to *understand* what is after all only O level (in my day anyway) physics chemistry and maths, has one feels a duty to make it their business to at least understand the fundamental assumptions and the overall nature of the AGW proposition. So I have.
And just as happened when I did it for 'renewable energy' I find a deep gulf between how its being presented to the great unwashed and how the so called science actually is.
I can point you directly at the facts and the flaws in the logic, but if you simply then turn round and deny that facts are facts, or the logical flaws are logical flaws, then I can only understand that not in terms of someone with a rational mind and a degree in a science subject and an understanding of science, but as a person who has simply chosen to believe despite the evidence.
And that person has te gall to call others 'deniers'
Exatly. I haven't taken his assertions as facts: That is your assertion. Sio you are lying about what I have said to start with.
I have taken his FACTS as facts - i.e. the data from NASA etc. that shows that upper air temperatures are not what they should be if water vapour provides the positive feedback necessary to justify the current IPCC value of lambda.
That refutes a CRUCIAL assertion of the AGW case, that that feedback is there and WE KNOW WHAT IT IS. Obviously either it isn't there, or we don't know what it is.
Which makes AGW simply another theory (along with possible others) that
*cant* be true because just about the only prediction it makes (apart from the world will be lots hotter in 100 years time and the world will be drowned) has juts been refuted.
There you go again. You simply cannot see how your position is not based on fact, or rational assessment of a theory. Its based on blind prejudice: You have been mesmerised by the mathematics of AGW and all the learned papers and been flattered by the marketing into believing and supporting something that simply isn't true.
And your only defense against this charge is to call people who attempt to criticise, deniers. ad when charged with that, call it a straw man
And yet, I have only done to you what you would do to others.
You talk about 'right wing think tanks; and 'conspiracies of fossil fuel companies to deny the truth' But have you ever seen them? No. Its just a handy emotive phrase you picked up from the Big Book of GreenSpin.
I know, because I have seen exactly the same thing said in almost the same words by people all over the place. The same conspiracy theories from the same nutters who can be identified by the fact that when they say 'I think that....' it is utterly clear from what follows that they have NOT thought, at all. They have taken 'recieved wisdom' from some superficially emotionally attractive narrative, produced by people whose business is producing superficially emotionally attractive narratives for public consumption.
Yes you have. In effect you have sauid that anyone who challenges AGW on ANY grounds is not
- presenting facts, but opinions and
- ipso facto they are part of some great denialist conspiracy.
If you EXAMINE those points critically, you will find they are NOT fact, but opinions, themselves!
At which point one has to give up: As with all people who have religion, there comes a point where rational discussion is no longer possible. One cannot question the rationality of Faith, which is by definition only there because rationality won't cover the case.
You may believe - you may CHOOSE to Believe - in AGW. Its not for me to interfere with another mans religion. But conversely you do NOT have the right to ram it down my throat and put the cost on my electricity bills and tell me its FACT, when it isn't.
Not only is it not FACT is now a hypothesis that has been REFUTED (or at least had serious doubts cast on it) by DIRECT EVIDENCE.
It reminds me of the time I took a moment with the Jehovahs to point out that the 3 properties of all knowing, all loving and all powerful plus the reality of suffering were simply logically impossible. Their response was something along the lines of well there are issues to explore, why not come to our centre and discuss it with us.
> well that's the usual "Guradina" drivel, isn't it?
It is just about possible that thawing glaciers in permafrost zones will unlock some faults - but they are not highly populated regions.
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>>> [Which I found very hard reading in parts.]
Actually I would say this is deliberately misleading.
Radiative losses at a given surface temperature scale as P = kT^4
This means that for small changes an X percent change in solar forcing translates to an X/4 % change in temperature so lambda can obviously be anything less than 4 before the Earth's temperature is in any danger of running away. And for larger changes it is even more favourable.
eg A change of x2 or +100% in solar flux gives an approx dT ~ 25% exact answer from radiation equation is dT = sqrt(sqrt(2)) = ~+19%
And so long as the Earth has all three phases of water present we have a very powerful latent heat buffer working in our favour.
Current global average temperature is 14C = 287K If the sun were 20% less bright and all other things being equal that global average would fall to 0.8^(1/4)*287K = 271K
Just below freezing on average and roughly 16C lower overall (down slightly less at the poles and more at the equator). There are still plenty of places on Earth that would not freeze at that without a positive feedback (notably the northern half of Australia and the southern half of North America and a large stripe of the sub tropics).
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requires the albedo feedback of white snow and glaciers to amplify the fluctuation to get anything like the sorts of excursions that are observed to occur in sync with the changes in average insolation at 70N. The driving force for Milankovitch glaciation cycles is small but systematic and the land area under snow is an important feedback mechanism.
2.5 billion years ago the Earth's atmosphere was still a reducing one of N2, CO2 and CH4 and free oxygen was still rare. This additional GHG forcing allowed the Earth to stay relatively warm despite a weak sun.
Other data can be found that shows that the models are probably not too far off on this point. You like to cherry pick data that suits your "IPCC are wrong and it is all a conspiracy by climate scientists" world view. I am surprised that you are so easily taken in.
Most of the last 50 years probably is due to CO2 but there is also a small periodic component that made the 1980's and 90's rise steeper than it would have done from just GHG forcing alone.
What after all is the 'temperature' of the surface of the atmosphere from which all radiation radiates, as it were.
now consider the cloud tops for example. More heat, more water vapour more thermals hotter cloud tops more heat losses more albedo less sun, and it rains.
Its the IPCC who are cherry picking data, not me. HOW they could claim that clouds and water vapour were positive feedback I do not know.
We both know that at thermal IR wavelengths the Earth is a very good approximation to a black body. The only exceptions are shallow angle specular reflections off water surfaces and exposed native metal ore.
Even the oceans behave enough like a black body that it isn't a problem apart from in the direction that the sea is reflecting direct sunlight.
You choose to selectively misrepresent the data and create straw men.
They know a lot more about the science than you do.
well no we don't know that. In fact te whole theory for anthropogenic global warming *depends utterly and completely* on the alleged fact that the presence of greenhouse gasses causes the Earth NOT to behave like a black body.
As do clouds and ice and snow etc. The whole principle of albedo is dependent on te fact that white stuff reflects incident energy - i.e. it dies NOT behave like a black body,
So we have a theory whose actual operation utterly depends on the earth NOT being a black body, and yet whose protagonist uses the fact that it is, to just teh same theory?
It ain't me cherry picking.
No, thast the IPCC.
Apparently they don't.
They certainly are seemingly unaware of its philsophy, to begin with.
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