Well said JohnWho, couldn't have put it better meself.

I keep reading the AGW mantra that "greenhouse gases" store heat!

I cannot find any science to support that simple claim. Even water vapour cannot store heat. Oxygen and Nitrogen, making up 99% of the atmosphere can and does store heat but loses it automatically in a simple process defined as "lapse rate" which is very clearly explained in science. This involves temperature and density changes with altitude.

In case anyone quibles my water vapour claim; water vapour transports a fixed amount of latent heat. This does not change with temperature.

(03-01-2010 01:09 AM)Richard111 Wrote:  Oxygen and Nitrogen, making up 99% of the atmosphere can and does store heat but loses it automatically in a simple process defined as "lapse rate" which is very clearly explained in science. This involves temperature and density changes with altitude.

Given CO2 has a lower heat capacity than N2 and O2, and has the ability to radiate heat at atmospheric temps. and pressures that N2 and O2 do not apparently have,
then does CO2 help cool the N2 and O2, adding to the (presumably dry) lapse rate. ?
(Because CO2 with a lower heat capacity looses heat (by means of radiation) first, therefore is effectively cooler than the N2 and O2)
Is it not the case that the (dry) lapse rate is therefore the sum of less gravity + CO2 heat radiation. ?

(03-01-2010 02:32 AM)Derek Wrote:  Given CO2 has a lower heat capacity than N2 and O2, and has the ability to radiate heat at atmospheric temps. and pressures that N2 and O2 do not apparently have,
then does CO2 help cool the N2 and O2, adding to the (presumably dry) lapse rate. ?
(Because CO2 with a lower heat capacity looses heat (by means of radiation) first, therefore is effectively cooler than the N2 and O2)
Is it not the case that the (dry) lapse rate is therefore the sum of less gravity + CO2 heat radiation. ?

My thoughts are along those lines but I still fail to see how CO2 can add any heat to the air beyond the first few hundred meters of altitude. I have to assume this same line of reasoning applies to water vapour.

In other words "greenhouse gases" close to the surface BLOCK their specific radiation bands from penitrating higher up the atmosphere.

This seems to explain why the "dry" lapse rate is not effected by extra absorbed heat, the higher air levels are simply not getting that extra heat.

The "dry" lapse rate is very roughly 1C per 100 meters of altitude. So upper air containing "greenhouse gases" are always cooler than lower air so radiative heat transfer CANNOT take place in a downward direction.

A cloud, water droplets, is effectively a "dark grey body" and produces such wide band down welling radiation that will not all be blocked by "greenhouse gases" below. This fits nicely with the fact that surface temperatures on cloudy nights do not fall as rapidly on clear nights.

This is the only effect that I can accept that meets any "greenhouse" explanation but then those same clouds during daytime provide cooling.

Willis Essenbach has a lot to say about clouds over at WUWT.

---

Here is some support for my above reasoning from the first link in SST's 75 reasons to skeptical of "global warming".

Scan down to the title below. LINK

Quote:Absorption of Infrared Radiation

The arithmetic of absorption of infrared radiation also works to decrease the linearity. Absorption of light follows a logarithmic curve (Fig. 2) as the amount of absorbing substance increases. It is generally accepted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb virtually all the infrared radiation in the main carbon dioxide absorption bands over a distance of less than one km. Thus, even if the atmosphere were heavily laden with carbon dioxide, it would still only cause an incremental increase in the amount of infrared absorption over current levels.

I think I meant CO2 (heat radiation) cooling effect. Apologies for my poor wording.
Therefore after the initial saturation of lower level atmos. CO2,
higher up CO2 produces more of the same wavelength radiation as it cools the atmos. it is contained in.

I mean therefore that CO2 throughout the depth of the atmos. releases radiation at it's wavelegth as it cools the N2 and O2,
not that it is neccesarily absorbed / remitted radiation of this wavelength.

Does this make sense. ?

I have followed your link - thanks for that.
Q - Does CO2 absorbtion plots, also equal CO2 emission plots for IR. ?

I am not too keen on,
"So, what is the actual increase? Interestingly enough, that is easy to estimate"
Effectively he takes all the temp (staring point and end point increase only) over a time period,
and divides it by the supposed CO2 (again start and finish points increase only) global level rise..
That assumes
i) The temp rise is solely due to CO2...
ii) The global CO2 and temp figures are accurate.......
Also,
iii) Does not take account of the variations in temp (and CO2) over the time period.....
Even by this "reasoning" shouldn't they of used the maximum and minimum values recorded for the two variables ?
Or maybe the max. min. and average for the starting and ending points, to produce a "range" of possible increase ?

Regarding John's fine post #45,

I take note that while indeed skeptics have a variable viewpoint on the AGW effects,there is the other side who has developed a level of certainty that is not borne out by reality at all.

Note the following FAILED claims:

The Tropospheric hot spot.

The increasing warming trend line of this decade that is ending.

The lack of positive feedback evidence.

The increasing number of catastrophic storms.

The utter failure to show that CAGW is around the corner.

Skeptics can allow some latitude in viewpoints because we are painfully aware just how little we really understand the climate.While those AGW believers have that inflexible belief of a hypothesis that has never been validated in ANY form,to the point of insanity.

Yet somehow we skeptics are the "bad guys",for the gall to be skeptical and in favor of the ENTIRE Scientific Method in its general form.

While a core group of AGW believing scientists preferred to be secretive,with hold data,try shutting down other viewpoints, and even criminally resist FOI requests.

The contrast is obvious.

(02-22-2010 02:25 PM)JohnWho Wrote:  What about: it's not these two, so it must be methane, or the PDO, or cosmic rays, or the Thermohaline Circulation, or ...?

Sorry I've been out of touch again, kinda been busy. Anyway this post from a while back is something that really got me thinking, so I decided to write an article on why cosmic rays do not significantly affect climate. I'll try to get to volcanic activity and methane as well, when I have time

I'll try to get to all the other stuff as well if I have time.

jason_85 -


Other than CO2 in the atmosphere, what exactly do you think significantly affects climate?

Are you painting yourself in a corner and the only thing you accept that affects climate is atmospheric CO2?

I also notice you've ignored a number of posts in this thread.

I haven't ignored anything, but it's simply not possible for me to address every critique, because it takes a lot of time. I think that historically the only external things significantly affecting the climate were Milankovich cycle and sunspots. Of course, these factors don't work alone, and we have secondary effects such as changes in ice coverage, greenhouse gas emissions, cloud coverage, etc.

Today I think the dominant force is CO2. I have tried to address why I think CO2 overtook sunspots as the leading cause for rapid changes in the climate, in "Sunspots and the 20th century" section of my article on global warming, and I will try to get to the other things as well, but as I said it takes time...

jason 85:

You say:

(03-04-2010 02:22 AM)jason_85 Wrote:  I haven't ignored anything, but it's simply not possible for me to address every critique, because it takes a lot of time. I think that historically the only external things significantly affecting the climate were Milankovich cycle and sunspots. Of course, these factors don't work alone, and we have secondary effects such as changes in ice coverage, greenhouse gas emissions, cloud coverage, etc.

Today I think the dominant force is CO2. I have tried to address why I think CO2 overtook sunspots as the leading cause for rapid changes in the climate, in "Sunspots and the 20th century" section of my article on global warming, and I will try to get to the other things as well, but as I said it takes time...

Sorry, but you have completely ignored the most likely cause of climate change and have made an assumption instead.

The basic assumption used in the numerical climate models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing. And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this possibility as follows.

The climate system is seeking an equilibrium that it never achieves. The Earth obtains radiant energy from the Sun and radiates that energy back to space. The energy input to the system (from the Sun) may be constant (although some doubt that), but the rotation of the Earth and its orbit around the Sun ensure that the energy input/output is never in perfect equilbrium.

The climate system is an intermediary in the process of returning (most of) the energy to space (some energy is radiated from the Earth’s surface back to space). The Northern and Southern hemispheres have different coverage by oceans and, therefore, as the year progresses the modulation of the energy input/output of the system varies. Such a varying system could be expected to exhibit oscillatory behaviour and it does: the mean global temperature increases by 3.8K from July to January and falls by the same amount from January to July each year.

Hence, the system is always seeking equilibrium but never achieves it.

Iimportantly, the oscillations could induce harmonic effects which have periodicity of several years. Of course, such harmonic oscillation would be a process that – at least in principle – is capable of evaluation.

However, there may be no process because the climate is a chaotic system. Therefore, the observed oscillations (ENSO, NAO, etc.) could be observation of the system seeking its chaotic attractor(s) in response to its seeking equilibrium in a changing situation.

Very, importantly, there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP. And the ~900 year oscillation could be the chaotic climate system seeking its attractor(s). If so, then all global climate models and ‘attribution studies’ utilized by IPCC and CCSP are based on the false premise that there is a force or process causing climate to change when no such force or process exists. Indeed, glacial and interglacial states may be the result of there being two chaotic attractors.

It seems likely that the climate system exhibits both harmonic oscillation and chaotic attractor seeking.

But the assumption that climate change is driven by radiative forcing may be correct. If so, then it is still extremely improbable that – within the foreseeable future – the climate models could be developed to a state whereby they could provide reliable predictions. This is because the climate system is extremely complex. Indeed, the climate system is more complex than the human brain (the climate system has more interacting components – e.g. biological organisms – than the human brain has interacting components – e.g. neurones), and nobody claims to be able to construct a reliable predictive model of the human brain. It is pure hubris to assume that the climate models are sufficient emulations for them to be used as reliable predictors of future climate when they have no demonstrated forecasting skill.

Hence, empirical assessments such as those of Idso and that of Eschenbach are essential if we are to evaluate the validity of the assumptions which form the basis of existing numerical climate models.

Richard

(03-04-2010 02:33 AM)Richard S Courtney. Wrote:  The basic assumption used in the numerical climate models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing.

Which numerical models? The ones for predicting climate into the near future?

(03-04-2010 02:33 AM)Richard S Courtney. Wrote:  And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this possibility as follows.

There is a strong scientific consensus that climate is strongly influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations. I am guessing you didn't mean to say that it is possible that there is "no force or process is causing climate to vary" so I'll just ignore that.

Look I agree with most of what you're saying, but you're saying there's a lack of evidence on my side. But then where's the evidence for what you're saying? What evidence is there that the milankovich cycle is able to produce the magnitude of oscillations in temperature that we're seeing?

Wiki has a good section for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Milankovitch cycles are seen in, for example, the Vostok ice core:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Milank...dCores.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok...lation.jpg

If you look at contemporary CO2 and temperature history, just like the lag shown in the ice cores, temperature changes occur BEFORE changes in CO2:
http://www.trevoole.co.uk/Questioning_Cl...mfm1_1.htm

Thus the consensus view of CO2 driving temperature is wrong on all time scales.

Yes, radiative forcing does occur; Milankovitch cycles show that, but it is radiative forcing that causes changes in CO2.

(03-04-2010 02:46 PM)Questioning_Climate Wrote:  If you look at contemporary CO2 and temperature history, just like the lag shown in the ice cores, temperature changes occur BEFORE changes in CO2:
http://www.trevoole.co.uk/Questioning_Cl...mfm1_1.htm

You say this as if it's not something every climate scientist already knows. This does not mean CO2 didn't drive up temperatures, it just shows that CO2 wasn't responsible for starting the interglacials.

I recommend you go back through the thread and read the discussions up to now.

---

(03-04-2010 02:46 PM)Questioning_Climate Wrote:  Yes, radiative forcing does occur; Milankovitch cycles show that, but it is radiative forcing that causes changes in CO2.

What does this mean? How can radiative forcing cause changes in CO2 without CO2 increasing radiative forcing?

Jason_85, I'm perfectly aware of your flawed arguments and I do not need to read through the thread again. My comments were to try to help you; clearly you think otherwise.

CO2 is not the dominant radiative forcing mechanism. There are a great many more significant factors affecting climate.

Maybe you would like to explain why CO2 driven radiative forcing from the much greater levels of the past did not cause thermal runaway?

(03-05-2010 01:30 AM)jason_85 Wrote:  

(03-04-2010 02:46 PM)Questioning_Climate Wrote:  If you look at contemporary CO2 and temperature history, just like the lag shown in the ice cores, temperature changes occur BEFORE changes in CO2:
http://www.trevoole.co.uk/Questioning_Cl...mfm1_1.htm

You say this as if it's not something every climate scientist already knows. This does not mean CO2 didn't drive up temperatures, it just shows that CO2 wasn't responsible for starting the interglacials.

I recommend you go back through the thread and read the discussions up to now.

---

(03-04-2010 02:46 PM)Questioning_Climate Wrote:  Yes, radiative forcing does occur; Milankovitch cycles show that, but it is radiative forcing that causes changes in CO2.

What does this mean? How can radiative forcing cause changes in CO2 without CO2 increasing radiative forcing?

I'm sorry I've been a bit dismissing, but the reason I asked you to go back and read the thread was because you were asking questions that had already been answered.

(03-05-2010 07:51 AM)Questioning_Climate Wrote:  Maybe you would like to explain why CO2 driven radiative forcing from the much greater levels of the past did not cause thermal runaway?

So here's the answer off the top of my head because I don't feel like looking it up right now: firstly, CO2 levels have rarely been as high as they are today, and times when they were higher than today were so long ago that we don't really have any reliable information, so any answer i or anyone else gives to that question is more or less open to debate anyway. Basically I would say that a global runaway did occur, hence the increases in temperature inexplicable by changes in the milankovich cycle/ice coverage alone.

Jason 85:

You quote me and make silly statements.

(03-04-2010 01:35 PM)jason_85 Wrote:  

(03-04-2010 02:33 AM)Richard S Courtney. Wrote:  The basic assumption used in the numerical climate models is that change to climate is driven by change to radiative forcing.

Which numerical models? The ones for predicting climate into the near future?

(03-04-2010 02:33 AM)Richard S Courtney. Wrote:  And it is very important to recognise that this assumption has not been demonstrated to be correct. Indeed, it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary. I explain this possibility as follows.

There is a strong scientific consensus that climate is strongly influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations. I am guessing you didn't mean to say that it is possible that there is "no force or process is causing climate to vary" so I'll just ignore that.

Look I agree with most of what you're saying, but you're saying there's a lack of evidence on my side. But then where's the evidence for what you're saying? What evidence is there that the milankovich cycle is able to produce the magnitude of oscillations in temperature that we're seeing?

All the climate models are based on the assumption of radiative forcing.
All of them. Got it?

Science progresses by dispute of “a strong scientific consensus ”. Were that not so then Galileo would have been wrong. And appeal to “a strong scientific consensus ” is an example of the logical fallacy of ‘appeal to authority’. (Google it if you want to know about logical fallacies).

I absolutely and certainly did mean "it is quite possible that there is no force or process causing climate to vary". I boldened it so it was clear that he statement was my main point. The remainder of what I wrote was explanation of it.

Your saying you intend to ignore it is offensive and stupid. Ignore whatever you want to, but stating it is not polite. And choosing to ignore reality choosing to believe in fantasy is one definition of insanity.

The "evidence on my side" is that your argument is demonstrated to be wrong. Therefore, there is need for an alterative explanation of climate change and I am suggesting one. Please try to 'shoot it down': the scientific method consists of presenting possible ideas and trying to demolish them, and it does not include any attempts to prove them.

You don't think there is need for an alterntive to AGW and radiative forcing as an expanation for climate change? OK, then address the following points.

Empirical evidence says the AGW hypothesis is wrong.
The following points explain this.

1. The anthropogenic emissions and global temperature do not correlate.

2. Change to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration follows change to global temperature at all time scales.

3. Recent rise in global temperature has not been induced by rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
Global temperature fell from 1940 to 1970, rose to 1998, and has fallen since. That’s 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming. Global temperature is now similar to that of 1990. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased at a near constant rate and by more than 30% since 1940. It has increased by 8% since 1990.

4. Rise in global temperature has not been induced by anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.
Over 80% of the emissions have been since 1940 and the emissions have been increasing at a compound rate. But since 1940 there have been 40 years of cooling with only 28 years of warming. There’s been no significant warming since 1995, and global temperature has fallen since the high it had in the El Nino year of 1998.

5. The pattern of atmospheric warming predicted by the AGW hypothesis is absent.
The hypothesis predicts most warming of the air at altitude in the tropics. Measurements from weather balloons and from satellites both show cooling at altitude in the tropics.

So, the normal rules of science say the AGW-hypothesis is completely refuted.
Nothing predicted by the hypothesis is observed, and the opposite of some of its predictions are observed.

I made no mention of Milankovitch Cycles. I discussed chaotic behaviour and the effects of strange attractors. Glacial and interglacial states are completely explicable as being the positions of strange attractors, and no forcings are required for a transition between them.

There is no evidence of anything unusual happening to the global climate.

The different estimates of the Earth’s average surface temperature (mean global temperature: MGT) all show
cooling from ~1880 to ~1910,
warming from ~1910 to ~1940,
cooling from ~ 1940 to ~1970,
warming from ~1970 to 1998,
cooling since 1998.

The general trend has been warming, but the rate of temperature rise was the same for the rate of rise in the two ~ 30 year warming periods: i.e. from ~1910 to ~1940 and from ~1970 to 1998.
Nobody disputes that the rates of global warming were the same in these 30-year periods: even Phil Jones admits it.

However, over 80% of the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) were after 1940. Clearly, there seems to have been little change to rate of temperature rise induced by the CO2 emissions from human activity. Indeed, if the emissions were causing the most recent rise then why has the temperature not increased for the last 15 years? And why did the global temperature rise in the period from ~1910 to ~1940 when everybody agrees the CO2 emissions from human activity were not sufficient to induce the rise?

It seems that there are several natural cycles that are overlaid on each other. The global temperature variations listed above seem to be a ~60-year cycle (i.e. ~30 year periods of alternating warming and cooling). And there is an apparent ~900 year oscillation that caused the Roman Warm Period (RWP), then the Dark Age Cool Period (DACP), then the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), then the Little Ice Age (LIA), and the present warm period (PWP). All the observed rise of global temperature in the twentieth century could be recovery from the LIA that is similar to the recovery from the DACP to the MWP.

These two observed natural cycles provide a complete explanation of the rise in MGT over the twentieth century. The recovery from the LIA is responsible for most – possibly all – of the temperature rise over the twentieth century, and the ~60-year cycle (that coincides with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, PDO) counteracted that rise in the periods ~1880 to ~1910, ~1940 to ~1970, and since 1998.

If these two natural cycles continue then
(1) the present stasis in MGT can be expected to continue for another 20 years after which global temperature will resume its rise until it reaches the level it had in the MWP
or
(2) at some time global temperature will start to fall until it reaches the level it had in the LIA.

Richard