[ExI] The Climate Science Isn't Settled [was: Re: climategate again]

Alfio Puglisi alfio.puglisi at gmail.com
Wed Dec 2 20:08:50 UTC 2009


On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/12/1 Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com>:
> >
> > Look at any plot of the temperature record (1880-present) [...]
>
> ### Look at the plot 1000 AD - present (but the real one, not from
> Mann et. al) What do you see?
>
> ----------------
>
> > False. CRU didn't "maximize" any temperature anomaly  [...]
>
> ### CRU brazenly manipulated proxy data for the pre-instrumental
> period, and appear to have fudged their analysis of the instrumental
> period as well.
>

Lindzen was talking about global temperature anomaly, not temperature
reconstructions. He's a MIT professor, so I assume he knows the difference.




> --------------
> . Lindzen knows full well that water vapor is a feedback,
> > and that even if it is carrying most of the natural greenhouse effect on
> its
> > shoulders, it can't do anything to change Earth's temperature on its own.
>
> ### Do you understand what you wrote? I certainly don't.
>

Sorry, English is my second language. What I meant is that you can't
influence climate using water vapor, because its residence time in the
atmosphere is something like two weeks, and any extra water vapor will soon
become rain and fall to the ground. So even if water vapor is the main
contributor the overall greenhouse effect, it is irrelevant to the issue of
current global warming. Lindzen of course knows this.


> > "Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between
> > incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%"
> >
> > 2% is significant when your planet has an average temperature of 290K.
> And
> > he didn't include the feedbacks (but didn't he talk about water vapor a
> few
> > lines before? Why not now?)
>
> ### Because nobody knows the feedback but available data are
> consistent with absence of positive feedback.
>

Unfortunately, ice age data can't be explained without positive feedbacks.
Orbital forcings are too small.


>
> ### Trenberth seems to disagree with you. He thinks it's a "travesty"
> that their models cannot account for the present period of cooling.
>

No, you are reading CRU emails out of context. Trenberth is lamenting the
fact that we are missing precise measurement of short-term radiation
imbalance and heat transfer, and so we cannot properly model short term
variation. Read Trendberth's paper, cited in the same email:

"An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy"

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/11/energydiagnostics09final.pdf

Abstract:
Planned adaptation to climate change requires
information about what is happening and why. While a
long-term trend is for global warming, short-term periods
of cooling can occur and have physical causes
associated with natural variability.     However, such
natural variability means that energy is rearranged or
changed within the climate system, and should be
traceable. An assessment is given of our ability to track
changes in reservoirs and flows of energy within the
climate system. Arguments are given that developing
the ability to do this is important, as it affects
interpretations of global and especially regional climate
change, and prospects for the future.



-----------------
>
> > All the talks Lindzen does about feedbacks is invalidated by ice age
> cores.
> > Without feedbacks, you can't explain the ice-age / interglacial
> alternance.
>
> ### So why does CO2 start rising only about 800 000 years after the
> end of an ice age? What is driving the feedback?
>

You probably mean 800, which is the typical CO2 rise lag at the end of a
glacial period. In that case, the periodical change in Earth's orbit change
the solar flux. That's the forcing, CO2 in that context is a feedback.



>
> ---------------------
> >
> > It's not the same. (and what is an "anti-skeptic view"? :-)   Global
> warming
> > is a well-developed theory with multiple supporting lines of evidence:
> > different kind of observations, and physics-based models.
>
> ### Anthropogenic CO2 driven catastrophic warming is a lunatic fringe
> theory supported by large government bureaucracies.


I know your political views. I am disappointed that you can't separate them
from scientific arguments.


But we do know that at no time in the past 600 million years did Earth
> exceed a temperature anomaly of +8C, despite CO2 levels much higher
> than today and this is enough to summarily reject the idea that CO2 is
> likely to cause catastrophic warming.
>

You think +8C would be a walk in the park? That's about the difference
between an ice age and the present climate. That's 120 meters of sea level
rise.


>
> ------------------
>
>  Without an obvious falsification, one would need to produce
> > an alternative explanation, and the proposed ones (there have been some:
> > solar, cosmic rays, ice age rebound and surely some other I'm forgetting)
> > didn't survive investigation.
>
> ### Read up on cosmic rays and aerosols.
>

I did. Found little to change the overall picture.

 Alfio
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