"In this cloud of unknowing, the null hypothesis that temperature change is a result of natural phenomena holds until proven otherwise."

There is a finite amount of fossil fuels which will gradually get more and more difficult to get.

We get a lot of fossil fuel from countries that are unfriendly to us.

Fossil fuels produce all sorts of pollution including CO2.

If we just burn fossil fuel like crazy until we run out, then there'll be a huge speculative bubble. Those people with the remaining, ever more scarce fossil fuels will become super wealthy. The population as a whole will be poorer.

Better for us, individually and through the government, to anticipate this and develop efficiency, use of the sun which is essentially infinite duration through wind, solar, and hydro, and head off this bubble of the fossil fuel running out. This would make sense even if CO2 turns out to be a minor problem.

Infant technology makes no sense from a private selfish persepective, that's where the government is the most effective. The same was true developing computers and many other technologies. Government should subsidize alternate energy and efficiency until it becomes viable by itself.

The government subsidized hybrid cars, but it phased out after a while. Hybrids became more widespread sooner than would have happened otherwise.

The oil companies would rather we just burn fossil fuels like crazy until oil becomes scarce. They will make huge amounts while this is happening and even more as it becomes more scarce. They buy off our "best government money can buy" to do nothing.

Hi Jerry,

I agree with most of what you're saying here, though with these important caveats.

1) Before large amounts of public money are spent subsidizing the setting up of alternative power generation technologies, the value of the industrial scale rollout of those technologies must be properly demonstrated for the part of the world they are proposed to serve. Solar photo-voltaic isn't viable north of the 54th parallel in the UK for example. Wind isn't viable anywhere apart from a few locations far from amjor centres of habitation so far as I can tell, because it's too intermittent and requires fossil fuel backup to be permanently online to maintain grid stability anyway.

2) With further development some current problems may be overcome, but we don't need to be building white elephants all over the landscape until they are. Note that I'm not saying we shouldn't develop these technologies, just that we shouldn't waste resources by using them inappropriately.

3) You've chosen to change the subject at the head of this new page, which is ok, but I'd still like you to consider the science of the greenhouse effect which I outlined at the bottom of the last. Viz:

If there is a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere due to shortwave radiation from the Sun getting in easier than longwave radiation from the surface can get out, then the same is true of the ocean, but more so. Sunlight penetrates 100m or more into the ocean and heats the water. But unlike the air water is nearly opaque to longwave radiation, so the ocean has a harder time getting rid of heat back to space than the atmosphere does. In order to radiate more effectively, so it can be in thermal equilibrium, it must rise in temperature.

Therefore most of the 'greenhouse effect' is actually in the ocean, not the atmosphere. Water has a vastly higher heat capacity than air, and the oceans have vastly higher total mass than the atmosphere. The oceans giving off heat is what keeps the air near the sea warm at night compared to up in the mountains. But to get rid of as much heat at night as they gain from the Sun during the day, the oceans have to be at an average ~289K, which is around 2C warmer than the average air temperature. The second law of thermodynamics says the air is therefore not going to heat the ocean, because heat cannot of itself pass from cooler to hotter.

The implication is that it is the ocean which is responsible for most of the higher and more stable temperature the Earth's surface enjoys compared to the Moon, which is at the same distance from the Sun we are. Therefore changing co2 levels in the air will have only a very small effect if any is even measurable.

Think about it.

Edited by tallbloke on 08/16/2012 01:13:02 MDT.

Wind is one of the cheapest energy sources - problem is the wind doesn't blow all the time, everywhere - need to couple it with more transmission lines to take electricity from where the wind is blowing to where the electricity is needed, and natural gas for when the wind isn't blowing

What the government should do, is identify looming problems with major consequences like energy, and seed development of solutions. As they mature, the subsidies should be phased out.

Like that solar panel maker that went broke. Solyndra? These are high risk and some will fail. That's why they need government subsidy.

This will also produce jobs which is good.

Here's one of the (many) reasons why big wind turbines are a bad idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAAzBArYdw

When you factor in access roads, foundation footings, transmission line construction, rare earth mining for the magnets in the dynamos, and backup generation, these things are not economical either in financial terms or in pure energy conversion terms.

Then add to thatr the Ill health, and suicides caused and homes abandoned due to low frequency noise, it's a nono.

Think again Jerry. While you are at it, do some thinking about the greenhouse effect as I outlined above. I'm still waiting for a response to that.

By The way, here's the accumulated cyclone energy graph for the last 30 years. Hurricanes on the decline despite the doomsayers blatherings...

.

Edited by tallbloke on 08/16/2012 09:04:36 MDT.

The only way to avoid negative effects is to live in the stone age with 10 million people on the earth.

Yeah, you have to study bad effects like birds, and figure out how to minimize. All energy sources have negative effects. Wind is better than everything else.

I think it's interesting to look at scientific subjects like global warming, but we're not going to reach any conclusions right now. Hopefully we'll spend a bunch of money studying it, including from government.

Jerry said:
Hopefully we'll spend a bunch of money studying it, including from government.


We already did. 127 BILLION DOLLARS since 1980 I think the figure is.

What we found out was that when the answer has already been decided beforehand, money buy exactly that science which confirms the preconception. It's independent researchers who are unearthing the truth of all this. Not those who depend on grant allocations.

Citizens who don't like being fleeced for their hard earned need to wise up and inform themselves better.

Edited by tallbloke on 08/16/2012 09:13:42 MDT.

I don't believe we've spent 127 billion dollars studying global warming

So ridiculous not even worth thinking about

Rog said,

"The second law of thermodynamics says the air is therefore not going to heat the ocean, because heat cannot of itself pass from cooler to hotter."

It's not that the air heats the ocean, it's that the air does not let as much of this heat escape the ocean and land masses as it did before - because of extra greenhouse gases.

Satelite data shows that there has not been an increase in incoming solar shortwave and also shows a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation. These differences would have been immeasureable not that long ago but it's tipping the scales now.

There is lots of information on this subject if anyone cares to look.

Edited by wildlife on 08/16/2012 10:53:36 MDT.

Jerry said:
I don't believe we've spent 127 billion dollars studying global warming
So ridiculous not even worth thinking about

The link to the report is somewhere in the last 137 pages of the flame war. Meanwhile another document has come to light which shows 5.1 BILLION DOLLARS was dished out by the US to countries like INDIA in the last two years alone for climate change mitigation projects which failed to account for the use of the money or provide figures on how much co2 had been saved.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/15/newly-declassified-document-from-inspector-general-u-s-climate-change-spending-abroad-is-a-mess/

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Dan said:
Satelite data shows that there has not been an increase in incoming solar shortwave and also shows a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation.
There is lots of information on this subject if anyone cares to look.

I looked. You're wrong.

This is the NCEP Global OLR reanalysis since 1948
.

And this is the satellite equatorial OLR data since 1979
.

Solar activity levels as indicated by the integration of sunspot number as a running count departing from the long term average. It increased all the way from the mid 1930's to 2003
.

The key point about using an integration of sunspot number this way rather than simply looking at the amplitude of the successive solar cycles is that it gives us a useful proxy for the ocean heat content. At the long term average sunspot value of ~40SSN the ocean neither gains nor loses heat. Since the average sunspot number over the second half of the C20th was much higher than 40SSN, the oceans gained heat all the way to 2003 despite the slight drops in the absolute peak values of the solar cycles. This is where the most influential climate scientists whose expertise is in paleo proxies such as tree rings and atmospheric science went wrong.

Edited by tallbloke on 08/17/2012 05:48:52 MDT.

You had to look? What about the other people here that 'looked' and found that you are wrong? I did not mention solar activity or solar cyles per se but mentioned incoming solar radiation versus outgoing radiation as a proportion, regardless of what cycle we are in. This has nothing to do with spikes or drops in solar activity. Regardless of cycle, less longwave radiation is getting out than used to, so the energy balance of Earth is offset.

In other words, on any given day or week, regardless of scale of solar activity, or ocean cycles, or amount of particulates in the air or whatever, more solar radiation is being retained by the planet than 60 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 10 years ago because of increasing amounts of GHG.

Edited by wildlife on 08/17/2012 11:35:15 MDT.

Dan said:
I did not mention solar activity or solar cyles per se but mentioned incoming solar radiation.

The amount of solar radiation arriving from the Sun at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is affected by two factors: The Earth's orbital parameters and solar variation. The first of these varies very slowly in the long term (100,000 years, coincident with the ice age glacial periods), and annually as the Earth orbits the Sun. The second is continuously variable, and solar activity as indicated by the sunspot count shows an increase throughout the C20th to a grand maximum of the highest solar cycle amplitude seen in 400 years of sunspot data collection in 1958 and a run of high cycles extending from the 1930's to 2003.

The amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth;s surface is a function of the above mentioned solar variation and cloud albedo - the amount of sunlight reflected back into space from cloud tops. Cloud amount reduced in the tropics throughout the 1980's and 90's according to satellite data collated by the Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP)and is the real cause of the late C20th warming. Cloud amount is found to be inversely proportional to solar activity levels, possibly due to the Svensmark effect or to the movement of the jet streams towards the equator during warmer periods.

Dan originally said:
Satelite(sic) data shows that there has not been an increase in incoming solar shortwave and also shows a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation.

The graphs of outgoing longwave and incoming solar energy above prove Dan to be wrong, so now he has changed tack and says:

Regardless of cycle, less longwave radiation is getting out than used to, so the energy balance of Earth is offset.

Dan has repeated the same falsehood. As the data shows, more, not less longwave radiation is getting out than used to. This is because Earth's surface was receiving more energy from the Sun due to higher levels of solar activity and the concomitantly reduced tropical cloud in the 80's and 90's and so has to emit more energy back to space to regain energy balance.

So the multi-billion dollar question is about the Earth's TOA energy balance and what has affected it. The problem is, this is difficult to measure accurately, and we only know what it is from our satellite measurements to an accuracy of around 5W/m^2. But the claimed theoretical signal from the increase in co2 is only 1.7W"/m^2 - three times less than the error on our measurements. So Dan's assertion that:

"more solar radiation is being retained by the planet than 60 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 10 years ago because of increasing amounts of GHG."

is not confirmed by the data. This is one of the main reasons the climate debate rumbles on, and why Kevin Trenberth worries about "missing heat" that he is sure must be hiding in the climate system somewhere (where Kevin?). He thinks heat is "Missing", because despite the ongoing increase in co2, and the theoretical (and highly speculative) assumption that solar variation doesn't make much difference to Earth's climate, and the fact there were no big volcanic eruptions reaching the startosphere since Pinatubo in 1991, the Earth's surface temperature has been stable for the last 17 years in terms of statistically significant change. This is why Kevin Trenberth bemoans that "We can't find the warming and it's a travesty that we can't" and that "The data are surely wrong". What Kevin doesn't seem to appreciate is the scientific method requires him to test his theory against experiment, and if the data say your hypothesis is wrong, you change the hypothesis, not the data.

Readers sufficiently interested to take the trouble can find out more about how the ocean heat content can be compared with satellite measurements to get a better handle on the Earth's energy balance by reading this somewhat technical article by Peter Berenyi on my blog:

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/working-out-where-the-energy-goes-part-2-peter-berenyi/

Edited by tallbloke on 08/18/2012 02:53:04 MDT.

along with 99% of the Climate Science community. Sounds better to say Dan is wrong doesn't it Rog, rather than the entire Climate Science community is wrong.

Dan.

Again, you are forgetting about The Global Conspiracy that seeks to suppress Rog's hard-won truth. The same conspiracy that has gotten to all 99% of those scientists and secretly coerced them to support The Warmist Agenda.

Again... remember The Global Conspiracy. It all makes more sense then.

Well Dan, if 99% of the climate science community is with you in saying that Outgoing longwave radiation has been falling then I'll have to go my own lonely way with the data, wherever it leads.

Who are you going to believe Dan? The 'consensus' or your own eyes?

.

Give us some context with that and some source. Are we supposed to believe from this out of context chart that OLR is increasing at some stupifying rate?

Check out this chart;
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Total-Heat-Content.gif

You'll like were I got that Rog; http://www.thescienceisstillsettled.com/climategate

Rog, you keep saying the oceans have actually been cooling since 2003. If that's the case, it would be unlikely that in 2007 an Arctic Ice Extent minimum record would have occurred and this year is on track to beat that record.

I know you will like this exerpt I took from the 2nd link above, since you and your buddies like to misquote what Kevin Trenberth said, along with everyone else. When are you and your gang going to 'acquire' more emails to misquote - right before another election? ;

" So, the thermal energy which satellite measurements tell us must be on Earth somewhere, but which we have been unable to detect, must be somewhere that we have not measured, and logically, the first place to look is in the one place we know we're unable to measure. And Kevin Trenberth considers it "a travesty that we can't" get equipment that measures ocean temperatures deeper than 2000 meters. "

Roger Tattersall (Rog) quoted Kevin as saying, " This is why Kevin Trenberth bemoans that "We can't find the warming and it's a travesty that we can't" and that "The data are surely wrong". "

Edited by wildlife on 08/19/2012 00:21:01 MDT.

Dan, the context for the graph is that it was produced by NCEP and covers the whole globe Outgoing Longwave Radiation from 1948. It shows an approx 6W/m^2 INCREASE in OLR over the period. Clearly, this need for the planet to lose more heat was due to an INCREASE in energy reaching the Earth's surface from the Sun due to changes in cloud cover, plus whatever other changes in the internal energy budget were caused by long term oceanic oscillations, humidty, co2 increase, particulate decrease, changing ocean surface biota, ice albedo, and a whole host of other factors.

Simple it aint.

Dan says that John Cook said that Kevin Trenberth said:
"Kevin Trenberth considers it "a travesty that we can't" get equipment that measures ocean temperatures deeper than 2000 meters. "

Here's what Kevin Trenberth actually said:


From: Tom Wigley

To: Gavin Schmidt

Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:43:54 -0600

Cc: Michael Mann , Kevin Trenberth , Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones”

, Benjamin Santer , Thomas R Karl , Jim Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Gavin,

I just think that you need to be up front with uncertainties

and the possibility of compensating errors.

Tom.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

>>>>> Kevin Trenberth wrote:

>>>>>> Hi all

>>>>>> Well I have my own article on where the heck is global

>>>>>> warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have

>>>>>> broken records the past two days for the coldest days on

>>>>>> record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days

>>>>>> was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the

>>>>>> previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F

>>>>>> and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

>>>>>> This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game

>>>>>> was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below

>>>>>> freezing weather).

>>>>>> Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change

>>>>>> planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. /Current Opinion in

>>>>>> Environmental Sustainability/, *1*, 19-27,

>>>>>> doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [PDF]

>>>>>> (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

>>>>>> The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at

>>>>>> the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data

>>>>>> published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there

>>>>>> should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong.

>>>>>> Our observing system is inadequate.

>>>>>> That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People

>>>>>> like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly

>>>>>> correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the

>>>>>> change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The

>>>>>> PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO

>>>>>> index became positive in September for first time since Sept

>>>>>> 2007. see

>>>>>> http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_current.ppt

>>>>>> Kevin

Tom Wigley comes out of this mess with more integrity than most of the people on the cc list IMO.

Dan says:
I know you will like this exerpt I took from the 2nd link above, since you and your buddies like to misquote what Kevin Trenberth said, along with everyone else.

As a matter of fact Dan, I and many other sceptics have been exhorting all and sundry to download and read the complete archive of emails for themselves, so they can make a balanced judgement about the issues for climate science, and science as a whole.

Edited by tallbloke on 08/19/2012 05:35:04 MDT.

The important thing here would be to compare the increase of incoming shortwave with the increase in outgoing longwave, IF this is the case. The whole point is that the outgoing is not keeping up with incoming, IF incoming is really increasing. I'm sure you want people to believe there is more outgoing radiation than incoming, in which case things would be cooling.

You did not answer the question about the record Arctic melting, both in sea ice and Greenland. It has been very consistent in this regard for over a decade. This would not be happening if things were cooling.

Yes, this is all very complex, that is why I like looking at realities like advanced Arctic melting, excessive forest fires and etc. These are not signs that support your contentions. You can create all the unceratinty you want - 10 times more than there really is - that is your job - you probably are relatively well compensated for it. In general the is nothing terribly wrong in the statement, even if it is possibly also taken out of context;

"you need to be up front with uncertainties and the possibility of compensating errors."

We all know the gain in knowledge is not a straight line venture and that people like you jump on any uncertainty and magnify it every chance you get. It's not wonder somebody on that side of the fence does not want to fuel you. That seems to be all you are interested in rather than what is really happening.

Edited by wildlife on 08/19/2012 11:39:30 MDT.

Dan, quit blowing smoke. I'm not paid for my interest in climate science or my blogging. I struggle by on half a salary leading a low carbon lifestyle. I'm just interested in discovering the scientific truth about how the solar system works for it's own sake. Free scientific enquiry for free thinkers.

Now, you said:
The whole point is that the outgoing is not keeping up with incoming, IF incoming is really increasing.

Outgoing obviously is keeping up with incoming, because according to measurements the global climate hasn't warmed in any statistically significant sense for 17 years.

As well as looking at the Arctic you need to look at the Antarctic, where sea ice has INCREASED over the same period that is has diminished in the north. According to unadjusted GHCN data, several countries in south america COOLED by around 0.8C since 1940. Localised conditions in the Antarctic peninsula seem to have bucked this trend. Go figure.

We are trying to understand a lot of conflicting and poorly organised and inaccurate data. You are not helping.

Dan said:
people like you jump on any uncertainty and magnify it every chance you get.

We have to keep repeating ourselves because people like you go around telling people we know for sure what causes climate change. Even though well paid co2 warmist scientists like Tom Wigley say (in private):

“you need to be up front with uncertainties and the possibility of compensating errors.”

Rog says, " because according to measurements the global climate hasn't warmed in any statistically significant sense for 17 years."

Climate change does not mean just straight line warming. There is ice to melt and oceans to heat up and they are doing that significantly. These are feedbacks that cool things off and they are moving in one direction and the ice is not rebounding. What happens when there is no Greenland ice to cool things to keep your 'significance' down? Hasn't warmed in any Statistically significant way is absurd. The Arctic is melting and the oceans circling Antartica are warming.

Anyone can search your quote and see that it comes from your small group of misinformers. I have said that you have said that the oceans have been cooling since 2003. Now you say there has not been 'significant' warming which implies there is warming. You contradict yourself quite a bit you know? It's rather constant. Statistically, we can count on that.

What is statistically significant? Would that be mass extinctions? No increase in climate heating? Had a look at fires in Russia lately? Crop droughts and fires in the USA. You guys hide the heat with your forever AVERGING of everything. YOU want people to look at well placed irrelevant bogus charts and graphs rather than looking at the real thing.

There have been statistically significant increases in damage caused by climate change, by the climate reacting to increased heat and trying to cool things off. So what if the temps average out after the feedbacks occur. The damage is still there - it does not get averaged away. If insurance companies could just average things away like you do, they would not be so afraid of what's been happening.

Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon/Mobil says humans are causing Climate Change but Rog I suppose thinks he's wrong also. Here's the link to the video we've all been hearing about where he admits to it. Doesn't sound so Statistically Insignificant. The difference with Mr. Tillerson is that he thinks we can just engineer our way out of it while we burn the rest of the worlds fossil fuel reserves. We can move our crop growing regions, we can move our cities.........he's probably been told we can just flood the atmosphere with particulates to reflect sunlight so he can keep selling oil. He talks about the importance of getting cheap oil to 3rd world countries that have no energy - no mention whatsoever of alternative energy.....say for Africa.....no solar cells not wind generators....nothing. Listen to this guy. He probably does not even know there is such as thing as a solar oven to cook food when he mentions oil as a replacement to cook food instead of cow dung.

The new buzword is energy security, not energy independence......all the while he acuses the other side of fear mongering! They were all probably swimming around in their Think Tanks and discovered ENERGY INDEPEDENCE sounded too much like Independence from Oil Companies - can't have that. Watch the whole video - I did. The 'statistically significant' environmental stuff starts at 47:00 minutes if you all want to skip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj6cqbwfrYc&feature=youtu.be

Edited by wildlife on 08/19/2012 16:44:34 MDT.