More on ice.....Arctic or Antarctic doesn't matter;

Most psychopaths are male, although the reasons for this sex difference are unknown. Psychopathy seems to be present in both Western and non-Western cultures, including those that have had minimal exposure to media portrayals of the condition. In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University, found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe “a man who … repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and … takes sexual advantage of many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment.” When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”

Lynn says:
I was more interested in whether the two of you had agreed on what 'proxy' of temperature change you agree to, otherwise the bet is meaningless. There are so many pieces of data to choose from to prove one person right and one wrong, that I hoped you had pre-agreed on what is measured, by who, how, and if any kind of data manipulation/smoothing etc...are allowed?

What I said before Lynn
"the average of the main global surface temperature indices."

Without going back through to find it, I recall we decided to use the average of the satellite based lower troposphere indices from UAH and RSS, and the Surface based indices from GISS and HADcru. The data is monthly. No smoothing, no tricks, just monthly data and the linear trend through it.

This is exactly what Woodfortrees does with it's wti woodfortrees index, which keeps things simple.That's what the graph below is.

.

Here's a URL which will take you straight to the graph
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2005/trend/plot/wti/from:2005
This URL will always give you the latest update, so bookmark it for future reference.

So, to recap:
If the trend from 2005-2020 is up, I pay Dean $1000
If the trend from 2005-2020 is down, Dean pays me $1000

Happy now?

Edited by tallbloke on 09/19/2012 17:05:07 MDT.

Thanks for clarifying Roger. Are you going to stick with the woodfortrees index, with it's offsets for baseline variance between the different methods used to generate the data?

I don't care what you guys use to settle your bet, as long as you have agreed. After all, as WFT itself states:

After many requests, I finally added trend-lines (linear least-squares regression) to the graph generator. I hope this is useful, but I would also like to point out that it can be fairly dangerous...

Temperature is falling!
Temperature is static!
Temperature is rising!
Temperature is rising really fast!

And in case woodfortrees is no longer available in 2020, I think it important to note the equation they use to adjust their baseline, notably:

WTI = mean(GISTEMP-0.35, HADCRUT3VGL-0.26, RSS-0.10, UAH)
or equivalently:
WTI = mean(GISTEMP, HADCRUT3VGL, RSS, UAH)-0.1775

I think, for those following this thread that do not follow the data errors that creep into any one kind of measurement, you (I) should also point out that the WTF/WTI uses the four sources most often quoted in climate studies. This includes two land/sea-based (HADCRUT3, GISTEMP) and two from satellite air measurements (RSS, UAH). Hopefully the combination gives better accuracy than any one of them individually. Seems fair to me. Which month in 2020 does the bet come due?

Of course, ocean temps, atmospheric CO2 and sea-ice cover are not included in this measurement method, but as long as the parameters are agreed upon, it's fair game.

Just to show how easy it is to prove any point of view in such a complicated debate as this, I ued the same software from woodfortrees to look a the last five years, using all 4 of the most recognised climate datasets on their site. It looks really different to the graph above that Roger posted, mainly because it misses 2005, arguably the warmest year in over a century:

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/last:72/offset:-0.35/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:72/offset:-0.26/trend/plot/rss/last:72/offset:-0.10/trend/plot/uah/last:72/trend/plot/wti/last:72/trend

It is adjusted for baseline differences as per WFT protocol. The trend, no matter which dataset you look at is for temperature increasing in the last six years. Defining the window of measurement is crucial if you want to banter graphs back and forth, but will be interesting to see how things are trending in a few more years!

There are so many things wrong with Lynn's last comment I don't know where to start, so I'll start by pointing out that it was Dean who challenged me to this bet, not the other way round. And it was Dean, not me, who chose 2005 as the start point, and 2020 as the end point.

I u[s]ed the same software from woodfortrees to look a the last five years

Incorrect, you have plotted the last six years using the last:72 command, which will keep advancing if people come back to this later and try it, thus giving them a false impression. You should have used the 'from' command.

It looks really different to the graph above that Roger posted

No it doesn't. The wti index trend rises around 0.02C in your graph from 2006.7 whereas in mine it falls about 0.02C from 2005. 0.04C is not "really different" and if the trend in 2020 was such that I won by a marginal amount like this, I would suggest to Dean that we spend the cash on a backpacking trip together.

mainly because it misses 2005, arguably the warmest year in over a century

Rubbish. Both 1998 and 2010 were warmer as you can see from this plot, which is Lynns with the actually monthly values for the WTI index from 1997.
I've given it a short url for to avoid formatting issues
http://tinyurl.com/cya4hn2

The trend, no matter which dataset you look at is for temperature increasing in the last six years.

Wipe your windows Lynn, both ground based surface temperature indices Gistemp and HADcru fall over the period according to your own plot! You are so convinced by your own preconceptions that you see what you want instead of ACTUALLY LOOKING AT THE DATA. This is the fundamental warmist fallacy writ large.

Here's the Graph, "where the heck is global warming?" (tm) Kevin Trenberth

.

And so much for the oft repeated warmist accusations that Roy Spencer and John Christy are diddling the satellite data; UAH rises the most strongly here, although they have an update coming soon so it might drop fractionally as they have identified a couple of minor orbital issues.

Edited by tallbloke on 09/20/2012 01:42:31 MDT.

The reason the satellite gathered lower troposphere datasets are rising over the last 6.5 years while the surface temperature datasets are falling is due to the phenomenon I first identified around five years ago by examining the sea surface, land surface and lower troposphere datasets and the Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR)dataset, and the solar activity and surface sunshine hours datasets which tells us about the rate that energy is headed back into space compared to the rate it is coming in at.

What I discovered was that land surface temperatures mimic sea surface temperatures a few months later. The ocean is the big dog in the Earth's climate system. It can contain as much heat in the top six feet as the entire atmosphere above it. The Sun heats the ocean because it's rays penetrate 300 feet down into it. 'back radiation' from greenhouse gases can't do this because they are long wave radiation emanating from a cooler sky to a warmer sea. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that heat does not pass from cooler bodies to hotter bodies.

Of course the warmies say this doesn't stop an atmosphere that has more greenhouse gases in it from slowing down the rate the ocean cools at by making the air warmer and therefore harder for the ocean to shed heat into, and indeed this is what the warmies think has happened. But there's an obvious problem with their theory, which is that the amount of radiation leaving Earth's atmosphere for space increased over the global warming period 1975-2004, rather than being trapped and redistributed downwards.

The logical explanation is that the diminished cloud cover (as verified by ISCCP weather satellite data and now two new ground based studies from Spain and China) over the period allowed more sunshine into the oceans, thus raising their temperature. This of course raised the temperature of the near surface air over the land as well, and so made it have a stronger differential to the coldness of space. That's why the more sophisticated explanation of how the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' is supposed to work fails.

In that explanation, the 'effective altitude of emission' rises due to the extra co2 making the atmophere more opaque to outgoing radiation, and since the higher altitude is colder, the surface has to rise in temperature to get the atmosphere to emit at a higher temperature so it can lose as much energy back to space as arrives from the Sun.

But this is back to front. The increased OLR proves that more energy from outside the system must have been getting in. Otherwise the increased OLR would mean that the system would have been cooling rather than warming. CO2 doesn't create energy, it just slows down its transmission outwards from Earth. But since the surface warmed while OLR increased too, additional energy must have been reaching the surface from outside.

Since the Sun only varies by around 0.1% over the 11 year cycle, and increased by around the same again over the C20th, it's additional output must be amplified by changes in cloud cover, and this is indeed what prof. Nir Shaviv of Tel Aviv university found in his study on using the oceans as a calorimeter to measure the effect of increased insolation at the surface. His findings were published in a paper at the Journal of Geophysical Research, but you can read it for free here:
http://sciencebits.com/calorimeter

The energy balance between OLR and the incoming sunshine proves that this must be a bigger effect than an increase in co2 can have, and so it must be the majority cause of the warming we saw in the late C20th.

But things have changed. The ISCCP weather satellites have measured an increase in cloud since the turn of the millennium and this is confirmed by another method of measuring how much sunlight is being reflected back into space. The Earthshine project measures the brightness of the light being reflected by the Earth onto the moon's surface, and this has increased over the same period, showing that more sunlight is being reflected away before it can get to the surface.

So what has all this got to do with why it is that the lower troposphere temperature has increased over the last 6.5 years while the surface air temperature has fallen?

Since the sun went quiet and cloud cover consequently increased again, not as much sunshine has got into the oceans, and consequently they have started cooling slightly since 2004. This makes the sea surface has cool down, and since land surface temperatures mimic what the sea surface does a few months later, they have cooled too. But the lower troposphere higher up above the ground has warmed, because the excess energy stored in the oceans while the sun was very active and cloud diminished between 1975 and 2004 is now being emitted back out into the atmosphere, and from there out to space.

But how come this energy being emitted into the atmosphere from the oceans isn't being trapped by the extra co2 and then re-radiated back down to the surface and warming it up?

The answer is that it is trying its best, but the effect is much less powerful in relation to the effect of a more active sun in the warming period and a less active sun now, than the warmist theoreticians believed, because they didn't take into account the effect of the active sun causing diminishing cloud cover, and so the sea surface and ground is cooling and the heat is escaping back to space now the sun has become sleepy, keeping the troposphere warm on its way.

Solar cycle 24 is very low, even though it should be near maximum now, and if the methods my research team has developed for predicting solar activity are correct, then solar cycle 25 won't be any stronger. Which is why I'm confident Dean will be buying the beers in 2020, though we might be drinking them under cloudier skies.

And that's the memo, as my dear friend Lubos Motl will, I hope, be saying for many years to come.

" CO2 doesn't create energy, it just slows down its transmission outwards from Earth. "

" But how come this energy being emitted into the atmosphere from the oceans isn't being trapped by the extra co2 and then re-radiated back down to the surface and warming it up? "

Rog, you made both of the statements above in your last post.

There is a difference between the two. Care to elaborate?

Sue thing Dan, the rhetorical question is answered in the following sentence, which is overly long I'll grant you. So I've punctuated it a bit and added a clarification.

"The answer is that water vapour and theextra co2 is trying its best, but the effect is much less powerful in relation to the effect of a more active sun in the warming period and a less active sun now, than the warmist theoreticians believed. This is because they didn't take into account the effect of the active sun causing diminishing cloud cover, and so the sea surface and ground is cooling and the heat is escaping back to space now the sun has become sleepy, keeping the troposphere warm (at cloud level where absorption is strong) on its way."

So what I'm saying is it does 'trap' or slow down transmission of long wave radiation from the surface, but the effect of the increased 'back radiation' from the increased co2 just isn't strong enough to keep up with the effect of the reduction in insolation due to the increase in cloud.

Here's the cloud graph:

.

Incidentally, the %anomaly scale on the left is wrong. The W/m^2 scale in the inset graph is correct. The source of the incorrect scale is skepticalscience.com, and I emailed John Cook several times asking him to correct it, following an earlier peaaceful enough email exchange. He never has though. Wonder why...

By the way Dan:
"push him off the ice when nobody's looking"
Do you suffer these kinds of psychopathic murder fantasies often?
Maybe you should see a therapist. Just sayin'.

Rog, could you please explain for us the mechanism by which the more active sun diminishes cloud cover? I know, it seems like an easy question......

Don't sweat it Rog, I don't have fantasies of murdering you, I posted that piece because it seemed like a rather comical scene, an Eskimo getting pushed off the ice when nobody was looking. You aren't worth having a fantasy about. You are much more valuable as a person to debunk. I hope I at least lend support for others to do this also.

Edited by wildlife on 09/20/2012 15:39:30 MDT.

"There are so many things wrong with Lynn's last comment I don't know where to start, so I'll start by pointing out that it was Dean who challenged me to this bet, not the other way round. And it was Dean, not me, who chose 2005 as the start point, and 2020 as the end point."

My point was not really about your specific bet with dean here, merely to reaffrim to those watching this thread that mining the data is easy, and can be done to make any position you believe look plausible. I was not making any statement of my belief in climate change, just illustrating how easy it is to present datasets with a chosen trend. I 'mined' the data to get this trend.

"I u[s]ed the same software from woodfortrees to look a the last five years

Incorrect, you have plotted the last six years using the last:72 command, which will keep advancing if people come back to this later and try it, thus giving them a false impression. You should have used the 'from' command."

Again, I was illustrating how choosing the window of analysis affects tends, rather than focusing on an equally arbitrary start point of 2005, by showing what it looks like if you just look at the last 6 years. The point, again, not being that I have an opinion, but by changing the starting and finishing year of trend calculation you can change the trend. Nothing to do with your bet with Dean.

"It looks really different to the graph above that Roger posted

No it doesn't. The wti index trend rises around 0.02C in your graph from 2006.7 whereas in mine it falls about 0.02C from 2005. 0.04C is not "really different" and if the trend in 2020 was such that I won by a marginal amount like this, I would suggest to Dean that we spend the cash on a backpacking trip together."

I'm glad you are willing to be that sporting. Do you have a trend change in mind that will settle the bet in favour of one of you?

"Wipe your windows Lynn, both ground based surface temperature indices Gistemp and HADcru fall over the period according to your own plot! You are so convinced by your own preconceptions that you see what you want instead of ACTUALLY LOOKING AT THE DATA. This is the fundamental warmist fallacy writ large."

Umm, yes the Gistemp and HADcru are falling, but the satellite based measurements are rising. Again, my point, which has nothing to do with my own preconceptions, as you call it, is that there are so many datasets anyone can use, that choosing one or a collection of several to draw a trend is a statisticians dream come true and a lay-person's nightmare. Chill out, I am just playing devil's advocate in the absence of Dean. But honestly, warmists, coolists and no-changists all use this technique of muddying the waters, not just warmists. IMHO the Trenberth graph is a perfect example of this. Change the "from" date to 1999 or 1997 and the trend looks different. Still not earth-shattering, but the direction of the trend changes, in both cases, to upwards.

Hi Dan,and thanks for reassuring us that your out of the blue and into oblivion Inuit murder story anecdote was just for comic relief.

The first point in reply to your request is that for my explanation of why global warming in the late C20th occurred it doesn't really make any difference whether the more active Sun caused the cloud to diminish or not. It is still an observational fact that cloud diminished. That it had a bigger effect than increasing co2 is a simple logical deduction, as my earlier post explained.

The reason I think there likely is a causal connection is that indications of solar variation over the long term derived from such things as 10Be (Beryllium isotope) proxy reconstructions match up quite well with temperature variation reconstructions (from many different proxies). Since cloud variation will have a stronger effect on surface temperature than solar variation can directly, it seems likely that there is a causal link, becuase otherwise random cloud variation would destroy the correlation between the 10Be proxy and temperature proxies.

Variation of the overall envelope of TSI (Sotal Solar Irradiance) over the 11 yearcycle is small, around 0.1% or 1.36W/m^2 at the TOA (top of atmosphere). The longterm variation is a matter of much dispute between different groups of solar scientists. We know it rose, but the questionis how much. However, variation of some of the component wavelengths such as extreme UV vary a lot more, up to 25%, and this has poorly understood but quite large effects on the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, particularly ozone. More research needed.

But we also have to remember that the variation in surface temperature of the Earth is quite small too. We've seen maybe a 1.5C rise since the little ice age. People tend to think "well if the average surface temperature is around 14C, then 1.5C is quite a big percentage of that". But this is a misunderstanding, because what we actually need to consider for scientific purposes, is the difference in absolute temperature, which is measured in degrees Kelvin. 1 degree Kelvin is the same as 1 degree Centigrade. But whereas Centigrade starts from the temperature of the freezing point of water, 0C, the Kelvin scale starts from absolute zero -273C.

So in fact, since the little ice age, the Earth's surface temperature has only increased around 0.5%, from around 287 to 288.5K.

Prof Nir Shaviv found that something (most likely cloud cover change) in the terrestrial climate system acts as a positive feedback on solar variation, amplifying it around five to seven times over a solar cycle. From this, we can conclude that even if solar variation over the last three hundred and fifty years is only around the same as the variation over the 11 year solar cycle, then along with the amplification found by Nir Shaviv, it would be enough to account for the warming since the LIA ended around 1700.

So, onto possible mechanisms for a solar variation effect on cloud cover.

One possible effect is the Svensmark effect, which posits a link between the number of cosmic rays entering the lower atmosphere and the number of cloud condensation nuclei in the air above the oceans. This has received support form experimental work at CERN lately. A stronger Sunand solar wind prevents so many cosmic rays getting in to the inner solar system, so less cloud seeding - less clouds.

The other is the hypothesised effect of a stronger Sun's radiation on the general circulation, forcing the jet streams polewards. This in effect widens the subtropical regions, and that leads to a reduction in cloud, letting more sunlight into the oceans, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. More research needed.

But whatever the status of these hypotheses, the brute fact of observation is that the Sun got stronger in the latter part of the C20th, and cloud cover did diminish. There is solid observational evidence for both of these facts.

Rog said, " The first point in reply to your request is that for my explanation of why global warming in the late C20th occurred it doesn't really make any difference whether the more active Sun caused the cloud to diminish or not. It is still an observational fact that cloud diminished. That it had a bigger effect than increasing co2 is a simple logical deduction, as my earlier post explained. "

When it comes to climate change I don't think the question is which is stronger, the direct sunlight or effects of CO2, but whether the extra CO2 traps the escaping heat more than othwerwise. Nobody is arguing that current CO2 amounts are enough to overcome all effects of natural variation. During this C20 warming there must have also been enhanced amounts of H2O in the atmosphere like Warmists predict - adding a positive feedback. You don't get warming like that without increases in H2O vapor.

I'd like to see more data on the diminished cloud period. This is data that certainly can get skewed. I know NASA has shown more more recip and clouds in equatorial areas.

Edited by wildlife on 09/20/2012 18:15:19 MDT.

You're missing the point.

Ocean heat content increased
Surface temperature increased
Tropospheric temperature increased
and
Outgoing long wave radiation increased

Co2 and water vapour do not create energy

Therefore the extra energy which made all those things warm up while extra amounts of energy also left the planet must have come from outside the Earth's climate system.

QED.

NASA has shown more more recip and clouds in equatorial areas.

Got a link for that or are you waving your arms again? Show us the data please.

The equatorial inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is always cloudy. The big change in insolation was in subtropical and temperate latitudes. Here's an example. This plot compares sunshine hours over Japan with the Chinese surface temperature record.

.

A much better match than co2 vs temperature.

Rog said, " Co2 and water vapour do not create energy. "

Why did you say that Rog? I did not say they do, and I know you don't think they do either. Did you say it because of that tendency of yours to distort what other people say?

Edited by wildlife on 09/21/2012 13:06:37 MDT.

Don't be paranoid Dan, I'm just laying out the logic of my argument clearly and completely. I prefer to work collaboratively, and on my site, that's what we do. But I'm just as happy arguing the case with people who are trying to oppose it. It helps keep all our wits sharp. That's science, it's both collaborative and adversarial. It should be a healthy process, and only becomes soured when people go off at tangents with personal attacks and innuendos.

Let's concentrate on the ideas.

I forgive you. I see that at your website you say the same thing.

I have question for you. At what point does shortwave become longwave? I mean why wouldn't shortwave interaction with areosals create what would be apparent longwave emitting from the planets surface? Surely these particles heat up at some level and emit longwave that could be mistaken for earth-born longwave when they are strictly from the atmosphere. The point here being that if that's the case they could show a false increase. That was where I was going with my previous post.

Edited by wildlife on 09/22/2012 01:00:07 MDT.

I haven't said anything I need to be forgiven for.

Anyway, this is a good, insightful question which deserves a reply, so here goes.

The boundary between 'short wave' and 'long wave' is actually an overlap in terms of what it means for the climate system. This is because Approximately 16% of incoming solar 'shortwave' is absorbed in the atmosphere by water vapour and the radiatively active trace gases such as co2 and ozone and methane. Also, aerosols of various types absorb solar energy directly, or reflect it.

There's very little water vapour and co2 in the stratosphere, where ozone absorbs strongly and actually causes the stratospheric temperature to rise with altitude, whereas temperature falls from the ground to the top of the troposphere where it meets the stratosphere. The rate it falls at is called the environmental lapse rate, and is around 6.5K per Km on average. If there was no moisture in the air, it would fall at around 9.8K/Km. This is called the dry adiabatic lapse rate, and it is determined by the equation

-Γ≡ dT/dz = -g/Cp

where g is gravity and Cp is the heat capacity at constant pressure. dT/dz is just the differentiation of delta Temperature divided by delta altitude in the units K(degrees Kelvin)/Km(kilometers).

The AGW theory is that adding more co2 will increase the heat capacity of the atmosphere (because it absorbs radiation), and so raise the 'effective altitude of emission'. This in effect enlarges the troposphere, and so when the lapse rate is back calculated from the Top of Atmosphere (TOA) to the surface, the temperature has to be larger than before.

But this relies on the assumption that 'everything else remains equal', and we don't know that's so. The Earth does not absorb or radiate long wave as a perfect 'black body' according to the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, because it presents a hemispheric surface to the incoming solar radiation, and is covered in a fluid (the oceans) which are shifting heat from the equator towards the poles. The rate and efficiency with which that happens depends on cloud cover and many other variables, and so there are multiple ways in which the emission of long wave back to space can vary, apart from a change in average surface temperature. This is summed up by an effect known as Holder's Inequality - the way heat is spread out.

So, for example, one of the ways Earth reacts to a change in the incoming solar energy is to alter the latitudinal position of the jet streams, which in turn alters cloud distribution.

The modelers try to reduce all this complexity by considering the measured radiation at various latitudes. And this tends to lead them to think in terms of changes in the TOA radiation as the driver of the system. But this is a mistake, because the main driver of the shifting of energy from equator to poles is not radiation, but the latent heat of vapourisation and condensation of water, and the convection which carries the water vapour up from the tropical ocean, and the currents which move warm water polewards under cloud which is changed by the SST (Sea surface temperature), but also changes the SST. All these things interact to affect each other, and it's fiendishly complicated to tease out the cause and effect. It's better to consider it as an interacting set of cybernetic feedback loops.

Here's a quote from the general circulation course at Chicago university:

"Considering the energy balance of the atmosphere-ocean system, the variation with
latitude of the long-term average net radiation at the top of the atmosphere implies energy
transports inside the system. These transports are produced by the circulations of both the
atmosphere and the oceans, and we can regard the general circulations of the atmosphere and
oceans as a “response”(for the purpose of modeling) to this pattern of net radiation. An important point, however, is that the
distributions of the albedo and the outgoing longwave radiation are determined in part by the
motion field (convection dominated general circulation). It is thus a drastic oversimplification to regard these fields as simple forcing
functions; they are bound up with the circulation itself.
http://kiwi.atmos.colostate.edu/group/dave/at605pdf/Chapter_2.pdf

My parentheses.

Well, at least you pointing out that you were not really answering me directly but just copying at me from your website about the CO2 and H2O vapor frees me from the paranoid level. Your answer was not considerate.

Anyway, your last post was certainly fun as I'm sure most here would agree, but it did not really answer the question of mistaken readings/interpretations of OLR. I was reading at your own Tallbloke website again and found this below. I have to agree with Entropic man about your OLR chart being pretty unconvincing. It looks to me like the OLR is 'trying' (trying being a word you have used) but not succeeding. I notice that you do say quite a bit that CO2 is at least a secondary cause of AGW ( we all know that people that come in second are no slouches )and even old Anthony watts is coming around and working on saving his skin in the game.

Here's an exerpt from your own blog that is telling - the solidity of your convections is exaggerated; (may as well just leave that funn punn there)

>>>>>>

Entropic man says:
September 22, 2012 at 12:41 am
Your graph of outgoing radiation has a short term variability, and likely 95% confidence limits, of about +/- 4W/M2. With all three moving averages showing much smaller changes I fail to see how you can claim with any statistical significance what trend the the outgoing radiation is showing.

tallbloke says:
September 22, 2012 at 12:43 am
The Units are just a convention that the observations are converted to at a notional point called the TOA (top of atmosphere).

Don’t ask me precisely how the electric signals the satellite sensor receives are processed though, it’s late, and I don’t know all the details.:)

tallbloke says:
September 22, 2012 at 12:52 am
Trick, My argument pivots around the sign of the OLR variation, it’s about logic, not the specific numbers. I could make my logic symbolic, but why bother when it would reduce the number of people following the argument by 90% ?

Additional co2 is supposed to make the atmosphere more opaque, thus increasing the ‘effective altitude of radiation’ to a colder place, which then forces the surface to get warmer in order to raise the T of the colder higher place so it can radiate 240W/m^2.

But if the OLR has increased, then where did the energy come from to raise the T? It Wasn’t all ‘trapped’ by additional co2 or OLR would have dropped. So the enhanced greenhouse is a second order effect so far as I can see. And the empirical cloud data backs me up too. Seems to me the ‘higher colder place’ already got prewarmed by the Sun via the ocean due to reduced cloud, with sufficient excess heat to increase OLR as well as warm the surface.

Rog, at least you appear more honest about your 'certainty' at your own website - that's understandable from a credibility standpoint.

Edited by wildlife on 09/22/2012 12:29:22 MDT.

Dan quotes 'Entropic Man at the Talkshop
Entropic man says:
September 22, 2012 at 12:41 am
Your graph of outgoing radiation has a short term variability, and likely 95% confidence limits, of about +/- 4W/M2. With all three moving averages showing much smaller changes I fail to see how you can claim with any statistical significance what trend the the outgoing radiation is showing.

My reply and Entopic Man's followup response are worth quoting too.

tallbloke says:
September 22, 2012 at 1:34 am (Edit)
Entropic man, what is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

When will Kevin Trenberth stop regaling us with certainty about ‘missing heat’?

(must be around here somewhere) :-)

Entropic man says:
September 22, 2012 at 11:39 am
“Entropic man, what is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.”

Agreed. The problem of correctly interpreting uncertainty in data bedevills the whole climate change debate. I’ve repeatedly seen people at both ends of the spectrum building predictive mountains out of data molehills, whether forecasting imminent disaster or projecting reassurance that the status quo will continue.

This is fair comment, and uncertainty has been a major theme of mine on this BPL thread from the start. So where does this leave the alarmists who assure us that 'the science is settled and we must now stop emitting co2 and spend billions on mitigation of the coming climate effects'?

The red herring and the answer are both in your closing comment.

The red herring being a claim that there is AGW going on and "the science is settled" .
The real answer being the underlying agenda that there must be some "authoritative intervention" to "do something about it", ie: "we must now stop emitting co2 and spend billions on mitigation of the coming climate effects"

This entire matter is a political matter and power struggle for over-arching control of the world population, thinly disguised as an "environmental" matter.

That is all I have to say on the issue. I don't involve myself further than that in specious pseudo-scientific arguments intended to bolster intrusive gov't intervention in the worldwide economy and every individual's life.

Edited by towaly on 09/22/2012 13:44:28 MDT.