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Post by jimcripwell on Aug 2, 2009 0:14:21 GMT
glc writes "Now you're just being silly. You seem to be implying that the only way anything can be determined is by physically measuring it."
I am not being silly. It is true that the only way you can be sure you have the correct answer is to measure it. The point here is what is at stake. If the sun has the wrong temperature, then it really does not matter. But if adding CO2 to the atmosphere does not cause the world's temperature to rise, then it does matter; to the tune of billions of dollars.
As I pointed out many times, if you cannot measure something, then any estimate you make MAY be subject to the Kelvin Fallacy. There may be unknowns in the estimation, which makes any estimation just plain wrong. This is why I claim there is no experimental data to show that AGW has any basis in physics.
And nothing you can say will ever convince me otherwise. This is why the hypothesis of AGW is fatally and fundamentally flawed. You can NEVER do the key experiment.
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Post by glc on Aug 2, 2009 0:23:48 GMT
That'd be called a hypothesis....same as AGW.....
The difference being that one "hypothesis" has been around more than 100 years and has not yet been falsified, while the other "hypothesis" is a desperate attempt to find an alternative explanation for the warming trend over the last 30 years. As it's become increasingly obvious that TSI cannot come even close to accounting for the warming it's been necessary to seek out other solar parameters to provide the answer. Anything (sunspots, magnetic flux, GCR) which appears to show the merest hint of a relationship with global temperature has been put forward as a candidate. No thought is given as to how these factors actually influence the climate - it's good enough that "they might".
So to summarise the 2 "hypotheses".
1. AGW theory has been around ~100 years and provides a clear mechanism for how warming may occur. 2. Solar theories are based on little more than a loose correlation and speculation and provide no explanation whatsoever as to how they induced recent (or any other) warming.
Take your pick.
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Post by jimcripwell on Aug 2, 2009 0:30:58 GMT
glc writes "Jim Cripwell (who is not a scientist) doesn’t accept the “greenhouse theory”, but does appear to readily accept some solar theory which involves the sun’s magnetic flux. I refer to it as a “theory” but it’s little more than speculation as no-one yet has discovered a mechanism by which it causes the earth to warm. Even the loose correlation which appears to exist during some periods breaks down over the longer term. Jim , himself certainly can’t explain the theory, so I assume it’s simply wishful thinking on his behalf. "
This I resent. I hold a MA degree in physics from Cavendish Labs. Cambridge, and spent most of my career working as a Defence Scientist, for the Defence Research Board, Canada, where I could not have been employed had I not held a scientific degree.
I agree completely that the idea that the sun's magentic effects controls climate is only a hypothesis, with absolutley no experimental data to support it. But it is not my idea. Behind the hypothesis are people with names like John Eddy, and Rhodes Fairbridge.
I also fully accept the greenhouse theory, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. At low concentrations, say less than 10 ppmv, adding more CO2 changes it's greenhouse effectiveness considerably. But this effect has almost completely disappeared by the time it's concentration gets to 100 ppmv.
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Post by woodstove on Aug 2, 2009 0:47:00 GMT
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Post by sigurdur on Aug 2, 2009 0:55:56 GMT
The idea that people who respond here are not qualified to respond.....I will let a few quotes from Albert Einstein dictate.
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. "
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. "
With this last quote, the models of AGW are all wrong as I have yet to see one that has not indicated that OHC should rise and rise. That is not the case at present. The other large flaw is the HOT SPOT that has never occurred. These two items by themselves disprove what the models indicate co2 should/would do.
There are forces at work that are not yet known. Just as the earth was once flat, it is now round. In climate science, we are still at the flat earth society stage of development.
The main thing in all of this, is, that we yearn to understand climate changes/forces better. It really isn't important that the models are wrong, what is important is what the models are not incorporating, that missing link per se. WE should be looking with wide open eyes for that missing link or links. When one says the science is settled, one quits looking, and that is a travesty.
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Post by sigurdur on Aug 2, 2009 1:00:13 GMT
Sorry for the thread drift. Let's get back to sea ice on this thread. Thanks.
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Post by LakeEffectKing on Aug 2, 2009 1:53:44 GMT
That'd be called a hypothesis....same as AGW..... The difference being that one "hypothesis" has been around more than 100 years and has not yet been falsified, while the other "hypothesis" is a desperate attempt to find an alternative explanation for the warming trend over the last 30 years. As it's become increasingly obvious that TSI cannot come even close to accounting for the warming it's been necessary to seek out other solar parameters to provide the answer. Anything (sunspots, magnetic flux, GCR) which appears to show the merest hint of a relationship with global temperature has been put forward as a candidate. No thought is given as to how these factors actually influence the climate - it's good enough that "they might". So to summarise the 2 "hypotheses". 1. AGW theory has been around ~100 years and provides a clear mechanism for how warming may occur. 2. Solar theories are based on little more than a loose correlation and speculation and provide no explanation whatsoever as to how they induced recent (or any other) warming. Take your pick. Theories are "granted" the chance to be falsified or verified to the point of (as much as possible)...approaching fact.....(100% fact is not as common as one would think....) A hypothesis MUST go through the scientific method (and pass) in order to attain a theory qualification. Since the AGW hypothesis (and many things in science) cannot have the scientific method applied to it (as per protocol due to testing limitations, our technological limits, inadequate knowledge base of the system that a particular parameter from which a hypothesis is derived from, etc.) then it will be mired in the status of hypothesis, plain and simple....try as you might to circumvent the scientific process and draw conclusions from a "short cut method"...and you will find that you'll be bitten more often than not. And that, too, goes for any solar hypothesis, PDO hypothesis, etc....sometimes man feels so "guilty" (or is manipulated to think so, beyond their own conscienciousness) that they just "feel" it is OK to jump past what IS science.....
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Post by radiant on Aug 2, 2009 3:09:41 GMT
The greenhouse effect is a property of all atmospheres & has nothing to do (in any detectable way) with so called "greenhouse gases" - but it isn't worth arguing & is off topic here. You can go read up on the old posts on old threads. Kiwi and Glc I can see that the simplification that CO2 which is an absorber emitter as if by magic can remove energy from the atmosphere is naive and now i am thinking about it i suppose a none absorbing emitting atmosphere can be warmed by convection but at night it would cool very rapidly as would the earth. So the green house gas influences must be part of the mix. Kiwi perhaps you could direct me to the previous threads where this was 'settled'. Glc I can also see that if NASA is saying the unusual solar quiet is causing the atmosphere to shrink by hundreds of kilometers 'up there' where it is incredible thin that it has implications for a proportional thickening all the way back to the surface where it will be unchanged. And because for example normally O2 at 18000 feet is half atmospheric pressure i am wondering if that also changes. So i am guessing that jet streams that transport massive amounts of air from one part of the world to another might now be happening at lower altitudes or interfered with by for example mountain or continental influences. There must be all manner of momentum implications for that. And I also know from my gliding experiences that air flows rather like water does. it avoids travelling higher and wants to follow the surface so that a wind avoids going over the mountains and travels around them just as water flows around a rock in a river. If you make the air denser at altitude near obstructions it must surely alter weather patterns and even the air itself can be an obstruction for another air mass that has no relationship with it in momentum terms, as for example a high and a low which are independantly moving unrelated masses. I cant see how we can then say there are no mechanisms for solar influence. Instead it seems to me that modelers want to have faith their models can describe the real world - whereas i cannot see how they possibly can put that into a computer with the current state of knowledge
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Post by sigurdur on Aug 2, 2009 3:22:59 GMT
Radiant: They can't. That is the huge problem of modeling.
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Post by radiant on Aug 2, 2009 3:25:53 GMT
Now you're just being silly. You seem to be implying that the only way anything can be determined is by physically measuring it. I assume, therefore, that you don't believe the surface temperature of the sun is ~6000 deg C. In the real world the only way we can measure stuff is to observe what happens when stuff gets done. For example in electronics there is an art to the final result rather than it only being a function of the parts that are assembled by design. Ie the thing gets made then it is modified to get the desired result. We only know the temperature of the air because of what it does to our mercury thermometer or what we experience as it moves around us. We only know the temperature of the sun by what it does to our earth bound 'thermometers' which presumably use the spectra to compare to what happens on earth. Which is very different from saying that if we mix some elements and apply some pressure and scale this up to a million mile diameters that we can say what the temperature at the surface is. Truelly the only way to measure stuff is to do it and then look at the results. PS. I agree this conversation should be in a C02 one or modellers one rather than the 'how much is the Arctic going to melt one'
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Post by neilhamp on Aug 2, 2009 8:10:07 GMT
I did a few little bits of arithmetic on the Japanese data; the loss of ice on a daily basis for the end of July. This is the table, in sq kms, the loss of ice from the previous day. July 21 118,281 22 168,437 23 121,719 24 131,250 25 110,781 26 74,063 27 80,156 28 62,500 29 65,156 30 31,094 This, of course, gives absolutely no indication of what is going to happen in the future, but I, for one, am going to keep a close eye on what happens for the last day of July, and the first week of August. Thanks, Jim, for your advice on where to find historical ice minima Do you have any update on the above figures?
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Post by glc on Aug 2, 2009 9:02:24 GMT
But this effect has almost completely disappeared by the time it's concentration gets to 100 ppmv. Why do you say that? It's certainly true that the first 100 ppm has more effect than the increase from 300 ppm to 400 ppm. The output from a Modtran run shows that here www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page24.htm However, note that the increase from 300 ppm to 600 ppm still produces a temperature increase of around 1 deg C.
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Post by glc on Aug 2, 2009 9:30:50 GMT
Oh, and glc, still waiting to hear what began moving us out of the Little Ice Age (in 1700 or 1800, take your pick), and on what date whatever it was that was performing this heating handed the baton to your cherished co2.
Your phrase "in 1700 or 1800, take your pick" is interesting because it illustrates the vagueness about the LIA. In the 1770-1790 period, for example, solar activity was high but this was a time of falling temperatures (across Europe, at least). The 1730s were warm - almost as warm as to-day according to the CET. Hans Erren has done research which suggests that a year in the 1500s was a candidate for the warmest year of the last 500 years. On an arctic expedition in 1817, the explorer William Scoresby noted "a remarkable diminution" of polar ice which lead to the President of the Royal Society address (discussed on WUWT) - yet this was in the depths of the Dalton Minimum.
Basically the problem is that the period of the LIA (and MWP) is not well defined and it ends to 'fit' whatever argument is being put forward. It's not possible, therefore, to provide a single reason for the "recovery".
The latter half of the 20th century was warmer than the first half. Why? (I don't believe it's all related to CO2). And why, despite it being warmer in the second half than the first, were the 1940s warmer than 1960s? Natural variability probably driven by ocean fluctuations seems a reasonable bet.
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Post by glc on Aug 2, 2009 9:50:03 GMT
With this last quote, the models of AGW are all wrong as I have yet to see one that has not indicated that OHC should rise and rise. That is not the case at present.
Two things here:
1. AGW theory is not dependent on models. Predictions of warming from increased CO2 levels were made long before the existence of high speed computers.
2. Models will not be able to reproduce every twist and turn along the path of increasing temperatures or declining ice extent or whatever. The quaestion is whether they will provide a close enough match to reality at some point in the future. For example, if I were to model the progress of a rock after it's been thrown from a high cliff there may be times when my model is at odds with reality. After a few seconds, say, I might show the rock to be continually falling while the rock might actually hit the jagged face of the cliff and bounce back higher. But at some point the model and reality would likely converge and (probably at the bottom of the cliff) would actually agree.
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Post by glc on Aug 2, 2009 10:04:37 GMT
I can see that the simplification that CO2 which is an absorber emitter as if by magic can remove energy from the atmosphere is naive and now i am thinking about it i suppose a none absorbing emitting atmosphere can be warmed by convection but at night it would cool very rapidly as would the earth.
radiant
Convection only operates in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere). Basically it just shifts energy around. The key to greenhouse warming is the incoming/outgoing balance at the top of the atmosphere. Averaged across it's surface the earth (and it's atmosphere), receives ~235 w/m2 from the sun. To maintain a stable temperature the earth must emit ~235 w/m2 back to space from the "top of the amosphere". It is only by radiation that this can be done. The surface can be cooled by latent heat, convection, etc but the earth, as a system, gets rid of the incoming ~235 w/m2 by radiation. A significant proportion of this outgoing radiation is emitted at higher altitudes by CO2. If CO2 concentrations increase then the outgoing radiation will be reduced. There will be an imbalance. To restore the balance the atmosphere will warm which (by Stefan -Bolzmann) will cause an increase in the energy emitted.
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