Tropospheric temperatures are not what models project. WRONG.


page 2
"Since the late 1950s, all radiosonde data sets show that the low and mid troposphere have warmed at a rate slightly faster than the rate of warming at the surface. These changes are in accord with our understanding of the effects of radiative forcing agents on the climate
system and with the results from model simulations."

Page 7.
"Errors in observed temperature trend differences
between the surface and the troposphere
are more likely to come from errors in
tropospheric data than from errors in surface
data."

"It is very likely that estimates of trends in
tropospheric temperatures are affected by
errors that remain in the adjusted radiosonde
data sets. ....it is likely that a net spurious
cooling corrupts the area-averaged adjusted
radiosonde data in the tropical troposphere,
causing these data to indicate less warming
than has actually occurred there."

Page 8.
"Comparisons between satellite and radiosonde
temperatures for the mid troposphere
to lower stratosphere layer (MSU channel 2;
T2) are very likely to be corrupted by excessive
stratospheric cooling in the radiosonde
data."


The known lag of about 1000 years of CO2 behind temperature in glacials/interglacials challenges the theory of CO2 causing warming. WRONG.

Milankovitch cycles drive the ice ages so why would you expect the level to rise at the same time?

Into glaciation:
1)Slight cooling, mainly at northern lattitudes, due to angle of earth changing.
2)Ocean cool cn CO2 is absorbed into the oceans.
3)The ice sheets add to cooling, but so does the reduced level of atmospheric CO2.

Out of glaciation
1)Slight warming, mainly at northern lattitudes, due to angle of earth changing.
2)Ocean warms and CO2 is outgassed by the oceans.
3)The ice sheets recede adding to warming, but so does the increased level of atmospheric CO2.


Co2 might not be due to human burning of fossil fuels. WRONG.

When your bath overflows what governs how fast it floods the bathroom is not how much water is in the bath but how much you are adding.

We know ALL the co2 increase in the atmosphere is made by humans.

A drop of the 14C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2. The Suess effect,first observed and accounted for, by Hans Suess in the early 1950s. The Suess effect happens because fossil fuels do not contain 14C precisely because they are fossil so they are much older than 10 half-lives of 14C.

A drop of the 13C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2. Because fossil fuels, forests, and soil carbon come from photosynthetic carbon, which is strongly depleted in 13C.

A drop in the oxygen concentration of the atmosphere, the signature of an oxidation of carbon. Were ocean warming responsible for the CO2 increase, we would also observe an increase in atmospheric O2.


The Sun is causing the warming. Sorry, WRONG again.

Point 2 here (note refs linked to - con't believe me? - download and read pdfs of the actual the actual papers.)


The climate has changed in the past and CO2 didn't cause it then. CORRECT!!! Woopee, or maybe not, the interpretation was twisted.

Look at the actual graph of emissions, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_History_and_Flux-2.png]here[/URL].

Then ask yourself, when would I expect to see the effect of that rise in the middle of the last century?

Hint:causality.


Ice Age, wrong, (bored now).

William Connelly, of the British Antractic Survey shows that scientists did not predict an Ice Age in the 70s, at best you could say the media got the wrong end of the stick.
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/


Actually the models do work, point 4. Back to my original post again


So we have nothing to worry about with Sea Level Rise, it's only going to be thermal eh?

"Rapid and synchronous ice-dynamic changes in East Greenland" geography.swan.ac.uk/glaciology/adrian/luckman_GRL_feb06.pdf


Climate porn - I actually agree with the programme.


And what does the breadth of the 'Real' peer reviewed science show?

Dr Oreskes reported analyses of “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 and published in the Institute_for_Scientific_Information database with the keywords ‘climate change’......After the analysis, she concluded that 75% of the examined abstracts either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it. A flaw in the essay was, as Oreskes later conceded, that the keywords she searched weren’t “climate change”, but “global climate change”.

Her conclusions have been challenged by Benny Peiser </wiki/Benny_Peiser> who initially enumerated the figure at closer to 30% [2]....Dr. Peiser has recently conceded in a letter to the australian Media Watch </wiki/Media_Watch_%28TV_series%29> that he no longer maintains parts of his criticisms. [4]
See here: follow the blue links to the original sources.
Oreskes stands, the peer reviewed literature supports the Scientific Consensus:

1) The earth is getting warmer (0.6 +/- 0.2 oC in the past century; and 0.6 degrees C over the last 30 years
2) People are causing this.
3) If GHG emissions continue, the warming will continue and indeed accelerate
4) This will be a problem and we ought to do something about it

Ooops. I forgot re Oreskes, the link to Wicki from which you can check their sources (blue numbers).

PS forgot to add. Channel 4, you should be ashamed.

cobblyWorlds

Oh dear, please see above for the perfect example of a killer greeny in a desperate attempt to ward off reasoned argument by cutting and pasting endless garbage he doesn't understand but believes anyway. It's so typical, a feeble attempt to baffle with pseudo science, it's what liberals so often do, shout down their opponents when they start to make them look like the idiots they are. Next he'll be scrunching his eyes up, fingers firmly stuck in his ears, going LALALALALALALA! I love it!

Not a greeny, an ex sceptic Thatcherite, small government, free market, law and order backing chap who discovered he was being mislead when he started to learn climate from the basic physics up in January 2005.

quote:

The known lag of about 1000 years of CO2 behind temperature in glacials/interglacials challenges the theory of CO2 causing warming

Wasnt this used in reference to Al Gores presentation? He was stating that ice cores showed that CO2 levels and warming were superimposible, thereby implying that CO2 was driving this warming? So it challenges HIS theory of CO2 warming (which I guess is taken from a scientist somewhere along the lines).

Im also interesting in the lag time between the sun activity and the heating effect. The time scale on a lot of figures is very hard to read. Oh, and what about sun spot activity. Reguardless of how, it also has a neat correlation with the temperature increase (cant remember if it was better or worse than the correlation for CO2). Surely if we can accept so readily that CO2 correlation means that it is involved/responsible for the tempertature increase, we have to accept that this may also be involved/responsible for the increase.

The point about this is that we the public , whatever the science , have been sold this Idea.
This idea is pushed by politic ions and interest groups because it gives them power!!.

the basic point of the programme is that global warming is happening and this is a natural process and the global warming zealots believe it is man made.

Both points have the same premise THE EARTH IS GETTING WARMER .

I see no problem with questioning orthodox beliefs , I see a real problem not allowing questioning and i see no problem reduce our use of resources as long as it does not effect the industrialization of the third world.

Cobbly,

Your initial post is interesting but too dismissive. whilst the program aired and since it has finished I have searched a number of topics covered in the program, and as one would expect there are plenty of documents, opinions, statements of 'fact' telling you whatever you want to believe. Some say for example the solar activity is a viable cause for change, some say its not. Both arguments are backed up by seemingly strong cases.

I am not in a position to offer a qualified opinion. I think the really important point the program was trying to make was simply how one sided the debate was and how - more importantly - the media and the political scene has closed its doors to any one who dares contradict this new 'word'. There was, a few years ago I believe a severe punishment for publicly saying the the earth was not the centre of the universe.

Do you not think there might be a chance we could be going down the same, slightly embarrassing road, by oppressing an alternative opinion on the subject?

Are you seriously telling me that in the 2 years and 2 months you have been studying the subject you know conclusively that your understanding on this subject is 100% correct thereby allowing you to make such authoritative statements? Have you checked every single permutation and combination of factors that can influence climate change down to such detail that you know you are right? With CO2 only making up approx 0.004% of the atmosphere as it is and our input a small proportion of that AND the input over the last 50 years being again a small proportion of that, are you telling me that you have hard worked out calculations that the miniscule %age increase in CO2 that we have produced in relation to the volume of the atmosphere in total can have such a substantial increase in temperature of the world? Of course you haven't.

Let's be sensible about this!

quote:

Originally posted by Mond:

quote:

The known lag of about 1000 years of CO2 behind temperature in glacials/interglacials challenges the theory of CO2 causing warming

Wasnt this used in reference to Al Gores presentation? He was stating that ice cores showed that CO2 levels and warming were superimposible, thereby implying that CO2 was driving this warming? So it challenges HIS theory of CO2 warming (which I guess is taken from a scientist somewhere along the lines).

Im also interesting in the lag time between the sun activity and the heating effect. The time scale on a lot of figures is very hard to read. Oh, and what about sun spot activity. Reguardless of how, it also has a neat correlation with the temperature increase (cant remember if it was better or worse than the correlation for CO2). Surely if we can accept so readily that CO2 correlation means that it is involved/responsible for the tempertature increase, we have to accept that this may also be involved/responsible for the increase.

Al Gore was OK to put it like that though because the time lag of CO2 and temperature doesn't affect the fact that CO2 traps infrared radiation and warms in the process.

Take 2 clear plastic drinks bottles and 2 thermal probes. Fill one bottle with CO2, leave air in the other, and seal with the thermal probes. Place in sunlight next to each other. They both get the same sunlight, but the CO2 filled bottle warms more. That's CO2


There can be no time lag between the solar effect and temperature.

Consider a glass of beer on a sunny day. You don't want it to warm up so you put it in the shade. Would you expect it to start warming more rapidly when you put it in shadow?

The basic physics of that is the same what warms the beer warms the earth, radiated sunlight.


The correlation shown was using the ARIM dataset. That is known now to contain a spurious trend since 1976. There is really no trend. After 1976 the solar levels off but we get 0.6degrees C warming.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/2005cal_fig1.gif
The ramping up after 1970 is due to CO2. Meehl's 2003 additivity study. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

I've got work in 7 hours, I'm off.



Welcome to the Anthropocene.

I disagree, Al Gore was not ok to put it like that as it is misleading. Much like the original Hokey stick graph was misleading. Its all very well explaining the principle. Explaining it using something which shows something completely different is highly misleading (esp if it makes your point more potnent).

quote:

Originally posted by Rob_T:
Cobbly,

Your initial post is interesting but too dismissive. whilst the program aired and since it has finished I have searched a number of topics covered in the program, and as one would expect there are plenty of documents, opinions, statements of 'fact' telling you whatever you want to believe. Some say for example the solar activity is a viable cause for change, some say its not. Both arguments are backed up by seemingly strong cases.

I am not in a position to offer a qualified opinion. I think the really important point the program was trying to make was simply how one sided the debate was and how - more importantly - the media and the political scene has closed its doors to any one who dares contradict this new 'word'. There was, a few years ago I believe a severe punishment for publicly saying the the earth was not the centre of the universe.

Do you not think there might be a chance we could be going down the same, slightly embarrassing road, by oppressing an alternative opinion on the subject?

Are you seriously telling me that in the 2 years and 2 months you have been studying the subject you know conclusively that your understanding on this subject is 100% correct thereby allowing you to make such authoritative statements? Have you checked every single permutation and combination of factors that can influence climate change down to such detail that you know you are right? With CO2 only making up approx 0.004% of the atmosphere as it is and our input a small proportion of that AND the input over the last 50 years being again a small proportion of that, are you telling me that you have hard worked out calculations that the miniscule %age increase in CO2 that we have produced in relation to the volume of the atmosphere in total can have such a substantial increase in temperature of the world? Of course you haven't.

Let's be sensible about this!

I have laid out my argument and linked to it from here, it's in my initial post linked to in the above text.

I am only posting here because of this awful mess of a programme, most of the time I'm too busy to post anywhere much.


Don't concern yourself with who I am or how long I have been studying. Read my argument follow the links check my sources. This is not my argument, this is one presentation of the consensus based on the actual studies and technical summaries (like the NCCSP Temperature trends document).

And remember I am not the one challenging the scientific Consensus.


Finally that link to Oreskes. Follow the links from the blue numbers - it's all true Peiser has retracted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Oreskes#Science_and_Society_Essay

For the lag time, I mean what if there was a dramatic increase, which then leveled out (at the new high level). The earth may take a long time to adjust to the new output from the sun, which is shown in a slow increase in temperature. Though this does seem unlikely as one would expect the change to be more instantanous, unless the seas were in some way preventing it. Anyway, the idea is that the change in activity occured pre-1950 and we are still feeling the repurcusions now. Ill admit that seems unlikely though!

Aditionally to that idea, the correlation before 1950's was good, but not perfect (though I cant find a decent graph for the 1000 years with this data). There were if I remember correctly spikes of temperature and sunspot/iradiation which are not perfectly in line with each other. Seeing as this variation occurs over a resonable time span, surely it makes it very hard to predict that they will follow each other perfectly in a short 50 year time span. All because there is no increased activity does not mean we are still expereincing the effects of previous activity. I guess it would come down to statistical analysis to determine if the increase now is significant when compared to the rest of the data, or if the general variation makes it impossible to say this.

Also, what about the type of radiation. Its all very well saying the overall levels are the same, but the actual type may have changed. Some wavelengths of light are implicated more in global warming for example.

Ignoring the fact that it was a polemic that did not allow anyone to rebut the statements being made, here are the few things I noticed about the "Great Global Warming Swindle" programme:

Lies

Volcanoes emit more CO2 than man. Badly wrong. When Pinatubo erupted (the biggest CO2 emitting volcano for years), CO2 levels went down slightly.

Climate models use double the CO2 for their predictions. A silly statement - they are run with stable CO2 to check they are stable, with observed CO2 increases to check they match current climate and with various rates of increase to make future predictions.

Implying that because CO2 is in such low concentrations it couldn't possibly be an important greenhouse gas.

Misrepresentations

CO2 follows warming. Already accepted by the science that oceans release CO2 when warmed. Warming also follows CO2 rise.

Man produces only a small amount of CO2 compared with nature. Yes, but it is additional CO2 which has been proved to cause the 30% increase (because you can tell by the isotope make-up of the CO2).

Medieval warm period. There was no one period at which the whole world was warm at once, as it is now. The graph they showed was a 20 year old guess based European observations and is out of date. The correct graph shows that temperatures were stable for the last 1000 years till the industrial revolution began.

In talking about the 1940-70s cooling or stable climate "despite economic growth" they failed to mention that lower emission standards meant aerosols (soot and smog) caused cooling. Scientists thought they knew in the 70's that aerosols caused cooling and CO2 caused warming, but the focus was on the aerosols then.

Misjudgements

Interviewed Piers Corbyn. To be polite, he's a maverick. I followed his forecasts for a few months and they're rubbish. Claimed that the Met Office forecast an extremely cold winter in 2005-6 when they actually forecast a 2 in 3 chance of a below average winter. Claims he bet *against* the Met Office - he actually bet against the climatology using Met Office data. I bet he didn't really make money - certainly the William Hill guy they interviewed in a documentary about Piers looked somewhat smug.

Out of date

Rate of tropospheric warming is slower than at the surface. Latest measurements show that this is not the case.

Brushed over

Claimed that ocean warming would take centuries and could be ignored. Ocean has warmed down to 3000 metres since 1961 and is the most significant cause of sea-level rise.

When talking about the media hyping global warming he ignored the fact that scientists are the first to say that one weather event cannot be attributed to climate change.


Lying by omission

I was amused by the fact that in fitting solar activity against 20th century warmth, they stopped the solar activity line at 1980 when the temperature line started to increase (ie. when solar activity stopped increasing).

When they showed the "poor" CO2 fit, they neglected to point out that scientists accept that there are a number of contributers some of which warm and some of which cool - these include CO2, CH4, solar effecs, land-use changes, ozone and aerosols. When they are all included the fit is very good.

Two of the professors said they didn't receive funding from lobby groups. That's 2 out of 9. Ian Clark, for example, works with a Canadian free-market lobby group called the Fraser Institute. Linzden allegedly charged oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services.

quote:

Rob_T

quote:

Do you not think there might be a chance we could be going down the same, slightly embarrassing road, by oppressing an alternative opinion on the subject?

I do not think that a programme full of lies and half-truths will help the debate. The debate is still fully open. Remember that most scientists aren't doing direct research on global warming (despite the "impacts of global warming on nut collecting" comment - a somewhat apt quote for this programme perhaps). And there has been an anti-global warming government in the US who could have sent things the other way if it weren't the case that most scientists are interested in the science not the money (they are bright enough to get other jobs if they don't believe in what they are doing).

My experience of the debate, is that the anti-GW arguments are usually repeated ad nauseum long after they are proved wrong. Where more technical arguments have been used, eg. in a climate change denier site such as co2science.org I have read their summary of scientific papers and then read the papers myself and found that the papers often say the exact opposite.

So expect a degree of frustration with people such as this documentary maker!

I guess Channel 4 needs the sponsorship from Exon Mobil now that Carphone Warehouse have pulled out ?

quote:

Originally posted by Mond:
For the lag time, I mean what if there was a dramatic increase, which then leveled out (at the new high level). The earth may take a long time to adjust to the new output from the sun, which is shown in a slow increase in temperature. Though this does seem unlikely as one would expect the change to be more instantanous, unless the seas were in some way preventing it. Anyway, the idea is that the change in activity occured pre-1950 and we are still feeling the repurcusions now. Ill admit that seems unlikely though!

Aditionally to that idea, the correlation before 1950's was good, but not perfect (though I cant find a decent graph for the 1000 years with this data). There were if I remember correctly spikes of temperature and sunspot/iradiation which are not perfectly in line with each other. Seeing as this variation occurs over a resonable time span, surely it makes it very hard to predict that they will follow each other perfectly in a short 50 year time span. All because there is no increased activity does not mean we are still expereincing the effects of previous activity. I guess it would come down to statistical analysis to determine if the increase now is significant when compared to the rest of the data, or if the general variation makes it impossible to say this.

Also, what about the type of radiation. Its all very well saying the overall levels are the same, but the actual type may have changed. Some wavelengths of light are implicated more in global warming for example.

Hello Mond.

The energy comes in from space, it hits the atmosphere, which is not very dense. It warms the ground which is a solid, and warms. It hits the ocean, a liquid, and unlike the ground it can convect energy down, and it's not opaque so it. Also water takes much more energy than air to warm up. So the oceans will take much longer than the land to warm up. This is why the Northern hemisphere has wider temperature variations than the southern(which is because the southern is mainly water. Also ice has to adjust to the warmer temperature.

So once the level of solar energy has levelled out, as it did in 1976 you have a continued warming that slows down as the planet gets nearer to it's 'equilibrium' temperature for the new higher level of solar forcing.

This lagging effect produces a temperature response to an increase in solar radiation that follows a curve that tails off a bit like a logarthimic function. Note the way the green curve takes ages to get to 1.


The problem is what's actually happening looks more like a ramp function. Which doesn't make sense in the context of the start of an increase in the slope of the ramp function being after the sun's output levels out.

I thought this documentary was fabulous, massive kudos for C4 to show it. There are always 2 sides to a coin but we so rarely get to see the other side.

The Earth has 0.04% CO2 in its' atmosphere, 97% of that is natural, the UK is only responsible for 2% of global CO2. When you hear politicians claiming that they'll reduce emissions by 10% they mean 10% of 2% of 3% of 0.04%, and that's supposed to save the world?

Preventing 3rd World countries from developing by forcing them to use expensive and useless green power sources while we sit back feeling superior is the real crime!

I have just begun to try and get my head around this issue.

I have to say as yet I have reached no clear conclusion.

But in the course of reading about the subject I have come to understand that the lag-chart the program referred to is actually now debunked science. The calculations were mis-read and this is acknowledged by the scientists involved in its creation. There are references and supporting evidence for this in George Monbiot's book Heat which I don't have to hand.


http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/01/30/another-species-of-denial/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=7

Worth a read.

Hmm, looking at some data from UK met office, for each decade the average temperature/month was

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960
Jan 4.6 5.1 -1.3 3.9 3.6
Feb 5.5 2.3 2.2 5.1 3.6
Mar 6.6 4.9 5.6 7.1 5.8
Apr 7.8 7.7 8 7.1 8.4
May 11.2 10.2 11.9 10.6 12.1
June 13.7 14.6 15.7 15.5 15.2
July 13.7 14.7 14.5 15.4 14.6
Aug 13.2 15.3 15.1 15.1 14.5
Sep 12.6 13.3 12.4 12.6 12.7
Oct 10.3 10.1 9.3 9.4 9.9
Nov 6.5 6 6.5 5.5 6.8
Dec 3.9 4 3.6 1 3.6

1970 1980 1990 2000 2005
Jan 3.4 2 6.2 4.6 5.7
Feb 2.6 5.4 7 5.8 4
Mar 3.3 4.3 7.9 7 6.8
Apr 6.2 8.2 7.6 7.5 8.6
May 12.1 10.4 12.2 11.6 11
June 15.5 13.3 13.1 14.4 15.1
July 14.7 14 16.3 14.9 16.3
Aug 15.4 15.3 17.6 16.2 15.8
Sep 14 14.2 12.7 14.4 14.8
Oct 10.3 8.5 11.5 10 12.7
Nov 7.3 6 6.5 6.6 6
Dec 3.8 5.1 4.1 5.3 4.3

Now if we look, the main driving force behind the increase in average yearly temperature over this time is the months of July, Aug, Sep and Oct. The same is true if we inculde 2000-2005 years. So the change in temperature is due to 3 or 4 months, not a general increase over all the months (which surley CO2 GW would cause). Surprising the very warm month of June shows no obvious increase in temperature recently at all. If the months of July, August Sept and Oct are taken out, the line becomes almost flat, there is a degree difference (decrease) in temperature between 1920 and 1940, and under a degree difference (increase) between 1980/2001 to 2005. This suggest that there is something special occuring in those months not happening in the others.

This effect may therefore be inderpendant of CO2, as one would expect all months to have an increase in temperature. Esp the months of May and June which were on average as or nearly as warm as July and August but which show almost no increase trend in temperature over time. (i am of course including previous variation, accept that this is a limited area of the earth and that I may see something different if I take more years into account).

quote:

Originally posted by qube:
The Earth has 0.04% CO2 in its' atmosphere, 97% of that is natural, the UK is only responsible for 2% of global CO2. When you hear politicians claiming that they'll reduce emissions by 10% they mean 10% of 2% of 3% of 0.04%, and that's supposed to save the world?

I'm sorry but this is plain idiotic. Just because something is less than 0.1% doesn't make it safe. After all would you be happy with Plutonium in you atmosphere if it is less than 1%. Derrrr!

quote:

Now if we look, the main driving force behind the increase in average yearly temperature over this time is the months of July, Aug, Sep and Oct. The same is true if we inculde 2000-2005 years. So the change in temperature is due to 3 or 4 months, not a general increase over all the months (which surley CO2 GW would cause).

Dear Mond,

I haven't looked at your evidence in detail. I would say first that the UK is a small part of the earth, and looking at a global or continental plot would be more relevant.

Furthermore, the UK is strongly influenced by the Gulf stream which keeps it warm in winter, and the effect of global warming on the sea is slower. Note that the Labrador coast, at the same latitude as the UK has sea ice in the winter.