- A team of U.S. scientists has used mathematics to assess the effect of natural solar variation on climate change.
Charles Camp and Ka Kit Tung of the University of Washington's department of applied mathematics said that to accurately assess effects from human sources on the planet's climate, scientists must first be able to quantify the contribution of natural variation in solar irradiance to temperature changes.
Camp and Tung said that while the existence of a long-term trend in solar output is controversial, its periodic change within an 11-year cycle has been measured by satellites."
and - CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. This is the conclusion of a comprehensive scientific study done by the Royal Meteorological Institute, which will be published this summer.
The study does not state that CO2 plays no role in warming the earth. "But it can never play the decisive role that is currently attributed to it", climate scientist Luc Debontridder says.
"Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it." said Luc Debontridder.
"Every change in weather conditions is blamed on CO2. But the warm winters of the last few years (in Belgium) are simply due to the 'North-Atlantic Oscillation'. And this has absolutely nothing to do with CO2
and finally - "In the mid-1970s, a climate shift cooled sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and warmed the coast of western North America, bringing long-range changes to the northern hemisphere. Ads by Google Advertise on this site
After this climate shift waned, an era of frequent El Ninos and rising global temperatures began.
Understanding the mechanisms driving such climate variability is difficult because unraveling causal connections that lead to chaotic climate behavior is complicated.
To simplify this, Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation.
By studying the last 100 years of these cycles' patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times.
Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then. a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability.
The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century.
13 comments:
Straw man arguments. Of course, they are largely correct. They are just debunking their Straw Man version of Global Warming Science.
Iblis,
It sounds like they have come up with a plausible alternative theory. there's nothing 'straw man' about that. They're hardly obliged to address every aspect of the IPCC theory to support an alternative mechanism.
That's assuming it is plausible, although it wouldn't be hard to be more plausible than the IPCC AGW theory...
They are just debunking their Straw Man version of Global Warming Science.
More deception and misinformation.
They are in no way debunking a strawman argument. If observed variation in temperatures is shown to be caused by natural cycles, then CO2 cannot possibly be the cause.
If warming is caused by natural cycles, then this is conclusive proof CO2 is not the cause.
For CO2 not to be the cause a lot of established physics has to be wrong. There has to be a new cause for the observed warming.
The article Jonathan wrote about is very speculative. It shows that it could just be explained by natural effects if they somehow conspire to produce the observed effects that are well explained by CO2 forcings. :)
count, Jonathan refferred to three different articles in that piece. Which one are you referring to?
For CO2 not to be the cause a lot of established physics has to be wrong.
Not true. The (presumed) radiative forcing of increased CO2 is small (0.3C) and diminishes as CO2 levels increase. It could easily be counteracted by some other physical process, say convection.
If CO2 is the primary climate driver, why are we not seeing the kind of signals we would expect from CO2 driven warming? The biggest effect (at the Earth's surface)should be reduced nighttime cooling, yet time after time Jonathan finds increased nighttime cooling.
The evidence says there is a problem with (the theory of) even small amounts of CO2 driven warming.
For CO2 not to be the cause a lot of established physics has to be wrong.
Nonsense! As Philip said, the radiative forcing of CO2 is very weak. The AGW alarmism is built on the purely hypothetical feedback mechanisms that could amplify a very minor potential warming from CO2 to some imaginary catastrophic extent. Such feedback mechanisms are purely speculative.
CO2 physics to AGW theory is what love is to pornography...
Philip, it is not a presumed effect, it is a rigorously proven effect. Also, it cannot be counteracted by convection, because adding CO2 to the atmosphere will only influence things via its radiative forcing effect.
Also, it completely wrong to look at the CO2 in isolation, ignoring feedbacks leading to higher H2O concentrations. The H2O amplifies the CO2 effect in a non-linear way.
If you don't see this, then you know less about atmospheric physics than the average high school student who has studied this subject and yo are then certainly not qualified to question the validity of the research performed at top institutions around the world.
The evidence for Global Warming has been summarized here:
See here
"1. We have surface measurements in the United States which show an accelerating trend towards higher temperatures.
2. These are temperature measurements being taken by planes and satellites, and they show that the troposphere is warming - just as we would expect.
3. The stratosphere is cooling - just as is predicted by the anthropogenic global warming theory. (Incidently, the latter of these is something which cannot be explained by any theory based upon solar variability.)
4. Measurements of temperatures at the surface of the ocean show that these temperatures are increasing.
5. Measurements of temperatures at various depths show warming as far down as 1500 meters.
6. Measurements of sea level show that it has been rising just as we would expect from thermal expansion.
7. Gravitometric measurements of Greenland and Antarctica which are showing net ice loss in both cases.
8. We can witness sea-ice loss in the Arctic which is dramatically accelerating.
9. We are seeing the acceleration of glaciers in both Greenland and Antarctica, particularly within the last few years. Greenland is no doubt affected by black carbon, but Antarctica is much more isolated.
10. We are witnessing the rise of the tropopause.
11. There is the poleward migration of species - just as one would expect with rising temperatures.
12. There is the increased intensity of hurricanes just as we would expect from rising sea surface temperatures.
13. There is the accelerating decline of glaciers throughout the world with few rare exceptions.
14. There is the rise in temperatures at greater depths in the permafrost.
15. There is the rapid expansion in the last few years of thermokarst lakes throughout parts of Siberia, Canada and Alaska.
16. There are changes in ocean circulation - just as has been predicted by climate models, for example, with temperatures rising more quickly overland.
17. We are seeing the disintegration of permafrost coastlines in the arctic.
18. We are witnessing changes in the altitude of the stratosphere.
19. We are getting temperature measurements from countries throughout the world which show the same trends.
20. When we perform measurements using only rural stations, we see almost identical trends compared to those which we get when we perform measurements with all surface stations."
Also, it completely wrong to look at the CO2 in isolation, ignoring feedbacks leading to higher H2O concentrations. The H2O amplifies the CO2 effect in a non-linear way.
This feedback mechanism is purely hypothetical. There has been no measured trend for increased precipitation/evaporation. Perhaps you can show us one. No increase - no feedback.
1. We have surface measurements in the United States which show an accelerating trend towards higher temperatures.
NASA have just revised their temperature records and 1934 is now the hottest year on record in US. Only 4 out of top 10 hottest years in the US now come from 1990's and 2000's. 1930's are now the hottest decade.
The wheels are beginning to fall off...
Raging Tiger,
The feedback is consequence of pretty trivial well establishd physics.
The revision by NASA had no influence on the globally averaged temperature trends at all.
Count Iblis said...
The feedback is consequence of pretty trivial well establishd physics.
No they are not. They are theoretical and over hyped. There has been no measured trend in precipitation/evaporation to prove H2O feedback's existence in the real world. As such it only exists in theory and models.
Moreover it can be reasoned that very powerful negative feedbacks also exist. Otherwise any trivial warming such as El Nino event should in theory result in a runaway global warming effect and yet it doesn't happen.
The revision by NASA had no influence on the globally averaged temperature trends at all.
When errors were first discovered in Eastern Colorado's data NOOA said:
it doesn’t matter. It’s only eastern Colorado. You haven’t proved that there are problems anywhere else in the United States.
Now that the entire US data was shown to have a problem and needed to be revised downwards, they say:
it doesn’t matter. It’s only the United States. You haven’t proved that there are problems anywhere else in the world.
I think it matters a great deal and calls into question the quality of the entire global surface temperature record.
"If observed variation in temperatures is shown to be caused by natural cycles, then CO2 cannot possibly be the cause. "
If non-smokers die from lung cancer, smoking cannot cause lung cancer.
"As Philip said, the radiative forcing of CO2 is very weak"
Without CO2 the temperature of the earth's surface would be about -15 deg C. Please learn the Stephan-Boltzmann law for black body radiation and the definition of weak.
Post a Comment