Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 7:05pm

Gee Rob W,

Maybe I'd lighten up when you stop spreading lies and misinformation like that rubbish little link. Seen it before, you guys are good at recycling!

Your issue is that the math don't add up. Wow. Just wow. Thousands of peer reviewed articles, all the IPCC documents, hundreds of different climate monitoring and measure ment programs in place around the world, over a century of confirmed physics and Rob says he doesn't accept AGW cos "the math don't add up".

"I mean what are we talking about here, is it something like 99% natural occurrence or some slightly lower figure of say a mere 95% ??" Yeah, dude. Like whatever.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 7:20pm

Really, we can see the evidence for E=mc2? No, won't go there. Anyway, Ray laments that I can't show him the EVIDENCE when all I've done is list the EVIDENCE. I've asked Ray what EVIDENCE he would like to see. He responded by telling me that he won't accept models, or theories (he misunderstands the meaning of theory, clearly. I wonder if he believes in the "theory" of evolution, incidentally?) or peer reviewed literature. So he says he's open minded and then says he won't accept anything you tell him. Go figure.

I've already come to the conclusion that Ray is NOT open minded, he is NOT open to EVIDENCE. And I think any fair observer who has read Ray's responses here could not but come to the same conclusion.

I could point to a million papers here, nothing would change Ray's mind. And the point is, no single paper can "prove" AGW. Ray falls back on all the old canards like "lack of signature in the troposphere" and "the models not matching the thermometers", etc. Problem is Ray doesn't actually know what he's talking about. So how do you make someone who is so wilfully, proudly ignorant, change their point of view? How do you make them say "ok, well maybe I'm not a world expert in climate change, so I'll leave it up to the boys who do know what they're doing."? I don't know. Clearly, I'm not being successful here.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 7:53pm

Easy to dismiss, eh Geoff? But of course, no substantive commentary. True to form.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 8:05pm

Geoff, you really need to get with the times. The "hot spot" is where it's supposed to be and has been detected by measuremet. Sheesh, what a dinosaur. Pwned.

Please see below:
Warming maximum in the tropical upper troposphere deduced from thermal winds
Robert J. Allen & Steven C. Sherwood



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AbstractClimate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface. Surprisingly, direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown this expected trend. However, non-climatic biases have been found in such measurements. Here we apply the thermal-wind equation to wind measurements from radiosonde data, which seem to be more stable than the temperature data. We derive estimates of temperature trends for the upper troposphere to the lower stratosphere since 1970. Over the period of observations, we find a maximum warming trend of 0.650.47 K per decade near the 200 hPa pressure level, below the tropical tropopause. Warming patterns are consistent with model predictions except for small discrepancies close to the tropopause. Our findings are inconsistent with the trends derived from radiosonde temperature datasets and from NCEP reanalyses of temperature and wind fields. The agreement with models increases confidence in current model-based predictions of future climate change.

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To explain to Geoff in simple terms (six words or less, oh noes that's Ray). Okay, not quite six, but really really simple. The measurement devices were being confounded by conditions in the upper atmosphere, so they had to (shock, horror) apply an equation to the data. And guess what the hot spot appeared. It was being hidden by measurement issues.

A great example of how things unfortunately aren't SIMPLE, like you people want them to be. So the clever people have to intervene and make sense of it all. Cue response from George: "See they manipulated the data". Greg: Bangs head.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 8:18pm

I know what the Castle is Geoff. "read any analysis" you say. Clearly you've only read the delusional denier analyses. People in the reality based universe who know the context of the emails know that the "trick" was nothing to be alarmed about. A mathematical phrase meaning a clever method. And they were trying to deal with a well-described issue with the tree ring data from 1960 NOT agreeing with actual temperature. Your problem Geoff, is you think you can take a conversation between two highly educated individuals out of context and that YOU know exactly what they meant in that conversation.. Jones himself has explained what that email meant. But true to form, you won't listen, because it's much easier living in your fantasy world.

To whit just one extract from the CRU website:
"One particular, illegally obtained, email relates to the preparation of a figure for the WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 1999. This email referred to a “trick” of adding recent instrumental data to the end of temperature reconstructions that were based on proxy data. The requirement for the WMO Statement was for up-to-date evidence showing how temperatures may have changed over the last 1000 years. To produce temperature series that were completely up-to-date (i.e. through to 1999) it was necessary to combine the temperature reconstructions with the instrumental record, because the temperature reconstructions from proxy data ended many years earlier whereas the instrumental record is updated every month. The use of the word “trick” was not intended to imply any deception.

Phil Jones comments further: “One of the three temperature reconstructions was based entirely on a particular set of tree-ring data that shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century through to the mid-20th century, but does not show a realistic trend of temperature after 1960. This is well known and is called the ‘decline’ or ‘divergence’. The use of the term ‘hiding the decline’ was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure. It is because of this trend in these tree-ring data that we know does not represent temperature change that I only show this series up to 1960 in the WMO Statement.”

The ‘decline’ in this set of tree-ring data should not be taken to mean that there is any problem with the instrumental temperature data. As for the tree-ring decline, various manifestations of this phenomenon have been discussed by numerous authors, and its implications are clearly signposted in Chapter 6 of the IPCC AR4 report."

But the deniers will continue to spout the same lies over and over again. Do they have no shame??

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 10:28pm

Rob, breathe. You admit you're not a scientist. Neither am I. I'm an engineer. You dismiss thousands of scienctists work because "it doesn't add up." To you it doesn't add up, but with all DUE respect, what do you know? If you don't know better (and you admit you don't) then don't dismiss the hard and genuine work of thousands of people. This is my point here. Unless you can come up with substantive arguments to dismiss AGW, you have no honest choice but to accept what the "elitist" educated people tell you. Sorry, but that's the way it is. And it's arrogant not to, what's more.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 10:38pm

Is Mr Cox a qualified climate scientist? If he is then he'll submit his revelations to a respected journal and he will change the history of the world. What? No? Thought not.


But I suspect he's a fellow who's read three climate research papers and now fancies himself an expert. But look at what he reads! A paper by Garth Paltridge who is an avowed climate sceptic! He didn't have an axe to grind, no! Mr Cox takes Paltridges word for it even though all the other satellite measurements of atmospheric water content differ with Paltridge's claims. As far as I can see, Paltridges paper hasn't exactly rocked the climate science world. Oh, what a hard done by lot the poor contrarians are!

Cox blathers on again about the CO2 absorption spectra, trying to sound clever. This nonsense is easily disproved by the following paper published in Nature in 2001 and followed up with a further lot of research in 2004, I think.

Title: Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997
by: John E. Harries, Helen E. Brindley, Pretty J. Sagoo & Richard J. Bantges
Abstract:
The evolution of the Earth's climate has been extensively studied1, 2, and a strong link between increases in surface temperatures and greenhouse gases has been established3, 4. But this relationship is complicated by several feedback processes—most importantly the hydrological cycle—that are not well understood5, 6, 7. Changes in the Earth's greenhouse effect can be detected from variations in the spectrum of outgoing longwave radiation8, 9, 10, which is a measure of how the Earth cools to space and carries the imprint of the gases that are responsible for the greenhouse effect11, 12, 13. Here we analyse the difference between the spectra of the outgoing longwave radiation of the Earth as measured by orbiting spacecraft in 1970 and 1997. We find differences in the spectra that point to long-term changes in atmospheric CH4, CO2 and O3 as well as CFC-11 and CFC-12. Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate. (My bold).

What this means is that over a period of 30 years the wavelengths of IR radiation being trapped in the atmosphere has changed. This is direct evidence that a) CO2 is not saturated, as the scientfic establishment claims and b) the atmosphere is trapping extra energy in the atmosphere. THIS IS MEASURED! No models, no!

My jibe at your quoting of a paper on cloud interactions from 1989 is that in the last 20 years a lot of research has been done on that topic. It's one of the most studied aspects of climate science, actually. Stuff from 20 years ago could hardly be viewed as the state of the art. At least your Paltridge citation was contemporary.

Cox seems to quote all the well-known sceptical scientists like Spencer. Which is all good and well, but he seems to lose track of the fact that those scientists get challenged in the literature by the mainstream. For example, recently with Lindzen and Choi. By focusing on the sceptical scientists one can't help but feel that Cox is merely trying to fulfil his own biases. He only looks at the sceptical arguments and not the countering mainstream arguments. He gets trapped in his own echo chamber.

The other thing to note here, is that contrary to denier claims, papers sceptical of AGW are indeed published - if they have any scientific merit. And they are discussed in the literature, as they should be.

You say I dismissed the Shindell paper. Read again what I wrote, Cox. I didn't dismiss it at all. In fact, I remarked on its location at one of the premier climate science institutions, NASA GISS. Did you not note that James Bloody Hansen is responsible for the upkeep of the page?! I was pointing out that I doubted that something that supported your sceptical arguments would be hosted on that website. Of course it doesn't support your sceptical arguments.

Your mate, Ramanathan is at the Scripp's institute and I see in that pdf doc he's talking about the effect of aerosols on the atmosphere. Any climate scientist would tell you that this is the least well understood aspect of climate science. So he must go his hardest to explain what's going on with that. But I'm afraid if you think that's going to overturn the fact that greenhouse gases exert radiative forcing, you're sadly deluded.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 10:47pm

There is heaps of stuff out there. I think one of the biggest ways we can save energy is recovery of waste energy from industrial facilities. You'd be amazed at how much recoverable heat gets rejected to atmosphere. Look up ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) heat recovery engines. Just one of the things I'm interested in and would love to be involved with implementing in industry.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 10:51pm

No, READ the article please. The "trick" was to amalgamate two different data sources so that the spurious tree ring result didn't appear in the graph. It's not hard to understand this actually, but if you're incapable, please don't take that out on people who are capable of understanding it.

What on earth are you going on about Gorians? What the hell is that? It's not clever or funny. I couldn't give a rat's about Al Gore.

Thanks fo proving my point. Jones comes to explain the email and you don't believe him even though it made perfect sense to most people. Man, isn't that axe of yours sharp already?

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 10:52pm

Ok, so tell us about it. Let's see what you understand about it. I'm not interested in Munchkins version.

Permalink Reply by Gregory Benvenuti on January 14, 2010 at 10:58pm

Jeff, buddy. I agree with you on all that stuff about EM radiation and temperature. In the video way back at the start of the thread, they spoke about the temperature of space. I was having a go at that statement. I was merely pointing out, as you would agree, that temperature is not really defined for a vacuum, which space is, essentially.

Your attachment is very interesting. Let them publish in the literature and let the experts battle it out. I'm not qualified to comment, but let's just say I would be sceptical, yes.

Permalink Reply by Suzi Lilburn on January 14, 2010 at 11:00pm

I should probably come clean. I have a degree in environmental warming. I've got a masters in B.G.C., E.R.R & S.F.P.

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