Sciencemadness Discussion Board

What is cause of global warming? Heat or gases?

RawWork - 28-3-2018 at 05:53

According to what we all hear, (major) cause is increase of CO2 in atmosphere. But is it really true? Problem here is warming, not CO2, correct? CO2 is only one (if not the only) cause.

I think that global warming is just what is sound like, the warming. Meaning excess temperature buildup on earth. And due to that temperature increase ice melts and plants and animals die because of high heat and UV. What is more problematic here? Heat or light?

What would be different in case of nuclear fusion in the future? Would not it generate the same amount of heat planet had before, if not even more? After all it looks to me like it's all about heat, and not CO2 or any gas in atmosphere. I don't know would this heat dissipate in any different way then the one generated by sun. Can global warming be caused by using many furnaces or heaters?

At least considering heat part of global warming. For light part, maybe there's no other way but to change atmosphere back to optimal (to block or reduce UV).

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by RawWork]

TheMrbunGee - 28-3-2018 at 06:00

CO2 causes greenhouse effect, and the temperature climbs because of it.

I read your question again and got that you have very little idea of how global warming works.

Heat from the sun hits earth, and warms it up, heat then radiates back out to the space. greenhouse gases (CO2, water, methane) prevents some of the heat to get away from the earth. more gases - more heat stays in atmosphere.

Major danger of global warming is not the fact that it gets warmer (and few animals(including humans) gets uncomfortable in the summer), it is what the this heat does to weather. you get more and more extreme storms, which is worst short term effect for humanity. water level rise wont kill anybody, just steal some area where people live.

If it gets really bad - you can have runaway greenhouse effect and if that's the case then we can add few more elements of PT to the "liquid at the room temperature" section.

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by TheMrbunGee]

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by TheMrbunGee]

RawWork - 28-3-2018 at 06:19

Hmm... I see that recovery of atmosphere is a must, at least because of UV. But would not more devices using nuclear fusion energy heat the earth too, just like the sun does (even if we had perfect atmosphere we will build up excess heat from excess fusors, heaters, lights, electronics)?

Is nuclear fusion the only solution (besides solar, wind, and few other forms of energy)?

I know what is greenhouse effect. But it can be caused by heaters too? Heat that way, or heat this way, it's same, correct? Blocking heat from dissipating into space or making more heat must be same, just like more thermal isolation or less heat can produce same temperature.

Why are not winters warmer? In my country (southeast europe) there's still winter, and it won't be gone until middle of May! Last year snow was falling in March and May. Hope it won't appear at summer!!! I was hoping that global warming will reduce cold! This never happened before! :mad:

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by RawWork]

TheMrbunGee - 28-3-2018 at 06:31

I don't think UV has a lot to do with this. harmful UV gets blocked at ozone layer and that is fine right now.

the heat from humankind devices is an ants pee in the ocean when you compare it to suns energy.


"Is nuclear fusion the only solution (besides solar, wind, and few other forms of energy)?"

pretty much - yes (not the only one but most realistic one for now). and decreasing consumption of energy is a solution. Increasing the effectivity of consumed energy is a realistic solution.

TheMrbunGee - 28-3-2018 at 06:36

Quote: Originally posted by RawWork  

I know what is greenhouse effect. But it can be caused by heaters too? Heat that way, or heat this way, it's same, correct? Blocking heat from dissipating into space or making more heat must be same, just like more thermal isolation or less heat can produce same temperature.

Why are not winters warmer? In my country (southeast europe) there's still winter, and it won't be gone until middle of May! Last year snow was falling in March and May. Hope it won't appear at summer!!! I was hoping that global warming will reduce cold! This never happened before! :mad:

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by RawWork]


As I said human-made heat is really nothing compared to what sun gives.

weather changes because of warming. overall planets temperature gets higher. oceans gets warmer, more water gets in atmosphere and it does crazy things to the usual weather.

RawWork - 28-3-2018 at 06:44

It's not fair! People are freezing to death each year because of lack of energy, and then burning to death in summer because of excess of this heat. We need this energy (heat) for our lives. Why let it exit into space? Why not capture it? How? I am not talking about capturing today's heat for tonight's cold defense. But converting it into some more stable energy form like dry cells and use them when needed? Does such technology exist? It's so sad and bad we can't capture that energy we need. Or are solar cells doing that already?

If they are, does it mean that the more solar cells, the better? But what about killing birds by solar cells? Can that problem be overcame?

DrP - 28-3-2018 at 07:05

Quote: Originally posted by RawWork  
It's not fair! People are freezing to death each year because of lack of energy, and then burning to death in summer because of excess of this heat. We need this energy (heat) for our lives. Why let it exit into space? Why not capture it?

If they are, does it mean that the more solar cells, the better? But what about killing birds by solar cells? Can that problem be overcame?


People have only just really began to become a civilization - we have struggled for thousands of years to survive. People light fires or kill an animal for it's fur to keep warm. The worlds population has boomed though - All of our technology is fairly recent in man's history. Most of our history is pretty barbaric and most of the world today still is. What do you want? We are advancing... solar is real promising imo (what's that about birds?... how many birds die from our total consumption of coal and other fossil fuels).

There are plenty of alternate fuel sources that are being developed - many have been retarded in their development by oil/gas/coal companies over the years but that does seem to be changing... although the world seems to be taking a political step to the right... where many do not even recognise the problems you are pointing out. We will get there in the end..... or die doing nothing about it. Either way it will be long after you or I have died. I hope we do find decent alternate energy sources (like solar, wind, fusion, whatever) of course. But it will take years to develop and there will undoubtably be teething troubles and snags with whatever is chosen... it's normal.

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 08:41

If you haven't seen this video, it's pretty cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Ra2HR27pQ There are a few fair criticisms that can be made, of course... for one, the circular arrangement of the chart looks nice but also makes it very hard to evaluate in an unbiased manner, and it's not clear how the author defines "temperature anomaly" - it looks like it is measured by standard deviations over the entire time period, but using which temperature readings, exactly....

If you look carefully, you'll notice that there is a run-up in temperature in Europe at the end of WWI that quickly falls off and a run-up in temperature in most of the world at the end of WWII that also falls off.

If you measure temperature in cities and industrial areas, you'll find that paving areas and running factories cause the temperature to increase. Higher temperatures in urban and industrial areas do matter, but in this video, they appear to reflect higher levels of industrial activity, not climate change.

LearnedAmateur - 28-3-2018 at 08:52

CO2 and heat both play major roles in the global warming phenomenon. Earth mainly releases heat as infrared radiation, which is absorbed really well by a lot of organic compounds (look at an IR spectroscopy table for specific values). This IR is absorbed by bonds in CO2, methane, etc. where it causes manipulation of the bonds - stretching and scissoring - and this energy is then re-emitted by the molecule back towards the Earth instead of out into space.

Melting ice also causes massive issues for multiple reasons and is a feedback process. The heat which is trapped in the Earth causes ice to melt (Antarctic and permafrost) which in turn means less heat from the Sun is reflected back out into space. Not only that, but Arctic permafrost contains a lot of methane gas, obviously getting released during the process which again adds to the total greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere.

Oh yeah, and UV is a different matter entirely and actually has very little to do with global warming. During the last century, CFCs were very heavily used around the world - when released into the atmosphere, UV breaks them down into chlorine radicals (Cl•) which react with ozone many thousands of times, catalysing the breakdown of ozone to diatomic oxygen which is far less able to absorb UV.

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by LearnedAmateur]

RogueRose - 28-3-2018 at 09:13

It is my opinion that the big fireball up in the sky that hangs around about 12 hours per day, has something to do with this "global warming" thing. I know I'm not alone in saying that at least since about 2007 the sun has been A LOT brighter than it was before. There were times when it seemed as much as 20-40% brighter than what it had been just a few years ago. When I say brighter, I mean it produced more intense light (more white-ish compared to a softer yellow of the years before) and at the same time, it seemed MUCH hotter when standing directly in the sun in places where I used to sit out all day. Sun burns also happened in 1/2 the time on a few occasions and I had gotten to know my body, how long I could stay in the sun, etc. I had shades and drapes that used to almost black out a room but when the sun was at peak brightness, the room was significantly brighter and no where near dark enough to sleep (for me) where before it was PLENTY dark enough.

There are a couple other forums where many people have noticed this and have brought the subject to the attention of the members. Many other people have noticed the same things, often around the exact same times, starting the same year/month and some days where it seemed exceptionally bright were we couldn't be outside w/o sunglasses (pretty odd when a person has never needed sunglasses in 30 years then is suddenly blinded by the sun). Had extensive eye exams to see if it was medical or body changes and after 3 tests, they came back with the same results as all prior tests by the doc.

A lot of people have noticed that the sun is brighter (it seems more so on some days than others) and even possibly more so in some area's (IDK how that could happen) but it seems there have been a lot of reports in the US in the NE, SW (especially SoCal & Arizona), souther east coast states & "middle america" on the Mississippi (including Chicago). I've seen a number of youtube videos about this wondering if others have noticed.

As for other countries who have reported an increased brightness were Australia, France and Spain from what I recall.

Of course there were (and are) a lot of people who dismiss this and say that the "sun hasn't changed" but the ones I've heard say that, many of them aren't exactly "eagle eyes" nor have great memories for comparing how it was in the past.

Now IDK if the sun is brighter or if there is some kind of atmospheric layer (ozone or similar layer??) missing that blocks out some of the brightness but I can attest that it is happening (though it has been harder to detect the last 3-4 years, I think because I have gotten used to it).

So that is part of my theory why things are hotter, especially in some areas.

As far as CO2, the fact that it makes up .04% of air (nitrogen being about 78%, O2 21%, argon 1%, etc) and when they talk about global increases of CO2 and that it would take 100 years for it to reach .05% or something like that, I have a difficult time believing that CO2 is more of a cause than that big ball of fire.

Now the other idea which I tend to see as more relevant is water in the air. Over the last ~150 years, we have pumped SO MUCH water from underground aquifers which is now surface water or is in lakes or oceans or clouds. H2O is the largest greenhouse gas and I think the pumping has effected that as well. This and the increase of sun temp may account for the larger hurricanes/typhoons as well as tornados and even earthquakes (more H2O in air, heavier air, more pressure on plates - could be a stretch but I see it as plausible), but I see the pumping from aquifers (in a manner for watering crops allows for lots of H2O evaporating) and then a hotter sun, causing those severe storms.

Has anyone else noticed the sun being especially bright starting a few years ago. For me it seemed to happen over night where once my shades were adequate, then bam, needed to double up and put a blanket over them, all in the course of 2-3 days (time from noticing and reacting)

LearnedAmateur - 28-3-2018 at 10:04

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  

As far as CO2, the fact that it makes up .04% of air (nitrogen being about 78%, O2 21%, argon 1%, etc) and when they talk about global increases of CO2 and that it would take 100 years for it to reach .05% or something like that, I have a difficult time believing that CO2 is more of a cause than that big ball of fire.


But then you have to consider that temperature and CO2 have a very strict correlation throughout the past 800,000 years, and the CO2 spike after the Industrial Revolution brought with it increases in the temperature anomalies across the globe.

Yes, the Sun is responsible for making Earth heat up as it has been for billions of years, and will do for billions more, but the concern is not where the heat comes from but where the energy is going. Because of greenhouse gases, the equilibrium between heat received by Earth and the energy it can bleed away is shifted towards the former as the greater concentration of such traps the heat in.

This shit diagram basically explains what goes on - red arrows represent emitted radiation from Earth, yellow arrows represent radiation absorbed and emitted from CO2 molecules, and blue dots are the molecules themselves. Hence, the more ‘dots’ you have, the more dense the ‘blockade’ of IR radiation since radiation will reflect in seemingly random directions according to the orientation of the molecules.

44ADC331-7433-42BE-87D0-0785EDD34883.jpeg - 411kB

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 10:54

Quote: Originally posted by LearnedAmateur  
Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  

As far as CO2, the fact that it makes up .04% of air (nitrogen being about 78%, O2 21%, argon 1%, etc) and when they talk about global increases of CO2 and that it would take 100 years for it to reach .05% or something like that, I have a difficult time believing that CO2 is more of a cause than that big ball of fire.


But then you have to consider that temperature and CO2 have a very strict correlation throughout the past 800,000 years, and the CO2 spike after the Industrial Revolution brought with it increases in the temperature anomalies across the globe.

Yes, the Sun is responsible for making Earth heat up as it has been for billions of years, and will do for billions more, but the concern is not where the heat comes from but where the energy is going. Because of greenhouse gases, the equilibrium between heat received by Earth and the energy it can bleed away is shifted towards the former as the greater concentration of such traps the heat in.

This shit diagram basically explains what goes on - red arrows represent emitted radiation from Earth, yellow arrows represent radiation absorbed and emitted from CO2 molecules, and blue dots are the molecules themselves. Hence, the more ‘dots’ you have, the more dense the ‘blockade’ of IR radiation since radiation will reflect in seemingly random directions according to the orientation of the molecules.


I give this kind of stuff about as much credibility as I do the Holy Ghost. A chlorine radical reacts with thousands of ozone molecules... really? Can you explain why?

aga - 28-3-2018 at 11:09

The thing that confuses me about the whole about 'Global Warming' stuff is the fact that we're in the middle of a series of ice-ages, as core-samples and fossil record Prove.

So, if it was all icy around 50,000 years back, then it got warmer (again) and now humans are doing stuff to accelerate this particular part of one of the warm/cold cycles, what difference does it really make, in the 100,000 year view of things ?

OK, so humanity could well wipe itself out, mostly, but isn't that good thing ?

Current human civilisation being destroyed merely by the side-effects of our sheer wanton greed is kinda poetic.

Edit:

It would not be a surprise if the vast limestone rock deposits really did start off as seashells in an ancient ocean, with each of the many subsequent layers being decomposed concrete ...

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by aga]

LearnedAmateur - 28-3-2018 at 11:43

Regarding ozone depletion, mechanisms are the best way to explain it. Chlorine radicals are effectively recycled whereas ozone isn’t - it takes a very long time (months to years) for a species to combine in a termination step, and it finds its way back to ground level.

Aga: it doesn’t really matter on the grand scheme of things, the Earth will continue revolving the Sun in our lonely little solar system in an obscure sector of our galaxy, amongst billions of stars in trillions of galaxies. The thing is though, we have made such a huge change to the global climate in the past 300 odd years, more change than would naturally occur in thousands of years. Life evolves far too slowly to adapt as it has done over massive periods of time far longer than any single organism can live for. Global warming destroys huge swathes of forests, expanding deserts and paradoxically drying up and drowning areas of land which means species are at least displaced and some driven to extinction. Why? Like you said, because of us. It’s a change to the only planet we know holds life, a change that could potentially lead to all but the most hardiest organisms disappearing from existence leaving the lush, diverse Earth a barren rock, following in the footsteps of Venus or Mars. It’s a change that we made, and that we can halt so that future generations of life have a chance to survive in the same way that it always has done.

[Edited on 28-3-2018 by LearnedAmateur]



[Edited on 28-3-2018 by LearnedAmateur]

B81CA917-9B82-4B9B-BD5B-031DE6B20B4B.jpeg - 145kB

mayko - 28-3-2018 at 11:55

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
it's not clear how the author defines "temperature anomaly" - it looks like it is measured by standard deviations over the entire time period, but using which temperature readings, exactly....



Temperature anomaly is the difference between measured temperature and some baseline. Here's a short explanation of how this works:
https://topologicoceans.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/temperature...


Quote:
If you measure temperature in cities and industrial areas, you'll find that paving areas and running factories cause the temperature to increase. Higher temperatures in urban and industrial areas do matter, but in this video, they appear to reflect higher levels of industrial activity, not climate change.


It sounds like you're attributing observed regional trends to industrialization via the "urban heat island effect". How did you arrive at this conclusion?


Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
It is my opinion that the big fireball up in the sky that hangs around about 12 hours per day, has something to do with this "global warming" thing. I know I'm not alone in saying that at least since about 2007 the sun has been A LOT brighter than it was before.


Good lord, no! The sun has been remarkably cool and dim during the last decade or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_24

Quote:

As far as CO2, the fact that it makes up .04% of air (nitrogen being about 78%, O2 21%, argon 1%, etc) and when they talk about global increases of CO2 and that it would take 100 years for it to reach .05% or something like that, I have a difficult time believing that CO2 is more of a cause than that big ball of fire.


They both "cause" the earth's temperature: one sends heat to earth, and the other slows its escape from earth. However, solar variation is currently a minor contributor to temperature variation. This has been examined pretty thoroughly. In particular, the sun's brightness has been flat or slightly decreasing for the last few decades, a time period where the fastest observed warming has taken place:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/463/2086/2447

Quote:

Now the other idea which I tend to see as more relevant is water in the air. Over the last ~150 years, we have pumped SO MUCH water from underground aquifers which is now surface water or is in lakes or oceans or clouds. H2O is the largest greenhouse gas and I think the pumping has effected that as well.


I'm skeptical that the limiting factor in global humidity is above-ground water, but there's also an important distinction between water vapor and other greenhouse gasses: water will condense under typical atmospheric conditions. This means that water vapor can amplify smaller changes in temperature (it's a well-known positive feedback) but doesn't add much on its own. Here's the ACS:

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesci...

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

I give this kind of stuff about as much credibility as I do the Holy Ghost. A chlorine radical reacts with thousands of ozone molecules... really? Can you explain why?


It's called catalysis. For a detailed account, I'd suggest starting with Dessler's "Chemistry and Physics of Stratospheric Ozone".


JJay - 28-3-2018 at 12:08

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  


Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

I give this kind of stuff about as much credibility as I do the Holy Ghost. A chlorine radical reacts with thousands of ozone molecules... really? Can you explain why?


It's called catalysis. For a detailed account, I'd suggest starting with Dessler's "Chemistry and Physics of Stratospheric Ozone".



If you don't understand the mechanism, kindly don't offer patronizing answers with a tone of false authority.

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 12:23

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
it's not clear how the author defines "temperature anomaly" - it looks like it is measured by standard deviations over the entire time period, but using which temperature readings, exactly....



Temperature anomaly is the difference between measured temperature and some baseline. Here's a short explanation of how this works:
https://topologicoceans.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/temperature...



Ok, so they are defining temperature anomaly as the simple deviation from the monthly average by country, across years, from the base period. Or is that deviation from the average temperature from stations within 1200 miles by month, across years, from the base period? Or did they use a kernel and fail to state its specifications? Does it matter? Not really... you can actually determine whether this data has statistical significance without knowing that.


[Edited on 28-3-2018 by JJay]

mayko - 28-3-2018 at 14:17

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

If you don't understand the mechanism, kindly don't offer patronizing answers with a tone of false authority.


If you don't understand the mechanism, aren't willing to look it up yourself, and aren't willing to follow up on source recommendations, there's very little I can do for you.

As for my alleged bad attitude.... maybe look in a mirror sometime?

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 14:30

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

If you don't understand the mechanism, kindly don't offer patronizing answers with a tone of false authority.


If you don't understand the mechanism, aren't willing to look it up yourself, and aren't willing to follow up on source recommendations, there's very little I can do for you.

As for my alleged bad attitude.... maybe look in a mirror sometime?


You suggested a piece of literature with more than 74 volumes as your source. With all due respect, no respect is due. https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 15:48

Here's the data from that video, averaged globally and normalized by month.

The data is heteroskedastic, and it probably shouldn't be... the fact that it is calls into question whether using "temperature anomalies" really has an advantage over using temperature readings directly, but I'm not going to worry about that right now... the heteroskedasticity arises from the early data.

Does this show a significant increase in temperature? Sure. I'm pretty confident that the temperature readings here are directly correlated with industrial activity rather than CO2 levels, though.

1522280150360_linearRegressionResults.png - 10kB

Oh and here are some other charts:

chart (1).png - 103kB

GDP_per_capita_of_India_(1820_to_present).png - 1.1MB



[Edited on 29-3-2018 by JJay]

nitro-genes - 28-3-2018 at 17:07

If CO2 and temperature are showing an not completely known interaction, why did they use CO2 measurements from icecores as a temperature proxy in the first place? Considering the inertness of noble gasses and it's temperature dependend solubility in ocean water (assuming equal salinity and volume), icecore noble gas levels make at least an interesting comparison/control. According to this article, these data may provide a much more unbiased temperature proxy than CO2.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08721-4

[Edited on 29-3-2018 by nitro-genes]

mayko - 28-3-2018 at 17:09

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

You suggested a piece of literature with more than 74 volumes as your source. With all due respect, no respect is due.



It's a 225-page textbook.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chemistry_and_Physi...

mayko - 28-3-2018 at 17:25


Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
Here's the data from that video, averaged globally and normalized by month.

The data is heteroskedastic, and it probably shouldn't be... the fact that it is calls into question whether using "temperature anomalies" really has an advantage over using temperature readings directly, but I'm not going to worry about that right now... the heteroskedasticity arises from the early data.


Why "should" these data be homoskedastic?


Quote:

Does this show a significant increase in temperature? Sure. I'm pretty confident that the temperature readings here are directly correlated with industrial activity rather than CO2 levels, though.


Given that industrial activity is the cause of and correlated with CO2 levels, temperature is directly correlated with both of them. This doesn't get us any closer to attributing regional temperature changes to UHI.

Quote:

Oh and here are some other charts:


ok, what is their relevance? The Keeling Curve isn't exactly breaking news.

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 18:00

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
Here's the data from that video, averaged globally and normalized by month.

The data is heteroskedastic, and it probably shouldn't be... the fact that it is calls into question whether using "temperature anomalies" really has an advantage over using temperature readings directly, but I'm not going to worry about that right now... the heteroskedasticity arises from the early data.


Why "should" these data be homoskedastic?




Here, the error variance is correlated to the global temperature (which we don't know, but the correlation is still evident), and while I haven't run any diagnostics, I doubt that happened by random chance.

There are ways of dealing with these things, but the heteroskedasticity suggests that converting the temperature readings to "temperature anomalies" introduces a loss of information which might actually be helpful for constructing a model.

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 18:14

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

You suggested a piece of literature with more than 74 volumes as your source. With all due respect, no respect is due.



It's a 225-page textbook.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chemistry_and_Physi...


Ohh.. ok... not all of the volumes are on ozone haha... ok..

I'm probably not going to read all of that, but I do know that chlorine radicals are not incredibly destructive to ozone in all circumstances, and I don't see offhand why they would be so incredibly destructive to ozone in the atmosphere unless they have nothing else to react with....

LearnedAmateur - 28-3-2018 at 22:17

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

I'm probably not going to read all of that, but I do know that chlorine radicals are not incredibly destructive to ozone in all circumstances, and I don't see offhand why they would be so incredibly destructive to ozone in the atmosphere unless they have nothing else to react with....


The thing is though, is that the hole in the ozone layer began and rapidly expanded when CFCs were first introduced in the 1930s and has since slowed and actually began to shrink since 1996 when they’ve been pretty much banned across most of the world. The CFCs are able to rise to the ozone layer, which as the name implies contains a lot more ozone than other atmospheric layers, so yeah there isn’t a huge number of things to preferentially react with Cl• up there, plus ozone is very reactive so quite happily breaks down in its presence. Because the reactions are all facilitated by UV, which is very intense at the OL compared to sea level, this also contributes heavily.

It’s an equilibrium like most other things, oxygen will undergo homolytic fission and the resulting radicals react with oxygen to create ozone, which easily cleaves by UV irradiation to make more ozone from oxygen, so on and so forth. CFCs disrupt this equilibrium by decreasing ozone levels and increasing oxygen, so more UV gets through to the ground, which means more harm for life on Earth.

JJay - 28-3-2018 at 22:37

Quote: Originally posted by LearnedAmateur  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

I'm probably not going to read all of that, but I do know that chlorine radicals are not incredibly destructive to ozone in all circumstances, and I don't see offhand why they would be so incredibly destructive to ozone in the atmosphere unless they have nothing else to react with....


The thing is though, is that the hole in the ozone layer began and rapidly expanded when CFCs were first introduced in the 1930s and has since slowed and actually began to shrink since 1996 when they’ve been pretty much banned across most of the world. The CFCs are able to rise to the ozone layer, which as the name implies contains a lot more ozone than other atmospheric layers, so yeah there isn’t a huge number of things to preferentially react with Cl• up there, plus ozone is very reactive so quite happily breaks down in its presence. Because the reactions are all facilitated by UV, which is very intense at the OL compared to sea level, this also contributes heavily.

It’s an equilibrium like most other things, oxygen will undergo homolytic fission and the resulting radicals react with oxygen to create ozone, which easily cleaves by UV irradiation to make more ozone from oxygen, so on and so forth. CFCs disrupt this equilibrium by decreasing ozone levels and increasing oxygen, so more UV gets through to the ground, which means more harm for life on Earth.


*shrug* I'm not really sure about that: http://www.theozonehole.com/ozoneholehistory.htm

If you mix a tiny amount chlorine gas and a large amount of pure ozone and expose it to UV, perhaps each chlorine molecule destroys a large number of ozone molecules... but how would the effect of the chlorine change by concentration? Also, if there's something for the chlorine radicals to latch onto, they won't last long....

LearnedAmateur - 29-3-2018 at 01:33

Well CFCs aren’t the only contributors to ozone breakdown, halons and other halogenated organics are still in wide use and also deplete the layer.

It’s like any other chemical reaction, the higher the concentration of a reagent will increase the rate of reaction because collisions are more likely, as per kinetic theory. Take the catalytic decomposition of H2O2 for instance, if you used a gram of MnO2 it will occur a lot quicker than using 0.1g - if you have more chlorine radicals floating around in the ozone, the ozone will decompose quicker and being an equilibrium, ozone production is effectively decreased hence there is less in the atmosphere. And yeah, they do come across molecules which can terminate the radical steps, but as you can see in the mechanism I added above, Cl• acts as a catalyst as it is regenerated by heterolytic fission of chlorine peroxide.

RawWork - 29-3-2018 at 04:04

So CFCs belong to global warming topic, but UV doesn't?
It's easy for any hater or angry person or mentally diseased to release CFCs into atmosphere and cause massive damage with little effort, correct?
What would be the best counterattack? Is there some chemical that would remove CFCs from the atmosphere, and not cause additional damage? Some that will itself be removed too, or act neutral on ozone after removing CFCs? Consider that sun ionizes some chemicals.

[Edited on 29-3-2018 by RawWork]

DrP - 29-3-2018 at 05:05



Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
It is my opinion that


We need facts and measured data - not opinions on the subject. Science right?



Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  
I know I'm not alone in saying that at least since about 2007 the sun has been A LOT brighter than it was before. There were times when it seemed as much as 20-40% brighter than what it had been just a few years ago.


Can you point us towards the meteorologists reports that back this up please? This news report says it's due to cleaner atmosphere in Europe and that some parts of the world are actually dimmer. I am not sure how bright the sun appears to be in the sky has any effect on the amount of energy absorbed and kept by the earth. It is about how much is retained and not allowed to escape - which atmospherics effect.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/21/a-bright-sun-to...


Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose  

So that is part of my theory why things are hotter, especially in some areas.


Local variations are irrelevant, obviously, when talking about GLOBAL warming. The majority of the world's scientists say different - please don't say it's a conspiracy theory.

Regarding the CO2 stuff - I pretty certain you know the proposed mechanism how greenhouse gasses work and trap energy from the sun by changing the wavelength of the incident rays so they can't escape.... we studied it at school back in the 1980's - you choose to ignore all that stuff or not understand it?

LearnedAmateur - 29-3-2018 at 06:19

Quote: Originally posted by RawWork  
So CFCs belong to global warming topic, but UV doesn't?
It's easy for any hater or angry person or mentally diseased to release CFCs into atmosphere and cause massive damage with little effort, correct?
What would be the best counterattack? Is there some chemical that would remove CFCs from the atmosphere, and not cause additional damage? Some that will itself be removed too, or act neutral on ozone after removing CFCs? Consider that sun ionizes some chemicals.

[Edited on 29-3-2018 by RawWork]


Eh, kinda, CFCs can be considered greenhouse gases in themselves but aren’t as strong as CO2 and CH4 for example - increase in UV penetration (which makes up about 4% of all wavelengths released by the Sun) doesn’t really contribute to global warming, infrared is the main concern which is almost half the output (~45%), visible light being the rest but this isn’t absorbed as well by greenhouse gases.

Probably not an individual, like how amateur chemists don’t really do much environmental damage by improper waste disposal, it’s more the collective masses and industry where thousands of tonnes of CFCs were released in the past years, due to consumerism. There isn’t really any counterattack other than banning or restricting their usage, over time levels have dropped naturally due to radical termination and absorption/degradation at the surface of the Earth.

mayko - 29-3-2018 at 07:33

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  

Here, the error variance is correlated to the global temperature (which we don't know, but the correlation is still evident), and while I haven't run any diagnostics, I doubt that happened by random chance.

There are ways of dealing with these things, but the heteroskedasticity suggests that converting the temperature readings to "temperature anomalies" introduces a loss of information which might actually be helpful for constructing a model.


Well.... yes, subtracting the baseline from the raw temperatures removes information about the baseline. This is often desirable, since it helps to control for spatial or seasonal differences, which can be much larger than the temporal signal of interest. It's not obvious what sort of model you want to build which would use those baselines (if you're testing UHI as a hypothesis, surely it would be more useful to include, say, population density as an explanatory variable?).

It's also not obvious to me how using anomalies would introduce spurious changes in variance. Two alternate explanations for your observation, at least as plausible, come immediately to mind:
* Earlier regional values are usually based on a smaller number of surface stations, and are thus less precise. The relatively noisier sampling of a homoskedastic process could artificially inflate variance.
* The underlying process might, in fact, be heteroskedastic.

It's not clear to me what you're trying to do here. It looks like you're trying to build a global time series from gridded ones. If you really want to reinvent the wheel, go ahead. Personally, unless I have a pressing reason to do otherwise, I'd stick with one of the globally averaged data sets that are already been published, such as from GISTEMP, HadCRUT, or BEST. It's also not clear why you're normalizing by month; monthly anomalies are almost always calculated from monthly baselines.

It may be that I've badly misunderstood you, that you're actually saying that the raw temperatures don't have constant variance, and that this makes temperature anomaly an inappropriate tool. I don't see how that bird flies either.

Temperature anomalies are ubiquitous in climatology, and are in common use by better statisticians than me. If I had evidence that they introduced artifacts or otherwise inappropriate, I'd be tripping over myself to publish, rather than posting on sciencemadness dot org.

How does any of this get us any closer to attributing regional trends to UHI?

mayko - 29-3-2018 at 07:36

Quote: Originally posted by nitro-genes  
If CO2 and temperature are showing an not completely known interaction, why did they use CO2 measurements from icecores as a temperature proxy in the first place? Considering the inertness of noble gasses and it's temperature dependend solubility in ocean water (assuming equal salinity and volume), icecore noble gas levels make at least an interesting comparison/control. According to this article, these data may provide a much more unbiased temperature proxy than CO2.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08721-4

[Edited on 29-3-2018 by nitro-genes]


Ice core analysis generally doesn't use CO2 as a temperature proxy, but rather oxygen isotope enrichment:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-are-past-temp...

That article does look neat, though, and I'm interested to see what comes of it; thanks for bringing it up!


sodium_stearate - 29-3-2018 at 10:27

The earth has been around for a very long time.

It has gone through many kinds of very long-term cycles
and will continue to do so long after humans have been
extinct for billions of years.

Right now, we humans are playing an active role in
the chemistry and the physics of our planet.
That makes sense when you take in to account the fact
that we are all made up of stuff that was here to start with.

It's just that currently, part of the process realizes what it's
doing.

JJay - 29-3-2018 at 15:21

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  


It may be that I've badly misunderstood you, that you're actually saying that the raw temperatures don't have constant variance, and that this makes temperature anomaly an inappropriate tool. I don't see how that bird flies either.



That is exactly what I'm saying. If you don't know the variance, you don't know how anomalous the readings are; what you call an anomaly, I would call an "error" or a "deviation" - an anomaly would probably be an unusually large error or deviation. Finding explanatory variables that account for that variance is not sufficient for causal inference (ideally you'd use a controlled experiment), but it is necessary.

(Oh and the problem is that you can't efficiently estimate the variance from the errors if it is correlated with the measurements. I understand this intuitively, but it is surely not hard to prove.)



[Edited on 29-3-2018 by JJay]

mayko - 29-3-2018 at 19:30

Walk me through this symbolically.
Given a raw temperature time series, T(t), an end goal is to decompose it into a linear combination of signals:

T(t) = F(t) + V(t) + C

where:
F(t) is net forced response, that is, the total change to the thermodynamic equilibrium of the earth system. As a special case, F(t)=0 in the absence of long-term climate change (of any sort: solar, greenhouse, aerosol, etc).
V(t) is net unforced response; that which does not change the thermodynamic equilibrium. Examples include the perturbation of a volcanic eruption, or the seesawing back and forth of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere. The long-term average of V(t) is 0; were it nonzero (for example, if volcanic eruptions increased in frequency), then there would be a forced response unaccounted for in F(t), which has been defined as the net forced response.
C is some constant representing the particulars of the record in question. The same 0.1 degree/decade warming signal plus noise is a very different raw temperature time series in the Sahara (C ~ 20) than in Antarctica (C ~ -20).

To calculate an anomaly time series, we first calculate a baseline B from T. This is done by choosing a reference time period P and calculating the average T(t) over P:
B = mean( T(t) for t in P)
B is a lot like a constant of integration; so long as you're consistent, choice of P doesn't really matter.

The anomaly time series is thus:
A(t) = T(t) - B = F(t) + V(t) + (C - B)

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
If you don't know the variance, you don't know how anomalous the readings are


uhhhhhhhhh.... well, we know that A(t) is 'anomalous' by virtue of it being an 'anomaly', and we only need to know T(t) to know A(t). It sounds like you think that anomalies are intended to be, by themselves, some sort of significance test, which they are not.

Quote:

what you call an anomaly, I would call an "error" or a "deviation"


You can do that if you want, but why would you and what would it matter? If you mean 'deviation from some reference value B', then yes, the terms are isomorphic, but what utility do we get from insisting on your linguistic preferences over established jargon? If you mean 'deviation from some central tendency', then no. The central tendency of T(t) is F(t) + C and the central tendency of A(t) is F(t) + (C - B). The deviation around both is V(t), whose homoskedasticity is not really relevant here. You don't need to know V(t) to know A(t).

Quote:

an anomaly would probably be an unusually large error or deviation


No. "An anomaly" in this context would be A(t) at some particular t. That is what the word means here. You don't have to take it from me. If you don't like it, I'm sorry, but if it makes you feel better nobody asked me either.

Quote:

(Oh and the problem is that you can't efficiently estimate the variance from the errors if it is correlated with the measurements.


It sounds like you are saying that it is nontrivial in this case to infer V(t) from A(t) because V(t) is correlated with T(t).

We can talk about that if you want, and what it means in practice, and whether it supports the hypothesis that UHI rather than greenhouse forcing is responsible for regional trends. But if it is indeed a problem, the problem stems from the raw temperatures T(t), not the process of calculating A(t). Why would it be less trivial to infer V(t) from A(t) + B, compared to A(t), given that V(t) is equally correlated with both?


JJay - 29-3-2018 at 20:23

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  

It sounds like you are saying that it is nontrivial in this case to infer V(t) from A(t) because V(t) is correlated with T(t).



No. Here's the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_(statistics)

mayko - 30-3-2018 at 07:11


You are saying that it is inefficient in this case to estimate V(t) from A(t) because V(t) is correlated with T(t).

We can talk about that if you want, and what it means in practice, and whether it supports the hypothesis that UHI rather than greenhouse forcing is responsible for regional trends. But if it is indeed a problem, the problem stems from the raw temperatures T(t), not the process of calculating A(t). Why would it be more efficient to estimate V(t) from A(t) + B, compared to A(t), given that V(t) is equally correlated with both?




[Edited on 30-3-2018 by mayko]

JJay - 30-3-2018 at 18:16

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  

You are saying that it is inefficient in this case to estimate V(t) from A(t) because V(t) is correlated with T(t).

We can talk about that if you want, and what it means in practice, and whether it supports the hypothesis that UHI rather than greenhouse forcing is responsible for regional trends. But if it is indeed a problem, the problem stems from the raw temperatures T(t), not the process of calculating A(t). Why would it be more efficient to estimate V(t) from A(t) + B, compared to A(t), given that V(t) is equally correlated with both?




[Edited on 30-3-2018 by mayko]


I don't see any reason to assume that it is equally correlated with both. The definition that most people use for "anomaly" in data is more like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomaly_detection I think this is a reasonable definition of "anomaly." After all, if temperature two readings taken at two different times are exactly the same, that's anomalous.

mayko - 2-4-2018 at 13:09

I am sorry to hear that you don't like the established jargon, but I doubt anyone reading is in a position to do anything about it, even were they so inclined. More to the point, what the data are called has no bearing on how they were derived or their statistical properties. They could be called potato numbers, but complaining that they don't taste good with ketchup wouldn't get you closer to attributing regional temperature trends to UHI.

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
Quote:
Why would it be more efficient to estimate V(t) from A(t) + B, compared to A(t), given that V(t) is equally correlated with both?



I don't see any reason to assume that it is equally correlated with both.


V(t) is equally correlated with A(t) and T(t) because A(t) and T(t) = A(t) + B only differ by a constant offset, B.

Maybe you are using "correlation" in some sense with which I'm not familiar, but for the most common definitions (eg, Pearson's coefficient, Spearman's rank), it's trivial that (x1, x2, x3....) will be just as correlated with (y1, y2, y3....) as with (y1+k, y2+k, y3+k...), for any real number k.

It's the variation that is correlated or uncorrelated between two data sets; adding or subtracting a constant offset doesn't add or subtract any variation (because it's constant, not variable.)

JJay - 2-4-2018 at 13:54

You're assuming that A(t) is at a constant linear offset from T(t), and it's offset by a different value at each station. In other words, your assumption is false.

AJKOER - 2-4-2018 at 14:55

When looking at time series data of temperature, remember that the sun's irradiance fluctuates (the sun is alive, at least for a long time to come). Sun spots, a measure of solar activity, has short term cyclic (averaging 11.1 years) properties that can introduce similar cyclic distortions in the temperature data on earth, which is separate from other global warming trends.

Some of my prior comments on SM:

"there is an interesting correlation between sunspots and climate (see http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.ht... . To quote a few points:

"Sunspots and climate
Incidentally, the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minima coincide with the colder periods of the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1820. More recently it was discovered that the sunspot number during 1861-1989 shows a remarkable parallelism with the simultaneous variation in northern hemisphere mean temperatures (2). There is an even better correlation with the length of the solar cycle, between years of the highest numbers of sunspots". .....
Intuitively one may assume the that total solar irradiance would decrease as the number of (optically dark) sunspots increased. However direct satellite measurements of irradiance have shown just the opposite to be the case. This means that more sunspots deliver more energy to the atmosphere, so that global temperatures should rise.
Not only does the increased brightness of the Sun tend to warm the Earth, but also the solar wind (a stream of highly energetic charged particles) shields the atmosphere from cosmic rays, which produce 14C (radioactive carbon 14). So there is more 14C when the Sun is magnetically quiescent. This explains why 14C samples from independently dated material are used as a way of inferring the Sun's magnetic history.
Recent research (3) indicates that the combined effects of sunspot-induced changes in solar irradiance and increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases offer the best explanation yet for the observed rise in average global temperature over the last century. Using a global climate model based on energy conservation, Lane et al (3) constructed a profile of atmospheric climate "forcing" due to combined changes in solar irradiance and emissions of greenhouse gases between 1880 and 1993. They found that the temperature variations predicted by their model accounted for up to 92% of the temperature changes actually observed over the period -- an excellent match for that period. Their results also suggest that the sensitivity of climate to the effects of solar irradiance is about 27% higher than its sensitivity to forcing by greenhouse gases."

My take on this is that if one is citing temperature data, one should at least adjust the data for the impact due to solar irradiance. I would also adjust for known recent volcanic events, for example, Krakatoa, possibly using a dummy variable or a model based on volume of mass/SO2 ejected into the upper atmosphere. To quote from Wikipedia on Krakatoa (link: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa#Glo... ) :

"In the year following the eruption, average Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F).[9] Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.[9] .....
The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere, which was subsequently transported by high level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentration in high level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) would reflect more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cool the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.[14]"

Another possible variable would be the change in annual sales in millions of ozone degrading chemicals, possibly at a lag (more work but better, use a percent contribution by group of chemicals rated by ability to attack ozone, and therefrom construct a potency adjustment factor). The estimated coefficient times the lagged sales figure change should correlate to reported estimates of the change in size of the ozone hole. A functional transformation to this area variable (like converting it to an ozone volume figure) may be required to obtain highest Pearson's correlation coefficient, which is a measure of linearity.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Also, as heating from whatever sources go on, it is true that heat itself becomes a major issue at a point!

When is that?

Well, for instance, when the methane hydrate at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico (and other places) hits a critical warming point to convert back to gaseous methane!

CH4 is actually much more potent than CO2 gas (like 86 times) in creating atmospheric warming, but its half life in the atmosphere is less. Source, see for example, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree... .

Still, that vast amount of CH4 release is going to be unpleasantly abrupt and nasty for the planet :o .

Like a bad chemistry experiment gone totally rogue!

[Edited on 3-4-2018 by AJKOER]

JJay - 2-4-2018 at 18:38

Furthermore, the variance is calculated using a non-linear equation; even if the framework you suggested did not suffer from the shortcoming that I pointed out earlier, if the variance is correlated with the measurements (this is *not* the same thing as assuming that the deviation is correlated with the measurements), if using so-called "anomalies," it's still necessary to estimate a an offset parameter, which introduces an additional degree of freedom to the model that must be estimated using non-linear techniques, introducing unnecessary bias and inefficiency.

[Edited on 3-4-2018 by JJay]

AJKOER - 3-4-2018 at 05:05

If one is forecasting, my personal experience is that the more parsimonious a model is with good variables, the more improved accuracy of the forecast!

Add lots of variables to impress people with your historical fit, but to really get a good forecast estimate, use but a few.

A good variable should be based on some accepted law, concept,... , and not random good/high correlation. If you understand how the variable is contributing to the model, and the universe changes, judging the change impact on the variable aids in judging the continued likelihood of a good forecast and/or its bias direction.

[Edited on 3-4-2018 by AJKOER]

mayko - 3-4-2018 at 18:27

Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
You're assuming that A(t) is at a constant linear offset from T(t), and it's offset by a different value at each station. In other words, your assumption is false.


:o!?HUH?!:o

It isn't an 'assumption' that A(t) differs from T(t) by a constant; that's *trivially true*, *by construction*! If you disagree, I'm not sure what to tell you, besides to look back at the definition, or maybe subtract A(t) from T(t) and see what you get.

In practice, the value of B will vary between station records (that's sort of the point), but that has no bearing on whether A(t) and T(t) are both correlated with the variance of V(t).

Quote:

it's still necessary to estimate a an offset parameter, which introduces an additional degree of freedom to the model that must be estimated using non-linear techniques, introducing unnecessary bias and inefficiency.


Accepting this momentarily for the sake of argument, in practice the difficulties of standardizing and combining records must surely be weighed against the difficulties of using an unmerged collection of many non-standardized raw temperature records. Some of these have already been mentioned here or in linked sites; here is another discussion from the perspective of global absolute temperature, which would presumably be implicit in any global absolute temperature time series you produced:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/08/observ...

Again, if I had evidence of what you're claiming (that using anomalies instead of raw temperatures is inappropriate) I'd be licking stamps to get my manuscript to GRL.

mayko - 3-4-2018 at 18:29

Quote: Originally posted by AJKOER  

"there is an interesting correlation between sunspots and climate (see http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.ht... . To quote a few points:


Not everything on that site is wrong, but it is a bit dated and several of the sources aren't valid anymore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigil_Friis-Christensen#Solar_...

As I've mentioned, observed temperature increases are difficult to explain in terms of solar activity, given that the every solar trend has been going the wrong direction to explain it, for the last several decades of the fastest heating. If we decided to "adjust" the temperature data, that is, remove everything but the greenhouse signal, it would revise things upwards (surely it would be an extreme revision if it's true that "the sensitivity of climate to the effects of solar irradiance is about 27% higher than its sensitivity to forcing by greenhouse gases"!)

Volcanic eruptions introduce real, but short-lived perturbations which don't change the ultimate trend.

It's often not necessary or informative to "adjust" the temperature data to account for these effects, but if you want to, sure, you can try to remove known non-greenhouse and internal variabilities to try to isolate the greenhouse signal by itself. Here's an example:

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/0440...



JJay - 3-4-2018 at 18:41

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
You're assuming that A(t) is at a constant linear offset from T(t), and it's offset by a different value at each station. In other words, your assumption is false.


:o!?HUH?!:o

It isn't an 'assumption' that A(t) differs from T(t) by a constant; that's *trivially true*, *by construction*! If you disagree, I'm not sure what to tell you, besides to look back at the definition, or maybe subtract A(t) from T(t) and see what you get.

In practice, the value of B will vary between station records (that's sort of the point), but that has no bearing on whether A(t) and T(t) are both correlated with the variance of V(t).

Quote:

it's still necessary to estimate a an offset parameter, which introduces an additional degree of freedom to the model that must be estimated using non-linear techniques, introducing unnecessary bias and inefficiency.


Accepting this momentarily for the sake of argument, in practice the difficulties of standardizing and combining records must surely be weighed against the difficulties of using an unmerged collection of many non-standardized raw temperature records. Some of these have already been mentioned here or in linked sites; here is another discussion from the perspective of global absolute temperature, which would presumably be implicit in any global absolute temperature time series you produced:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/08/observ...

Again, if I had evidence of what you're claiming (that using anomalies instead of raw temperatures is inappropriate) I'd be licking stamps to get my manuscript to GRL.


I'm not trying to be rude about this, but I have already explained three times why using temperature "anomalies" is not really a good idea, and I didn't even get into non-linear links and so forth. If you can't follow the discussion so far, there's no point in going any further.

mayko - 3-4-2018 at 18:46

I can follow the discussion! I just want to understand how V(t) - A(t) is something other than B, which is constant. Can someone more patient than JJay explain this to me? It sounds like he has a groundbreaking paper in geophysics to write!

AJKOER - 4-4-2018 at 05:48

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote: Originally posted by AJKOER  

"there is an interesting correlation between sunspots and climate (see http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.ht... . To quote a few points:


Not everything on that site is wrong, but it is a bit dated and several of the sources aren't valid anymore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigil_Friis-Christensen#Solar_...

As I've mentioned, observed temperature increases are difficult to explain in terms of solar activity, given that the every solar trend has been going the wrong direction to explain it, for the last several decades of the fastest heating. If we decided to "adjust" the temperature data, that is, remove everything but the greenhouse signal, it would revise things upwards (surely it would be an extreme revision if it's true that "the sensitivity of climate to the effects of solar irradiance is about 27% higher than its sensitivity to forcing by greenhouse gases"!)

Volcanic eruptions introduce real, but short-lived perturbations which don't change the ultimate trend.

It's often not necessary or informative to "adjust" the temperature data to account for these effects, but if you want to, sure, you can try to remove known non-greenhouse and internal variabilities to try to isolate the greenhouse signal by itself. Here's an example:

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/0440...


Perhaps a new examination of the faults in current science is more in order. First, even though years ago I saw a documentary showing the obvious melting occurring in the usually frozen tundras regions on earth with large methane releases occurring through the unfrozen ground, only recently do I see articles like, "Thawing permafrost produces more methane than expected" citing 'Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas that is roughly 30 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide (CO2). Both gases are produced in thawing permafrost as dead animal and plant remains are decomposed' link: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-permafrost-methane.html . That article produced forecasts:

"first forecasts. According to the scientists: The permafrost soils of Northern Europe, Northern Asia and North America could produce up to 1 gigaton of methane and 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2100. "

Also, read "First direct observations of methane's increasing greenhouse effect at the Earth's surface ", at https://phys.org/news/2018-04-methane-greenhouse-effect-eart... .

Per my prior reference, in my opinion, there is some politics mixing in with the science as the official impact of CH4 is still currently based on a 100 year average effect! Basically, it appears that the science is just developing on the real CH4 impact, but it was early on deemed, by the science community, to be less alarmist by toning down methane impact on global warming by employing a questionable hundred year average effect.

Another source (see https://www.edf.org/methane-other-important-greenhouse-gas?g... ) states, to quote:

"While methane doesn't linger as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it is initially far more devastating to the climate because of how effectively it absorbs heat. In the first two decades after its release, methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. "

Also, per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane ) on methane:

"As methane rises into the air, it reacts with the hydroxyl radical to create water vapor and carbon dioxide. The lifespan of methane in the atmosphere was estimated at 9.6 years as of 2001; however, increasing emissions of methane over time reduce the concentration of the hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere."

So the impact of CH4 due to its reduce rate of conversion to CO2 with time is effectively increasing from hydroxyl radical loss. I make sense of the latter as more CO2 (from all sources inclusive of methane) plus water vapor means increase HCO3- ions which are scavengers of hydroxyl radicals via:

HCO3- + .OH --> H2O + .CO3-

creating a less powerful (than the hydroxyl radical) carbonate radical anion. So, my opinion is that the above reaction could be increasingly in competition with the action of .OH on CH4 as CO2 levels rise. In other words, a compounding effect which is apparently not baked into the current widely promulgated science. Also, possible threatening enhancing effects (in apparent agreement with my comment):

"Ramanathan (1988)[81] notes that both water and ice clouds, when formed at cold lower stratospheric temperatures, are extremely efficient in enhancing the atmospheric greenhouse effect. He also notes that there is a distinct possibility that large increases in future methane may lead to a surface warming that increases nonlinearly with the methane concentration."

In 1985, to quote "Ramanathan and collaborators announce that global warming may come twice as fast as expected, from rise of methane and other trace greenhouse gases", see https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm .

If we don't like older models implications (which may be implying a methane induced elevated sensitivity) of what is happening, don't change to newer models that are more politically digestible.
--------------------------------------------

Here is a recent reference to methane hydrate release from sea floor movement: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180206105852.h... .

Also, these two references to ancient events: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171120111336.h... and https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101110101313.h...

Put all three articles together suggests to me a possible CO2/methane footprint to extreme warming occurring 54 million years whose release was triggered by massive movements of land masses (formation of mountain ranges).

[Edited on 4-4-2018 by AJKOER]

mayko - 5-4-2018 at 12:15

It's not a secret that methane is a greenhouse gas, and its impact has been and continues to be actively researched; I'm not sure what the 'faults' are that you want to examine. Maybe I'm reading too much into your wording, but this remark is puzzling:

Quote: Originally posted by AJKOER  

First, even though years ago I saw a documentary showing the obvious melting occurring in the usually frozen tundras regions on earth with large methane releases occurring through the unfrozen ground, only recently do I see articles like, "Thawing permafrost produces more methane than expected"


If the article was titled "Unexpectedly, Thawing Permafrost Releases Methane", then it well might suggest a glaring oversight in the context of the earlier documentary you mention. As stated, it's simply reporting on the newest developments in the 'current science'.

Quote:
Also, read "First direct observations of methane's increasing greenhouse effect at the Earth's surface ", at https://phys.org/news/2018-04-methane-greenhouse-effect-eart... .


Similarly, this sounds to me like you're suggesting that it just now occurred to someone to try to directly measure methane's greenhouse effect. In reality, it was a long-running project, and the scientists began gathering the data a decade and a half ago. This dedication would seem to contradict a systemic bias against considering the impact of methane!

Quote:
Per my prior reference, in my opinion, there is some politics mixing in with the science as the official impact of CH4 is still currently based on a 100 year average effect! Basically, it appears that the science is just developing on the real CH4 impact, but it was early on deemed, by the science community, to be less alarmist by toning down methane impact on global warming by employing a questionable hundred year average effect.


It sounds like you're talking about Global Warming Potential, which attempts to account for the fact that a given methane emission is, in the long run, a CO2 emission. It's a little like buying a car in installments. A 20-year GWP would be like the down payment, whereas a 100-year GWP is like the total amount the car costs. One or the other measure might be more useful, depending on your specific budgeting concerns, but planning around one or the other doesn't change the basic facts of financing.

This article explores the issue in more detail, but the key points I want to highlight are:
* Using a 20 vs 100 year GWP may make a difference in terms of policy and planning, but it doesn't change the physical science involved ("There is no scientific reason to prefer a 100-year time horizon over a 20-year time horizon; the choice of GWP100 is simply a matter of convention"; this cuts both ways!)
* A 100 year GWP isn't inherently politicized, nor is a 10 or 20 year inherently neutral
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...

An article that might support a larger methane impact that typically thought might be this one:
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-effect-methane-climate-greater...

However, there are two important points to keep in mind:
* The results don't substantially change the big picture: "carbon dioxide remains by far the most significant gas driving human-induced climate change"
* This is a relatively new result in an area of active research. It may be correct, but new results often aren't, especially when they appear to radically change the current understanding.

For an example of the second point in action, one need only scroll up! A few posts ago, JJay dropped this link on us with no particular introduction or explanation:
Quote: Originally posted by JJay  
With all due respect, no respect is due. https://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html


It's definitely an interesting story! (Again, the scientists involved didn't think that it changed the big picture: "Overwhelming evidence still suggests that anthropogenic emissions of CFCs and halons are the reason for the ozone loss." That's not my main point here, though.)

The thing is, it's a story from 2007. As one might imagine, there was a flurry of research into the controversy, which confirmed that the reported result was not correct, and which identified the reason why. For example:
https://www.nature.com/news/2009/070509/full/news.2009.456.h...

Now, some might say it's strange, even negligent, that he'd bring up this particular news item without mentioning any research on the topic that's less than a decade old. I think we can forgive him, though; he was probably busy singlehandedly overturning the GISS, HadCRUT, BEST, UAH, RSS, and RATPAC datasets (to name a few), from a base level, mere days after needing that base level explained to him (LOL!)


Quote:
So the impact of CH4 due to its reduce rate of conversion to CO2 with time is effectively increasing from hydroxyl radical loss. I make sense of the latter as more CO2 (from all sources inclusive of methane) plus water vapor means increase HCO3- ions which are scavengers of hydroxyl radicals via:

HCO3- + .OH --> H2O + .CO3-

creating a less powerful (than the hydroxyl radical) carbonate radical anion. So, my opinion is that the above reaction could be increasingly in competition with the action of .OH on CH4 as CO2 levels rise. In other words, a compounding effect which is apparently not baked into the current widely promulgated science.


Is there any evidence that this reaction takes place at all under atmospheric conditions?

Quote:


Put all three articles together suggests to me a possible CO2/methane footprint to extreme warming occurring 54 million years whose release was triggered by massive movements of land masses (formation of mountain ranges).


It's entirely possible. The PETM is an area of active research, and I don't think there is anything resembling a solid conclusion on the ultimate causes of the carbon cycle perturbation and thermal spike.

byko3y - 5-4-2018 at 19:18

Invention of CO2 as a cause of temperature change is not scientifical, but bureaucratical.
Facts show that:
- temperature raise causes raise in the CO2 level after thousand of years:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html
CO2_0-400k_yrs.gif - 8kB
Temp_0-400k_yrs.gif - 11kB
(notice X-axis going in reversed time)

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-wi...
"overall observations are consistent with temperature rise causing the oceans to release part of their dissolved CO2 after substantial lag time, yet not consistent with CO2 being the primary driver of climate."
gisp220temperaturesince1070020bp20with20co220from20epica20domec1.gif - 45kB

- concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are insignificant compared to the main earth greenhouse gas - water (H2O).

Official conclusion was made by cherry picking from available data, mostly based on medium-scale correlation, because large scale graph shows no correlation
https://medium.com/@ghornerhb/heres-a-better-graph-of-co2-an...
0 3Vm0copgT8K-pcRm.gif - 28kB

and the thousand years lag of CO2 level is barely visible on medium scale:
400000yearslarge1.gif - 45kB

[Edited on 6-4-2018 by byko3y]

JJay - 5-4-2018 at 19:25

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Invention of CO2 as a cause of temperature change is not scientifical, but bureaucratical.
Facts show that:
- temperature raise causes raise in the CO2 level after almost thousand of years:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html


(notice X-axis going in reversed time)

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-wi...
"overall observations are consistent with temperature rise causing the oceans to release part of their dissolved CO2 after substantial lag time, yet not consistent with CO2 being the primary driver of climate."


- concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are insignificant compared to the main earth greenhouse gas - water (H2O).

Official conclusion was made by cherry picking from available data, mostly based on medium-scale correlation, because large scale graph shows no correlation

https://medium.com/@ghornerhb/heres-a-better-graph-of-co2-an...


and the almost thousand years lag of CO2 level is barely visible on medium scale:


Hah. As we all know, fires produce carbon dioxide. Try building a fire next to a thermometer and see what happens. Clearly, only a fool would try to deny science.

byko3y - 5-4-2018 at 19:27

JJay, aren't we talking about global warming? Was your message a joke?

JJay - 5-4-2018 at 19:30

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
JJay, aren't we talking about global warming? Was your message a joke?


Yes, it was a joke.

AJKOER - 6-4-2018 at 12:25

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
]
........
Quote:
So the impact of CH4 due to its reduce rate of conversion to CO2 with time is effectively increasing from hydroxyl radical loss. I make sense of the latter as more CO2 (from all sources inclusive of methane) plus water vapor means increase HCO3- ions which are scavengers of hydroxyl radicals via:

HCO3- + .OH --> H2O + .CO3-

creating a less powerful (than the hydroxyl radical) carbonate radical anion. So, my opinion is that the above reaction could be increasingly in competition with the action of .OH on CH4 as CO2 levels rise. In other words, a compounding effect which is apparently not baked into the current widely promulgated science.


Is there any evidence that this reaction takes place at all under atmospheric conditions?
......


Yes, here is an article discussing the decomposition of .CO3- and its hydrate at sunrise, namely: .CO3- H2O, "Sunlight photodestruction of CO3−, CO3−·H2O, and O3−: The importance of photodissociation to the D region electron densities at sunrise" by James R. Peterson.

Link: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JA08...

More background on the carbonate radical formation, see "Rate constant for reaction of hydroxyl radicals with bicarbonate ions☆" , at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/1359019786... . To quote from the abstract:

"The rate constant for reaction of hydroxyl radicals with the bicarbonate ion has been determined to be 8.5 × 10^6 dm3 mol-1s-1. This value was calculated from: the measured rate of formation of the CO-3 radical in pulsed electron irradiation of bicarbonate solutions over the pH range 7.0–9.4; the pK for the equilibrium HCO3- ⇌ CO3= + H+; and the rate constant for hydroxyl radicals reacting with the carbonate ion."
--------------------------------------

The decomposition product by sunlight on .CO3- yielding CO2 + .O-, may result upon contact with O2, some .O3- via:

.CO3- + hv --> CO2 + .O-

.O- + O2 = .O3-

where the ozonide radical may attack CH4, but the following reaction is also possible, consuming more hydroxyl radical but liberating ozone:

.O3- + .OH --> O3 + OH-

However, the carbonate radical release of CO2 with added H2O could remove more .OH via the bicarbonate path, where we started:

CO2 + H2O ⇌ H+ + HCO3-

HCO3- + .OH --> H2O + .CO3-

The net of all of the above is:

O2 + 2 .OH + hv --H2O, .CO3-, CO2 ---> O3 + H2O

which would appear to favor some possible ozone formation at the expense of two hydroxyl radicals needed for methane removal.

So, speculatively, the ozone hole gets better, but we all bake :o .

[Edited on 6-4-2018 by AJKOER]

mayko - 8-4-2018 at 15:54

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Invention of CO2 as a cause of temperature change is not scientifical, but bureaucratical.
Facts show that:
- temperature raise causes raise in the CO2 level after thousand of years:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html



The "lag-lead" phenomenon is a real effect, but you're overstating its generality and importance to present-day observations. The plots you've shown to illustrate it are all of CO2/temperature variations, over the last several Quaternary glaciation cycles, as reconstructed from individual ice cores. This tells us something about how Quaternary ice ages unfold, but it doesn't establish, as a generalized law, that a CO2 change will never precede or cause a temperature change, and there are good physical reasons for thinking that it could.


Quote:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-wi...
"overall observations are consistent with temperature rise causing the oceans to release part of their dissolved CO2 after substantial lag time, yet not consistent with CO2 being the primary driver of climate."


WUWT is, uh, less than reputable as far as sources go ;)
But the quote you've pulled out is correct, to the extent that it refers to Quaternary glacial cycles. The generally accepted explanation of their driver is orbital forcing, in which small wobbles in the Earth's orbit slowly change the incoming solar energy. This small change is amplified by the outgassing feedback that you mention. There are a number of reasons that we know this isn't what's happening right now; one of them is that the ocean is currently a net carbon sink, not a net carbon source.

Another aspect discussed in the Shakun paper from the WUWT link is that the lag/lead effect differs between hemispheres. Oxygen isotope proxies from ice cores are "good enough" for many purposes, but they are regionally biased, and using Antarctic ice cores exaggerates the lag-lead in one direction, while ignoring that Northern hemisphere proxies tend to show CO2 leading and temperature lagging!

There is much more to the issue. If you haven't read the Shakun paper, I highly recommend it.

Attachment: Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last degalciation - Shakun et al 2012.pdf (905kB)
This file has been downloaded 240 times


Quote:

- concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are insignificant compared to the main earth greenhouse gas - water (H2O).


Concentration isn't the same as impact. A few back of the envelope calculations give me a ratio of maybe 50:1, water vapor to CO2, but the radiative forcing of water vapor is only about three times that of CO2. Even that is a little misleading, because the water vapor present in the air is caused by temperature (Clausius-Clapeyron), and the CO2 concentration isn't, at least in the present. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, water vapor acts mostly as a feedback; that is to say, non-condensing greenhouse gas forcing is much of the reason that there's water vapor in the first place.

Quote:

Official conclusion was made by cherry picking from available data,


Anthropogenic global warming due to increased greenhouse effect was predicted in the late 19th century on the basis of uncontroversial thermodynamics and radiation physics, long before there was any data to cherrypick.

Quote:

mostly based on medium-scale correlation, because large scale graph shows no correlation
https://medium.com/@ghornerhb/heres-a-better-graph-of-co2-an...


That large scale graph also doesn't account for many other confounding factors that change over geologic time, but aren't responsible for current observations. Examples include changes in solar intensity or continental arrangement.

As long as we're talking about correlations, I want to back up a bit.

Now, JJay has said a great many interesting things here, which are "huge, if true". I want to roll back to the start, leaving aside issues like his inability thusfar to relate his informal statistical musings to his mechanistic hypothesis of UHI as a temperature driver. If you'll recall, his original complaint regarding the temperature record was that its variance was not constant, and in particular, that the variance was correlated with the anomaly. I've dwelt enough for now on the often eye-bugging notion that this is a worse problem for anomalies than for raw temperatures, so I'm going to move to a different question, something I've taken at face value so far: is it even true??

Last I heard, JJay hadn't gotten around to formally testing his observation. Maybe it would be true of the data in the graph he presented, but part of my concern is the plotted data itself. Remember, he doesn't seem to be using the GISS global temperature time series. He's using a hand-rolled global time series which he constructed from "the data from that video". It's actually not obvious what his starting data even was, since it appears that several vaguely identified datasets were used in the visualization he linked to. (The most explicitly named is ERSSTv4, which is sea surface temperature data.) Now, at first I thought he was averaging a bunch of already-gridded data, which is weird when there's already a global time series available, but I didn't think he'd go too wrong. But maybe that isn't what he did, or maybe it did go wrong somehow.

(Looking back, I suspect a lot of his questions and objections are less about the practice of standardizing a station record to its reference climatology, and more about issues like "How does one combine local station records with an uneven spatial & temporal distribution into a regional or global record?", "How does one compare (mostly) fixed land stations to (mostly) transient ocean measurements?" and "How does one account for non-climatic artifacts?" These are questions very much worth asking, but they're less about what an anomaly time series is, than about what you do with one once you've got it. If he wants a soundbite answer, he's out of luck - homogenization and gridding are broad, deep, complex topics. Ordinarily, I'd suggest doing some background reading, perhaps starting with the FAQ section for the GISS data. However, even when the topic is complicated enough to be Nobel-worthy, JJay seems averse, even hostile to getting oriented ahead of time.)

I don't have the data JJay plotted handy, and I'd be disinclined to recreate it even if I thought I had sufficient information to do so. Instead, I'm using an actual global time series published by GISS (specifically, the global LOTI, here ). If it shows the behavior JJay claims, we'll know that behavior is at least somewhat robust. If it doesn't, there's a discrepancy somewhere. Maybe he isn't using the dataset he thinks he is. Maybe he dorked up the averaging process. Maybe renormalizing by month isn't a good decision. Maybe statistics-by-eyeball isn't reliable. It would be possible that it's GISS who are wrong, but without more information I find that unlikely, not because I think NASA is an unassailable, inerrant authority, but because they aren't the ones who just spent a half dozen posts telling me that two time series differing by a constant have different correlation properties.

anomalies_with_MSE.png - 148kB

Here's the monthly anomalies, plotted in black, and the annual in green. The data have been binned into non-overlapping 5 year windows, marked by purple lines. Line height is used to indicate the mean anomaly over this window; this is a quick and dirty estimate of both A(t) and F(t) (since the long-term mean of V(t) is zero). The vertical tick height on the window boundaries is root mean square error, though I don't think it's especially helpful here.

(A quick aside is necessary; I think I actually misstated the terms of JJay's argument earlier, when I said things like "(...) it is inefficient in this case to estimate V(t) from A(t) because V(t) is correlated with T(t). " Instead, I'm pretty sure it would have to be a time-dependent variance measure of A(t), rather than the unforced variation itself, which we were correlating with T(t). For example, we might be interested in the instantaneous standard deviation of A(t), as a function of time. Call it S(A,t). I tried to correct myself the last time I brought it up, but it deserves to have attention drawn to it, because I'm about to calculate some variance measures as functions of time. As embarrassing a flub as this is, it's worse for JJay, since he appeared to agree with the accidentally bogus statement without noticing, and because it doesn't change the trivial fact that A(t) and T(t) have the same correlation properties with *arbitrary* datasets.)

JJay has suggested that a number of variation measures are correlated with the anomalies, including variance and mean square error. These were calculated over the windows, using the window mean as an estimator, and correlations were tested via least squares linear regression. The results for mean square error are typical:

mse_vs_mean_windowed.png - 32kB

Code:
Call: lm(formula = GISTEMP_global.windowed$mse ~ GISTEMP_global.windowed$mean) Residuals: Min 1Q Median 3Q Max -0.0099664 -0.0038843 0.0001331 0.0034176 0.0138152 Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 0.018928 0.001039 18.221 6.01e-16 *** GISTEMP_global.windowed$mean -0.005960 0.003538 -1.685 0.104 --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 Residual standard error: 0.005396 on 25 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.102, Adjusted R-squared: 0.06604 F-statistic: 2.838 on 1 and 25 DF, p-value: 0.1045


I've tried different window sizes, different window starts, non-overlapping and rolling. I've tested mean square error and variance (these are essentially identical here, though they need not be), root mean square error and standard deviation (ditto), and time. In spite of a great deal of uncorrected p-hacking in favor of JJay's hypothesis, I can't seem to crack the 95% confidence interval, and the 90% only once in dozens of tests. That doesn't mean it isn't a real, but it's not significant by this test. It's possible that my methods aren't sufficient or appropriate to detect the correlation, but then again, JJay hasn't even outlined what methods would be, to say nothing of implementing them. When I use data that isn't sketchy homebrew, I completely fail to replicate the statistics-by-eyeball result that was the main motivating observation behind much of this discussion.



mayko - 8-4-2018 at 15:56

Quote: Originally posted by AJKOER  

Yes, here is an article discussing the decomposition of .CO3- and its hydrate at sunrise, namely: .CO3- H2O, "Sunlight photodestruction of CO3−, CO3−·H2O, and O3−: The importance of photodissociation to the D region electron densities at sunrise" by James R. Peterson.

Link: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JA08...

More background on the carbonate radical formation, see "Rate constant for reaction of hydroxyl radicals with bicarbonate ions☆" , at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/1359019786... . To quote from the abstract:

"The rate constant for reaction of hydroxyl radicals with the bicarbonate ion has been determined to be 8.5 × 10^6 dm3 mol-1s-1. This value was calculated from: the measured rate of formation of the CO-3 radical in pulsed electron irradiation of bicarbonate solutions over the pH range 7.0–9.4; the pK for the equilibrium HCO3- ⇌ CO3= + H+; and the rate constant for hydroxyl radicals reacting with the carbonate ion."


That's pretty interesting; I'm still skeptical it would be a major player but then again I didn't think the reaction would go at all!

AJKOER - 12-4-2018 at 05:22

One idea of what to do with the raw time series data augmented by actual collection data.

Start by constructing a regression model where the all the raw temperature data collected at time t is subject to a transform (like log), which is then regressed against dummy variables (0 or 1) for variables like hemisphere, a land reading, a water location, month (that is, 12 seasonal dummies)..., and non-dummy variables of known estimates of active greenhouse presence minus its mean and the sun irradiance at that time (also minus its mean). This results in a standardized data value for time t and an estimate of its statistical variance for the transformed data point t (and an implied value for the untransformed data point).

In other words, remove poor simple models to correct for seasonal effects and the like, and do incorporate data variance estimates (via generalized least-squares), in deriving standardizing factors.

Use the above standardized data and error estimates in a generalized least-square (with likely an auto-correlation correction) trend model (or time series analysis) which incorporates variance estimates of the standardized data.

If such a model shows a time trend, it may be due to unknown estimates of green house gases like CH4,..., or other missing variable(s).
---------------------------------------------------------

If the data series is long enough (more than 2x60 at least), cut the data in half and estimate the standardizing model on every other even data point. Then, test the model on the excluded odd points.

Repeat the exercise building the model on the odd points and test on the even points. Why suffer this loss of data? Because now the model specification, based on a close examination of half the data, is a bit more separated (except for strong serial correlation, in which case, use ever other 3rd point, resulting in 3 models) for testing predictive ability.

Note both predictive ability (actual vs. forecast) and deviation in regression coefficients between the two data sets. The range (high - low) of the individual coefficients is also a variability estimate and can also be roughly converted into an estimate of the regression coefficient standard deviation.

[Edited on 13-4-2018 by AJKOER]

byko3y - 14-4-2018 at 02:50

AJKOER, you can actually find different sources of data providing slightly different result, all the methods are publically known https://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measure...
But the overall trend of temperature abnormality is similar and insignificant to humanity.

byko3y - 14-4-2018 at 06:39

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
There is much more to the issue. If you haven't read the Shakun paper, I highly recommend it.
Attachment: Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last degalciation - Shakun et al 2012.pdf (905kB)

Shakun's article in "Nature", being a mainstream media, emphasizes the importance of one period with good CO2 lag-correlation, while forgetting about everything else.

Quote:
A few back of the envelope calculations give me a ratio of maybe 50:1, water vapor to CO2, but the radiative forcing of water vapor is only about three times that of CO2.

CO2 might absorb more IR radiation at same concentration, yet the warter still provides the most impact in terms of absorption of thermal radiation:
(table from http://coelho.mota.googlepages.com/RadiationBudget.pdf )
Greenhouse gases.png - 39kB

Average concentration of CO2 is 400 ppm, average concentration of water is 5000 ppm ( http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html )
I can approximate ratio of specific absorption CO2:H2O as 5:1 (based on ppm concentration values (71:5000)/(29:400) ). Probably you just put excessive zero in your number. And probably you are trying to bullshit us.

Quote:
Anthropogenic global warming due to increased greenhouse effect was predicted in the late 19th century on the basis of uncontroversial thermodynamics and radiation physics, long before there was any data to cherrypick.
A lot of crazy shit was predicted century ago, luckily most of it was rejected. That's why it's important to stick to the facts and overall picture, and not to the random statements.
I'm talking not only about cherrypicking in long and medium range, but also in short range, once again the picture:
gisp220temperaturesince1070020bp20with20co220from20epica20domec1.gif - 29kB
shows no correlation, but if you pick the last 100 years only, you might find the correlation out of nothing. You can also pick another 100 years from the graph and find correlation there too, although it does not exists on the larger picture.

mayko - 14-4-2018 at 08:59

Quote: Originally posted by AJKOER  
One idea of what to do with the raw time series data augmented by actual collection data.

Start by constructing a regression model where the all the raw temperature data collected at time t is subject to a transform (like log), which is then regressed against dummy variables (0 or 1) for variables like hemisphere, a land reading, a water location, month (that is, 12 seasonal dummies)..., and non-dummy variables of known estimates of active greenhouse presence minus its mean and the sun irradiance at that time (also minus its mean). This results in a standardized data value for time t and an estimate of its statistical variance for the transformed data point t (and an implied value for the untransformed data point).

In other words, remove poor simple models to correct for seasonal effects and the like, and do incorporate data variance estimates (via generalized least-squares), in deriving standardizing factors.

Use the above standardized data and error estimates in a generalized least-square (with likely an auto-correlation correction) trend model (or time series analysis) which incorporates variance estimates of the standardized data.



Sure, you could do that sort of thing. The specifics of the regression and interpretation will likely depend heavily on what particular questions are being asked of the data: are we trying to tease out the influence of methane? are we looking for an artefactual urbanization signal? One thing you mention is "predictive ability (actual vs. forecast)", which suggests that you're planning to extrapolate your fitted curve into the future. This may or may not be appropriate, and it's not how simulation-based "climate models", such as GCMs, work. They're more like physically-informed differential equation solvers than data regressors.

If you're just interested in excluding urbanization as a major explanation of observed warming, there are probably easier ways to do it, such as comparing rural station trends to urban station trends, comparing land station trends to sea trends, or using sea level as a global proxy thermometer.

(Funny story, Ross McKitrick once did a curve-fitting exercise of the sort you describe, and found that economic activity is correlated with warming intensity, perhaps suggesting an urbanization component or other artefacts. Unfortunately for him, his result was due to a number of bungles, including forgetting to convert between degrees and radians (!)

http://web.archive.org/web/20090425085804/http://scienceblog... )

One last loose end to tie up on the topic of regressions: what with heteroskedasticity being the econometrics buzzword of the month, I'm surprised no one has pointed out that my MSE vs mean regression has a mild case of it. However, using robust standard error is not sufficient to rescue the significance. As long as we're trying to poke holes in the regression, we might also check for outliers and see if removing them leaves the results intact, or if they are introducing an unrepresentative bias. By [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier#Tukey's_fences]Tukey's method[/url], there is a single mild outlier near 1900. Removing this slashes the modeled effect size by a third and obliterates whatever marginal significance it had.


Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
you can actually find different sources of data providing slightly different result, all the methods are publically known https://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measure...


Every single data set presented there is in temperature anomalies. Clearly, you and JJay need to sit down and get your heads together! ;)

Quote:
Shakun's article in "Nature", being a mainstream media, emphasizes the importance of one period with good CO2 lag-correlation, while forgetting about everything else.


The purpose of the article was to investigate Quaternary declaciations. I'm not sure how one would go about this, other than to study high-quality data from the Quaternary. It is certainly not the case that they have 'forgotten' the other 4.5 billion years of geologic time!

Quote:

Quote:
A few back of the envelope calculations give me a ratio of maybe 50:1, water vapor to CO2, but the radiative forcing of water vapor is only about three times that of CO2.

CO2 might absorb more IR radiation at same concentration, yet the warter still provides the most impact in terms of absorption of thermal radiation:
(table from http://coelho.mota.googlepages.com/RadiationBudget.pdf )


That table is from the article I linked to. It supports my quoted figure of "about three times that of CO2", which is actually generous. Those numbers are not radiative forcing at equal concentration; they're radiative forcing in real-world conditions.
Furthermore, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but how is Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society anything but 'a mainstream media'? Why is that a problem for Nature, but not BAMS ?

Quote:
Average concentration of CO2 is 400 ppm, average concentration of water is 5000 ppm ( http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html )
I can approximate ratio of specific absorption CO2:H2O as 5:1 (based on ppm concentration values (71:5000)/(29:400) ). Probably you just put excessive zero in your number. And probably you are trying to bullshit us.


"Probably", part of the difference is that I used a different source for water vapor concentration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor#In_Earth's_atmosphere
But accepting your figures, when I divide 5000 by 400, I get 12.5 . This still illustrates the central point: in spite of a 12-fold difference in concentration, water vapor only exerts a three-fold bigger radiative forcing.
Your calculation of 'specific absorption' seems to be premised on the misconception that the stated radiative forcings are given at equal concentration, which they aren't. Look at the units: they're Watts per meter squared, not Watts per meter squared per ppm. Or, look at the 'percent contribution to clear sky' column.
Anyway, thanks for the assumption of good faith :)


Quote:
Quote:
Anthropogenic global warming due to increased greenhouse effect was predicted in the late 19th century on the basis of uncontroversial thermodynamics and radiation physics, long before there was any data to cherrypick.

A lot of crazy shit was predicted century ago, luckily most of it was rejected. That's why it's important to stick to the facts and overall picture, and not to the random statements.


Do you reject much of acid-base chemistry and chemical kinetics on the same principle? They were set down by the same person, after all!


Quote:
I'm talking not only about cherrypicking in long and medium range, but also in short range, once again the picture:

shows no correlation, but if you pick the last 100 years only, you might find the correlation out of nothing. You can also pick another 100 years from the graph and find correlation there too, although it does not exists on the larger picture.


This graph also does not include the long-term change in insolation due to orbital forcing, which generally drives temperature changes at that time scale, so there's a confounding factor that isn't visually being taken into account. The graph is of the Holocene, the time period since the last deglaciation; this period has been remarkably stable and long-lasting in the context of the Quaternary. This stability in the face of orbital forcing needs to be considered, as long as we're doing informal visual correlating.

Dig further, using one of your own sources, and you find a great deal of other shenanigans lurking in this particular graph:
https://skepticalscience.com/crux-of-a-core3.html

Also, it uses temperature anomalies. Dang!

byko3y - 14-4-2018 at 14:00

Quote: Originally posted by mayko  

(Funny story, Ross McKitrick once did a curve-fitting exercise of the sort you describe, and found that economic activity is correlated with warming intensity, perhaps suggesting an urbanization component or other artefacts. Unfortunately for him, his result was due to a number of bungles, including forgetting to convert between degrees and radians (!)

Funny story, there are researchers that found urbanization artifact to be a valid cause of the measured temperature deviation : https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2014/374987/
They use no prediction, no models, just pure measured data. Even the critics of the theory have to accept some of the data, because the effect was well know long ago, we just don't know the extend of its actual impact: https://skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-interm...
Strange thing: the data from satellites and weather ballons does not show such steep rise of temperature as might be expected from greenhouse effect: https://www.americanexperiment.org/2016/11/climate-change-2-...
Mainstream politics had to reshuffle the satellite data many years after the measurements were made, in order to make them match the surface data: https://skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-...

Quote:
Furthermore, maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but how is Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society anything but 'a mainstream media'? Why is that a problem for Nature, but not BAMS ?
I'm not talking they are evil, I'm just trying to say you cannot publish any independant research in the mainstream media. If you are looking for truth, then you need to have additional sources of information.

Quote:
"Probably", part of the difference is that I used a different source for water vapor concentration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor#In_Earth's_atmosphere
But accepting your figures, when I divide 5000 by 400, I get 12.5 . This still illustrates the central point: in spite of a 12-fold difference in concentration, water vapor only exerts a three-fold bigger radiative forcing.
Your calculation of 'specific absorption' seems to be premised on the misconception that the stated radiative forcings are given at equal concentration, which they aren't. Look at the units: they're Watts per meter squared, not Watts per meter squared per ppm. Or, look at the 'percent contribution to clear sky' column.
12.5/4 = 4.17, which is very close to my number. Of couse the concentration might fluctuate, water might change its state, but I talk about average approximation.

Quote:
Do you reject much of acid-base chemistry and chemical kinetics on the same principle? They were set down by the same person, after all!
I don't believe in authority and fame. Even greatest scientists made mistakes. I believe in facts.

Quote:
Dig further, using one of your own sources, and you find a great deal of other shenanigans lurking in this particular graph:
https://skepticalscience.com/crux-of-a-core3.html
Okay, you got me, indeed, the temperature on that graph is a local Greenland temperature. Let's look at global graphs then:
marcott2-13_11k-graph-610.gif - 26kB
( data from http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1228026 )

co2_10000_years.gif - 8kB

Are you happy with this correlation now?

mayko - 14-4-2018 at 20:59

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  

Funny story, there are researchers that found urbanization artifact to be a valid cause of the measured temperature deviation : https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2014/374987/
They use no prediction, no models, just pure measured data. Even the critics of the theory have to accept some of the data, because the effect was well know long ago,


It's certainly true that urbanization and land use change in general can have an impact on regional trends, such as in the study you've linked to. That doesn't make it a major driver of global trends, though. The study does an experiment which I suggested, which is to compare urban and rural stations, and they find warming at both, which would suggest that urbanization isn't the only driver, even at the regional scale.


Quote:
we just don't know the extend of its actual impact: https://skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-interm...


That link does not support your argument. In fact, it provides another example the the urban-rural station comparison I mentioned. (Don't let JJay know that all their data are anomalies!)

Quote:
Strange thing: the data from satellites and weather ballons does not show such steep rise of temperature as might be expected from greenhouse effect: https://www.americanexperiment.org/2016/11/climate-change-2-...


Here's Gavin Schmidt explaining why the figure presented here is misleading, and putting it in context:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...
I don't know how you came to a conclusion about attribution from that article.

Quote:

Mainstream politics had to reshuffle the satellite data many years after the measurements were made, in order to make them match the surface data: https://skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-...


That link does not support your description. It gives a pretty standard account of the time the UAH team insisted their data were right and everyone else's were wrong, were shown to be incorrect, and had to account for orbital decay of their satellites with a correction so large that it changed the sign of the long-term trend. This was not a case where "Mainstream politics had to reshuffle the satellite data"; it was one of the "random statements" which ultimately "was rejected". I thought you were in favor of that?

Quote:

Quote:
"Probably", part of the difference is that I used a different source for water vapor concentration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor#In_Earth's_atmosphere
But accepting your figures, when I divide 5000 by 400, I get 12.5 . This still illustrates the central point: in spite of a 12-fold difference in concentration, water vapor only exerts a three-fold bigger radiative forcing.
Your calculation of 'specific absorption' seems to be premised on the misconception that the stated radiative forcings are given at equal concentration, which they aren't. Look at the units: they're Watts per meter squared, not Watts per meter squared per ppm. Or, look at the 'percent contribution to clear sky' column.
12.5/4 = 4.17, which is very close to my number. Of couse the concentration might fluctuate, water might change its state, but I talk about average approximation.


12.5 is the ratio of water vapor concentration to CO2 concentration. Why are you dividing 12.5 by 4? What is the physical meaning of a quarter of the ratio of concentrations? Why is dividing by 4 necessary to compare the relative concentrations to their relative radiative forcings? "Your number" was a combination of the radiative forcings of CO2 and H2O, weighted by meaningless coefficients. Why are we comparing anything to it?

Also, 12.5/4 = 3.125, not 4.17

Quote:
Quote:
Do you reject much of acid-base chemistry and chemical kinetics on the same principle? They were set down by the same person, after all!
I don't believe in authority and fame. Even greatest scientists made mistakes. I believe in facts.


Cool, I like facts too! It *is* a fact that "Anthropogenic global warming due to increased greenhouse effect was predicted in the late 19th century" on a physical science basis. That physical science basis contains many facts about thermodynamics and radiation.
That this happened "long before there was any data to cherrypick" is one way we know that it *is not* a fact that "Official conclusion was made by cherry picking from available data"


Quote:
Okay, you got me, indeed, the temperature on that graph is a local Greenland temperature. Let's look at global graphs then:

( data from http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1228026 )

Are you happy with this correlation now?


That's only one of the problems mentioned, but yeah, it's a little better :)

byko3y - 15-4-2018 at 07:47

Quote:
Strange thing: the data from satellites and weather ballons does not show such steep rise of temperature as might be expected from greenhouse effect: https://www.americanexperiment.org/2016/11/climate-change-2-...
Here's Gavin Schmidt explaining why the figure presented here is misleading, and putting it in context:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...
I don't know how you came to a conclusion about attribution from that article.
They still accept the satellite data, that shows 0.3 C change in temperature anomaly globally, while the surface measurement tell us about 0.7 C raise of temperature anomaly from 1980 to 2015. They mainly debunk the comparision of modeled and measured values.
Greenhouse theory suggests change of temperature in atmosphere should be larger then surface temperature, which is not the case, thus we have another argument against theory of greenhouse as a main driver of climate.
What might be the actual cause? Some say it's solar activity ( https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/13/paper-demonstrates-so... ), but the overall raise might be overestimated due to methodology of measurement of surface temperature, and actual rise of temperature is indeed approximately 0.3 C (the temperature rose undoubtedly, that's not a question).

Quote:
Quote:
Mainstream politics had to reshuffle the satellite data many years after the measurements were made, in order to make them match the surface data: https://skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-...

That link does not support your description. It gives a pretty standard account of the time the UAH team insisted their data were right and everyone else's were wrong, were shown to be incorrect, and had to account for orbital decay of their satellites with a correction so large that it changed the sign of the long-term trend. This was not a case where "Mainstream politics had to reshuffle the satellite data"; it was one of the "random statements" which ultimately "was rejected". I thought you were in favor of that?

Maybe indeed the old data about coling is incorrect, and the new value of 0.3 C warming is correct - okay, not a big deal. we still got argument against greenhouse theory.

Quote:
12.5 is the ratio of water vapor concentration to CO2 concentration. Why are you dividing 12.5 by 4? What is the physical meaning of a quarter of the ratio of concentrations? Why is dividing by 4 necessary to compare the relative concentrations to their relative radiative forcings? "Your number" was a combination of the radiative forcings of CO2 and H2O, weighted by meaningless coefficients. Why are we comparing anything to it?
I divide the concentrations ratio onto heat absorption ratio, thus obtaining specific absorption ratio, which is approximately 5:1. So if there was an equal concentration of water and carbon dioxide in atmosphere, then approximately 83% heat would be absorbed by carbon dioxide and 17% absorbed by water, thus carbon dioxide becoming main greenhouse gas. But the current state of the earth show opposite: water is the main greenhouse gas.
Precision of calculation plays no role here due to relatively large error of appropoximation, you might take 6:1, 4:1, 3:1, whatever.

Quote:
That this happened "long before there was any data to cherrypick" is one way we know that it *is not* a fact that "Official conclusion was made by cherry picking from available data"
Yes, the greenhouse theory was created long time ago, but it is not proven yet - that's the fact even politics have to accept and include into their reports. The cherry picking comes when someone needs to state that greenhouse climate theory was proven, then he needs to take partial data he likes and ignore everything else, thus he can claim "there's no data showing CO2 is not the main driver of climate".

sodium_stearate - 15-4-2018 at 10:54

We must also always keep in mind that there's
a huge economic dimension to "climate change" and
"global warming".

On one side there are oil and coal companies that
might like the data to be skewed in their favor, so that
they can continue their business as usual.

On the other side we have all of the "green" , "energy efficient"
things which are currently being thrown at us every day.

Those are seemingly endless, and the drive is a full-court
press to convince everyone to purchase expensive
"light bulbs", and to allow endless wind turbines to be
constructed. It is endless.

It is very tiring to watch this all unfolding, because
a good share of it seems to point back to basic human
nature in the form of greed on both sides.

Both sides tend to bend and twist science to force
it to help them "prove" that whatever they are selling
is something everyone needs.

And, just as any cheap salesman or carnival barker
knows, the more drama and urgency they can tack on to
their basic sales pitch, the more stirred up they can get
their suckers to be. They all know that stirred-up suckers
tend to make impulse purchases.

I find that a lot of this whole subject is attempting
to pull on the emotions of the general public, in order
to sell them one specific agenda, or another.

Sure there's good and proper science with plenty of
accurate data to analyze. But then we also have this
layer of salesmen trying to sell stuff under the guise
that science shows that we need their products now.

[Edited on 16-4-2018 by sodium_stearate]

RawWork - 15-4-2018 at 11:42

Yeah, that is similar to economic dimensions and tricks in other areas like health. They tell us to eat more, drink more, use pharmacy products...while exactly opposite will give us health. As Dr Ross Horne found out, on day when doctors stopped working and came on riots, number of patients decreased twice. Suddenly everybody became healthy. Also in my country one bus was in flames after being parked overnight on some location, and company said: "competition".

Haha, now I use word competition in so many funny ways. Whenever some s#*t happens either in real life or in movie, and somebody asks "what?", "why?", "who?", I say COMPETITION.

Competition everywhere. In Syria, In Korea, in food, in health, in vehicles, in sports, in games... Whenever blood gets spilled, or explosion happens, or crime...it's always they...THE COMPETITION. :D

mayko - 15-4-2018 at 18:19

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Quote:
Strange thing: the data from satellites and weather ballons does not show such steep rise of temperature as might be expected from greenhouse effect: https://www.americanexperiment.org/2016/11/climate-change-2-...
Here's Gavin Schmidt explaining why the figure presented here is misleading, and putting it in context:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...
I don't know how you came to a conclusion about attribution from that article.
They still accept the satellite data, that shows 0.3 C change in temperature anomaly globally, while the surface measurement tell us about 0.7 C raise of temperature anomaly from 1980 to 2015. They mainly debunk the comparision of modeled and measured values.
Greenhouse theory suggests change of temperature in atmosphere should be larger then surface temperature, which is not the case, thus we have another argument against theory of greenhouse as a main driver of climate.


Whoa, hold on. You're changing the subject from modeled vs measured tropospheric trends, to tropospheric vs. surface trends, and making a new claim about attribution. Neither the RealClimate, nor WUWT (lol) nor "American Experiment" (LOL) posts mentioned this at all. Can you give a reputable source for where you're getting this information? Because I suspect it'll be just as questionable.


Quote:

Quote:
12.5 is the ratio of water vapor concentration to CO2 concentration. Why are you dividing 12.5 by 4? What is the physical meaning of a quarter of the ratio of concentrations? Why is dividing by 4 necessary to compare the relative concentrations to their relative radiative forcings? "Your number" was a combination of the radiative forcings of CO2 and H2O, weighted by meaningless coefficients. Why are we comparing anything to it?

I divide the concentrations ratio onto heat absorption ratio, thus obtaining specific absorption ratio, which is approximately 5:1. So if there was an equal concentration of water and carbon dioxide in atmosphere, then approximately 83% heat would be absorbed by carbon dioxide and 17% absorbed by water, thus carbon dioxide becoming main greenhouse gas. But the current state of the earth show opposite: water is the main greenhouse gas.
Precision of calculation plays no role here due to relatively large error of appropoximation, you might take 6:1, 4:1, 3:1, whatever.


IR opacity (and hence radiative forcing) is not a linear function of concentration (it's exponential, comparable to Beer's law). As such, the ratio of absorption by CO2 and H2O at equal concentration, isn't a constant - it's a function of concentration. Calculating a "specific absorption ratio" by scaling their radiative forcings by their relative concentrations is not meaningful.
If I wanted to go through the trouble of computing the radiative forcings of individual greenhouse gasses at equal concentration, I'd probably use a radiative transfer equation solver, such as this one:
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
Doing so is overkill in this case. If you'll recall, these calculations were in support of the statement, "Concentration isn't the same as impact". To see this is a FACT, one need only consider that, in spite of being 12.5 times as concentrated as CO2, water vapor does not exert 12.5 times as strong a greenhouse effect as CO2, but instead, less than three times as strong. (I'm not sure I'd call 8% "insignificant", either, but whatever.)
Even if it was meaningful to calculate a "specific absorption ratio", I have no idea why you'd compare it to the gas mixing ratio, and even less why you'd expect them to be equal.
As I've mentioned, even the 3x figure is misleading outside the context of well-established FACTS of physical chemistry.


Quote:
Yes, the greenhouse theory was created long time ago, but it is not proven yet - that's the fact even politics have to accept and include into their reports. The cherry picking comes when someone needs to state that greenhouse climate theory was proven, then he needs to take partial data he likes and ignore everything else, thus he can claim "there's no data showing CO2 is not the main driver of climate".


Nothing in science is "proven". Evolution, gravity, relativity, Ohm's law, atomic theory, and the periodic table are "not proven". If you you want "proof", that's down the hall in the math department. If you're asking about decisive evidence in favor of anthropogenic, GHG-driven global warming, then yes, there's a decent pile of that.

byko3y - 16-4-2018 at 02:34

Quote:
Whoa, hold on. You're changing the subject from modeled vs measured tropospheric trends, to tropospheric vs. surface trends, and making a new claim about attribution. Neither the RealClimate, nor WUWT (lol) nor "American Experiment" (LOL) posts mentioned this at all. Can you give a reputable source for where you're getting this information? Because I suspect it'll be just as questionable.

The original publication from John Christy is here: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20160202/104399/HHRG-...
You might want to plot the graphs yourself from the satellite and ballons data (the data on the graph is: "average of 102 IPCC CMIP5 climate models (red), the average of 3 satellite datasets (green -UAH, RSS, NOAA) and 4 balloon datasets (blue, NOAA, UKMet, RICH, RAOBCORE). " )

Quote:
Nothing in science is "proven". Evolution, gravity, relativity, Ohm's law, atomic theory, and the periodic table are "not proven". If you you want "proof", that's down the hall in the math department. If you're asking about decisive evidence in favor of anthropogenic, GHG-driven global warming, then yes, there's a decent pile of that.
"Proven" practicaly means being not refuted experimentally. Multiple experimental data show green house theory is invalid and must be either adjusted for the new facts or rejected as a whole. I talk about history of high CO2 concentration that did not lead to warming and "surface-first" nature of the current warming.

Update: last known to me corrections by Christy http://science.sciencemag.org/content/310/5750/972.long give the value of +0.123 K/decade warming (0.035 K/decade correction) as of 2005 year, the time when anomaly stopped its raise.

[Edited on 16-4-2018 by byko3y]

mayko - 16-4-2018 at 09:06

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Quote:
Whoa, hold on. You're changing the subject from modeled vs measured tropospheric trends, to tropospheric vs. surface trends, and making a new claim about attribution. Neither the RealClimate, nor WUWT (lol) nor "American Experiment" (LOL) posts mentioned this at all. Can you give a reputable source for where you're getting this information? Because I suspect it'll be just as questionable.

The original publication from John Christy is here: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20160202/104399/HHRG-...
You might want to plot the graphs yourself from the satellite and ballons data (the data on the graph is: "average of 102 IPCC CMIP5 climate models (red), the average of 3 satellite datasets (green -UAH, RSS, NOAA) and 4 balloon datasets (blue, NOAA, UKMet, RICH, RAOBCORE). " )


Now you're changing the subject back to satellites vs surface records. I asked you about your claim of modeled vs measured trends and attribution. We can talk about either (more on satellites here, for example, this time from Rasmus Benestad: "it is an indisputable fact that Christy’s graph presents numbers with different meanings as if they were equivalent" ) but you need to pick one. Or, if you want, we could talk about about something else entirely. For example, we could talk about the generally good agreement between modeled and measured surface temperatures ;)


Quote:
Proven" practicaly means being not refuted experimentally.

This isn't a good working definition of proof, and it's not a good standard of evidence in general, for a number of reasons. Here's an example: You owe me $100. I can prove it: nobody's 'refuted experimentally' my claim, now have they? So pay up! xD

Quote:
Multiple experimental data show green house theory is invalid and must be either adjusted for the new facts or rejected as a whole. I talk about history of high CO2 concentration that did not lead to warming and "surface-first" nature of the current warming.


It is a FACT that every theory must be adjusted to new facts; it is NOT a FACT that observations are so critically inconsistent with theoretical expectations that the underlying theory must be thrown out.
To the extent I understand what "experimental data" you're talking about here, it's already been addressed.

Quote:
Update: last known to me corrections by Christy http://science.sciencemag.org/content/310/5750/972.long give the value of +0.123 K/decade warming (0.035 K/decade correction) as of 2005 year, the time when anomaly stopped its raise.


I don't think that exchange supports your case generally, especially not such zingers as:
Quote:

...it is hard to believe that Christy and Spencer would argue that a data set showing the “wrong” amount of warming must therefore be flawed. If that were a valid argument, their own satellite analysis would have been discarded years ago.



Attachment: Correcting Temperature Data Sets.pdf (269kB)
This file has been downloaded 324 times

It is not the case that measure temperatures stopped rising in 2005; this is not true of satellite measurements generally (not even UAH!), nor radiosondes, nor surface stations. For example, here's a side-by-side comparison of different satellite and balloon records, with important discussion and context:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/which-satellite-data...






byko3y - 16-4-2018 at 10:31

Quote:
Now you're changing the subject back to satellites vs surface records. I asked you about your claim of modeled vs measured trends and attribution
I don't really understand why anyone would care about model that is being changed regulary, while we have some actual data that is still not fully understood. Most of the critic comes about model and its comparision, while the actual measured data is much more enlightening.

Quote:
This isn't a good working definition of proof, and it's not a good standard of evidence in general, for a number of reasons. Here's an example: You owe me $100. I can prove it: nobody's 'refuted experimentally' my claim, now have they? So pay up! xD
That's the scenario I've already described and it is used widely to "prove" something. I don't know what word would fit the definition better though, but that's the way science method works: nothing is truth, everything is just a theory that was already refuted or was not refuted yet.

Quote:
It is a FACT that every theory must be adjusted to new facts; it is NOT a FACT that observations are so critically inconsistent with theoretical expectations that the underlying theory must be thrown out.
To the extent I understand what "experimental data" you're talking about here, it's already been addressed.

I don't see much difference between throwing out the theory and adjusting it. I want to emphasize: I'm not talking about grenhouse effect in general, because it definitely exists, I'm talking about unknow relation of greenhouse effect to the climate on Earth.

Quote:
I don't think that exchange supports your case generally, especially not such zingers as:
Quote:
...it is hard to believe that Christy and Spencer would argue that a data set showing the “wrong” amount of warming must therefore be flawed. If that were a valid argument, their own satellite analysis would have been discarded years ago.

I dont understand your argument. Validity of satellite data is currently accepted after corrections. Probably they are put under pressure because they involuntarily oppose the current party policy. They try to readjust their measurements by every possible mean, but they find few opportunities, because the data is a fact, you can't change it and many eyes are watching your moves while you are interptering the data.

Quote:
It is not the case that measure temperatures stopped rising in 2005; this is not true of satellite measurements generally (not even UAH!), nor radiosondes, nor surface stations. For example, here's a side-by-side comparison of different satellite and balloon records, with important discussion and context:
Okay, you are corect, I didn't pay atention to that because in any case the gradient of temperature of anomaly is approximately half of that measured at surface, which by itself refutes the currently accepted grerenhouse theory of climate.

mayko - 16-4-2018 at 18:48

Quote:
I don't really understand why anyone would care about model that is being changed regulary, while we have some actual data that is still not fully understood. Most of the critic comes about model and its comparision, while the actual measured data is much more enlightening.


If you don't care about models, I don't know why you brought them up. They are used because they are an important and powerful tool for understanding data. Your characterizations of the controversies is not accurate: there are plenty of critics of the data and their interpretations, many of them just as questionable as the criticisms you've given of models.

Quote:
Quote:
This isn't a good working definition of proof, and it's not a good standard of evidence in general, for a number of reasons. Here's an example: You owe me $100. I can prove it: nobody's 'refuted experimentally' my claim, now have they? So pay up! xD
That's the scenario I've already described and it is used widely to "prove" something. I don't know what word would fit the definition better though, but that's the way science method works: nothing is truth, everything is just a theory that was already refuted or was not refuted yet.


But that's not the same at all! First you told me that something was "proven", if it had not yet been 'experimentally refuted'; then you turn around and tell me that it's actually "just a theory". Which one is it? Moreover, if you actually believe that "everything is just a theory" and "nothing is truth"............ why on earth would you insist on "proof" in the first place? Especially when you probably find Mere Theories to be actionable elsewhere (do you need 'proof' of gravity to know not to jump off a cliff?) And how 'bout that hundo?????????

It sounds like you're describing falsification, which is an important process in science, but hardly the totality of how science works (though you're right that it's often taught as though it is). For one thing, naive falsification provides no way forward when different experiments, different data, and different analyses are at odds, as they often are. For another, it is incapable of making positive claims: falsification can never say that something is a true, but can only say that it's not been shown to be false. Is this really how a fact-lover such as yourself sees science, as a collection of non-facts waiting to decay into anti-facts? Do you really believe that it's not "truth" that atoms exist or that phosgene is incredibly toxic, only that these things have not yet been ruled out?


Quote:

I don't see much difference between throwing out the theory and adjusting it. I want to emphasize: I'm not talking about grenhouse effect in general, because it definitely exists, I'm talking about unknow relation of greenhouse effect to the climate on Earth.


I'm sorry to hear your philosophy of science is so brittle! I myself don't see much difference between the greenhouse effect in general and the known relation of the greenhouse effect to the climate on earth.

Quote:

I dont understand your argument. Validity of satellite data is currently accepted after corrections.


I've posted several links to articles by practicing climatologists about this from various angles: satellite-based temperature data are not direct measurements of tropospheric temperature; they are a physically informed but computationally-based inference from microwave brightness as measured through the stratosphere with its own signal, and they are susceptible to a variety of biases and artifacts. They are valuable information, but not inherently more reliable than the surface record (the RSS researchers acknowledge as much). The UAH data in particular are not well regarded for a number of reasons, including its lack of agreement with similar datasets, the lack of transparency in its methods (just try and find their algorithm for converting microwave brightness to temperature!), and Spencer & Christy's long, well-documented history of being completely full of it (one of your own sources has whole categories for their goofs called "Christy Crocks" and "Spencer Slip-Ups" ).


Quote:
Probably they are put under pressure because they involuntarily oppose the current party policy. They try to readjust their measurements by every possible mean, but they find few opportunities, because the data is a fact, you can't change it and many eyes are watching your moves while you are interptering the data.


It's a good thing I know you like facts so much, or I'd have mistaken this for baseless, ideologically motivated speculation ;)


Quote:
in any case the gradient of temperature of anomaly is approximately half of that measured at surface, which by itself refutes the currently accepted grerenhouse theory of climate.[/rquote]

Okay, you're changing the subject again away from models and back to tropospheric vs surface measurements and attribution. Are you going to back this up, especially the attribution part? How do you reconcile this claim with positive evidence in favor of greenhouse warming, such as nights warming faster than days, or winters warming faster than summers?

byko3y - 17-4-2018 at 01:40

You are making mountain out of molehill. I explaned in the very next message that "proven" means "not refuted". I tried to fall and it hurts - that's sufficient proof of gravitation to me. I'm talking about Popper's definition of scientific method.
And that's the reason it is so vulnerable to cherry picking.
And I know well about phylosophical, religious, and political constituents of the modern science, but I prefere to ignore them, because they have nothing to deal with scientific method. Of course I can say something is true, I can believe in god, but that's not something we like to talk about here at sciencemadness.

Quote:
I myself don't see much difference between the greenhouse effect in general and the known relation of the greenhouse effect to the climate on earth.
If you look at the graph of the modern temperature global anomaly, you will find that small period fluctuations can be much more prominent than long time ones. It's even more prominent when looking at local temperatures. Thus Earth has some strong climate-driving mechanisms, and whether or not they can overcome or compensate for greenhouse effect - is one open question.
Another open question might be illustrated with picture:
Carbon_Cycle.gif - 12kB

The largest producers of carbon dioxide on Earth is not human's industry, but ocean and plants. So if impact of fossil fuel burn is insignificant, could it be another mechanism responsible for both raise in CO2 level and temperature anomaly?

Quote:
They are valuable information, but not inherently more reliable than the surface record (the RSS researchers acknowledge as much). The UAH data in particular are not well regarded for a number of reasons, including its lack of agreement with similar datasets, the lack of transparency in its methods (just try and find their algorithm for converting microwave brightness to temperature!), and Spencer & Christy's long, well-documented history of being completely full of it (one of your own sources has whole categories for their goofs called "Christy Crocks" and "Spencer Slip-Ups" ).
You just needed to provide data from another satellites and methods of their processing showing us that satellites are not reliable. I just don't feel like that's the case, I feel more like the propaganda machine targeted those researchers to defame the facts they published.

Quote:
Okay, you're changing the subject again away from models and back to tropospheric vs surface measurements and attribution. Are you going to back this up, especially the attribution part? How do you reconcile this claim with positive evidence in favor of greenhouse warming, such as nights warming faster than days, or winters warming faster than summers?
When you have one experimental data in favor and one expelrimental data against the theory, then you might say that the theory is doubtful or incomplete. That's the case of the currently accepted greenhouse theory of climate: some facts confirm it, some facts not confirm it.

MrHomeScientist - 17-4-2018 at 07:07

I'm reluctant to butt in, but if I understand that picture correctly the up arrows are carbon releases into the atmosphere and down arrows are carbon sinks. The ocean and plants are nearly neutral, but there is no corresponding down arrow for fossil fuel burning. If you add up the numbers, that's still net 12 Somethings (whatever that number signifies) going into the atmosphere, all from fossil fuels. So clearly we're adding more CO2 than can be sequestered, right? And CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect and general warming, right?

DrP - 17-4-2018 at 07:38

Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist  
I'm reluctant to butt in, but if I understand that picture correctly the up arrows are carbon releases into the atmosphere and down arrows are carbon sinks. The ocean and plants are nearly neutral, but there is no corresponding down arrow for fossil fuel burning. If you add up the numbers, that's still net 12 Somethings (whatever that number signifies) going into the atmosphere, all from fossil fuels. So clearly we're adding more CO2 than can be sequestered, right? And CO2 contributes to the greenhouse effect and general warming, right?



Correct as far as I know/can see.... but I am no climate expert.

I think mayko is doing a good job... I can't never keep up with these conversations - you rebuff one comment only to have the point changed and the goal posts moved or the direction pointed to some other spurious misinformation that is only part relevant.... and your original rebuttal of a single point gets forgotten until the cycle of the argument come around again to the original point that they still stand by even though you have given data and studies that rebut it - it's like talking religion.




[Edited on 17-4-2018 by DrP]

byko3y - 17-4-2018 at 10:18

MrHomeScientistOcean contains approx 40 000 gigatonns of CO2 dissolved. Atmosphere contains 3000 gigatonns of CO2. On the picture i've posted plants and ocean absorb 17 Gt of CO2, while humanity produces 29. In fact humanity produced 10 Gt in 2015 year ( https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions ), but the CO2 level is still rising, which is consistent with theory that influence of humanity on CO2 level in atmosphere is insignificant.

DrP, nobody is forcing you to read the thread.

nitro-genes - 17-4-2018 at 11:16

This seems relevant:

http://uscentrist.org/platform/positions/environment/context...

Crazy idea probably, but... would it be remotely possible to "model" the earth as in building a large real life representation in which closely controled changes could be made to observe the effects on other parameters? :)

[Edited on 17-4-2018 by nitro-genes]

MrHomeScientist - 17-4-2018 at 11:59

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
MrHomeScientistOcean contains approx 40 000 gigatonns of CO2 dissolved. Atmosphere contains 3000 gigatonns of CO2. On the picture i've posted plants and ocean absorb 17 Gt of CO2, while humanity produces 29. In fact humanity produced 10 Gt in 2015 year ( https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions ), but the CO2 level is still rising, which is consistent with theory that influence of humanity on CO2 level in atmosphere is insignificant.

Wait, so the graphic you yourself provided was wrong? And I assume you meant 2014 since your link only goes up to that year.

I don't think it really matters how much the various sinks contain; sure they emit far more than humanity does, but they absorb most of it right back. The point is that the net movement of CO2 is 12 [Somethings] into the atmosphere, and that seems to be caused solely by humanity.

That's just based on that graphic you posted, and frankly I'm guessing about what it means because it has almost no information on it. Just bare numbers and arrows. Can you provide the source for that picture? The graphic and your above link might not be talking about the same thing.

RawWork - 17-4-2018 at 12:43

Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist  
Can you provide the source for that picture?


LOL, there are billions sources for that exact picture (below text that says "Pages that include matching images"): Google Search

byko3y - 17-4-2018 at 14:17

MrHomeScientist, you might notice there's no units on the picture, it is carbon dioxide weight per year. That's an adapted version of the report http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-3.... , where weight of carbon per year is used as a measuring unit. IPCC based its report on multiple sources from 2004-2006 years. My mistake was that I compared the different type of numbers (10 Gt of C vs 36 Gt of CO2).
There's more problems with the picture - it's actually made up: "Gross fluxes generally have uncertainties of more than ±20% but fractional amounts have been retained to achieve overall balance when including estimates in fractions of GtC yr–1 for riverine transport, weathering, deep ocean burial, etc. ‘GPP’ is annual gross (terrestrial) primary production". Nobody knows the exact values of absorbed and emitted CO2. The picture is more about "human-made emission is insignificant compared to environmental one".

mayko - 17-4-2018 at 20:38



Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
You are making mountain out of molehill. I explaned in the very next message that "proven" means "not refuted". I tried to fall and it hurts - that's sufficient proof of gravitation to me. I'm talking about Popper's definition of scientific method.
And that's the reason it is so vulnerable to cherry picking.
And I know well about phylosophical, religious, and political constituents of the modern science, but I prefere to ignore them, because they have nothing to deal with scientific method. Of course I can say something is true, I can believe in god, but that's not something we like to talk about here at sciencemadness.


Asking for a reasonable, well-defined standard of evidence is not making a mountain out of a molehill. The standard of evidence you've described is not reasonable, and it's not well-defined, but I'll accept it here, because it means that:
1) anthropogenic global warming is "proven". (You yourself say: "...you might say that the theory is doubtful or incomplete. That's the case of the currently accepted greenhouse theory of climate". In other words, it hasn't been refuted!)
2) it's "proven" that you owe me $100
When are you going to pay up? I will accept cash, check, or money order. ;)

Quote:
If you look at the graph of the modern temperature global anomaly, you will find that small period fluctuations can be much more prominent than long time ones. It's even more prominent when looking at local temperatures. Thus Earth has some strong climate-driving mechanisms, and whether or not they can overcome or compensate for greenhouse effect - is one open question.


"small periodic fluctuations" can NOT account for a long-term trend!

Quote:

The largest producers of carbon dioxide on Earth is not human's industry, but ocean and plants. So if impact of fossil fuel burn is insignificant, could it be another mechanism responsible for both raise in CO2 level and temperature anomaly?


Suppose I go into business partnered with my good friend, Joe Schmuckatelli, and we open a joint bank account. Suppose one night Joe looks up from balancing the books and says:
"Mayko, every day I put $100 into the joint account, and every day you put in $10. Your contribution isn't zero, but you're clearly not pulling your weight."
Sounds reasonable. But suppose I reply:
"Joe! Every day you take out $105 and every day I take out $0!"
You'd probably conclude that Joe can't be trusted with our finances. And yet, you're making exactly the same mistake, with gigatons of carbon instead of dollars. As a others have correctly explained, your figure shows that the ocean and terrestrial carbon pools are net sinks, not net sources. (I've mentioned this already in reply to you, and others have given some more supporting information)
You've called attention to the large size of the carbon reservoirs, but that's like Joe pointing to the size of the bank account. It wouldn't matter if there were $50 or $5000 in the account; it would still be the case that its growth was entirely my doing, and entirely in spite of Joe.

Quote:
You just needed to provide data from another satellites and methods of their processing showing us that satellites are not reliable. I just don't feel like that's the case, I feel more like the propaganda machine targeted those researchers to defame the facts they published.


I've posted several links about this; if that's how you feel about them, fine... but are your feelings FACTs??

I sort of agree with what other people have said, that we're stuck in a loop and not really hearing each other. Maybe it would be good to put this to bed for a little while, at least until we've had some time to dig deeper into sources and think some more about each other's perspective. We can always come back if someone comes up with a new angle!

byko3y - 18-4-2018 at 06:53

Quote:
it's "proven" that you owe me $100
You may decide anything for yourself, but nobody except you is able to verify your statement. Continuing to the original subject:
Quote:
anthropogenic global warming is "proven". (You yourself say: "...you might say that the theory is doubtful or incomplete. That's the case of the currently accepted greenhouse theory of climate". In other words, it hasn't been refuted!)
- that's exactly what we see today in climate committees: no extrinsical data and researchers are allowed to pass in, thus forming a separated world where every experimental data is suporting the accepted theory. Similar thing is happenning in the heads of people and some societies, that reject every argument not confirming their believes.
So you can pay yourself my debt.

Quote:
"small periodic fluctuations" can NOT account for a long-term trend!
Why?

Quote:
"Mayko, every day I put $100 into the joint account, and every day you put in $10. Your contribution isn't zero, but you're clearly not pulling your weight."
Sounds reasonable. But suppose I reply:
"Joe! Every day you take out $105 and every day I take out $0!"
You'd probably conclude that Joe can't be trusted with our finances. And yet, you're making exactly the same mistake, with gigatons of carbon instead of dollars. As a others have correctly explained, your figure shows that the ocean and terrestrial carbon pools are net sinks, not net sources. (I've mentioned this already in reply to you, and others have given some more supporting information)
You've called attention to the large size of the carbon reservoirs, but that's like Joe pointing to the size of the bank account. It wouldn't matter if there were $50 or $5000 in the account; it would still be the case that its growth was entirely my doing, and entirely in spite of Joe.
The analogy is irrelevant, it does not fit the discussed problem. Human's business with environment is unfair from the begginning.
The ocean and plants are actually emmiting hundreds of gigatonns and consuming similar emount. They can consume more, then can emmit more - 30-40 Gt of CO2 per year is very small amount of "money" for them, they can easily make or waste them. The fluctuation is so small we can't even measure the net balance for major participants precise enough to compare it with human's minor participation, unlike your irrelevant example where we can measure the balance.

Quote:
I've posted several links about this; if that's how you feel about them, fine... but are your feelings FACTs??
Are you talking about this one:
Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote:
Strange thing: the data from satellites and weather ballons does not show such steep rise of temperature as might be expected from greenhouse effect: https://www.americanexperiment.org/2016/11/climate-change-2-...

Here's Gavin Schmidt explaining why the figure presented here is misleading, and putting it in context:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...
I don't know how you came to a conclusion about attribution from that article.

Then I've already answered that they don't question the satellite data, but rather question the model the data is compared with. Satellite data still remains reliable, and still is not fitting the currently accepted theory.

update: here's the only argument about uncertainty of data from satellites from the article, it compares the data from different observations, you can see small deviations, but overall trend is consistent, pretty much proving the reliability of the data:

christy_struct.png - 160kB

[Edited on 18-4-2018 by byko3y]

DrP - 18-4-2018 at 07:19

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Quote:
You may decide
Quote:
anthropogenic global warming is "proven". (You yourself say: "...you might say that the theory is doubtful or incomplete. That's the case of the currently accepted greenhouse theory of climate". In other words, it hasn't been refuted!)
- that's exactly what we see today in climate committees: no extrinsical data and researchers are allowed to pass in, thus forming a separated world where every experimental data is suporting the accepted theory.

[Edited on 18-4-2018 by byko3y]



You mean like the chart you gave yourself that shows a net sinkage of Co2 without human influence, but a net increase with it added to the sums?



DrP - 18-4-2018 at 07:22

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Quote:
it's "proven" that you owe me $100
You may decide anything for yourself, but nobody except you is able to verify your statement.




Hold on! You aren't trying to wrangle out of that one are you? I saw it written there my self a page or 2 back for sure that you owe him $100. tut tut - nice try!

byko3y - 18-4-2018 at 08:16

Quote: Originally posted by DrP  
You mean like the chart you gave yourself that shows a net sinkage of Co2 without human influence, but a net increase with it added to the sums?
I don't really understand what you say. There are a lot of different researches providing different views at the climate from different angles, compiling them into single theory haven't been done yet, instead there was done a selection of views for the sake of making a political decision.

MrHomeScientist - 18-4-2018 at 09:55

He (and I) are trying to point out that your chart:

files.php.gif - 12kB

clearly shows that the net movement of carbon into the atmosphere is 12 [Gt/year] , if you add up all the contributions shown. 29 + 439 - 450 + 332 - 338 = 12

It also shows that the land and sea do indeed emit a lot of carbon, but they absorb it all right back (and then some). So it makes no difference at all how big those numbers are compared to human emissions. That is irrelevant. The part that matters is net change, which is +12 into the atmosphere. Even though humans are a small contributor, we are producing more than the environment can absorb. Thus carbon builds up in the atmosphere. That was the point of mayko's bank account analogy.

Again this is all based on a piece of data that you gave. I'm not attacking you personally, I'm just trying to point out that your sources might not be telling the story you think they are.

byko3y - 18-4-2018 at 10:42

MrHomeScientist, they do not "absorb it all right back", the graph shows integration of hundreds of processes. For example, plants absorb CO2 during day to produce carbohydrates and emmit CO2 by digesting own carbohydrates during night. Warm part of the ocean emmits CO2, while cold parts of the ocean absorb CO2. The actual balance of those process is beyond precision of measurement. But those processes are at least order of magnitude larger than human activity. The close numbers of absorbed and produced CO2 means the system is in balance, which is questionable - we don't know what actually happens.
Quote:
Thus carbon builds up in the atmosphere.
And that's another question: why in atmosphere? Atmosphere contains only about 3.6% of all the carbon dioxide in biosphere. Ecologists like to wine about lowering of ph in water, but why the hell then CO2 stays in atmosphere if it is absorbed by water?

mayko - 6-5-2018 at 17:09



Quote: Originally posted by byko3y  
Quote:
it's "proven" that you owe me $100
You may decide anything for yourself, but nobody except you is able to verify your statement.


It meets your criteria for "proof"! You have two outs here. The boring one is to come up with a better standard of evidence. More interesting would be to experimentally refute my claim. This would put us in a very strange situtation, since the debt would then be, not disproven (that's proof of the negation), and not unproven (that's neither proven nor disproven), but de-proven: once proven, but no longer. What could that even mean?
Anyway, the point of this detour is that it's not very sensible to demand certainty, and then turn around and say that nothing in science is certain.

Quote:
what we see today in climate committees: no extrinsical data and researchers are allowed to pass in, thus forming a separated world where every experimental data is suporting the accepted theory. Similar thing is happenning in the heads of people and some societies, that reject every argument not confirming their believes.


This doesn't sound like a fact to me. Here's an actual fact: Richard Muller was initially very critical and skeptical of the instrumental record, yet was put in charge of the Berkeley Surface Temperature project anyway - he changed his mind over the course of the project. Here's another fact: Anthony Watts, of WUWT fame, swore at the outset that he'd accept the results of the BEST data whatever they showed, only to change his mind when he didn't like the results.


Quote:
Quote:
"small periodic fluctuations" can NOT account for a long-term trend!
Why?


Because that's what a periodic fluctuation is: signal without trend. A sine wave doesn't have a long term trend. If I sit in a bathtub and slosh back and forth, the water at a given point might fluctuate up and down, but it won't exhibit a long-term change unless I turn on the tap or pull out the plug.


Quote:
The analogy is irrelevant, it does not fit the discussed problem. Human's business with environment is unfair from the begginning.
The ocean and plants are actually emmiting hundreds of gigatonns and consuming similar emount. They can consume more, then can emmit more - 30-40 Gt of CO2 per year is very small amount of "money" for them, they can easily make or waste them. The fluctuation is so small we can't even measure the net balance for major participants precise enough to compare it with human's minor participation, unlike your irrelevant example where we can measure the balance.


It certainly was relevant to the claim you originally supported with the figure ("The largest producers of carbon dioxide on Earth is not human's industry, but ocean and plants.") Those are both net sinks, not net sources. If you want to talk about uncertainty in the flux sizes, that's a conversation that might be worth having, but we need to be clear about what we're actually talking about. It's just like switching back and forth between surface vs. troposphere and satellite vs. troposphere; we can talk about one, we can talk about the other, we can talk about one then the other, or we can talk about something else entirely, but first you need to make up your mind what you want to talk about!

We don't need to know the size of individual fluxes to know that they are in approximate balance; atmospheric CO2 changes much slower in the geologic record, even during the last deglaciation, than it is now. We also don't need to know the individual fluxes to attribute observed changes to fossil fuel combustion. One of your own sources does it with better constrained figures and conservation of mass:
https://skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.htm...
nitro-genes has mentioned another line of evidence: the nuclear signal of old carbon, which shows up everywhere from lake varves to the cellulose of book pages.
Another is the small but measurable decline in oxygen:
http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu



Quote:
Quote:
I've posted several links about this; if that's how you feel about them, fine... but are your feelings FACTs??
Are you talking about this one:
Quote: Originally posted by mayko  
Quote:
Strange thing: the data from satellites and weather ballons does not show such steep rise of temperature as might be expected from greenhouse effect: https://www.americanexperiment.org/2016/11/climate-change-2-...

Here's Gavin Schmidt explaining why the figure presented here is misleading, and putting it in context:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...
I don't know how you came to a conclusion about attribution from that article.

Then I've already answered that they don't question the satellite data, but rather question the model the data is compared with. Satellite data still remains reliable, and still is not fitting the currently accepted theory.
update: here's the only argument about uncertainty of data from satellites from the article, it compares the data from different observations, you can see small deviations, but overall trend is consistent, pretty much proving the reliability of the data:


I think you're glossing over a great deal in that article, but I actually had this one more specifically in mind. Not only does it show that UAH is an outlier compared to both RSS and weather balloon measurements, it points out that trends from satellite measurements vary by a factor of two. This is at least as murky a situation as 20% uncertainty in carbon flux!
Quote:

For example, here's a side-by-side comparison of different satellite and balloon records, with important discussion and context:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/which-satellite-data...


None of this is to say that GCMs are perfect; they aren't, and it's important to explore their deficiencies. None of this is to say that satellite data are flawed to the point of useless; they aren't. The point is instead that comparing them isn't the "critical experiment" you're trying to make it into (and in particular, that your original figure was somewhat misleading). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimentum_crucis)
Finally, I still haven't heard how you're coming to conclusions about attribution from this. For example, you've suggested that solar forcing is at work - why would that be a more consistent with slower warming at elevation? And how would you reconcile this with direct, evidence for greenhouse warming, such as measurements of outgoing and downwellinglongwave radiation?


Quote:
And that's another question: why in atmosphere? Atmosphere contains only about 3.6% of all the carbon dioxide in biosphere. Ecologists like to wine about lowering of ph in water, but why the hell then CO2 stays in atmosphere if it is absorbed by water?


It doesn't; your own image shows a constant exchange between different reservoirs. Fossil fuel emissions equilibrate between those reservoirs just like CO2 equilibrates between the liquid and the headspace in a soda bottle, with about 40% ending up in the atmosphere. We're discussing the airborne because the topic is global warming, and the oceanic and land fractions don't absorb and re-radiate outgoing IR. The thing to keep in mind is that there is no burial process to compensate for fossil fuel combustion, and conservation of mass guarantees that the released CO2 must go somewhere. This, combined with the observed increases in carbon in each of the reservoirs, strongly suggests that burning fossil fuels are responsible for observed trends.

AJKOER - 7-5-2018 at 09:20

While the topic of this thread is "What is cause of global warming? Heat or gases?", perhaps a first step is a statistical 0/1 analysis (that is, a bernoulli event, either yes or no) as to whether we are actually in a period of global warming! Discriminant function analysis is the branch of science for determining whether a set of variables is effective in predicting category membership (the bernoulli categories in this case being either a period of global warming or not), which assumes we have a definition of a period of warming.

Focusing on getting a good probability of prediction (with an acceptable Type ll error), which does not necessarily require an identification or understanding of all causative variables, some postulated correlated variables can act as substitutes.

Once we known that we are in such a period of warming, some average statistics on magnitude of temperature change, and extremes of the distribution may be meaningful (and likely conservative given the recent introduction of negative human influences, I suspect).

[Edited on 7-5-2018 by AJKOER]

SWIM - 7-5-2018 at 10:02

Global warming is caused by dinosaurs.

70 million years ago, they roamed the earth and it was damn hot out there.

A meteor buried them all in ash, and things cooled off.

Now We come along and start digging them back up for museums and suchlike.

Is it any wonder things are heating up again?

We need a re-burial program before things get out of hand.


byko3y - 9-5-2018 at 19:02

Quote:
It meets your criteria for "proof"! You have two outs here. The boring one is to come up with a better standard of evidence. More interesting would be to experimentally refute my claim.

Truth is subjective. By providing agruments you can shift subjective truth of mine and other readers. I can't be sure I don't owe nobody.
I don't know what you want to say in the end by this particular discussion, but I'm pretty sure you want me to believe in somebody's words.

Quote:
It's just like switching back and forth between surface vs. troposphere and satellite vs. troposphere; we can talk about one, we can talk about the other, we can talk about one then the other, or we can talk about something else entirely, but first you need to make up your mind what you want to talk about!
We talk about the state when none of available theories is capable of explaining all the existing data: temperature in troposphere, surface, satellite data and meteorology stations. You pick one thing and explain it with a single theory - another data contradicts the theory.

Quote:
We don't need to know the size of individual fluxes to know that they are in approximate balance; atmospheric CO2 changes much slower in the geologic record, even during the last deglaciation, than it is now. We also don't need to know the individual fluxes to attribute observed changes to fossil fuel combustion.
https://skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.htm...
I don't really understand how that article relates to our discussion, there's much clearer fact you've stated that the change in CO2 level in the last century should be as low as 10-20 ppm, while the actual raise is measured to be 130 ppm, thus humanity probably is attributed to 110-120 ppm change (and not 100% as the author of the article wants us to believe):
Holocene-Sea-Level-CO2-Concentration.jpg - 108kB

But overall I agree that the present raise of CO2 level is mainly anthropogenic, environment is not absorbing the CO2 quickly enough.

Quote:
I think you're glossing over a great deal in that article, but I actually had this one more specifically in mind. Not only does it show that UAH is an outlier compared to both RSS and weather balloon measurements, it points out that trends from satellite measurements vary by a factor of two. This is at least as murky a situation as 20% uncertainty in carbon flux!

Data from weather ballons confirms the corrected satellite data: https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-12.htm
I'd like to remind you that in the begginning I was talking about both satellite and weather ballon data, but for some reason you shifted the discussion into satellites.

Quote:
None of this is to say that GCMs are perfect; they aren't, and it's important to explore their deficiencies. None of this is to say that satellite data are flawed to the point of useless; they aren't. The point is instead that comparing them isn't the "critical experiment" you're trying to make it into (and in particular, that your original figure was somewhat misleading). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimentum_crucis)
Finally, I still haven't heard how you're coming to conclusions about attribution from this. For example, you've suggested that solar forcing is at work - why would that be a more consistent with slower warming at elevation? And how would you reconcile this with direct, evidence for greenhouse warming, such as measurements of outgoing and downwellinglongwave radiation?
I do not state the solar activity theory is the correct one, but I do state the greenhouse theory is debunked with publically available experimental data - the data from both weather ballons and satellites shows the raise of temperature comes from surface, not from atmosphere, so you need to search for another theory or try to adjust the old one.