Problems with climate change theories.

[matthyaouw]

I am looking to learn about the major flaws with our current theories and data on climate change, particularly in terms of the ice ages. Any examples of inconsistencies or problems with data, or any other information you could give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Matt.

 

[CharlesP]

I suggest you review the evidence before you start knocking the conclusion.
This is a pretty authoritative document.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm

 

[Locrian]

He wasn't knocking the conclusion, he was asking for problems with the data and the theories. That isn't the same thing, though I wouldn't expect someone of your mindset to see the difference. Probing a theories problems does not necessarily weaken it.

Given the way the last thread turned out CharlesP, I'm supprised you are so willing to start sticking your neck out again.

 

[Andre]

I am looking to learn about the major flaws with our current theories and data on climate change, particularly in terms of the ice ages.

Me too, for some six years, and I booked some progress. I'm maxed out right now, but I'd recommend some of my threads here.

 

[CharlesP]

The scientific community has begun to speak out more strongly on climate in response to pseudoscience from non-scientific organizations. You can read a peer reviewed scientific response at:
http://www.realclimate.org/

Pay particular attention to the graph known as the "hockey stick."

 

[Locrian]

Pay particular attention to the graph known as the "hockey stick."

Gah. Not that again. What, are we to debunk it monthly now? Why must these same broken arguments always keep coming up? There is no new evidence for it, so I suppose all the same stuff will just get rehashed.

Why don't you give us the low down on this hockey stick, CharlesP. Even better, why don't we all just cut and paste the arguments from the last thread on this subject?

 

[Andre]

Matthyaouw,

I summarized the global warming discussion for you:

Anthropogenic pros:

- Apparant temp rise of 0.4-0.8 °C over the last 100 years
- Unusual in the past 1000 years (MBH Hockeystick)
- Principle of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing (Arrhenius)
- Correlation CO2 Greenhouse gas with temp now, as well as in the ice age (Pleistocene)
- Climate models using GHG forcing predict a lot more warming.
- Planet Venus is excellent example of Greenhouse Gas forcing

Conclusion: Anthropogenic Global Warming must be mitigated by emission cutback
Hence: Kyoto necessary

Cons:

- Temp rise of 0.4-0.8 °C over the last 100 years debatable due to Urban Heat Island effect and closure of urban weather stations worldwide
- Not unusual in the past 1000 years (MBH Hockeystick has been debunked by Storch)
- Principle of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing is far too weak due to absorption saturation in the IR band (roughly logarithmic proportional) The first 100 ppm CO2 is some 100 times more effective than a 400-500 ppm increase
- Cause - effect relationship of CO2 with temp is debated especially during the ice age (Pleistocene). Claimed mechanisms are falsified by several contradictions
- No correlation CO2 in the last 500 million years with CO2 levels up to 30 times higher than nowadays.
- Climate models are not taking clouds into (full) effect
- Early Predictions of warming for 2000+, made around 1995, prove to be highly exaggerated, falsifying the claims made in that period.
- Global temperatures have stabilized globally as of 1998
- Strong changes in several atmospheric, oceanic and solar cycles the last decades coincide to produce abnormal yet natural warming.
- Soot and haze absorb more visible light than it reflects, also causing warming
- Stratosphere and Troposphere temperatures do not behave according to increased GHG forcing and show stability (Kärner)
- Scaremonger claims about ice melting, sea level raising, aridity, flooding etc, pertain climate change as such and do not prove its cause. You could easily start a narration on natural climate changes also with melting ica and sea level rise.
- Consensus is not proving anything.

Conclusion: Anthropogenic Global Warming (as in Greenhouse gas effect) is minimum and emission cutback is not serving any purpose.
Hence: Kyoto waste of valuable assets

 

[matthyaouw]

Thank you.
One more question- How certain can we be that the evidence we use to determine past environments gives us an accurate picture of climate change in the Pleistocene?

 

[Andre]

Believe, we have no idea at all, what we think we see in the Pleistocene proxies. Ask Richard Muller for instance:

http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Causality.pdf

Now perhaps read the paradigm shift thread. Then remove "global warming" and "ice ages" from your "toolbox" and insert things like: "what more are isotopes than temperature".

 

[Andre]

Oh and I'm proposing the fundamentals of a possible paradigm shift for ice ages there. I'm reluctant to post that in these forums, since I will not tolerate the insult having to witness such a thread being moved to TD.

 

[Phobos]

Temp rise of 0.4-0.8 °C over the last 100 years debatable due to Urban Heat Island effect and closure of urban weather stations worldwide

I've heard that recent models account for the heat island effect (as best they can, of course) and that some temperature increase is still detected, albeit reduced from past estimates. How much uncertainty is still in the models due to heat island effects?

Also, aren't there a lot of non-urban data being used in current models?

- Principle of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing is far too weak due to absorption saturation in the IR band (roughly logarithmic proportional) The first 100 ppm CO2 is some 100 times more effective than a 400-500 ppm increase

Is that the first 100 ppm from a baseline of zero or from pre-industial atmospheric levels?

- Climate models are not taking clouds into (full) effect

Current models take clouds into effect through some adjustment parameter right? I.E., the models divide the globe into regions which are larger than typical cloud systems, therefore, clouds are too small to resolve individually in the models, so there is some sort of adjustment made based on the current understanding of how clouds impact GW (which is a debate in itself whether the impact of clouds is positive or negative).

- Soot and haze absorb more visible light than it reflects, also causing warming

How is this an argument against AGW? (or is it just against CO2-induced AGW?)

 

[Andre]

Some examples of Urban Heat Island effect:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/tokyo.JPG is probable one of the most extreme, average tempreture compared here with the three closest rural weather stations.

But also moderate cities like http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/Louisville.jpg display clear UHI effect compared with it's closest rural weather station. Note that the temperature trend is a cooling here, just like central China, North Siberia, Argentine, Chile and Antarctica.

Anyway, this is how IPCC dictates the http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/052.htm:

Clearly, the urban heat island effect is a real climate change in urban areas, but is not representative of larger areas. Extensive tests have shown that the urban heat island effects are no more than about 0.05°C up to 1990 in the global temperature records used in this chapter to depict climate change. Thus we have assumed an uncertainty of zero in global land-surface air temperature in 1900 due to urbanisation, linearly increasing to 0.06°C (two standard deviations 0.12°C) in 2000.

.

As again http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=186 is that many weatherstations have closed in the 1980-1990 timeframe worldwide, most of them were rural stations obviously (nobody was interested in UHI effect at that time). Consequently part of the temperature rise may be due to bias caused by a change in ratio between urban and rural weather stations. In the USA however most stations remained in commission and curiously enough there is also little or no warming in the US. Many areas are actually cooling.
-------------
The principles of greenhouse forcing are very well explained http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/PS134/LabManual/lab.modtran.html all you like and compare effects of any concentration of CO2 and CH4 greenhouse gasses on absorption and emission. For instance: run the model with all defaults except CO2:

0 ppm: INTEGRATED RADIATION ENERGY FLUX= 249.096W/m2
10 ppm: INTEGRATED RADIATION ENERGY FLUX= 239.582W/m2

Hence difference 9,5 W/m2

1000 ppm: INTEGRATED RADIATION ENERGY FLUX= 223.16W/m2
2000 ppm: INTEGRATED RADIATION ENERGY FLUX= 220.428W/m2

Hence difference 2,7 W/m2

See how quickly the greenhouse gas effect saturates? Now, I have no idea at all how all of this has lead to scaring hype of global warming.
---------------

Effects of clouds is still under heavy debate. High thin clouds are believed to nett reduce re-radiation and hence have a warming effect. Low dense clouds reflict more visible light and cause cooling. The recent albedo changes suggest changes in average cloud cover.

----------
Soot may be the single most important anthropogenic part of the current warming. Other reasons are:

bias due to ratio change in urban and rural weather stations,
the very strong el nino of 1997-1998
simulaneous change in several atmospheric and oceanic oscillations.

 

[matthyaouw]

This is some very interesting stuff. Thankyou.

 

[Andre]

you're welcome

Incidentely I played a bit more with that CO2 forcing model and came up with http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/co2forcing.jpg .

All conditions default except base temp 15C and standard atmosphere
The radiative forcing on the Y-axis in W/m2 versus the concentration of C2 of CO2 on the X-axis.

Point A is 200 ppm CO2, typical ice-age value
Point B is 285 ppm CO2, typical pre-industrian value
Point C is 380 ppm CO2, about now
Point D is 570 ppm CO2, the double pre-industrial value
Point E is 1500 ppm CO2, the presumed predominant value some 200 million years ago, about 4-5 times the value of today.
Point F is 6600 ppm CO2, the presumed predominant value some 450 million years ago, about 20 times the value of today

Point E and F are based on http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/gh-ih.jpg .

It may be clear from this how unnatural the greenhouse hype is.

 

[CharlesP]

This is four weeks late but catching up with the thread.

- Temp rise of 0.4-0.8 °C over the last 100 years debatable due to Urban Heat Island effect and closure of urban weather stations worldwide.

This has been addressed numerous times in the literature. It was discussed in the IPCC report para 2.2.2.1. Page 105. The difference between the urban and rural measurements, though small, has been taken into account. Also see Box 2.1 on the next page 106.

- Not unusual in the past 1000 years (MBH Hockeystick has been debunked by Storch)

I'd like to see the reference. The Hockystick has been duplicated by numerous independent researchers (see Climate Change 2001, P133 para 2.3.2.2.).

- Principle of greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing is far too weak due to absorption saturation in the IR band (roughly logarithmic proportional) The first 100 ppm CO2 is some 100 times more effective than a 400-500 ppm increase

Page 93 of Climate Change 2001 Chapter 1 para. 1.3.1 directly addresses the saturation question. The absorption is weaker in the sidebands and so they can't ever be completely saturated. And the part of the curve of relevance is near 300 ppm.

- Cause - effect relationship of CO2 with temp is debated especially during the ice age (Pleistocene). Claimed mechanisms are falsified by several contradictions

Please provide details.

- No correlation CO2 in the last 500 million years with CO2 levels up to 30 times higher than nowadays.

Show references or details a bit larger for readability.
"The present atmospheric CO2 concentration has not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years, and likely not during the last 20 million years. The rate of increase over the past century is unprecedented, at least during the past 20,000 years. The present atmospheric CO2 increase is caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2." Climate Change 2001 P185

- Climate models are not taking clouds into (full) effect

Forcing studies have shown that clouds do not provide a significant long term global either positive or negative feedback, to compromise global warming conclusions. See Crowley Science 289 July 2000 P276.

- Early Predictions of warming for 2000+, made around 1995, prove to be highly exaggerated, falsifying the claims made in that period.

Please provide reference if possible since the period for which the predictions were made for 2100? has probably not passed. Climate models have improved since 1995.

- Global temperatures have stabilized globally as of 1998

That is not the way I read this graph: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/2004/

- Strong changes in several atmospheric, oceanic and solar cycles the last decades coincide to produce abnormal yet natural warming.

The IPCC and other professionals maintain "that natural factors such as volcanoes or solar variations are not sufficient to produce the observed 20th century forcing."(warming)

- Soot and haze absorb more visible light than it reflects, also causing warming

Those are local phenomenon. Aerosols cool. These are smaller effects than GHG.

- Stratosphere and Troposphere temperatures do not behave according to increased GHG forcing and show stability (Kärner)

Lower Troposphere temperatures are increasing. The Stratosphere is expected to cool in response to GHGs because the "insulating blanket gets thicker".

- Scaremonger claims about ice melting, sea level raising, aridity, flooding etc, pertain climate change as such and do not prove its cause. You could easily start a narration on natural climate changes also with melting ice and sea level rise.

In the baseline last 1000 years glaciers and sea ice have not changed as quickly as they have recently.

For a detailed report on pseudoscientific claims by industry see
http://www.realclimate.org/ and http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/Contrarians.html#Contrarians
For an establishment accepted report see www.aip.org/history/climate.

 

[Andre]

Well, that's a few hours of work. I guess. If you would have added a few more hours to read all my posts here, you would have discovered that I have covered all these elements even in this thread about UHI. Not going to do it again. Just start with this selection:

https://www.physicsforums.com/forum...p=40&sort=postusername&order=asc&daysprune=-1

another interesting thread.

and before asking for evidence back-up and references of the next please check my threads first.

Let me just emphasize a few things:

The hockeystick has not only be debunked by Storch but also by MM as I have posted here. Check the next Geophysical Research Letters:

It was discussed in the IPCC report para 2.2.2.1. Page 105.

Check my previous post, exactly what I quoted. Repeating statements have little to do with enforcing their correctness.

The present atmospheric CO2 concentration has not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years, and likely not during the last 20 million years. The rate of increase over the past century is unprecedented, at least during the past 20,000 years.

No matter how clever the guys were, who wrote this, it is still a fallacy. affirming the consequent. Actually about three counts of fallacies. The 420,000year record of isotope spikes in the ice cores like Vostok (Petit 1999) that are assumed to be temperatures (but in reality precipitation changes) precede the CO2 spikes, which in reality are caused by oceanic clathrate explosions. The causality problem was already recognized in global warming circles hence MBH was most welcome to take over the role of key evidence.

With the ice core story being completely different, all the basic inputs for prediction models are suspect. Feedback factors are most likely very erratic. None of the models have calculated the consequences of clathrate explosions. This is the key problem.

The present atmospheric CO2 increase is caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2.

Nobody is disputing that but it's irrelevant due to the saturation effect as I have posted in this thread previously. Actually the suggestion that sceptics could be denying that statement is a straw man fallacy

Some more fallacies:

In the baseline last 1000 years glaciers and sea ice have not changed as quickly as they have recently.

Fallacy Affirming the concequent again. What causes some glaciers to retreat and others to grow? changes in precipitation patterns have often been proven to be the reason of changing behavior of glaciers.

For a detailed report on pseudoscientific claims by industry see

This is the most common, most powerfull and lowest form of fallacies, the ad hominemin this case the milder subform Circumstantial Ad Hominem, however the use of Hitler card has also been seen here for instance.

Perhaps have a look at this little discussion

BTW I have recommended Realclimate for studying the power of fallacies here.

edit for fixing link

 

[CharlesP]

... I have covered all these elements even in this thread about UHI. ...

Does anyone know what UHI is?

...(MBH Hockeystick has been debunked by Storch)

A search under Storch got me a report supporting the hockystick. Can you provide the journal issue and page for this?

The work of McIntire&McKitrick has been ridiculed by the realclimate boys so the establishment won't accept it any more.

 

[Andre]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/306/5696/679

The work of McIntire&McKitrick has been ridiculed by the realclimate boys so the establishment won't accept it any more.

What can we conclude from that?

 

[reasonmclucus]

I am looking to learn about the major flaws with our current theories and data on climate change, particularly in terms of the ice ages. Any examples of inconsistencies or problems with data, or any other information you could give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Matt.

There's a major problem with the temperature data. The data are mathematically worthless.

To get an "average" temperature, scientists take the warmest and the coolest temperatures in a day, and calculate the temperature that is exactly in the middle of those high and low values. This provides an average temperature for a day. These average temperatures are then calculated for spots all over the Earth, over an entire year.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/2004/

Averaging temperatures would require looking at all temperatures during the day rather than just the high or low which might not be representative of temperatures throughout the day. There might be some value in looking only at changes in the low temperatures which would indicate the minimum amount of heat present, although the most accurate comparisons probably should plot the curve of temperatures in degrees Kelvin and then compare the area under the curve for different time periods. "Global warming" if it's occurring might even be greater than estimated.

Those on both sides of the debate need to recognize that temperatures for periods prior to the keeping of records cannot be accurately determined. Ice formation/melting and plant growth are not dependent on average temperatures, but upon temperature ranges. For example, plant growth depends on the number of days the temperature is warm enough for plant survival(for most plants this means above freezing) but not too hot for optimal plant functioning. Average temperature could vary by several degrees provided low temperatures stayed above freezing.

Climatologists are paying too much attention to CO2 which is unlikely to be capable of affecting atmospheric temperatures. I've dealt with this in another thread so won't go into it here.

Greater attention needs to be paid to the terracalories of heat the billions of humans generate and the impact of changing the thermal characteristics of the landscape. Plants convert solar radiation into the chemical bonds of complex molecules. Buildings convert such radiation into heat.

Researchers also need to consider the thermal characteristics of the water vapor that humans put into the atmosphere through combustion of hydrogen containing fuels. Water vapor carries 540 calories of heat per gram. When that vapor condenses to a liquid the 540 calories are released to heat the remainder of the air. Dry air has a coefficient of heat less than .25 so the condensation of a gram of water vapor releases sufficient heat to heat 2,160 grams of air by one degree C.

Traditional physics recognizes conduction, convection and radiation as the primary means of heat transfer. However, evaporation of water transfers heat into the atmosphere. Considering that 2/3's of Earth's surface is covered by water, evaporation plays a major role in transferring heat from the solid/liquid portion of Earth into the gaseous envelop that surrounds it. Plants and animals also release heat into the air by evaporation of water as does the soil in some areas.

Geothermal heat may be playing a role in ice melting in the Antarctic. Underwater volcanos such as the one discovered last year could heat water sufficiently to melt some of the ice.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040527235943.htm

 

[juju]

Hi,

I have attached a pdf of the vostok ice core data which shows a direct correlation with CO2 concentration and temperature.

juju

 

[matthyaouw]

The data alone proves little. Is it cause, effect, or two things with no direct relationship both dependent on the same variable?
I could produce a graph showing the amount of growth of shrubs plotted against the number of offspring produced by the average coyote pair, with there being a strong positive correlation. From this I could claim that the faster growing shrubs allow the coyotes more shade and their offspring are less likely to overheat and die, or I could say that the larger number of coyotes predated creatures which eat the shrubs, allowing them to grow more, or the two could both come about independantly, with higher rainfall in certain years and greater water avaliability being the determining factor for both.
Raw data alone can show a correlation, but not explain its significance.

 

[juju]

Hi,

The data fits the physics. CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat in the lower atmosphere. The more CO2 in the atmosphere the warmer the lower atmosphere (more trapped heat) and the cooler the upper atmosphere (less heat getting through). This is happening now.

juju

 

[Andre]

Well it might be a tough more complicated, Juju

The "temperarture data" of Vostok is actually isotope ratio data. Isotope fractination is sensitive to temperature but much more sensitive to relative humidity and rate of precipitation. So if there is a change in isotope ratio without change in precipitation then it could be a temperature however if there is a change with a simultaneous change in snowfall then the temperature change cannot be the primary reason for an isotope ratio change. Now guess what:

Isotope ratio changes in the Vostok ice cores correlate between 91% and 99,5% with the layer height consequently almost all of the isotope changes are precipitation changes and not temperature

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/Vostokamp.jpg

The ice age theory down the drain.

 

[juju]

Hi Andre,

That doesn't negate the fact that the more CO2 and other heat trapping gasses in the atmosphere, the greater the percentage of heat trapped in the lower atmosphere.

juju

 

[Andre]

But that doesn't negate the fact of the saturation of the bandwidth in the IR region where CO2 is active. Doubling CO2 causes only an academical increase of 0,58 degrees celsius. The amplifying feedback factors that would boost that value to 1,8 to 5,6 degrees or whatever, are emperically based on exactly the same proxie that I showed without ever thinking about the precipitation effect.

But worse, the CO2 increase lags the isoptope changes with a few hundred years.

 

[juju]

Hi Andre,

So what your saying is either that excess precipitation and temperature increase is a precursor to and maybe a causative element in CO2 increase.

Or that there are still unknown factors which are the causative elements of both CO2 increase, temperature increase, and precipitation increase.

juju

 

[Andre]

No and No

Both the isotope - precipitation correlation and the CO2 reacting to that, as well as the ODP oceanic sediment cores have an obvious single cause. Massive clathrate destabilisation events on the ocean floors. It's not unknown (several clathrate destabilisation events dated around the end of the last "glacial" period have been identified and compiled by Mark Maslin 2004) but the relevance has not been recognized yet.

But with those new identified complex processes, the simple relationship between isotope fractination and assumed temperature can be considered flawed.

 

[reasonmclucus]

Hi,

The data fits the physics. CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat in the lower atmosphere. The more CO2 in the atmosphere the warmer the lower atmosphere (more trapped heat) and the cooler the upper atmosphere (less heat getting through). This is happening now.

juju

The radiation CO2 absorbs is only absorbed by CO2 which is heavier than the rest of the air and thus not likely to be in the upper atomsphere.

Incidentally, heat and radiation are different forms of energy. I have yet to see any citations to experiments showing that the radiation CO2 absorbs contains significant heat energy.

All atmospheric gases trap heat energy in that heat doesn't pass through gases the way it does through a solid, e.g., a skillet. Double paned glass on windows improves insolation because heat energy doesn't readily pass through the dead air space. Gas molecules function independently. As they gain heat their motion increases. They carry the heat with them.

The primary means of heat transfer from the solid portion of Earth to the air is conduction, not radiation. As the sun heats the ground, it becomes hotter than the air and transfers heat through conduction to air in thermal contact with the ground. This process depends on the difference in temperature with the ground and air moving toward the same temperature.

This process also occurs over water, but water heats slower than ground and water also transfers heat through evaporation.

As the heated air rises, cooler air is drawn in and heated. On hot days this process of rising heat is visible in some rural areas because of the different refractive indices of the heated air.

Clouds can block heated air from rising, including the clouds formed from jet contrails. This process could keep warmer air from rising to heat the upper atmosphere. High air pressure can also keep warm air from rising.