Global Warming w/o Tiggy

[Augustine2004]

Interesting, but I doubt we really know yet what's going on.

[grmorton]

Interesting, but I doubt we really know yet what's going on.

Not sure what you mean, but CO2 doesn't spike in the late 90s and then go down as the temperature does. Water vapor does spike and drop. That says to me that CO2 can't be the cause of the heat in the late 1990s

[grmorton]

Thought I would add the CO2 curve, the Keeling Curve, which all the global warming hysteriacs say drives the temperature. Note that it has almost no correlation with the ups and down of temperature. Water vapor and the satellite temperatures march in lockstep. CO2 marches to a different drum than the temperature does. Temperature marches to the beat of precipitable water vapor.

[oxmixmudd]

Thought I would add the CO2 curve, the Keeling Curve, which all the global warming hysteriacs say drives the temperature. Note that it has almost no correlation with the ups and down of temperature. Water vapor and the satellite temperatures march in lockstep. CO2 marches to a different drum than the temperature does. Temperature marches to the beat of precipitable water vapor.

Although I'm certainly no expert, why do you dismiss the Climate Science conclusion that water vapor content is a feedback, not a forcing. That is, it is simply reacting to the changes in temperature and not actually causing them. Keeping in mind the reasons they give for their conclusions - That is (simplified), that water vapor content is itself very temperature sensitive, whereas CO2 content is not. Indeed, that is what your graphs show, when temps are up, water vapor is up, temps are down, water vapor is down. It could just as easily be reacting as causing.

Jim

[FLovell]

Although I'm certainly no expert, why do you dismiss the Climate Science conclusion that water vapor content is a feedback, not a forcing. That is, it is simply reacting to the changes in temperature and not actually causing them. Keeping in mind the reasons they give for their conclusions - That is (simplified), that water vapor content is itself very temperature sensitive, whereas CO2 content is not. Indeed, that is what your graphs show, when temps are up, water vapor is up, temps are down, water vapor is down. It could just as easily be reacting as causing.

Jim

It is complicated, Jim. Water vapor being a greenhouse gas excellemento, as atmospheric H2O goes up (for any reason) the atmosphere tends to trap more heat, raising the temperature, which accelerates evaporation from warmer water, which increases atmospheric H2O, which traps more heat, which...well, today's "feedback" H2O is tomorrow's "forcing" H2O. Complicating it further, as atmospheric water vapor approaches and reaches saturation (dew-point humidity), clouds of water-droplet-rich water vapor traps even more heat under the cloud cover at night, but reflects back radiant incoming radiation from the sun in the daytime, and thus both forces (at night) and "ameliorates" or tempers forcing during day.

And it is complicate by CO2 too -- you say that "CO2 content is not very temperature sensitive," but it is temperature sensitive (just not as much as is H2O) and the oceans do release dissolved CO2 as temperature goes up, and CO2 does not form clouds (not on earth anyhow) that at least reflect back incoming radiant energy from the sun.

Of course, what I have just said is grossly oversimplified, the complexity of the dynamics of global climate is colossally complex, a plethora of interacting and entangled linear and (mostly) non-linear very-short-cycle variable influences on global temperature plus short-cycle variable influences on global temperature plus medium-short-cycle variable influences on global temperature plus medium-cycle variable influences on global temperature plus long-cycle variable influences on global temperature plus very-long-cycle variable influences on global temperature plus utterly sporadic (non-cyclic) influences of randomly intense influences on global temperature, and all these influences are at times aiding in concert global temperature increases, and at other times aiding in concert global temperature decreases and most of the time competing with each-other in a mix of warmth-aiding by some, cooling-aiding by some, some at the minimum-influence point in their cycle, some at maximum influence point in their cycle), all producing an in-the-net Fourier-like point-in-time average global temperature.

The idea that we even presently know all the significant terms of Earth's global climate equation-of-state (let alone that we know any of the coefficients of any terms with accuracy) with which to write reliable computer models of Earth's global climate dynamic strikes me as...preposterous!

And then on top of that issue of whether we presently know and well-understand enough about global climate dynamics to write reliable models is the additional separate (but equally important, with respect to obtaining reliable outputs) issue of the reliability (accuracy and precision) of the data of state(s present and past) that we input to our global climate models.

In short, any intensely politicized claim (made explicitly or even implicitly) to the effect that our knowledge of global climate dynamics is "settled science" also strikes me as...well, to be more charitable to anthropogenic-global-warming advocates and anthropogenic-global-climate-change advocates than they are to anthropogenic-PLUS-natural-global-climate-change inevitablists like me (all three or four of us, though I am the only one I know of), is at best: unthinkably premature!

And don't even get me started on potential unintended consequences of some of the proposed "fixes" -- all I'll say about those here and now is what I have said before -- IF global climate change is unavoidable, change that leads to a green Greenland would be better than change which leads to glaciers back in Tennessee again.

All the foregoing does is more deeply establish my credentials as just another variety of global climate crackpot, so what I've tried yet again to articulate continues to be preeminently dismiss-worthy. But there it is again anyhow (sorry 'bout that!).

-- Frank

PS: I get this question a lot in private email and in other forums (away from Tweb):

"BY THE WAY FRANK, JUST WHAT THE HECK IS A GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE INEVITABLIST, ANYHOW?"

A global climate change inevitablist is one for whom (on the basis of the historical data of Earth's biosphere) the surprise would be global climate STASIS at Earth's present (historically rare and each time only briefly-lasting [geologically speaking]) global climate temperature. History gives us no reason to think there'd be stasis at present temperatures from now on WITH or withOUT humans in the picture and regardless of anything in-the-picture humans might or might not try to tweak or otherwise do to maintain stasis. Global climate change inevitablists DO think we should stop pooping in our own nest , reduce pollution, get off fossil fuels for energy, all that other good stuff, including even tweak to minimize our influence on global climate change in any thoughtful, economically realistic and unintended-consequence-free way we might come up with while we buy time (if necessary) for planning minimum-teeth-gnashing migrations that might prove unavoidable in the future (as have been unavoidable for us and other critters in the past). Yup, yup, yup -- crackpots, I know.

[Augustine2004]

More water vapor in the atmosphere that is not sourced from the surface (the oceans, e.g.) or the atmosphere itself--cars generate considerable water vapor, for one thing--may lead to higher temperatures. On the other hand, if say the sun caused temperatures to rise then we may get more water vapor.

Help!

[grmorton]

Although I'm certainly no expert, why do you dismiss the Climate Science conclusion that water vapor content is a feedback, not a forcing. That is, it is simply reacting to the changes in temperature and not actually causing them. Keeping in mind the reasons they give for their conclusions - That is (simplified), that water vapor content is itself very temperature sensitive, whereas CO2 content is not. Indeed, that is what your graphs show, when temps are up, water vapor is up, temps are down, water vapor is down. It could just as easily be reacting as causing.

Jim

Jim! You can't be serious here. Water reacting to WHAT MOTION IN THE CO2 CURVE? There is no spike in CO2 to cause the rise of water vapor in 1997. There is no drop in CO2 ahead of the drop in water vapor. Indeed, CO2 went up during the time that water vapor went both up and down.

We know that water vapor is causing the temperature BECAUSE the water vapor in 1997 goes up THEN AFTER THAT the temperature goes up. THEN in late 1998, the water vapor goes DOWN and a few months later the temperature ALSO GOES DOWN! CO2 on the other hand does NOTHING but its normal dance. Please explain how it is that the temperature is moving in sync with the water and not the CO2. If CO2 were a cause then the temperature should have the same periodicity as the CO2 curve. It doesn't.

Secondly H2O is a more powerful greenhouse gas than is CO2. You want the weaker ghg to be the cause and the more powerful one be the effect? We also know that as the oceans warm, they degas CO2 That is an effect, not a cause.

Thirdly throughout geologic history, during the ice ages, CO2 RISES AFTER THE TEMPERATURE HAS ALREADY RISEN!!! See the picture below for the little ice age.

Peter Cox and Chris Jones, “Illuminating the Modern Dance of Climate and CO2,” Science, 321(2008), p. 1643

“By contrast the Little Ice Age (LIA) perturbation in climate (9) and CO2 (10) is much smaller, but has the advantage of having occurred over a time scale of a few centuries.”
“The perturbations of climate and CO2 during the LIA period from 1500 to 1750 are strongly correlated, with climate leading CO2 by ~50 years (11). "

© source where applicable

I think the real question is why you think this time the laws of how the earth works are different?

[grmorton]

I want to add something to my response to Jim. I looked up causality in Wiki

"For nonexperimental data, causal direction can be hinted if information about time is available. This is because (according to many, though not all, theories) causes must precede their effects temporally. This can be set up by simple linear regression models, for instance, with an analysis of covariance in which baseline and follow up values are known for a theorized cause and effect. The addition of time as a variable, though not proving causality, is a big help in supporting a pre-existing theory of causal direction. For instance, our degree of confidence in the direction and nature of causality is much greater when supported by data from a longitudinal study than by data from a cross-sectional study."

The covariance is what I was interested in. In the case of V=iR, where V is volts, i is amperage and R is resistance, if you increase the volts, you increase the amperage or current. These causally related variables vary in sync.
The force of gravity is F=GMm/r^2. If m doubles, the force doubles. They vary together. But if the force were to go up today while m dropped and tomorrow m goes up but the force goes up, how can one say that changes in m are the cause of the changes in F???


Things that don't vary in sync are hard to prove as causation. Consider this: My cat died tonight from an ax whack. I didn't swing an ax tonight. How can I be considered to be the cause of the cat's death?

Consider another case: I drive 30 miles to work on Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, and Thursday, no variation but John earned sales commissions of $100, $50,$150, and $0.2 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Should my driving be considered a cause of John's sales commissions?

But what if I drive to work a distance of 1000 miles, 500 miles, 1500 miles and 2 miles on those days. Could my activity be the cause of John's sales commissions? The covariance might be a clue if he is renting his car to me each day. CO2 doesn't budge but the temperature goes both up and down under the same CO2 conditions. This is like my first case where I drive a constant amount each day and John's commissions go up and down.

In order to detect causality, things must vary together. there can be an inverse correlation, where if the cause goes up, the effect always drops but cause and effect always vary together regardless of whether it is an inverse relationship or not.

[oxmixmudd]

Glenn, as a preface, remember I am not very committed one way or the other in the AGW debate. I do try to look at both sides of the argument, and when addressing someone strongly polarized one direction or another I do tend to appear to be debating the 'other' side, but that is because I am trying to understand each sides objections to the other. At this point I hesitate to say which side I think is winning the debate from my perspective.

I want to add something to my response to Jim. I looked up causality in Wiki

"For nonexperimental data, causal direction can be hinted if information about time is available. This is because (according to many, though not all, theories) causes must precede their effects temporally. This can be set up by simple linear regression models, for instance, with an analysis of covariance in which baseline and follow up values are known for a theorized cause and effect. The addition of time as a variable, though not proving causality, is a big help in supporting a pre-existing theory of causal direction. For instance, our degree of confidence in the direction and nature of causality is much greater when supported by data from a longitudinal study than by data from a cross-sectional study."

This can be true in simple systems but is not always true in more complex system. The issue here being long term trends vs. short term trends. The long term trend up does not correlate well with water vapor changes, though the short term fluctuations do. So the argument coming back your way is this - does the average water vapor content track well with the rising temperature trend.

The covariance is what I was interested in. In the case of V=iR, where V is volts, i is amperage and R is resistance, if you increase the volts, you increase the amperage or current. These causally related variables vary in sync.

Excellent example. We can see the current in a fixed circuit is directly related to voltage and resitance, but we can't necessarily prove that a long term decay in overall voltage is necessarily related to changes in resistence. And indeed, if the voltage source is a battery, they are not. It is related to the chemical properties of the battery.

The force of gravity is F=GMm/r^2. If m doubles, the force doubles. They vary together. But if the force were to go up today while m dropped and tomorrow m goes up but the force goes up, how can one say that changes in m are the cause of the changes in F???


Things that don't vary in sync are hard to prove as causation. Consider this: My cat died tonight from an ax whack. I didn't swing an ax tonight. How can I be considered to be the cause of the cat's death?

Consider another case: I drive 30 miles to work on Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, and Thursday, no variation but John earned sales commissions of $100, $50,$150, and $0.2 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Should my driving be considered a cause of John's sales commissions?

But what if I drive to work a distance of 1000 miles, 500 miles, 1500 miles and 2 miles on those days. Could my activity be the cause of John's sales commissions? The covariance might be a clue if he is renting his car to me each day. CO2 doesn't budge but the temperature goes both up and down under the same CO2 conditions. This is like my first case where I drive a constant amount each day and John's commissions go up and down.

In order to detect causality, things must vary together. there can be an inverse correlation, where if the cause goes up, the effect always drops but cause and effect always vary together regardless of whether it is an inverse relationship or not.

As Frank and others have pointed out - we aren't talking about anything nearly as simple as a DC circuit or a simple two body planetary orbits or your sales commission example. There are many factors intertwined in ways complex and to a great degree not understood - so many I'm not sure either side can say with absolute certainty they know one way or the other for sure who or what is the primary cause of the current warming. The thing that sticks out with your water vapor (WV) observation is that WV responds quickly to other environmental effects. CO2 percentage does not.

I do think that when looking at cause and effect you need to compare apples to apples. And unless you smooth the (WV) data, you can't really say what its correlation with the long term trend is. Just the fact it tracks short term temperature variation (high frequency component) really has little to say about its contribution to the long term (low frequency) trend. It is very possible for each component to have very different causes, just like a complex audio waveform need not come from a single instrument.

The strong points so far from my perspective on your side is the palaontalogical data that shows CO2 lagging temps, and the data that shows a strong correllation between sunspot number and temperature.

The complicating issues is that the indicated lag in CO2 may be indicative of what happens when a CO2 rise is not the cause of the overall rising temps. That is, if temps rise, CO2 is released over timescales of 50 years or more. We are pretty sure the Little Ice Age is a sunspot induced cooling and warming. So what that picture shows is how CO2 behaves relative to climate change that is not CO2 related.

In our case, CO2 rise is not lagging the temperature rise but rather (in the decades long average temperature scale - low frequency) tracks precisely with it. So the lag may indicate something more troubling - that CO2 naturally rises with temperature, and that if Mankind is the source of the initial rise, nature may have its own contribution to make later as the effects of the temperature rise filter into the other CO2 sinks, say the deeper layers of the ocean. That is, that the lag may be due to CO2 release from deeper layers as the heat in the surface, over time, raises temperatures at greater and greater ocean depths. If that is the case, then IF (big if) the current temperature rise is man's CO2 contribution induced, then we will see another contributer that will lag the mankind induced contribution by some 50 years or so.

OTOH, another option could be the CO2 rise is actually due to some kind of environmental response to rising temperatures in the first half of the 20th century. And so the case would need to be made - does the current rise in CO2 1950-2000 match that which would be implied by indicated temperature rise from 1900 - 1950 as per the LIA indications you post? Bascially you have a <10 ppmv rise that correlates with a 50 year .3 deg C temperature rise. The keeling curve gives us about 60 ppmv for a 50 year period from 1960 to 2010 and the GW temperature rise 1910 to 1940 about .6 deg C with a drop beck into the 1950s. looking at the preceding 50 years, (1910 to 1960) the rise is around ,4 deg C. The trends is right, but the values for CO2 don't seem right in proportion to the indicated rise if the primary contributor was the same as that observed in the LIA. That is, we may be seeing a 10-20 ppmv contribution in that 60ppmv that is related to the trend seen in the LIA, but it does not seem likely it is the primary source.

But if you are right, CO2 will continue to rise for another 50 years even if temps go down and mankind stops contributing.



Jim

[grmorton]

Is this cooling local to you or global i.e planet wide?

See above.

Up until 2010, the cooling was global because we were cooler than 1998.

But, I don't think the proclaimed temperature record is very accurate. 1. They keep changing the past making 1920 cooler than it was just 5 years ago. 2. the uncertainty in the measurements, which are often taken next to heat sources makes one wonder how much of this record heat of 2010 is due to heat sources? 3. a peer reviewed article just came out measuring the uncertainty of the stations. It is scary how much the uncertainy is. See below.

My reason for asking is that winters my way have been getting milder and the summers have been much hotter, as of late.

I thought you lived in Europe. From what I have been reading you all the past 2 years have had some really tough winters.

Again, as you say, this is only weather and not climate, but nevertheless, it counters your Miami trend. And I think this trend has been somewhat global across Oz.

I would go chasing the data, but continue to find myself too busy chasing YECs.


Regards, Roland

I got tired of chasing YECs, who are absolutely harmless compared to the nutters who want to tax my country to give money to corrupt third world countries as 'penance' for supposedly warming the world. I got tired of chasing harmless yecs, when there is another group of people, the Holocene Deniers, who ignore the geologic FACT that oceans were 2-3 meters higher 5000 years ago, the permafrost in Siberia was melted 5000 years ago, there were no Alpine glaciers nor southern Norwegian glaciers 5000 years ago, and Antarctican ice sheets had collapsed many times in the past but somehow today's collapse is laid at the feet of modern society.

[cite=Douglas Fox, "Driller Thriller," New Scientist April 11, 2009,p. 36"The West Antarctic ice sheet has collapsed and regrown over 60 times in the past few million years." [/cite]

M. J. Bentley, “Early Holocene Retreat of the George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula,” Geology, 33(2005):173-176, p. 173

"The recent collapse of several Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves has been linked to rapid regional atmospheric warming during the twentieth century. New high-resolution lake sediment records of Holocene ice-shelf behavior show that the George VI Ice Shelf was absent beginning ca. 9595 calibrated (cal.) yr B.P., but reformed by ca. 7945 cal. yr B.P. This retreat immediately followed a period of maximum Holocene warmth that is recorded in some ice cores and occurred at the same time as an influx of warmer ocean water onto the Antarctic Peninsula shelf. The absence of the ice shelf suggests that early Holocene ocean-atmosphere variability in the Antarctic Peninsula was greater than that measured in recent decades.”

© source where applicable

The things that these hysteriacs fear are things that are quite common in recent geologic history and there is absolutely NOTHING unusual about the present climate. This is why Ian Plimer, another YEC fighter has changed his target as I did. I don't care who it is or what their politics or religion is,, if they ignore geologic history, they need to be enlightened.

Roland, go look at my page on Holocene Denial syndrome. http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/2...-syndrome.html

All the data came from peer-reviewed sources. I only say that because so many people idiotically equate peer-review with TRUTH. Data is what indicates truth, not whether or not the idea was peer-reviewed.

edited: this goes with the picture below: Figure 3. (•), the global surface air temperature anomaly series through 2009, as updated
on 18 February 2010, (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). The grey error bars
show the annual anomaly lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C.

UNCERTAINTY IN THE GLOBAL AVERAGE SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE INDEX: A REPRESENTATIVE LOWER LIMIT
Patrick Frank, Palo Alto, CA 94301-2436, USA, Energy and Environment,Volume 21, Number 8 / December 2010DOI: 10.1260/0958-305X.21.8.969

[grmorton]

Glenn, as a preface, remember I am not very committed one way or the other in the AGW debate. I do try to look at both sides of the argument, and when addressing someone strongly polarized one direction or another I do tend to appear to be debating the 'other' side, but that is because I am trying to understand each sides objections to the other. At this point I hesitate to say which side I think is winning the debate from my perspective.



This can be true in simple systems but is not always true in more complex system. The issue here being long term trends vs. short term trends. The long term trend up does not correlate well with water vapor changes, though the short term fluctuations do. So the argument coming back your way is this - does the average water vapor content track well with the rising temperature trend.

Please name me one system which is universally acknowledged in which a causation goes up causing the dependent variable to go up, and then goes up some more, causing the dependent variable to go down, then goes up some more and causes the dependent variable to stay the same, then goes up and causes the dependent variable to go up, then it goes up causing again the dependent variable to go down.

Can you name anyother system other than the belief that the climate must be driven by CO2? If so, please also explain precisely how it was proven that the causation can cause all outcomes.

Excellent example. We can see the current in a fixed circuit is directly related to voltage and resitance, but we can't necessarily prove that a long term decay in overall voltage is necessarily related to changes in resistence. And indeed, if the voltage source is a battery, they are not. It is related to the chemical properties of the battery.

Actually we can prove that the long term change in voltage is due to resistance if we measure the heat given off by the resistor. That heat energy equals the loss of energy in the circuit.

As Frank and others have pointed out - we aren't talking about anything nearly as simple as a DC circuit or a simple two body planetary orbits or your sales commission example. There are many factors intertwined in ways complex and to a great degree not understood - so many I'm not sure either side can say with absolute certainty they know one way or the other for sure who or what is the primary cause of the current warming. The thing that sticks out with your water vapor (WV) observation is that WV responds quickly to other environmental effects. CO2 percentage does not.

No, we are not talking about something simple, but non-linear systems are intrinsically UNPREDICTABLE. Last time I checked, the IPCC was making LOTS of predictions about a nonlinear system.

Steven Strogatz, Sync, (New York: Hyperion Books, 2003), p. 190

"Roughly speaking, we can only predict for an amount of time comparable to the Lyapunov time; after that, the errors in the measurement of the true initial state have snowballed so much that they exceed the allowable tolerance. By lowering our standards or improving our initial measurements, we can always predict longer. But the rub is the obstinate way the predictability horizon depends on the initial precision: If you want to predict twice as long yet still achieve the same accuracy, it will now cost you not twice the effort but ten times as much. And if you are ambitious and want to predict three times longer, that will cost a hundred times the effort; four times longer, a thousand times the effort, and so on. In a chaotic system, the required precision in the initial measurement grows exponentially, not linearly.
"That's devastating. It means, in practice, that you can never predict much longer than a small multiple of the Lyapunov time, no matter how good your instruments become. The Lyapunov time sets a horizon beyond which acceptable prediction becomes impossible. For a chaotic electrical circuit, the horizon is something like a thousandth of a second; for the weather, it's unknown but seems to be a few days; and for the solar system itself, five million years."

© source where applicable

The IPCC is constantly trying to ignore the Lyapunov time frame and unfortunately, people actually believe the IPCC cause they don't know any better. Lyapunov's limit is intrinsic to ANY nonlinear system. One can predict the future only so far then it can't be predicted.

Secondly you should consider that as far as you are concerned, old man :-), a prediction of what the temperature will be in 2100 is totally unverifiable for you. They can claim any number and you won't be here to see it falsified.

I do think that when looking at cause and effect you need to compare apples to apples. And unless you smooth the (WV) data, you can't really say what its correlation with the long term trend is. Just the fact it tracks short term temperature variation (high frequency component) really has little to say about its contribution to the long term (low frequency) trend. It is very possible for each component to have very different causes, just like a complex audio waveform need not come from a single instrument.

The regression line shown in the plot IS the smoothed long term behavior It is going up. But as far as I am concerned WV is what is driving the CO2 up, not the reverse.

The strong points so far from my perspective on your side is the palaontalogical data that shows CO2 lagging temps, and the data that shows a strong correllation between sunspot number and temperature.

What about the fact that everything the hysteriacs publically fear, Antarctican ice collapses, and higher sea levels, all happened 5000 years ago under totally natural situations? There simply is NOTHING unsual geologically about today's climate.

The complicating issues is that the indicated lag in CO2 may be indicative of what happens when a CO2 rise is not the cause of the overall rising temps. That is, if temps rise, CO2 is released over timescales of 50 years or more. We are pretty sure the Little Ice Age is a sunspot induced cooling and warming. So what that picture shows is how CO2 behaves relative to climate change that is not CO2 related.

I would love to hear one of the hysteriacs explain why the 'cause' of global warming happens AFTER the warming.

In our case, CO2 rise is not lagging the temperature rise but rather (in the decades long average temperature scale - low frequency)

Absolutely NOT so. The world's temperature has been rising for 250 years ever since the Little Ice Age. CO2 didn't start rising until the 20th century. The lag was a wee bit longer than 50 years but it isn't inconsistent with the lag seen in glacial ages. Three glaciations show a 600 year lag between temperature rise and the subsequent CO2 rise. Of course, none of the global warming advocates will bother to tell you this. This thing is a political movement, not a science movement. All the global warming hysteriacs want more government control and are quite open about it.

C. R. DE FREITAS
Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere really dangerous? BULLETIN OF CANADIAN PETROLEUM GEOLOGY
VOL. 50, NO. 2 (JUNE, 2002), P. 297-327, p. 302

Atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global temperature
correlate and cohere such that the CO2 follows the temperature
(both up and down) by some months. This was first observed by
Kuo et al. (1990) who did a frequency analysis for the period
1950 to 1990, and has been confirmed by other workers using
different data sets (Priem, 1997; Dettinger and Ghil, 1998;
Fischer et al., 1999, Indermühle et al., 1999). In other work, reanalysis
of the famous Vostok ice core shows CO2 increases
lagging about 600 years behind the temperature increases of the
three significant deglaciations (Fischer et al, 1999). Clearly, high
CO2 levels are not the primary cause of temperature rises signaling
the end of an ice age. Other research on geological timescales
also shows that sometimes temperatures were high when CO2
concentrations were low, and vice versa (Indermühle et al., 1999,
Panagi et al., 1999; Flower, 1999).

© source where applicable

tracks precisely with it. So the lag may indicate something more troubling - that CO2 naturally rises with temperature, and that if Mankind is the source of the initial rise, nature may have its own contribution to make later as the effects of the temperature rise filter into the other CO2 sinks, say the deeper layers of the ocean. That is, that the lag may be due to CO2 release from deeper layers as the heat in the surface, over time, raises temperatures at greater and greater ocean depths. If that is the case, then IF (big if) the current temperature rise is man's CO2 contribution induced, then we will see another contributer that will lag the mankind induced contribution by some 50 years or so.

OTOH, another option could be the CO2 rise is actually due to some kind of environmental response to rising temperatures in the first half of the 20th century. And so the case would need to be made - does the current rise in CO2 1950-2000 match that which would be implied by indicated temperature rise from 1900 - 1950 as per the LIA indications you post? Bascially you have a <10 ppmv rise that correlates with a 50 year .3 deg C temperature rise. The keeling curve gives us about 60 ppmv for a 50 year period from 1960 to 2010 and the GW temperature rise 1910 to 1940 about .6 deg C with a drop beck into the 1950s. looking at the preceding 50 years, (1910 to 1960) the rise is around ,4 deg C. The trends is right, but the values for CO2 don't seem right in proportion to the indicated rise if the primary contributor was the same as that observed in the LIA. That is, we may be seeing a 10-20 ppmv contribution in that 60ppmv that is related to the trend seen in the LIA, but it does not seem likely it is the primary source.

But if you are right, CO2 will continue to rise for another 50 years even if temps go down and mankind stops contributing.



Jim

Jim, it might continue to go up for another 600 years even if mankind quit contributing. Three deglaciations show that to have been the case.

As you point out CO2 started rising in 1950. What caused the warming before that? More than half the warming out of the LIA came before 1950. I forgot the source of this picture but it shows the temperature changes over the past millennium. I did find a very similar chart at http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N5/C1.php

Jim, ask yourself, if more than half the temperature rise occurred BEFORE the CO2 rise, and given that warming oceans will outgas CO2, how can we possibly be sure that CO2 is the real driver of the climate when it moves AFTER the temperature rise, sometimes as long as 600 years after?

[grmorton]

Where is the rejoicing??? We have heard years of whines and complaints about the Arctic ice melting and (wipe my eyes free of the tears) how this is killing the (wipe them again, sob, sniff) pretty polar bears.

But when the Arctic Ice is, as it is now, ABOVE the long term average, there is SILENCE, not cheering from those most vocal about saving the (gotta wipe a few more tears here, sigh, wait a minute while I compose myself).....polar bear who can't fend for himself if we don't (loud crying here) stop using fossil fuels. Today the Arctic ice is above the long term (1979-2008) average. Where is the cheering?

Could it be that the lack of cheering is because polar bears are really only a pawn in their political gamesmanship? The polar bear isn't what they are worried about, it is political control.

Below is the current ice extent anomaly. Pardon me while I go off an cry because of the lack of truthfulness among the global warming hysteriacs

[FLovell]

...As Frank and others have pointed out - we aren't talking about anything nearly as simple as a DC circuit or a simple two body planetary orbits or your sales commission example. There are many factors intertwined in ways complex and to a great degree not understood - so many I'm not sure either side can say with absolute certainty they know one way or the other for sure who or what is the primary cause of the current warming. The thing that sticks out with your water vapor (WV) observation is that WV responds quickly to other environmental effects. CO2 percentage does not...

Jim, you are right that considerable complexities are involved!

However, I am not aware of any example of a real PHYSICAL process or system where the complexity (no matter HOW great) of the dynamics involved reverses the temporally sequential appearance of causes and their effects such that the causes of effects appear later than their effects appear. If the argument for anthropogenic global warming rests on such an argument, it is most definitely NOT the way to bet (and is not in ANY sense even REMOTELY "settled science" or justifying of politicization).

-- Frank

[oxmixmudd]

Please name me one system which is universally acknowledged in which a causation goes up causing the dependent variable to go up, and then goes up some more, causing the dependent variable to go down, then goes up some more and causes the dependent variable to stay the same, then goes up and causes the dependent variable to go up, then it goes up causing again the dependent variable to go down.

Can you name anyother system other than the belief that the climate must be driven by CO2? If so, please also explain precisely how it was proven that the causation can cause all outcomes.

I think you missed the point Glenn. I did not say that short term water vapor and temperature were related. I was pointing out that looking at the short term relationship between water vapor and temperature does not establish a correlation between water vapor and the long term temperature trend.

Actually we can prove that the long term change in voltage is due to resistance if we measure the heat given off by the resistor. That heat energy equals the loss of energy in the circuit.

But Glenn, the reason the example was good was not that we can't show that the internal resistance of the battery changes, it is that the CAUSE of the change is the chemical properties of the battery. If you want to know WHY the voltage goes down, pointing at the change in resistance in the battery does not tell you WHY, it only tells you WHAT. the WHY is answered by looking at how a battery works. If instead the voltage source was a generator, then the cause might be a gradual failure in some part of the voltage regulator (which also, incidentally, may officially be measurable as a change in resistance in that circuit). But if all you look at is that SYMPTOM, you would not ever discover the CAUSE.

No, we are not talking about something simple, but non-linear systems are intrinsically UNPREDICTABLE. Last time I checked, the IPCC was making LOTS of predictions about a nonlinear system.

Steven Strogatz, Sync, (New York: Hyperion Books, 2003), p. 190

"Roughly speaking, we can only predict for an amount of time comparable to the Lyapunov time; after that, the errors in the measurement of the true initial state have snowballed so much that they exceed the allowable tolerance. By lowering our standards or improving our initial measurements, we can always predict longer. But the rub is the obstinate way the predictability horizon depends on the initial precision: If you want to predict twice as long yet still achieve the same accuracy, it will now cost you not twice the effort but ten times as much. And if you are ambitious and want to predict three times longer, that will cost a hundred times the effort; four times longer, a thousand times the effort, and so on. In a chaotic system, the required precision in the initial measurement grows exponentially, not linearly.

© source where applicable

Steven Strogatz, Sync, (New York: Hyperion Books, 2003), p. 190

I believe I said quite clearly that neither side can be sure of its conclusions, other than that the Earth is warming.

"That's devastating. It means, in practice, that you can never predict much longer than a small multiple of the Lyapunov time, no matter how good your instruments become. The Lyapunov time sets a horizon beyond which acceptable prediction becomes impossible. For a chaotic electrical circuit, the horizon is something like a thousandth of a second; for the weather, it's unknown but seems to be a few days; and for the solar system itself, five million years."

© source where applicable

Agreed, but this is irrelevant in terms of whether or not you can show a long term correlation between temperature and water vapor as a 'forcing' based on the examination of short term data.
This only means that one can't expect to ever be able to make long term predictions of what the weather or even the climate itself will do.

However, you are leaving something out. Chaotic systems often have both a regular and an unpredictable component. Technically, our moon's orbit is chaotic (it is part of a multi-body system - by definition this is a non-linear system). It can indeed possibly wonder off into space given just the right nudge at just the right time. That does not mean we can't predict fairly accurately when we will have a full moon for the next few years. My heartbeat is chaotic, but It still beats fairly regularly, and I can predict fairly well what my heart rate will be sitting at my desk if I am calm based on a measurement I made last week. I just could not predict precisely when a given beat will begin more than a few minutes (or perhaps less) in the future.

So, I am not sure you can make a blanket statement that these climate predictions are bogus. That is effectively a misapplication of what we know about non-linear systems. The degree of predictability depends on where the non-linearity resides, and how dynamic the system actually is.

The IPCC is constantly trying to ignore the Lyapunov time frame and unfortunately, people actually believe the IPCC cause they don't know any better. Lyapunov's limit is intrinsic to ANY nonlinear system. One can predict the future only so far then it can't be predicted.

Secondly you should consider that as far as you are concerned, old man :-), a prediction of what the temperature will be in 2100 is totally unverifiable for you. They can claim any number and you won't be here to see it falsified.

I agree. And certainly there is a lot of uncertainty in any such a prediction, though I think that has more to do with being unable to properly characterize the system than its non-linearity. Again, back to the moon. I surely would not want try to define exactly where it will be (like to inches) over the next year, but I've no problem saying what day the new moon will occur in 2100. Indeed, despite the non-linearity of that orbit, we pretty much know what the phases of the moon were during Alexander's conquests. That is because when it comes to when a new moon will occur, the non-linearity of the system is not a factor.

The regression line shown in the plot IS the smoothed long term behavior It is going up. But as far as I am concerned WV is what is driving the CO2 up, not the reverse.



What about the fact that everything the hysteriacs publically fear, Antarctican ice collapses, and higher sea levels, all happened 5000 years ago under totally natural situations? There simply is NOTHING unsual geologically about today's climate.

The fact these things have occurred in the past does not mean the REASON they are occurring now is the same as the reason they have occurred in the past. IF we are the source of the rising CO2 (as opposed to some major volcanic eruption like, say, the Deccan Traps) then there IS something we can do about this particular spike in CO2/temperature - assuming a warmer Earth is actually a bad thing.

See, when all is said and done, I don't know that we can really even prove a warmer Earth is a bad thing. It might be a good thing overall. How could we know for sure?. Dire predictions of horrible, destructive weather based on global warming. Do we have evidence the weather was worse when the vikings found 'green'land?

Do rising sea levels present a problem - yes. But will the rate of rise mean we can't compensate - I don't know, but it seems unlikely. New Orleans should be underwater by now but (except for Katrina) it is not. So I tend to agree with you the political motivations are very suspect. There are too many politicians that want my money, and a global 'disaster' will give them the right to take it. It's all just too easy for this data to be being manipulated to that end.

But that does not mean AGW is not true. It just means the likelyhood the politicians motivated toward socialism will abuse it to forward their own ends is very high.

Which brings to mind something. You know how Jorge always rattles on about how the Materialists NEED billions of years? Well that is irrelevant to the question of IF there are billions of years of history - right? Well, to me this is the same thing. Yes, the socialists want AGW to be true, it is a gold mine for pushing their agenda. But that does not mean it is not true. But it does make it harder to get at the truth of the matter.

I would love to hear one of the hysteriacs explain why the 'cause' of global warming happens AFTER the warming.




Absolutely NOT so. The world's temperature has been rising for 250 years ever since the Little Ice Age. CO2 didn't start rising until the 20th century.

I'm not sure this is correct. CO2 has risen 100 ppm in the last 150 years. Human sourced CO2 likely became a major contributor with the industrial revolution and the inception of coal as the major energy source at that time. Since that time the amount fossil fuel used for energy has been a monotonically increasing function. We do dump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere and have been for quite some time.

The lag was a wee bit longer than 50 years but it isn't inconsistent with the lag seen in glacial ages. Three glaciations show a 600 year lag between temperature rise and the subsequent CO2 rise. Of course, none of the global warming advocates will bother to tell you this. This thing is a political movement, not a science movement. All the global warming hysteriacs want more government control and are quite open about it.

Well, once again we agree, but I am not as willing as you are to tie the actual truth of AGW to the power mongers that see it as an opportunity to control people.

C. R. DE FREITAS
Are observed changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere really dangerous? BULLETIN OF CANADIAN PETROLEUM GEOLOGY
VOL. 50, NO. 2 (JUNE, 2002), P. 297-327, p. 302

Atmospheric CO2 concentration and mean global temperature
correlate and cohere such that the CO2 follows the temperature
(both up and down) by some months. This was first observed by
Kuo et al. (1990) who did a frequency analysis for the period
1950 to 1990, and has been confirmed by other workers using
different data sets (Priem, 1997; Dettinger and Ghil, 1998;
Fischer et al., 1999, Indermühle et al., 1999). In other work, reanalysis
of the famous Vostok ice core shows CO2 increases
lagging about 600 years behind the temperature increases of the
three significant deglaciations (Fischer et al, 1999). Clearly, high
CO2 levels are not the primary cause of temperature rises signaling
the end of an ice age. Other research on geological timescales
also shows that sometimes temperatures were high when CO2
concentrations were low, and vice versa (Indermühle et al., 1999,
Panagi et al., 1999; Flower, 1999).

© source where applicable

Jim, it might continue to go up for another 600 years even if mankind quit contributing. Three deglaciations show that to have been the case.

As I have said before, a strong ball in your corner is the measure lag in CO2 relative to temperature. That does not, however, negate the evidence in the AGW corner. And some of your statements are - from my perspective - go beyond what the data supports. Specifically, there is no way to tie the short term water vapor correlations with temperature to the long term temperature rise. I think the AGW guys have it right that water vapor is a feedback, not a forcing.

As you point out CO2 started rising in 1950.

I really only said that the CO2 from 1960 to 2010 could be interpretted as a lagged response to the temperature rise from 1910 to 1960. I did not say "CO2 started rising in 1950". I also pointed out that the amount of rise due to that lag - if one uses the LIA as a model - is less that the measured amount.

What caused the warming before that? More than half the warming out of the LIA came before 1950. I forgot the source of this picture but it shows the temperature changes over the past millennium. I did find a very similar chart at http://www.co2science.org/articles/V11/N5/C1.php

Jim, ask yourself, if more than half the temperature rise occurred BEFORE the CO2 rise, and given that warming oceans will outgas CO2, how can we possibly be sure that CO2 is the real driver of the climate when it moves AFTER the temperature rise, sometimes as long as 600 years after?

Again, CO2 has risen significantly for the last 150 years. Now, maybe that's a continued lag response to the LIA warming, or maybe it's because of the direct human input(or both). I suppose that is the question. But I don't see either side necessarily being particularly open to the possibility they are wrong, which means I have to be very careful to look long and hard at the data both sides are presenting, which is what I am trying to do.


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Jim, you are right that considerable complexities are involved!

However, I am not aware of any example of a real PHYSICAL process or system where the complexity (no matter HOW great) of the dynamics involved reverses the temporally sequential appearance of causes and their effects such that the causes of effects appear later than their effects appear. If the argument for anthropogenic global warming rests on such an argument, it is most definitely NOT the way to bet (and is not in ANY sense even REMOTELY "settled science" or justifying of politicization).

-- Frank

You have a point, but consider the following assumptions.

1) Temperature rise results in lagged CO2 increase per natural mechanisms.

2) CO2 increases results in a long term temperature increase.

3) The LIA is a sunspot induced change.

1 and 2 still work together to amplify the warming which follows the natural fluctuation in spot number. That lag in CO2, in this case both negative and positive, is due to the 'inertia' of the ocean CO2 sink.


Now consider 4) human input of CO2.

The human input of CO2 is a different CO2 source than seen in any of the previous warmings, though there may be other, natural sources (like large volcanic eruptions) that function as a similar direct source of CO2. The fact the human sourced CO2 is coincidental with potential CO2 lag response associated with the LIA warming (or even another warming cycle similar to the 1000AD spike in Glenn's graph) complicates things a good bit. Because we don't know what is what. It's a mixed bag. We can't necessarily say the CO2 is all lagged CO2/temp that we've seen in the past because we have an additional source of CO2 that was not there during that time.

I really don't think this issue can be resolved to a simple 1 or 2 major factors that define the problem. And I think that may be a mistake being made on both sides. There is a LOT we don't know about the Earth's climate and the factors that influence it. And the AGW political climate does make it hard to get at data and research exploring some of the other inputs to climate change. But all that does not mean the human contribution is not significant.

Basically, it boils down to this. The fact the environmental nutcases that do all kinds of crazy things have embraced AGW does not mean AGW is wrong. Likewise, the fact the socialist agendized politicians have embraced AGW as a means to their end does not mean AGW is wrong. It does however mean that figuring out if AGW is real is harder to do. And it means that IF there was data that strongly undermined AGW, then either of the above agendas hitched up to AGW would likely tend to try to suppress it. Further, it means that since science funding is politicized on this issue, the research may well be very one sided. And THAT makes figuring out what is really going on very hard.


Jim