Is Global Warming Man Made?

Did someone link this leaked doc from the EPA already?

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf

As of the best information I currently have, the GHG/CO2 hypothesis as to the cause of global warming, which this Draft TSD supports, is currently an invalid hypothesis from a scientific viewpoint because it fails a number of critical comparisons with available observable data. Any one of these failings should be enough to invalidate the hypothesis; the breadth of these failings leaves no other possible conclusion based on current data. As Feynman (1975) has said failure to conform to real world data makes it necessary from a scientific viewpoint to revise the hypothesis or abandon it (see Section 2.1 for the exact quote). Unfortunately this has not happened in the global warming debate, but needs to if an accurate finding concerning endangerment is to be made. The failings are listed below in decreasing order of importance in my view:

...

regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/14, 11:34am)

Post 81

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 11:37am

Hi Fred,

We cross-posted. I'd like to reiterate your contentions to get a handle on them. Here's what I gather your claims are. Please correct them as you see fit.

1. There's no reasonable way to measure average surface temperature (AST).

2. AST doesn't matter anyway because it discounts the thermal mass of the oceans.

3. There's no reasonable way to accurately measure the thermal mass of the oceans due to uncertainty of thermocline distribution.

4. If there were a reasonable way to measure oceanic thermal mass and AST, even *that* wouldn't matter because temperatures 10km up is really what matters because up there is more indicative of global warming than are surface measurements.

Jordan

Post 82

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 12:21pm

Jordan:

"I appreciate the effort. I suspect you're getting caught up because most studies model change in temperature rather than temperature itself, even though most of those models implicitly include the temperatures themselves."

OK, but ... change in *what* the temperature?

Did you actually read your own references?

The 'earthpolicy.org' ref was classic cargo cult science.

(Though, I sleep better at night knowing that there is a totally anonymous "org" on the in-ter-net -- otherwise known as a subfolder on some dusty webserver somewhere-- that has taken on as its mission all of 'earth policy.')

It provided 'nice charts' showing changes in 'the temperature' over decades ... without once defining what 'the' temperature was.

Just 'temperature.' With 'science' like this, even the Fahrenheit/Celsius distinction is irrelevant. I suppose we should be glad that they even included units. Clearly, 'identifying' the definition of 'temperature,' knowingly presented, is not required when addressing an audience of Hollywood jewelery designers, florists, and other denizens of the 'green' class.

Look, a chart. On the in-ter-net. I'm convinced.

Any 8 year old with 30 minutes could sit down with Excel and generate a 'nice' chart of *totally uninformed meaningless numbers*.

Yes, the 'elusive' nature of determining SAT was illuminating. Did you read it? And do you understand the implications when pondering the comparisons with a more meaningful mass averaged determination of 'the' global temperature?

Its as if folks with non-science backgrounds believe that the universe responds to democracy, in determining such things as 'climate.' So, why not 'vote' based on 'surface area' averaging? One square inch, one vote. That's 'fair', so that is how nature *should* drive the climate.

Well, close enough for the latest voodoo dance around the base of the volcano, bamboozling boobs with boob bait.

It would be 'unfair' to base it on considerations of thermal mass. That is hardly an egalitarian method of driving the climate. So, since a 'surface averaged' determination is a more egalitarian method of determining 'the' global temperature, we'll all kumbaya along to that tune.

Good grief Charlie Brown. There are times I wish I'd never studied science, or at the very least, could temporarily disable all such knowledge from my consciousness. It is a terrible impediment to understanding the voodoo sensibilities of the Tribe, driven as it is by cargo cult science things like 'political science,' aka, not science at all.

Post 83

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 12:37pm

Jordan:

1. There's no reasonably (accurate) way to measure average 'global' surface temperature (AST) that is consistent across the many decade long time periods being compared(much less, centuries,) and certainly not to the precision or accuracy claimed. The changes debated are well below the uncertainties of the calculated(not measured)values.

2. AST doesn't matter anyway because it does not represent the thermal mass of the oceans in a manner that is consistent across the time periods being compared.

3. There's no reasonable way to accurately measure the thermal mass of the oceans due to uncertainty of thermocline distribution, either as a single snapshot, and certainly, not as a time series across the time periods being compared.

4. If there were a reasonable way to measure oceanic thermal mass and AST and atmospheric profiles around the earth in a manner that was consistent across the time periods being compared, then that would matter because temperatures at the 10km altitude are what are predicted to be responsive to manmade GHG caused atmospheric heating, according to the very tweaked climate models driving this issue, as well as any basic scientific understanding of 'greenhouse effect.' Equally, surface trends would be most responsive to solar variability.

5. There are plenty of atmospheric profile measurements from modern times, over a period in which MMGHG global warming has been claimed, which do not show any warming trends at 10Km. But, that obervation has nothing at all to do with reporting 'a' number called 'the' global temperature. It in and of itself negates the major hypothesis of GHG induced global warming. What trends are observed from measurements -- not computer models -- is supportive of surface only trends, consistent with solar variability, not GHG. Coupled with NASA's observations of ice cap extent on Mars over recent decades, and the driver appears clearly to be the Sun, not mankind.

6, Ice cap extent is a net combination of winter freezing and summer melting. Because of the inclination of the earth on its axis, coupled with the fact that the earth is closer to the Sun in southern summer than northern summer, if the cause was primarily solar, we should expect significant differences in the response of the southern ice cap and the northern ice cap extent. Conversely, due to the extremely effective hemispherical mixing of the atmosphere(see CHC studies), if the cause was CO2, we should expect similar response in both the northern and southern ice caps. We observe significant different trends at both poles.

The evidence in total is supportive of solar variability. The only place on earth that contradicts this is in the virtual world of tweaked computer models, rigged to show a primary dependency on CO2 concentration.

regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/14, 12:44pm)

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/14, 12:50pm)

Post 84

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 1:25pm

Fred,

I must be misunderstanding you. The NASA chart I linked shows the temperature in degrees Celsius. The last measurement recorded, which was in 2007, averages global temperature at 14.7 degrees Celsius. Are you questioning how they gather that measurement? NASA discusses that, though I'm not sure it's on the exact page I linked to.

But I suppose all that is a side issue to you because you've discounted global AST in any event. You appear to care more about temperature 10km up. What needs to happen 10km up for you to accept a claim of anthropogenic global warming?

Aside, it would be more pleasant if you'd take a less derisive tone.

Jordan

Post 85

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 2:18pm

Jordon:

"But I suppose all that is a side issue to you because you've discounted global AST in any event. You appear to care more about temperature 10km up. What needs to happen 10km up for you to accept a claim of anthropogenic global warming?"

It is the theory of greenhouse gas warming that cares more about temperatures 10km up. According to the very climate models used as the basis for this whole MMGHGGW assertion, that is where we should be seeing evidence of warming trends. This isn't much of a surprise, because every model of the greenhouse gas effect as it relates to 'trapping' reflected infra red radiation reflected from the earth would 'trap' this radiation closer to the center of mass breadbasket of the atmosphere, not at the boundary layer at the surface(where we live.) Our atmosphere is much thicker than 10 km; 10 km is where the models predict we should be seeing the bulk of the warming trends, if it is CO2/GHG based warming trend. If the trend is only at the surface, then that is consistent with solar variability.

Post 86

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 2:38pm

Jordan:

I'm not trying to prove anything here. Back in post 27 I said that I'm going to resist discussing evidence that I find persuasive for climate change. So this thread has largely been about the sun, rather than humans, as explaining climate change.

First off "climate change" is occurring and always has, that is a basic fact of having an atmosphere and the climate will continue to change regardless of what man does, the global warming debate used to be about something more specific, i.e. a warming of the Earth caused by man. But since the Earth has shown some cooling in recent years, the weasels have sneaked in new terminology, calling it "climate change".

Second, a lack of proof of the sun warming the Earth (which I'm not saying is the case) is not proof of man warming the Earth.

Post 87

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 3:01pm

Jordan,

I read several ancillaries to the studies and found no temperature (no estimation of global temperature). Also, as to your question to Fred about "What would it take for you to change your mind?" -- I think that 2 things, taken together, might get me to thinking that anthropogenic global warming might be plausible:

(1) decades of temperature increases at the altitude of 8-km which matched or exceeded the corresponding surface temperature increases below

(2) noted differences in greenhouse gas concentrations which have also been proven "somehow" to drive climate change

To my knowledge, neither of these two things exist or have ever existed.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/14, 7:11pm)

Post 88

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 8:17pm

And then, there is this:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf

5 Conclusion
There is no global temperature. The reasons lie in the properties of the equation of state governing local thermodynamic equilibrium, and the implications cannot be avoided by substituting statistics for physics.
Since temperature is an intensive variable, the total temperature is meaningless in terms of the system being measured, and hence any one simple average has no necessary meaning. Neither does temperature have a constant proportional relationship with energy or other extensive thermodynamic properties. Averages of the Earth�s temperature field are thus devoid of a physical context which would indicate how they are to be interpreted, or what meaning can be attached to changes in their levels, up or down. Statistics cannot stand in as a replacement for the missing physics because data alone are context-free. Assuming a context only leads to paradoxes such as
simultaneous warming and cooling in the same system based on arbitrary choice in some free parameter. Considering even a restrictive class of admissible coordinate transformations yields families of averaging rules that likewise generate opposite trends in the same data,
and by implication indicating contradictory rankings of years in terms of warmth. The physics provides no guidance as to which interpretation of the data is warranted.
Since arbitrary indexes are being used to measure a physically non-existent quantity, it is not surprising that different formulae yield different results...

Post 89

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 8:26pm

Fred,

So then you would be convinced of anthropogenic global warming if we saw warming trends 10km up? I think Ed might agree per his first criterion if those warming trends are shown for "decades" and are greater than surface temperatures (although I don't know why you include that last factor, Ed).

John,

First off "climate change" is occurring and always has. .

Certainly you didn't think I was disputing this. Again, can the sun account for climate trends irrespective of human activity?

Second, a lack of proof of the sun warming the Earth (which I'm not saying is the case) is not proof of man warming the Earth.

Agreed. Anthropogenic climate change still needs to make its case.

Ed,

I don't understand your second criterion. Too vague.

Jordan (with an 'a')

Post 90

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 8:30pm

The paper above is an interesting read, and makes many good points about climate science and atmospheric modeling.

One of them is familiar to anyone who has every wrestled with Navier-Stokes and/or any of its modeled variants:

It is usually not the absolute value of something that primarily drives systems, but the value of the gradient of that something that primarily drives systems.

Therefore, when it comes to a system such as 'climate', what is of interest is changes in the value of gradient, not absolute or even changes in value.

We are nowhere near talking about comparing the values of 'the' global gradient of temperature or anything else over decades, nor mans impact on same. That would be even more physically absurd than the concept of 'the' global temperature. Nor has there been significant widespread discussion of how and why concepts such as 'gradient' drive not only climate, but everything.

(There is an old, funny assertion, that is funny but true: gradients drive everything.)

The MMGW debate is pure cargo cult science, a religious confluence of self interests. It has apostles and true believers and heretics, and most important, billions in tribal funding.

It is a glorified excuse to tax and spend OPM. It is pure political science. The debate is patently absurd.

Post 91

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 8:37pm

I agree that we can't very easily get an accurate temperature of the earth on the earth with no good baseline, no immensely widespread sample, and no standardized measuring equipment. The dense and highly structured atmosphere and ocean and the earth's geologically active surface don't help either. But skepticism is not the answer. The Earth as seen from space must have some average heat signature over time. We do produce somewhat meaningful temperature measurements for other heavenly bodies. The same could be done for the earth from a moon base over time. Your specific criticisms are correct, Fred, and I have sanctioned them.

But we need not draw the unwarranted conclusion that because we do not now know something it cannot be known.

Post 92

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 8:43pm

Jordan:

"So then you would be convinced of anthropogenic global warming if we saw warming trends 10km up?"

I'd be convinced that there was evidence of GHG caused global warming. The 'anthropogenic' assertion would be totally unrelated to any such profile evidence. How would such evidence prove 'antrhopogenic?' But moot.

The factual lack of such significant warming trend is counter-evidence that no such GHG based warming is occurring, anthropogenic or otherwise. The trending at the surface is consistant with solar variability, not GHG. As well as at least three other independent observations that support solar variability.

There are no significant observations that support GHG, only the tweaked output of computer models.

I am also aware that the MMGHG folks are aware of the 10km problem, and have cooked up a 'correction' to the observed profile data based on some cockamamee 'wind shear' theory. So, please, don't direct me to another half assed internet website where some tool is displaying rigged plots based on that total nonsense.

It is totally bogus, cargo cult nonsense to spackle over this damning deficit in the data, meant to impress the Hollywoold jewelers, florists, and other technical illiterates who buy that kind of 'debunking' deconstruction wholesale.

regards,
Fred

Post 93

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 8:53pm

Jordan:

"climate change" is occurring and always has"

Certainly you didn't think I was disputing this. Again, can the sun account for climate trends irrespective of human activity?

Something other than man obviously must be responsible for 4 billion years of climate change on this planet Jordan. Man has only been on this planet for 300,000 of those years, and the combustible engine has only been around for a 100 of those years. So how do you explain 4 billion years (minus a 100) of climate change? Obviously the only logical explanation of billions of years of climate change is from natural causes, since man's history on this planet is so small compared to the age of the atmosphere.
(Edited by John Armaos on 7/14, 9:08pm)

Post 94

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 9:08pm

Ted:

True enough. But, take a good read of that paper linked above. It makes a compelling case.

And, we can calculate many such 'a' global temperature; one such has often been calculated: the solar radiative balance skin temperature. It depends on coming up with 'a' single average value for average earth full disk albedo. Is that 'the' global temperature we have been angsting over? No.

That, coupled with the 'other' greenhouse gas effect(based purely on adiabatic lapse rate) conspires to give us the following odd facts:

Venus, closer to the sun, yet has a cooler 'radiative skin temperature' than earth, farther from the sun -- because of Venus' high albedo-- and simultaneously, a much higher surface temperature -- due to its enourmously thick atmosphere.

Imagine if the earth's oceans were all boiled off to vapor, our atmoshere would be over a thousand times more massive and 'thicker', and the earth's surface temperature would be enourmously high, along with the surface pressure.

That is the Venus 'greenhouse' effect that drives its high surface temperature. The Triple Point of water, and the early development of Venus and Earth's atmosphere, have more to do with our present relative surface temperatures than CO2. Venus was always closer to the sun, there was never a time in its history when the surface was cool enough to support water in all three phases, it never pooled most of its water as massive buffering oceans. It's surface was always too hot for water in all three phases. A different dynamic on Venus resulted in a mostly CO2 atmosphere, and once again, CO2 was an effect, not a cause.

And yet, Venus CO2 is often referenced as a cautionary tale by our local science abusing charlatans. Yet it sure wasn't smoke stacks and Buicks on Venus that created all that CO2. It was Venus always immensely thick atmosphere weathering its surface. Venus surface would be hot whether that was CO2, N2, O2, or H20 vapor, as long as gravity exists on Venus and its atmosphere was thick and massive.

If the earth's albedo were to rise as high as Venus, then net solar loading would drop, and our surface temperature would drop, not rise to match Venus.

If the earth's albedo were to drop, then net solar loading would increase, and our surface temperatures would rise.

This is why, indeed, significant anthropogenic emissions of particulates are impactful on our climate.

But the case for CO2 hasn't been made; only in cooked computer models that do not match observation and record.

The cooked models remain not only unproved, but based on what observations we do have, disproved.

regards,
Fred

Post 95

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - 9:18pm

You could have stopped with "true enough."

Post 96

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - 9:46am

Jordan, let me explain the second part of my "What would make me change my mind?" outline.

To my knowledge, there is more GHG in the atmosphere now than there was, say, 150 years ago. In order for me to blame GHGs for global warming, I would require a lab test with the GHG concentration of 150 years ago and the GHG concentration of today. From those two starting points, I could design an elaborate lab test which simulates the climate. I would control the concentration of GHGs (the independent variable) -- going from today's concentration to that of 150 years ago -- and I would look for temperature changes (the dependent variable) that are close to what has been observed.

This type of prospective study is reams more important than the retro-spective observational studies utilized by professional ecologists. So there's the difference in temperature change at 8-km and on the surface below (to verify GHGs are "working"), and there's the difference in temperature from the GHG concentration of today vs. 150 years ago (to quantify the proportionality of GHGs as related to global warming).

Ed

Post 97

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - 10:14am

Fred, thinking more on your posts, could you not say that the problem with measuring temperature is that first, while temperature is a property of volumes which are three dimensional, it can only be measured for either one dimensional points or two dimensional surfaces, and that second, in systems far from equilibrium, such as the sun and the earth, temperature may be far from uniform, with areas of relatively low temperature, such as the sun's surface, 5,778K, between the corona 5x10^6K and the core, 15.7x10^6K or the permafrost and the ocean's depths which are close to 4C to 0C while the atmosphere above may be at 40 C and the core of the Earth is comparable in temperature to the surface of the sun?

Post 98

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - 11:48am

Ted:

Sure.

Imagine a column of water, 1 ft square by 1000 ft high, with a uniform temperature of 70 deg F.

Imagine a second column of water, 1 ft square by 1 ft high, with a uniform temperature of 90 deg F.

When looked at 'at the surface', each column is '1 ft square.'

We want to measure something called 'the global temperature' of this simple system.

If we base it on 'surface temperature', and we account for the equal surface areas at the top of each column, we would conclude 'the average global temperature is 80 deg F...

...even though there is 1000 times as much water at 70 deg F as there is as 90 deg F in our simple example.

But that is ridiculous...because in fact, the temperature is not uniform in the 1000 ft column, and probably isn't even uniform in the 1 ft column. But that's ok, because for much of the ocean, we have only a poor idea of what the temperature profile is, and ... it is always changing.

Said another way: when we measure 'the surface temperature' in the shallow Gulf of Mexico, do we weight it the same as an equal area in the deep mid Atlantic?

Yes we do. Why? Because that is what we can easily do. Or, we wave our hands, and make up a weigting, without knowing precisely the profiles of either.

Now, imagine that our oceans cover varied depths, cross myriad currents and upwellings, and are not simple columns of uniform water, waiting to be 'averaged'.

Does a 'surface average temperature' mean anything with any physical significance? No, though many have hand waved and claimed that maybe it does, because ... that is what could easily be measured for 'the globe,' and look how many nice charts on the in-ter-net have resulted? The 'working climate' folks scrounging for funding day in and day out at places like NOAA's GFDL are only too glad to pump out color charts to 0.1 deg C accuracy, attach them to reports that inevitably conclude little but "more research is badly needed."

As well, if you look at satellite IR imagery, you will detect rapid diurnal changes in the land masses, and far more stable temperatures in bodies of water. You will also detect weather scale event changes in the surface temperature of both. What 'the temperature' do you report for the rapidly changing observations on land? The High? The Low? The average of the High and the low? The time weighted diurnal average of the diurnally varying temperature?

Here is the real point of that; if relying on groundstation point observations for the last century, what 'value' is being reported? No matter what you could do today with more complete satellite data, how is past point data observations 'corrected' to be comparable with modern measurements? The modern satellite data is practically useless for such comparisons, except to compare with similar era satellite data.

regards,
Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 7/15, 11:52am)

Post 99

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - 12:05pm