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Has the AGW "consensus" come to an end?

Jack Hays said:
Observed tempature trends of the last century are not outside historical (and pre-industrial) norms, and the work of Professor Svensmark points to an entirely different climate paradigm.:mrgreen:
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Do you contend that CO2 doesn't have properties which cause it to retain more heat than other gasses? Or do you contend that the principle of the conservation of energy doesn't really exist?
 
Dezaad said:
Do you contend that CO2 doesn't have properties which cause it to retain more heat than other gasses? Or do you contend that the principle of the conservation of energy doesn't really exist?
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The debate has never been about the physics, but rather about climate sensitivity to physics. It remains undemonstrated that there is a causal link between CO2 and observed climate trends. Meanwhile, Svensmark has put forward an alternative paradigm.
 
Jack Hays said:
The debate has never been about the physics, but rather about climate sensitivity to physics. It remains undemonstrated that there is a causal link between CO2 and observed climate trends. Meanwhile, Svensmark has put forward an alternative paradigm.
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The consensus of climate scientists is confident that there is a causal link. That atmospheric CO2 has been increasing, an energy imbalance developed, and warming has been occurring fits the Greenhouse Effect. That a robust explanation for the slowdown in surface warming has been identified and measured undercuts arguments that this slowdown in surface warming suggests the link between CO2 and climate change is weak to non-existent.
 
donsutherland1 said:
The consensus of climate scientists is confident that there is a causal link. That atmospheric CO2 has been increasing, an energy imbalance developed, and warming has been occurring fits the Greenhouse Effect. That a robust explanation for the slowdown in surface warming has been identified and measured undercuts arguments that this slowdown in surface warming suggests the link between CO2 and climate change is weak to non-existent.
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Science is not a democracy, so the consensus of one interest group doesn't matter much. As Einstein noted in response to the "One Hundred Against Einstein" open letter criticizing his work, if there was merit to their argument, one would have been enough. Meanwhile, Svensmark's work does not so much refute AGW as envelop and bypass it with a far grander, more elegant conception.:peace
 
Jack Hays said:
Hard to imagine since his most significant paper only appeared in 2012.
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I was referring to his work from the 1990s concerning global cosmic rays (GCRs). In fact, with the recent solar minimum (deepest and longest since at least the early 20th century), one should have seen robust cooling (both from the solar minimum and from the increase in GCRs affecting the earth). Instead, the energy imbalance persisted and warming continued albeit at a slower rate on the surface (but at a faster rate in the deep ocean). The climate response was consistent with the energy imbalance. That sort of a lab case further undermined the solar amplification hypothesis for the recent warming, GCRs being proposed as one mechanism of solar amplification.
 
donsutherland1 said:
I was referring to his work from the 1990s concerning global cosmic rays (GCRs). In fact, with the recent solar minimum (deepest and longest since at least the early 20th century), one should have seen robust cooling (both from the solar minimum and from the increase in GCRs affecting the earth). Instead, the energy imbalance persisted and warming continued albeit at a slower rate on the surface (but at a faster rate in the deep ocean). The climate response was consistent with the energy imbalance. That sort of a lab case further undermined the solar amplification hypothesis for the recent warming, GCRs being proposed as one mechanism of solar amplification.
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You should see Svensmark's 2012 paper published by the Royal Astronomical Society.:peace
 
Jack Hays said:
Science is not a democracy, so the consensus of one interest group doesn't matter much. As Einstein noted in response to the "One Hundred Against Einstein" open letter criticizing his work, if there was merit to their argument, one would have been enough. Meanwhile, Svensmark's work does not so much refute AGW as envelop and bypass it with a far grander, more elegant conception.:peace
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I never suggested that it is. My point is that the preponderant body of scientific literature supports AGW as the leading driver of climate change. To date, that body of literature, respecting the existence of some uncertainty, has not been seriously undermined. There is no competing mechanism that offers at least as good an explanation at this time.
 
donsutherland1 said:
The climate models are based on, among other things, the laws of physics. The Greenhouse Effect is non-controversial. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Atmospheric CO2 has been increasing. If the Greenhouse Effect is real, that should lead to a positive energy imbalance. That imbalance has been measured.

If there's a positive energy imbalance and if the principle of the conservation of energy is correct (that energy cannot be created nor destroyed), then that imbalance can't have zero impact. It should lead to heating.

With the recent slowing in surface warming (land and ocean surface), one would have to find the warming either in the atmosphere and/or ocean. It hasn't shown up in the atmosphere. It was measured in the ocean (particularly below 700 meters).

Where uncertainty exists is the exact sensitivity of the earth's climate response to a doubling of CO2 on account of complex feedbacks, some of which are not well-understood. In other words, the warming might be somewhat more modest or it could be even greater than currently thought. Zero warming does not have serious scientific support.

The problem for those rejecting the idea that an increase in atmospheric CO2 should lead to a warming response (exact magnitude is subject to some uncertainty) is that they have no robust alternative to explain the observed warming that has been occurring. They have no mechanism that robustly explains the observed temperature trends, particularly since the mid-20th century. Yet, when CO2 is added to the natural forcings (solar, volcanic, etc.), the replication of the warming is pretty good.

Absent such a mechanism(s), their argument rests on either CO2's not having greenhouse gas properties and/or the principle of the conservation of energy's not being accurate. Both are extremely remote possibilities. Indeed, the existence of a persistent energy imbalance reaffirms the Greenhouse Effect. The oceanic heat content data reaffirms the principle of the conservation of energy.
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For the sake of argument lets say you are right. What do you think of the following? Really I am interested because you warmers are so convinced you are right that the following must be right too so why get all worked up, what's done is done.

"Also as predicted only sooner, the world was beginning to suffer historically unprecedented heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. The sea level was rising while mountain glaciers, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and Arctic sea ice melted back, all at accelerating rates. Important ecosystems from alpine meadows to coral reefs were showing signs of stress. For the scientists, as one of them remarked, "Seeing their own predictions come true has been a frightening experience."(62) Some researchers turned from predicting future warming to identifying how far some of the extreme weather events of the 2000's could already be attributed to human-caused climate change.


<=Sea rise & ice





<=Impacts

Still more sobering, people were just now coming to grips with the implications of a fact that scientists had known for decades — the climate system has built-in time lags. Even if human emissions of CO2 magically dropped to zero, the gas already in the air would linger for many centuries, trapping heat. The passionate policy controversies and even much of the scientific research had been preoccupied with the warming of a degree or two (or more?) expected by the end of the century. But global temperatures would continue to creep upward until the ocean depths reached equilibrium with the heated air, until biological systems finished adapting to the new conditions, and until Arctic icecaps melted back to their own equilibrium. Whatever we did now, humanity was already committed to centuries of violently changing weather and rising seas.(63*) Yet emissions of greenhouse gases, far from halting, were soaring at an accelerating rate.

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
 
donsutherland1 said:
I never suggested that it is. My point is that the preponderant body of scientific literature supports AGW as the leading driver of climate change. To date, that body of literature, respecting the existence of some uncertainty, has not been seriously undermined. There is no competing mechanism that offers at least as good an explanation at this time.
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You seem like a reasonable fellow, so I'll just repeat the suggestion to look at Svenmark's 2012 paper in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I'd provide a link if I were not on my I-Pad rather than laptop right now. With that, I'll say good night.:peace
 
Jack Hays said:
You seem like a reasonable fellow, so I'll just repeat the suggestion to look at Svenmark's 2012 paper in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I'd provide a link if I were not on my I-Pad rather than laptop right now. With that, I'll say good night.:peace
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It is nice to talk to a warmer who doesn't call you a moron or a shill for "big oil".
 
Jack Hays said:
You should see Svensmark's 2012 paper published by the Royal Astronomical Society.:peace
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I have it and have read a good chunk of it (namely his findings, explanations, and caveats). A few quick things:

1. He's talking about impacts from GCRs assoicated with nearby supernovae
2. He's linking exceptional levels of GCRs on account of nearby supernovae to coolings that took place over long time-scales ("sudden" in geological time)
3. He acknowledges a recent "divergence" (speculating that it might have to do with C4 plants, which have an extra carbon atom)
4. He does not argue against an increase in CO2 offsetting the impact of GCRs driven by a nearby supernova, much less the much lower level absent such supernovae. On that matter, he writes:

Other processes might in principle counter a cooling of the climate by negative feedback. For example, if a cooling reduces the loss of CO2 to geochemical weathering, which could lead to a build-up of CO2 if other sinks and sources of CO2 remain constant, and so dampen or reverse the cooling (Donnadieu, Godd´eris & Bouttes 2009).

In effect, Svensmark is not arguing against the Greenhouse Effect associated with CO2. In fact, he's suggesting that the GCR impact exists alongside other climate drivers, including CO2. He writes of the combination of drivers, "The net impact of such processes will eventually have to be resolved by estimating the forcing of the individual processes and incorporating them in a multidisciplinary numerical model beyond the scope of this paper."

In sum, a similar impact to the one he described related to an increase in CO2 could occur if some other mechanism (natural and/or anthropogenic) led to increases in CO2 emissions to the point where emissions exceeded absorption and atmospheric CO2 increased. Currently, that's where things stand and atmospheric CO2 is approaching 400 PPM and will probably reach or exceed it before the end of this decade (annual average).

As he acknowledges other drivers and suggests that additional work would be required to find the "net impact," one cannot automatically assume that his conclusion debunks AGW nor that a nearby supernova would necessarily produce the same kind of cooling that has occurred in the past given those other drivers, particularly CO2 (that he singled out as posing a risk of damping or reversing a GCR-driven cooling). In the end, he contributes a factor that could have a climatic impact (he believes it has in the past given his data), but does not propose that his work offers an alternative explanation to AGW.
 
sawyerloggingon said:
For the sake of argument lets say you are right. What do you think of the following? Really I am interested because you warmers are so convinced you are right that the following must be right too so why get all worked up, what's done is done.

"Also as predicted only sooner, the world was beginning to suffer historically unprecedented heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. The sea level was rising while mountain glaciers, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and Arctic sea ice melted back, all at accelerating rates. Important ecosystems from alpine meadows to coral reefs were showing signs of stress. For the scientists, as one of them remarked, "Seeing their own predictions come true has been a frightening experience."(62) Some researchers turned from predicting future warming to identifying how far some of the extreme weather events of the 2000's could already be attributed to human-caused climate change.


<=Sea rise & ice





<=Impacts

Still more sobering, people were just now coming to grips with the implications of a fact that scientists had known for decades — the climate system has built-in time lags. Even if human emissions of CO2 magically dropped to zero, the gas already in the air would linger for many centuries, trapping heat. The passionate policy controversies and even much of the scientific research had been preoccupied with the warming of a degree or two (or more?) expected by the end of the century. But global temperatures would continue to creep upward until the ocean depths reached equilibrium with the heated air, until biological systems finished adapting to the new conditions, and until Arctic icecaps melted back to their own equilibrium. Whatever we did now, humanity was already committed to centuries of violently changing weather and rising seas.(63*) Yet emissions of greenhouse gases, far from halting, were soaring at an accelerating rate.

The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
Click to expand...

Attribution science is still in its infancy. There's much higher confidence that climate change has had some impact on the frequency, intensity, and scale of extreme heat, as those extremes can be demonstrated statistically. There are suggestions of links to extreme weather (one proposed mechanism is that Arctic amplification leads to increased blocking, which impacts and slows the jet stream). However, the science is not at the point where it can confidently say, for example, the unusual track Hurricane Sandy took last fall was due to climate change. Some non-tropical cyclones have taken similar tracks e.g., a late February Mid-Atlantic blizzard in 2010, so it is not an unprecedented storm track, even as it is a rare one. With respect to Sandy, the one thing where there is somewhat greater confidence is that the rising sea level made a modest contribution to the storm surge.
 
Threegoofs said:
What's not clear about Confidence Intervals?

Oh,right. Basic statistical knowledge.
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Let's see the projections and how solar activity is fluctuating cyclically.
 
Threegoofs said:
Maybe if I type it slower?

C o n f i d e n c e I n t e r v a l s ?

The models take variability into account. The warming we've seen is within confidence intervals.
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Ok, so how long do you need the hypothesis to be violated beyond this confidence?? The guy at NOAA said 10 years... What do you need? 50 year? 100years? Does it need to get to an ice age with the same co2 levels??

Sounds to me like you are just coming up with a cop out excuse.
 
donsutherland1 said:
The climate models are based on, among other things, the laws of physics. The Greenhouse Effect is non-controversial. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Atmospheric CO2 has been increasing. If the Greenhouse Effect is real, that should lead to a positive energy imbalance. That imbalance has been measured.
Click to expand...
Yes, it can now be reasonable accurate as well since Source was launched. However, the individual factors are little understood still.


donsutherland1 said:
If there's a positive energy imbalance and if the principle of the conservation of energy is correct (that energy cannot be created nor destroyed), then that imbalance can't have zero impact. It should lead to heating.
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Yes, if the earth receives more energy than it emits, then there is a net warming effect, until balance is ontained. It works both ways. the earth will cool if it emits more energy than it receives.


donsutherland1 said:
With the recent slowing in surface warming (land and ocean surface), one would have to find the warming either in the atmosphere and/or ocean. It hasn't shown up in the atmosphere. It was measured in the ocean (particularly below 700 meters).
Click to expand...
Makes the debate even more interesting, doesn't it.


donsutherland1 said:
Where uncertainty exists is the exact sensitivity of the earth's climate response to a doubling of CO2 on account of complex feedbacks, some of which are not well-understood. In other words, the warming might be somewhat more modest or it could be even greater than currently thought. Zero warming does not have serious scientific support.
Click to expand...
Even if it's as great as the alarmists say it is, the effect is only 1/3rd of what they say. Unless they majically break the Stefan–Boltzmann law.


donsutherland1 said:
The problem for those rejecting the idea that an increase in atmospheric CO2 should lead to a warming response (exact magnitude is subject to some uncertainty) is that they have no robust alternative to explain the observed warming that has been occurring. They have no mechanism that robustly explains the observed temperature trends, particularly since the mid-20th century. Yet, when CO2 is added to the natural forcings (solar, volcanic, etc.), the replication of the warming is pretty good.
Click to expand...
Except for a few things you seem to have forgotten.

The solar output has almost certainly increased from 1900 to 1950. This alone may be the primary cause of 20th century warming. There is also a lag time involved because the majority of the changes take place in the ocean, below the surface. Some of this change in energy goes deeper than that 700 meters. Very little goes that deep though. then there is heavy aerosols which we started emitting in abundance in the 40's. they covered the skies, reducing the warming rays of the sun. Then in the 70's we formed the EPA and started clearing the skies, allowing the earth to warm to the levels it would have been earlier, from the increased solar energy ending about 1950.


donsutherland1 said:
Absent such a mechanism(s), their argument rests on either CO2's not having greenhouse gas properties and/or the principle of the conservation of energy's not being accurate. Both are extremely remote possibilities. Indeed, the existence of a persistent energy imbalance reaffirms the Greenhouse Effect. The oceanic heat content data reaffirms the principle of the conservation of energy.
Click to expand...
Why so binary in your reasoning?
 
Dezaad said:
Do you contend that CO2 doesn't have properties which cause it to retain more heat than other gasses? Or do you contend that the principle of the conservation of energy doesn't really exist?
Click to expand...

Retaining heat is probably the wrong terminology. It absorbs and remits the energy.

H2O has far more forcing than CO2 does. CO2 is 2nd, N2O 3rd, and CH4 is 4th.
 
donsutherland1 said:
The consensus of climate scientists is confident that there is a causal link.
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Yes, the universities teach them that temperatures follow CO2. not all believe this however, and science isn't a democracy. Now nearly all scientists will agree that CO2 trends follow ocean temperatures.


donsutherland1 said:
That atmospheric CO2 has been increasing, an energy imbalance developed, and warming has been occurring fits the Greenhouse Effect.
Click to expand...
Yes. The good proof that correlation equals causation...


donsutherland1 said:
That a robust explanation for the slowdown in surface warming has been identified and measured undercuts arguments that this slowdown in surface warming suggests the link between CO2 and climate change is weak to non-existent.
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Funny how a better temperature correlation can be linked to the sun.
 
BmanMcfly said:
Ok, so how long do you need the hypothesis to be violated beyond this confidence?? The guy at NOAA said 10 years... What do you need? 50 year? 100years? Does it need to get to an ice age with the same co2 levels??

Sounds to me like you are just coming up with a cop out excuse.
Click to expand...

Well, do I listen to McFly or NOAA?

Ill stick with NOAA. I'm guessing they have a good angle on the stats.
 
Threegoofs said:
Well, do I listen to McFly or NOAA?

Ill stick with NOAA. I'm guessing they have a good angle on the stats.
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You mean the same NOAA who has corrupted temp data? You know all their sites that are effected by urban heating.. Every time they use an airport (or city) as a measuring place for rain and temp they are guilty of collecting corrupt data. EVERY TIME. This skewed data favors results "proving" global warming.

New U.S. Population-Adjusted Temperature Dataset (PDAT), 1973-2012 « Roy Spencer, PhD

So I suggest starting next year NOAA uses all it's R&D money to build new sites away from cities and airports. Record the temps for 10 years, throw the numbers into their models and see what pops out. Odds are they'll find nothing has warmed over that 10 year period. :cool:
 
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