Paper: CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas.

[Doug1029]

18 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

You are are 100% wrong! In 1994 I applied for a PALE Grant to attend the local Junior College to get some basic credits and was rejected because I was White. 

Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake.  It just dawned on me that admittance and qualifying for a grant are two different things.  You were most-likely admitted to the junior college, but then denied the grant - just guessing.  Grants are made by third parties, but frequently administered by the universities.  To a newby student, it would look like it was the university doing the rejecting.  Could that be where the confusion is coming from?

Oklahoma has the same problem.  We have to admit them, but if they aren't independently wealthy, they may not be able to attend for lack of funds.  Nobody ever said it was fair.

Grants and scholarships come with all sorts of often weird requirements.  There's a scholarship for people with red hair, for example.  So the university doesn't have complete control over its financial aid program.

Doug

 

[Doug1029]

23 minutes ago, Derek Willis said:

I am from the UK. I can see how the nuances can lead to differing interpretations. I do now see what you mean. However, to go back to my point, if the climate constant failed to make accurate predictions, and now Christy's equation is also failing to make accurate predictions, you climate scientists really need to come up with something that works. 

That's what we're trying to do.  At the levels of CO2 that we expect between now and 2100, there isn't much difference between a straight line and what a model like Christy's would predict.  So until we come up with something better, a straight line is what is being used, or at least it was when I last checked.

Doug

[Doug1029]

20 minutes ago, Derek Willis said:

No, you have to find an equation/function that matches the data. Doing it the other way round leads to suspicion from people like me. That is, you already have the outcome you want. Fourier Analysis is what you need. Any curve can be broken down into simpler curves, and then a good approximation of the form of the function can be integrated.

I have tried models that didn't fit the data.  SAS blows up the whole process and refuses to give you any answer.

In climate-related dendrochronology, you are not trying to get too good a fit.  The climate signal is in the residuals and if you eliminate those, you eliminate the climate signal.  Polynomials are particulalrly bad about that.

As a general rule, polynomials produce better fits for tree ring data than does the decreasing log, but they also can be unpredictable.  Theoretically, if one kept adding terms, one would eventually get a perfect fit.  But, that could require 500 terms (an impressive model) and we usually start seeing a decrease in r^2 about six or seven terms in.  So, when we use a polynomial, we use ten terms and run it using a stepwise regression.

I'm guessing I have run about 3000 detrendings by now.  I know what usually works and also, there's the question of exactly what it is you're trying to do.  The actual plot of the tree's growth, if you have the entire core, looks like a Weibull.  But frequently, I don't have the entire core.  So a decreasing log works just fine.  All I really need to accomplish is to remove age-related trends.

If you're looking for century-scale warming you're in a damned-if-you-do; damned-if-you-don't situation.  Logarithms are about the only things that can detrend for age without removing climate-related variation.  But a positive log removes warming-related variation and a negative log removes cooling-related variation.  And a century-scale series is going to have both.  So what we do is built a regionally standardized curve by breaking regular series into short sections and averaging results within each section.  That gives us the shape of the growth curve under the assumption of constant climate.  We then compare that with the actual series.

I am thinking I could fit a multinomial to a tree ring chronology (minimum:  ten series).  X terms to include CO2, summer high temps, summer low temps, summer average temps, winter low temps and monthly precip going back four years.  Some of these terms are not going to be significant, but others might be.  If temperatures survive, I'll have a process to measure warming directly.  But once again, it only works looking backward.  It doesn't tell you what is going to happen in the future.

That's about as far as I am willing to go at the moment.  I'm really having more fun with identifying specific rainfall events from 300 years ago.

Doug

[lost_shaman]

9 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

There are lots of problems with the old land grants and surveys - we still don't know exactly where the line between Oklahoma and Texas is.

My Family Estate owns several parcels of Land on the border. I'm positive where the border is, it's bureaucrats at the Bureau of Land Management that don't seem to understand where the border is.

[lost_shaman]

On 12/10/2017 at 2:04 PM, Doug1o29 said:

The consensus seems to be that under current rates of increase by 2400, atmospheric carbon will reach 1800 ppm.  What that means for temps, I don't know, but using Christy's equation, temps would rise about 6 degrees C.  Even that will still cause major damage to the earth's ecosystems.  Boiling seas or no, we're still not off the hook.

And this is exactly what the Paper in the OP is about. In the troposphere CO2s thermal contribution is due mainly from colisions with other Atmospheric molecules as opposed the photon re-emission. When a CO2 molecule absorbs a 15 um photon for example this causes the molecule to vibrate, but in the troposphere the atmospheric density is so great that the CO2 molecule bumps into say an O2 molecule for example before a photon re-emission can take place and thus there is a slight heating but the CO2 molecule also stops vibrating and therefore has no energy to emit a photon. i.e. no down welling longwave radiation back to Earth from that molecule. This fact greatly reduces the amount of heating the IPCC assumes because the IPCC has not taken this into account. In the OP Paper the Author even explains that by disregarding this fact then you would appoach about 6 degrees K of heating at ~4,000 ppmv CO2.

 

On 12/10/2017 at 2:04 PM, Doug1o29 said:

1.  If the model is correct, why does Venus have such a high temperature?  Even an atmosphere of pure CO2 wouldn't raise temperatures that much.

Venus' 96% CO2 atmosphere is soo hot because it is also 93 times denser than the Earth's Atmosphere. On Earth under normal conditions the temperature raises or drops about 3.5 degrees F / 1,000 ft. So imagine an Atmosphere 93 times denser than Earth's and you can see why the surface of Venus is soo HOT. It's the same principle that cause Death Valley to be one of the hottest place on Earth because the is simply more Atmosphere above it than most other places on Earth.

 

On 12/10/2017 at 2:04 PM, Doug1o29 said:

2.  Why have earth's temperatures not followed Christy's model in the past?

Again see the explanation in the OP Paper.

[lost_shaman]

7 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

What is a PALE grant?  I haven't heard of that one before.

The PELL grant is part of the Federal government's student aide program.  I don't believe there are any racial requirements on it, but I might be wrong.  Many states offer support at the undergrad level and there are more of these programs than I can count.  Does Texas have one by the name of PALE?  Or is that just a way to say Pell with a Texas accent?

My fault for the mis-spelling, and yes I was rejected because I'm white.

[lost_shaman]

5 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake.  It just dawned on me that admittance and qualifying for a grant are two different things.  You were most-likely admitted to the junior college, but then denied the grant - just guessing.  Grants are made by third parties, but frequently administered by the universities.  To a newby student, it would look like it was the university doing the rejecting.  Could that be where the confusion is coming from?

Oklahoma has the same problem.  We have to admit them, but if they aren't independently wealthy, they may not be able to attend for lack of funds.  Nobody ever said it was fair.

Grants and scholarships come with all sorts of often weird requirements.  There's a scholarship for people with red hair, for example.  So the university doesn't have complete control over its financial aid program.

No, PELL grants are Federal grants, of course I was admitted to the College but denied the Grant because Minorities were greatly preferred over White Males. I'm sure this is still the case.

[lost_shaman]

On 12/9/2017 at 1:05 PM, Doug1o29 said:

Cold is more deadly than heat.  But if we start getting more high temps as a result of climate change, that could also change.

The more we discuss this the more you come across as a religious adherent to the Global Warming dogma that began decades ago with the eco-activists "big oil" is bad and when that didn't really catch on mainstream the CO2 boggy man was invented. Despite the real world failing to conform to the 'narrative' you guys continue to strive adhere to your own made up religious dogma as if it is simply infallible you just haven't written the perfect computer model that proves your preconceptions are true.

You guys never even discuss the posibility that we are simply slowly rebounding from the Little Ice Age! No in fact your hero's were caught red handed in the Climategate fiasco openly discussing ways to minimze the LIA and the Roman warm period so that it would look like the climate has been very stable (when it is not) in order to dramatize the rebounding temperatures from the cold Little ice age period. 

The truth is that the Little Ice Age period had rising CO2 levels until the temperature cooled only then did CO2 levels drop slightly, so we have heard dozens of excuses from your camp to minimize this fact. 

Quote

This means that the drop in atmospheric CO₂ during the LIA was more likely to have been a direct response to the dipping temperatures. The cool climate of the LIA reduced photosynthesis but also slowed down plant respiration and decomposition, with the net effect that more CO₂ was taken up by the land biosphere during cool periods.

http://theconversation.com/land-carbon-storage-swelled-in-the-little-ice-age-which-bodes-ill-for-the-future-62965

If your camp was actually engaged in Science then you would follow the evidence, that being naturally CO2 levels follow temperature trends as opposed to dictating them!

[lost_shaman]

On 12/9/2017 at 11:05 AM, Doug1o29 said:

CO2 levels during the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period were much lower than they are today.  In order to precipitate an ecosystem collapse, the climate systme must be operating near a threshold.

You don't make any sense! If any of that was due to massive Methane releases, then we would see this methane in ice cores and Methane has a half life of 7 years converting into water and CO2, so again you would see massive CO2 increases in ice cores from Major methane releases that are imaginary Doug.

 

On 12/9/2017 at 11:05 AM, Doug1o29 said:

If this had anything to do with CO2 levels, I don't know what it was, but they may have had a small effect.  I don't see how "bad land management" in the Sahara could affect snowfall in Greenland.  Could you explain that.

You just assume with zero evidence that one caused the other? But completely reject actual evidence of East to West Cattle grazing that denoided the land of vegetation of the Sahara which resulted in a tipping point in which monsoonal rains failed resulting in the Saharan desertification. 

[Doug1029]

13 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

My Family Estate owns several parcels of Land on the border. I'm positive where the border is, it's bureaucrats at the Bureau of Land Management that don't seem to understand where the border is.

The border is the south bank of the Red River as it was in 1819.  But where is that?  The boundary is generally taken to be the cut bank, but admittedly, that was probably not right on the bank of the river and not everyplace along the river has a cut bank.  To make matters worse, the river moves back and forth.

The Federal government owns the land beneath the river from the border to the middle of the river.  But many landowners on the south side think THEY own to the middle of the river.

And that's not all.  Texas and Oklahoma fall under two much-different sets of land laws.  While I have studied the Public Land Survey, Texas is something else.

Doug

[Doug1029]

11 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

You guys never even discuss the posibility that we are simply slowly rebounding from the Little Ice Age! No in fact your hero's were caught red handed in the Climategate fiasco openly discussing ways to minimze the LIA and the Roman warm period so that it would look like the climate has been very stable (when it is not) in order to dramatize the rebounding temperatures from the cold Little ice age period. 

The truth is that the Little Ice Age period had rising CO2 levels until the temperature cooled only then did CO2 levels drop slightly, so we have heard dozens of excuses from your camp to minimize this fact. 

If your camp was actually engaged in Science then you would follow the evidence, that being naturally CO2 levels follow temperature trends as opposed to dictating them!

I have actual temperature records going back into the Little Ice Age and access to tree-ring chronologies going back into the Altithermal (8400 YBP).  If I want to know what the temperature did, it is not too hard to find out.  The lowest temps since 1300 occurred between 1570 and 1730.  How chilling the Little Ice Age was may be judged by the fact that 1837 is the second hottest year on record for Oklahoma and Texas.

In 1841 there was another dip in temps.  Temperature climbed to a high in 1862 (Civil War Drought), gradually decreased to a low in 1886 and increased slowly to another high about 1893-1896 (Gay Nineties Drought) and decreased to a low in 1910.  Each low temp has been progressively higher than the previous one.  There was a local high in 1936 and another one in 1952.  Temps stabilized until 1976 and then shot up to the high in 1998, declined slightly until 2005, then rose again to the El Nino high of 2014.  2017 is on track to be the second hottest year on record (so far).

The Little Ice Age is mostly evident in records from the Atlantic Basin and not all of those.  It takes effort to find evidence of it in other parts of the world.  Global average temperatures topped those of the Medieval Warm Period about 1940.  To say that the Little Ice Age lasted longer than that is to include the Medieval Warm Period in the Little Ice Age.

That may not be as bad as it sounds.  The term "Little Ice Age" was originally applied to the glacial advances of the last 4000 years.  The Altithermal was warmer than present, so on that basis, one could say that we are still in the Little Ice Age and this would include the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods in the Little Ice Age.  So definitions get into the picture, too.  The Roman Warm Period and current high temps both match up with high points in the Bond Cycle, so I strongly suspect that part of our current warming is natural.  So a good estimate of the amount of human-caused warming would be the difference between current temps and those of the Roman Warm Period.

The claim that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than at present can be supported only by using selected chronologies and ignoring those that show a different result.  The only proper analysis has to include all available chronologies and that shows that we are currently warmer than the Medieval Warm Period; thus, the Little Ice Age has ended.

But once again, we have a more-or-less smooth curve when averaged over the millenium.  The world can be said to be coninuuing a warmap that began in the Little Ice Age.

For that matter, we can say that the world is still warming up from the Wisconsin Ice Age.  There is still a remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet on Baffin Island, so the great ice cap still exists.

 

About those rising CO2 levels during the Little Ice Age (and don't forget the Younger Dryas Cold Period).  Under natural conditions, atmospheric carbon dioxide is controlled by ocean temperatures which lag behind land temperatures by about 300 years.  So under natural conditions we can get rising CO2 levels while temperatures are declining and vice versa.  But current conditions are not natural.  We humans have added about 120 ppm CO2 to the air.  And that has changed the way the climate system works.

 

BTW:  The Pliocene had CO2 levels comparable to today (250-450 ppm).  Continental United States had temps comparable to today, but the Arctic had temps as much as 19 degrees warmer.  This is explained as the result of an evaporation basin in the North Pacific producing currents that carried heat northward.

And sea levels about 75 feet higher than today.  That's not high enough to include all the water on earth, so somewhere there were still glaciers.  There's an article about this in the December 9 issue of Science News.  Happy reading.

Doug

Edited December 12, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

10 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

You don't make any sense! If any of that was due to massive Methane releases, then we would see this methane in ice cores and Methane has a half life of 7 years converting into water and CO2, so again you would see massive CO2 increases in ice cores from Major methane releases that are imaginary Doug.

CO2 levels in the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period were about 280 ppm.  Today we are at about 400 ppm.  You're the one who is not making any sense.  And those numbers are from the same NASA source you cited above (There are other datasets on the site.).

Massive methane releases could trigger sudden climate change.  Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, but, as you say, it has a relatively short half life in the air.  That's why the release has to be massive.  There are methane blowout cones in the sea floor off the Virgina coast and near Bermuda.  Such blowouts have happened before.  And warming seas could trigger more of them.  And they may not need to be massive:  if there are enough small seeps, that could do it, too.

The Younger Dryas Cold Period went from full glacial to inter-glacial in 40 years with snowfall accomplishing the feat in just two years - sudden climate change as a result of crossing a threshold is possible.  Just melting of the Artic sea ice could also do it.  Or the opening of a new evaporation basin, or shutting down of an old one.  What would happen if the Gulf Stream shut down?  Melt enough water from the Greenland ice cap and do it fast enough and that might just happen:  an ice age (or at least, a big chill) produced by warming!  Personally, I don't think it will happen, but there are others who disagree with me and know more about ocean circulation than I do.

Doug

[Doug1029]

10 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

You just assume with zero evidence that one caused the other? But completely reject actual evidence of East to West Cattle grazing that denoided the land of vegetation of the Sahara which resulted in a tipping point in which monsoonal rains failed resulting in the Saharan desertification. 

You haven't answered my question.  How does desertification in the Sahara cause a change in snowfall in Greenland?

Enough of the rants.  Read what I write, for once.

Doug

[Doc Socks Junior]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

You haven't answered my question.  How does desertification in the Sahara cause a change in snowfall in Greenland?

Enough of the rants.  Read what I write, for once.

Planetary wave propagation. Land-atmosphere teleconnection.

[Essan]

There is zero evdence that the shift in the ITCZ 5kya causing desertificaton of the Sahara, endng the Afrcan Humid period, was caused by over-grazing by huge herds of cattle that have otherwise left no trace of their existence (and whose human owners have never been traced) .   However I think subsequent grazing by livestock in more recent times may have amplified the effect - anthropogenc clmate change in action

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/End of the African Humid Period

[Doc Socks Junior]

1 hour ago, Essan said:

There is zero evdence that the shift in the ITCZ 5kya causing desertificaton of the Sahara, endng the Afrcan Humid period, was caused by over-grazing by huge herds of cattle that have otherwise left no trace of their existence (and whose human owners have never been traced) .   However I think subsequent grazing by livestock in more recent times may have amplified the effect - anthropogenc clmate change in action

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/End of the African Humid Period

I wouldn't say zero. I also wouldn't say a lot. Of course, it turns into a chicken and egg problem - and the desertification would have happened in either case.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2017.00004/full#h6

Quote

This paper explores scenarios whereby humans could be viewed as active agents in landscape denudation. During the period when agriculture was adopted in northern Africa, the regions where it was occurring were at the precipice of ecological regime shifts. Pastoralism, in particular, is argued to enhance devegetation and regime shifts in unbalanced ecosystems. Threshold crossing events were documented in the historical records of New Zealand and western North America due to the introduction of livestock. In looking at temporally correlated archeological and paleoenvironmental records of northern Africa, similar landscape dynamics from the historical precedents are observed: reduction in net primary productivity, homogenization of the flora, transformation of the landscape into a shrub-dominated biozone, and increasing xerophylic vegetation overall. Although human agents are not seen as the only forces inducing regime change during the termination of the AHP, their potential role in inducing large-scale landscape change must be properly contextualized against other global occurrences of neolithization.

 

Edited December 12, 2017 by Socks Junior

[Doug1029]

1 hour ago, Essan said:

There is zero evdence that the shift in the ITCZ 5kya causing desertificaton of the Sahara, endng the Afrcan Humid period, was caused by over-grazing by huge herds of cattle that have otherwise left no trace of their existence (and whose human owners have never been traced) .   However I think subsequent grazing by livestock in more recent times may have amplified the effect - anthropogenc clmate change in action

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/End of the African Humid Period

I agree.

Doug

[Doug1029]

32 minutes ago, Socks Junior said:

I wouldn't say zero. I also wouldn't say a lot. Of course, it turns into a chicken and egg problem - and the desertification would have happened in either case.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2017.00004/full#h6

 

The central part of the US was kept pretty much tree free by buffalo.  I have a research plot set up near Middle Spring which was on the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail.  Pioneer accounts describe it as completely devoid of trees.  Now it's an oasis with cottonwoods scattered along the Cimarron River which is only a half-mile away.  Take that word "river" with a large grain of salt.  It rarely has water in it.  The area is part of the Cimarron National Grassland and open to the public.  They have a little tourist site at Middle Spring.

There's also a unique windmill near there.  It has a 20-foot fan and powers an oil well!  Even Big Oil is getting into the act!

Doug

[Doc Socks Junior]

7 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

The central part of the US was kept pretty much tree free by buffalo.  I have a research plot set up near Middle Spring which was on the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail.  Pioneer accounts describe it as completely devoid of trees.  Now it's an oasis with cottonwoods scattered along the Cimarron River which is only a half-mile away.  Take that word "river" with a large grain of salt.  It rarely has water in it.  The area is part of the Cimarron National Grassland and open to the public.  They have a little tourist site at Middle Spring.

There's also a unique windmill near there.  It has a 20-foot fan and powers an oil well!  Even Big Oil is getting into the act!

Classic western "river" then?

I've driven through Texas a few times recently, and the nodding donkeys and windmills happily coexist. Some pretty huge wind farms through there.

[Doug1029]

1 hour ago, Socks Junior said:

Classic western "river" then?

I've driven through Texas a few times recently, and the nodding donkeys and windmills happily coexist. Some pretty huge wind farms through there.

Classic.  In fact, the Cimarron is one of those "classic" western rivers.  I walked right across it without realizing I'd crossed.  Found some igneous rocks gravel.  Hard to believe there are pieces that big so far out on the plains.  The Cimarron National Grassland is the beginning of permanent water in the Cimarron.  Up where I was and west, it is usually dry.  It's a local event when water manages to run all the way across the grassland.

Lots and lots and lots of grassed-over sand dunes.  Wouldn't take much to get them moving again.  A hot fire before greenup is complete would do it.

Doug

[Derek Willis]

12 hours ago, Socks Junior said:

I've driven through Texas a few times recently, and the nodding donkeys and windmills happily coexist. Some pretty huge wind farms through there.

A few years back I saw a movie called There Will Be Blood which was about the early days of the oil industry in California. There were risk taking mavericks, gushers, well-top explosions, double-dealings, and murder. I doubt such drama could be applied to a movie about windmills!

[lost_shaman]

20 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

You haven't answered my question.  How does desertification in the Sahara cause a change in snowfall in Greenland?

Enough of the rants.  Read what I write, for once.

No I certainly did not answer your question because I asked you to SHOW that one CAUSED the other. You either cannot SHOW that to be true or ignored my request to SHOW that to be true. 

So why would I answer a fallacious question? Or on the other hand why would I answer a question of yours if you are unwilling to answer my request to SHOW causation? 

Your insult is unbecoming and unnecessary Doug. You've thrown a few of those around lately and I'm loosing respect for you over these which is really unfortunate.

Edited December 13, 2017 by lost_shaman

[lost_shaman]

20 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

2017 is on track to be the second hottest year on record (so far).

You mean on PAPER after the half dozen or so temperature adjustments to the actual temperature records in the last 10 years where EVERY SINGLE ADJUSTMENT makes past years look colder and recent years look hotter? 

Ha! This is the true "Climate Constant" you guys are looking for. i.e. Constant confirmation bias, from the "but these adjustments are necessary" Department!

[Derek Willis]

1 hour ago, lost_shaman said:

You mean on PAPER after the half dozen or so temperature adjustments to the actual temperature records in the last 10 years where EVERY SINGLE ADJUSTMENT makes past years look colder and recent years look hotter?

Perhaps you - and also Doug - could explain what these adjustments are all about. I keep seeing phrases like "relative to the 1951 to 1980 mean". Why can't a mean of annual absolute temperatures be used? For instance, the global mean temperature in 1940 was x degrees and the global mean temperature in 2017 was y degrees. Why do they have to be relative to something?

Edited December 13, 2017 by Derek Willis

[lost_shaman]

2 hours ago, Derek Willis said:

Perhaps you - and also Doug - could explain what these adjustments are all about.

To be honest no-one knows what these adjustments are about. NASA GISS keeps making them (always resulting in recent years appearing hotter) about every two years using unpublished algorithms so no-one knows what exactly is going on or can reproduce the same results. We simply get the yearly NASA press release that this year is 1st, 2nd, or 3rd hottest year EVHA!!!