Answer to the global warming skeptics/denier

[Tristam]

Looked up Kuronosans question, he is correct, heat further from the surface of the earth will radiate away faster.

[Tristam]

I will use a summer shower as a simple example. Water condenses, forms droplets, and rain falls. This causes a heating in this area, making the ambient temperature slightly higher. This causes the air to no longer be saturated and the rain stops. This is a simplified summer off/on shower most can relate to.

(This is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY simplified and parts are wrong in a sense of how a meteorologist thinks, But, it gets the jist across.)

Honest question for you then, if condensation/evaporation overall is 1-1 for heat transfer, and these cycles generate weather/wind, how does wind factor into the heat equation. Does it even?

[kuronosan]

Okay, so as I have this figured:

1) Water condenses in the atmosphere and becomes liquid, liberating heat as it falls and gaining heat as it reaches the surface.

2) This heat, combined with heat energy from solar radiation, results in the evaporation of water as the heat rises and reaches the atmosphere.

3) This effect cools the ground below as the cold air from the stratosphere or wherever begins to fall down.

4) The result of the vapor reaching the upper atmosphere is dissipation of heat and recondensation of the water.

5) GOTO 1

So I can see how heat can be carried by the rain droplets and result in the repetition of the water cycle. How exactly does the rain generate heat rather than dissipate heat? I'm not a meteorologist or a physicist but I am a medical scientist and if vaporizing didn't release heat energy and dissipate then your body wouldn't cool after you sweat (which is the primary purpose of sweat - to release excess heat energy). Rather, the sweat would perpetually cause you to gain heat?

Help me understand this here. I know the heat energy doesn't magically vanish but it does transfer somewhere. I didn't fail thermodynamics, you know.

[Chun Liroy]

What max was getting at is the surface temperature gets to say 90 degrees C, once 100 calories have been added to the water, the water evaporates. The water vapor carries the heat that was once at the surface of the water with it, giving the surface a cooling effect.... I can't think of any decent analogies atm.

Edit: kinda thought of one. Think of the salt in seawater. When water evaporates it leaves the salt behind, so in turn the ocean becomes saltier. It's just vice versa with heat. It takes the heat with it rather than leave it behind. At least this is what I believe Max was trying to get at.

[lilfoo]

Honest question for you then, if condensation/evaporation overall is 1-1 for heat transfer, and these cycles generate weather/wind, how does wind factor into the heat equation. Does it even?

In the micro scale it dose not factor in. In that scale we generally follow the parcel which means where it is and where it is going dose not really matter.

In the synoptic scale wind plays a large role in the form of advection. but this is diving into quasigeostrophic theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostrophic_wind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradient_wind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_wind

This is more of how wind is affecting weather and predictions then just the heat equation.

TL;DR: in the large scale we ignore most of the heat equation because its effects are minuscule in comparison to the much larger forces at work in the atmosphere.

[lilfoo]

So I can see how heat can be carried by the rain droplets and result in the repetition of the water cycle. How exactly does the rain generate heat rather than dissipate heat? I'm not a meteorologist or a physicist but I am a medical scientist and if vaporizing didn't release heat energy and dissipate then your body wouldn't cool after you sweat (which is the primary purpose of sweat - to release excess heat energy). Rather, the sweat would perpetually cause you to gain heat?

Help me understand this here. I know the heat energy doesn't magically vanish but it does transfer somewhere. I didn't fail thermodynamics, you know.

Your body exerts a liquid on the surface of your skin. If the air is not saturated (basically why high Relative humidity values feel like hell in comparison to low @ same temp) the water would rather evaporate then stay a liquid. In order for this phase change to occur heat is needed. Your body is generally a good source of heat in comparison to the air around it (why hot saturated air is literally hell). So the water takes the heat from your body cooling you by the amount of heat transferred during the phase change.

[Tristam]

Okay, so as I have this figured:

1) Water condenses in the atmosphere and becomes liquid, liberating heat as it falls and gaining heat as it reaches the surface.

2) This heat, combined with heat energy from solar radiation, results in the evaporation of water as the heat rises and reaches the atmosphere.

3) This effect cools the ground below as the cold air from the stratosphere or wherever begins to fall down.

4) The result of the vapor reaching the upper atmosphere is dissipation of heat and recondensation of the water.

5) GOTO 1

So I can see how heat can be carried by the rain droplets and result in the repetition of the water cycle. How exactly does the rain generate heat rather than dissipate heat? I'm not a meteorologist or a physicist but I am a medical scientist and if vaporizing didn't release heat energy and dissipate then your body wouldn't cool after you sweat (which is the primary purpose of sweat - to release excess heat energy). Rather, the sweat would perpetually cause you to gain heat?

Help me understand this here. I know the heat energy doesn't magically vanish but it does transfer somewhere. I didn't fail thermodynamics, you know.

I would try to simplify it like this

1) Water condenses, liberating heat

2) Rain falls carrying with it CO2 dissolved as carbonate, no heat transfer

3) Water is on ground

4) Water vaporizes, absorbing the exact amount of heat as in 1

5) Repeat

But between points 2 and 4, there is less IR shielding, and there is a net flux of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, which is how I drew my conclusion with respect to overall temperature.

[Tristam]

Your body exerts a liquid on the surface of your skin. If the air is not saturated (basically why high Relative humidity values feel like hell in comparison to low @ same temp) the water would rather evaporate then stay a liquid. In order for this phase change to occur heat is needed. Your body is generally a good source of heat in comparison to the air around it (why hot saturated air is literally hell). So the water takes the heat from your body cooling you by the amount of heat transferred during the phase change.

Also, the vapor -> liquid phase transition doesn't happen in our bodies, as in the case of weather/climate. Since water is always in liquid form inside us, we don't overheat and only feel the effects of vapor cooling.

[Chun Liroy]

And the salt in sweat lowers the specific heat

[Tristam]

TL;DR: in the large scale we ignore most of the heat equation because its effects are minuscule in comparison to the much larger forces at work in the atmosphere.

That helps, thanks. Especially to help distinguish weather vs. climate in these sorts of discussions.

[Max™]

So there's a few falsified models. Here's an excercise for you. Propose an alternative model. We can discuss that. Otherwise all you're doing is saying "nuh uh", which is just an argument from personal incredulity. The null hypothesis was nullified by invalidating other naturally occurring phenomena.

Spoiler: show

Propose an alternative model, okey dokey, the amount of CO2 available has been reduced at this point in the Earths history, the planet is far enough away from the sun, and tilted properly to keep cycling energy from the equator to the poles. The variation of the orbit around the sun, and the varying position of the sun related to the disc of the milky way induce a cyclical minimum/maximum effect on solar activity, as does the tidal effects induced on the sun by Jupiter/Saturn/the outer planets, mostly Jupiter of course.

These changes to the energy budget are met with resistance due to climate inertia, as the earth absorbs heat energy, it is transferred around due to the ocean currents, the winds, and the activities of life.

As the earth warms up it reaches a point where the processes that have been exacerbating the heating can no longer hold more energy, when these maximums coincide with the peaks from the various cyclical influences from the solar system, you get periods of intense warming, and then a tipping point is reached where the energy radiated/locked up exceeds that coming into the system, and as the energy from the sun tends back towards a minimum, the planet slides into a cooling period, releasing the heat it stored up. When the external factors fall out of their weaker synched state, you get brief warm spells, every 100k years or so you get a tipping point followed by a weak external influence cycle, and you slide into an ice age, with the dramatic albedo changes taking over until the system reaches a new semi-stable state. The processes which were at work to warm the planet prior to this are still in effect, but they've been overwhelmed by the cooling cycle until the sun heads back into a more active period/the external factors tip back in favor of warming. All the energy built up in the system, all the inertia of those warming effects kicks in rapidly, and you get a burst of several thousand years of intense warming feeding on that stored potential, like a climate flywheel, when it begins to spin down, it fluctuates until the sun dips back into a less active cycle, and the process tips back into an ice age.

Right now we're spinning the flywheel back up a bit, but the onset of another ice age should still be several thousand years away, so the system still holds significant heating potential with or without our actions.

Now, all that is basically a regurgitated version of the milankovitch/ice age models you can find in various places, including the IPCC papers:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...n/faq-6-1.html, nothing really new there, other than the fairly recent observations that Jupiter induces tidal effects on the Sun which could explain the roughly 11 year cycle.


Apparently, something happened to put a dampening effect on the warming processes several hundred years ago, causing the little ice age, corresponding well with the Maunder Minimum.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ot_Numbers.png

As the solar activity began to increase, the built up inertia in the climate system sprung back, causing a dramatic burst of warming, which coincided with the development of several key technologies. Previous warming cycles did not have the technological level available to capitalize on the longer growing seasons in the same way, nor the population density to trigger such explosive productivity increases as the late 1700's, early 1800's did.

I wonder why the assumption is that the industrial revolution triggered the warming, when it makes just as much sense that the warming could have triggered the industrial revolution.

And this is funny:

"If you're arguing that the since model agrees with observation which means the model is right because it agrees with observations, rather than because no other model agrees with observations, you're missing the point of science, dude."

-Said the non-scientist to the postdoc

A model is more valid if it fits the data and is supported by what we know about natural laws, it is less valid if it does not fit the data. If no other model agrees with the data, the model that fits the data is the best model available. If you don't understand this, you're even more of a crackpot than I thought. I, for instance, use kinetic models to explain some of my data. If the model fits the data better, I am happier, and so are the reviewers. If the model does not fit the data, then either my understanding of the process is wrong, or the data is bad, and I work very hard to make sure my data is good. How does this not make sense to you?

Also, data collected in bad faith, or presented incorrectly is meaningless. For instance the y-axis on that graph wasn't even labeled lol. It could have been a graph of ducks in Peru over time. The website you pulled from has a bad habit of not presenting data faithfully in order to cast doubt on the science. That is why I distrust that source, their conclusions are usually falsifiable lol. If you made the error faithfully, then I apologize, even if you did call me a cunt you big meanie Q.Q

Now I don't really care what your actual stance is. I care about your arguments, which are very denialist from this and other threads. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.

Anyhoo, I know I'm super cuntish, but I'd rather be a cunt than a crackpot.

I gotta get back to the rest of this later, as the comp is needed.

[Tristam]

okaaaay, possibly some good stuff there although not clearly stated. milankovitch theory by itself doesn't account for current warming. You're also doing lots and lots of speculation. "Sprung back" is not a quantitative statement. How does your model predict current warming exactly?

Milankovitch based inertia is.....interesting..... so a prediction of your model is that rapid warming events should occur with some cyclic frequency but out of phase with Milankovitch cycles right? A test of this would show up in Fourier analysis no? I haven't read anything of it. Heating potential doesn't really matter with respect to the current debate. The earth holds plenty more "heating potential" obviously, we don't want it to realize that potential of course.

Also, you can't only use sunspot cycles alone as proxy for energy recieved by earth from the sun. While sunspot number is a partial proxy for total irradiance, it's not a terribly reliable measurement, satellite measurements contradict that assumption. Actually, solar irradiance hasn't varied much since 1978, when satellite observations began. The best reconstructions suggest that it hasn't changed since the 40s. Furthermore, the maunder minimum was also a period of high volcanic activity, contributing to cooling. Prior to that, it's possible that sunspot activity was normal, further throwing doubt on your model.

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/raimund/...Nature2005.pdf

The idea that the industrial revolution started AGW isn't assumed, since it's based on the known fact that CO2 causes warming.

So part 2 now: How do we test your model, and how is it differentiable than AGW. Under what circumstances would it make better predictions of future climate?

edit: Am I understanding this right, you're proposing solar activity increased in the 1700s, yet the temperature record didn't start to show it until the industrial revolution due to........inertia? And then all of a sudden climate sensitivity to solar forcing suddenly changed....?? So what caused the change in forcing? What is the feedback loop that has sprung? Are you suggesting that industrial revolution effects are simply correlation, despite the known properties of IR absorptive properties of greenhouse gases? These are honest questions, and I'm actually trying to be polite, but your model proposes more questions than it answers. Heat isn't stored as inertia, it's stored as energy in the form of temperature. If the energy balance changed in the 1700s, where did that energy go?

edit x2: Also, I think if solar irradiance prior to the maunder minimum was as high as it is afterwards for a sufficiently long period of time, that would invalidate your model no? Because milankovitch cycles are so much longer right? Otherwise you would have to show why in this period of the Milankovitch cycle inertia would have built up and been released just after the Maunder minimum, which would have had to have been the steady state prior, despite the fact that Milankovitch theory predicts cooling for the next few thousand years? I'm having real trouble with this. Your assumption seems to be that exit from the maunder minimum was anomalous, and coincident with a buildup of milankovitch based inertia?

[Max™]

Milankovitch based inertia is.....interesting..... so a prediction of your model is that rapid warming events should occur with some cyclic frequency but out of phase with Milankovitch cycles right? A test of this would show up in Fourier analysis no? I haven't read anything of it. Heating potential doesn't really matter with respect to the current debate. The earth holds plenty more "heating potential" obviously, we don't want it to realize that potential of course.

There should be small warming spikes as the climate seeks thermal equilibrium, including the changes in the atmospheric gas concentrations, as CO2 gets pulled out of the system, it reaches a point of saturation, and the system tips over a bit. When those come into phase with the solar activity, you get warm periods, when the Milankovitch cycles come into phase with those warm periods, you get dramatic interglacials, but the period of the stronger factors is longer than the weaker ones, giving a slide towards an ice age as they fall out of sync.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/gl...aleo_fig13.jpg

The idea that the industrial revolution started AGW isn't assumed, since it's based on the known fact that CO2 causes warming.

So part 2 now: How do we test your model, and how is it differentiable than AGW. Under what circumstances would it make better predictions of future climate?

edit: Am I understanding this right, you're proposing solar activity increased in the 1700s, yet the temperature record didn't start to show it until the industrial revolution due to........inertia? And then all of a sudden climate sensitivity to solar forcing suddenly changed....?? So what caused the change in forcing? What is the feedback loop that has sprung? Are you suggesting that industrial revolution effects are simply correlation, despite the known properties of IR absorptive properties of greenhouse gases? These are honest questions, and I'm actually trying to be polite, but your model proposes more questions than it answers. Heat isn't stored as inertia, it's stored as energy in the form of temperature. If the energy balance changed in the 1700s, where did that energy go?

I mean changing the amount of energy in a system as complex and large as this one has something similar to the concept of inertia, didn't state that clearly.

The processes which were in effect during the warm period of 1000~1400ish AD were still active, but another effect (probably related to the reduced sunspot activity, as it is unlikely that the cooling had nothing in common with such a dramatic change in solar behavior) began to counteract it. Just because those processes were hindered doesn't mean they disappeared, and when the cause of the little ice age weakened sufficiently, the warming factors took over rather dramatically.

Normally the springback effect leaving an ice age starts at a lower global temperature, with significant glaciation involved. The melting of ice doesn't require as much energy as evaporation, and I would imagine the change in the energy budget was made all the more dramatic from having more energy stored in the oceans as warmed water rather than being stored in glaciers.

edit x2: Also, I think if solar irradiance prior to the maunder minimum was as high as it is afterwards for a sufficiently long period of time, that would invalidate your model no? Because milankovitch cycles are so much longer right? Otherwise you would have to show why in this period of the Milankovitch cycle inertia would have built up and been released just after the Maunder minimum, which would have had to have been the steady state prior, despite the fact that Milankovitch theory predicts cooling for the next few thousand years? I'm having real trouble with this. Your assumption seems to be that exit from the maunder minimum was anomalous, and coincident with a buildup of milankovitch based inertia?

No no, the entrance to the maunder period was anomalous, the climate should have been gradually cycling out of the interglacial warming, relaxing, and trending back into a cooling phase. Whatever triggered the little ice age dropped global temperatures dramatically, but the climate hadn't caught up properly, so instead of a smooth downturn, we got a sharp dip, which waned, and then a spike upwards as the system overcorrects.

The energy budget normally dips slowly, and the climate subsides fairly smoothly into a glacial period due to cooling factors taking over, in this case it had a sharp drop in the available energy, which wasn't accompanied by the normal cooling processes, causing a rather fortunate jerk in the system. Suddenly we went from long cold winters, to shorter, more temperate ones, longer growing periods, and all of the intellectual development up to that point put us in just the right position to capitalize on it with the industrial revolution, which contributed to the snap-back, perhaps even accelerated it, sure... but CO2 is not the main greenhouse gas, and CO2 levels tend to increase during warming cycles naturally.

We contributed to rising CO2, no doubt, but CO2 isn't the only thing that affects the climate, and the rebound out of the little ice age had already began by the early 1800's. Which leads one to wonder why the warming that was going on anyways would have stopped then and nicely passed the torch to us?

[Tristam]

Milankovitch theory predicts that even prior to the maunder minimum, the world was trending towards cooling. Also the MWP is only observed in parts of the northern hemisphere, it was not a global phenomenon, or at least the uncertainties do not suggest so. If there was a warming process, you need to state what it was, because it would be novel.

So what feedbacks triggered the overcorrection though? If not CO2, then what? You suggest that the forcings that produce the warming that stabilized the climate prior to the maunder minimum were still active but overwhelmed. In that case, the energy had to have been stored somewhere to result in an overcorrection. The formal possibility is the oceans, which would suggest that ocean temps should be cooling now, but they aren't. However, if the maunder minimum was caused by low sunspot activity (irradiance) or changes in albedo due to volcanic activity, then the warming process is invalidated but the energy isn't stored anywhere. It's just not reaching the earth in scenario 1, and reflected in scenario 2. So the energy couldn't have been stored in the oceans or biological cycles right?

Is there another possibility I'm overlooking?

[Tristam]

And no, CO2 is not the only thing that affects the climate, but it is the only known parameter that is currently changing over the time scales that explain the anomalous warming. It has quantifiable effects on the energy budget, so it's easy to make predictions. The errors associated with uncertainties in feedbacks are valid, but not insurmountable. The most valid criticism of the models is that the uncertainties diverge too much after 2100, at which point the current models fail to make meaningful predictions. HOWEVER, more data means better models, so as we collect more data and better data, our models will become more refiined.

Also, no models predict runaway scenarios, by virtue of the fact that they are not reliable past a certain point.

[Max™]

Milankovitch theory predicts that even prior to the maunder minimum, the world was trending towards cooling. Also the MWP is only observed in parts of the northern hemisphere, it was not a global phenomenon, or at least the uncertainties do not suggest so. If there was a warming process, you need to state what it was, because it would be novel.

I'm a little baffled by this, as it doesn't fit to me that the world was strictly trending towards an ice age from what I've seen.

Nor does it make sense to me to accept that the temperature was quite as stable as is implied by graphs like this:

Spoiler: show

http://www.realclimate.org/HockeySti...l_6623cbd6.png

It's totally cool though to compare an observed temperature peak with an averaged reconstruction obtained through proxies.

So what feedbacks triggered the overcorrection t
hough? If not CO2, then what? You suggest that the forcings that produce the warming that stabilized the climate prior to the maunder minimum were still active but overwhelmed.

I wasn't saying the climate was stabilized, I was saying it was actively warming. I don't consider any model which claims the temperature has been stable over the last 1000 years prior to the industrial revolution to be very reasonable.

Especially given the dramatic change of heart the IPCC had from the 1990 graphs:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ann-moberg.png

Suddenly they went to this?:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Comparison.png

Given the NAS findings that the Mann charts aren't as plausible pre-1600's, call me skeptical that it has been just cooling until the industrial revolution.

Sure, relative to the holocene maximum, but there have still been significant up, and downturns.

In that case, the energy had to have been stored somewhere to result in an overcorrection. The formal possibility is the oceans, which would suggest that ocean temps should be cooling now, but they aren't.
However, if the maunder minimum was caused by low sunspot activity (irradiance) or changes in albedo due to volcanic activity, then the warming process is invalidated but the energy isn't stored anywhere. It's just not reaching the earth in scenario 1, and reflected in scenario 2. So the energy couldn't have been stored in the oceans or biological cycles right?
Is there another possibility I'm overlooking?

The processes involved in warming, changes in atmospheric concentration, oceanic currents, weather patterns, the general albedo, the water cycle, all of those should have still been running in "interglacial mode" when the energy input dropped off, shouldn't they?

There would have been a winding down as the system tried to transfer the energy stored up during the previous warming periods, while the climate wasn't receiving enough energy to promote this exchange. This would fit the blips during the LIA, as it bled off some of that "climate inertia" like a J-braking diesel, brrn... brrn... brrn..., when the incoming energy from the sun started to peak again, the warming processes kicked in full force, leading to the fairly rapid increases over the last couple centuries. We then stoked this process by altering the atmospheric gas contentrations fairly dramatically, of course.


Don't get me wrong, we're obviously having an effect, but I don't see justification to claim we're the sole cause of such a drastic change in a system with so much potential energy storage as the global climate.

[BerenTebogo]

"As promised, here are the first results from my little backyard experiment to investigate the role of downwelling infrared (IR) sky radiation on air temperature."

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/07/...r-temperature/

Didn't do more than scan because honestly, I don't care.

[Tristam]

Milankovitch theory does predict global cooling at this time, but very very slowly. It's observed in the "averaged-averages" of the reconstructions you showed, but the statistical significance is low because the errors associated with the measurements are high and it's such a slow process. Either way, you can't pick and choose parts of milankovitch theory you want for your model.

You'll also notice that while individual reconstructions of past climate do show swings, none of them are of the magnitude nor duration currently observed. Stability is a relative term, and not model dependent, just my subjective interpretation of all the data. The climate of the past 2000 years before the IR was certainly more stable than it is now. I think you're focusing too much on the errors in the measurements. The errors drop substantially after 1600 because the reconstructions are better and theres more data. That does not neccessarily mean the climate was more stable, just that we have better approximations of what was actually happening.

The difference between graph #s 2 and 3 is easily explained by the fact that two decades passed lol! Science moves fast. People did more reconstructions, more experiments, and there are more direct temperature measurements. Better data = better graphs and better models. I don't know what data set is referred to by the orange line though, it seems curious since it doesn't show up in any of the other graphs and I'm assuming it's an independent reconstruction? Either way, no labels anywhere, tough to tell what I'm looking at. Even if we assume that the orange line shows a 1.5 degree temperature swing over 400 years, that's not in any of the more modern graphs, and it also doesn't report the uncertainties associated with whatever measurement.

Also, the mann charts from a particular dataset were assumed to be invalid by McIntyre, but when Mann published more datasets removing the tree ring data Mcintyre was critical of, there was no significant change in the prior reconstructions. Even so, he's obviously not the only source of the reconstructions, just look at the graphs.


"The processes involved in warming, changes in atmospheric concentration, oceanic currents, weather patterns, the general albedo, the water cycle, all of those should have still been running in "interglacial mode" when the energy input dropped off, shouldn't they?"

Ok, if they were still running and contributing to buffering the energy budget. Where did the energy go? It is stored as heat somewhere according to your model, yet isn't in the temperature record. If it was stored in the oceans it could only be stored as thermal motion, heat. If it were in the atmosphere it would contribute to thermal motion, heat. Also if there were no change in the processes already running, then they should not overcorrect. They should contribute just as much energy to the equation as they did before. Which is supported by the fact that once sunspot activity/volcanic activity returned to normal, so did the average temp. IF something in your processes did change, you need to be more specific. What direction was the change in albedo and when? Does it agree with any prior reconstructions of ice sheet levels? What are the associated changes in the atmosphere? And why did these changes take so long to become responsive to CO2?

Finally how is it possible to distinguish your model from AGW? What would you expect differently in the data? What would you expect the future to hold in your model vs. AGW?

[Max™]

Ok, if they were still running and contributing to buffering the energy budget. Where did the energy go? It is stored as heat somewhere according to your model, yet isn't in the temperature record. If it was stored in the oceans it could only be stored as thermal motion, heat. If it were in the atmosphere it would contribute to thermal motion, heat. Also if there were no change in the processes already running, then they should not overcorrect.

Looking at the past interglacials over the last 400k years, we're experiencing something similar to the rapid fluctuations prior to every major glaciation cycle, from what I can tell.

The energy would begin to dissipate, and normally would produce a warming effect during a typical period of solar activity, in such an extreme dip, it merely slowed the cooling, and caused it to hiccup now and then.

They should contribute just as much energy to the equation as they did before. Which is supported by the fact that once sunspot activity/volcanic activity returned to normal, so did the average temp. IF something in your processes did change, you need to be more specific. What direction was the change in albedo and when? Does it agree with any prior reconstructions of ice sheet levels? What are the associated changes in the atmosphere? And why did these changes take so long to become responsive to CO2?

They do, but that energy was going into fighting the loss of energy into space, when the activity kicked up again, it fed energy back beyond the environments storage ability, and produced a surplus of warming after re-saturation.

Normally the climate bleeds off stored up heat energy during the long interglacials, and it isn't until it bottoms out that you get a rebound. In this case the rebound started well before draining those stores, leading to an accelerated rise in temperatures.

The changes release CO2 which feeds back into the cycles, as it cools the CO2 has less infrared radiation to trap, and becomes rapidly less effective. As it works on a more logarithmic scale, in a situation where the CO2 concentrations become disconnected from the normal temperature variations, it initiates rapid feedback effects, stacking the deck in favor of a warm period, so to speak.

Human activities have been taking these processes already in effect and giving them more to work with, providing the appearance that we're solely responsible.

I'm saying that if we hadn't contributed any CO2 at all, it would only be 0.1 or 0.2 c cooler than it is now.

Finally how is it possible to distinguish your model from AGW? What would you expect differently in the data? What would you expect the future to hold in your model vs. AGW?

I would expect the amount of warming due to CO2 to peak rapidly as it does not have an unlimited incoming energy budget to work with. I would expect that rather than seeing a positive feedback effect from CO2 > Water Vapor taking the primary role, we will see the ability of the water cycle to absorb heat reach a maximum. Upon saturating the atmosphere fully, we should see an increase in high altitude cloudiness, which will lead to a general downturn in the radiation reaching the surface layers of the atmosphere.

The higher atmosphere condensation/freezing would dump energy into space rapidly, while warming the climate little compared to the effect of precipitation in the lower altitudes. The reduction of incoming energy should alter the ocean currents/weather patterns enough to give the water vapor in the atmosphere a more favourable route to shed it's heat energy by snowing out over the poles, increasing the albedo enough to bring about the early onset of at least a minor glaciation.


Every time the climate has reached a peak level of CO2, it fluctuates briefly, then tips back into a glaciation cycle, the runaway warming hypothesis doesn't make sense when looking at the paleoclimate variations in atmospheric concentrations, nor does it seem reasonable given the climate patterns over the last 400,000 years, to me.

[Tristam]

You made projections from on a starting assumption that's based on eyeballing the paleoclimate record from ice core data?

Let me tell you something about human error, we pick out trends that are most appealing to our intuitive sense of how a process works, not based on how it actually does. I'm guilty of it too, which is why I use computers to help select relevant data and remove unacceptable data. Or I use statistical methods alone in determining what is significant, and what is noise. You absolutely must do that, which is why current warming is called "anomalous" it's highly (95%) unlikely that this warming is natural.

So you think stored energy, not stored as heat, but released as heat, went into fighting loss of incoming radiation? I dont know of any method the earth uses to store energy for long periods of time not as heat, I mean I guess life could store energy not as heat? Even the oceans store energy as heat. In any event, it also shouldn't rebound dramatically the way it is today, because the stored energy would only be enough to balance the energy budget to where it was before the maunder minimum, not enough to trigger positive feedback loops that weren't triggered before. You're proposing either an unknown forcing, or an unknown source of energy.

For option one, if you're proposing that a opposite direction feedback loop exists that was rapidly triggered by cooling, and was more powerful than the forcings that caused it, regardless of the balance of the energy budget, that flies right in the face of the theory of ice ages, especially during an interglacial. Did ice melt due to some unknown forcing that only happened once, because it got cooler? This just doesn't make sense atall. If these forcings were sensitive enough to be triggered like this, then why the delay before rapid warming? For option 2, maybe theoretical physicists can get away with proposing dark energy and not explaining it, but you can't do that with climate. Maybe this is the source of our disagreements, i don't think your thought process is suited to explaining climate.

The idea that if we didn't contribute any CO2 the earth would be only a little bit cooler just isn't supported by any data at all. You cannot invent a forcing and not say what it is. Otherwise you're just guessing, not forming a hypothesis based on natural laws. Your mysterious climate inertial energy phenomenon either doesn't exist, or you're not stating what it is.

Ironically, you're not treating clouds right either. Clouds trap IR radiation as well as reflect it, so your assumption doesn't hold water (haha, get it?).

Also, your second to last paragraph seems to be taken from a model I forgot to disqualify earlier, the idea that positive feedbacks trigger more pronounced negative feedbacks. It's a variation of the self regulating climate model, but it's very old and already experimentally falsified, and I'm too exhausted with this discussion to look up exactly which experiments disrupted that model. (edit: the gist of the message was that when the energy budget changes, climate always changes in the same direction by positive feedbacks until it is stabilized by negative forcings, but the negative forcings never change the energy budget such that the net energy budget goes in the opposite direction. For instance, we don't leave interglacials until the energy budget changes in the opposite direction due to changes in solar irradiance. That's probably not the best explanation, but I'm tired of looking through papers). So what you're calling a rebound effect in paleoclimate data could be you eyeball fitting statistical noise in the record either due to experimental error (all experiments have errors associated with them) or just noise in the climate system (weather, snow, wind, sunspot cycles, el nino, continental drift etc.)

So while your precipitation is happening, the oceans are still warming, and will stay warm for a very long time because like you said earlier, they're very large and it takes a long time for them to cool partially because antarctica doesn't allow mixing of the oceans to a certain degree. So by the time that happens, arctic ice is gone, snow cannot build, and you're relying entirely on antarctica, which will be largely ice-less by that time and some time into the future. This all ignores other positive feedbacks completely.

I think runaway hypotheses make perfect sense because of the paleoclimate data. Milankovitch theory demonstrates that it doesn't take a large change in the energy budget to cause ice ages/interglacials because of positive feedbacks in either direction. Changes in the energy budget are amplified by feedbacks, this is known based on historical records, that has to factor into any model that claims to be based on knowledge of what happened in the past. You can suggest that the climate is less sensitive to CO2 than we think, but that ignores actual feedback loops that are known to exist. And given the weight of the evidence, I don't think it's valid to do that, unless the unknown forcing is explicitly stated in a simple form. Another thing is that we're not stopping putting CO2 into the atmosphere, so we're not giving the climate a chance to stabilize atall.

I'm all over the place because there are so many unknowns you're proposing, and so little data to work with, that this is really tiresome and I just don't want to edit this post.