Question about global warming

[Bernie Gunther]

:d

 

[david dissadent]

The UN-IPCC AR4 SPM has been obliged to more than halve its high-end estimate of sea level rise by 2100 from 3 feet to a mere 17 inches.

The SPM scenario B mid range estimate is 0.20 – 0.43m (~8 to 17 inches). See Table SPM-2..

Sorry but Mr Bigfish you dont seem to be answering my questions, but do you stand by the first statement?

 

[bigfish]

Sorry but Mr Bigfish you dont seem to be answering my questions, but do you stand by the first statement?

Dear david

You appear to be somewhat confused. Here are 3 extracts from recent newspaper reports bearing out what I said.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC
summary released last Friday inflates the language of doom even as
it deflates its predictions of temperature and sea level increases from previousreports.

The IPCC Climate Change 2007 report predicts world temperatures will
possibly rise 1.8C to 4C (3.25 to 7.2F) from 1990 levels to the year
2100 and that sea levels might rise 28 to 43 cm (11 to 17 inches).

Just six years ago, however, the picture looked much bleaker.

The 2001 IPCC report predicted that from 1990 to 2100 temperatures would
rise 1.4C to 5.8C causing sea levels to rise by .09 to .88 metres (3.5
to 34.6 inches or 9 to 88 cm).

In other words, in just six years, predictions about temperature
increases have plummeted by one-third and predictions about sea-level
increases at the high end have been cut in half!

http://calgarysun.canoe.ca/NewsStand/News/Columnists/Corbella_Licia/2007/02/07/3548993-sun.html

Since 1850, global temperatures have increased almost 1 degree Celsius.
Sea level has risen about seven inches, though the connection is
unclear. So far, global warming has been a change, not a calamity. The
IPCC projects wide ranges for the next century: temperature increases
from 1.1 degrees Celsius to 6.4 degrees; sea level rises from seven
inches to almost two feet. People might easily adapt; or there might be
costly disruptions (say, frequent flooding of coastal cities resulting
from melting polar ice caps).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601526.html


Unsurprisingly, the report will please neither a Humeian skeptic nor a
rabid apocalyptic. Indeed, even before it appeared, environmentalists
were incensed that predictions for the rise in sea levels this century
have been lowered to between 28 and 43 cm (11 to 17 inches). They want
the polar bears to be drowning now!

Philip Stott The Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2007

I hope this helps.

Best wishes, bf

 

[david dissadent]

UN-IPCC AR4 SPM has been obliged to more than halve its high-end estimate of sea level rise by 2100 from 3 feet to a mere 17 inches.

The SPM scenario B mid range estimate is 0.20 – 0.43m (~8 to 17 inches). See Table SPM-2..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_02_07_climatereport.pdf

So sir is the high end estimate 17 inches?

The IPCC Climate Change 2007 report predicts world temperatures will
possibly rise 1.8C to 4C (3.25 to 7.2F) from 1990 levels to the year
2100 and that sea levels might rise 28 to 43 cm (11 to 17 inches).

Just six years ago, however, the picture looked much bleaker.

The 2001 IPCC report predicted that from 1990 to 2100 temperatures would
rise 1.4C to 5.8C causing sea levels to rise by .09 to .88 metres (3.5
to 34.6 inches or 9 to 88 cm).

Your quote is deliberately misleading it compaires the highest estimate with the median estimate in the second. Will you with draw the numbers and replace them with either two high end comparisons or two median comparisons and not an invalid mixing of them?
3rd summary
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/vol4/english/pdf/spm.pdf
4th summary
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_02_07_climatereport.pdf

 

[Jonti]

... Einstein's theories are being increasingly attacked, and not only by Novak. But then science is like that.

Sure is.

But science seems to survive the crackpots.

 

[david dissadent]

OT but warmest January on record.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070217/sc_afp/usweatherclimate
No shocks here

 

[david dissadent]

The Guardian is reporting that the IPCC will give an assesment of 50/50 on the likelyhood that there will be substantial melt of the grounded ice sheets in the Antartic and Greenland. But they are being long term in there assesment giving it centuaries. The collapse of Larsen B however may indicate that it could happen quicker. But not really an in our life time type thing.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2016243,00.html

 

[free spirit]

Bigfish, to answer your very misleading question...

Al Gore...
"Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide."

IPCC...
"Model-based range excluding future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow"

pretty fucking obvious difference in the assumptions behind the 2 statements that leads to the different conclusions - the IPCC is being conservative and giving predictions based on the ice sheets remaining pretty much intact, Al Gore's going on the recent evidence that ice sheets and glaciers actually melt much faster than previously thought, and stating what would happen if these major ice sheets melt.

next?

 

[bigfish]

Predicting Fate of Glaciers Proves Slippery Task

By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
15 February 2007

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declined to extrapolate the recent accelerated loss of glacial ice far into the future (ScienceNOW, 2 February). Too poorly understood, the IPCC authors said. Overly cautious, some scientists responded in very public complaints (Science, 9 February, p. 754). The accelerated ice loss--apparently driven by global warming--could raise sea level much faster than the IPCC was predicting, they said. Yet almost immediately, new findings have emerged to support the IPCC's conservative stance.

In a surprise development, glaciologists reported online last week in Science (10.1126/science.1138478) that two major outlet glaciers draining the Greenland ice sheet--Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim--did a lively two-step in the first part of the decade. By gauging the elevation and flow speed of the glaciers using satellite data, Ian Howat of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle and his colleagues found that Kangerdlugssuaq sped up abruptly in 2005, no doubt accelerating sea level rise just a bit. But then it fell back to near its earlier flow speed by the next year. Helheim gradually accelerated over several years, also sped up sharply in 2005, and then slowed abruptly to its original flow speed. Apparently, these glaciers were temporarily responding to the loss of some restraining ice at their lower ends, much as a river's flow would temporarily increase with the lowering of a dam.

Helen Fricker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and her colleagues report another glaciological surprise in a paper published online today in Science. Fricker also presented the study this morning at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW) in San Francisco, California. Using a new satellite-based laser technique, the team discovered an unexpectedly active network of linked lakes beneath two ice streams--Whillans and Mercer--draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Researchers knew of pools of meltwater at the base of Antarctic ice, but Fricker and her colleagues recorded the rising and falling of the surface by up to 9 meters over 14 patches of ice, the largest three spanning 120 to 500 square kilometers. Water that could lubricate the base of the ice and perhaps accelerate its flow was seeping from one subglacial lake to another in a matter of months, and in one case escaping to the sea. "We didn't know as much about the Antarctic ice sheet as we thought we did," says Fricker.

Glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in State College agrees. "Lots of people were saying we [IPCC authors] should extrapolate into the future," he says, but "we dug our heels in at the IPCC and said we don't know enough to give an answer." Researchers will have to understand how and why glacier speeds can vary so much, he adds, before they can trust their models to forecast the fate of the ice sheets, much less sea level.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/215/2

 

[bigfish]

Antarctic Temperatures Disagree with Climate Model Predictions

A new report on climate over the world’s southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.

This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth’s climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.

It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.

David Bromwich, professor of geography and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco.

“It’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now,” he said. “Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It’s very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth.”

http://www.physorg.com/news90782778.html

 

[david dissadent]

It’s very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth.”

.

 

[bigfish]

As shown in the graph I posted above, measurements taken by Altimeter Radar Satellite of the Eastern Antarctic ice shield, indicate that its mass has been increasing by about 45 billion tons per year since 1992. This increase in mass is due to increased precipitation caused by warmer air temperatures. The ice sheets cannot attain great thickness or distance over open ocean before breaking up.

http://www.physorg.com/news4180.html


Here is a summary of recent peer reviewed scientific papers addressing some of the more common claims made by the alarmist clergy. These papers indicate that their claims are not true and that global warming is not a "problem":

1. Sea level rise has been slowing down, rather than increasing as commonly reported.
Ref: Larsen, C.E. and I. Clark. 2006. A search for scale in sea-level studies. Journal of Coastal Research, 22(4) ,788-800.

The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century, in comparison with the latter part.
Ref: Holgate, S. J. (2007), On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L01602, doi:10.1029/2006GL028492.

2. The recent reported warming of the oceans may be a reflection of faulty observations rather than a real warming.
Ref: Ivchenko, V. O., N. C. Wells, and D. L. Aleynik (2006), Anomaly of heat content in the northern Atlantic in the last 7 years: Is the ocean warming or cooling?, Geophysical Research Letters, 33.

3. The Arctic Ocean has been ice free before and had much reduced ice cover before 1200 AD compared to the present.
Ref.: Grinsted, A., Moore, J.C., Pohjola, V., Martma, T. and Isaksson, E. 2006. Svalbard summer melting, continentality, and sea ice extent from the Lomonosovfonna ice core. Journal of Geophysical Research, 111.

4. Greenland temperatures for 1991-2000 are the same as they were for 1851-1860.
Ref: Vinther, B.M., K.K. Andersen, P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, and J. Cappelen. 2006. Extending?Greenland temperature records into the late eighteenth century. Journal of Geophysical Research, 111.

5. Snow cover has increased in Eurasia between 1936 and 2004, whereas models predict a decline.
Ref: Groisman, P.Y., R.W. Knight, V.N. Razuvaev, O.N. Bulygina, and T.R. Karl, 2006. State of the ground: Climatology and changes during the past 69 years over northern Eurasia for a rarely used measure of snow cover and frozen land. Journal of Climate, 19, 4933-4955.

6. The amount of Antarctic ice is increasing.
Ref: Wingham, D.J., A. Shepherd, A. Muir, and G.J. Marshall. 2006: Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364, 1627-1635.

7. Glaciers have been retreating for 250 years or more and their retreat is not a new phenomena or evidence for anthropogenic global warming. It is evidence for coming out of the Little Ice Age or evidence for an upward swing in the 1500 year climate cycle.
Refs: Pederson, G.T., S.T. Gray, D,B. Fagre, and L.J. Graumlich. 2006. Long-Duration Drought Variability and Impacts on Ecosystem Services: A Case Study from Glacier National Park, Montana. Earth Interactions, 10, Paper No. 4.
Cullen, N. J., T. Malg, G. Kaser, K. Hussein, K. Steffen, and D. R. Hardy (2006), Kilimanjaro Glaciers: Recent areal extent from satellite data and new interpretation of observed 20th century retreat rates, Geophysical Research Letters, 33. (Recession occurred mostly early in the 20th century.)
Hong, Y.T., et al., 2000, Response of climate to solar forcing recorded in a 6000-year time-series of Chinese peat cellulose. The Holocene, 10, 1-7.
Conway et al., 1999, Past and future grounding-line retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Science, 286, 280-283.
Bond, G., Kromer, B., Beer, J., Muscheler, R., Evans, M.N., Showers, W., Hoffmann, S., Lotti-Bond, R., Hajdas, I. and Bonani, G. 2001. Persistent solar influence on North Atlantic climate during the Holocene. Science 294: 2130-2136.

 

[bigfish]

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

 

[laptop]

“Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming.

Crap.

This is why the unsexy phrase "global climate change" is more precise than "global warming".

Putting shedloads of extra energy into the climate - that is, global mean warming - will of course have different effects in different places. Including, possibly, cooling in some.

And as for Calder... well, the UK's libel laws make a full discussion of the circumstances under which he ceased to be editor of New Scientist (hic!) problematic

 

[nick1181]

Fuck me, this thread is a C&P frenzy isn't it?

The C&P above, mentions "alarmist clergy". Sorry. The liar-alarm has just gone off.

This all reminds me of that movie with Bruce Willis where an asteroid is headed for the earth - except that humanity, rather than doing something about it, sits around squabbling (with all the blind, stupid and/or religious cunts) about whether or not it's real.

Go with the biomass of peer-reviewed scientific opinion (as opposed to David Bellamy). Ask any farmer in the world. This is real.

 

[bigfish]

Putting shedloads of extra energy into the climate - that is, global mean warming - will of course have different effects in different places. Including, possibly, cooling in some.

According to the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, increased atmospheric CO2 concentration drives global warming. However, global mean temperatures over the last 8 years have hardly risen at all, despite the fact that: "carbon dioxide radiative forcing increased by 20% from 1995 to 2005, the largest change for any decade in at least the last 200 years" (IPCC AR4 SPM).


Here's the CRU-UEA temperature anomaly with ranking since 1998:

1998 0.526 - 1
1999 0.302 - 8
2000 0.277 - 9
2001 0.406 - 7
2002 0.455 - 4
2003 0.465 - 3
2004 0.444 - 5
2005 0.475 - 2
2006 0.422 - 6

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt

heating the globe by the atmosphere = 33°C

95% due to conduction and convection = 31.35°C

5% due to radiation = 1.65°C

5% of radiation picked up by CO2 = 0.083°C

3% of CO2 produced by humans = 0.0025°C

5% of absorption "unsaturated" for global warming = 0.00013°C

claimed global warming = 0.6°C

There is no real mechanism for carbon dioxide creating global warming.

And as for Calder... well, the UK's libel laws make a full discussion of the circumstances under which he ceased to be editor of New Scientist (hic!) problematic

A typically scurrilous ad hominem attack on a man who refuses to swallow alarmist quackery, composed by an alarmist quack, masquerading as a paragon of scientific virtue.

 

[laptop]

Bigfish's latest C&P appears to be a sort of word salad...

Meanwhile, it seems that it's Calder himself who's been appealing to the Argument from Authority by billing his credibility as stemming from his editorship, of New Scientist - forgetting to mention that this was from 1962 to 1966.

 

[kerplunk]

heating the globe by the atmosphere = 33°C

95% due to conduction and convection = 31.35°C

5% due to radiation = 1.65°C

5% of radiation picked up by CO2 = 0.083°C

3% of CO2 produced by humans = 0.0025°C

5% of absorption "unsaturated" for global warming = 0.00013°C

claimed global warming = 0.6°C

There is no real mechanism for carbon dioxide creating global warming.

another of Gary Novak's right?

Ignoring his rather unique ideas about conduction/convection for a moment doesn't it concern you that he makes such basic errors as using the '3% of CO2 produced by humans' figure in his calculations instead of what the actual increase in concentrations are (30%)?

I suspect I should be just ignoring such nuttyness rather than wasting my energy but I had to ask...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> I suspect I should be just ignoring such nuttyness rather than wasting my energy <snip>

I find that's the best policy, bigfish is sort of self-refuting due to his utterly credulous use of flake sources and failure to actually understand what his rare non-flake sources are saying.

 

[DUMBO.66]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/inevitable.shtml
well this looks bad..

 

[bigfish]

... doesn't it concern you that he makes such basic errors as using the '3% of CO2 produced by humans' figure in his calculations instead of what the actual increase in concentrations are (30%)?
...

Dear kerplunk

What concerns me is that you are here attempting to substitute a falsehood for a fact. Human activity is NOT responsible for an "actual increase in [CO2] concentrations [of] 30%". Novak's figure of 3% is right, your figure of 30% is wrong by a huge margin.

About 186 billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere each year; about 180 billion tons comes from natural sources we have no control over; the 6 billion tons due to human activity are 3.26% of the total; water vapor concentration accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect; CO2 accounts for about 3% of the effect; and human activity accounts for about 3% of that.

Here's a link explaining things in more detail for you:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

All the best, bf

 

[kerplunk]

Dear kerplunk

What concerns me is that you are here attempting to substitute a falsehood for a fact. Human activity is NOT responsible for an "actual increase in [CO2] concentrations [of] 30%". Novak's figure of 3% is right, your figure of 30% is wrong by a huge margin.

About 186 billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere each year; about 180 billion tons comes from natural sources we have no control over; the 6 billion tons due to human activity are 3.26% of the total...

Yes i can see how he got there but it's the wrong figures to use in his calculations because they're annual gross figures which don't take into account the CO2 that's annually removed by carbon sinks. Nor does it take into account the net accumulation in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution which has led to an increased concentration level = 30%.

[/quote]

Here's a link explaining things in more detail for you:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

All the best, bf

Thanks but they seem to have done the same thing as above and ignored the carbon cycle and used gross output figures to attribute most of the rise in concentration levels to "natural additions". Since concentration levels hadn't risen above 280ppm for hundreds of thousand of years and then rose sharply at the start of the industrial revolution, and man-made emissions are more than enough to account for it, I think we can say it's plain wrong wrong wrong.

 

[dash]

Hi bigfish, I have been away lately so haven't been able to reply sooner.

You originally posted up this extract from Novak's website:

There's no Mechanism for Global Warming.

Crunching the basic numbers shows that there is no real mechanism for carbon dioxide creating global warming.

It is said that the atmosphere adds 33°C of heat to the globe, which no one has been disputing.

The heat starts at the earth's surface. Most of it is picked up by the air through conduction and convection. About 3-5% will be radiated from the earth's surface into the atmosphere. This means, 1.65°C of air temperature can be attributed to radiation.

Carbon dioxide absorbs the emitted radiation through three narrow bands, which will pick up about 3-5% of the radiation. This means, of the 1.65°C due to radiation, no more than 0.0825°C can be due to CO2.

These are hard numbers which cannot be rationalized away. So the propagandists are trying to find some mechanism to explain how the globe has supposedly been heated 0.6°C due to CO2 already, and perhaps 1-6°C in the future.

They are pretending that there is an esoteric mechanism higher in the atmosphere, but they cannot describe it. There is no such mechanism.

To begin with, I am not at all sure about two things.

First, Novak states "About 3-5% [of heat] will be radiated from the earth's surface into the atmosphere." I don't know where Novak gets the figure of 3-5% from, unless he has in mind the ground portion of solar radiation bounced back into space as a result of the Earth's albedo. Also, there is a leap in reasoning in the way Novak treats 3-5% of heat radiated from the Earth's surface into the atmosphere as identical to 3-5% of the 33C greenhouse effect. We have to ask: what systems of measurement are being used? And if they are different, how is one converted into the other?

This diagram below which gives a much better picture of the complex patterns of energy exchange going on, in watts per square metre:

There's a similar but less detailed diagram, along with some informative text here on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenhouse_Effect.png

It looks like a great deal more energy is being radiated from the Earth's surface than Novak would suggest.

Second, I don't get the bit about convection being a major contributor to the greenhouse effect of 33C extra warmth. In a small scale system like a gardener's greenhouse, it's the suppression of convection which produces a local increase in temperature. On the scale of the Earth, I imagine convection merely redistributes heat.

So it is does not seem unreasonable when the link above states that "Of the surface heat captured by the atmosphere, more than 75% can be attributed to the action of greenhouse gases that absorb thermal radiation emitted by the Earth's surface."

If I note with some dismay how Novak also takes issue with relativity, the Big Bang, and kinetic energy, then it's because life is short and as a non-scientist I want to read things by people who at least give the appearance or have the credentials to suggest they know what they're talking about. It's fair enough for Novak to have a go at maybe one major scientific theory, but for him to broaden his attacks onto several suggests he's a man fretting over his own unfulfilled potential.

Elsewhere he tries to rubbish the results of ice core samples and what they have to say about the earth's temperature and atmosphere in the past. Yet it seems that ice cores from different locations, processed by different teams, show pretty consistent results:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Epica_do18_plot.png

Compared to Novak's efforts, there are much better accounts of what contribution CO2 might make to the greenhouse effect, written by climate scientists, eg: here and here.

 

[kerplunk]

Second, I don't get the bit about convection being a major contributor to the greenhouse effect of 33C extra warmth. In a small scale system like a gardener's greenhouse, it's the suppression of convection which produces a local increase in temperature. On the scale of the Earth, I imagine convection merely redistributes heat.

But Novak doesn't say the 'greenhouse effect' he just refers to the 'atmosphere' - if he'd said greenhouse effect he wouldn't then be able to go on and attribute most of the 33C warming to convection. He slashes the contribution from the greenhouse effect (without which the earth would be an ice ball etc) with no explanation - although he does mention his belief that heat from the earths core warming the oceans plays a major roll in another section so maybe that's it!

...suggests he's a man fretting over his own unfulfilled potential.

"symbolic of his struggle against reality more like" - Reg

 

[dash]

kerplunk, a certain irony here in finding an article by arch-sceptic Steven Milloy which asserts that convection aids heat loss from the Earth.

These radiative processes, if they acted alone, would warm the Earth’s atmosphere to about 77 degrees Centigrade – much warmer than the 15 degrees Centigrade the Earth actually is. Fortunately, other atmospheric processes – including updrafts and circulation carrying heat upwards and toward the poles – facilitate energy escape into space so that our atmosphere cools to around 15 degrees Centigrade.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192544,00.html

Would guess that the only way heat can finally be lost from the Earth is by radiation into outer space, but the above description seems more realistic than Novak's opaque arguments.

 

[guinnessdrinker]

IMO solar forcing seems a pretty respectable hypothesis. The dreaded Wikipedia gives a fairly comprehensive and as far as I can tell, balanced summary of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_spot_cycle

I actually know an astrophysist by training who makes his money using techniques based on solar activity. but then he denies global warming is linked with carbon.

 

[guinnessdrinker]

Lots of weird microclimates here also. The deserts or, semi-deserts are often just the otherside of a mountain range from rich green valleys. You can drive for just 10 minutes and go from African desert type landscape to something more like the Bavarian Alps. Well, sort of. I may be pushing a point a little to far!

as I understand, galicia is a bit irish, weather wise.

 

[dash]

guinnessdrinker: Would that be Piers Corbyn by any chance?

 

[guinnessdrinker]

guinnessdrinker: Would that be Piers Corbyn by any chance?

yes. he is famous for that.

 

[quimcunx]

It get puts forward that there are two opposing views about global warming, that the scientific community is split. It's not, with the exception of the odd scientist in the pay of corporations or governments, or their representative misrepresenting scientific findings there is a consensus that we are indeed fucked.

Global and local weather and climate are affected by all sorts. It's fabulously difficult to predict. Also I would point out that Global warming can result in local decreases in temperature. But the overall picture is still that 'globally' we're warming up.

Part of the reason global warming has been replaced by climate change (other than it save people being confused about cold bits in a warming world) is that politicians (you know, those ones who like the oil so much) think climate change sounds less threatening. Just a change in climate, like when you go on holiday...