Re: Even doubling or tripling the amount of CO2′ will have ‘little impact’ on temps

Mike Jr. wrote:
On Sep 6, 6:14 pm, Sam Wormley <sworml...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mike Jr. wrote:
On Sep 6, 10:30 am, Sam Wormley <sworml...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
doug wrote:
Sam Wormley wrote:
Mike Jr. wrote:
What? Care to rephrase this? In the AGW hypothesis, CO2's only
purpose is to initiate the chain of events leading to run away global
warming.
CO2 traps heat. More CO2 ==> More trapped heat.
Yes but the amount is much too small to account for the huge
temperature changes predicted. There has to be an amplification
effect of 30-100 or so.
Show me the numbers, equations, model, etc.
Sam,
Roy Spencer noted that the tropical tropospheric heat budget is
dominated by a balance between latent heating from precipitation and
longwave (LW) cooling to outer space. The precipitation systems
produce clouds that heat the atmosphere via "greenhouse" warming, and
cool the earth's surface by reflecting incoming solar SW radiation
back into space. See "Thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere with a
convective adjustment, Manabe and Strickler (1964), J. Atmos. Sci.,
21, 361– 385.
Surface water, heated by incoming solar SW radiation, evaporates which
cools the earth's surface. The hot moist air rises and condenses
releasing heat and rain. Latent heating from this condensation causes
the air and the remaining water vapor to rise until clouds tops are
formed. LW radiation is lost to space (OLR) both from the cloud tops
and from the clear, dry air being forced downward by the rising air.
This later, being dry, is more efficient at radiating LW radiation
back into space than the moist cloud tops. This dry air can travel
far from the precipitation system that spawned it.
Roy Spencer references a paper by Renno, Emanuel, and Stone titled
"Radiative-convective model with an explicit hydrologic cycle, 1:
Formulation and sensitivity to model parameters", J. Geophys. Res.,
99, 14429-14441 (1994) that demonstrated that precipitation systems
have the potential to be the Earth's 'air conditioner', switching on
when things get too warm.
Spencer noticed just this kind of behavior while analyzing the daily
evolution of a time composite of fifteen tropical intraseasonal
oscillations (ISOs) using various satellite instruments during the
period September 2000 to September 2005.
"The composite of fifteen strong intraseasonal oscillations we
examined revealed that enhanced radiative cooling of the ocean-
atmosphere system occurs during the tropospheric warm phase of the
oscillation. Our measured sensitivity of total (SW + LW) cloud
radiative forcing to tropospheric temperature is -6.1 W m**-2 K**-1.
During the composite oscillation’s rainy, tropospheric warming phase,
the longwave flux anomalies unexpectedly transitioned from warming to
cooling, behavior which was traced to a decrease in ice cloud
coverage."
Take a look at Roy Spencer's peer-reviewed paper here
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
--Mike Jr
The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

Last section - Carbon Dioxide as the Key to Climate Change

"Billions of years ago the oceans would have been permanently frozen,
if not for high CO2 levels. Astrophysical theory showed that as the
Sun had consumed its nuclear fuel it had gradually grown brighter, yet
somehow the Earth's temperature had remained neither too cold nor too
hot to sustain life. The best guess was that CO2 acted as a thermostat
for the planet."

CO2 is such a weak green house gas that the above strikes me as
implausible. H2O in the form of water vapor represents 90% of the
greenhouse effect. As I pointed out in my previous post, the
atmosphere adjusts its water vapor level and precipitation systems to
maintain a common greenhouse factor. That dreaded Miskolczi supplies
the math and equations to show why this occurs. You should finally
read the paper; it won’t burn your eyes out. :-)

"During the 1990s, further ice core measurements indicated that during
past glacial periods, temperature changes had preceded CO2 changes by
several centuries. Was it necessary to give up the simple hypothesis
that had attracted scientists ever since Tyndall in the 19th century —
that changes in CO2 were a simple and direct cause of ice ages?"

As stated in
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm#S3
this lag isn't contested. But come on, how can CO2 have gotten us out
of a snowball earth if it is a consequence of warming instead of the
cause? This is a major problem for AGW and the author just passes
over it and then commits several non sequiturs. What justifies the
following?

"The ice cores now showed, as theorists had predicted since the 19th
century, that a powerful feedback cycle was amplifying the effect of
the cyclical changes in sunlight. Even a small change in the gas level
would bring further changes in the global heat balance, which would in
turn alter the gas level, which... and so forth. This suggested how
tiny shifts in the Earth’s orbit had set the timing of the enormous
swings of glacial cycles.

Or, more ominously, how a change in the gas level initiated by
humanity might be amplified through a temperature feedback loop."

What if that feedback loop, as evidenced in my previous post is
negative? Ah ....

"The computations pinned down an imbalance. The Earth was now taking
in from sunlight nearly a watt per square meter more than it was
radiating back into space, averaged over the planet’s entire surface."

Computer models can't predict 100 days in advance. You want to base
science on predicting 100 years into the future. This is fantasy!
Actual observations from the “A-Train” are showing that the earth's
precipitation systems are compensating. This model derived prediction
is just wrong!

"Eventually geochemists and their allies managed to get numbers for
the “climate sensitivity” in ancient eras, that is, the response of
temperature to a rise in the CO2 level. Over hundreds of millions of
years, a doubled level of the gas had always gone along with a
temperature rise of three degrees, give or take a couple of degrees.
That agreed almost exactly with the numbers coming from many computer
studies."

During the last 400,000 years CO2 levels have been lower than they
now... that's at least two cycles of glaciation.


But Sam, the temperature increases preceded the increase in CO2!!!

That was then... but not now!
You gotta look at the bigger picture.


"The basic physics and chemistry of the problems raised by Tyndall
were now well in hand. There were reliable calculations of the direct
effects of CO2 on radiation, of how the gas was dissolved in sea
water, and other physical phenomena. Further progress would center on
understanding the complex interactions of the entire planetary system,
and especially interactions with living creatures. The creatures who
would count the most were humans. The climate a century hence would
depend chiefly on what they chose to do about their emissions."

Because CO2's effects are being compensated for by the atmosphere I
find this conclusion unjustified. I wouldn't be so stubborn on this
point except that I read Miskolczi and I believe what the equations
are telling me. If you haven't read it, you should. Hey, I read your
URL.

Also, instead of talking across me, how about responding to some of my
points?

I'm trying to get you to question your convictions, Mike. What has
happened to CO2 in the last 100 years is different that the last
400,000.


--Mike Jr.


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