Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Good point, Thomas. I wondered why Schwarzenegger was doing business directly with England? Does he now have some grandiose dream of pretending he is president of the country or something? I think he should mind his own business, which is running the state of California, instead of entering into pacts, treaties, whatever, with other nations.

We wouldn't want to go to war over a theory that isn't mature either like democracy in Iraq will make the Mideast safer.

Theories in science are refined all the time Thomas. The refining of how the Troposphere should warm compared to the surface doesn't negate the observed warming.

I agree, but I don't see what you are trying to say by this analogy. Have I ever said the war in Iraq was anything but a terrible idea?


The observed passed warming isn't hard-wired into treaties and laws. The expectations about future warmings are -- and those expectations can change as long as the underlying theories evolve.

Let us not forget the FACT that many theories are proven wrong and they fall by the wayside, rather than undergoing refinement.

Whether the pact Ahnold signed with Blair is constitutional, it's more political rhetoric to appeal to the moderates than actual outcome. Ahnold is trying to distance himself from Bush on the environment.

No okie.

Theories are adjusted to fit the observed results. It's the way science works. Science never actually writes anything in stone when it comes to theories.

Maybe a small error in my terminology, Parados, but you are assuming the observed results are not skewed or fudged SOMETIMES to fit the desired results. Example being the troposphere temperature readings by satellites. We have results but there is apparently disagreement on the validity of those results, or the validity of "corrected" results.

Science does write things into stone when a "theory" becomes a "law." In regard to global warming "theory," I think the global warming ideas have been mislabeled as theories, when they are really nothing more than hypotheses. This brings up a very good point, Parados, as I would have no problem whatsoever with global warming science if it was properly regarded for what it is, and that is "hypothesis." Global warmers are in effect trying to conclude that one man-caused factor is behind all of it, when in reality the data does not support it.

Thank you for your kind invitation, BernardR, but I will pass. And I prefer to post other people's views, as they stimulate my views and I would hope that they would similarly stimulate the minds of other readers here.

A theory is an organizing rubric which can only be tested in small pieces by putting forth hypotheses.

And nothing is ever written in stone in science, not even if someone were to propose something as a law or principle.

sumac, It can be written in stone, but still has the prospect for revision.

Pretty maleable stone then.

watch it , i say !
if you don't agree with 'arnie' , the terminator will get you (remember what your mother told you about the bogeyman ! ).
hbg

Hey, that's our gov.

c.i. :
watch out , he may want to breakfast on you >
btw on our last cruise there were quite a few californians (who also happened to be democrats ) , who thought 'arnie' vas quite ein cleverer boy , jah !' .
hbg

As they say in South America, ja ja...

SCENTA

I am very much afraid that the environmentalist expert, Mr.Parados, cannot read, so I will make it clearer and put it in terms he can understand--On the elementary school level

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 12:29 am Post: 2182234 -

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am sure that the learned Mr. Parados can handle the objections made in the article below. If he cannot, it STANDS as testimony to the fact that recent claims about Satellite Temperatures are overblown and exaggerated.


Global Warming Doubt Dispelled? Not Really
Milloy Op-ed in Fox News.com
by Steven J. Milloy
August 18, 2005


Is the debate now over for skeptics of global warming hysteria? Readers of USA Today may certainly have that impression.


"Satellite and weather-balloon research released today removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say," reported USA Today on Aug.12.

Certainly the USA Today report was partially correct - the researchers did, in fact, "say" [read "claim"] that "the last bastion of scientific doubt" had been removed. But claims and reality often don't match up.

Three papers published in the journal Science last week purport to debunk an important argument advanced by skeptics of the notion of catastrophic, manmade global warming. The skeptics' argument is that while temperatures measured on the Earth's surface seem to indicate that global temperatures have increased at a rate of about 0.20 degrees Centigrade per decade (deg. C/decade) since the 1970s, temperatures measured in the atmosphere by satellite and weather balloons have shown only a relatively insignificant amount of warming for the same time period (about 0.09 deg. C/decade).

The implication of the skeptics' argument is that whatever warming seems to be happening on the Earth's surface, similar warming isn't happening in the atmosphere. This might mean that any observed surface warming is more likely due to the urban heat island effect -- where the heat-retaining properties of concrete and asphalt in urban areas artificially increase local temperatures -- rather than increasing atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

One of the new Science studies reported that the satellites had drifted in orbit, causing errors in temperature measurement. Corrections to the satellite data, according to the researchers, would increase the atmospheric warming estimate to 0.19 deg. C/decade -- more in line with the 0.20 deg. C/decade warming of the Earth's surface. Another study reported that heating from tropical sunlight had skewed the balloon temperature measurements.

Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the studies' authors, told USA Today that, "Once corrected, the satellite and balloon temperatures align with other surface and upper atmosphere measures, as well as climate change models."

So is it really game-set-match in favor of the global warming alarmists? Not so fast, say the skeptics.

When University of Alabama-Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, a prominent climatologist, factored the newly reported corrections into his calculations, his estimate of atmospheric warming was only 0.12 deg. C/decade -- higher than the prior estimate of 0.09 deg. C/decade, but well below the Science study estimate of 0.19 deg C/decade and the surface temperature estimate of 0.20 deg. C/decade.

As to the claimed errors in the weather balloon measurements, Spencer says that no other effort to adjust the balloon data has produced warming estimates as high as those reported in the new study and that it will take time for the research community to form opinions about whether the new adjustments advocated are justified.

Climate expert Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project says the temperature adjustments are "not a big deal."

"Greenhouse theory says (and the models calculate) that the atmospheric trend should be 30 percent greater than the surface trend -- and it isn't," says Singer. "Furthermore, the models predict that polar [temperature] trends should greatly exceed the tropical values -- and they clearly don't ... In fact, the Antarctic has been cooling," adds Singer.

Singer also had some related thoughts concerning the gloom-and-doom forecasts concerning future temperatures.


Because of its prohibitive costs, alarm over global warming has been rejected numerous times by President Bush and the U.S. Senate. European nations are already discovering that their economies can't live with the Kyoto Protocol that was just implemented in February.

Despite alarmist media reports, global warming-mania is melting. It's no wonder the alarmists are in such a hurry to close the book on the science.

*************************************************************

It is vital for the continued debate on this subject that Mr. Sumac or whoever else is interested not the statistics in the article above which CLEARLY SHOW AN EFFORT BY THE GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERICS TO OVERSTATE THE CASE.


Point No. 1

Roy Spencer, Noted Climatologist reported that his calculation of Satellite Temperatures, after recalibration because of drift of the satellites in orbit causing satellite temperatures to be slightly in error, that the claim made by in the Journal Science is in error.Dr Spencer reports that the Article claims that the new atmospheric warming was now corrected to show a 0.19C per decade( meaning of course, a 0.95C warming by 2056).

Dr. Spencer's own calculations show this to be in error, He claims that the new atmospheric warming is only 0.12C per decade. This would mean a warming of 0.60C by 2056 or slightly more than one half of one degree Centigrade by 2056.

(As Dr. Lomborg pointed out in his important book, The Skeptical Environmentalist--quote--WE SHOULD NOT SPEND VAST AMOUNTS OF MONEY TO CUT A TINY SLICE OF THE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE INCREASE WHEN THIS CONSTITUTES A POOR USE OF RESOURCES AND WHEN WE COULD PROBABLY USE THESE FUNDS FAR MORE EFFECTIVELY IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD)
*********************************************************
I will put it as I would put it to a child, Mr. Parados.


a. You see, child, the man named Roy Spencer showed that the bad men who used the number 19 were wrong. The number is really 12. You do remember learning in the second grade that 19 is seven more than 12?

and, I am sure that you remember that you learned in the sixth grade, little boy, that 30 % is a lot. The man Mr. Singer said that the "trend"( that's a big word meaning where something is going) in the air should be 30% bigger than the "trend" on the ground.

Gee, little boy, the bad mens seem to have made a mistake.


*************************************************************

Is that written in terms you can understand, Mr.Parados, or should I try to put it in Kindergarten terms?

You do know the meaning of the sentence-Recent Reports about "global warming" have been shown by climatologists to be "overblown and exaggerated" don't you-MR. PARADOS? If not, I can write it more simply. If you had even a sliver of scientific knowledge, you would realize that your task is to REBUT the findings of Dr.Spencer and Dr. Singer, using data instead of your unreferenced off the top of your head incomprehensible blah-blah!

Mr. Parados wrote and Mr. Thomas( who is always on target) answered:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
parados wrote:
Actually, Greenhouse theory is evolving.
Mr. Thomas replied.
Great. Wake me up again when the theory is mature. There's no point in hard-wiring an evolving theory into laws and institutions.

_________________


And I will reference, again, a point made by Dr. Lomborg in his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist"

P. 322

"Second, we should not spend vast amounts of money to cut a TINY SLICE of the global temperature increase when this constitutes a poor use of resources and when we could probably use these funds far more effectively in the developing world"

Mr. Thomas's point about NOT "hard-wiring an evolving theory into laws and institutions" makes an effective counter-point to Dr. Lomborg's statement.

Given the paucity of his references to Scientific Articles on the alleged Global Warming, I am not sure that Mr. Parados is really equipped to understand what they say, I am then replicating an article featuring Dr. Roy Spencer( highlighted in my post today, which may, shed some light on this topic.





By Roy Spencer


In one of a trio of new global warming papers in Science, Mears & Wentz (2005) address what they consider to be a large source of uncertainty in our (University of Alabama in Huntsville, "UAH") satellite estimate for global lower tropospheric ("LT") temperature trends since 1979. The satellite measurements come from the Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Units (AMSUs) flying on NOAA's polar orbiting weather satellites. The UAH estimate of the globally averaged trend since 1979 to the present has been +0.09 deg. C/decade, considerably below the surface thermometer estimate that has been hovering around +0.20 deg. C/decade for the same period of record.


This discrepancy between the UAH satellite LT trends and the surface thermometer trends has caused some consternation, since what we understand of atmospheric physics suggests that sustained warming at the surface should be amplified with height in the troposphere, not reduced.


Mears & Wentz, who are very capable remote sensing experts from Remote Sensing Systems ("RSS", Santa Rosa, California), found that the LT trend was particularly sensitive to the UAH method for removing the drift of the satellites through the local observing time. The satellites are launched into sun-synchronous orbits that are meant to cross over the same Earth locations at approximately the same time each day. But since the satellites do not have on-board propulsion, the satellites fall slowly back to Earth, which changes their orbital characteristics. In particular, what began as early afternoon observations from the daylight side of the "afternoon satellites" orbits drift to later in the day over the several years of each satellite's lifetime. This causes a spurious cooling trend as the Earth observations are made later in the afternoon to the evening.


The UAH method for removing this drift depended upon the spacecraft roll attitude (the accuracy with which it was pointing straight down, and not sideways) being almost exactly the same during the day side of the orbit as the night side. The new research paper presents Mears & Wentz's own estimate of LT trends using diurnal cycle corrections based upon a climate model estimate of the daily (diurnal) cycle of temperature at different levels in the atmosphere, on a global basis.


Their final estimate of the global lower tropospheric trend through 2004 is +0.19 deg. C/decade, very close to the surface thermometer estimate, and this constitutes the primary news value of their report.


While their criticism of the UAH diurnal cycle adjustment method is somewhat speculative, Mears & Wentz were additionally able to demonstrate to us, privately, that there is an error that arises from our implementation of the UAH technique. This very convincing demonstration, which is based upon simple algebra and was discovered too late to make it into their published report, made it obvious to us that the UAH diurnal correction method had a bias that needed to be corrected.


Since we (UAH) had already been working on a new diurnal adjustment technique, based upon the newer and more powerful AMSUs that have been flying since 1998, we rushed our new method to completion recently, and implemented new corrections. As a result, the UAH global temperature trends for the period 1979 to the present have increased from +0.09 to +0.12 deg. C/decade -- still below the RSS estimate of +0.19 deg. C/decade.


Our new AMSU-based (observed) diurnal cycle adjustments end up being very similar to RSS's climate model (theoretical) adjustments. So why the remaining difference between the trends produced by the two groups? While this needs to be studied further, it looks like the reason is the same as that determined for the discrepancy in deep-tropospheric satellite estimates between the two groups: the way in which successive satellites in the long satellite time series are intercalibrated. There has been a continuing, honest difference of opinion between UAH and RSS about how this should best be done.


In a paper accompanying the Mears and Wentz paper, a new analysis of radiosonde (weather balloon) data by Sherwood et al. also obtains larger levels of warming than have been previously reported. No other radiosonde dataset that has attempted to adjust for the calibration artifacts discussed therein has produced warming estimates as high as those obtained in this new study. As is always the case, it will take a while for the research community to form opinions about whether the new radiosonde adjustments advocated in this work are justified. At a minimum, the new work shows that at least one method for analysis of the weather balloon data (which have traditionally supported the much smaller satellite trends from UAH) results in trends much closer to the warmer surface thermometer trends.


The third paper (Santer et al, 2005) takes a more thorough look at the theoretical expectation that surface warming should be amplified with height in the troposphere. The authors restate what had already been known: that the UAH satellite warming estimates were at odds with theoretical expectations (as had been some radiosonde measures). Now, the convergence of these newly reported satellite and radiosonde estimates toward the surface warming estimates, if taken at face value, provides better agreement with climate models' explanation of how the climate system behaves.


What will all of this mean for the global warming debate? Probably less than the media spin will make of it. At a minimum, the new reports show that it is indeed possible to analyze different temperature datasets in such a way that they agree with current global warming theory. Nevertheless, all measurements systems have errors (especially for climate trends), and researchers differ in their views of what kinds of errors exist, and how they should be corrected. As pointed out by Santer et al., it is with great difficulty that our present weather measurement systems (thermometers, weather balloons, and satellites) are forced to measure miniscule climate trends. What isn't generally recognized is that the satellite-thermometer difference that has sparked debate in recent years has largely originated over the tropical oceans -- the trends over northern hemispheric land areas, where most people live, have been almost identical.


On the positive side, at least some portion of the disagreement between satellite and thermometer estimates of global temperature trends has now been removed. This helps to further shift the global warming debate out of the realm of "is warming happening?" to "how much has it warmed, and how much will it warm in the future?". (Equally valid questions to debate are "how much of the warmth is man-made?", "is warming necessarily a bad thing?", and "what can we do about it anyway?"). And this is where the debate should be.



**************************************************************

If Mr. Parados reads carefully( he has not done so thus far) he will note that Dr. Spencer states:

It is indeed possible to analyis different temperature datasets IN SUCH A WAY that they agree with current global warming theory.

and

"How much of the warming is a man-made"?


I have still not received a valid answer from Mr. Parados concerning the spike in surface temperatures from 1910 to 1940 which are almost as great as the gain in temperatures from 1940 till today.

The problem, which for some reason, Mr. Parados will not comment on, is that the surface temperature gain from 1910 to 1940 was accompanied by a CO2 emission of FIVE TIMES LESS THAN THE CO2 EMISSION TOTAL FROM 1940 TO PRESENT.


IF CO2 A L O N E WAS THE VILLAIN, THE RISE IN TEMPERATURE FROM 1910 TO 1940 CANNOT BE EXPLAINED EXCEPT IN TERMS OF
NON- ANTHROPONGENIC SOURCES> Since Mr. Parados sometimes seems to misunderstand, I'll have to put that in much simpler terms.

The warming from 1910 to 1940 must have come from sources other than those man-made!!

It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night.


It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night.


It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night. It was a dark and stormy night.