Comments on: Easterbrook Projection of Temperatures

By: Julian Braggins

Julian Braggins — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:43:36 +0000

I too thought there might be more response to this paper when it first came out last July, not that I saw any considered refutation. Lubos Motl has just written about the basic CO2 equation at

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008.....erage.html

which seems to have a the point that quibbling about the “average Global Temperature” is a waste of time and effort, as the global heat budget has little correlation with it, in that a minor increase over a century in the aGT can just be marked down as changes in temperature distribution. (My comment, from an entirely non scientific interpretation).

By: KuhnKat

KuhnKat — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:35:16 +0000

Lucia,

a paper by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161

appears to falsify the enhanced greenhouse effect that is the basis of the warmer projections. I honestly am not capable of evaluating it, but, they appear to have some real issues with the basic physics. Maybe you could take a look at it?? I saw one blog series on it, but, the warmers mainly were attacking the average global temperature claims instead of the issues with GHG’s.

By: lucia

lucia — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:58:25 +0000

JM–
The baseline is irrelevant when determining the trend. Period. I set things to a common baseline for the purpose of plotting.

I realize you don’t understand the simple fact that rebaselining is unimportant. However, since you don’t believe me, Arthur or the variety of other people who have told you so here, I don’t suppose we will convince you.

Possibly, you will convince Tamino to redo the whole thing rebaselining appropriately under your guidance, but I’m not going to waste any more of my time discussing the non-importance of rebaselining when determining the trend.

By: lucia

lucia — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:42:30 +0000

Tetris–
I haven’t forgotten that the enhanced greenhouse effect is a hypothesis. But, in science, (and politics, life etc.) one is permitted to assess the physical arguments in favor of a theory and lean toward or against believing the hypothesis even before it is tested.

But, I also am underneath it all, strongly inclined towards empiricisms. So, I do believe hypotheses need to be tested. My general sense is: quite a bit of the warming we have seen since the 70s is likely do to GHG’s. Is it all the warming? Probably not. As for percentages: I honestly don’t know.

What I do see — and this is unfortunate– is much of the testing and verification in support of attribution is fairly hand waving. (This is not, by the way, unique to climate science. There are many, many handwaving proofs in all fields. Don’t let engineers tell you there has never been any in engineering publications for CFD. There were loads of “Here’s the predictions; here’s the data. Eyeball. Looks good to me!” type papers. There is even value in that! But, it’s not the sort of things that really tests alternative hypotheses realistic very strictly.)

By: tetris

tetris — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:39:32 +0000

Lucia,
You have stated in several of your posts, as you do above, that the physical arguments of GHGs having a warming effect appear sound to you. What appears to me to be forgotten is that the “GHGs [let alone man-made CO2 specifically] cause global warming” hypothesis is precisely that, a hypothesis, and one which, the IPCCs efforts notwithstanding, has not been proven. Also, it appears to me that elementary physics tell us that the “greenhouse” effect of CO2 is on a log scale and thus has specific limits that fall well short of those ascribed to their effect by e.g. Hansen or the IPCC.
Fact is, there is a rapidly growing body of data and analysis that strongly suggest the AGW hypothesis is fundamentally flawed. For instance, what to do with the demonstrable fact that as CO2 ppmv values continue to rise ALL relevant temperature metrics from SSTs, deep ocean temperatures, land surface and lower troposphere temperatures have leveled off or fallen for a decade now? The lower troposphere temperatures are particularly confounding in this regard as AGW proponents have held them up as the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”. However, not only is this temperature metric not increasing at a rate of 30% over land surface temperatures as per the IPCCs GCMs, it is in fact falling [-0.3C between Jan-March 2008 alone]. All of this can not have been caused by one old fashioned La Nina.
Don Easterbrook is certainly not alone in cautioning that any further warming is not CO2 driven. In my view, the hypothesis which needs to be falsified first and foremost is the one that states that variations in relevant temperature metrics are primarily caused by natural, cyclical, systemic fluctuations.
I look forward to your comments.

By: lucia

lucia — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:31:08 +0000

Leif-- I think you're right. The wiggles just look transposed. It seems Dr. Easterbrook did jump into comments at WattsUpWithThat? At (08:02:10) , Don Easterbrook posted:

The projected warming from ~2040 to ~2070 is NOT driven by CO2, it’s merely a continuation of warm/cool cycles over the past 500 years, long before man-made CO2 could have been a factor. We’ve been warming up from the Little Ice Age at rate of about 1 degree or so per century and the 2040-70 projection is simply a continuation of non-AGW cycles.

By: Leif Svalgaard

Leif Svalgaard — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:59:22 +0000

lucia, your point 5: source of other wiggles. They are just the wiggles from the previous cold period shifted over. this is a common and probably valid approach as it preserves some of the statistical properties of the curve.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:20:22 +0000

What is temps return to 0 anomaly (or even -1 anomaly)? I find it incredible that scientists have not even considered this. Its always assumed its going to go up….when historically its gone up and down and this trend is simply confirming this. What if it really goes down and down -10?