Geoffwood

BFTV, are you happy that within the last century the composite sum of the negative phases of the AMO and the PDO coincided with a phase in climate science where experts feared the onset of an ice age due to growth in Arctic sea ice. That being during the late 70's. PDO negative 50's to 80's, AMO negative 60's to 90's. After the peaks of both we get an Arctic sea ice minimum. As this does not rely entirely upon proxy data is this not a good and reliable 'best estimate' of correlation?

4wd, "There is indisputable evidence of wave washed beaches on the north coast of Greenland that completely falsifies it." Such is the power of natural variation. Thank you. To certain others; This interglacial peaked around 6000years ago. There is no unprecedented warming. As the glaciers retreat there is evidence of hundreds if not thousands of warmer years this Holocene. Nature can do this to the Arctic all by herself.

reef, are predictions of future Arctic sea ice levels and therefore peoples expectations not based upon resolving the issue of the relative strength of natural variation and man's influence. Is this not a time coming to resolve what forces climate? If the Arctic is 'the canary in the mine' then this is when and where it happens. If they are right I am proven to be wrong! I can lay off with the tech but I cannot bend to things that I don't agree with. I feel this needs a balance of at least some who believe that the natural drivers are grossly underestimated. You may choose to delete this post, it is after all your thread, your call. I haven't received any warnings before deletion of posts. (Can't believe you deleted Oldsnowywizard's opinion. Surely someone can express one?)

oldsnowywizard. My apologies for the direction of my posts. People's ideas about the evolutionary trend of the Arctic sea ice is biased by a confused idea that trace gases set and maintain and can force surface temperatures. My aim is to set out from basics or include from basics a physically accountable argument against the radiative 'greenhouse effect'. This is done for no other reason than at the surface 'no radiative' enhancement is evident. I welcome any input, positive or negative. We can agree or choose to disagree on basics. Without going down to basics we have no chance of agreeing. Without an enhanced 'greenhouse effect' the recovery of Arctic sea ice is an exciting, but dangerous option. Regards.

Hi BFTV. Thanks for the reply. "It's simply showing a trend, not making a prediction. It helps people visualise the decline in volume. There really is to no need to get so uppity about it." "It helps people visualise the decline...." That's exactly the point I am making. Can people not see the actual trending without the linear trend added? The inclusion of said linear trend upon a cyclic function IS misleading. People are given an impression that it is significant and as some people are doing here, extrapolating the decline to the last degree. Without inclusion of 'rate of change of the linear trend' and/or a maturity diagram of the trend's development over time, the site developers are lining themselves up for failure to predict the recovery of Arctic sea ice or even include that possibility. Guess the science 'is' settled.

I love it when educated people like those over at PIOMAS open their publicly viewable domain with a graph showing a linear trend superimposed upon a complex signal. Wow! All those educated statistical mathematicians deriving a linear trend from the sum of complex functions. Such is the nature of the opinion they are directing upon the public. Nature rarely does linear trends. Fact. Nature does repeated cycles punctuated by dramatic changes. Mathematics' involvement with natural science and physics is a mockery without the differential calculus. Read into that what you will.

knocker. Seeing as you like PIOMAS so much, why didn't you link to this graph? http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst.png Looks like this years temperatures are 'so high' in the Arctic that the ice is growing thicker, no?

minus 9. Although I agree that most are incorrect about the predictions for the Arctic there are several periodic cycles retrievable from proxy data sets. These natural cycles involve resonances with external solar system drivers. Some are predictable and stand to be tested alongside the fiction of 'greenhouse gas forcing' at this point in time. Interesting decade ahead.

Knocker. Hi. Do you not feel that neven is a little short sighted, in the 'assumption' that sea ice in the Arctic will one day soon, just melt away? The discussions there about the rate at which the final days of summer Arctic ice will pan out are the stuff of pure fantasy. Most of the area of ice missing from the Arctic during this current 'natural' warm period are along the North Atlantic seaboard during the final stages of the 'naturally' occurring Atlantic Multidecadal (AMO) at the end of the current warm period. With a declining AMO inevitable and a reduction in both TSI and continued reduction in stratospheric temperatures mixed through the winter vortex, the full recovery of Arctic sea ice is inevitable.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.anom.global.html Something to ponder. Goodnight, best wishes

Crepuscular Ray. There is currently a long standing lack of global temperature changes. Most (publicly available) data sets are showing no statistically significant warming for the past 10 years plus. For some like the MET OFFICE hadcrut data it's nearly 18 years. How long with GHG's rising but no correlation with temperature before the public catch on? Meanwhile, nature isn't waiting for man's consensus if opinion of what drives global temperature. The zero Celsius calibration for freezing is driving global sea ice into a sustained positive anomaly. So I irrespective of GCMs' algorithm's inability to average a non linear function like temperature, I'll go with sea ice and the position of the polar front (indicated by mean jet stream position).

Devonian, I ask you this from compete humility. How willing are you to accept that throwing a stone into the air, which is a reversible isentropic process and you know to be true, is true for the particles that make up the air? It seems that you are interested but not convinced. What would it take?

Crepuscular Ray, I calculated a temperature for a planet's surface at this distance from the Sun without an atmosphere. The reason was to 'gauge the magnitude' of the surface enhancement of having 10^18 kg of matter thermally driven off the surface and suspended in near hydrostatic equilibrium above the surface. It's less than popularly believed.

Devonian, The physics of the tropospheric lapse is 'exactly' the same as throwing a stone into the air. All potential energy at zenith, returned to kinetic at the lower altitude. For a gas 1/2mv^2 = 1/2kT per degree of freedom. The sum of kinetic states is the heat capacity. The atmosphere is gravitationally contained. Nothing, and that is nothing goes up or down without releasing gravitational potential or doing work, which comes from the kinetic states, normalised through equipartition into the kinetic distribution we call temperature.

Crepuscular Ray, I don't know where to start. The Earth has no ocean without an atmosphere. No liquids in a vacuum. The Earth without an atmosphere is a rocky surface. The same rock as the moon.

Devonian, Sorry but a simple understanding of what was going on would tell you that I wouldn't raise the albedo to lower temperature.

Devonian, No I do not use an atmospheric albedo. The albedo is that of the moon. It's the same rock. Devonian, feel free to question any step. It's a sensibly arrived at calculation We can derive the lapse from kinetic theory if you choose.

Knocker, So now you understand it. Find fault with my argument. It's easy, just point to the parts that are incorrect!

Crepuscular Ray, At last you got to the point. There is no 'accelerated anthropological warming' atmospheres don't work that way.

Crepuscular Ray, Care to show something other than chaff. The lapse rate can be derived and contains vibrational modes as part of Cp. Please SPECIFY THE DETAILS OF MY ERRORS.

Ok we'll do this anyway. According to Trenberth's energy budget as used by the IPCC. From the incoming solar energy thermalised, which is (1-albedo), some 23% of solar radiation thermalised is absorbed by the atmosphere. So of the 71%(1-albedo) 23% or 0.32 of the thermal budget is absorbed by the atmosphere. From the same budget of the net outgoing flux of 17%, 5% is absorbed by the atmosphere and 12% transmitted. 29% of net energy lost by the surface to space is absorbed by the atmosphere. So 32% of the radiative heating of the surface and 29% of the radiative losses to space are absorbed by the atmosphere. Aren't these very similar proportions? Does it sound like energy can get in but can't get out due to wavelength dependent properties?

Knocker and Crepuscular Ray please explain how, despite massive changes in density and optical path length at long wave radiation wavelengths how the lower troposphere isn't any warmer than bringing an air parcel down from the upper troposphere. Where is the greenhouse effect measurable and demonstrable?

Crepuscular Ray, Sounds like I struck a chord there. Got a vein pumping. I asked what the word meant. The answer was wrongI gave a level headed answer. And isn't knocker capable of responding all by himself? Are you his hand-holder?

Knocker, No it doesn't mean that. It means no energy leaves. Where Q= energy For adiabatic dQ or rate of change is zero. For an isentropic or reversible adiabatic the net radiative flux is near zero or it doesn't radiate at all. If we compress or reduce the pressure of a gas we have Boyle's law providing we allow time for the system to lose or gain energy to or from its surroundings. Adiabatic refers to an inability to do so. The net of incoming and outgoing fluxes add to zero. Ergo the bulk of tropospheric dynamics allow energy to not be altered relative to the total tropospheric profile which is conservation based upon insignificant loss. Prediction. You will contend this. Then I will quote you from the IPCC Energy Balance.

Knocker, A few days ago you quoted three lapse rates with initials preceding. One of the letters in each was the letter 'A', what does that stand for and what does that word mean? Are you purposefully detracting from the rates you 'understand' and quoted?