Admiral_Bobski

I think you haven't quite got the idea of hysteresis, GW. Hysteresis is not something that can be "overcome" - it's not a "reluctance towards change". hysteresis - noun 1. the lag in response exhibited by a body reacting to changes in the forces...affecting it. 2. the phenomenon exhibited by a system...in which the reaction of the system to changes is dependent upon its past reactions to change. CB

I don't think that a discussion of the LI is entirely out of place in this thread: Q. What is causing the warming? A. Could it be the LI principle? CB

Iceberg, I named no names in my earlier post with regards barbed comments and so on, but your attitude has been less than respectful. Regardless, though, you are seriously misreading (or misrepresenting) what I am saying. I did not say that the LI had proved anything. I said that the LI had shown that the principle exists. Rather a different assertion, I hope you'll agree. I would not be so brazen as to claim proof where there is none. What order of magnitude does the LI require? Well, what's the temperature trend over the last 60 years or so? 0.1C per decade? Well, 0.1C per decade would require an increase (a retention) of 0.01C per year, which would make 0.001C (1/1000th of a degree) per month more than ample to cover it. You'd have to ask VP for the exact figures (since I lost all the LI stuff when my computer crashed), but I don't believe it's quite as straightforward as entering in a "retention constant" of 1/1000th of a degree. When I brought up the 1/1000th of a degree I was talking about the principle of the LI. You seem to accept the retention of such trifling amounts in principle, am I right? CB

How small an effect? Do you think it possible that 1/1000th of a degree C could be retained over the course of a month (so that the next month is 1/1000th of a degree warmer than it otherwise would have been)? CB

Well, Iceberg, I am honoured that you should allow me and VP to continue our work - very kind of you. However, I don't "push it down people's throats" except in response to certain comments. I am sick and tired of people saying "there's no possible way that the Sun can be responsible" when the LI has already shown that, in principle, it is possible. What the LI has already shown, whether you accept it or not, is that the introduction of a lag into the climate system produces a "temperature" output akin to what we see in the world. Yes there are refinements, adjustments and corrections to be made in order to turn a bit of mathematical meddling into a coherent hypothesis, but the principle of it has already been shown to be correct. I am fed up with the barbed comments and put-downs that various posters have made about the LI (and, more objectionably, about VP and myself - though VP has borne the brunt of it, for which I can only apologise to him). And finally, most people (on both sides of the debate) seem to be expecting far too much of the LI - the LI will not "explain everything", and nor did we ever claim that it would. The LI does not ignore GHGs, it incorporates them. This means that it acknowledges the greenhouse effect without attributing all of the warming to it (or, rather, not attributing the source of the warming to it). And I think that's why I'm going to have to give up on this debate - at least until the LI is finished, which may be some time. Nobody seems willing to accept that the LI is a sound principle, and nobody seems willing to play Devil's Advocate and actually discuss the possible merits of it, in scientific terms. In the meantime I am happy to remain around to point out logical fallacies in people's arguments, but with regards actual scientific discussions I don't see that there's much point. CB

I see that GW and Iceberg have still yet to understand the premise of the LI. Oh Well. CB

Posted by myself on another thread, but applicable to all: I really do give up - henceforth I shall be doing any further work on the LI with VP by e-mail and telephone...I've had enough of this smug point-scoring (and it's not even legitimate point-scoring because you still haven't got the...well, er... point). Adieu. CB

Solar has a small immediate input. I really do give up - henceforth I shall be doing any further work on the LI with VP by e-mail and telephone...I've had enough of this smug point-scoring (and it's not even legitimate point-scoring because you still haven't got the...well, er... point). Adieu. CB

BBC article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8615789.stm Published in Environmental Research Letters. Who funded it? Who cares? Paper can be found, in full, here: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024001/fulltext CB

Of course there is always the possibility (just a possibility, mind) that the "missing heat" is not "missing" at all but is, in fact, "non-existant". Just a possibility, you understand. CB

I'm not sure there's any need to point any fingers at all, but maybe that's just me... CB

Does anybody think it strange that so many Pro-AGWers were declaiming the hysteria of skeptics after the CRU leak, and now those self-safe pros, having been "vindicated", are lashing out with just as much hysteria at the skeptics? As for the Sun...well, everybody here knows my views on that particular subject, but it's worth pointing out that the scientists who found a link between low solar activity and a colder CET have not described a fundamental mechanism for the effect... CB

Good luck with that! Unofrtunately I have no real personality - it has been completely subsumed by my pedantry CB

In all fairness though, sea ice decline isn't actually caused by CO2 per se, is it? It's caused by other things, such as temperature increases and (perhaps even moreso) weather patterns. Which does bring us back to the issue of CO2, I grant you, but it's a bit more complicated than that. CB

Well don't read it then! CB

You accuse people of "prattling on" like "simpletons" and claim you're not name calling? Is your post not "a measured response gauged to cause upset"? Silly me. CB PS - You also squeezed the word "butt" in there, I see

I'm not being pedantic at all - you stated that "we do not have any old perennial", which is clearly not true. Am I upsetting you by calling you on that fact? If so then I apologise, but my point still stands and is patently not pedantic. CB

Sorry, sss, what's the obvious agenda? He clearly comments, at several points, that feedbacks are incorporated into his maths, because of the way the figures have been derived, and he makes the point of saying that there is an assumption that the feedback effects will only ever change proportionately with CO2 concentration (which is a reasonable assumption to make for the purposes of his illustration). I've re-read the article and I can't see where he claims that CO2 comes from the oceans - in fact he seems to quite clealry accept that increases in atmospheric CO2 come from manmade emissions and not the ocean. I'm not sure that his spatial distribution argument is fallacious so much as oversimplified - but he does acknowledge that his argument is a little simplistic. As for the saturation issue, his description seems to tally with the explanations given in other places (for instance, your earlier links), if in perhaps a more simplistic manner. Interestingly, your argument about the "redistribution of heat...by weather" relates to your objection over the "1K difference out of 288K" issue. It's all to do with averages, and more specifically to do with the validity of using averages in certain circumstances. The "288K" figure is based upon a global average and, as I have said before, the very fact that the night side of Earth does not plummet to around -250C is evidence of lags in the climate system, yes? So, with these lags we are actually varying around a much higher baseline than you allow for (and these lags are - at least in part - a symptom of weather). Your defence of the science of AGW is admirable, but sometimes I think you are blinded to other possibilites and refuse to lend them any credence. CB If it's a generic e-mail then that's fairly irrelevant, isn't it? And even if it weren't generic, there is no personal information or opinion in it, so what's the problem? CB

We don't have any old perennial? None at all? CB

Interesting article: http://brneurosci.org/co2.html CB

I have addressed that particular issue so many times before on these pages that I don't think I'll bother again... CB

I'm still looking into your outgoing longwave radiation comment - there's quite a bit to take in surrounding that particular topic (plus some possible discrepancies). More on that later. My post was as a response to your insinuation that Dr Alley's lecture would resolve the "foolish fallacy" of thinking that CO2 can't lead temperature, where it clearly doesn't - it glosses over all the causation and points instead only to correlation. I sense that you are starting to get a little exasperated by my comments. I confess to being a little exasperated myself. CB

I agree that it is a logical fallacy to say that "because CO2 lagged temperature in the past it can't be leading it now." But that logical fallacy, and your rebuttal, sidestep the issue of correlation and causation. I have watched about 40 minutes of the lecture, and I intend to finish it off later on today. It is a very good lecture: he outlines his points very clearly and concisely, and in an entertaining way (which is always good ). I agree with (or can't argue against) almost everything he says. But...! There is an assumption, in his lecture, that CO2 causes temperatures to rise. Never does he show how, where or when CO2 became a significant factor in historical temperature increases - he simply says that "we can't explain it without CO2, but we can explain it with CO2." Well, just because we can't explain it without CO2 does not mean that there is no explanation that omits CO2. He has shown numerous examples of correlation, but no actual examples of causation. In fact the best causative explanation he can give is that "we can't explain it any other way." I'm sorry, but that's not causation, that's assumption. Anyhoo, I have to dash off for a while, so I'll catch up with the rest of the lecture later on. CB

VP has given us a pretty good starting point there, I think. Is it possible to attribute some figures to each factor? (I think that was GW's original point on the "consensus" thread - to identify forcings and feedbacks and apply figures to them.) So where do we start? CB

Yes, and I've been pointing out the flaw in that point for years, too!!!! CB