I wrote recently that I wanted to check local regions of inland lakes to look for bias in the sea ice satellite record.   Satellites are not long lived creatures.  They are built of lightweight materials very carefully constructed to survive in incredibly harsh environments.  The result is design lifetimes far shorter than a decade.   Why is that important?   Because that means that the finest climate trend records, which are satellite based, are comprised of instruments continually re-calibrated to absolute detail but are knitted together wherever any switch of instrument occurs.

All kinds of things can affect measurements, time of day, altitude decay, instrument degradation, signal loss, on and on.   Scientists work very hard to correct for these changes but sometimes they are unable to achieve a perfect result.  Other times problems are missed.

One of the biggest critiques of satellite temperature data is the known offsets caused by orbital decay of the individual instruments and how they are knitted together during transitions to newer satellites.  The details of the corrections are impressive and when things in science are not simple, that often means not certain.  In the UAH and RSS series, that means that the scientists use additional data to re-knit the satellites.  Less detail is available in knitting of multi-satellite sea ice data.

What is more important is that sea ice data changed sensor types at about 1987.  I knew this before but had forgotten in which year this transition occurred.

For this experiment, I chose a section of Canada which included lakes that always will freeze over 100% in the winter and melt 100% in the summer.  You would expect that sea ice area for these lakes would produce a sine wave with clipped peaks as the signal reached 100% and 0%.

I can really improve these graphics but this will get the point across:

Total Sea Ice Area - no mask

Purple mask incorporating Great Bear, Great Slave, and Athabaska River Lake.

By running the sea ice code presented previously here and incorporating this purple highlighted mask, we get the sea ice area plot below:

Click to expand. One hundred day filtered three lake sea ice area.

Several things stand out.  First, there is little, yet a non-zero negative trend in the maximum ice from 3 lakes .   Then we see that the minimum ice level from these 3 lakes never drops below 10000 sq km average.   The daily unfiltered data approaches closer to zero but there is enough noise that zero isn’t ever reached in lakes which have zero ice.  The very last cycle is “preliminary data” which has not been fully processed so it’s similar depth to the first cycles may be representative of the processing rather than the data itself.  It makes one wonder what exactly was done to the different types of data.

Steve Fitzpatrick happened to be writing about the crazy thread on backradiation so I sent him this last plot with this comment:

Sea ice area from Great Bear, Great Slave, and Athabaska River.

Wouldn’t you expect that satellite data would show an even melt in the summer months?

And later:

Sea ice at these 3 lakes should have the same max/min.   There is a satellite switch right at 87-88.

I don’t know if there is an instrument type change at the same point.
More reading.

I had forgotten when the instrument type switch occurred but a bit of research turned up this:

This data set contains gridded brightness temperatures (TB) and sea ice concentrations, spanning October 1978 through August 1987, when the SMMR scanner was turned off.

In the end I realized that this is the point where the data turned from SMMR to SMM/I type sensors.  I’m not familiar with the details of the sensors but it seems this offset likely biases the critical Northern Hemisphere sea ice trend to some extent.

We have been looking at sea ice trends below the arctic circle at the request of Anthony Watts.  It is a curiosity of his that he’s been asking Walt Meier of the NSIDC to consider for some time.   I am a fan of the NSIDC because their data access is excellent and they answer questions very quickly and reasonably. This post is from the daily sea ice data as presented by the NSIDC on their FTP site.   It is several gigabytes so if you are serious, fileZilla is a good free software to facilitate download.

From the video’s produced, it is apparent that a lot of noisy data exists at the extreme lower edge of detection.   This data results in sea ice being detected in isolated squares of warm latitudes with no chance of having actual sea ice. The effect is visible in this video showing both poles through the history of satellite ice data.

You can see the great lakes around Michigan sparkle year round with sea ice detection noise yet we know that the beaches in July and August are 90F and and the only ice you will find would be in someones drink.bbSo the false detection at the low end of the microwave sensor range is a known factor.   Plotting the sea ice area outside of the circle above, we can see that the sea ice never quite hits zero.  It gets pretty close though.

It is interesting that the minimum value has a shift at about 1998.  Fluctuations in the minimums don’t seem to have much trend so I assume the effect is instrument related.  There are a number of different instruments on different satellites which have been combined to create this trend.

There is a statistically signficant trend in the sea ice outside of the arctic circle.  This ice is completely melting as expected every year so the trend we see is a result of reduced formation.  I’m curious now what percentage of this new formation is in the open sea vs landlocked lakes but that will be a subject for a future post.

The Arctic trend shown next is comprised of everything above the arctic circle.

The trend is also significantly negative.

For confirmation of the above, these results differ very little from the UIUC cryosphere page.  UIUC does infill the pole hole with estimated data whereas I simply leave it out.  The pole hole is the region around the pole where the satellite instruments do not reach.  This region changed size early in the record leaving some difficult choices as to how to handle the newly available data.  I simply used the large mask throughout the record when creating trends. My trend may be slightly more negative than theirs due to the difference but the fractional differences are very small.

The purpose behind some of this work was to determine what percentage of the above trend is seasonal ice unrelated to polar cap melt.  Taking 152000km^2/decade of seasonal ice out of the 518000km^2 total, that amounts to 29% of the melt trend is due to ice which, in the last 34 years, is completely seasonal in nature.  Arctic circle ice also melts every year so it is a mix of seasonal and perennial (multi-year) ice.  The ratio of the seasonal ice 152000 to the mixed seasonal/multiyear ice 366000 is 41% – not sure what use that is but it is interesting to consider that the multi-year ice loss is quite a bit less than these graphs show.

This next graph requires some interpretation.  It is a ratio of the seasonal ice area outside the Arctic circle to the ice inside the Arctic circle.

In looking at this plot, I read it by observing the annual peaks only.  There is a visibly evident trend in the peak values each year.  This means that the peak seasonal ice is decreasing at a higher rate than the perennial Arctic peak ice.  This seems to be a confirmation of gradual warming processes controlling the peak amount as we would expect the southerly ice to show the effects first.  One problem with this graph is that it reads near zero during the time of greatest melting so we really only have good information at the peaks.

More work needs to be done.  The next thing I want to do is look at landlocked ice to see if there are trends in satellite detection ability.  After that, I have some new ideas to isolate whether the 2007 and 2010 arctic minimums were localized effects caused by ocean currents or if they were larger in scope.

My focus on this now is because the data is interesting and extensive and I haven’t seen much work done on regional effects in blogland.  I am very much skeptical that we should be worried about any of this.  If you add up all the sea ice in the world, we have a heck of a lot of it at any given time.  About 19million Km^2 on average.  If you take the global anomaly and offset it by the average amount, it gives a good idea what the sea ice death spiral is working out to be.

This data was compiled from the daily Ease grid files presented by the NSIDC.  Code for this post his here. ice code Save it and change the extension to R as WordPress won’t allow upload of text or R files.   It is written in several sections: functions, Northern hemisphere ice, Southern hemisphere ice, plotting calls etc. Authors of the various parts include RomanM, RyanO, Nic, Steve McIntyre and myself. Nearly all of their work has been modified so many times by me they may not recognize it but still deserve credit for the good parts.  Any errors are my own.

Accelerating warming failed again. I’ve been waiting for this post because we knew the sat channels had plunged. On reading his post, I learned that Dr. Roy Spencer’s daughter was involved in a serious car accident.  I hope everyone will send their regards.

 

H/T Doug Cotton.

 

David Appell has released a copy of a FOD AR5 chapter.

http://www.davidappell.com/AR5

Satellite sea ice measurements are comprised of terabytes of data over decades of time and multiple instruments. The literature on the topic is incomplete for those of us who don’t live in the field, yet far better than anything that paleomagicology has ever produced. In my recent sea ice work, I’ve taken the time to correct for leap years in the trend and spent a lot of time insuring that the calculations are accurate. I really want to understand what is happening to cause the melting of the Arctic and growth of the Antarctic and believe I am coming close. I used FileZilla to download all of the EASE grid sea ice data from the NSIDC. If you want the link, send an email and I will give you instructions. We don’t want to download gigabytes of ice data if we are not serious about study.

Anthony Watts was curious about the ice trends above and below the Arctic Circle. It seems reasonable that a large percentage of ice loss would happen at lower latitudes if global warming is the cause of the loss. Contrary to my own theory that warm waters were pushed into the pole, it seems that this general warming is in fact the cause. The jury is not out yet, but IMO the fat lady’s tummy is visible.   So here are some of the plots I’ve generated:

This is the ice area inside the Arctic Circle. The decline in minimum is striking, as are the step features in the maximums.

I’m not at all comfortable with the steps in maximum ice considering that the max ice is constrained by land mass.

Ice area inside the Arctic circle.

Consider that the total ice area is this:

Entire Northern Sea Ice

Note that the minimum area never drops to zero. This is an offset in the resulting area which should be considered.

The ice anomaly below the Arctic is:

South of the Arctic circle yet northern hemisphere sea ice.

This plot seems to have an artificial step at 1995.  There is a significant satellite switch at that point but I haven’t had time to fully research it.  Despite my fondness for the massively funded Sea Ice group,  I don’t believe right now that it is a non-issue.  Long time readers will remember the step in the UAH RSS data.

I’m tired again, hopefully this is enough to start some thought.  MUCH more of this has been done and will be posted in greater detail.

The theme which started the URL of noconsensus, was that a consensus is an unnatural state for humanity. People disagree about everything under the Sun. Usually, disagreement is due to lack of information but we all know that many times it is about biased interpretation of information. The only questions in global warming are related to the magnitude of warming, what is causing that warming and whether it is a problem in any way at all. In my opinion, this is just my opinion, those questions aren’t even close to being answered by Climate Science™. Yet if the left wing environmental groups around the country cannot have consensus on the danger and the consequential need to enact anti-industry controls for that danger, their own self-destructive agenda cannot move forward.

Since this blog was started, the environmental activist groups, which are fronts for the most radical anti-industrial agenda, have really exposed their hands. From the president of Greenpeace announcing that they are really anti-capitalist to to 501C 3′s using taxpayer money to take political stances against conservative candidates. Recently in the news, another tax-free entity, Forecast the Facts, has compiled a list of 55 meteorologists who refuse to spout the dangers of climate change. It has long been understood that meteorologists are not inclined to agree with climate science doom predictions. After all, they can plainly see that droughts, hurricanes and storms happen all the time and that there is no trend in the history of these events. Since they are professional scientists who unlike climatologists, don’t make more money and recognition by agreement with the consensus, often times, they simply state reality as their less-influenced scientific minds see it.

As is so typical of those who believe in government control as a goal to be achieved, the extremists will not tolerate free thought and actually believe this as a BIG problem which needs to be addressed. It is unconscionable to them that scientists won’t repeat in unison that the world is ending due to industry and the excesses of modern life. You know, excesses like food, transportation, and heat. To that end Forecast the Facts has made a blacklist of meteorologists who have made anti-message statements and has consequently (predictably) come under a small bit of pressure in the media. In reaction, they recently published a statement of their purpose linked here, but we can read all we need to know about these people by the final paragraph copied below.

Like it or not, that decision puts the AMS squarely in the midst of this conversation. And in our eyes, there is only one way for them to appropriately comport themselves – quickly pass a statement that is consistent with the current scientific consensus, and then vigorously promote that statement to their members. Anything short of this would be a derilection of their duty as a scientific association. That is the conclusion that more than 13,000 people — those who have signed the Forecast the Facts petition — have come to, and we hope that number grows significantly in days to come. Because in the end, Forecast The Facts exists for one purpose — to make sure these people’s voices are heard. We can only hope that the AMS, and broadcast meteorologists across the country, start listening.

I find it amazing that the any person on Earth can read this and consider it a reasonable statement. See, we have no consensus on that either.

Change you can believe in.  I’ve wondered often why the assumption of a large Climate Science™ body is so against warmer weather.  As many here are noting, I do understand that CO2 will absolutely warm the planet.  Still I am more skeptical than many as to whether that warming attributed to CO2 has been, or even can be, detected. Attribution studies are woefully inadequate and not due to inept scientists as much as the difficulty of the problem. The fact that some are even published is due to ineptness though as I have finished papers thinking the answer is – we don’t really know – but you can guess that that isn’t what was written.

Warmer is bad.

Why?

Being a multicellular air breathing organism, I like warm. I do also like polar bears but my guess is that they don’t mind warm either. We are only talking about a few degrees and that is NOT enough to end sea ice. We know for a fact that there are endless positive effects of a warmer planet and have only been able to come up with a few negative ones. The positive includes more plants, more area for animals to graze, more water in the air, less clothing on beaches etc.. Negatives, as written, are unproven. For instance, the melting of the ice caps. We have seen some summer ice shrinkage in the Arctic and some growth in the Antarctic. We have also seen that the caps refreeze every year with an abruptness corresponding to the very cold temperatures of the poles. Shocker!! Not a few C below freezing but several tens of degrees. I frankly don’t see the planetary doom in that.

Antarctic ice isn’t melting any time soon and glaciers aren’t vanishing as advertised. We all know that this isn’t the story the media and scientists are selling but it IS reality.

So what is really wrong with being warmer? What if we do see those temp increases the government organized IPCC predicts? I don’t really understand people’s incredible ability to react to unproven scenarios of destruction, simply because the scenario was stated. Shut off the power because we are worrying about an unproven ‘end of the world’ claim makes as much sense as not eating so we can save ourselves from heart disease. The world isn’t this clean pristine operating room environment which must be left undisturbed. It is a home in which we live and should care for, but that doesn’t mean we have to try and hold its weather static. The Earth doesn’t hold it static itself anyway. It prefers being colder and that is really bad news for us and I would also guess, the polar bears.

I have reworked my sea ice code to account for leap years and to make it easier to read.  It wasn’t a terribly easy process but it was useful.   Here I will present some plots of sea ice trend as derived from the gridded satellite data.  The purpose of this was to verify their accuracy and lay groundwork for future posts on sea ice.

Unfortunate statistically significant growth of ice during unprecedented death-spiral sea ice doom.

Unfortunate statistically significant loss of ice during unprecedented death-spiral sea ice doom.

All of the graphs here have been taken from the NSIDC gridded data.  Of all the government funded global warming groups I have corresponded with, these people are the best.  The graphs shown are daily data with some linear interpolation for the earliest decade where data was missing.     AR corrected c0nfidence intervals are reasonable but are getting close to 1 so don’t interpret them too closely.  They also assume a normal distribution – which probably isn’t that bad of an assumption.  Bottom line – look at them as an approximation. – - more people should write that.

Now for my signature sea ice plot.  The global sea ice with an offset based on the average area of sea ice.  The purpose of this plot is to explain that there is a heck of a lot of sea ice left on this “little blue marble” and that those who panic are in their own special class.

Ok, to be honest, the other purpose is to drive advocates nuts with the very data they promote.

I will present the code for these plots soon.  It is fairly complex, definitely has a C accent that would drive Mosher crazy, but does the job more accurately than anything I have previously produced.

I’ve been spending time working on improved sea ice code.  Anthony Watts asked for something and Steve McIntyre helped find the right R function to get it going. I want to also overlay SST data as well as flow direction in the videos. Hopefully it will lead us to some statistical analysis.

In the meantime JWL has been discussing backradiation on the previous thread. It is an old argument which doesn’t have a lot of entertainment value for some of us. He has put together a pdf which alleges to prove that backradiation (radiation from cold to hot) is impossible in the climate system and has made the claim that nobody has critiqued his math.  I’m going to help him out.

What he does here though is completely circular reasoning.  We have two surfaces and a flow between them.  f is a variable representing absorption of the medium in between the two surfaces.  Surface one emits energy at a power ?1 which is equal to ?T1^4.  T is the plate temp and ? is a constant.  Now classic physics agrees that emission power is proportional to T^4 so there is no problem with that.   Lets look at the assumptions he makes though:

The heat transfer q from i->j is equal to the emission at i minus the emission of j in watts per meter squared.   The negative term in equation 1 is the exact magnitude we would expect of back radiation.  However, the author is already writing text that the back-radiation is non-physical.  How do we know?

We then proceed to the equations at the top of this extensive PDF. Figure 1a includes the emission now from a surface.  Joseph has apparently re-written the laws of physics for this as now the emission of the first surface to the second is equal to f(?1 – ?2) where theta is the flux.  I asked how this equation came about and was pointed to equation 1.  Equation 1 though doesn’t say anything about the source of the flux, it only says that the sum of the flux is ?(Ti^4-Tj^4).  Of course that is not the assumption stated but the math doesn’t know anything about what assumption you state.  My question was and still is, how does the surface know to emit less energy when the second surface exists in a different timeframe? If the second surface vanishes instantly, does the first return to emitting a proper amount of radiation?

Very confusing.

So then we proceed to the next section of the treatise.

So for system 1 we have in steady state – input = output or f(?1 – ?2) = f ?2 which with some easy algebra is  f?1 = 2f?2.  In system 2 we have the same thing f?1 = 2f?2.  They are exactly the same.  Now for system 2 Joseph states that plate 2 of model B, having two hand drawn arrows, is emitting twice as much as the first.  But wasn’t the original assumption that plate 1 changed its emission based on some spooky knowledge of plate 2?  This assumption was based on nothing I can see but it included the plate 1 emission correction which happened to be exactly equal to the emission of plate 2 back to plate 1. He then concludes that B is non-physical based on absolutely NO evidence other than his original (and obviously false) assumption.

The logic is totally circular and the math for both cases is identical.

Joseph hasn’t made the claim that the second plate won’t absorb the photons from the first, he is making the claim that the photons don’t even exit the first surface.  As this example of heat is identical to two incandescent lamps, this is physically identical to stating that if you shine a bright light on a dim light the second will dim further.

Many real world examples prove Joseph wrong.  Lets assume though that most of us already know this and look at it from a spacetime standpoint – because it is also fun.

Each surface, from its own point of reference, sees the other surface as behind itself in time.  The amount each sees the other as behind (X) is equal to the time light takes to travel across the distance between the objects.  Imagine that one plate suddenly vanished.  The other plate wouldn’t realize it for X seconds and in Josephs world, would stubbornly continue to emit at a reduced level until it became aware of the vanished counterpart.  These reduced output photons would pass through the space where the first plate had been for a full 2X the number of seconds.  This is because the first plate would become aware that the second had vanished after (X seconds) and then began emitting a greater amount across the same distance (another X seconds)!  A sensor behind the second plate would see a reduced output for 2x seconds after the plate disappeared, followed by a sudden jump in brightness of the first plate.

Now imagine the plates were a light-day apart and you had enough time to stick a sensor between the surfaces.

That is unphysical in my book.

So many examples prove radiation does flow from cold to warm.  My favorite, presented here before, is one of an uncooled infrared camera looking at an image of ice. Now we know the camera’s sensor is room temp so if radiation does not emit from cold to warm, everything cooler than the camera sensor, should appear midnight black. As this video progresses the color scale shifts so the table – room temp – is significantly warmer than many other objects in the image.  Especially the edges of the ice.  The manufacturer seems to also believe the camera can measure to minus 20 C.   Much to the chagrin of AGW advocates (and Joseph), that would be well below room temp in my room.

Remember, light and IR radiation are the same thing.  Your flashlight does not change intensity when you shine it at the sun.  Nor does the sun, however the energy from the flashlight will interact with the plasma of the solar surface 8 minutes after you shine it.

After this, I am done with this topic.  I won’t mind trying to explain where people go wrong in their thermodynamics, but really this is very much elementary and life is short.  I have spent a good deal of time trying to straighten out this form of “skepticism” which unfortunately is flatly not reasonable.  However, some are honestly confused and when they read a bunch of math letters piled together with words, they can’t always understand what the author is saying.

A guest post by Dr. Weinstein in response to a post by Dr. Spencer.

EFFECT OF ATMOSPHERIC MASS AND CO2 ON GROUND TEMPERATURE

Leonard Weinstein, ScD

January 17, 2012

The issue has been raised about the effect of the mass of an atmosphere on surface temperature.  It can be shown that if no optically absorbing gases, aerosols, or clouds are present in the atmosphere, that the average surface temperature will be determined by albedo, absorbed surface solar radiation (ignoring small radioactive heating effects), and outgoing thermal radiation at the ground level, and I will not discuss that issue here. The present discussion only considers an atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and for simplicity only looks at the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Only long time average global average values of temperature are considered, and only at long term constant CO2 levels (i.e., transient responses are ignored).

Some simplifications are made here, as the complete analysis is complex, and requires accurate experimentally measured data values and assumptions that are not well settled. The main simplification I make is the ground temperature sensitivity of the Earth atmosphere to increases in atmospheric CO2 levels. Values from less than 0.5 C/doubling to over 4 C/doubling have been suggested as the result of CO2 increase plus all feedback effects, However I am only describing the CO2 effect independently here, and this has been shown in most studies to give a surface increase of about 1.2 C/doubling of CO2, ignoring all other effects.

I use here is a mean virtual temperature, Tv~250 K that is based on an average temperature between sea level and approximate average location of outgoing radiation to space. This is an approximation, but its exact value has little effect on the comparison shown later. In addition, I use the wet lapse rate (as found in our lower to mid Troposphere) of -6.5 C per km height, even though I ignored the feedback effect of water vapor and clouds in the atmosphere to simplify the analysis.

In an atmosphere, the height from ground to a particular pressure level can be found from the following equation:

 The value of H, which differs somewhat for different lapse rates, is called the scale height, and is the height where the pressure decreases by a factor of 1/e. I am using here the value of H ~29.3Tv for Earth’s atmosphere (based on the actual measured average atmospheric gas properties and Earth’s gravity), so combining this with the value of Tv   selectedgives H~7.33 km. Changes in this value would be small enough for different assumptions that it would not change the basic result shown here.

I now examine two simplified cases:

1.  The case of a surface pressure of 1 bar (Earth’s actual value), with present amounts of CO2 (390 ppm), and with the effect of other greenhouse gases, aerosols, or clouds having a constant effect that is independent of atmospheric mass or changes in CO2, and assuming the same albedo as at present.
2. The case of 2 bars surface pressure, with the same total amount of CO2 as case 1, but with an added equal amount of a mix of N2 and or O2, so that the average specific heat and molecular weight of the atmospheric gases are the same for 1 and 2. The greenhouse heating effect of other greenhouse gases, clouds, and aerosols are considered to be exactly the same as case 1 to separately show the effect of CO2 alone, and the albedo is still the same as in case 1.

The total effect of the present amount of CO2 alone on an increase in temperature above the no-greenhouse gas for case 1 is not accurately established, with estimates for CO2 alone from 5 C to 15 C as compared to the 33 C estimated total greenhouse effect with all gases, clouds, and aerosols. Since some of the CO2 absorption and radiation wavelengths overlap some of the water vapor wavelengths, the effect of CO2 in the presence of water vapor is even less addition than if considered alone. I am examining the effect of only CO2 here. I use an estimated value of the total CO2 effect of 10 C for the present amount as being reasonable (the exact amount is not important as long as is significantly larger than the effect of one doubling). If case 1 has the same mass atmosphere as the present atmosphere, except the concentration of CO2 was 0.5 times that of the present (195 ppm), this would have resulted in a reduction of surface temperature of 1.2 C for the lower concentration, ignoring feedback. Case two does has half the concentration of case 1, but also has twice the atmospheric mass, so the total mass of CO2 is the same for both case 1 and 2, and the only difference is atmospheric mass (and corresponding thickness) of the total atmosphere.  The question is: what does this do to surface temperature?

The atmosphere is considerably thicker for case 2 than case 1 due to having twice the mass of gases, and this raises the altitude of some of the (assumed well mixed) CO2 a considerable amount. A simple analogy to see the effect is that if a thin unmixed layer of CO2 containing all the present CO2 mass in the present atmosphere were forced to lie close over the surface, and most of the atmosphere above it had none, the greenhouse gas effect would only raise the location of outgoing radiation a short distance above the surface. Multiplying the average outgoing altitude by the lapse rate would result in surface temperature increasing only a fraction of the 10 C presently possible for mixed atmospheric CO2. While the gases would mix eventually up into the atmosphere, this point shows the effect of altitude of the greenhouse gas as also being a factor.

The equation for the relation between pressure and height for p1/p2=2 gives a value of (Z2-Z1)=5.08 km. Thus the pressure at 5.08 km for case 2 matches the surface pressure for case 1. The fact that a 0.5 change in CO2 would only change surface temperature 1.2 C implies that it only changes the average location of outgoing radiation by 1.2/6.5= 0.18 km if that were the only factor considered. However, the total change of 10 C possible for all of the CO2 alone implies the average altitude of outgoing radiation to space for all the CO2 alone was about 10/6.5=1.54 km. This is nearly an order of magnitude larger than the change due to a 0.5 change of CO2 (i.e., it is the result of the exponential response).

We thus have case 2 with only 0.5 the CO2as case 1 in the lower 5.08 km of atmosphere, but where it has the same total mass of the entire case 1 atmosphere. However, we have on top of that, additional atmosphere with the same total mass of atmosphere as all of case 1, and also with 0.5 the CO2 as all of case 1. This upper layer would be as thick as the entire present case 1 atmosphere. If the upper layer absorbed and radiate all portions of wavelengths absorbed and radiated in the lower 5.08 km, this upper portion alone would have a location (for CO2 alone) 1.36 km above the 5.08 km level where outgoing radiation occurred. The actual solution of the resulting average altitude would require a full radiation analysis, and is not as high as that oversimplified version. However, it is clear that a thicker atmosphere, even without increasing total greenhouse gases over the thinner case, would have increased surface temperature due to the increased average altitude of outgoing radiation. It is also true that it is not the mass or pressure of the atmosphere alone that causes the increase, it is the combination of average altitude of outgoing radiation and lapse rate, and the increase in mass of atmosphere would raise the average location of outgoing radiation by virtue of thickening the total atmosphere. The final increase in surface temperature is the product of average outgoing altitude (including from the ground, greenhouse gases, clouds and aerosols), and lapse rate.

Tom Fuller has started blogging again. He used to post at the SF examiner – until he also quit. Many of you will remember that he and I hold different views on politics but I find him honest and a far better writer than me. According to his email, his new blog will focus on energy and climate and appears to be directed at renewable energy. I’m looking forward to his contributions again and expect he will create a comfortable blogging atmosphere where difficult yet reasoned discussions can be held.

Let this be a lesson to new bloggers, it is a trap!

Tom’s blog (3000quads.com) is here and linked on the right.

Below is the full length of the NSIDC SEA ice data. From 2.8 gb of data. The graphs of the Arctic and Antarctic are plotted on equal grid scales having a pixel resolution of 25km. The satellite ice data comes from the NSIDC Sea Ice Concentrations as collected from the Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave systems.

UPDATE: High speed video from 2004 to present added below.

In response to recent discussions, I’ve taken the time to download the 2.8 gb of data required to plot sea ice.  I found a far better software for video creation called virtual dub.  And I rescaled the graphs so that the Arctic and Antarctic are plotted on equal grid scales.   The pixel resolution is 25km and the satellite ice data comes from the NSIDC Sea Ice Concentrations as collected from the Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave systems.   This version represents just a few years of the total dataset and is similar to my previous publicaitons.   You may note the higher resolution and frame rate than my previous work.   Currently, I’m compiling the complete video for publication tomorrow.      The purpose of the project is to first visually see if 2009 – 2011 which is not shown here, has similar weather patterns to 2007.  Also, I hope to add sea surface temperature and flow directions to the video – both of which will probably add to our understanding of the sea ice situation.   If I’m lucky, there may be some stats to follow as well.

High speed September 2004 to present:

S0 I’m actually getting to where I feel better about things and have begun looking at actual data.  Then I ran across this.

It is a call to action to limit black carbon emissions, a far more sensible thing to attack than CO2, but the article is so insane that I simply refuse to accept that anyone in the world believes it has any attachment to reality.

The Abstract:

Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and global warming. We considered ~400 emission control measures to reduce these pollutants by using current technology and experience. We identified 14 measures targeting methane and BC emissions that reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050. This strategy avoids 0.7 to 4.7 million annual premature deaths from outdoor air pollution and increases annual crop yields by 30 to 135 million metric tons due to ozone reductions in 2030 and beyond. Benefits of methane emissions reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric ton, which is well above typical marginal abatement costs (less than $250). The selected controls target different sources and influence climate on shorter time scales than those of carbon dioxide–reduction measures. Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.

You have got to be completely insane to imagine that a 0.5C warming or the associated pollution will kill a minimum of 700,000 people per year. This is what passes for peer review?!

Jesus…

There is simply no shame in these people’s makeup.  Have you ever witnessed such incredibly blatant and false scare tactics? This actually went into a journal.Perhaps if this is the standard for the AAAS science magazine, it should rename itself Charmin.

Steve McIntyre has an interesting post on how certain members of the most controversial sections of Climate Science™ have influenced the openness and transparency of the IPCC.   As usual, he has put considerable time into the effort and discovered a unique chain of events in the public documentation.

The IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.

We wouldn’t want anyone pointing out that flawed Steig work was being used as a poster boy for global warming until after it was too late right?   After all, Soon and Baliunas needed to go because its method was flawed, not because it was an anti-AGW result.  I’m sure that the Berkeley temperature study will also be treated similarly.

 

 

Apparently sea ice doesn’t agree with the global warming agenda.  I haven’t looked in months and would love to update the sea ice videos but I have to re-download the GB of data.   Today I took at the Cryosphere site (after literally months) and found this plot:

Sea ice is above average.   Despite my belief in CO2 global warming’s effect, I really don’t believe it has had any scientifically discernible impact on sea ice.  Nutin!!  Now we still believe ice does melt from warmth, at least I don’t think  Climate Science™ has changed that yet (apparently thermometers still have branches), but you need a lot more than a few degrees to melt an Earth pole. The same Sun hating environment that makes Star Wars planet Hoth look like a friendly beach resort.

I’m thinking that after I turn in the useless tax-payer sucking 501C we’ve been discusssing, to no useful effect, I’m going to write a letter to god and turn in the planetary poles for not listening to the government.  God put us on Earth for a reason, and if Earth doesn’t realize it we ought to do something about it.

Yup, still in a funk….

Some wonder why I’m tired and grumpy about climate blogging.  Wikipedia is a great example.   No matter the evidence, they will publish whatever revisionist truth compliments the leftist message.  I  will never contribute to that group although it could have been a wonderful source, it has become a biased propaganda engine of massive size.  They are regularly asking people for contributions at a time when other websites of that size are rife with cash.  Gee, does that sound like any newspapers you know?  Media groups never seem to recognize that it is the message that is not selling, they always blame something else.  Wiki claims that they don’t want adds to influence their content, but a few minutes of review by an unbiased individual reveals that the plain ain’t working.   Today at WUWT, James Padgett has a nice post on the Wikirevisionist article on the Soon and Baliunas incident.  The same SB paper which led to some insane behavior by the paleoclimatologist community which didn’t like the critique of their blatantly unreasonable methodologies.

I’ve been so frustrated with the constant untruths in media and climate science that it is hard to post anything.  Last night I spent a few hours quietly looking back at Ljungqvist 2010 proxies and will likely have a post in the next day or two on that.  It seems somewhat removed from the out-of-control political idiocy disguised as science.  Numbers are calming.

Anyway, check this out.  It is worth a read.

The Wonderful World of Wikipedia Posted on January 10, 2012 by James Padgett

Guest post by James Padgett

As many readers are aware, the culture surrounding the climate change topic area of Wikipedia has been a microcosm of climate science for nearly a full decade.

This is not a compliment.

When you read the Climategate emails and see discussions of finding people to investigate and discredit your ideological opponents –  that is Wikipedia. When you read about the IPCC’s usage of the WWF and students in composing their Climate Bible (KJV) – that is Wikipedia. When you read about “climate scientists” conspiring to get other scientists fired for challenging the orthodoxy – that is Wikipedia.

In short, Wikipedia does not care about truth, and certainly not doubts, it cares about message.

Read the rest at WUWT.

In continuation of my investigation of the actions of the tax exempt 501c corporation the “PACIFIC INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT, AND SECURITY”, I have dug deeper into the tax reporting and operations of Peter Gleick.  It appears that this organization operates completely above IRS law, employing what appears to be 95% government taxpayer money for the purpose of actively campaigning against conservative politicians and organizations. It is by no means the only group to do so but we have to start somewhere.

First, here is an article by President Peter Gleick on PIS letterhead specifically critiquing policies of conservative presidential candidates. climate_bs_award_2011[1]

Gleick is an extremist political activist by any form of the definition you care to propose.  He’s written numerous left wing propaganda pieces on the ‘green’ blog which are so full of pro-leftist disinformation that communist countries probably look to him for his expertise.  Now there is nothing inherently wrong with an organization promoting untruths for a political goal, the 501c’s are a leftist heaven for such things.  There are also conservative versions, but far, far fewer of them.  Conservatives don’t believe in taking government money for these things.  The result though has been a huge imbalance in funding for truth in science rather than the pro-government, pro-AGW, type messages.  Thus, it seems reasonable that we should shine a little light on them here.

Unfortunately for Gleick, he’s taken the process a step further in this years climate BS awards. Instead of complaining about those amazingly stupid conservatives, he’s actually taken the time to name and critique Republican presidential candidates for their positions on global warming.  This was in the last post but is worth reproducing here:

Climate B.S.* from all of the Republican candidates for President of the United States
Is it really necessary to be anti-science in general, and anti-climate science in particular, in order to be nominated to lead the Republican Party in the United States? Apparently, yes, at least in the minds of the Republican presidential candidates or their advisors. These candidates can be split into three groups: those ignorant or uninterested in science and its role in informing policy; those who intentionally distort science because it conflicts with deeply held political or religious ideology; and those who blow with the wind, giving their allegiance to whatever ideology seems most expedient at any given moment. There is some overlap, of course: some candidates, such as Rick Perry, have been in all three groups at various times. The third group includes candidates who have at one time or another held positions more or less consistent with scientific understanding, but who in 2011 adopted anti-scientific positions during their primary campaigns. For example, Gingrich, Romney, and Huntsman, at some point in the past all expressed at least a partial understanding about the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change. Yet all three have now retreated from the scientific evidence to faulty but ideological safe positions demanded by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In October, Romney caved in to conservative pressure and changed his stance on the issue. Just days ago, after pressure from anti-climate-science activists, Gingrich cut a chapter on climate science from a book of environmental essays he had agreed to produce. Ironically, that chapter was to have been written by an atmospheric scientist (Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University) who happens to be an evangelical and speaks regularly to conservative groups. She was also targeted by these activists for personal abuse – a tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians. (For a few of the craziest things the top GOP candidates have said on climate change, see Joe Romm’s recent essay at Think Progress.)

In short, the choice among the Republican candidates on the issue of climate change is scientific ignorance, distain for science, blatant misrepresentation of facts, or naked political expediency, any one of which would make the Republican candidates strong contenders for the 2011 Climate B.S. Award. Combined? They win hands down.

The worst part of the above for my heart, is listing Activist Joe Romm as an honest broker of science.  The guy doesn’t have a scientific cell left in his body. They have all atrophied to raisins under his need to be green no matter the evidence.   Seriously though, 501C’s are specifically prohibited from participation for or against any politician.   This violation of their tax free status cannot be tolerated but we have to report it and then it is up to the IRS to determine whether they should be properly prosecuted.   Steve McIntyre took the time to see how the PIS group filed last year and noted the boxes indicating that the group had not campaigned for any candidate in 2010. The above quote is from an article dated1/5/2012 so is the tax exempt group ok until 2013 when they will undoubtedly declare they are tax exempt for 2012?

Here is a list of rules from the US government regarding 501C (3) corporations:

  What puts a 501(c)(3) status in jeopardy?
When a 501(c)(3) does not file paperwork with the IRS and/or state or misstates its records intentionally, its tax-exempt status can be jeopardized. Additionally, 501(c)(3) organizations cannot engage in the following activities:
• Conducting extensive lobbying;
• Donating a substantial private benefit to individuals or other organizations for uses not aligned with the organization’s 501(c)(3) purpose;
• Providing outsiders or insiders with personal benefits;
• Engaging in any political activity; and
• Having excessive unrelated business income (UBI).

Joe Romm may want to read up on these.

Cornell University actually lists the code.  You can read it in full here.  In the meatime, it looks like many 501c’s are way over the line for what they are allowed regarding their tax exempt status.  Since some formatting came with the text, I’ll put my bold in color below

§ 501. Exemption from tax on corporations, certain trusts, etc. (a) Exemption from taxation

An organization described in subsection (c) or (d) or section 401 (a) shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle unless such exemption is denied under section 502 or 503. (b) Tax on unrelated business income and certain other activities

An organization exempt from taxation under subsection (a) shall be subject to tax to the extent provided in parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter, but (notwithstanding parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter) shall be considered an organization exempt from income taxes for the purpose of any law which refers to organizations exempt from income taxes. [snip]

(c) List of exempt organizations

The following organizations are referred to in subsection (a): (1) Any corporation organized under Act of Congress which is an instrumentality of the United States but only if such corporation—

(A) is exempt from Federal income taxes—

(i) under such Act as amended and supplemented before July 18, 1984, or (ii) under this title without regard to any provision of law which is not contained in this title and which is not contained in a revenue Act, or (B) is described in subsection (l). (2) Corporations organized for the exclusive purpose of holding title to property, collecting income therefrom, and turning over the entire amount thereof, less expenses, to an organization which itself is exempt under this section. Rules similar to the rules of subparagraph (G) of paragraph (25) shall apply for purposes of this paragraph. (3) Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)), and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. The phrase ‘Substantial part of the activities’ for propaganda has become a huge hole in the legislation as that means some fraction of the tax free money can be used for propaganda.   Where Gleick (and many others) go wrong is when they list the names of candidates discussing their policies while using our money. Ok, I’m tired again so rather than break down the tax forms from the PIS institute today, I’ll simply link the information here.  Pacific_Institute_990_tax_10[1].The PIS group has received over two million USD, primarily from government sources over the last 5 years.   This is equivalent to a healthy 10 million dollar company for profits while employing far fewer people for the result.   The two million used by this group in tax represents the full taxation of a healthy 25 million dollar company in the United States.  What also stinks is that all he had to do was build something with the employment level of a couple of gas stations and the guaranteed income of taxpayer money. Note that in section 4 of his corporate tax return, Gleick asserted to the IRS that his group has participated in NO political campaign activities. Will the lies about non-political status hold water in their 2011 return?  Considering that the group has turned over 1o million dollars in profits/contributions (mostly government tax money) in the past 5 years, I think they will take their chances!

Judith Curry has a post including the climate BS awards by Peter H. Gleick which purports to correct the record on climate change. You will not be terribly surprised to read these opening sentences:

The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011 – a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world. The scientific evidence for the accelerating human influence on climate further strengthened, as it has for decades now.

The only time that I know of where climate didn’t change was when Michael Mann invented it. Of course that lack of change is the point of the hockey shtick handle but we will beat that slow-witted monkey on the head some other time. What makes this stink to high heaven is that this PAC is not a political action committee.  It is rather, one of thousands of left wing 501c money funnels which operate tax free while simultaneously pushing a pro-government control high taxation agenda.

After the last US presidential election,  thinking people should not be surprised to see yet another violation of the law ignored by the liberal activists. What stinks is the lack of astonishment in the media.

This is the rule according to the IRS for a non-profit tax free entitiy:

My bold.

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

I have read thousands of examples of violations of this rule but this is by far one of the worst in my experience:

The 2011 Winner: Climate B.S.* from all of the Republican candidates for President of the United States

Is it really necessary to be anti-science in general, and anti-climate science in particular, in order to be nominated to lead the Republican Party in the United States? Apparently, yes, at least in the minds of the Republican presidential candidates or their advisors. These candidates can be split into three groups: those ignorant or uninterested in science and its role in informing policy; those who intentionally distort science because it conflicts with deeply held political or religious ideology; and those who blow with the wind, giving their allegiance to whatever ideology seems most expedient at any given moment. There is some overlap, of course: some candidates, such as Rick Perry, have been in all three groups at various times. The third group includes candidates who have at one time or another held positions more or less consistent with scientific understanding, but who in 2011 adopted anti-scientific positions during their primary campaigns. For example, Gingrich, Romney, and Huntsman, at some point in the past all expressed at least a partial understanding about the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change. Yet all three have now retreated from the scientific evidence to faulty but ideological safe positions demanded by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In October, Romney caved in to conservative pressure and changed his stance on the issue. Just days ago, after pressure from anti-climate-science activists, Gingrich cut a chapter on climate science from a book of environmental essays he had agreed to produce. Ironically, that chapter was to have been written by an atmospheric scientist (Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University) who happens to be an evangelical and speaks regularly to conservative groups. She was also targeted by these activists for personal abuse – a tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians. (For a few of the craziest things the top GOP candidates have said on climate change, see Joe Romm’s recent essay at Think Progress.)

Just in case you think there is some wiggle room for the political agnosticism of this activist group, the next paragraph in their “unbiased” and politically neutral article should clear it up for you:

In short, the choice among the Republican candidates on the issue of climate change is scientific ignorance, distain for science, blatant misrepresentation of facts, or naked political expediency, any one of which would make the Republican candidates strong contenders for the 2011 Climate B.S. Award. Combined? They win hands down.

Why is it acceptable for an obviously political organization to take literally millions in funding from government donors for the purpose of promoting extremist, left-wing, anti-capitalist propaganda?

The PAC group had $581,000 USD in donations in 2010 ALONE!-after tax.  What percentage came from taxpayers?

Agency for International Development $13512

Bureau of Reclamation $14,670

California Public Utilities Commission $25,808

Community Water Center $8,453

Department of Water Resources $73,716

Institute for Social and Environmental Transition $30,487

United Nation Global Compact Foundation $98,145

United Nation Water Mandate $11,198

United Nation Environment Program $32,782

University of Berkeley $ 19,137

State of California Environmental Protection Agency $18,107

Water Reuse $$38,811

It is absolutely sickening to understand that 66% (  $384,466 USD. )  of the revenues of this blatantly political organization are taken at literal gunpoint from American taxpayers.  The money is being DIRECTLY spent for political propaganda in a campaign year!  The ‘bosses’ work for this group part time of course, lining their pockets with a couple hundred K of candy while simultaneously working other committees.  After all, the board of directors must be paid.

How stupid are we!

Jesus………

It is hard to have any emotion about climate these days. It is like I’ve reached the end of the road and can see over the edge of the cliff. All is in view as far as you can see. They call it green but after Climategate 2.0, all I see is brown.

Pound on more Mannian style math or random proxies, sure -can do, but why? Beat up on a little more Berkeley surface temperature studies, sure, can do. The data dicing is fantastic low hanging fodder. Again, why? Even Judith Curry has not responded to me on the simpler topic of CI. Not even a sentence. What is the point of wasting my limited time on these adventures if the geniuses won’t listen to reason. Beat up on the IPCC for reposting extremist crap? Sure, again easy fodder. How about “renewable” energy – the big anti-entropy lie. Fun stuff, but again why?

Tough times for a technical climate blogger. Lots of the same crap, trees ain’t thermometers, ice ain’t melting, sea level ain’t rising from CO2, no more hurricanes, Antarctic and Arctic ice will still be there, on and on and on. Why not shut down industry!?

There we go.