On Jan 28, 10:35 am, "Ron Button" wrote:
What say you experts ?

RonB

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com...ljYmEwYzUyNTkw...
yODJjZTM3Nzc

First, the science. After many years in this line of work, I've come to the
firm conclusion that global warming is one of those research areas where
scientists think they know much more than they really do. In many ways,
putting a man on the Moon was far easier than understanding the climate
system. Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas - a minor one. And, yes,
humans burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide: one molecule of CO2 for
every 100,000 molecules of atmosphere, every five years.

But is this a recipe for a global warming Armageddon? I'm betting my
reputation on: "No." Recent research has made me more convinced of this than
ever.

So, why would a minority of scientists like me dare to disagree with a
56-percent majority? (That is how many of the 530 climate scientists polled
agreed that global warming is mostly caused by humans,)

While there are several answers to this question, here I'll mention only
one. Compared to the carbon dioxide that humans produce, Mother Nature
routinely transfers 40 times as much CO2, and 24,000 times as much water
vapor (Earth's primary greenhouse gas), back and forth between the
atmosphere and the Earth's surface, every day.

Scientists have simply assumed that these natural processes have been in
balance for centuries. But, what if there have always been some small - but
natural - imbalances in those large up-and-down flows that slowly change
over time? In that case, our measured increases in greenhouse gases and
global temperatures might well turn out to be more natural than manmade,
lost in the noise of natural variability.

Can I prove any of this? No - not yet, anyway. But neither have any
scientists produced one single scientific paper showing that Mother Nature
isn't the dominant source of what we are seeing. Mankind is one possible
explanation, and our measurements of natural variability in the climate
system on time scales of decades to centuries are simply not good enough to
find out how many natural sources of variability are also out there.

The evidence for rapid exchange of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere
comes from the fact that current carbon cycle flux estimates show that the
annual CO2 exchange between surface and atmosphere amounts to 20% to 30% of
the total amount in the atmosphere. This means that most of the carbon in
the atmosphere is recycled through the surface every five years or so. From
Segalstad's writings, the rate of exchange could even be faster than this.
For instance, how do we know what the turbulent fluxes in and out of the
wind-driven ocean are? How would one measure such a thing locally, let
alone globally? Now, this globally averaged situation is made up of some
regions emitting more CO2 than they absorb, and some regions absorbing more
than they emit. What if there is a region where there has been a long-term
change in the net carbon flux that is at least as big as the human source?
After all, the human source represents only 3% (or less) the size of the
natural fluxes in and out of the surface. This means that we would need to
know the natural upward and downward fluxes to much better than 3% to say
that humans are responsible for the current upward trend in atmospheric CO2.
Are measurements of the global carbon fluxes much better than 3% in
accuracy?? I doubt it.
So, one possibility would be a long-term change in the El Nino / La Nina
cycle, which would include fluctuations in the ocean upwelling areas off the
west coasts of the continents. Since these areas represent semi-direct
connections to deep-ocean carbon storage, this could be one possible source
of the extra carbon (or, maybe I should say a decreasing sink for
atmospheric carbon?).
Let's say the oceans are producing an extra 1 unit of CO2, mankind is
producing 1 unit, and nature is absorbing an extra 1.5 units. Then we get
the situation we have today, with CO2 rising at about 50% the rate of human
emissions. If nothing else, Fig. 3 illustrates how large the natural
interannual changes in CO2 are compared to the human emissions. In Fig. 5
we see that the yearly-average CO2 increase at Mauna Loa ends up being
anywhere from 0% of the human source, to 130%.
It seems to me that this is proof that natural net flux imbalances are at
least as big as the human source.

Roy Spencer is quite correct when he writes "After many years in this
line of work, I've come to the firm conclusion that global warming is
one of those research areas where scientists think they know much more
than they really do." However when he asks "But is this a recipe for a
global warming Armageddon?" and answers "I'm betting my reputation on:
"No."" he is very wrong.

Of course, as has already been pointed out Dr Spencer is a
creationist, so he has little scientific reputation to lose. However,
working with Christy he has shown that the climate models do not
accurately represent the the tropical lapse rate. The warming that
the models predict in the the upper troposphere has not materialised,
and Spencer and Christy therefore argue that global warming is not
happening. No one lives in the upper troposphere. They all live at
the bottom of the troposphere and that is where the warming is
occurring. It is on the sea surface where the Arctic sea ice has
melted, and elsewhere on the surface where glaciers and the Greenland
ice sheet are melting. And the melt is far faster than predicted by
the models. The models are being proved wrong, even without Spencer
and Christy's data

Arrhenius is held up as a great hero, but his model was shown to be
wrong by Dr Koch. His work was reported by Karl Angsrom and agrees
with that of John Tyndall. Koch showed that the absorption of
radiation by CO2 is virtually saturated. Therefore the greenhouse
theory of climate change cannot work the way that it is currently
being proposed. Increasing CO2 does not change the radiation balance
of the Earth.

The actual mechanism is that when CO2 concentration increases the
radiation is absorbed closer to its origin, the Earth's surface. The
surface loses heat by convection as well as radiation, and with warmer
air close to the surface convection is inhibited and so the surface
warms. In regions of the Earth where CO2 is the dominant greenhouse
gas, because absolute humidity is low, then higher concentrations of
CO2 lead to significant rises in surface temperature. Those regions
are at the poles where the low temperature leads to low humidity.

It is the increase in CO2 which is causing the Arctic sea ice to melt,
and the melting is being accelerated by the greenhosue effect of water
vapour from the ice free areas, plus the ice albedo effect. Within a
few years the Arctic sea ice will vanish, and with it the natural air
conditioning system for the Northern Hemisphere!

It is not just creationists like Spencer who cannot believe in
Armageddon. None of us wants to believe in that, so we we all dismiss
it. However, it is a fact :-(

Cheers, Alastair.