Black carbon is produced in diesel exhaust and when wood and coal are burned.

REPLY: Yep, that's it! Go after the evil coal industry. So more people will get put out of work, and our electricity will be powered by gerbils. A note to you coal mining union people out there. If you let these weenies have there way, you WILL BE OUT OF A JOB! So be careful as to which politician you choose to bash at your next Mitchell Day rally!

DENY DENY DENY THE GLO-BULL WARMING LIE!!!!!!!

Worldwide temperatures have been declining for the last ten years. As such, it is a dubious distinction to be the "second most important contributor" to global warming.

I do understand the author's motivation to avoid steping on the toes of people at GISS who can have his work censored. His remark highlights the corrupt and broken intellectual atmosphere in the climate community.

One sentence caught my eye:

"There is also uncertainty as to just how much of the black carbon in the atmosphere comes from human activities, Koch said."

Since black carbon and CO2 are both produced by burning, then surely the same uncertainty must apply to the CO2 as well.

Wow, looks like these guys took our little backyard experiment and turned it into something nearly indecipherable. No wonder the public is skeptical about AGW, these guys communicate among themselves then attempt to tell the public how it should think. If I have ever seen a 'study' speaking completely from the spectrum right and left, this is it.

Koch is commendable for being cautious for not immediately jumping on the bandwagon. However, give it a little time.

Someone is obviously going to have to correct me, but the 'conclusions' I draw from reading the study is:
1) Soot is very short lived, only weeks, but being absorptive of solar radiance(as we found) creates cooling.
2) CO2 will forever be considered by AGW Hysterics as the primary climate 'forcer', that is, until they freeze their tails off in the next cooling cycle unless they can jet around making millions telling everyone that they have to save mankind from itself.
3) The AGW community is covering ALL the bases just in case.
4) I was planning to start a camel dung enterprise and develop super efficient stoves to process camel crap. I believe they would have been successful if you don't have any problem coming home after a hard days work to a house smelling like camel s... . Looks like that's another of my 'ideas' out the door.
5) "But many of these radiometers are close to urban areas and it is unclear if the published trends are representative of true regional to global averages." Someone finally came out and said it in a paper. Sheesh, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, and given this fact it is entirely possible that we have had More cooling since 1998 that that documented due to the 'urban areas' skewering the data.
6) BC's have a surface warming effect...ABC's have a cooling effect that seems to override the BC's.
7) "whereas ABCs will lead to a cooling of both the surface and the atmosphere. In regions where such coupling is weak (for example, dry seasons in the tropics), the surface dimming due to ABCs can lead to surface cooling and thus can mask the greenhouse warming"....You Go Guys! had to get this in sooner or later! that's right, that dreaded 'warming' is still going on no matter what the temperature portends. Kind of like your shadow is Always with you regardless of lighting conditions inside or outside.

I could go on, but time and space prohibit. The 'conclusion', well, my conclusion here, is to ask a question: Has a real STUDY been done, notwithstanding all the 'supporting peer-reviewed papers' noted, that actually provides some relevant Data to actually study regards the subject or is this paper the usual fancy 'theoretical conjecture' that is forever coming out of the Hysterics?

Likely it it simply 'musing.' When you get 50 guys all passing their muses around for approval, pretty soon muse is accepted and becomes fact.

It’s CO2 is the problem---no wait it’s methane-----not so fast it’s carbon black---wait we have not accounted for that second most important “heater” in the models----but if we have not accounted for that in the models and it is so important how come Dr. Hansen says the models are so accurate???
Will somebody on the AGW side please get their story straight!
The peons who you want to pay for fixing this are really getting confused----wait maybe not confused so much as starting to understand that “Climatology” is a field so new it should do solid basic science to understand the dynamics of climate instead of telling us the earth is melting.
Like someone once said…. “Better to keep quiet and have people think you are stupid then to open your mouth and prove it!”
Brett- At least you got to Wednesday before the laughs started- Thanks….I needed that!

I have to wonder if the "black carbon" (as opposed to day-glo pink version?)(though I must admit it sounds rather more ominous being BLACK CARBON) is left over from the experiments probably undertaken in the late 70's to warm the planet by spreading soot on the icecaps?

LOL, just kidding.

On another note, it seems that my open burning of anything flamable and sooty seems to be working, I guess. Glad the scientists are finally acknowledging it.

Your welcome.

UAH data is out for March. Over the last 12 months, worldwide temperatures have averaged a whopping 0.17 degrees above the thirty year mean. I doubt the Princess and The Pea could notice a change that small.

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

Also interesting is that Antarctic temperatures were much below normal this past summer. No wonder Hansen thinks Antarctica is about to melt down and drown Manhattan and London.

How can Carbon Dioxide be the most important, when Methane is 7 time more powerful a green house gas than Carbon dioxide, and Water Vapor is 4 time more powerful than Carbon dioxide?

Especially since about 97% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is volcanic in origin?

Brett,

In contravention to everything I've heard about new babies, yours seems to be giving you energy instead of taking it away. You ar eposting like every five minutes it seems! Reply: Wow! It doesn't seem like it. I feel like I have been ignoring the blog lately with all the stuff going on outside of work. My wife and I are struggling to get any type of decent sleep as the baby is wide awake for the most part from 11pm-4am. We'll get it straightened out eventually.

Daniel Fuqua,
First of all, I think you misunderstand when people say that CO2 is the "most important" Greenhouse Gas. Water Vapor indeed has a greater contribution to the overall greenhouse effect than CO2. But right now H2O is largely independent of human activity (at least arguably so). Human's have increased CO2 concentration by at least 30% since preindustrial times. Methane is indeed a more powerful "pound-for-pound" GHG than CO2, but there is a lot less CH4 in the atmosphere than CO2. Not tomention that once put there, CO2 stays in the atmosphere longer than CH4.

Off Topic - But Interesting
The BBC is now officially a propoganda advocate of AGW:
Nothing reported there can be trusted any longer.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/bbc_folds_then_folds_again.html

Ramanathan spoke before his eminence Henry Waxman on October 17, 2007 pertaining to the above.

http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1550

"Atmospheric scientist Dorothy Koch of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who was not affiliated with the study, cautioned that the case wasn't that simple."

Looks like Dorothy is vying for a promotion. Keep toting the Hansen, I mean company line.

You can see why GISS temp is simply not credible
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=3&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=03&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=reg
In fact it will turn out to be the skeptics greatest ally in the near future

Whether it's CO2 emissions, methane from industrial farming, or industrial soot, these are all anthropogenic influences on climate, and they all must be reduced.

methane and industrial soot do not stay in the atmosphere for as long as CO2 does, which makes them less problematic. if CO2 only stayed in the atmosphere for, say, 5 years -- instead of 100 years -- most people wouldn't be too worried. However, that's not the case, and henceforth, we see an accumulative effect with a linear increase in CO2 every single year.

Daniel Fuqua, briefly:

Along with what might be called the "direct" warming effect of GHGs, we need to account for both residence time and location in the atmosphere. CO2 has considerable persistence in the atmosphere, methane has relatively little and water vapor has virtually none. Also important is that there is a significant amount of CO2 in the stratosphere but nearly no water vapor.

The normal interglacial proportion of CO2 is 280 ppm. At present there is about 380 ppm, the difference being from human activities, meaning that we are responsible for a bit more than 25% of the total.

"They say this effect is unaccounted for in model-based estimates used in most studies, meaning that black carbon's actual warming contribution has been underestimated."

OK. The models don't properly account for:
Black Carbon
Clouds
Cosmic rays
Ocean currents
ADOs, PDOs, ENSOs, Denzos.....
La nina
El nino
Etc, etc, etc.
Tell me again how the models are accurate.
Has anyone ever attempted to add up all the Unaccounted bits to see just what is left of the CO2 AGW hypothesis?

"Black" Carbon? Sorry, not scary enough for me. How about Blood Carbon, or Death Carbon? After all, it is now the second most deadly substance known to man.

In order to really affect those who are already frightened of CO2, Adult White Male Carbon, or Republican Carbon would be more offensive and likely to get a better response.

However, if Koch added an adjective to try to sway the non believers perhaps Hillary Carbon or Gold Carbon would be better, those greedy SOB's would be trying to pan it out of the air.

Other kinds of carbon already or soon to be discovered are;

Right Wing Conspiracy Carbon
Serbian Sniper Carbon (This Carbon was recently found to be imaginary after it was found out that an "Only Human" originally made it up I mean discovered it)
Carbon Squared
Carbon Cubed
Carbon to the Nth degree for the One Upper's out there

If we remove Carbon from the periodic table and all hold hands & pray, maybe Hansen and his Son Our Lord and Savoir Al Gore will simply make all the Carbon disappear.

We just have to believe and all will be well.

Regards,

Steve

After thought: I wonder if the first tool making species said "I'm only a Homo Hablis!" when they lied in order to make themselves appear more favorable.

Off topic; again... sorry.
Brett; I think this might make a good thread topic.

Climate change confirmed but global warming is cancelled

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=21153&cid=39&cname=NBR
Excerpt:

So by late last year we not only knew IPCC forecasts of atmospheric global warming were wrong; we were beginning to understand why they are wrong.
......
Furthermore, Spencer shows the extra rain that falls from these clouds cools the underlying oceans, providing a second negative feedback to negate the CO2 warming.

Alarmists' quandary

This has struck the alarmists like a thunderbolt, especially as the lead author of the IPCC chapter on feedback has written to Spencer agreeing that he is right!

Finally - some clarity about the madness surrounding AGW

Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nature, Britain's top science journal.

The overwhelming majority of these med-taking brainiacs said they indulged in order to "improve concentration," and 60 percent said they did so on a daily or weekly basis.

The 1,427 respondents -- most of them in the United States -- completed an informal, online survey posted on the "Nature Network" Web forum, a discussion site for scientists operated by the Nature Publishing Group.

More than a third said that they would feel pressure to give their children such drugs if they knew other kids at school were also taking them.

"These are academics working in scientific institutions," Ruth Francis, who handles press relations for the group, told AFP.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080409184817.qle46eoh&show_article=1

Soot is short-lived, but a constant anthropogenic emission. It's not cummulative like co2 but it probably has greater warming impact than we realize, both in the atmosphere and at the surface from deposition. As for toxicity, soot is without question an enviromental problem that must be addressed.

Hey Brett,
How would one go about calculating the amount of soot my "Tunnel idea" would remove from the atmosphere once they were placed in service? Can computers model the effects of this? Also,what are your thoughts on the Tunnels? Reply: I am the wrong guy to ask that question Patrick.

Daniel,

During the complete combustion of gasoline for every 8 moles of CO2 made 9 moles of water is also produced. C8H18 + 12.5 O2 ----> 9 H2O + 8 CO2
(please don’t quibble about 87 or 93 octane)
So man is putting water into the atmosphere with every gallon of gas along with CO2. As for that that means------stay tuned to the debate.

I think I've worked out why GISS data is so skewed. (many other probably have as well). All the cold areas have been left out or don't have surface temps available (see Africa and South America (amazon) which have been constantly cooler (especilally march) for the last 6 months (see COLA).
As a scientist, for me, this is definitely not credible data/statistics

right now H2O is largely independent of human activity

Hi cmbclean,

Please justify that remark. There are huge amounts of water vapor generated by humans - nuclear power plants - factories, cars, households, farms, industry. H20 also absorbs a much wider spectrum of IR than CO2.

Please prove to me that human generated H20 has less effect on IR absorption than CO2.

TIA

Mark: Your last post was the first I read that was non-political. Thank-you. Maybe we can have an actual debate without political overtones. After all climate has nothing to do with politics. Does it?

This has struck the alarmists like a thunderbolt, especially as the lead author of the IPCC chapter on feedback has written to Spencer agreeing that he is right!

I'm guessing that this piece was published on April 1st.

Soot/carbon,black carbon,volcano ash in the air, if volcano ash makes it cooler why would this make it warmer?? (Reply: Read the study.) Anyway, Amen to Oiznop's top blog, we need coal for electric and people try to find a way to shut them down, even though its for there benefit, complain about farmers and try to stop this and that, even though its for there benefit, complain about oil use, against opening up new sites in Alaska{spots no one will ever see in their lifetime}even though its for their benefit, and oil is oil there is no alternative and all the messing around with alternatives is jacking up the price even higher now than it needs to be. Reason...look to the left. And all yeh one more thing, how many colors does carbon come in? Is there other colors of it than black, maybe I'll get a grant to turn this stuff to white carbon and cool this hot planet down and make people happy... The End.