Another blow to the Gorons! Much of the AGW climate scare is based on computer models. Many people foolishly believe computer models are predictions or forecasts while in truth computer models only generate *what if* scenarios.

Climate computer models are extremely complex and *what if* permeates the models. The relationships between various factors are not well known and any algorithm that tries to express those relationships will necessarily be approximate.

My profession is writing software. Software is verified by testing. Whenever a change is made to a computer program, a full test regimen must also be done to ensure the program works as intended.

Climate models can't be tested like normal software. The only way to validate these models is to match their output with real-world observations. A long-term climate model must be tested against decades of data. Remember, each time a program is changed, the testing must restart. This makes long-term climate models practically unverifiable.

I have a question about climate models: How *open* are the models? Are the algorithms shared? Can independent researchers view the inner details of the models? More important, can independent researchers view the source code?

Reply: I do not honestly know. Anyone else?

The research clearly shows that you can actually slow down sea-level rise when you increase temperatures over Antarctica because snowfall increases, but warmer temperatures also have the potential to speed up sea-level rise due to enhanced melting along the edges of Antarctica.

Over the next century, whether the ice sheet grows from increased snowfall or shrinks due to more melt will depend on how much temperatures increase in Antarctica, and potentially on erosion at the ice sheet edge by the warmer ocean and rising sea level.

The current generation of climate models has improved over previous generations, but still leaves Antarctic surface temperature projections for the 21st century with a high degree of uncertainty.

Brett,

Your headline would have been equally valid had you left out the word "Antarctic."

Reply: Maybe.

Probably it's just me not paying attention , but has anybody - say in the past year or so - noticed any big time reports about the models having UNDERESTIMATED the actual observed warming ? After all , something like that is not the type of news that would generally go unnoticed or hidden , much less neglected by the AGW alarmists . I would expect to be hearing the Town Criers bellowing it out from the highest bell towers in the land . "See , " they would be saying . " we told you so ! This guy here made these model predictions , and now we're finding out it's actually Worse than the models predicted ! " Yet, as far as I'm aware , we have very little if anything of this nature. Is there any of you math wizards out there that could calculate the odds of this occuring naturally ? I personally would think that [To paraphrase a line from Starship Troopers ] - Statistically speaking , this should have happened accidentally by now . So I guess the question I have is , should the AGW Alarmist community be suprised if the general fence sitting Public sounds like the sceptics when they look at this and say " Geeez , now here's a big suprise , the models over estimated warming again ." But , then again , It's probably just me not paying attention !!

Brett,
I could be wrong, but I thought that the GCMs predicted that the Antartic would cool as the rest of the globe warms, and that this cooling is perfectly in line with over-all AGW.

Too many conflicting predictions and scenarios and explainations. Reply: No doubt.

"The study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego provides strong evidence that a glacial ice cap, about half the size of the modern day glacial ice sheet, existed 91 million years ago during a period of intense global warming."

The above quote comes from a Jan 2008 story that I have attached below:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/uoc--awc011008.php

The author of the researtch report also states:
"Until now it was generally accepted that there were no large glaciers on the poles prior to the development of the Antarctic ice sheet about 33 million years ago," said Richard Norris, professor of paleobiology at Scripps Oceanography and co-author of the study. "This study demonstrates that even the super-warm climates of the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum were not warm enough to prevent ice growth."

Obviously, the climate model algorithms need to be corrected based on this new research finding. The a 2-inch sea level reduction only changes the potential sea level rise to the range of 5-21 inches.

What I find even more interesting is the following quote:
"The results from the study are consistent with other studies from Russia and New Jersey that show sea level fell by about 25-40 m (82-131 ft) at the same time that the ice sheets were growing during the Cretaceous period. Sea level is known to fall as water is removed from the oceans to build continental ice sheets; conversely, sea level rises as ice melts and returns to the sea."

This more significant potential decrease in sea levels would have significant implications and needs to be investigated further. Obviously the ice conditions of Antarctica do not follow simple correlations.

My Lord. Forecasters looking out the window!

What ever will they think of next.?

An interesting question: When does "global" mean "local"?

According to NASA, Antarctica is in a strong cooling trend and a strong warm trend - at the same time.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/WilkinsIceSheet/images/wilkins_avh_2007.jpg

The solution is to give Antarctica anti-psychotic medication.

You headline would have been unusual if it would have read, "Models Get Prediction Right".

Models are wonderful toys for which we pay, through taxes & grants, millions of dollars. Scientists spend even more millions on computer time to play around with no measurable result.

Even if they cannot make reasonable predictions with the models, they will keep trying. They have to justify their expenditures.

How does ice melt at 60 below?

Quick IQ test for the alarmists -

The south pole receives no sunlight from March 20 to September 20. How much of the incoming UV is trapped by greenhouse gases?

1. Huge amounts which will cause Antarctica to melt and raise sea level 200 feet.

2. Enough to make the Penguins migrate to the Arctic - as reported by NBC.

3. Close to zero, because there isn't much incoming UV.

4. Enough to make the Penguins drop their eggs and produce tap-dancing chicks.

JEP,

They test the computer models by running them to predict past weather events and see how the results correlate. If it predicts past weather events accurately, then it is assumed that what the model predicts for the future is fairly accurate. Here's a Wiki entry that explains GCM's more accurately:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model

The computer models are not perfect, but they give us a starting point. If we didn't have computer models, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the many modern conveniences that we have today, including modern medicines. If we don't give scientists the time and money needed to perfect the computer models, then they will never get any better at predicting the weather.

Compare 1970's desktop computer technology with that of today and you can get my point.

Here's another link about climate models:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/19/10529

An excerpt: Major progress in our understanding of climate processes in the past, present, and future has been made by the development of numerical models that simulate climate at an increasing level of detail. Recent breakthroughs in spatial coverage and temporal resolutions of systems recording today's climate and high-resolution reconstructions of past climate conditions from diverse archives using new proxies make it possible to validate climate models and thus improve their reliability for future predictions.

Wait a minute. WAIT A MINUTE! Do you people only read intop a reoprt what you want to? And then extrapolate whatever you want from the misreading of the information. Read this quote again from the article.

"The computer models are accurately simulating climate for the other six continents, according to the study."

That means (to me) that over the rest of the planet they are getting it right! And all you can focus on is the Antarctic? And the reason they got that wrong is because the ozone hole is larger? Brett it seems to me that the headline could just as well have been:

SCIENTISTS GET IT RIGHT OVER MAJORITY OF PLANET, BUT MISS THE ANTARCTIC DUE TO OZONE HOLE!

Reply: Too many words for a title.

jp,

No, none of the GCMs predict Antarctic cooling. They all predict warming, and lots of it in both poles due to positive feedbacks provided by additional water vapor in the atmosphere as a result of CO2 warming.

The only portion of Antarctica that is warming is the peninsula that holds McMerdo, and that sits outside the Antarctic circle, additionally, there is a strong suspicion that that warming is due to vulcanism along the coast.

Svensmark's GCR theory predicts Antarctic warming due to additional cloud cover (clouds have a higher albedo than ice) but that requires more water vapor than appears to be available in the area (Antarctica is the worlds largest desert) getting less than 2" of precipitation/yr).

jep is algorithm a contraction for
al gore rhythym

orientation of suns rays on earths surface changed by toplike wobble of earth now has mor direct rays in nh vs sh. polar regions more affected by this this balance of planet-this is just one of many natural factors keeping south pole colderrrrrrr

jep, Kansas USA:
How open are the models?
This issue has been discussed a length on the Climate Audit site. Steve has obtained some source code for some models over the years but the GISS code in perticular has been very difficult to get.
Perhaps a Query at Cliamteaudit.org would get you some up to date status.

bill-tb,

How does ice melt at 60 below?

It melts at that temperature due to the special physics that can only be attributed to anthropogenically-produced CO2.

Sorry, I should have added (/sarc off) at the bottom of the last post.

Hi kevinag,

If the modelers say they are doing a good job, it must be true.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts
Albert Einstein

Gary:

I believe you missed my points.

1. To my knowledge, no computer models have done well in "back predicting" climate (sorry, I don't recall the correct term).

2. Without running the model into the future, it's impossible to know if the model really "back predicted" the past climate or if it was just fudged until it seemed to predict the past. (I'm not saying the researchers fudged their results, but fudged the algorithms until they received the correct results. )

3. Computer models are very valuable in engineering and medicine and have led to many wonderful discoveries. But the real world is the test for those models. A new, effective medicine derived from or through computer modeling is the proof of the model. Climate models may be useful in understanding the climate but only so much as they accurately reflect the real world.

I have a question about climate models: How *open* are the models? Are the algorithms shared? Can independent researchers view the inner details of the models? More important, can independent researchers view the source code?

It took me about fifteen seconds to find the fms: the flexible modeling system (published by NOAA).

From the what is fms link on that site:

FMS is a software framework for supporting the efficient development, construction, execution, and scientific interpretation of atmospheric, oceanic, and climate system models. FMS comprises the following:

1. A software infrastructure for constructing and running atmospheric, oceanic, and climate system models. This infrastructure includes software to handle parallelization, input and output, data exchange between various model grids, orchestration of the time stepping, makefiles, and simple sample run scripts. This infrastructure should largely insulate FMS users from machine-specific details.
2. A standardization of the interfaces between various component models.
3. Software for standardizing, coordinating, and improving diagnostic calculations of FMS-based models, and input data preparation for such models. Common preprocessing and post-processing software are included to the extent that the needed functionality cannot be adequately provided by available third-party software.
4. Contributed component models that are subjected to a rigorous software quality review and improvement process. The development and initial testing of these component models is largely a scientific question, and would not fall under FMS. The quality review and improvement process includes consideration of (A) compliance with FMS interface and documentation standards to ensure portability and inter-operability, (B) understandability (clarity and consistency of documentation, comments, interfaces, and code), and (C) general computational efficiency without algorithmic changes.
5. A standardized technique for version control and dissemination of the software and documentation.

FMS does not include the determination of model configurations, parameter settings, or the choice amongst various options. These decisions require scientific research. Similarly, the development of new component models is a scientific concern that is outside of the direct purview of FMS. Nonetheless, infrastructural changes to enable such developments are within the scope of FMS. The collaborative software review process of contributed models is therefore an essential facet of FMS.

It appears to me that the models themselves and their source code is readily available to anyone who chooses to use them. I am similarly under the impression that a variety of web-based sites are available that host the various models, some free and some not, for anyone who cares to use them.

Of course, it's far more satisfying to throw around questions and innuendo than to actually engage in the work yourselves.

My question for "jep, Kansas USA" is: how hard have looked for yourself?

- Has your ability download a particular model been blocked? I don't mean "have you read somebody on a blog somewhere who read somewhere..." -- I mean have you tried it yourself and been blocked?

- Have you tried to discern the algorithms, and been blocked?

- What "inner details" have you sought and been denied?

- What source code have you attempted to download, and been blocked from receiving?

Just got through reading THE CHILLING STARS by Svensmark and Calder. Their basic theory is that clouds caused by cosmic rays, and the changes in the shielding magnetic field of the sun rather than its luminosity, are a primary driver. Perhaps THE primary driver of planetary temperature. What is interesting is that the tendency of Antarctica to go in opposite directions to the rest of the world falls out naturally from the theory.

So, I guess the climate models get a B+ (6 out of 7 continents plus the Antarctic peninsula). Not perfect but hard to characterize as alarmist paranoia.

funny,

nowhere does it say. "the computer models were wrong" That admission might lead us to beleive that if the models could possibly be WRONG. AGW might not be happening because the models are used to prove AGW. Garbage in Garbage out

meanwhile, the sun is blank

http://www.spaceweather.com/

"No, none of the GCMs predict Antarctic cooling. They all predict warming, and lots of it in both poles due to positive feedbacks provided by additional water vapor in the atmosphere as a result of CO2 warming."

You better tell that to Spencer Wearts,Kirk Bryan, and Syukuro Manabe, as well as the folks at Real Climate:

http://tinyurl.com/48z936

As far as I can tell (from reading articles about global warming) this is a NATURAL occurring phenomenon caused by, of all things, the sun. Ice core samples have indicated that the earth goes through these "cycles" every 8-10,000 years or so, so there isn't a whole hell of a lot we can do about it. As far as as the earth "heating up" because of increased green house gases, that is a miss truth. It was actually warmer prior to the industrial revolution, than it is now! Go figure. And one other thing....can anyone explain why Mars is heating up at approximately the same rate as the Earth, and yet it has no civilization adding to it's green house output? Al Gore and his goon squad climate experts are waaayyyy over their heads on this one.

This thread had me laughing till my sides hurt. Has anyone been monitoring the apparent monsoon like flow crossing Africa from the tropical SH Atlantic to the Middle East? It seems this has become a trend the last three years, I know off topic...I just can't follow up with any pearls of wise humor...still chuckling...I wonder what the sea ice extent is for Antartica now and is it still above norms in area?

Brookline Tom,
Did YOU actually try to download any code? I did and I got a certificate error from Internet Explorer. I proceeded anyway and was taken to a Gforge website that did not have any direct downloads of any code! There was a link to a request page with the caveat that requests may be rejected. This is hardly my idea of open source. Regardless, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to figure out the code without help from the designers.

If you are going to ridicule someone, be prepared to back up your assertions. Post a link to ACTUAL CODE!

The south pole receives no sunlight from March 20 to September 20. How much of the incoming UV is trapped by greenhouse gases?

PH, I assume you mean IR radiation, right?

Hey Patrick,

If the modelers say they are doing a good job, it must be true.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts
Albert Einstein

If the modelers are changing the facts, why didn't they do it over all seven continents to remove all evidence of their models' apparent imperfections? Would you suggest that they were worried about the data seeming "too" perfect, or would you simply say that they are too incompetent to cover their own tracks?

I love conspiracy theories.

Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Reaches �Unprecedented� Levels

Four of the past 5 months are �all-time� records for Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomalies, �unprecedented� since the data set began in 1979 as shown below:

http://climateaudit.org/

Apparently the climate modelers knew that it was going to cool down from 1998 to at least 2015, but they just forgot to tell the IPCC about it when they were making their report last year.

Just a simple oversight from some software guys living on energy drinks and playing WOW during their spare cycles.

Hi cmbclean,

Essentially all of the "incoming" radiation is short wave.

In places where there actually is some UV arriving at the ground, the energy gets converted to heat (IR) and has to find it's way back upwards to space through an atmosphere containing some greenhouse gases.

As this study points out, there are a lot less greenhouse gases over Antarctica than the Nobel prize winning climate modelers thought previously.

At the south pole there is essentially no incoming radiation for half a year. No incoming energy and very little greenhouse gas to hold in the existing heat. The result is average temperatures around 80-90 below zero.

Gore, Hansen, Boxer, Ban, and their climate modeling buddies should hold a press conference at Vostok in July to tell us about the extreme warming which is going to cause sea level to rise 25 meters this century.
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/news_repository/will-oceans-surge-59-centimetres-this-century-or-25-metres

Hello Travis, you said:

"Travis:
Hey Patrick,

If the modelers say they are doing a good job, it must be true.

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts
Albert Einstein

If the modelers are changing the facts, why didn't they do it over all seven continents to remove all evidence of their models' apparent imperfections? Would you suggest that they were worried about the data seeming "too" perfect, or would you simply say that they are too incompetent to cover their own tracks?

I love conspiracy theories."

You mean conspiracy theories like the Big Oil companies paying off the skeptical scientists and with whom they are in cahoots with to just protect their enrgy source income? How about the Bush is an oil man which is why he is not for reducing consumption one? Or maybe just the conspiracy of the USA to not sign away our sovereignty JUST to keep the sole superpower status in order to control the world? Those kind of conspiracy theories?

Patrick Henry:
It wasn't the modelers who said they were doing a good job! It was an independent study. So if the study doesn't fit your ideology, trash it! If a study says we got six continents right and one wrong, why doesn't the headline say that? Reply: Because the study was mostly focused on Antarctica. and we got the one wrong probably because the ozone situation is worse then we factored!! And what proof do you have that the modelers knew that it was going to be cooler? Do you just make it ALL up based on your ideology?

Brookline Tom:

FMS is a framework for creating climate models, not a model itself. There's a very important difference. Please check your facts next time.

What's the innuendo behind asking about technical details of the climate model source code?

Patrick,
I really don't think it was any conspiracy; after all the IPCC uses hundreds of authors, has dozens of peer review scientists, and can always say the "consensus" still believe we are warming. To get a taste of this bureaucratic thinking go to Real Climate and read thier take on things. They still insist that we are warming, and have bet the Germans who said we stopped warming 2500 Euros that we will be warming in 2010.

Hey cbm. I could be wrong on this , but I was under the impression that solar does come to us in the the form of UV . It just changes to long wave when it reflects off the surface. Yes, No ?

Thanks Brett, good post.

Been gone for a while...

thought it might be good to step back and think over the issues involved.

Funny, I come back look at the comments on the thread and there are the AGWers still being rude and short with everyone.

The models are incorrect because the system is far too complex to accurately model. The reason they appear to do better on the other continents is that the grids are so large that any of us could darn near make the same predictions and be right.

Kinda like the famous "3 degree guarantee" your local news met uses. That's just a 6 degree spread right?

Besides, are they now saying that a climate is defined in a mere 100 years?

I believe that what we will find is that it is borderline that GW is occurring and damn near impossible that AGW is occurring.

Frankly put, based upon what I have seen over the last ten years, this is a crappy way to run a global warming. And yes BT, that's a backyard weather report.

"You mean conspiracy theories like the Big Oil companies paying off the skeptical scientists and with whom they are in cahoots with to just protect their enrgy source income?"

Exxon has admitted to paying off scientists and denier groups, so chalk this one up to the "truth" category.

"How about the Bush is an oil man which is why he is not for reducing consumption one?"

Uh, he was an oil man, so there's another truth.

"Or maybe just the conspiracy of the USA to not sign away our sovereignty JUST to keep the sole superpower status in order to control the world?"

If anything, it's the right-wing who advocates protectionism to preserve our superpower status. The fact of the matter is that at the end of this century, there will be three superpowers, and the United States may only be the third strongest one. And it will have nothing to do with regulations, taxes, or the usual rhetoric coming from the Radical Right.

FMS is a framework for creating climate models, not a model itself. There's a very important difference. Please check your facts next time.

BT, don't forget to download some info on Plank's Law regarding Specific Heat Cavity when attempting to discredit the use of Specific Heat CAPACITY to describe how much energy it takes to raise the temp of a known amount of matter.

15 seconds huh? Perhaps next time you should take some extra time to understand what it is you are paraphrasing? Nah, some of us get a good laugh out of it. Thank you very much!

"""JP:
Patrick,
I really don't think it was any conspiracy; ....... Real Climate and read thier take on things. They still insist that we are warming, and have bet the Germans who said we stopped warming 2500 Euros that we will be warming in 2010. """

This item could get really interesting.

- RC has made a prediction that can be tested in our life time.
- RC will base their conclusions on GISS data.
- James Hansen controlls GISS Data "Adjustment"
- RC is James Hansen's propoganda site.

Does anyone want to predict what the GISS Data will be " Adjusted " to say in 2010?

It could be really fun to start recording all GISS vs other sources, temperature postings over the next year and a half.

Anonymous:
"No, none of the GCMs predict Antarctic cooling. .....
You better tell that to Spencer Wearts,Kirk Bryan, and Syukuro Manabe, as well as the folks at Real Climate:"

Would this be the same Real Climate that is
Real Famous for rewriting
Real History to make it seem
Real scary to reinforce the
Real Agenda of the multibillion dollar AGW industry.

It's so hard to get details of what's in the models. Are they just regular weather models run further into the future? What are the initial conditions? The devils is in the details.

I'm sure this is as evil, but I am reminded of Joe McCarthy holding up a sheet of paper (but never actually showing it to anybody) claiming he has a list of names.

The AGW guys claim their model fits the past but doesn't fit the recent past without CO2. Do I believe they know all the physics etc behind this and model it correctly? Or is it just a strawman?
Maybe their fit of the past is too good; they are just fitting a time series, not the physics etc.

Facinating article on the difference between accuracy and precision in GCMs

http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html

Excerpt:
The rapid growth of uncertainty means that GCMs cannot discern an ice age from a hothouse from 5 years away, much less 100 years away. So far as GCMs are concerned, Earth may be a winter wonderland by 2100 or a tropical paradise. No one knows.

It just changes to long wave when it reflects off the surface. Yes, No ?

Some of the incoming high-energy photons are absorbed in the atmosphere, where they excite other molecules. Many or most of those temporarily-excited molecules then eventually release that photon as an IR photon, so that the incoming UV radiation is re-radiated as heat (IR). Some of that re-radiated IR is directed outwards, towards space. Of that, some is then absorbed in the IR spectrum by GHGs, including atmostpheric CO2. The remainder escapes and adds to the energy reflected through albedo. Meanwhile, some of the re-radiated IR is directed downward, towards the surface. Some of that downward-directed IR is absorbed by the atmosphere (heating it) and the remainder strikes the surface.

If I remember my physics correctly from my own EE training 35 years ago, we essentially compute the net energy flux through a gaussian surface well outside the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere. Using Plank's law, we calculate backwards from the observed surface temperature of the earth to derive the average radiation striking the surface (treating the earth surface as a black-body).

The difference between the net energy flux into the Earth and the net energy striking the surface is the amount retained by the atmosphere in the "greenhouse effect".

I have never proposed a conspiracy.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Hanlon's Razor

bt,

It appears to me that the models themselves and their source code is readily available to anyone who chooses to use them.

The source code is not readily available, as was mention above by another poster. There are some descriptions of some of the modules and the source codes that may possibly be available are dated, while those being used presently are restricted to internal use.

So much for readily available models. Besides, if were able to secure a source code, that's all you have. Compilation is left up to you.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

Touche.

BT says,

"SOME of the incoming high-energy photons are absorbed in the atmosphere"

"SOME of that re-radiated IR is directed outwards, towards space"

"SOME of the re-radiated IR is directed downward, towards the surface"

"SOME is then absorbed in the IR spectrum by GHGs, including atmostpheric CO2"

"SOME of that downward-directed IR is absorbed by the atmosphere"

Interesting Tom... you reference Planks Law and also tie in "SOME" five times (5) to explain radiated IR.

Did Plank use "some" in his calculations? Perhaps you could share "some" actual numbers with the rest of us??

Considering an actual increase in man-made black body surfaces, along with the MANY other forcings, using your "settled science" how much warmth is attributed to 100 ppm co2.

I'll answer for you seeing that you refuse to admit it...

YOU DON'T KNOW!!!!

Unless the United States is considered part of Antarctica, it looks like the modelers might be stretching the truth a tiny bit with their claims of correctness. Feb-April was a disaster for the CPC models. Hot/cold - what's the difference?

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/archives/long_lead/gifs/2007/200707temp.gif
http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/products/maps/acis/Last3mTDeptUS.png

YOU DON'T KNOW!!!!

In the dozen or so times I've already responded to this canard in the past, I've posted links to the sources -- including the math. Contrarians like AGW Steve responded with shouts, insults, and more lies. If you want the specifics, search the archives here or use Google.

I'll not waste my time again.

BT,

Can you give me a one sentence summary/estimate on how much warmth YOU think is attributed to 100 ppm CO2?

No links needed. Thanks.

Hi BT . Thanks for the feedback. My primary question was in regards to the form the energy existed as incoming [high energy photons]. You pretty much answered that. The transformation to IR occurs primarily once the UVL enters the atmosphere through the various processes you mentioned above.

If I remember my physics correctly from my own EE training 35 years ago, we essentially compute the net energy flux through a gaussian surface well outside the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha :) Pardon me, hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, seriously now. Please describe the "net energy flux" you are referring to. What type of energy are you referring to? Where is it coming from? The Sun, as electricity? :) You're awesome!

We must assume that the Gaussian Surface you are referring to is spherical, correct? (Wink Wink ;) Can you explain why being well outside of the Earth's atmosphere is relevant other than there is no medium for a Gaussian Surface to be described nor to conduct electricity? :)

Last I checked photons are without charge, even after quantum was discovered. :)

Using Plank's law, we calculate backwards from the observed surface temperature of the earth to derive the average radiation striking the surface (treating the earth surface as a black-body).

Hahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhaha!

As a professor of mine once stated "Mathematics is beauty!" It sure is! This must be something to behold. Can you please explain the above? :) Calculating backwards from a single temp to derive an average of radiation striking the surface? :) Incredible!

Please also recall that the Earth's surface has many temps and CO2 only absorbs energy in a couple of those temp/energy bands :)

Sorry man, this is much better than your Plank's law in a Vacuum stuff.

Please keep it up and be sure to share this stuff with the folks over at RealClimate, this is AGW at it's best!

Don't take my word for any of the above, just Google it, you'll find the answers but only if you WANT TO!

Hahahahhahahahahahhahahahaha!

Happy Monday!

Steve

"The south pole receives no sunlight from March 20 to September 20. How much of the incoming UV is trapped by greenhouse gases?"

>100% because the uv prevents cooling of the surface regardless of incoming UV. Without the CO2 the surface would cool even further during this period.