New Zealand ski resorts see 'largest snow base ever'...
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10527882

Mexican scientist warns Earth will see 'Little Ice Age' for next 80 years!
http://www.milenio.com/mexico/milenio/nota.asp?id=651680

For some reason, the second article, although on Drudge, is in Spanish, maybe you guys know how to translate, otherwise its worthless as it is now.

So what we have pertaining to the article is that we will have a drought in North America at some point and global warming will accentuate that and turn everything else to dust.

It might be going to other way.

The point of this study is that small changes in solar activity over long periods of time can have measureable influence on climate.

However, with the recent rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, we have a large change over a short time. So far, the forcing due to CO2 is about 10 times that seen from the noted long term solar changes but already climate changes have been noticed. What is worrisome is the long term implications of these changes.

Well, this just goes to show you can't blame humanity over the fickelness of a Hydrogen Nuclear reaction a milling times the size of Earth deciding to have a spat of heating or cooling every once in a while, eh?

BS on the global warming we,ve been cooling since '99.

Here is a link to the English version of the article Steve Rowland posted concerning the prediction of a "little ice age."

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.milenio.com%2Fmexico%2Fmilenio%2Fnota.asp%3Fid%3D651680&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=es&tl=en

The one thing I garnered from this and other research which counters the AGW claims is that we really know very little about our climate. I also believe that the sun is the key to understanding climate science, not bit players like CO2.

Andrew: Welcome to the zoo. Yesterday I filled up a bottle of water, then took the same kind of bottle and filled it quickly with two CO2 cartridges and closed the lid. I then inserted two identical highly accurate(expensive) darkroom thermometers into the sides and taped them up to be sure my experiment was air tight. After one hour the bottle with the CO2 was 30 degrees warmer. Infrared radiation that would otherwise pass through our atmosphere goes to the Earth. The energy of the IR is transferred to the CO2 molecules and convection from water vapor and rising heat causes them to tumble faster, and this transfers some of the energy to the other gases in the atmosphere by the collisions. They then move faster. This is commonly called being "warmer". Heat becomes trapped in the troposphere and the stratosphere is colder. It backs up only when it gets more warm causing the greenhouse effect. This simple explanation is one reason that every Academy of Science from all the industrial countries believe this to be fact. What you will learn here is that a skeptic is someone who argues the Science, and a denier is, misinformationists, and the fact you will be misquoted, as just a part of what you will experience here. Have you heard the joke about little people can't change the atmosphere. Like the OZONE LAYER!!Glad to see you here! KIPP

So much for the AGW concensus.

Global Warming Skeptics Prominently Featured At International Scientific Meeting

Indian Scientist Mocks Nobel Prize Award to Gore

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200808191759/energy-and-environment/global-warming-skeptics-prominently-featured-at-international-scientific-meeting.html

And:

From "Stanley Goldenberg, meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA"

http://www.insurancetechguru.com/blog/2008/08/global-warming-not-linked-to-increased-hurricane-activity/

Excerpt:
"I did not say if there is global warming, it would be man-made," Mr. Goldenberg emphasized. "Not all scientists agree that the warming we've seen is necessarily anthropogenic. It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming."

So far, the forcing due to CO2 is about 10 times that seen from the noted long term solar changes

Andrew,

I don't expect you to respond because you have not, that I have seen, to date responded to any of the replies to you asking you to back up your claims.

AGW at it's best.

Here goes.

What is the forcing attributed to CO2 today?

What is considered long term?

Thanks,

Steve

Andrew,

Really curious, what big large change have we seen over a short period of time, and how do you know there have not been other changes more extreme? Thanks for your time in answering this for me.

Kipp,

If my understanding is correct you had CO2 gas and compared it with liquid water. It takes much less energy to heat up a gas than it does a liquid. I find your experiment pointless.

Dave

Yesterday I filled up a bottle of water, then took the same kind of bottle and filled it quickly with two CO2 cartridges and closed the lid.

Kipp,

Couple questions.

1. What did you fill the first bottle with? Water?

2. What size bottles? How much volume?

After you answer, I'll let you in on the errors with your experiment. The Scientific Method is at work folks.

I won't comment on the rest of your post other than you seem to be attempting to create a Grand Unification Theory of AGW. Big problem is that the several thoughts you are trying to combine don't work as you errantly suggest.

Can you tell us how and why the Stratophere is warmer than the tropopause?

It backs up only when it gets more warm causing the greenhouse effect.

This is definitely the AGW quote of the day! Gavin Schmidt give you that line or what?

Thanks,

Steve

I love the last caveat :

"Global warming will leave things like this in the dust. The natural oscillations here are nothing like what we would expect to see with global warming," he said

Now if that is not a lame excuse for a cya. This guy wants his cake and eat it to.

Kipp Alpert:

Do you know that water has much larger heat capacity and much larger density than CO2?

I think, you have to redesign your experiment for more convincing result. I like to see your redesigned new experiment and its result.

"Global warming will leave things like this in the dust. The natural oscillations here are nothing like what we would expect to see with global warming," he said

Nothing like casting aside science for some more speculation; I guess that gets them easy funding and publishing approval from the Science is Settled crowd though. The statement is completely speculative and has no foundation, and inserting it seriously erodes the credibility of the study's author.

His assertions include assumptions that may be completely erroneous; for example, maybe the reduced solar activity impacts the hydrological cycle in a manner unrelated to Atlantic sea surface temps, like reduced evaporation, and that is the reason for the lack of correlation between sea surface temps and drought that has been observed in "modern records." Amazing how they always seem to think they have an absolute understanding of such a complex system with so many variables that operate in such a chaotic fashion!

Gary,

I looked at the links you provided, it seems the scientists from RealClimate ask the same question I've been trying to find an answer to: If we cannot accurately predict 5-10 day weather forecasts, how can we so confidently rely on climate models for long term climate change?

I will admit I know a lot less about Physics, Chemistry, IR forcing, and the other technical topics people discuss from time to time here. I do however, as a Software Engineer know how computer programs work and I do understand how statistical modeling works. The "science" behind modeling is not any different for modeling a weather forecast or modeling future climate change.

It is a fact that Computer Science, while it has Science in its name is far behind the classical sciences in both procedure and theory. It is in its infancy, yet it is still older than the science behind AGW--thus we're using two very new fields to base our predictions on--I'm not faulting the fields, its just what we have to work with currently.

I started reading this blog over a year ago with the intent to find an answer because I didn't know enough about the AGW to make an informed opinion. What I've found almost unfailingly is that the topic is more political than it is scientific and it is extremely rare to find Conservatives who believe in AGW or Liberals who don't.

I still am at the same point I was a year ago, though I now believe that there truly isn't enough known about the complex system that is climate for ANYONE to scientifically prove AGW at this point.

That brings me back to the question I started with, which in over a year's time reading this blog and other websites, I have yet to find an answer to: How can we be so sure the climate models are accurate when our weather models are not?

On that note, I have logged the forecasted temps on the 10 day forecast where I live for the last year and compared it to the actual temperatures recorded to see how accurate the forecast is the farther out it is. It consistently goes to being on average about 2 degrees within the mean recorded temperature on day 1 to 4-5 degrees off (with a much bigger standard deviation) by days 7-10. If our level of precision degrades by over 100% forcasting out just 10 days, how can we confidently predict 50 years from now in a system that is even more complex than weather?

I'm throwing these questions out for anyone to answer--Brett included. I'm not a denier, I am what Paul Yeager described as a true skeptic back around the beginning of the year and am simply looking for answers.

Chris B.

If we cannot accurately predict 5-10 day weather forecasts, how can we so confidently rely on climate models for long term climate change?

How can Accuweather predict the weather at my house tomorrow when they can't even tell me when a particular cloud is going to block out the sun? In a strange twist of intuition, complex systems are often easier to deal with than simpler systems. A small box with a dozen molecules would defy the computational capabilities of the fastest super computers but put 10**23 molecules in that same box and suddenly the ideal gas law is satisfied very well.

It is my guess (someone correct me if I am wrong) that climate models work in a similar manner in that the behaviour at any given point on the planet or at any given time is meaningless but when averaged for a region or over time the results become consistent over many ensemble runs. I don't think there can be a proof that they are correct, but like most models, they must demonstrate consistency with observations. It is my understanding that they do a very good job with climates near our present one while I think they do a much poorer job in modeling ice ages (not sure about this). There are parts of the modelling which are very mature (radiation balance) while others such as clouds and aerosols still need more work.

Liberals tend to believe more in AWG since they are people more prone to change than conservative people. When this comes to make change to our polluting habits, the opinions of conservation is a very dangerous one. Its like facing death and doing nothing. Be real or not, AWG, we should clearly diminish our emissions. Conversatives of businesses of course dont like to face that. But here I make my appeal to them.

Putting this aside, I think this study is a very interesting one. We cannot know for sure that those 1500 year change are caused by the sun, but still makes our future more easy to predict.

Congratulations Kipp. You have just demonstrated that a volume of CO2 gas requires much less energy to heat than an equivalent volume of liquid water.

By the way, water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas, so even if you ran the experiment correctly with CO2 gas in one bottle, and water vapor at the same density in the other bottle, and compensated for the difference in specific heat capacity, the experiment still has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere.

Here's another one to ponder. There is virtually an infinite supply of water vapor ready to be liberated into the atmosphere from the world's oceans. Why is the average relative humidity at the level measured, and not saturated due to positive feedback?

Here's another one to ponder. If total greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere goes up (for example, by adding CO2 gas to the atmosphere), why would you assume that the specific humidity of the atmosphere would increase (as the climate models assume), when observational data shows that it has decreased in the mid-troposphere over the last 20 years?

Ok this is meant as a pure joke, lighten up!

Kipps experiemnt proved that AGW is in fact proven by bad science!

kipp-just a couple of questions
1 was 1 bottle water and the other bottle only co2 of was the second bottle water with co2 added

2 what was the temperature differential between the two bottles at the time of filling

3what was the differential 15 minutes later

4 what was the diff 30 minutes/45 min later

5 what was he difference 2/3/4 hours later

im curious if you took these readings if you did then please enlighten us if not maybe you need to repeat your experiment. i dont know why but im thinking it might have been 30 deg warmer at the onset of the experiment my post will probably show after your answer to gw steve
looking forward to thant response and his assesment of your experiment

This is the issue where dumb Americans demonstrate American leadership is parasitic to the world. Thx for capitalism and everything, now step aside before you ruin this game of civilization for everyone.
A weather forecast is like projecting a parabolic curve. Deniers believe that the science behind AGW is merely projecting the curve of annual temperatures.
It is proven 100% that CO2 is a Greenhouse gas. Half of the blog comments here are attempts to prove this otherwise. This isn't a conversation about AGW and climate science. It is ADD America proving corporatism doesn't work, and that America is the new Soviet Union.
The President believe deniers that CO2 is not a Greenhouse gas. What's the point of discussing this further. Russia should take the leadership and begin drafting a nuclear first-strike contingency should American industry continue with unabated CO2 WMD emissions.

chris b,

exactly!!! nevermind your paying $4 a gallon for gas and $20 bucks for a t-boone i mean t-bone steak, cause we have to save the world from co2 meltdown because the science is settled...

Chris B.

Your assessment of the AGW topic being political is spot on.
Which begs the question; How could valid science and logic completely escape one whole segment of society? (either way) Something is fishy.
On the models; do some google research on the assumptions that are used for sensitivity. It is very telling.
Then look up the difficulty of establishing a starting base line from which to project forward any model.
Also very telling.
This should ultimately leave you very sceptical indeed about the predictive value of the models.
Then go back to your starting point about politics and ask how a governing body could use (abuse) such a system of Alchemy based science.

Gary,

I agree that one segment of society could not completely miss out on understanding "settled science." In fact, my belief is that the way people scream that it is settled and people like Dr. Hansen for example claiming that a "You-tube style debate" would be tough for scientists to win means something is fishy.

I don't doubt that any competent scientist could easily win a "You-tube style debate" on whether the moon-landing was a hoax. They could use Physics and engineering to show exactly how a space shuttle can get into space, show the abundance of evidence that we do indeed have man-made objects orbiting the earth, etc. It wouldn't be hard. But how come on this particular issue, Hansen claims he couldn't win?

Until someone on either side convinces me otherwise, this is a political issue, not a scientific one. While I applaude most of the goals the AGW crowd is promoting such as clean energy and getting off our reliance of foreign oil, I believe there are far more dire consequences for the United States not doing these things than the fantasies proposed by "potential effects of AGW" over the next century. If we had the type of will that we had in the 1960s space race to develop our own energy and stop piling up debt to countries who don't like us, we'd lower emissions, improve our standard of living, and shut up the AGW crowd's sky-is-falling rhetoric all in one fell swoop. I don't see anything wrong with any of that. Fortunately, I believe both our Presidential candidates this time around at least see this point of view to a certain extent.

I am extremely doubtful about the claim of 1500 year fluctuations in TSI. That is, I doubt the Bond theory.

What the paper does offer is evidence of drought experienced in a certain region (indeed, one where I hadn't realized did have doughts during the Holocene).

Phillip Huggan:
The fact that CO2 is a greenhouse (poor term) gas, is not disputed. What is debated is that the small fraction of a percent that is in the atmosphere can effect the climate in a decernable way. The models used to show the 'A' in AGW appear to discount the negative feebacks and overstate the positive. Without an accurate understanding of the feedback mechanisms, assigning an accurate measure of effect for each of the constituent gases in the atmosphere is impossible. If Russia is to take a leadership role, they can start by reducing their CO2 emmissions and pollution. At least the pollution, which is far worse than the U.S.

"Global warming will leave things like this in the dust. The natural oscillations here are nothing like what we would expect to see with global warming,"

Now why would a person ruin a perfectly good scientific paper with a speculative statement like this? Soon all papers will contain a mandatory Statement of Fealty to Global Warming.

Boondocks, the negative feedbacks are being accurately represented. The uncertainty over the altitude of cloud formation leads IPCC to assign a broad range of temperature variations. Likewise for particulate formations. Likewise for Milankovitch Cycles and Solar radiation changes. This is why IPCC projects a temperature range and candidly admits where they don't know the science (unlike deniers); I'll skim through the 3500 pages and retreive the specific pages where positive and negative feedbacks are discounted, if you wish.
What specific feedback are you referencing? Here is a link to some crappy denier reasoning:
http://mc-computing.com/qs/Global_Warming/IPCC.html
In all cases the negative forcing uncertainties are candidly stated and incorporated into the IPCC models (ie. temp projections don't need to be adjusted to acount for them). The radiative objection is ludicruous. I suppose the sun could be supernovae tonight, but a simple Google Scholar search will reveal this denier point is disproven.
Yes, our precipitation, cloud, and particulate model are incomplete. No, that doesn't mean we should ignore what we do know about the Greenhouse Effect. When you shine light through CO2, heat gets trapped. IPCC explains where this heat goes. Deniers magic it away.
When Darwin figured out evolution, he didn't know about recessive and dominant genes, or mutations, as explanations for why it happened. That didn't mean we should've ignored fossil records and it doesn't mean we should ignore the Greenhouse Effect.
What negative feedback is not being recognized? There aren't any still hiding in the weeds, I wish there were.

I love how the article presents findings and facts through the first few paragraphs, then suggests how the findings deviate from what "modern science" has observed, and then finally closes with a statement that suggests the sun's activity and it's effects on the earth will be dwarfed by the impact of manmade global warming! You know, what happens when 'manmade' global warming is a thing of the past and we're STILL not happy with our climate? Do we fight the sun next?

How about the Antartic sea ice? Let's hear from the 47,000 skeptics of this global warming scam!
Greenland - hmmm...I wonder why they call it that if it's covered with ice? I bet it was once green! I suppose it was warming a long time ago - much warmer than it is now and without cars!