See Oh Too?

[MSimon]

http://drtimball.com/2011/ernst-georg-b ... deceivers/

Early researchers knew of the existence of a large set of CO2 measures from the 19th century beginning in 1812. They were part of the drive to determine the constituents of the atmosphere. They became part of the manipulated climate science record with a 1983 Climatic Change article, The Pre-industrial Carbon Dioxide Level. Wigley was Director of the infamous Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) before Phil Jones took over. Wigley began the decline of climate science, but it was under Jones’ leadership that the malfeasance was arranged and fully exposed in the emails leaked on 20 November 2009. In the article, Wigley established the pre-industrial level at approximately 270 ppm, even though readings ranged up to 600 ppm. It was necessary to agree with the outrageously selective work of G.S. Callendar (Figure 1) that showed a low pre-industrial level, but also a different slope to the trend.

Two other records were arranged to support the claims. One was the Antarctic ice core record, which showed a close relationship between CO2 and temperature. The other was the modern record from Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

The ice core record has several problems. There is contamination of the air in the bubble by water; different results are obtained if the ice is crushed or melted to obtain the air sample; it takes decades for the air bubble to form; the raw data was smoothed out by a 70 year moving average that removed the great annual variability found in the 19th century and Stomata Index (SI) records; closer examination revealed a major flaw in the hypothesis because temperature rises before CO2.

The Mauna Loa record is taken on a volcano where CO2 leaks from ground for many kilometers around. The process of data collection is patented and owned by the Keeling family and is modified to eliminate all “local effect”. This standardizing of the data is also applied to distribution of CO2 through the atmosphere. It is not evenly distributed at all as recent satellite data shows, yet that is the pattern built into the computer models.

Ernst Beck re-examined the 19th century data as his friend Gartner describes,

With his special meticulousness, Beck collected and analysed thousands and thousands of older measurements of the CO2 content of the air and found out that such content has been sometimes higher than today in the first half of the 20th century and also partially in the 19th century.

He found the pre-industrial level little different from the current level, and the variability from year to year was much wider than the ice core and Mauna Loa record showed. He put all the data together in Figure 2.

[tomclarke]

With his special meticulousness, Beck collected and analysed thousands and thousands of older measurements of the CO2 content of the air and found out that such content has been sometimes higher than today in the first half of the 20th century and also partially in the 19th century.

He found the pre-industrial level little different from the current level, and the variability from year to year was much wider than the ice core and Mauna Loa record showed. He put all the data together in Figure 2.

The argument here is:

Mauna Loa measurements require care in processing
Ice core measurements require care in processing

Then he puts together a graph with local measurements and those two (carefully processed) background measurements

You can see that
(1) the ice core and
(2) ML measurements are consistent with each other, and consistent with 40% of fossil fuel CO2 going into the atmosphere.

There is, independently,
(3) hard satellite spectrometry evidence that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing because the CO2 absorption line fine structure can be identified and it is getting bigger (over 4 different satellites and times from 1970-2006).
I put this on the other thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5504&p=114572&sid=7 ... 60#p114511

So we have three consistent and independent lines of evidence showing the expected CO2 increase as roughly 40% of emitted fossil fuel CO2, and making a large change to atmospheric CO2 concentration - this is hardly something at experimental limits where no-one can measure it properly.

So how does this guy come to the odea that CO2 has not increased? He is taking local CO2 measurements - which you can see from his graph are contaminated by local CO2 sources and therefore all over the place. He is not checking what this contamination is, cross-checking to get greater accuracy, because if he did his estimate would be consistent with the three other proper sources of measurement I've mentioned.

His argument is so obviously fallacious, ignoring multiple lines of evidence and with no good evidence to the contrary, that it beggars belief.

MSimon - explain the observations! Are these guys in different fields all lying to us? Fabricating data? And ifyou believe this, what is your evidence. There sure is none here so far.

[MSimon]

He doesn't say CO2 hasn't increased recently. Only that it has been higher in the last 200 years. i.e. current levels are not unusual.

All this will get properly revisited when the gravy train stops.

You do have to admit that Mauna Loa is probably not the best place to measure atmospheric CO2.

And you did read about the problems with ice cores?

As to lying? Happens all the time when money is involved.

[choff]

Here's a paper from Beck.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf

Comprehensive data sets documented in more than 390 papers were ignored despite
prominent scientists like Robert Bunsen, Konrad Roentgen, or the Nobel Prize winners
August Krogh and Otto Warburg had measured the CO2 content of air with high
precision [19]. Their results are the basics of modern natural science lectured round the
world. In fact there is one single publication in 1986 [20] Keeling discussed 18 historic
measurement series of about 400 [20] and rejected the 20th century data prior to 1958
without having investigated them. So he missed that in 1936 the Finnish chemist Y.
Kauko achieved a measuring accuracy of 0.33%, which means about ±1 ppm and
Kauko had also measured a vertical CO2 profile for the first time [23], (see fig.3 a).
One reason may have been the intention to ‘prove’ that the increase of the
atmospheric CO2 was due to fossil fuel burning, an idea that was strongly influenced
by the work of the English steam engineer Guy Callendar.

[tomclarke]

He doesn't say CO2 hasn't increased recently. Only that it has been higher in the last 200 years. i.e. current levels are not unusual.

All this will get properly revisited when the gravy train stops.

You do have to admit that Mauna Loa is probably not the best place to measure atmospheric CO2.

And you did read about the problems with ice cores?

As to lying? Happens all the time when money is involved.

This is the type of pseudo-science lying I don't like.

I don't admit ML is a bad place to measure CO2. Do you want me to go read up what are the issues, see how the data is processed, etc etc. The data from it looks consistent with the ice core data.

The observatory near the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii has been recording the amount of carbon dioxide in the air since 1958. This is the longest continuous record of direct measurements of CO2 and it shows a steadily increasing trend from year to year; combined with a saw-tooth effect that is caused by changes in the rate of plant growth through the seasons. This curve is commonly known as the Keeling Curve, named after Charles Keeling, the American scientist who started the project.

Why Mauna Loa? Early attempts to measure CO2 in the USA and Scandinavia found that the readings varied a lot due to the influence of growing plants and the exhaust from motors. Mauna Loa is ideal because it is so remote from big population centres. Also, on tropical islands at night, the prevailing winds blow from the land out to sea, which effect brings clean, well-mixed Central Pacific air from high in the atmosphere to the observatory. This removes any interference coming from the vegetation lower down on the island.

But how about gas from the volcano? It is true that volcanoes blow out CO2 from time to time and that this can interfere with the readings. Most of the time, though, the prevailing winds blow the volcanic gasses away from the observatory. But when the winds do sometimes blow from active vents towards the observatory, the influence from the volcano is obvious on the normally consistent records and any dubious readings can be easily spotted and edited out (Ryan, 1995).

There are problems with all data sources, and I'm sure it makes a difference how you get the air out from ice cores. I don't agree that that invalidates the data. I'm sure it has been analysed, compensated and error bars established.

Here is a paper from 1993 which shows +/- 1ppmv accuracy for CO2 from ice cares. They identify a problem melting ice and therefore crush it instead.
http://www.igsoc.org:8080/journal/39/13 ... 09-215.pdf


None of which work this lying (by misdirection) bothers to mention.

Now if it referenced the work and showed precisely where the analysis was deficient, the error bars wrong, yes then I'd respect it.

This level of commentary - I'm ashamed you give it any credence it is so superficial. Especially when 5 minutes independent googling can show it is wrong.

If there are problems with any of these data sources they can be stated.

If the data sources have error bars so high they are worthless that can be stated (they don't).

And anyway for that last 30 years satellite CO2 measurements agree with the ML data.

I have to say anyone agreeing this stuff is scientifically incompetent and politically biassed.

[tomclarke]

CHoff - the problem here is that CO2 concentration is well mixed in the upper atmosphere but near sources of emmission (plants, vehicles) it varies widely both seasonally and geographically.

So all these historical data sets will be not useful, except for regional analyses. Actually people do a lot of regional analysis to see how quickly CO2 gets mixed, how the plant/air transfers work etc. So they probably are not completely ignored.

But if you want good quality results you need to be in the upper atmosphere - on a pacific island (Mauna Loa) - or in the Antarctic.

All far from CO2 emitters.

Again, I think it is shocking you have so little independent curiosity about why these apparent anomalies exist that you don't investigate it yourself. 5 minutes with google goes a long way. Instead you swallow these lies hook line and sinker.

Here's a paper from Beck.

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf

Comprehensive data sets documented in more than 390 papers were ignored despite
prominent scientists like Robert Bunsen, Konrad Roentgen, or the Nobel Prize winners
August Krogh and Otto Warburg had measured the CO2 content of air with high
precision [19]. Their results are the basics of modern natural science lectured round the
world. In fact there is one single publication in 1986 [20] Keeling discussed 18 historic
measurement series of about 400 [20] and rejected the 20th century data prior to 1958
without having investigated them. So he missed that in 1936 the Finnish chemist Y.
Kauko achieved a measuring accuracy of 0.33%, which means about ±1 ppm and
Kauko had also measured a vertical CO2 profile for the first time [23], (see fig.3 a).
One reason may have been the intention to ‘prove’ that the increase of the
atmospheric CO2 was due to fossil fuel burning, an idea that was strongly influenced
by the work of the English steam engineer Guy Callendar.

[choff]

Beck's paper describes in great detail how local conditions have to be taken into consideration during measurements, he describes Keeling's own mistakes in this regard. Also given is the acceptance of 19th century data in the Keeling curve described as too low by 19th century scientists from chemical processing errors.

[MSimon]

CHoff - the problem here is that CO2 concentration is well mixed in the upper atmosphere but near sources of emmission (plants, vehicles) it varies widely both seasonally and geographically.

So true. But to get well mixed you have to get to about 2Km and higher. And getting to that level on a volcano that is out gassing CO2 hardly seems the best place to take measurements.

http://ps.uci.edu/~rowlandblake/publications/177.pdf

Seriously Tom. That is bad measurement science. Very bad measurement science. And you tout "science". You strike me as a believer when science is actually brought forward by sceptics. You have to think of everything that could confound your results. And Mauna Loa is prima facie confounding.

Other than the amusement value it is hardly worth wasting time with you. But I have to admit the amusement value is high.

[MSimon]

We conclude that upper tropospheric CO2 volume mixing ratios will provide a valuable tool for validating vertical transport. The implications of the CO2 variation caused by the stratosphere-troposphere exchange for remote sensing of CO2 are discussed.

http://yly-mac.gps.caltech.edu/Reprints ... a_2006.pdf

So where is this upper troposphere? The gentlemen designate 9Km to 13 Km. That is about 5.6 to 8 miles high. Maybe the Byrds can fly that high on a mountain. Ordinary people use airplanes.

[hanelyp]

Collect CO2 measurements at a site with substantial natural CO2 emission, then "correct" the data? Yeah, that'll work just great. /sarc.

[tomclarke]

Collect CO2 measurements at a site with substantial natural CO2 emission, then "correct" the data? Yeah, that'll work just great. /sarc.

OK - which bit of this don't you get. ML has volcanic activity. The observatory is on the extinct top away from the active bits, all of which are lower. When the wind is in the right direction the air measured is blown in pure from the pacific. A time graph of the CO2 concentration will show a low constant value (CO2 remember does not vary day to day like weather) with fluctuations when the wind is NOT right that peak upwards and are easily removed.

Now, if you understand that you can see why the volcanic CO2 at ML is not a problem. If it WERE a problem you'd have to have a whole load of scientists knowingly fabricating data between 1958 and now. I don't think AGW was a big issue in 1958 and it is a far out conspiracy theory that would allow that.

Also, you can see why a pacific island with little vegetation and an observatory a long way above the vegetation, so that the air it sees is mostly pure pacific without contamination, makes sense. the main sources of errors are industry and car exhaust gasses, and plants.

[tomclarke]

We conclude that upper tropospheric CO2 volume mixing ratios will provide a valuable tool for validating vertical transport. The implications of the CO2 variation caused by the stratosphere-troposphere exchange for remote sensing of CO2 are discussed.

http://yly-mac.gps.caltech.edu/Reprints ... a_2006.pdf

So where is this upper troposphere? The gentlemen designate 9Km to 13 Km. That is about 5.6 to 8 miles high. Maybe the Byrds can fly that high on a mountain. Ordinary people use airplanes.

I don't quite see the point of this? 9-13k sounds about right for upper troposphere. There are satellite measurements. Those are flaky. There are routine radiosonde air measurements that will give decent data normally up to about 20km. The highest balloons have got up to 47km!

A rubber or latex balloon filled with either helium or hydrogen lifts the device up through the atmosphere. The maximum altitude to which the balloon ascends is determined by the diameter and thickness of the balloon. Balloon sizes can range from 100 to 3,000 g (3.5 to 105.8 oz). As the balloon ascends through the atmosphere, the pressure decreases, causing the balloon to expand. Eventually, the balloon will expand to the extent that its skin will break, terminating the ascent. An 800 g (28 oz) balloon will burst at about 21 km (13 mi).[10] After bursting, a small parachute on the radiosonde's support line carries it to Earth. A typical radiosonde flight lasts 60 to 90 minutes. One radiosonde from Clark Air Base, Philippines reached an altitude of 155,092 ft (47,272 m). At that time the United States Air Force was not logging such records.[citation needed]

[choff]

Glad you mentioned the radiosonde data, I'll repeat myself.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/07/t ... new-paper/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/06/n ... ter-vapor/

Table 2. Change of OLR by layer from water vapor and from CO2 from 1990 to 2001.
The calculations show that the cooling effect of the water vapor changes on OLR is 16 times greater than the warming effect of CO2 during this 11-year period. The cooling effect of the two upper layers is 5.8 times greater than the warming effect of the lowest layer.

The Tropical Hot Spot

The models predict a distinctive pattern of warming – a “hot-spot” of enhanced warming in the upper atmosphere at 8 km to 13 km over the tropics, shown as the large red spot in Figure 8. The temperature at this “hot-spot” is projected to increase at a rate of two to three times faster than at the surface. However, the Hadley Centre’s real-world plot of radiosonde temperature observations from weather balloons shown below does not show the projected hot-spot at all. The predicted hot-spot is entirely absent from the observational record. If it was there it would have been easily detected.

The hot-spot is forecast in climate models due to the theory that the water vapor profile in the tropics is dominated by the moist adiabatic lapse rate, which requires that water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere with warming. The moist adiabatic lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of water-saturated air changes as it move up in the atmosphere by convection such as within a thunder cloud. A graph here shows two lapse rate profiles with a larger temperature difference in the upper atmosphere than at the surface. The projected water vapor increase creates the hot-spot and is responsible for half to two-thirds of the surface warming in the IPCC climate models.

Conclusion

Climate models predict upper atmosphere moistening which triples the greenhouse effect from man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The new satellite data from the NASA water vapor project shows declining upper atmosphere water vapor during the period 1988 to 2001. It is the best available data for water vapor because it has global coverage. Calculations by a line-by-line radiative code show that upper atmosphere water vapor changes at 500 mb to 300 mb have 29 times greater effect on OLR and temperatures than the same change near the surface. The cooling effect of the water vapor changes on OLR is 16 times greater than the warming effect of CO2 during the 1990 to 2001 period. Radiosonde data shows that upper atmosphere water vapor declines with warming. The IPCC dismisses the radiosonde data as the decline is inconsistent with theory. During the 1990 to 2001 period, upper atmosphere water vapor from satellite data declines more than that from radiosonde data, so there is no reason to dismiss the radiosonde data. Changes in water vapor are linked to temperature trends in the upper atmosphere. Both satellite data and radiosonde data confirm the absence of any tropical upper atmosphere temperature amplification, contrary to IPCC theory. Four independent data sets demonstrate that the IPCC theory is wrong. CO2 does not cause significant global warming.


The early 1960's astronauts were sujected to rigorous psychological evalutaion prior to acceptance into the NASA programs, so we can reasonably dismiss any suggestion that as deniers they are confused in some way.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/1 ... 18017.html

[tomclarke]

Glad you mentioned the radiosonde data, I'll repeat myself.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/07/t ... new-paper/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/06/n ... ter-vapor/

Table 2. Change of OLR by layer from water vapor and from CO2 from 1990 to 2001.
The calculations show that the cooling effect of the water vapor changes on OLR is 16 times greater than the warming effect of CO2 during this 11-year period. The cooling effect of the two upper layers is 5.8 times greater than the warming effect of the lowest layer.

The Tropical Hot Spot

The models predict a distinctive pattern of warming – a “hot-spot” of enhanced warming in the upper atmosphere at 8 km to 13 km over the tropics, shown as the large red spot in Figure 8. The temperature at this “hot-spot” is projected to increase at a rate of two to three times faster than at the surface. However, the Hadley Centre’s real-world plot of radiosonde temperature observations from weather balloons shown below does not show the projected hot-spot at all. The predicted hot-spot is entirely absent from the observational record. If it was there it would have been easily detected.

The hot-spot is forecast in climate models due to the theory that the water vapor profile in the tropics is dominated by the moist adiabatic lapse rate, which requires that water vapor increases in the upper atmosphere with warming. The moist adiabatic lapse rate describes how the temperature of a parcel of water-saturated air changes as it move up in the atmosphere by convection such as within a thunder cloud. A graph here shows two lapse rate profiles with a larger temperature difference in the upper atmosphere than at the surface. The projected water vapor increase creates the hot-spot and is responsible for half to two-thirds of the surface warming in the IPCC climate models.

Conclusion

Climate models predict upper atmosphere moistening which triples the greenhouse effect from man-made carbon dioxide emissions. The new satellite data from the NASA water vapor project shows declining upper atmosphere water vapor during the period 1988 to 2001. It is the best available data for water vapor because it has global coverage. Calculations by a line-by-line radiative code show that upper atmosphere water vapor changes at 500 mb to 300 mb have 29 times greater effect on OLR and temperatures than the same change near the surface. The cooling effect of the water vapor changes on OLR is 16 times greater than the warming effect of CO2 during the 1990 to 2001 period. Radiosonde data shows that upper atmosphere water vapor declines with warming. The IPCC dismisses the radiosonde data as the decline is inconsistent with theory. During the 1990 to 2001 period, upper atmosphere water vapor from satellite data declines more than that from radiosonde data, so there is no reason to dismiss the radiosonde data. Changes in water vapor are linked to temperature trends in the upper atmosphere. Both satellite data and radiosonde data confirm the absence of any tropical upper atmosphere temperature amplification, contrary to IPCC theory. Four independent data sets demonstrate that the IPCC theory is wrong. CO2 does not cause significant global warming.


The early 1960's astronauts were sujected to rigorous psychological evalutaion prior to acceptance into the NASA programs, so we can reasonably dismiss any suggestion that as deniers they are confused in some way.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/1 ... 18017.html

Ok, there are three things:

(1) appeal to authority (astronauts) with the view that due to psychological testing they cannot have confused ideas about science. I notice that 1960s astronauts are not necessarily well-balanced people, there being at least one counterexample. I also note that well-balanced people are not always rational about science, consider the prevalence of creationists who otherwise seem normal. Finally technical skills and educational do not protect againt confision about science - consider the large number of famous engineers and scientists who take up weird ideas in old age. (eg Laithwaite - perpetual motion with gyroscopes). But mainly this is an appeal to authority not backed by evidence which no right-thinking person would accept.

(2) The hot spot mystery. This is indeed a mystery. Some datasets show much less warming than expected for tropical mid-troposphere.

Now what the headline does not give you is the details. If you want the full set, told from three different viewpoints on the ECS high/low spectrum, and discussed, see the following:
http://www.climatedialogue.org/the-miss ... -hot-spot/

Summarising:
(a) everyone agrees that this is not an issue with climate models. The relationship between surface and mid tropo temperatures contradicts basic physics (lapse rate) validated by simple 1D integration

(b) the datasets are very variable. Some show predicted warming, some do not.

(c) This remains a mystery - but it is not clear whether it is a bad data mystery or a bad atmosphere understanding mystery. No-one has proposed a theoretical hypothesis that would explain the lack of warming.

(3) WUWT paper claims that based on observed water vapour, the effect of water vapour changes should be 16X larger than the effect of CO2 and result in no CO2 based warming. I've earlier posted a bit about why this is complex and the WUWT posts have probably got it wrong - as would be par for the course. After all it is easy to make mistakes with this stuff - and these posts have not had the partial sanity checking from peer review - nor the major sanity checking from being published and have other scientists find the errors.

Of course, if you want to appeal to authority you might reckon that a poster on WUWT would be likely to get it right? I would not.

So I'm delaying a bit looking at these papers hard because I'm not clever enough myself to detect for sure complex mistakes - though I can find obvious ones - and I want to compare these papers and other directly related calculations and see what are the differences in assumptions.
If there are no other calculations these papers would win by default - but that is not likely!

I'll get back to you on this one, and till I do you should view this as open. (Did you read my previous comments re the NASA satellite data - that it was just totally inaccurate for high atmosphere data? That was my first attempt, but getting to grips with the whole thing is complex - there are data issues and theory issues).

[choff]

I'd trust an astronaut driving any airplane I happen to be in over a warmist driving it every time.

It's not WUWT saying it, it's NASA.

There is no mystery, just a lot of warmists trying to adjust their way out of a completely busted theory.