More Evidence Against The "hockey Stick"

[Devonian]

Oh, Dev, Dev, Dev, Dev, Dev... Who said anything about accepting the study? Jethro just said in the post to which you replied "Absolutely we must wait for it to be looked at by others."

You do so like to jump on things as soon as possible, don't you? Perhaps, if this is the only study into this phenomenon, there will be more studies to follow.

CB

EDIT - Removed unnecessary comment

CB, that was a quick reply....

Btw, where did I say anyone accepts the study?

[VillagePlank]

For me the most exciting thing is that there is now experimental evidence rather than theoretical ideas suggesting sunspot activity affecting something here on earth. That it's results also reflect temperature is key - if tree rings were no good for reconstructing temperatures then we wouldn't use them, would we?

So, on the face of - time for professional, rather than blogosphere criticisms must be allowed - sunspots affect tree-rings, and tree-rings are an analogue for temperature ergo we have physical evidence for a connection between sunspots and temperature.

[Methuselah]

For me the most exciting thing is that there is now experimental evidence rather than theoretical ideas suggesting sunspot activity affecting something here on earth. That it's results also reflect temperature is key - if tree rings were no good for reconstructing temperatures then we wouldn't use them, would we?

So, on the face of - time for professional, rather than blogosphere criticisms must be allowed - sunspots affect tree-rings, and tree-rings are an analogue for temperature ergo we have physical evidence for a connection between sunspots and temperature.

You beat me too it, mate!

[VillagePlank]

You beat me too it, mate!

Something interesting to discuss is that it might not contradict most existing papers! Most studies that exclude the sun from modern warming does so using Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and not general solar activity (sunspots) which is thought to be responsible for cosmic ray flux (Marsh, N., Svensmark, H. Cosmic rays, clouds, and climate. Space Sci. Rev. 94, 215–230, 2000.)

A case in point (although it does briefly consider cosmic ray flux) is N.A. Krivova, S.K. Solanki, Solar variability and global warming: a statistical

comparison since 1850, Advances in Space Research 34 (2004) 361–364

Edited October 20, 2009 by VillagePlank

[Admiral_Bobski]

CB, that was a quick reply....

Btw, where did I say anyone accepts the study?

You said "I'm quite sure...that there isn't a AGW sceptic on the planet who'd accept ONE study..."

I was asking who said anything about accepting one study...?

And Jethro had already said that it needed to be looked at by others.

So what, precisely, was the point of your post?

CB

[Devonian]

You said "I'm quite sure...that there isn't a AGW sceptic on the planet who'd accept ONE study..."

I was asking who said anything about accepting one study...?

And Jethro had already said that it needed to be looked at by others.

So what, precisely, was the point of your post?

CB

Oh, yes, I can see how my post might not make sense

It's just that for years I've just seen the work of thousands of scientists dismissed across the net, while this ONE study is (fair enough) being given a fair hearing. Such things grate a little, sorry about that....

Edited October 20, 2009 by Devonian

[Admiral_Bobski]

Oh, yes, I can see how my post might not make sense

It's just that for years I've just seen the work of thousands of scientists dismissed across the net, while this ONE study is (fair enough) being given a fair hearing. Such things grate a little, sorry about that....

That's alright - I realise that I may not be in entirely the best of moods this evening (see General Climate Change Discussion for details).

Anyway, I've just finished watching Sean Locke on Argumental and I have realised that there are better ways of having these important discussions...

CB

[Devonian]

That's alright - I realise that I may not be in entirely the best of moods this evening (see General Climate Change Discussion for details).

Anyway, I've just finished watching Sean Locke on Argumental and I have realised that there are better ways of having these important discussions...

CB

Well, (OT, my bad) I've just dipped into a programme about over fishing. Happy watching it is not - we'll hoover up the lot I think, pity the poor fish....

Edited October 20, 2009 by Devonian

[NorthNorfolkWeather]

I have to admit I've never been a great fan of tree ring proxies, I think combined with other proxies they can help to paint a picture of past climate, but the sample size needs to be large and it needs to be none regional.

Latest reports seem to suggest that trees grow better when we have lots of Glactic Cosmic Rays hitting them, at solar minima, so we now have another variable in the mix

I'll find the link to the latest tree ring info as soon as I can

WHOOPS,

that's what happens when you only read the end of the thread sorry for wasting space.

Edited October 20, 2009 by NorthNorfolkWeather

[Admiral_Bobski]

Well, (OT, my bad) I've just dipped into a programme about over fishing. Happy watching it is not - we'll hoover up the lot I think, pity the poor fish....

Better use a Vax - a Hoover would explode sucking up all that water, surely...?

[Gray-Wolf]

So help me here, I do mean it and I'm not wanting to wind but I'm still not getting it.

So I've got me bucket and me tap,I've got me hole and the fluid in is in equilibrium.

If I slow the flow the level drops, if I speed up the flow the level rises.

If I widen the hole the level falls and if I plug it the level rises.

Part of my fluid is a substance .We know what it's properties are.

Above a certain ppm it agglomerates lower amounts it separates.

We add more of this substance and it agglomerates and agglomerates around our hole.

The level goes up yeah ?

We know what CO2 does yeah?

Why wont it plug our heat 'hole' and fill us up with the heat that can't get out?

I honestly think I must be loosing it but I still can't understand why this won't occur.

[jethro]

Oh, yes, I can see how my post might not make sense

It's just that for years I've just seen the work of thousands of scientists dismissed across the net, while this ONE study is (fair enough) being given a fair hearing. Such things grate a little, sorry about that....

Dev, no one is dismissing anything here.

Trees are my "thing" it's my bread and butter, my passion and the root (excuse the pun) cause of my initial interest in climate change; a new study comes up about trees ad I want to know more about it.

It has the potential (if verified) to question or at the very least, call into question, much of what we take as established fact.

I hope we hear more about this.

[Methuselah]

I think we all accept that, during a 'perfect' summer, plants grow at a faster rate than they did in the 'Year Without a Summer'...IMO, if cosmic rays also turn out to make a contribution, our knowledge will be enhanced, and our ability to reconstruct past climate regimes will benefit; we will get closer to the truth.

That said, it being the first of its kind, the paper may go the same way as Cold Fusion. Maybe yes, maybe no? Interesting stuff nonetheless!

[Admiral_Bobski]

So help me here, I do mean it and I'm not wanting to wind but I'm still not getting it.

So I've got me bucket and me tap,I've got me hole and the fluid in is in equilibrium.

If I slow the flow the level drops, if I speed up the flow the level rises.

If I widen the hole the level falls and if I plug it the level rises.

Part of my fluid is a substance .We know what it's properties are.

Above a certain ppm it agglomerates lower amounts it separates.

We add more of this substance and it agglomerates and agglomerates around our hole.

The level goes up yeah ?

We know what CO2 does yeah?

Why wont it plug our heat 'hole' and fill us up with the heat that can't get out?

I honestly think I must be loosing it but I still can't understand why this won't occur.

If CO2 behaves the way it is assumed to behave then what you have described is a valid analogy. The point about the leaky integrator was to examine whether or not CO2 is required to behave this way to produce the results we have witnessed over the past 100 years or so.

What the leaky integrator has shown is that a system exhibiting hysteresis (which the climate does) is quite capable of producing results startlingly similar to reality without needing to "shrink the hole" - that is, without the need for CO2 to behave the way it is assumed to behave.

That's what makes the leaky integrator so darned interesting.

CB

[VillagePlank]

What the leaky integrator has shown is that a system exhibiting hysteresis (which the climate does) is quite capable of producing results startlingly similar to reality without needing to "shrink the hole" - that is, without the need for CO2 to behave the way it is assumed to behave.

I appreciate that you don't want to share the stuff we've been working on, just yet, but it seems relevant now ... and might help GW out a bit.

The crux is ... any system that is dynamical must necessarily exhibit hysteresis

For instance,

x_t+1=rx_t

where x is the quantity that we're interested in, t is time, and r is some modifier, there is only one special case where this system will not exhibit hysteresis (either positive of negative) and that is where r=1, therefore keeping x constant. In an equilibrium system (not a dynamic equilibria situation, of course) r is presumed to be one, with other factors modifying x for each t. The CO2 hypothesis says just that - that the climate is stable (r=1) and excess CO2 tips the balance in favour of increasing temperature.

The LI posits the notion that that is not true. Indeed, that the climate is a dynamical system, so must necessarily exhibit hysteresis (ie variable r).

Edited October 21, 2009 by VillagePlank

[AtlanticFlamethrower]

when r (solar input) rises, x (temperature) rises, but when r falls, x follows. r can do this because the climate is not assumed to be stable. It is influenced by external variables (model emphasises one, namely r, rather than lots of 'rs', for simplicity). AGW, however, must assume r = 1 because the climate was stable until humans influenced it with CO2. r is NOT a variable because AGW assume the climate can become stable again by humans controlling CO2.

The CO2 hypothesis says just that - that the climate is stable (r=1) and excess CO2 tips the balance in favour of increasing temperature.

So AGW version would be

x + y + z ...t+1=1xt

where y is CO2, z is methane etc?

Sorry if that looks really stupid.

[VillagePlank]

So AGW version would be ...

The AGW version is more like ....

x_t+1 = log(c_t) . 0.001(s+v+e+i) . x_t

where the 0.001 is an arbitraty small amount designed to deprecate the influence of the other factors (tt might be higher or it might be lower), and the other factors are solar, volcanic, ENSO, and sea-ice. It also incorporates the logorithmic effect of c such that it's influence is suspected to reduce the higher the concentration gets.

I've never needed to add in the GhG effect (the primary difference between CO2 and LI premises is that the CO2 premise thinks natural factors are more or less constant, and the Li thinks that the GhG effect is more or less constant), so I've not tested this, so this my first thoughts on integrating it.

Edited October 21, 2009 by VillagePlank

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks V.P. ,that does help me.

The 'natural hysteresis' bit is now where I find have to push for further guidance/interpretation.

Not in that the 'natural Hysteresis' does not indeed exist but that if this natural propensity toward it, over time, leads to the system remaining relatively stable and balanced (within recognisable parameters), can we not then tend to view this as r=1 over this period?

We may not know all of the complexities of the system but we do know that for those long periods of 'relative stability' only the Milankovich forcings seem to be impacting upon the system and that those impacts can be seen to lead to a (relatively) predictable response by the system?

Within the time periods that we know the planet introduced a larger burden of CO2 we lose the 'Milankovich regularity' and appear to to reach a different 'balance point' within our system where that particular forcing appears to be too weak (though obviously still present) to influence the system (to the extent we note when that CO2 burden is not present in those elevated amounts).

Am I not still in the position to say that when CO2 levels are elevated beyond the recent levels of variability that we should expect see a driven response, within the system, similar to that which occurred the last time the system operated with this particular 'mix' of component drivers?

EDIT: Sorry, tag the end on now,

If the answer is a positive 'maybe' then would we not be expecting to see a 'hockey stick' starting to appear as the system starts to respond to the new level of CO2 forcing?

Edited October 21, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[VillagePlank]

Not in that the 'natural Hysteresis' does not indeed exist but that if this natural propensity toward it, over time, leads to the system remaining relatively stable and balanced (within recognisable parameters), can we not then tend to view this as r=1 over this period?

Current consensus thinking is that r~1 within quite tight boundaries, so your interpretation of current published science, in my view, is correct - and, naturally, additional forcing factors that exceed the tight bounds of r must mean that it must destabilise the system accordingly.

The LI explores the idea that r does tend to 1 but only over extended periods of time - ie the arithmetic mean over an 'infinite' amount of time means that r=1 However, over shorter periods of time the difference in r amplifies any hysteretic effect the sun might have in both a positive and negative fashion.

So it's not quite as outrageous, in my view, as some might initially have suspected.

Of course, this is vastly simplified, and for illustration purposes, only ...

Edited October 21, 2009 by VillagePlank

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks again V.P.

On the other thread I refer to looking at things in 'large brush-strokes' and not to just focus in on fine details so as to avoid becoming 'bogged down' in that detail rendering us unable to interpret the 'bigger picture'.

The 400ppm CO2 and 6c higher temps of 55 to 40 million years ago are just such 'large brush-strokes' but seeing as all the other inputs are roughly similar to today (continental position ,precession through the 'Milankovich cycle', solar out put and all of the rest of the myriad of drivers) then surely it is not total wrong to gain a flavour from such times as to what a 400ppm world may necessitate for the system to find the balance it did then as all the other inputs are roughly the same and only our global temps (at present) remain low?

When we look at the 'Milankovich period' you could guess from the CO2 levels roughly where you are on the cycle and what the temps would 'roughly' be. Why is it so wrong to extend this to the 400ppm period?

I seem to get a very bad press ,via my own rantings but also from not being able to balance every worrying confirmation (to me) that changes are occurring with a more positive story of either how it isn't happening or how we are dead wrong to be concerned about the impacts of our increasing CO2 burden on the future climate, if I could find such a wealth of information to the contrary I would but it just isn't there.

Jethro's latest piece, though interesting in it's own right, does not help explain the periods of high CO2 high temp of 55-40 million years ago, the period is too long and so such fluctuations (even of multiple sun spot cycles) will be as lost as the Milankovich signals are in periods when the elevated CO2 maintains high temps to the point that the worlds oceans temps reach parity, from pole to equator, as that vast heat reserve will act as a 'dampening mechanism' on any short term forcings to the contrary.

I hate glossing, especially Buckingham green glossing....ah well , back to the skirting boards......

[Admiral_Bobski]

When we look at the 'Milankovich period' you could guess from the CO2 levels roughly where you are on the cycle and what the temps would 'roughly' be. Why is it so wrong to extend this to the 400ppm period?

I won't dissect your whole post, but I'd like to quickly focus on the passage quoted above.

You can guess from CO2 levels roughly where you are on what cycle?

One of the reasons why correlation cannot prove causation in this case is because there are many different cycles, each of varying length, which overlap. Although it may be possible to pinpoint where we are on the Milankovich cycle, this doesn't actually bring us any closer to determining what temperatures will be like a few years from now if CO2 levels reach 400ppm. This is precisely the problem with using broad brush strokes and glossing over the finer details.

CB

[VillagePlank]

Here's a brief overview the subject of trees and cosmic-rays.

*****

With reference to the 400ppm (by volume?) by GW of some 50m years ago ...

Firstly, where's the CO₂ data for 50m years ago - I'd like to take a look

Secondly, a good paper (widely accepted = good) is Petite et al, Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from Vostok ice core, Antarctica, Nature, Vol 399, 3 June 1999 and their correlation of CH₄ and CO₂ to isotopic temperatures is r²=0.71 (which is strong) but it correlates only to periods that were actually measurable. For instance, their error rate is "better than +/- 15kyr, better than +/- 10kyr for most of the record, and better than +/- 5kyr for the last 110kyr" (p432, sidebar)

There's a big jump to saying that last time CO₂ was, say, 400ppmv, the temperature was this or that, give or take 5000 years, and then having it compared to the last 100 years. That gives error rates of orders of magnitude, let alone other (very) significant problems with such an approach.

Or perhaps I'm missing something, here? Note that in my opinion, the paper is an exceptional piece of academic science, and I don't dispute their findings. Only the blogosphere interpretation and extrapolation of them.

Edited October 21, 2009 by VillagePlank

[Gray-Wolf]

I won't dissect your whole post, but I'd like to quickly focus on the passage quoted above.

You can guess from CO2 levels roughly where you are on what cycle?

One of the reasons why correlation cannot prove causation in this case is because there are many different cycles, each of varying length, which overlap. Although it may be possible to pinpoint where we are on the Milankovich cycle, this doesn't actually bring us any closer to determining what temperatures will be like a few years from now if CO2 levels reach 400ppm. This is precisely the problem with using broad brush strokes and glossing over the finer details.

CB

Again I must emphasise the size of brush strokes here. The Milankovich cycles is roughly 100,00yrs is it not?

For my 'r' to tending towards a value of '1' would require all other 'drivers' to be on much tighter rhythmic cycles (i.e. have cycled through there entirety many times over such a time period) .

For us to experience the glacial/interglacial periods with such regularity over that time period must mean that the Milankovich is far more persuasive than any of the other 'drivers' (occurring over this period) of earths history and that , no matter how hard the other drivers may try, the orbital forcing wins out and imprints it's own effects over the top of all else.

We see no evidence of such 'rhythmic' glacial cycles over the 15 million years of extreme , earth generated, elevated CO2 levels.

To me this would indicate that there is another driver, of even greater potency, than the Milankovich (which appears to over-ride all the other myriad of 'minor drivers' in our more recent earth history) at play here?

Bring to me a driver ,of over 100,000yr duration, and we can explore how this has 'interacted' (in the records) with our understanding of the orbital forcing of this period .

If not I'm still stuck looking at the myriad of cycles occurring to the point of 'flat lining' in their percieved effects then, with the brush size I'm on, my 'r' will not tend towards '1' .

EDIT: I promise it's not from the top of my head V.P. so , paint willing, I'll trawl through my 'history' and see where I've been (I'm still trying to track down current Arctic Ocean sea temp anom plots from a Norwegian site I culled but am having not sucess there even though the image 'borrowed' is up on a thread already...sorry Mr M.)

Edited October 21, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[VillagePlank]

Bring to me a driver ,of over 100,000yr duration, and we can explore how this has 'interacted' (in the records) with our understanding of the orbital forcing of this period .

If not I'm still stuck looking at the myriad of cycles occurring to the point of 'flat lining' in their percieved effects then, with the brush size I'm on, my 'r' will not tend towards '1' .

If you can accept the solar-earth distance and obliquity has a powerful effect on climate, then surely it must necessarily be the case that solar activity is also a very strong driver. TSI is not a measurement of solar activity, it is a measurement of how much radiation reaches some satellite. Sunspots seem to me to be much more indicitave of general solar activity.

Edited October 21, 2009 by VillagePlank

[Gray-Wolf]

I'm sorry V.P. I'm not quite following. I'm trying to ask if we know of any other 'long cycle' driver, other than Milankovich, whose impacts appear in our geological record as showing influence.

My past posts are accepting of the impact of a variable (by spacial positioning in our precesional orbit) solar input.

The minor variations (duration ,not necessarily in terms of impacts) in the sun as he cycles through his spot cycles, combination of spot cycles etc. (and the impacts that any reduction in the solar wind has on our magnetosphere's potential to negate the burden of 'background' cosmic radiation') seem to be far less persuasive in their impacts on the planet than the slow, irresistible drive, of our orbital distance/tilt of the planet and the glacial era it has driven since our atmospheric CO2 'balanced' itself out in the range it has occupied over that period (of forced glaciation/interglacial).

Edited October 21, 2009 by Gray-Wolf