Even gurus of warming admit the hot spot went missing

Big names like Santer, Sherwood, and Schmidt admit that the models predict more warming 10 km above the equator than what the weather balloons could find. Each time they announce that they’ve resolved the differences, they have to start by admitting there are differences to resolve.

My point here is that some bloggers are variously arguing the nonsensical or irrelevant: that, a/ the hot-spot was always there; b/ it doesn’t matter if it’s not found, and c/ it would occur with all climate forcings. Which disagrees with the top expert supporters of AGW.

The real debate is now about whether the hot-spot has been found or not. The top alarmists argue that we’ve sort of ‘found’ the hot-spot recently with new statistical rehashes or by using wind-gauges instead of thermometers. Note that even when they imply they’ve ‘found it’, after an unfortunate reader wades through the convoluted language, it turns out that they’ve just increased the error bars so they stretch far enough to include the real world results. Thus, it’s no longer ‘statistically different’.

So to state the obvious, from the mouths of the AGW experts themselves… 1/ the discrepancy matters, and 2/ even they agree it was definitely missing.

Climate models and theoretical expectations have predicted that the upper troposphere should be warming faster than the surface. Surprisingly, direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown this expected trend.
Sherwood et al 2008. Simple news summary of Sherwood here.

Sherwood reviewed 17 papers in his opening remarks and only one of them showed the expected warming.

Since the late 1960s, scientists have performed experiments in which computer models of the climate system are run with human-caused increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs). These experiments consistently showed that increases in atmospheric concentrations of GHGs should lead to pronounced warming, both at the Earth’s surface and in the troposphere. The models also predicted that in the tropics, the warming of the troposphere should be larger than the warming of the surface. … Until several years ago, however, most available estimates of tropospheric emperature changes obtained from satellites and weather balloons (radiosondes) implied that the tropical troposphere had actually cooled slightly over the last 20 to 30 years (in sharp contrast to the computer model predictions, which show tropospheric warming). For nearly a decade, this apparent disconnect between models and reality has been used by some scientists and politicians to argue that:

· Human-caused changes in greenhouse gases have no effect on climate;
· Computer models have no skill in simulating the observed temperature changes in the tropics, and therefore cannot be used to predict the climatic “shape of things to come” in response to further increases in greenhouse gases.
Santer 2008 (Real Climate, Fact Sheet)

“On multi-decadal timescales, tropospheric amplification of surface warming is a robust feature of model simulations, but occurs in only one observational dataset. Other observations show weak or even negative amplification.”
Santer et al 2005

“Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming…..[and while we have sorted out some differences] …discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved.
Karl et al 2006

“A recent report of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) identified a ‘potentially serious inconsistency’ between modelled and observed trends in tropical lapse rates”
Santer et al 2008 (including Gavin Schmidt and Sherwood)

How much of a discrepancy is there?

“Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs.”

Douglass et al 2007

7.3 out of 10 based on 10 ratings

28 comments to Even gurus of warming admit the hot spot went missing

  • #
    JCP

    This demonstrates that the scientists are:
    (1)reviewing their models based on available data;
    (2)admitting that there are variables missing (or incorrectly applied);
    (3)making adjustments (although this is not specifically stated in the post.)

    This is what scientists do in the search for the truth.

    This is what science really is – very few absolutes & continuous improvement leading to advancement of the science. Observations and data lead the improvements.

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  • #
    Mike Davis

    Well Jo:
    Now you probabley know that if we look for a result we could probably find a model output showing that particular result. Please ignore the fact that the model is not based on reality nor does that model run match any other. But just think: You have now proven any claim that you want to make. I enloyed watching the dancing at RC and else where when trying to prove that a claim (pick any one)can not disproved as it is within the error bars of all runs of all GCM,s. They just fail to advise you that all GCM’s falsify one another and prove nothing stand alone nor combined. IPCC admits the problem of individual GCM,s and thinks if they hand picked runs that gave the results they wanted combined that would do. There is a saying: Two wrongs do not make a right. Why do people belive that hundreds of wrongs make a right?
    As SGT. Schultz from from the tv series Hogans heros said: I know NOTHING!

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  • #
    Mike Davis

    JCP:
    It appears that we were posting at the same time. My question is why is it necessary to adjust data to better match theory? And why is it necessary to keep data and procedure hidden so that it can not be reproduced independently?
    One more question for you:Why do Paleo climate people digest data mix it together produce a paper that is proven to be incorrect then they take that same unreliable data add more unreliable data and continue to regurgitate ad infinitum. Is this some kind of team sport or a form of bullimia.
    Sorry JO: It upsets me that there are people out there claiming to do science while disregarding scientific methods and practices and their followers claiming that the results are real or meaningful.

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  • #
    JCP

    AGW has become political. Some scientists have become political. Politics is not science – the intended results are different. Science is about knowledge. Politics is about people.

    Data should not be adjusted to match theory; models need to be adjusted to match data. Data and procedure should not be hidden. Science is a collective effort – when scientists hide data and procedures their motives should be questioned. As I stated before, “Observations and data lead the improvements.” Even the scientists who have become political understand this.

    Often unreliable data can not be reproduced and is eventually discarded. It does not advance the science. Unfortunately, corrections and retractions are not as “news-worthy” as the original research.

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  • #
    Mike Davis

    JCP:
    I agree. However there are some so called researchers that find a new method to use on unreliable data and claim robustness with models.

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  • #
    JCP

    If the results from the models can’t be reproduced, or if the projections are not observed, the model fails. If a scientist continually creates models that fail, future models will be questioned.

    Unfortunately, this takes time. Scientists researching AGW have the luxury of knowing that they will not be completely discredited in their lifetime. The length of time required to validate or invalidate their research goes well beyond their life expectancies.

    My hope is that we don’t enact any laws based on these projections because some politician believes that the science is settled and that we must act now.

    My concern is that we are spending too many tax dollars on this science and not enough to develop the alternative energy technology that is needed. (Not because of AGW but due to finite fossil fuel resources.)

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  • #
    Mike Davis

    As it was in the past it will be in the future. We will learn of and use processes that we do not know that we do not know. Just think about changes in our lifestyles in the past 10, 100, 1000 years.

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  • #
    DTaylor

    In all of my experience( 40 years) in Engineering and Science, I have learned that if the uncertainty band(error bar)of phenomena A overlaps the uncertainty band(error bar) of B, then the measurements are consistent. HOWEVER this is absolutely NO EXCUSE to use a “rubber ruler” to stretch or contract the Uncertainty Band(s) for Political Convenience.

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  • #
    Phillip Bratby

    Dr Roy Spencer’s latest paper shows how the incorrect feedback in the IPCC computer models produce the non-existent fingerprint. See http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/satellite-and-climate-model-evidence/

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  • #
    Mike Davis

    I find that DR. Roy Spencer gets a little carried away with his rhetoric when speaking about the issues. I feel the same while reading about abusing public trust and passing out false information. His credintels look good. He has a long history of processing data. I also feel that some reqire an eye exam. I think that post of his was the best joke of this year. My wife was concerned about my health as I was laughing so hard while reading and trying to find the blue line. As I live in Tennessee I will have my eye doctor contact AL to schedul his exam.

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  • #
    kuhnkat

    OT

    Mauna Loa posts .24 yearly rise in co2 for 2008, the smallest since recording began in 1959!!!

    http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

    Hopefully they fully checked these numbers before posting!!

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  • #
    Steve Schapel

    JCP: “… alternative energy technology … Not because of AGW but due to finite fossil fuel resources”
    Are you sure? Where did you get this information about “finite fossil fuel resources”? If, as I suspect, it’s from the same type of places that you have now come to reject as reliable sources of information about AGW, then why do you apparently believe one bunch of rubbish and not another?

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  • #
    Plonker

    Steve S, I have to disagree – fossil fuel (if you believe mineral oil is ‘fossil’)will run out sometime! It presumably took quite a few years to form and we have managed to use a prety high persentage in a relitavely short time.
    On the other hand, when I was at school I seem to remember being told that oil would run out in 20 or 30 years – I hate to admit that was AT LEAST 30 years ago now! The point is there is nothing wrong and possibly a good deal of right in (properly thought out) alternative technology, E.G. I’m told that a barrage across the severn estuary here in the uk could provide at least 5% of the UK electricity needs. O.K. it would cost a lot, but its probably a fraction of the cost of AGW carbon cuts! plus it would make the sea at Weston Super Mare BLUE(ish)instead of that lovely muddy brown :-).

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  • #

    The “hot spot” went missing?

    It was never there in the first place.

    Unless you are deep into the AGW hypothesis where reality can be bent some.

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  • #
    Pink Pig

    A true scientist would be willing to accept the failure of his hypothesis. Most hypotheses end up on the scrap heap — a very small number survive. If a researcher responds to the failure of his model to predict events by blaming the data, then he is not following the scientific method.

    AGW vs alternative fuel development is a false dichotomy anyway. The fact that I reject the AGW hypothesis does not imply that I am opposed to new sources of energy. I am not a Luddite, after all. Improvements are constantly ongoing, in this case as in others. Just a few hundred years ago, humanity relied on tallow to provide lighting and coal to provide heat. The fact that there is a limit to the amount of tallow and coal that we can consume has been rendered irrelevant by technological progress. Does anyone today worry that we are running out of tallow?

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  • #
    MattB

    I was having a bit of a read in to this… and thought it would be fair to bring in a few more quote from Santer 2008 factsheet, in relation to the final quote of Douglass et al 2007…

    Firstly you quote that bit about “for nearly a decade…. argue that blah blah”

    but omit the next sentence from Santer that “They find that claim to be incorrect”

    because “we show that the statistical test is flawed, and that the conclusions reached by Douglass et al are incorrect.”

    So I think you really SHOULD show in your piece that while you quote snippets of Santer et al… they fundamentally disagree with your conclusions and have clearly demonstrated errors in Douglass et al.

    now whether or not some bloggers have all their facts straight is quite irrelevent… it would be like me telling you that AGW is true because Lord Monckton is a crackpot… when in fact easy target as the man is he is irrelevent to the science debate entirely. So lets say Lambert made an error or whatever (I’m not saying he did) – well it would hardly be a silver bullet after all if he were proven correct the sceptics would just say he is just a computer nerd anyway (and we all know how unreliable they are on climete science) 😉

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  • #
    Rod Smith

    MattB:

    Your quote from Santer is interesting, and accurate, but I am not aware that this “hot spot” controversy has yet been put-to-bed in the AGW community.

    As a matter of fact the subject came up quite recently at Climate Audit. There was an effort afoot to use the observed wind to ‘adjust’ the temperature.

    At that time Sherwood stated this couldn’t be done on data prior to the ’70’s, inferring to me that this ‘data correction’ was still on the burner for subsequent data. I gathered that the ‘early’ rawinsonde reports were considered so crude as to be beyond fixing. The fact that subsequent reports, using improved (modernized) equipment and procedures, likely show the same trends and measured earlier was not discussed.

    I find it disturbing that legitimate scientists would dream of ‘correcting’ measured temperatures in order to justify the results of a model without so much as an attempt to show why either the sensors were flawed or the raw data was routinely incorrectly reduced.

    I think the equipment of the ’50’s and ’60’s was quite easily capable of detecting significant levels — which have always been defined as a level varying by 1C or more from the temperature trend between standard isobaric levels. (There are also other criteria that are not pertinent to this discussion.)

    I do know that rawinsonde observations in the zone between 10N and 10S were sparse in those days, but are surely a bit more numerous in this day and age.

    Finally, we know that current sounding equipment is technically better than ever, and surely more accurate. If that is so, then a legitimate question would be, “Is the “hot spot” still missing?”

    My understanding is that it is still absent. (Maybe AWOL might be a better term!)

    Thus the controversy continues.

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  • #
    Rod Smith

    I don’t understand why the hot spots, if they exist, weren’t detected?

    A short discussion of how and why levels are selected and reported during radiosonde runs might be enlightening to some. I will try to be brief, but I do not intend to gloss over any pertinent details. My comments apply primarily to older radiosonde observations, not the new computer reduced versions, although as far as I can tell, similar conditions prevail.

    I will mostly take a pass on the accuracy and/or precision of the temperature elements used. Although I believe they were quite good, they were certainly not of laboratory quality. Beyond noting that they closely agreed with launch site temperatures at launch time and that response time seemed very rapid, I will defer to others more familiar with such hardware.

    Traditionally, tropospheric mandatory reporting levels were, surface, 1000, 850, 700, 500, 400, 300, 250, and 200 hPa. At some recent (to me) time, 925 hPa was added.

    Mandatory means just what you would suspect, temperatures (and more) must be reported for these levels.

    Levels between mandatory levels can also be reported, for several reasons, but essentially they are because of significant linear departure from the bounding mandatory reporting points. These levels are called, (surprise) significant levels. (Give the weather guys credit here for descriptive nomenclature!)

    The temperature criteria for selecting a level below the tropopause as significant was a departure from ‘trend’ between any two reported levels by 1 degree C or more. Picture drawing a straight line between two consecutive reported levels (at temperature crossings) and if the actual temperature trace equals or exceeds 1C, on either side, it must be selected and reported as significant.

    Sometimes the selection of one significant level created criteria for a nearby second significant level. Obviously the report should allow anyone to create a very similar temperature curve.

    In summary, temperatures at points other than mandatory levels, below tropopause, are reported based on what could be termed ‘significant departure from expected,’ and sometimes for other reasons not pertinent to ‘hot spots.’

    Note: WMO now defines as significant “the bases and tops of temperature inversions and isothermal layers greater than 20 hPa in thickness and at pressures greater than 300 hPa and the bases and tops of all inversion layers with temperature changes of 2.5°C or 20% relative humidity at pressures greater than 300 hPa.”

    In my opinion, thinking that a radiosonde of any era was consistently unable to detect layers with significant changes in temperature seems ludicrous. And I think most folks that had been around radiosondes would agree. I guess the hot spots might not be very hot, or too thin to be significant.

    Or maybe they just didn’t exist.

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  • #

    […] Thanks for that Robert…some interesting rebuttals against as follows : missing signature even global warmning admit the hot spot went missing reply to Deltoid found the hot spot- not the missing […]

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  • #
    W.G.

    There is another angle to this entire AGW’rs’ pretense that this is an issue of some temperature differentials at a certain height. The mattter I refer to is the ENTIRE PANOPLY of MANDATORY signatures from the existence of such a lens, not from a simple climatic stand point but from the standpoint of the many different ELECTROMAGNETICALLY associated MANDATORY SIGNATURES.

    For instance: Gavin Schmidt whose work I wouldn’t trust to burn in a fireplace because of the laws he happily nullifies, has said that he sees that “this type warm region would be present whether the warming was manmade or otherwise: to try to throw people off the fact that first, it HASN’T been found and if they massage their data enough they can make it look as though it’s been found but “not as robust” etc.

    The problem with Gavin Schmidt is he never studied electromagnetic radiation or he’d have known that IF that LENS was in FACT serving as a TRAP for outgoing HEAT, then whatever heat was ultimately spread around and eventually migrated upward due to the convective effect would STILL be overlapped by the fact that, AS the EMITTER of that energy, the ENERGY DENSITY coming CLOSER and CLOSER TO THE FACE would HAVE to become EVER GREATER until it accounted for whatever was THERE from previous net energy entrapment, AND what was coming in, AT that TIME. For instance: If you have any electromagnetic emitter of ANY TYPE: a light bulb, an infrared heat lamp, an infrared magical refractive (ultimately a net reflector) lens, – or a radio antenna – as you DRAW AN INSTRUMENT CLOSER TO THE EMITTER FACE you MUST encounter an EVER increasing ENERGY DENSITY.

    So his assertion the hot spot would be there anyway is factually, mostly, INcorrect: since what he says denies the very action of the lens as the primary emitter in the first place. No matter how hot it gets up there, the places where the sun is able to input most, and the lens able to TRAP most: this is KNOWN to be around the tropics MUST be HOTTER than the SURROUNDING AREAS NO MATTER WHAT. Because if you have a BOX and on the inside it’s painted white: and you shine a light into a hole in that box, the HIGHEST DENSITY of ENERGY in that BOX WILL BE at the place where all the previous light has been put in: and YET STILL MORE, BEING INTRODUCED.

    This so called hot spot has GOT to be there. The air: at that altitude is QUITE thin; so the AGW crew has to justify one of two things: either there is MASSSSSSIVE air being pumped past that lens such that it equalizes or very nearly does, temps: and we KNOW that this has NOT happened –

    or, that energy has to be stored on the backs of EXTREMELY highly energized air molecules. And this has been going on for 20 years? And setting records for the last TEN? and not ONE single SCIENTIFIC field on THIS PLANET: can find ANY of this heat? Say, WHAT????

    Now: on to the OTHER missing signatures Gavin Schmidt doesn’t know how to adequately lie his way out of because it quite simply can not be DONE: because HE can’t GET together all the records and massage away the truths, and massage in lies. Make NO BONES about this I am not accusing Gavin Schmidt of having ONE single HONEST BONE in HIS BODY because these facts are BASICS in electromagnetic radiation whatEVER the medium.

    There is the matter that, no matter HOW much of a trickle they claim there is, of heat coming into the atmosphere, in order for that lens to work, there MUST BE enough heat that SOMETHING could detect it: and one of those things that we know WOULD is the land based, optical astronomy field.
    They’re the guys who helped Einstein establish part of gen. relativity in 1915 by measuring the deflection of a beam of starlight as it passed by the SUN during an eclipse. Those guys. The field which helped WRITE the laws of physics.

    It wouldn’t matter very much how MUCH heat there was: ANY amount more than the norm, would IMMEDIATELY begin to show up as increased thermal turbulence; and if the atmosphere had in FACT been heating, then alllll around the world, as things got hotter and hotter, the OPTICAL ASTRONOMY field would be saying “See here? This is a phot of X star on X day of X year. Note the distortion of the image of X star. Now: here’s one, in say, 1979. See the increased turbulence? Now, here’s one in 1998, and another one, today.”

    No. You do NOT hear that going on – not from the professionals, and not even from the many amateurs with various sized scopes. The reason that you’re not, is because the atmosphere overhead, hasn’t been heating to a degree even noticeable by some of the most highly analytic, and most CERTAINLY able to DETECT that thermal turbulence in the heated night sky – people, in all of analytical science. They’re FAMOUS for their capacity to winnow the truth by looking at things over, and over, and over.

    Why: WHY no optical turbulence? If record setting heat has been being trapped all these years, it HAD to be up at the face of that lens, SOMETIMES. And not a soul’s seen a wobble. In all these years. Who’s reported it? See – that’s the point. NO ONE HAS.
    Not one. Notice how it’s so silent from the optical astronomy field on this issue you can hear a pin drop? It’s because people have checked. What – nobody thought to do that? In 20 years, not one student thought, “hmmm, i have to write a paper, global warming’s pretty big, i’ll check photographs of XYZ through the years and compare thermal turbulence below the face of the magic lens and be a big star to my professor.” Nope.
    Because they don’t exist. Gavin can’t massage that data because he can’t get his hands on it, and there are too many controls on telescope records for him to massage some up. And if he did, others who had scopes would show their own photos of similar and perhaps even the identical events – and say, “here are my undoctored photos. His don’t look like mine,” and he’d be busted before he got far from the gate.
    That’s why not one WORD from the optical land based astronomy field.

    Let’s move on to ANOTHER MANDATORY SIGNATURE if there was a lens: which there’s not.

    The radio telecommunications business: wireless electromagnetic communications. There is a field in radio, the ocean going radio field, who due to their long distances from any horizen antenna, had to find early on, a way to talk past line of sight around the globe.
    They did find one.

    It’s called Non Line of Sight Transmission and it involves bouncing radio waves, off – guess what? The face of the Troposphere. The difference in the temperatures between the downward facing side of the troposphere and the outward, upward, space facing side, creates an effect, which makes radio waves of certain frequencies, bounce off of it. When it’s hotter they switch from a higher frequency to a lower one for reasons I could explain but if you’re a radiation guy you know these type things.
    These refracted waveforms are dependent to varying degree, on the difference in temperature, and the ionization of, the face of that tropospheric region.
    In all these years, have you ever seen some newsbyte from some communications field people, “We’ve noticed that when the old Meltaroonie is really cranking, we get X, Y, or Z changes in our propagation capacity using this method, and have changed our communications strategies by doing the following when it’s really active..”

    No you have not. Because the face of the troposphere has been showing about the same, normal response characteristics as the people in that field expect to see, and it’s business as usual.

    Here’s another area where Gavin Schmidt can’t lie and massage data: the defense field, applied and in research.

    Radars are used for a variety of tasks. They’re used for weather: and also they’re used, for tracking small, fast, incoming air-to-air missiles as planes come toward each other at speeds often in excess of Mach 1: the missiles they fire at each other often reach enormous speeds: and this means, that when two planes are closing, just a couple of seconds’ respite from being detected, could be the difference between a good day and a bad one.

    These military people look hard and long, and exploit every single facet of the environment they can, to achieve these ends. In the past TWENTY YEARS: HAVE you seen ONE – JUST ONE defense bulletin on a news site saying, “Due to the high levels of heat and ionization around the face of the Magic Lens at some points, when it’s particularly active, it’s been found that a small air-to-air missile can be shielded from detection for a FEW seconds, as it zips toward it’s target: by hiding it just above the hot face of that lens. The temperature differences aren’t that great, but when the missile tracks along just above the face of the lens, a plane coming toward the missle’s radars, are looking into a longer cross section of the lens, if they’re up quite high: say, 40,000 feet and above.”

    Anything like that at all in all these years? That weather radars, or highly sensitive defense radars, have noticed anomalies in the sky that used to not be there before the Magic Mel-0-Myth-0-Matic Mannian Mechanism started churning up the ice caps with spun off therms?
    Nope. Not one word in all these years.

    The VERY PEOPLE you’d think, “Aw yea, they’re up there with their 50 million dollar planes and all this gear, they know what atmospheric environ they’re dallying about in. I’m NOT SURPRISED to HEAR that they started thinking of hiding missiles’ HEAT signatures and their general radar cross section up behind that ionized, heated layer” – NOT a WORD. Not ever.

    So: we’ve got NO thermal sensors work. OPTICAL VIEWING no longer tells the truth, the telecommunications field says NOT one WORD in all these years as they BOUNCE signals OFF the troposphere, DEPENDENT to a large degree, on the TEMPERATURE DIFFERENTIAL of that tropospheric face;

    we’ve got the WEATHER radar people and the DEFENSE radar people: they also detect ZERO electromagnetic anomalies up there.

    As far as their attribution that “these radiosondes suck” isn’t it odd, that they were ok to send people into space, based on their information?

    There are MORE signatures MANDATORY for that lens to be up there.

    There would be GAS IONIZATION. This would come in several flavors: the first one would be, that there would simply be electromagnetic field charge noted when someone flew instruments through the face of the lens. The other type is that of simple auroras.

    Auroras are caused when primarily nitrogen atoms but also oxygen and others, escape far enough into space, that they ionize, or split off into protons and electrons. When this happens, some light’s given off, and it happens at the poles a lot due to the lines of the magnetic field of the planet etc.
    If in FACT there was a lens up at around 50k feet, shuttling so much air through there that it was simultaneously enough heat to melt two ice caps, disrupt continents, etc

    the presence of the vast quantities of air needed to move this heat away, would (again i know i used the word just now already) VASTLY increase the number of actual air molecules, escaping out to eventually reach the ionosphere and the auroroas would be VERY easy to notice as being different. This is a matter so beyond disputing that if anyone tried to argue against it he’d be laughed at by any group of atmospheric scientists around Ye Olde coffee machine.

    There’s yet ANOTHER signature MANDATORY for such a heated sheet of air molecules up in that cold, dry sky: DUST ionization.

    All this air they claim has been heated, in a dry, cold environ up there just 50k feet: and this lens has been active they tell us, since say, 1979 or 80. This is 2009. All this time this thing’s been trapping heat and shuttling it around super stealthily – and in moving ALL this warm dry air, there’s been NO NOTICE of DUST behaving differently? The air that’s heated is charged with energy. The air that’s not, has a lower potential. And this lens has been becoming EVER MORE active so we’re told: and there’s no change at all in the characteristics of the air up there vis-a-vis the dust?
    That’s simply not possible. Because to TAKE that AIR up THAT HIGH you HAVE to HAVE, sufficient motive force, to bring more DUST up there, TOO.

    So why isn’t the dust that would necessarily be subject to the charging forces of these disparate charge layers of air, acting as though it is? Because there IS no warmed, charged layer, that’s why.

    And if there is say you: see the previous arguments and ask yourself who’s wrong – all those sciences NOT seeing anything of any significance, or the people whose predictive powers I’ll just leave at, wouldn’t encourage me to play their lottery number selection?

    You have got to bear in mind, that these people CONSTANTLY try to give you the slip: CONSTANTLY telling you that “you don’t understand.” The only problem is, they claim NO ONE understands, but THEM. And they say, THAT lens is THERE.

    Then what happened to the entire spectrum of detection & sensing sciences NOT associated with climate specifically but who, just like all of us, expect to see the same classical universe we learned about in college and the work place? See – they’re just bystanders who WOULD not be able to HELP but see, if there was anything there. Not all thermal sensors are on weather/climate instruments. Mil/Research planes, commercial planes, private craft, they’ve all got thermal sensors and many have logging of it.

    There’s another: D.I.R.E.C.T. RESULT of the lens, which might SEEM to be a matter of “climatological” this & that but in fact, MUST EXIST for the lens to: the massive moisture uptake/release dynamics claimed for this Magic Melter.

    Remember the moisture uptake isn’t just due to heat as they will sometimes claim but also due to the fact that the HEAT will cause such great UPWELLING of AIR. This moving air that wouldn’t normally be pulled over oceans, becomes subject to the vacuum of the lens as it lifts air from below, heats it, pushes it out to the side: this is REQUIRED for there to be a LENS because of the convective force. So when we DON’T see the storms of mammoth height, DON’T see the enormous air in motion THAT TOO is DIRECTLY BECAUSE: we find no hot upper atmosphere.

    On, and ON, and ON the list of missing signatures goes. Science after science, field after field, there’s NOTHING.

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    W.G.

    When I spoke of the time between ’79 and 2009 being 20 years I actually had something else in mind that was 20 years ago, about 1989.

    I was walking past one of the electronic engineers’ bench & lab space he had carved out of the corner in a telecommunications place I worked, and he says to me, “Hey Walter, did you hear about Global Warming? We’re going to be noticing some increased ionization in the atmosphere; it won’t affect us it’ll mostly affect ocean communications and maybe some satellites,” (their two way communications, not weather sats)

    And I said to him, “Yea but they’ve been saying that a long time and we’ve got nothing,” in just an offhand remark on the state of things as known to be. He kind of grinned and said “But they’re sure now, they say it’s grown to the point we ought to be seeing it,” and then he finished with “Definitely in the next couple of years,” and that was the last time we ever talked about it.

    That was twenty years ago(ish) and at that time, we were tuning receivers on just middle of the road pro communications equipment to be responsive to NINE one MILLIONTHS of a VOLT’s signal strength. If you should so see fit to write down a decimal point then go out to the right – 0, 0, 0, on till you finally write that 9…

    and you think about the fact that was TWENTY YEARS AGO.. and these clowns are telling you, that “This Magic Lens is too “Special” for your puny instrumentation to detect because you’re stupid”

    Well, I’ll take that bet. At the drop of a hat, and I’ll drop the hat. Because whoever tries to pull that is full of sh*t. There would be so many signatures in that sky you wouldn’t be able to NOT see that lens if it was actually active, and heating all that air.

    Here’s another thing to think about when they tell YOU, that YOU’RE stupid. And this isn’t entirely based on the presence of that “hot spot” but does in fact relate to you, HOW MUCH AIR this thing would be having to heat.

    Do you know what the difference is, in the specific heat of water, vs. air? Specific heat, is how many therms have to be added or subtracted from a compound to change it’s temperature by one degree.

    WATER: is the most THERMALLY INERTIAL freely found compound in the world. NOTHING, found in large amounts in nature, holds as much heat: as MANY THERMS as water: before it’s temperature changes X amount.

    Atmospheric AIR on the other hand, has a TINY specific heat by comparison. the difference if I recall is like 3,000 to ONE. 3,000 air molecules would have to give to a water molecule enough heat that each air molecule changed temperature one degree, for that water molecule to change temperature: by one degree.

    Now you think of all this water they’re telling you has been heated up: two ice caps have become riddled, spongelike, sodden messes. Entire oceanic FLOWS have been altered. Now things like stone, soil, trees, the blacktop and concrete we have, the amount is less than water to change it’s temperature but it’s still, far, FAR, FAR more than that of air.

    Ask yourself: in 30 years: how has this Magic Lens moved THAT much heat: THAT much air: and nobody EVER found it? Not EVER- not EVER??

    Remember if water vs air have about a 3,000/1 ratio – what about all that soil, concrete, wood, whose temps have changed? They’ve got to be – most of them at LEAST 1,000 to one, and i’m betting most of the things in the everyday world have a specific heat differential on the order of 1500 to one.

    And that doesn’t count the heat IN the AIR itself: all THAT’s got to be counted, TOO.

    All this air is supposed to have been shuttled through a region at somewhere around .. oh let’s give it 40,000 feet not 50,000. Do you know how THIN the air is at that altitude?

    And ALL this heat is supposed to have schlepped up there and AMAZINGLY, GOTTEN BACK DOWN to SEA LEVEL and not a SOUL on this EARTH has ever been able to find how.

    You might find somebody to come in and address one.. or two of these with some circular bullsh*t. They might leave the uninitiated thinking, “Hmm, i’m not sure what he said but he sure did sound sure of himself.”

    But what about the other six or eight MANDATORY requirements? And I have to confess I’ve had a few of them try to explain that they “have a link to this article.” And it’s always the same. We have no evidence but we did a study and we ran some models.

    Well… wrong answer vs the laws of physics. In a PLETHORA of ways. And there’s just no gettin around that.

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    Brilliant posts WG.

    OK, so we know the hot spot is missing.

    Can I suggest another (unneccesary given the above, but the more the merrier…)
    David Archibald has been presenting a plot of the effect of CO2 at sea level for many years now.
    He measured this in a repeatable, verifiable experiment,
    1.5 degrees Celcius temperature rise for the first 20ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere at sea level.
    Temperature further increasing by two tenths of the previous “step” per doubling of atmospheric CO2 level thereafter.
    When plotted this gives a very sharp rising initially, and then flat (ie logarithmic) curve.

    The IPCC says that through the depth of the atmosphere the above effect becomes 10 degrees Celcius for the first 280ppm,
    and a further 1 tenth per CO2 doubling thereafter.

    Plotted the IPCC figures give a similar shape, but much higher, and further to the right, the effect being given the present atmospheric CO2 concentration there is still some heating left in the “system” if CO2 levels continue to rise.

    Please see,
    http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g43/DerekJohn_photos/stuff/Slide6-66.jpg

    The difference is stark, David Archibald suggests there is no temperature rise left in the system, and hence no trigger for the (presently missing) hot spot.
    The IPCC states that there is still a CO2 caused temperature rise left in the system and hence “hot spot”.

    David Archibald’s figures are from a repeatable, verifiable experiment.
    What evidence has the IPCC or modelling offered for the 10 degrees celcius rise for the first 280ppm atmospheric CO2 through the depth of the atmosphere figures.?

    If the IPCC used figures of say 10 degrees for the first 20ppm (or even as high as 180ppm – from a rough add up in my head as I type), then there would be no AGW.
    So, the ball really is in the AGW camp, what is the evidence for the 10 degrees Celcius, and the first 280ppm CO2 figures.
    Without such evidence there is no AGW, as modelled at present.

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    MattB

    There is a useful follow up on this with an open letter from Ben Santer published addressing criticism by Douglass and Christy about these hot spot papers (ersulting from the emailgate issue).

    http://www.desmogblog.com/douglass-and-christy-bad-science-disingenuous-commentary

    Ig nore the desmog blog bit if yuo want, the pdf link to the letter is at the bottom.

    Essentially backing up the criticism of Douglass et al 2007, which is important in the subject of this post.

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    wow, after reading this post I now realise why this approach is important mankinds wellness, many thanks! Thanks

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    Superbly composed post, thanks!

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    […] two thirds of their projected temperature increases are due to amplification by feedbacks. They admit there are discrepancies, and go to great lengths to resolve them (see for example, Thorne, Dessler, […]

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