Monday, December 27, 2010

So just what does explain Global Warming?

Hang around the debate between proponents and opponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming for a while, and you'll hear this question tossed out to the opponents by the proponents.  OK, smartypants.  If it's not Carbon Dioxide, just what it it?

There's a very interesting post over at Roger Pielke, Sr.'s blog, about precisely this.

Thus the rate of temperature rise during the last 200 years is about +1°C/200 years,  + 0.5°C/100 years, which is about 5/6 of the rate of increase (+0.6°C/100 years) during the last century. Therefore, it may be inferred that the CO2 contribution was about +0.1°C during the last century. There was no obvious break in the rate of temperature rise during the last 150~200 years, so it is likely that the recovery from the LIA is continuing to the present. Sea level rise is approximately linear (1.7mm/year or less) from about 1850, to the present. The retreat of many glaciers in the world began from about 1800-1850, not after 1946, when CO2 began to increase rapidly. When discussing the present warming, we should not ignore the LIA and its recovery.

The only complication is that the multi-decadal oscillation, of the amplitude  ~0.2°C and a period of about 60 years, is superposed on the linear change. It peaked in about 1940 and 2000. After 1940, the temperature change was negative until 1975, so a similar negative trend may continue until about 2030. This may explain the present halting of the temperature rise. The inferred temperature increase by 2100 is about + 0.5°C±0.2°C, depending on the phase of the multi-decadal oscillation.
If climate chage is your bag, baby, RTWT.

Tagged with "junk science" because I don't have a tag for "non-junk science".

3 comments:

KurtP said...

OK, smartypants. If it's not Carbon Dioxide, just what it it?

Hydrogen!

Where's my cookie?

Stranger said...

Without getting technical, between 10,000 and 20,000 parts per million of the atmosphere consists of water vapor. Which, as a free gas at 1 atmosphere, has seven times the "greenhouse effect" of carbon dioxide at the same pressure.

Carbon dioxide comprises some 370 parts per million of the atmosphere. But it has only one seventh the GHG effect of water vapor. Therefore, atmospheric CO2 has the same greenhouse effect as 52 parts of water vapor.

But there is 190 to 400 times more water vapor than CO2. Therefore, any added greenhouse effect from CO2 is completely swamped by water vapor.

One should not require a road map and pictographs from that point.

Stranger

The Czar of Muscovy said...

Hey, don't touch my junk science.