The Great Cooling Of Arctic Sea Ice Projections: Having Been Burned, Scientists Far More Cautious With Projections

Dirk Notz of the Hamburg-based Max-Planck-Institute: Arctic sea ice could again expand in the coming decade

By Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated/edited by P Gosselin)

Over the past 30 years Arctic sea ice has shrunk considerably. Although both in 2007 and 2012 negative records were reached, the ice recovered in the years that followed.

Former US Vice President and climate activist Al Gore was clearly impressed by the 2007 melt record and so in 2008 he declared the Arctic could be completely ice free by 2013. The year 2013 came and went, but the ice stayed. Using the same alarmist bullhorn, US Senator John Kerry also announced that the Arctic sea ice was set to melt away, read here:

The truth is that the threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now.“

The idea of an ice-free Arctic from both politicians obviously had been whispered to them by IPCC scientists such as Wieslaw Maslowski. The BBC reported here on December 12, 2007:

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.”

Looking back at these completely failed prognoses, one would at least expect a return to reason. But this has not been the case for some. There are still climate alarmist scientists who continue insisting that the Arctic sea ice only has a few years left. They’re dead sure. The same is true with the end-of-the-world. And when the predicted end of the world fails to happen, the goalposts get pushed back, or the focus switches to some other end-of-world scenario.

One of the more outspoken believers of the Arctic death spiral is Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge. In 2012 he announced to the world the prognosis that Arctic sea ice would disappear within four years. Today, two years later, the trend is in the opposite direction. It doesn’t look good for Wadhams and his prognosis. Now even some of the most obstinate alarmists think the same. For them the apocalyptic visions are really starting to get annoying. During a sea-ice conference in September 2014 in London, Gavin Schmidt had harsh words for Wadhams via Twitter:

“Some anticipation for Peter Wadhams. Audience members already crying,” “Wadhams still using graphs with ridiculous projections with no basis in physics,” “Wadhams now onto methane pulse of 50 GT. But no better justified than his previous statements,” and “Wadhams clearly states that there is no physics behind his extrapolations.”

The latest prognoses come from James Overland and Muyin Wang, who published them in the Geophysical Research Letters in May, 2013. Here they employ three prognosis approaches which look at the end of the ice in 2020, 2030 or 2040. What follows is the abstract:

When will the summer Arctic be nearly sea ice free?
The observed rapid loss of thick multiyear sea ice over the last 7 years and the September 2012 Arctic sea ice extent reduction of 49% relative to the 1979–2000 climatology are inconsistent with projections of a nearly sea ice-free summer Arctic from model estimates of 2070 and beyond made just a few years ago. Three recent approaches to predictions in the scientific literature are as follows: (1) extrapolation of sea ice volume data, (2) assuming several more rapid loss events such as 2007 and 2012, and (3) climate model projections. Time horizons for a nearly sea ice-free summer for these three approaches are roughly 2020 or earlier, 2030 ± 10 years, and 2040 or later. Loss estimates from models are based on a subset of the most rapid ensemble members. It is not possible to clearly choose one approach over another as this depends on the relative weights given to data versus models. Observations and citations support the conclusion that most global climate model results in the CMIP5 archive are too conservative in their sea ice projections. Recent data and expert opinion should be considered in addition to model results to advance the very likely timing for future sea ice loss to the first half of the 21st century, with a possibility of major loss within a decade or two.”

Other scientists have become more cautious, as they were burned too many times in the past with overly hasty projections. Sea ice scientist Dirk Notz of the Hamburg-based Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology declared in September 2014, in response to a request made by Pierre Gosselin of notrickszone.com, that because of the variability over the coming decade the ice could just as well expand as it could shrink. Interestingly in the model graphics provided by Notz for the coming decades, there are no ice free polar seas to be seen. What follows is the exact wording of the notable e-mail from Notz to Gosselin:

Dear Pierre,

Thanks for being in touch, and sorry for the slow reply. I was at a meeting with surprisingly little internet access. Regarding the bet: I’d be very careful to place a bet in either direction, simply based on our understanding of the system from climate-model simulations. These basically say that on short time scales, such as from one decade to the next, internal variability can cause both an increase or a decrease of the ice coverage. To exemplify this, I’ve attached a slide that shows 30-year long trends from our climate-model simulations.

There you see 30-year long trends for different start dates in our simulations, which vary wildly. This would even more be the case for 10-year long trends. Hence, I wouldn’t put money on a further decrease of the ice cover in the years to come, nor on the opposite. I’ve also attached a plot showing two of the simulations with our Earth-System Model, which suggest that there might be slightly less sea ice in the next decade, but other simulations show a slight increase on these short time scales.

Hence, on time scales such as one decade, the ice cover could well increase a bit (as you are suggesting), but it might also decrease. This depends in my opinion primarily on weather patterns in individual summers – nothing we can predict at the moment. Having said this, however, one of the presentations at the meeting I’ve just been to by Andrey Proshutinsky went in the same direction as you’re suggesting, namely that because of ocean cycles there will be a recovery of sea ice in the years to come. However, I don’t believe this to be a very robust finding that I would put money on at the moment. It’s nevertheless certainly something that we’ll investigate more in the time to come. […] Please let me know if any further questions should come up.

Best wishes,

Dirk”

With all the long-term prognoses we are also naturally interested in how things will develop with Arctic sea ice over the coming year (2015). In her blog Judith Curry provided a forecast Blog in October 2014. She expects the ice in the summer of 2015 to at least reach the extent seen in 2014:

And finally, my prediction for 2015 sea ice minima. I predict minimum sea extent will be the same or greater than 2014, with a continued recovery of sea ice volume. I expect continued recovery in the Atlantic portion of the Arctic, with continued low sea ice extent in the Siberian Arctic. My decadal scale prediction is either no trend in sea ice minima or an increase (I do not expect continued decline in the coming decade).”

It doesn’t look good for Peter Wadhams and the followers of the climate-alarmism movement.

 

74 responses to “The Great Cooling Of Arctic Sea Ice Projections: Having Been Burned, Scientists Far More Cautious With Projections”

  1. mwhite

    My gas and electricity bills have almost trebled over the past 10years or so. That is despite using low energy bulbs etc, as much insulation as the house can tolerate.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/11292367/Green-policies-to-add-up-to-40pc-to-cost-of-household-electricity.html

    seems things aren’t going to get any better.

    Don’t ever want to see the perveyers of CAGW to get away scot free.

  2. Curious George

    If I understand the job description, you basically hallucinate about the future and then something different happens.

    [Dilbert Comic Strip, December 17, 2014]

    1. Bernd Felsche

      Link to the strip.

      Be good to Scott Adams. He’s got a healthy mind under his hat.

  3. John F. Hultquist

    When speaking about ice on the Arctic Ocean Peter Wadhams claimed that “Ice Free” [TM ?] does not mean ice free.

    Asked about this yesterday, he said: ‘I still think that it is very likely that by mid-September 2015, the ice area will be less than one million square kilometres – the official designation of ice-free, implying only a fringe of floes around the coastlines. That is where the trend is taking us.’

    ICE FREE

    Just so you know where the goal posts have been moved to.

  4. Bebben

    “Global warming will make the Arctic free of summer ice in 2015 at the latest”

    http://www.adressa.no/vaeret/klima/article1205556.ece

    “This is the conclusion in the most extensive research project ever done about the ice conditions in the Arctic.

    Nearly 300 scientists from 15 countries have participated in the project “Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study”, with a total cost of 280 million [Norwegian] crowns.”

    “Thanks to the new survey the scientists now can calculate the first ice-free year much more accurate than before. The minimum ice volume in the Arctic to date was recorded last summer, while this years’ summer came very close to the 2007 record.”

    I sure hope all the 300 researchers agreed, so there was at least a 97% consensus.

    I love consensus, nothing is better than that. 🙂

  5. Bebben

    Just posted a comment, it seems to have disappeared into climatespace eh, cyberspace.

    Anyway, in 2008, it was reported in a Norwegian newspaper that 300 scientists could predict “much more accurate than before” that the Arctic summer ice would be gone in 2015 – at the latest.

    http://www.adressa.no/vaeret/klima/article1205556.ece

    The project was called “Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study” and had a price tag of 280 million Norwegian Crowns.

  6. Alan Poirier

    Given that the next two solar cycles will be lower than C24, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that Arctic ice is going to grow over the next 30 years. This will be the Big Chill but with no great soundtrack.

  7. David Appell

    Which scientists do you think believe the Arctic sea ice projections of Peter Wadhams, besides Peter Wadhams? He was notoriously miffed when attendees at the Royal Society meeting a few months ago mocked him on Twitter….

    https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/when-climate-scientists-criticise-each-other/

  8. David Appell

    Bebben: Here is a quote from today’s (12/17) AGU meeting in San Francisco:

    “[An Arctic sea] Ice-free in 2015 or 2035 or something exact: that’s just not the level of certainty you would ever expect in something with this much noise.”

    — Jennifer Kay, Univ of Colorado at Boulder
    12/17/14

    1. DirkH

      Thanks David. So after spending billions the expected certainty of projections has declined.

      Or in other words, after getting stuffed with taxpayer money, they now say, well, thanks for the dough, but there’s nothing we can do for you, have a nice day.

      Maybe somebody told them about the concept of fiduciary duty…

      1. David Appell

        DirkH wrote:
        “Thanks David. So after spending billions the expected certainty of projections has declined.”

        Dirk, how well does your model do?

        You can spend all the money in the world — some systems have an inherent variability that cannot be overcome.

      2. David Appell

        DirkH wrote:
        “Or in other words, after getting stuffed with taxpayer money, they now say, well, thanks for the dough, but there’s nothing we can do for you, have a nice day.
        Maybe somebody told them about the concept of fiduciary duty…”

        Maybe you need to show others how to make the certain projections you’d like to see, since you’re so sure it’s possible. It’s easy to criticize — how can you do it better (or at all)?

        Models of complex systems simply aren’t capable of precise predictions. You know that, of course, but for some reason that isn’t all all convincing want to pretend otherwise.

        1. DirkH

          Well David, too funny, now YOU are telling ME that the models are having no predictive skill? Quick, rush for the Xanax, something’s wrong with you.

          Fiduciary Duty is the concept that an advisor may not lie to his customer when he is taking the customers money. The warmist climate scientists have violated this by prodding the politicians into wasting billions of Dollars into nonsensical undertakings.

          This money needs to be reclaimed from their bank accounts.

          1. David Appell

            Dirk,

            You didn’t answer: how well does your model do?

            What would you do differently from what modelers have done so far?

            By the way, global climate models are UNDERPREDICTING the extent of Arctic sea ice decline. See the figure here:

            http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/03/the-puzzles-involving-sea-ice-at-the-poles/

          2. David Appell

            PS: Funding scientific research has never come with a guarantee of results. Despite that, scientific research has changed the world more than any other method of thought.

          3. DirkH

            David Appell
            20. Dezember 2014 at 19:26 | Permalink | Reply
            “Dirk,
            You didn’t answer: how well does your model do?”

            My model? It currently works perfectly. My model is based on the observation that each year is very similar to the year before. It is: The climate stays the same.

            So far, it has 100% predictive skill.

            “What would you do differently from what modelers have done so far?”

            I would fire them and sue them to reclaim the money.

          4. DirkH

            David Appell
            20. Dezember 2014 at 19:28 | Permalink
            “PS: Funding scientific research has never come with a guarantee of results.”

            Yet the warmist scientists have knowingly and consciously done everything to enable the biggest taxpayer money theft and capital misallocation in history.

            ” Despite that, scientific research has changed the world more than any other method of thought.”

            Well, there is useful research, and then there’s Lysenkoism (Lysenko), Eugenics (Darwin’s cousin), Climate Modeling (Schneider), you name it.

          5. DirkH

            When building the case against the warmist scientists, evidence such as the climategate e mails need to be used, that prove unequivocally a cnospiracy to mislead.

            Fiduciary duty has been violated. The IPCC is polluted and crorupt.

            Similar to other grand “government successes”, what strikes the eye is the total absence of quality control, cost control and validation/verification. A haven for scoundrels, naturally, and at this moment in time overgrown by the third generation of trough-feeders, 100% inefficient.

          6. David Appell

            DirkH, on his model:
            “The climate stays the same.”

            That’s the worst model failure of them all:

            http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/

            Having failed so badly, you’re clearly in no position to judge anyone.

          7. David Appell

            DirkH wrote:
            “Well, there is useful research, and then there’s Lysenkoism (Lysenko), Eugenics (Darwin’s cousin), Climate Modeling (Schneider), you name it.”

            Your ignorance is showing — Schneider wasn’t a climate modeler in the way we think of them today.

            Perhaps you meant to insult one of the earliest successful climate modelers, Syukuro Manabe, who was the first, with Wetherald, to successfully calculate (1967) the surface temperature of the Earth.

            Can your model calculate the surface temperature of the Earth, Dirk?

          8. David Appell

            DirkH wrote:
            “Well, there is useful research, and then there’s Lysenkoism (Lysenko), Eugenics (Darwin’s cousin), Climate Modeling (Schneider), you name it.”

            Since you can’t recognize the benefits of science, I don’t think someone like you deserves what has come from it. So how about you go live in the woods for awhile and see what you’re missing?

  9. David Appell

    John F. Hultquist wrote:
    “When speaking about ice on the Arctic Ocean Peter Wadhams claimed that “Ice Free” [TM ?] does not mean ice free.”

    This is no movement of the goalposts — that’s the position often taken in the scientific literature. For example:

    “Trends in Arctic sea ice extent from CMIP5, CMIP3 and observations,” Julienne C. Stroeve et al, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L16502, doi:10.1029/2012GL052676, 2012.

    1. John F. Hultquist

      Thanks David.
      Say, I could use $55,000 for a house remodel. If you could provide it I promise to pay it all back by late September of next year. Actually, I’ll just round that down to $50,000 because “all” doesn’t really mean all.
      The reference you provide is a recent already reset of “ice free”. The great climate scientist Al Gore: “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”[Dec. 2008]
      http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/12/five-years-ago-today-al-gore-predicted-the-north-pole-will-be-ice-free-in-5-years/

      1. David Appell

        Al Gore isn’t a scientist, is he?

        Why do you need a precise date for the absence of summer Arctic sea ice, anyway? Do you think changes don’t happen until the moment the ice is completely gone?

        1. Cornelius

          David, it is the alarmists who are providing those dates, and they are repeatedly wrong. That is precisely the point. Just like those cult leaders who predict the end of the world, see that date come and go, and then simply produce another date. Thus the word ‘alarmist’.

          I would say that the completely confident claims of absence of sea ice by certain dates represents the exaggeration of change, and should be the subject of criticism.

          1. David Appell

            No one I know even thinks about what Al Gore says, let alone takes him as an oracle.

            I just spent a week at the AGU conference in San Francisco. I didn’t hear Gore’s name come up once. Not once.

            It’s people like you who are obsessed with Al Gore.

          2. David Appell

            PS: Try taking a look at some of the science, such as the top part of the first figure here:

            http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/03/the-puzzles-involving-sea-ice-at-the-poles/

            When does it show Arctic SIE going to zero?

          3. DirkH

            I can do that with my crayons for half the taxpayer money they used. Hey government I’m available!

          4. David Appell

            DirkH
            “I can do that with my crayons for half the taxpayer money they used. Hey government I’m available!”

            So apply for a grant, genius.

            What are you afraid of?

          5. David Appell

            DirkH wrote:
            “I can do that with my crayons for half the taxpayer money they used. Hey government I’m available!”

            Didn’t you say above that your crayon “model” predicts no change?

            So clearly it’s wrong from the very beginning. I don’t see any governments funding the likes of you….

    2. Cornelius

      David, what you’ve shown is that the goalposts were moved as early as 2012. We’ve endured ice-free alarmist predictions since long before that. When occurred the first “consensus” that 0 km^2 = 10^6 km^2 in the context of Arctic ice?

      1. David Appell

        What “goalposts?”

        Maybe you just had the wrong idea that 100% of the summer Arctic sea ice would disappear one particular day in some particular year, never to be seen again. That’s just a simplistic, unserious view of the situation, and it utterly misses the issues raised by Arctic melting.

        1. stan stendera

          Mr. Appell, are your eyes brown.

        2. Cornelius

          No one here is claiming that the ice would melt and never reappear. Irrelevant and misdirected.

          The goalposts are very well defined and have been provided repeatedly over a span of many years. Specifically, that Arctic ice would completely melt at the September minimum. If we’re truly faced with run-away warming and an Arctic death spiral, why wouldn’t we believe such a thing?

          The recent verbiage is clearly leaning towards damage control mode, vs. the unrelenting doomsday of yore. Tipping points are pushed farther into the future, zero becomes a million, the four to eleven degree range is drawn back, etc.

          On a related subject: If we experience another frigid winter in the northern hemisphere this year, would you guess that this will be blamed on modestly low Arctic ice?

          1. David Appell

            Corneliusm wrote:
            “On a related subject: If we experience another frigid winter in the northern hemisphere this year, would you guess that this will be blamed on modestly low Arctic ice?”

            What part of Jennifer Francis’s hypothesis do you disagree with, and why?

  10. David Appell

    mwhite: The Telegraph article you linked to talks mostly about the future: “The cost of household electricity WILL RISE by as much as 40 per cent by the end of the decade because of the Government’s green energy policies.” (emphasis mine).

    So how is it your electricity cost has tripled over the last 10 years? Do you use three times more kilowatt-hours? Has your usage grown?

    (Honestly, I’m interested. Here in the US I’ve paid a range of prices for electricity: about $0.17/kWh in New Hampshire, high due to the decommissioning costs for a nuclear power plant, to as low as $0.07/kWh in Oregon, due to a lot of hydropower.)

    1. DirkH

      He said electricity and gas.

      Here in Germany electricity tariff for private customers has doubled from 2000 to now, from about 12 Eurocent a kWh to 26.5 now.

      1. David Appell

        I’ve gone through more than a factor of two difference in electricity prices since 2000. I dealt with it.

        1. DirkH

          Well, so you admit that the technological and regulatory ideas of the warmists always and inevitably lead to a higher cost structure, creating inflation and a de facto reduction in living standards.

          Why, then, do you constantly promote their crazy ideas like electric cars? Higher prices mean more resource usage, not less – all the green technologies are in fact more destructive than convential technologies, as they require MORE mining and processing, not less – if they didn’t they would be CHEAPER, not more expensive.

          1. David Appell

            DirkH wrote:
            “Well, so you admit that the technological and regulatory ideas of the warmists always and inevitably lead to a higher cost structure, creating inflation and a de facto reduction in living standards.”

            No, I don’t. In fact, coal and oil lead to negative economic growth, due to the high costs of their pollution.

            Generating power with coal and oil creates more damage than value-added, according to Yale economist William Nordhaus in a 2011 paper:

            “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy,” Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus, American Economic Review, 101(5): 1649–75 (2011).
            http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.5.1649

            Summarizing that paper’s findings: for every $1 in value that comes from coal-generated electricity, it creates $2.20 in damages.

            Total damages: $70 billion per year (in 2012 dollars).

            Petroleum-generated electricity is even worse: $5.13 in damages for $1 in value.

            The National Academy of Sciences estimated that fossil fuel use causes damages of at least $120 B/yr to health and the environment:

            “Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use”
            National Research Council, 2010
            http://books.nap.edu/catalog/12794.html

            (Dollar figure for 2005, in 2007 dollars.)

            Of course, no one on forums like this wants to mention external costs, because including them makes it clear that we are all subsidizing fossil fuels by a huge amount through worse health and higher medical costs.

  11. DirkH

    German scientists, uni Essen, Kalifat Al Kraft (aka NRW), demand higher taxes, 4000EUR subsidy per electric noddycar to achieve Germany’s eschaton of getting 1 million noddy cars on the road in 2020.
    http://www.fr-online.de/wirtschaft/-e-autos-subventionen-fuer-e-autos,1472780,29362400.html

    Got nothing else to do. All hail the noddycar!

    Oh and free ‘leccy for their drivers. Of course, of course, how else should utopia come about, but by the promise of free stuff.

    1. Bernd Felsche

      I can’t see them passing NCAP crash tests.

      Perhaps it’s their true purpose; to convert occupants to angels.

      1. Bernd Felsche

        P.S. 100,000 new sparky vehicles vs 40 million conventional ones.

        It’s the lack of thought that counts!

        1. David Appell

          I know someone who has an electric car. He says he saves a lot of money….

          1. Bernd Felsche

            I don’t have an electric car; which saves me much more money.

          2. David Appell

            Bernd Felsche wrote:
            “I don’t have an electric car; which saves me much more money.”

            Prove it.

            “When it comes to fueling the vehicle, electricity is one-eighth the cost of gasoline or diesel.”

            http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2014/12/a-quieterand-cleanertrash-truck/

          3. DirkH

            I have an old battered VW Polo converted to LPG; and as LPG contains less carbon per calorie than gasoline, the genius warmist politicians in Germany have decided to make it practically tax free.

            As the price for gasoline at the pump in Germany consists to 70% of taxes, I save TONS of money, and I’m driving 20,000 miles a year. Way to go, political warmism.

            Best part of it, it doesn’t sound like a power drill.

          4. David Appell

            So you’re happy to take advantage of efforts to address global warming, without even the decency to be grateful….

    2. Lawrie Ayres

      When governments have to bribe folk to use electric cars or wind-power or install solar then you know it doesn’t stack up financially. It also means those who are resistant to the bribe are going to pay through higher taxes or charges. So a simple thought. What if everyone adopted the subsidised product and all were rewarded with “free” electricity, who would pay? How would it be afforded? Just shows the environmental incompetents don’t do logic.

      1. David Appell

        Lawrie Ayres wrote:
        “When governments have to bribe folk to use electric cars or wind-power or install solar then you know it doesn’t stack up financially.”

        Want to discuss the health and ecosystem costs of fossil fuel pollution?

        And who pays it? (You.)

        1. DirkH

          David, if solar and wind are superiour, sustainable, more economic than fossil fuels, then a nation using only these energy sources must dominate over fossil fuel powered ones (they will not have to subsidize the fossil fuels according to your argument, so they will save precious capital).

          That is not what we observe.

          Why is that?

          1. David Appell

            The share of renewable energy in Sweden was 50% in 2005 and 60% in 2012.
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden#Renewable_energy

            In 2013, their per capita GDP was 10% higher than the US.

            And you don’t seem to realize that your analogy is a poor one, because Sweden is still subject to some of the damage of fossil fuels burned by other nations near it and around the world.

          2. David Appell

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden#Renewable_energy

            In 2013, their nominal per capita GDP was 10% higher than the US.

            They rank much higher than the US in the Economist’s “Where-to-be-born” index:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index

            And you don’t seem to realize that your analogy is a poor one, because Sweden is still subject to some of the damage of fossil fuels burned by other nations near it and around the world.

          3. David Appell

            Some of my comments aren’t showing up…. Blocked?

          4. DirkH

            WordPress rejects you?

  12. pyeatte

    It is almost like trying to guess which shell the bean is under. They are guessing, with a bias towards far-left political goals.

  13. Otter (ClimateOtter on Twitter)

    Little davey seems to be upset about something here, otherwise he’d not be condesc… commenting, so much.

    1. David Appell

      Do you have a rational argument here?

  14. Dave72

    They are not alarmists, they are hysterics.

    1. David Appell

      Just curious — do you think the Earth doesn’t emit infrared radiation, or do you think CO2 doesn’t absorb it?

      1. Ed Caryl

        It’s the changes in emission and absorption that are important.

        1. David Appell

          Right. Do you think there haven’t been changes? Observations show there has been, such as:

          “Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
          http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

          “Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect,” R. Phillipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)
          http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract

          1. DirkH

            During a period of warming, radiative cooling of the planet declined? Whowouldathunk. Here’s a prediction: During the Global Warming Hiatus from 1997 on it didn’t.

            I leave it to the government scientists to confirm that.

            Amazingly, CO2 continued to rise though – shredding the basis of the Global Warming hypothesis.

          2. David Appell

            Dirk: You didn’t understand the papers. Read the again.

            No, global warming hasn’t stopped in the last 18 years. That’s just propaganda spread by people who lie to you.

  15. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #161 | Watts Up With That?

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