[alancalverd]

You may not be a plant, but as you can't synthesise sugars or proteins, your life depends on plants. The Irish potato famine, the Oklahoma dustbowl, Lysenkoism....killed millions of people, and the same stories recur every year throughout Africa and Asia: Bihar,the Sahel....

True, most of these disasters have been caused by a failure of the water supply or seriously bad science, but it's difficult to imagine how a few percent more foliage could be a Bad Thing. 400 ppm CO2 won't do you any harm, and it may just help to avert then next major agricultural catastrophe.

Rapid changes in climate are inevitable, as the historical record shows. For the first time since life began, one species  is able to anticipate and mitigate its effect, but most people prefer to argue about its cause. 

[damocles]

From alancalverd (reply #220):

True, most of these disasters have been caused by a failure of the water supply or seriously bad science, but it's difficult to imagine how a few percent more foliage could be a Bad Thing. 400 ppm CO2 won't do you any harm, and it may just help to avert then next major agricultural catastrophe.

True, but it is also hard to imagine how it could be a good thing:

From damocles (reply #217):

11% greening in response to 15% CO2 increase over the same period is hardly unexpected in desert plants that are not water-limited in their photosynthetic response. Fact is that most plants, including over 90% of food crops, are water-limited.

Meanwhile there is an argument that more CO2 will lead to global warming, rising sea levels, and more erratic weather, which definitely is a bad thing. It is not an overwhelming argument, but it is a position supported by over 90% of the serious scientists working in the area, which at least means that it must be seriously considered by any rational person.

[alancalverd]

There are very good, logical, scientific and political reasons for limiting and eventually abolishing the emission of CO2 from fossil fuels. Global warming is not one of them.

[Bored chemist]

"it's difficult to imagine how a few percent more foliage could be a Bad Thing. "
If anyone had said that it was, then that wouldn't be a strawman.

"There are very good, logical, scientific and political reasons for limiting and eventually abolishing the emission of CO2 from fossil fuels. Global warming is not one of them."
Says you, but the experts disagree; and they have actual evidence.

[MoreCarbonOK]

damocles says
Meanwhile there is an argument that more CO2 will lead to global warming, rising sea levels, and more erratic weather, which definitely is a bad thing. It is not an overwhelming argument, but it is a position supported by over 90% of the serious scientists
bored chemist says
Says you, but the experts disagree; and they have actual evidence.

henry says

I am not serious? what evidence are you guys referring to? I am interested to hear from you which information you find convincing for this type of reasoning of those in the 90%?

Truth is that most data sets including my own, i.e.  both my global set and my set for South Africa,
show that we have dropped by about 0.2K, on average over the last 12 years.

That is the reality. It is not an "opinion". It is a figure. We, on earth, are almost a quarter degree cooler now as it was 12 years ago.

it does not yet sound like a lot. but I know we are further accelerating downwards, simply because I cannot find another best fit for my data, other than the one reported here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/

[Bored chemist]

henry says

I am not serious?

No.
A serious researcher wouldn't try to fit a sine wave through the data like you did.
They would look at scientific evidence, like the stuff cited here.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming.html#.UeLiTY3_l7g

or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

[MoreCarbonOK]

BC quotes
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11639-climate-myths-the-cooling-after-1940-shows-co2-does-not-cause-warming.html#.UeLiTY3_l7g

henry says
come on BC?
we were talking about post 2000,
nothing to do with 1940-1970
(which btw had a lot of atomic bombs going off, especially in the Pacific, causing widespread de-foliation,
a tell-tale sign....)

anyway, show me your best fit, on, e.g. the end results of my first table here,
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/

i.e. drop in T in K/annum versus time?

[MoreCarbonOK]

I am so amused now.
Over the past year, I have pursued everyone in the south african media who claimed "global warming" due to CO2 increase, to provide me with proof of that, showing them my own results (of SA weather stations) since 2000.....
(on the threat of going to the broadcasting complaints commission)

I have not heard about "global warming" for a long time here in the media...
LOL

how backwards they still are in Britain

You only need one man to stand up....

like we had Mandela...

[Bored chemist]

Sorry, I had forgotten that you didn't listen when told this earlier
"That's weather, not climate, and it's local weather; we already covered that."

So,  I'd not bother fitting anything to that small a data set.

[MoreCarbonOK]

henry@BC
and I told you a few hundred times now that most major data sets agree with my own
here you can see this, where I put this into a graph.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2014/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend
namely that the trend is NEGATIVE from about 12 years ago.

Now here you can see the average trend from 1980
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2012/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2012/trend

we  discussed this in detail, and in this discussion I agreed with you, that, on average, we rose by between 0.3 and 0.4 degrees C since 1980.

now go back to "my little, insignificant data set" and in the 2nd table (on means) you will see that I determined an average warming rate of ca. 0.013K/annum since 1980.
That also works out to 0.4 degrees C since 1980.

Did you see how accurate my small data set was?

Now, the reason I asked you to look again at the first table and do that fit, is because, stupid enough, nobody in the data sets is looking at maxima and minima, yet there is where you can learn most. "Means"  is earthly chaotic, but, eventually, it follows the "maxima".  Based on that maxima trend, which such high correlation (99.7%) , I can easily predict correctly that warming has stopped and that cooling has started. Unfortunately, putting more CO2 in the air will not stop that trend.
 I hope somebody learned something here today...

[Bored chemist]

"and I told you a few hundred times now that most major data sets agree with my own"
Indeed.
Now, remind me why yours is the only one that's marching in step.
And I'm going to stop reading your posts until you sort out the mess your links make of
the site formatting because your posts don't seem worth the trouble of reading.

[MoreCarbonOK]

...>>>....BC says

And I'm going to stop reading your posts until you sort out the mess your links make of...

henry says
true, I don't know much about computer science

and I do think you and me are good chemists, both of us qualifying in that direction.

I am afraid you lack my knowledge on statistics
which includes probability theory. Stats 1 is reasonably simple, stats 2 is difficult, stats 3 is more complicated
especially on sampling techniques, where you have to be sure of randomness and representative-ness,

but if you just grasped stats 1,  you would understand what I am saying

the problem is: you want to follow a certain line of thinking (politics? majority rules?) instead of use your own brains.

You have to stop that line of thinking.

[Bored chemist]

Trust me, I'm not the one who needs to learn stats here.
Having a computer that can plot a sine wave through the data doesn't mean the data follow a sine wave.
The fact that you chose that function (rather than, for example a polynomial)
means that you are the one who " want(s) to follow a certain line of thinking ".
A sine wave goes back to where it starts from so your choice absolutely ruled out the idea of any long term change.

[damocles]

from MoreCarbonOK:

true, I don't know much about computer science

and I do think you and me are good chemists, both of us qualifying in that direction.

I am afraid you lack my knowledge on statistics
which includes probability theory. Stats 1 is reasonably simple, stats 2 is difficult, stats 3 is more complicated
especially on sampling techniques, where you have to be sure of randomness and representative-ness,

but if you just grasped stats 1,  you would understand what I am saying

(1) As a good scientist, I believe in dispassionately following the evidence. The evidence that MCOK is a good chemist is totally belied by the fact that in earlier posts in this lengthy interchange MoreCarbonOK posted as follows:

Smokers do not die (immediately) from inhaling  near 100% CO2

The air which smokers inhale is roughly 15% CO2 at most. The point that BC was making in his next post, which would be transparent to a good chemist, was that the nitrogen component of air, 78%, is not involved in the combustion reaction. It is also a fact that oxygen continues to be necessary to support the smokers' lives.

from henry (moreCarbonOK):
Quote
Clifford,
are you a chemisdt?
Any (good) chemist knows that there are giga tons and giga tons of bi-carbonates dissolved in the oceans and that (any type of) warming would cause it to be released:

HCO3- + heat => CO2 (g) + OH-.

This is the actual reason we are alive today. Cause and effect, get it? There is a causal relationship. More warming naturally causes more CO2. Without warmth and carbon dioxide there would be nothing, really. To make that what we dearly want, i.e. more crops, more trees, lawns and animals and people, nature uses water and carbon dioxide and warmth, mostly.

Wake up out of your dream worlds. More CO2 is better. I hope you at least agree with me on that.


Henry are you a chemist? Any (good) chemist knows that there must be a stoichiometric balance in an equation system like the one you have been quoting so frequently to justify your simplistic assumption.

If the equation that you are relying on to account for the increase in atmospheric CO2 as the result of increasing temperature, then the alkalinity of sea water would be rising in accordance with the increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact it has been falling. This is more in line with the conventional explanation of a steady increase in atmospheric CO2 in line with human activity, with approximately one third of the additional CO2 burden being taken up by the world's oceans. An analysis of the global sources and sinks of CO2 also matches the conventional explanation: CO2 is mostly generated over land, and much more over populated industrialized land, and is mostly absorbed in the oceans. The models now have a fine enough resolution to pick out specific areas of ocean, e.g. the Behring Strait, where CO2 is being released to the atmosphere. But they are more than compensated for by the overall effect of the oceans in absorbing CO2. (By the way this has been confirmed by direct measurement).

Any good chemist should be able to do a simple calculation to show that the equation itself is far from correct as quoted:
HCO3^–(aq) + heat --> CO2(g) + OH^–(aq)
It should read:
HCO3^–(aq) <==> CO2(g) + OH^–(aq) + heat
Moreover it is closely linked with another step:
OH^–(aq) + HCO3^–(aq) <==> CO3^2–(aq) + H2O(l) + a little more heat
to provide an overall result of:
2 HCO3^–(aq) <==> CO2(g) + CO3^2–(aq) + H2O(l) + even more heat.

Provision of more heat should, on the face of it, result in the absorption of atmospheric CO2, although this will depend on the availability of aqueous carbonate.

(2) MCOK's claim to be well versed in statistics also appears, on the evidence, to be rather optimistic.
He says:

I am afraid you lack my knowledge on statistics
which includes probability theory. Stats 1 is reasonably simple, stats 2 is difficult, stats 3 is more complicated
especially on sampling techniques, where you have to be sure of randomness and representative-ness,

His sampling techniques might be spatially representative, but they are certainly temporally unfortunate, to say the least. Why? Because they are based on a cooling from a peak in 2002-3 to a trough in 2010-12. But the peak corresponds to an El Niño event in 2002-2003 declining to two consecutive La Niña events in 2011 and 2012. The corresponding ENSO indices can be found at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml.
When the ENSO influence is removed from the (Australian) data, it is found that there is still a warming trend:
http://www.aussmc.org/documents/waiting-for-global-cooling.pdf

[MoreCarbonOK]

Henry@damocles
clearly you are no chemist at all,
otherwise, you would have known that to make a standard solution of, say,  0.1 n NaOH,  you need to boil the DI water for 10 minutes to remove all CO2
so the reaction
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
is therefore quite correct, to describe what we are doing in the lab..
Since there are giga tons of bicarbonate in the oceans it follows clearly that (more) CO2 follows (more) warming.
As I have shown to you before from the records.
(if you were worried how the OH- is balanced out, in my standard solution, we know that as we boil the water, H₂CO₃ + H₂O=> HCO₃- + H₃O⁺ which precedes the quoted reaction)


BC says
The fact that you chose that function (rather than, for example a polynomial)
means that you are the one who " want(s) to follow a certain line of thinking ".
A sine wave goes back to where it starts from so your choice absolutely ruled out the idea of any long term change.

Henry says
The truth is that on the last 4 figures in Table 1, I did do a binomial fit and it gave me an incredible correlation coefficient of 0.997.
(if you put the speed of warming out against time)
After obtaining this result, I did not bother to take more samples (i.e. weather stations), because it simply would not matter:
in statistics you simply cannot get things better than that, to prove a relationship, from a sample.


However,  if you use that binomial fit to predict the future, even just a few years ahead, where will we end up? Can you tell me?

FYI the data (MAXIMA) are

0.036 - LAST 38 YEARS
0.028 - LAST 32 YEARS
0.015 - LAST 22 YEARS
-0.013 - LAST 12 YEARS

just check it out...
please.

[evan_au]

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the use of a binomial fit to climate data. Please clarify.

I regularly use the Binomial Distribution, but I don't see how this relates to climate prediction.

Please provide some more information about how this curve fitting was done. The Binomial Distribution can provide a few curve shapes, based on it two input parameters:

• Declining towards zero
  
• Increasing towards one
  
• A bell-shaped curve, which starts at zero and ends at zero, with a peak in the middle

Please describe:

• which of these curve shapes best fitted your climate data?
  
• How did you map the two input parameters onto the climate data?
  
• what was the probability parameter which produced the best fit?
  
• what is the climate-relevant significance of this probability parameter?
• how did you map the binomial probability distribution (range 0-1) onto the climate data to make future climate predictions?

 

[damocles]

From Henry (reply #234):

Henry@damocles
clearly you are no chemist at all,
otherwise, you would have known that to make a standard solution of, say,  0.1 n NaOH,  you need to boil the DI water for 10 minutes to remove all CO2
so the reaction
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
is therefore quite correct, to describe what we are doing in the lab..
Since there are giga tons of bicarbonate in the oceans it follows clearly that (more) CO2 follows (more) warming.

umm... No, Henry! You are confusing two thermodynamic quantities here -- whether a reaction takes in or gives out heat (∆Hrxn = enthalpy of reaction) , and the direction of spontaneity of a reaction (∆Grxn = gibbs free energy of reaction). In most cases the reaction that gives out heat is the spontaneous one, but in this case the situation is reversed, and especially if you want to involve hydroxyl and bicarbonate! For the reaction that I described for solution/release of CO2(g) the ∆H°rxn is around -36 kJ/mol (i.e. energy released), but the ∆G°rxn is around +8 kJ/mol. Of course the activities of the various substances come into play in deciding the direction of spontaneity, but they have no part in the enthalpy change (and this post provides even more empirical evidence that you are not seriously a chemist).

From evan-au (reply #235):

I'm sorry, but I don't understand the use of a binomial fit to climate data. Please clarify.

I regularly use the Binomial Distribution, but I don't see how this relates to climate prediction.

Please provide some more information about how this curve fitting was done. The Binomial Distribution can provide a few curve shapes, based on a single probability parameter:
   •   Declining towards zero
   •   Increasing towards one
   •   A bell-shaped curve, which starts at zero and ends at zero, with a peak in the middle

Evan I think that what Henry means by "binomial fit" is a 2nd order polynomial fit (which guarantees a catastrophe in one direction or the other!) -- but I cannot be sure. Notice though how everything is expressed in terms of "last x years" so that his data remains firmly anchored on the last two years, which have both been La Niña years.

[MoreCarbonOK]

henry@damocles

I am sure I told you before.
You have rain, there in AU, right?  Where did it come from? how did it form?


heat is an outlet for bicarbonate from the seas
HCO3- => CO2 g + OH-

cold is a sinc for CO2

CO2 + 2H2O => HCO3- + H3O+

that this happens is provable from measurements at cold and warm places.

Damocles says
Notice though how everything is expressed in terms of "last x years" so that his data remains
firmly anchored on the last two years, which have both been La Niña years

Henry says
 how misleading this statement is, which really makes me doubt your honesty and integrity
clearly you can see the falling speed in maximum temperature from 38 years ago to now?
(i.e. from 38 years ago, and NOT two years)

Henry@all

pity there is no one here who understands stats, even if it were just first year.


If you have a set of data from a sample, like the one quoted to you
you can first try a linear fit
(which, on maxima, gave me correlation of 0.96)
then you can try a polynomial fit, first 2nd order (0.995), than higher order
lastly you can try something like a sine wave fit
Thankful to God, I decided on the last option, giving me the least upheaval,
although some problems will be coming up when we reach the bottom of the sine wave.


I don't know how I can help you, if don't understand that.

Either fit will show that we changed sign from warming to cooling around 1995....
just looking at energy coming in.

[MoreCarbonOK]

perhaps I should again explain what you are looking at in the tables
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/


The (black) figures you are looking at  represent the average change in degrees Celsius (or Kelvin) per annum,
from the average temperatures measured during the period indicated.
These are the slopes of the least square fit equations or “ linear trendlines” for the periods indicated, as calculated, i.e. the value before the x.

The average temperature data from the stations were obtained from http://www.tutiempo.net
I tried to avoid stations with many missing data. Nevertheless, it is very difficult finding weather stations that have no missing data at all.
If a month’s data was found missing or if I found that the average for a month was based on less than 15 days of that month’s data,
I looked at the average temperatures of that month of the preceding- and following year, averaged these,
and in this way estimated the temperatures of that particular month’s missing data.
The last point is important:in normal stats, one is inclined to fill in long term averages for missing databut here that would be wrong,
if you want to study the change in temp. / weather over time

[Bored chemist]

OK, seconds out.
Both of you are wrong about CO2 water, bicarbonate, hydroxide etc.

Henry's assertion that
HCO3 - (bi carbonate) +heat => CO2 (g) + OH-
is wrong.
And so is this
2 HCO3–(aq) <==> CO2(g) + CO32–(aq) + H2O(l) + even more heat.

I invite you both to go to the kitchen, get some bicarbonate of soda and stir it into a cup full of boiling hot water.
That way you can both verify that
2 NaHCO3  --> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2

Heating drives the equilibrium to the right (because of the large delta S term)
You don't get carbonates decomposing to hydroxides in aqueous solution.
The reaction
2 NaOH + CO2  --> Na2CO3  + H2O
goes essentially to completion
So does the reaction
NaOH + NaHCO3 --> Na2CO3 + H2O

There's very little OH- in sea water.

Now, perhaps Henry could answer my point that his choice of a sine wave 
(which will never show a long term trend) is anything other than a,
possibly unconscious, attempt to ensure that his "model" agrees with his beliefs.
Then, having chosen a model which forces the conclusion that there is no change
(in the long term), he claims I'm not open minded.
Why is that?
Why choose a model which excludes the possibility of what is widely thought to be the right answer?
Had you (with your asserted understanding of Stats 3) not realised that?