[cogitator]

The peer-review of the blogging scientific community isn't very impressed with this one.

An open-book test

Apparently there's a little problem with the proper units to use in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, and the reviewers didn't notice it. Anonymous at 12:15 AM really goes to town.

[Daffynition]

Nice find. Guess McKitrick is not well received in the community. Although dated, found this.

I'm still trying to wrap my feeeble brain around the idea that scientists should uphold the same standards for their theories, which is what I get from this article.

[AaronInCarolina]

The peer-review of the blogging scientific community isn't very impressed with this one.

Ah yes... Good ol' Rabid Rabett. Eli Rabett is hardly the objective voice in this discussion, and in fact is one of the most rabid pushers of global warming theory. He and Gavin and others often make hand-wave arguments against dissenters, then constantly subsequently refer to said hand-wave arguments as having conclusively debunked the claim, thereby rendering the dissenter as forever discredited.

The issue of questioning the relevancy of the term Global Mean Temperature is a very valid and valuable endeavor. It is quite true that in such a heterogenous chaotic system such as the earth's climate, that measuring changes in some global mean has little, if any, value. The truth is there is no significant global warming. There is, however, significant regional warming, particularly in some of the polar regions and higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Outside of these regions, warming, if any, has been quite minimal, and even in some locations it has cooled (AR4 SPM).

So the question has to be asked... Why has such an importance been placed upon changes in some global mean temperature, when the warming has been fairly isolated to particular regions? It's like holding your bare foot over a campfire and worrying mostly about how it affects the increase in temperature of your whole body rather than the extreme combustion of flesh that is occurring on your foot. It doesn't make much sense. Unless, of course, you have a strong desire to blame everything on CO2. We know that CO2 is a well-mixed greenhouse gas, as are the other main GHG players. It is peculiar to me why, when CO2 and other GHG mix so well to the point of being nearly homogeneously distributed in an otherwise heterogeneous system, that temperature anomalies are so heterogeneous. I am truly interested in your take, Cog, on why well-mixed GHG's don't produce a more homogeneous anomaly pattern.

[ancient_geezer]

Apparently there's a little problem with the proper units to use in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, and the reviewers didn't notice it.

Interesting, I have no problem demonstrating similar relationships using absolute temperatures and appropriate temperature values for the Newtonian cooling example, within the range of current arctic/tropical saltwater temps with ambient temperature set at the current global surface average.

http://home.earthlink.net/~a_geezer/Climate/Fig1Kelvin.gif

 

I would say for demonstration purposes, the distinction is without significance, being only a matter of scaling and setting up the conditions to demonstrate the principle.