And yet you can say: "Today's story from my home state of Louisiana--"earliest snowfall since 1938". Houston "earliest snowfall ever recorded". And the graph indicates why; it's been cold over North America -- anomalously cold. In contrast to everywhere else. Australia is mired in a horrible heat wave (also supported by the data).
Springtime Heatwave in Southeastern Australia
"So doesn't that heat have to go somewhere?"
Sure, but there are MANY other factors involved. Not all feedbacks are positive. One may cause increased heating, one increased cooling. The delta T is the result of all this.
Understood. Cloud feedbacks would be the one possibility for a significant negative feedback loop.
It's impossible to reproduce 20th century temperatures (modeling, of course) with only natural forcings. By natural, that means volcanic and aerosols. Only with anthropogenic forcings (including SO2 aerosols, besides greenhouse gases) can realistic results be obtained.
Sorry, but the existing models are simply inadequate. They do not include the effect of water vapor, for which even the direction of the feedback is not known.
All current research indicates positive water vapor feedback. Roy Spencer has been making noise about an alternative, but he hasn't launched it yet. Any useful climate models include positive water vapor feedback parameterized according to current knowledge.
Additional info: Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?
Now, I am generally curious. The above is the main thing I point to when I discuss the influence of CO2. It says: "However, as shown in Figure 1, models are able to simulate the observed 20th-century changes in temperature when they include all of the most important external factors, including human influences from sources such as greenhouse gases and natural external factors." I would be FLOORED if said models didn't include water vapor feedback. I think you're making an extraordinary claim here. Put me on the floor; show me the extraordinary evidence.
Here's a couple of links to help you:
Water Vapor Feedback Loop Will Cause Accelerated Global Warming, Professor Warns
And even your own "Team" admits (clandestinely) that their models have failed to predict current cooling. You don't believe THEIR OWN analysis???
I've seen most of what I think are the "high content" emails. Would you mind quoting the one (or two) in which they say that their models failed to predict the current cooling? If you're talking about Trenberth's "travesty" email, I don't think he's saying what you want him to be saying. If it's a different email, go right ahead and show me.
"I know about science and predictions. Part of climate science is forecasting future climate states. Relativistic physics does not do "forecasts".
Which again just proves that your knowledge of science is inadequate. Look up "theory of relativity" and "global positioning system" and then come back and tell me that "relativistic physics does not do "forecasts"".
I read the link, thanks. We're probably talking past each other. I read it as a prediction of effects that would be observed (and confirmation). For me, a forecast is a defined future state based on a model. Semantics can be troublesome.
And other solar physicists have made different predictions.
How do you personally evaluate which predictions are the best ones?
If you think that my understanding of the subject of climate change is therefore inconsequential, that's fine. I'm not aggrieved by that."
Yup, that's pretty much my opinion.
So, arguments from authority are the only ones that pass muster, huh? If a National Academy of Sciences Fellow makes the same arguments as I do, then you would listen to him, but not to me? If he references a paper in Science, then he knows what he's doing, and I don't? Just because you have a Ph.D. doesn't automatically confer greater knowledge and understanding, and not having one doesn't mean you can't have a decent grasp of a subject. Skeptics quoted the late Michael Crichton as an authority, and belittle Gore for not being a climate scientist. I sense a double standard.
Answer just ONE chemistry question---what is the Beer-Lambert law, and how does it affect global warming??
The Beer-Lambert law describes the absorption of light by a substance in a medium. This is commonly used in spectroscopy, where the property absorbance is measured (for liquids) as a function of the path length of the measuring cell and the number of "absorbers" (which will be expressed in units of molarity). The Beer-Lambert law has different expressions for absorption of light in a solid medium or in a gas. In the atmosphere, the Beer-Lambert law is an inadequate representation of optical effects because you also have to take into account scattering and reflection from particles. However, the absorption of light (including longwave IR radiation) can in part be characterized by Beer-Lambert absorption. And if you think that this means CO2 absorption will saturate in the atmosphere, then I have a few links I can provide that explain why it doesn't, because you also have to account for changing atmospheric dynamics.
I'll wait for the data.
Apparently the WMO didn't.
"And 2009 is another of the warmest years, according to the UN's weather experts the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) which published provisional findings that this year was 0.44C above the long term average of 14C. It is expected to become the fifth warmest year since instrumental records began in 1850, the Met Office said, and will be warmer than 2008 because of the emergence of El Nino weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean which contribute to warmer temperatures. The data from the WMO shows that for large parts of southern Asia and central Africa, it will have been the warmest year on record. But north America experienced conditions that were cooler than normal - although Canadian cities Vancouver and Victoria saw new record temperatures set and Alaska had the second-warmest July on record."