Here is a Scientific American article that refers to a Science Magazine article that I thought I remembered reading about concerning warming and clouds. The actual Science article is unfortunately behind a pay wall.

Here is a series from New Scientist about climate change myths. This article addresses your questions of energy imbalances in the context of answering the question of how we know that the Earth is still warming.

How about $100 each in an escrow account with a 60 year time frame? I’ll be dead, but maybe my nephew’s kids can use the money to buy a loaf of bread. Or do you think that Miami can survive a century without cap and trade?

The claim I’ve heard related specifically to surface temperatures not continuing to rise as predicted. The answer has been that the heat was stored in the ocean instead. Which is plausible, even if as NPR described there has been trouble accounting for some heat which was expected but not in fact found.

I continue to remain an open-minded agnostic about this Jim. Since you seem fairly knowledgeable about the science and the data and how it is being measured and modeled, maybe you can point me in the direction of some stuff that speaks to what I view as a big missing piece of the puzzle. Obviously, whether Earth heats and by how much relates not just to how much energy Earth absorbs but how much it retains.

Apparently, the surface temperatures seem to have continued to rise slowly but still fluctuate on an annual basis. And the oceans see capable of storing vast amounts of energy and then occasionally venting them in things like El Nino.

So, how are we doing with measuring the amounts of energy that manage to escape entirely? This relates in part to CO2 as we know, but what about cloud reflectivity for example? Are there other factors? We know that if all other factors are kept equal then extra CO2 will lead to more trapped energy. But how do we figure out what the other factors could be and whether they are in fact being kept equal?

JIm, do you think Tully is a cherrypicker?

Who are these climate scientists?

97% of the ones the Heartland Institute interviewed:
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

Do you have any sort of actual citation for this claim?

How many decades is “a few decades?”

How much of a sea-level rise are they predicting?

How much of a rise do they say would be sufficient to “put Miami underwater?”

According to wiki Miami is only 2 M above sea level:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami

That’s 200 cm. 59 cm was the IPCC’s highest estimate in 2007, apparently there’s reason to believe it should be at least doubled:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/08/ups-and-downs-of-sea-level-projections/

59 cm is almost 2 ft, so we don’t have much room for error on this issue.

That’s by 2010, BTW. So we have time. But if the chicken littles are right we’re probably gonna start a feedback loop where Antarctic ice melts, exposing dark rock, which heats up when the sun hits it…

What percent of climate scientists actually agrees with their prediction?

It’s a minority.

But we’re talking risk mitigation here. And as the last few years of black swan events have proven it’s never foolish to mitigate risks. It’s foolish to overspend on risk mitigation, but this excersize is designed to figure out how much we should spend on mitigating that risk.

What are the odds I’ll take them seriously without their raw data and the models they are using to make such an alarming prediction? Wait, that one I can answer. Zero.

So in other words there’s nothing they could possibly do to convince you that global warming is a problem.

Because there will always be some cleaver bastard who wants one more piece of data, or disagrees with the process they used in step 67. And rather than create his own model, or attempt to improve the model realclimate uses that clever bastard will get lots of money to tour the country denouncing global warming as an evil conspiracy.

Climate scientists believe Miami is likely to be under water within a few decades if we don’t stop global warming. What are the odds you think they’re right? In your mind how much would it be worth spending to mitigate that risk?

Who are these climate scientists?

Do you have any sort of actual citation for this claim?

How many decades is “a few decades?”

How much of a sea-level rise are they predicting?

How much of a rise do they say would be sufficient to “put Miami underwater?”

What percent of climate scientists actually agrees with their prediction?

How could I possibly quantity the odds without their raw data and models?

What are the odds I’ll take them seriously without their raw data and the models they are using to make such an alarming prediction? Wait, that one I can answer. Zero.

As for wisdom, we’ll probably have to agree to disagree.

I have just one question for you:
Climate scientists believe Miami is likely to be under water within a few decades if we don’t stop global warming. What are the odds you think they’re right? In your mind how much would it be worth spending to mitigate that risk?

I understand your general point, which is that the raw data is likely to be spun by opponents, and that data adjustments are likely to be spun as proof of chicanery and untrustworthiness even if they are sound or defensible approaches. Of course that will, happen, sadly.

I don’t think any excuse is very good for not releasing your raw data. It makes you look like you have something to hide.

FWIW, Tully never has said to me that recent years have shown cooling, which is what so-called denialists have shopped. What he said to me is that over the last few years, the previously predicted trend had not continued. That’s quite different. In the graphs someone above linked to, the lines are virtually flat. Without knowing what linear regression was used on what data, flat is the best adjective for those bullets.

Until such a time as somebody comes up with a sensible alternative, and actually manages to convince most experts there alternative is true, we should act as if the theory was gospel truth. To do anything else would be foolish.

No koolaid for me thanks. I think the opposite, that acting precipitously on incomplete understanding would be foolish. We don’t even know how “balanced” Earth’s climate is, or how sensitive it is to more CO2. Surface temp varies year by year while showing a slight upward trend. The presumption is that the ocean is storing energy when the surface temp averafes aren’t showing it. But some of the expected heat went “missing,” according to NPR. The amount of heat radiated off of Earth varies depending on cloud cover and other factors.

There is a lot to keep track of, and we just don’t know for sure that there is an enduring positive imbalance. We just don’t know yet. There are troubling signs that merit more and closer study. But if we had been able to entirely define the nature of the levels of inputs and outputs, there’d be more agreement on the warming projections.

I’m not taking anything as gospel at this point. There are many chapters yet to write before we start thinking about any sort of climate bible. I’m not going to lose my mind because global surface temperatures seem to have increased by about 3/4 of a degree or so from 1850 to 2010. And neither should anybody else.

The trouble with Tully’s argument is that it’s always possible to demand more data.

This is particularly true when a statistician has based his reputation on mining your data for flaws. You send him the stuff you used, and thus kept pristine copies of, he mines it, finds nothing amiss, accuses you of cherry-picking your data, and demands that you turn over data you didn’t use. data that may never have existed, or may have been thrown out because some idiot broke the test tube before the data collection was complete. Heck it may be data some other scientist collected and turned over to you.

AGW predicted the current rise in temperatures 10 years ago. You don’t believe me fight the math:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

Until such a time as somebody comes up with a sensible alternative, and actually manages to convince most experts there alternative is true, we should act as if the theory was gospel truth. To do anything else would be foolish.

If global warming is so real and obvious, why can’t our ongoing understanding of it be an open source effort. I distrust people who make statistical claims without showing their actual data as a matter of course. That’s not personal or political to me.

Tully, awhile back I recall you shopping the idea that over the last 10 years the previous warming trend hasn’t continued. Do you still believe that? After digging into it, it now seems that many folks shopping that meme are basing it on an oversimplification that overemphasizes 1998. Thoughts?

Every scientific consensus is supported in part by BS evidence and suppressing dissent. The BS happens because scientists are people and people are frequently full of it, and suppression happens as a defense mechanism. It ensures that a consensus only changes when major new evidence shows up, not every time some smart cookie thinks up some clever hypothesis. This is what the Intelligent design crowd hasn’t figured out. They’re clever, but most of them don’t even know what biogeography is; none can explain why the intelligent designer decided against African kangaroos.

I am troubled by some of the stuff that’s come out. But so far it doesn’t seem to be much worse than the stuff that happens normally in science. “hiding the decline”, and some of the comments in the computer code could be damning for individual scientific careers because they certainly sound like falsifying evidence. But you have to keep in mind: this is one group. It’s a fairly extreme group dedicated to convincing everyone else to become more extreme.

You wanna change the consensus you’re gonna have to prove less extreme AGW advocates like the IPCC are lying.

Problem being that, as the CRU leak demonstrates, the so-called “consensus” was largely manufactured by AVOIDING and actively REPRESSING all those things, something I’ve been noisily pointing out for bloody fucking years. The thoroughly politicized IPCC proclaims itself as the voice of “consensus,” a self-fulfilling prophecy. The argument is circular — only those taking the “consensus” view are allowed to be heard, anyone not echoing the “consensus” is automatically dismissed as unworthy, regardless of the validity of their criticism and contra research.

For the millionth time, for those who don’t know the difference, “consensus” is a term of politics, not one of science. There is ZERO need to “break scientific consensus” as a validifier of claims when the so-called “consensus” itself fails to meet the criteria of the scientific method. REAL science requires no “consensus.” It is self-demonstrable — it stands on its own. REAL science discloses primary data, full modeling construction, etc. It opens itself to full examination for purposes of testing and replication and confirmation. Real science does not hide behind pompous pronouncements of authority — that’s what religion does.

RELEASE THE PRIMARY DATA. RELEASE THE FULL MODELING CODE. RELEASE THE DETAILED JUSTIFICATIONS OF THE “ADJUSTMENTS.” RELEASE IT ALL. RELEASE IT NOW.

A major reason I’m pro man-made global warming, pro-Kyoto, and pro-cap-and-trade is that that I did a simple analysis of the costs of fixing the problem. And they weren’t exactly unbearable. Cash-for-clunkers cost like $8 per capita. Cash-for-caulkers would help too, and it would cost about the same.

Manufacturing loads of solar panels would be more expensive but a) historically as technology gets adopted in masse it gets much cheaper; and b) we’ve got spare manufacturing capacity out the whazoo. The same can be said for windmills. Heck check out the “waste heat” article on Wikipedia. We could add a simple generator to pretty much every smokestack in the country.

Contrast this with the benefits. I’ll ignore global warming and ocean acidification for the time being. Let’s look at the technical benefits. A simple fact is somebody’s gonna figure out how to make millions of solar panels cheap. Same with windmills. When the rest of the world has adopted cap-and-trade and Kyoto their companies have an extra incentive to be the ones who figure this out. Which means that without Kyoto we’ll be choosing between German solar panels and Saudi oil.

Now look at the foreign policy benefits. Right now dozens of island nations believe in global warming. 54 African nations believe global warming will turn much of that continent into a desert in the next few decades. You think it’s gonna be easy to get those guys to turn over a radical preacher if we don’t have cap-and-trade? How about convincing those guys to use their UN Vote to support us? Especially when the Chinese are there offering a blank check, no bitching about democracy, and a very plausible excuse when asked why they don’t deal with global warming (there’s no point if the US doesn’t).

That’s what weak-sense critical thinking is…you start with an opinion you want to support, look only for that support, and then stop when you find it. We need to do better if we really care about the truth. Right? Anyone REALLY disagree with that? If not,. then man up. Right?

Atmospheric CO2 is rising. Hard to dispute that. There is at this point substantial correlation between recent warming trends (the hockey stick etc) and growth in CO2 levels. IF any of you out there think the hockey stick is wrong, please keep reading and researching into views from a variety of sources.

CO2 traps infrared radiation. That can cause more temperature rises. We’re at about 390 ppm and almost halfway to a doubling from levels prior to the industrial revolution. That may well be a serious problem.

At this point, from what I have been able to discern so far, we don’t seem to have a very comprehensive idea of just how sensitive Earth’s climate is and will be. There are many factors involved in figuring how much heat will really be trapped as opposed to radiated off of Earth. Especially measuring it. The presumption seems to be that absent the human injection of CO2 into the atmosphere which causes warming, that the Earth was and will be in balance. In other words, subtract humans and the amount of heat absorbed by the Earth and the amount radiated back into space is basically equal. My view is that this presumption deserves more exploration.

And don’t forget, there are also many factors involved in trying to forecast the nature and extent of changes humans will experience should global temperatures continue to rise slowly until we either substantially decrease the use of fossil fuels voluntarily, or run out.

I suspect that some of these guys will need to resign before climate science will be able to recover. The scientists who are committed to fair and open inquiry realize they need to open the data up. The others have lost the faith of the public. We have to rely on the smart guys because we cannot do the calculations ourselves. But what we can do is judge the character of the people advising us, and because they are evidently lying, we can’t trust them.

Publish all the data, and the code, and let’s find out what is going on.

“Radiation from the Sun ultimately provides the only energy source for the Earth’s atmosphere and changes in solar activity clearly have the potential to affect climate. There is statistical evidence for solar influence on various meteorological parameters on all timescales, although extracting the signal from the noise in a naturally highly variable system remains a key problem. Changes in total solar irradiance undoubtedly impact the Earth’s energy balance but uncertainties in the historical record of TSI mean that the magnitude of even this direct influence is not well known. Variations in solar UV radiation impact the thermal structure and composition of the middle atmosphere but details of the responses in both temperature and ozone concentrations are not well established. Various theories are now being developed for coupling mechanisms whereby direct solar impacts on the middle atmosphere might influence the troposphere but the influences are complex and non-linear and many questions remain concerning the detailed mechanisms which determine to what extent, where and when the solar influence is felt. Variations in cosmic radiation, modulated by solar activity, are manifest in changes in atmospheric ionisation but it is not yet clear whether these have the potential to significantly affect the atmosphere in a way that will impact climate…. With regard to the climate, further data-mining and analysis are required to firmly establish the magnitude, geographical distribution and seasonality of its response to various forms of solar activity. Understanding the mechanisms involved in the response then becomes the overriding objective. Current ideas suggest three main avenues where further research is needed. Firstly, the means whereby solar radiative heating of the upper and middle atmosphere may influence the lower atmosphere through dynamical coupling needs to be better understood. Secondly, it needs to be established whether or not variations in direct solar heating of the tropical oceans can be of sufficient magnitude to produce apparently observed effects. Thirdly, more work is needed on the microphysical processes involved in ion-induced nucleation, and, probably more importantly, the growth rates of the condensation nuclei produced. Perhaps when these questions are answered we will be confident that we really understand how changes in the Sun affect the climate on Earth. “

The second link is laughable. Your source – Joe Romm – as described in the sidebar “Rolling Stone: “America’s fiercest climate-change activist-blogger lets it rip”

He is an advocate for one side of a scientific argument with a book to sell. He is not an arbiter of the truth.

The assertion is that the science is not decided. You link to one side of the argument and then describe the other side as liars. That does not undermine the assertion. It only says which side of the argument you are on. You are not even making an argument so much as proclaiming your faith in religious dogma.

I reminded of this exact translation of a quote from the Inquistion:

“Galileo, will people who try to pass themselves off as scientists ever quit lying about the earth revolving around the sun? I think it’s unlikely.”

And, mw, will people who try to pass themselves off as skeptics ever quit lying about the last 10 years? I think it’s unlikely.

Science is not determined by elections. There is nothing more meaningless in the determination of scientific truth than a scientific consensus. A scientific argument stands on its own, regardless of the number of people who initially agree or disagree.

On the other hand, advancing a political goal, such as imposing a massive new tax like Cap & Trade requires a political consensus. To achieve such a political consensus some will use fear tactics by claiming a scientific consensus predicting disastrous consequences if the measure does not pass.

The science is unsettled. It appears there are at least two reasonable hypothesis for the global warming that was taking place up until about 10 years ago. One was related to human activity and CO2 greenhouse effects. One was related to variations in solar output. The CO2 hypothesis is brought into question by the inability to explain the apparent cooling of the last 10 years. It’ll probably take another 10 years to get enough data to settle the question. It appears that some scientists invested in the greenhouse theory have been using extraordinary and questionable techniques to make the data fit the theory. Scientific scrutiny and more data will settle the question.

However, it would be madness to agree to treaties limiting production and impose new job destroying, economy throttling regulations and taxes like Cap & Trade based on unsettled science. Even those who subscribe to the theory that man-made CO2 is the cause have shown that CO2 limitations as considered in Kyoto or Copenhagen or Cap and Trade are not the solution.

Obama may agree to limitations in Copenhagen and choose to push Cap & Trade for a lot of reasons. None of them have anything to do with science.

I think agnostic is a great word choice Frank. I started using that a few years back for things like “I’m agnostic on whether Jed Lowrie is the Red Sox shortstop of the future.” It carries a great point, which is that you’re not saying it’s wrong, only that you’re not convinced yet.

I’ve had people trying to bully me off my doubts for years now, and been accused of being all sorts of hideous creatures like a shill for big business, an apologist for big oil, a useful idiot for the republican party and so on. I’ve met college students with clipboards who knew less about the subject than I but were quite sure to the point of zeal. Politics has had an adverse effect on the science. That’s quite clear.

And I understand that it comes from a place of genuine concern about our future. The concern is quite admirable and worthwhile. The bullying is not.