Not 97% but .3% of Climatologists agree.

[jem]

1. without greenhouse gases the sunny side of the earth might also be far warmer... greenhouse gases act as a thermostat... you need to learn some current science.

2. Regarding whether adding more greenhouse gases warm or cool... NASA states more experiments need to be done...

So the only people it is "blindingly obvious" to are the blindingly ignorant.


http://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/


Don't clouds keep Earth cooler?

Water in the atmosphere also acts as a greenhouse gas. The atmosphere contains a lot of water. This water can be in the form of a gas—water vapor—or in the form of a liquid—clouds. Clouds are water vapor that has cooled and condensed back into tiny droplets of liquid water.

Clouds as seen from space.
Earth's clouds as seen from space.

Water in the clouds holds in some of the heat from Earth's surface. But the bright white tops of clouds also reflect some of the sunlight back to space. So with clouds, some energy from the Sun never even reaches Earth's surface.

How much the clouds affect the warming or cooling of Earth's surface is one of those tricky questions that several NASA missions are aiming to answer.

Quote from stu:

Not ignorance, basic science spelt out for you.
Without greenhouse gases the Earth would be frozen.
Greenhouse gases reflect some radiation (heat from the sun) from the lower atmosphere back to Earth.
They reflect some radiation (heat from the sun ) from the upper atmosphere back to outer space and so there is a natural balance.
The only thing they are doing from the effects humans have on them, is to warm the planet.

Without science you wouldn't even understand that much, not that I expect you do.


In the upper atmosphere they do. That you have to pose such a question shows how ignorantly you approach the subject. Which is pretty much how you've approached most stuff on this board.


The science is what makes it screamingly obvious, except to deniers such as yourself, that more co2 greenhouse gas sitting in the lower atmosphere is making the same atmosphere co2 denser , and therefore allows even less radiation to escape than otherwise would be the case , making the Earth even warmer, changing the climate.


Because YOUR argument? You mean a conspiracist /denier / extremist / political argument.

Why the f*k do you imagine it's not a good idea to keep polluting? Because polluting the atmosphere by pouring billions of tons of co2 greenhouse gas into it is sooner or later going to tip the balance and warm the planet and change the climate.

The most basic science confirms it.. whereas you are merely in the usual brainless bullshit denial of it , like you always are.

 

[jem]

read this you ignorant leftist drones and see what real science is...

they admit it leaves scientists "scratching their heads".

(which is code for hey the data and evidence we have seems to be pointing to the fact that more clouds cool the earth (just like the data with aerosols) ... but we can't really admit that right now... so we are looking for some other explanation.)

http://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/


Or do clouds make Earth warmer?

Here is a riddle—a serious one, not a joke:

As the ocean warms up, more water evaporates into the air. So does more water vapor then mean more warming? And does more warming mean more water vapor? And ‘round and ‘round we go?

Drawing shows how clouds have a greenhouse effect at night. Clouds trap some of the heat coming from Earth's surface, preventing it from escaping into space.
At night, clouds trap some of the heat from Earth's surface. Thus, it does not escape back into space.

Or, since more water vapor means more clouds, will the fluffy white clouds reflect enough sunlight back into space to make up for the warming?

Drawing shows arrows that represent sun's energy reflecting off tops of clouds.
During the day, clouds reflect the Sun's energy back to space, before it has a chance to heat Earth's surface.

This cloud riddle has scientists scratching their heads and trying to figure it out. NASA is helping with satellites like Aqua and CloudSat, which study the Earth's water cycle and clouds in 3-D.

Image taken by a satellite of a hurricane. Below is a cross-section of the storm clouds, colored to show how much water is contained in the clouds at different heights.
The top image is a hurricane, as seen by a satellite. Below is a cross-section of the storm clouds. This colorful image was made with data from the CloudSat satellite. It shows with different colors how much water is contained in the clouds at different heights.

 

[jem]

http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap09/rossow.html


In order to predict the climate change, we need to understand the key aspects of the climate system. One key aspect is how cloudiness changes in an atmosphere with more greenhouse gases, and how, in turn, this change in cloudiness affects the climate. This is important, because we all have experienced how important cloudiness is in determining the day's minimum and maximum temperatures, for instance. About 60% of the globe is covered by cloud. Clouds modulate Earth's radiation balance both in the visible and infrared spectra. Clouds are also important as key link in the hydrological cycle, and this involves transfer of water and heat from the oceans to the land surfaces. We know the following:

Clouds cool the Earth by reflecting incoming sunlight. The tiny drops or ice particles in clouds scatter between 20 and 90 percent of the sunlight that strikes them, giving them their bright, white appearance. From space, clouds look bright whereas large bodies of water look dark. A cloud-free Earth would absorb nearly 20 percent more heat from the sun than the present Earth does. To be in radiation balance Earth would have to be warmer by about 12�C. Clouds cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space, much as they chill a summer's day at the beach.
Clouds warm the Earth by absorbing infrared radiation emitted from the surface and reradiating it back down. The process traps heat like a blanket and slows the rate at which the surface can cool. The blanketing effect warms Earth's surface by some 7�C.
Thus the net effect of clouds on the climate is to cool the surface by about 5�C, at least under the current global distribution of clouds. Clouds reflect about 50 W m-2 of solar radiation up into space, and radiate about 30 W m-2 down to the ground, so the net effect is 20 W m-2 cooling on average. This greatly exceeds the 4 W m-2 warming due to doubling the atmosphere�s carbon dioxide from 300 to 600 ppm, or the roughly 2 W m-2 cooling caused by aerosols.
We don't know �

how clouds themselves will change by the warming of the Earth, forced by a change in greenhouse gas concentration; and
what the net cooling or warming effect of all clouds on Earth will be in a changing atmosphere.
If the cooling effect of clouds increases more than the heating effect does, the clouds would reduce the magnitude of the greenhouse-induced warming but speed its arrival (negative feedback). The same result could come about if both effects decrease, but the cooling decreases less than the heating does. If the cooling increases less (or decreases more) than the heating, the cloud changes would boost the magnitude of eventual warming but delay its arrival. (It is also possible for the two effects to go in opposite directions, which would give rise to outcomes similar to the ones mentioned, but more intense.) In any event, what matters is only the net effect of clouds. A complicating factor is the altitude of the clouds: high clouds have a net warming effect, because they block little incoming solar radiation but, being so cold, they return little outgoing infrared radiation back to the Earth surface. Low clouds have a net cooling effect, because they have a high albedo, and, being nearly as warm as the surface, they emit nearly as much infrared radiation to space as would the surface under clear skies.

At this time very little is known about the sensitivity of clouds to a changing climate (1). Little is known about the stratus cloud veil that covers much of the subtropical oceans, for instance off California and off Chile. Yet these clouds are believed to be very important in the global radiation balance, and can be readily excited by manmade CCN, as evidenced in ship tracks. Also, surface-based cloud observations are very limited in temporal resolution and spatial coverage of the globe. For these reasons, the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project was established in 1982, and a satellite dubbed CLOUDSAT, carrying a 95 GHz cloud radar and backscatter lidar, will be launched in 2004.



References

(1) Rossow, W.B., and Y.-C. Zhang 1995. Calculation of surface and top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes from physical quantities based on ISCCP datasets: 2. Validation and first results. J. Geophys. Res. 100, 1167-1197.

 

[gwb-trading]

Quote from futurecurrents:

The Antarctic IS melting. We've been through this already multiple times. It's sea ice from the melting land ice.

You don't need to try to be stupid. It comes naturally.

I could show charts but it's pointless.

You're an idiot.

You must be using Toronto Mayor Ford's crack pipe.

The sea ice is increasing. The recent land ice measurements are increasing on over 80% of the continent.

Yeah, it really is pointless to show us up-to-date charts that prove exactly what we are saying... which is why you always post charts from a decade ago in a twisted attempt to prove your fabricated AGW points.

 

[futurecurrents]

Quote from jem:

read this you ignorant leftist drones and see what real science is...

they admit it leaves scientists "scratching their heads".

(which is code for hey the data and evidence we have seems to be pointing to the fact that more clouds cool the earth (just like the data with aerosols) ... but we can't really admit that right now... so we are looking for some other explanation.)

http://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/


Or do clouds make Earth warmer?

Here is a riddle—a serious one, not a joke:

As the ocean warms up, more water evaporates into the air. So does more water vapor then mean more warming? And does more warming mean more water vapor? And ‘round and ‘round we go?

Drawing shows how clouds have a greenhouse effect at night. Clouds trap some of the heat coming from Earth's surface, preventing it from escaping into space.
At night, clouds trap some of the heat from Earth's surface. Thus, it does not escape back into space.

Or, since more water vapor means more clouds, will the fluffy white clouds reflect enough sunlight back into space to make up for the warming?

Drawing shows arrows that represent sun's energy reflecting off tops of clouds.
During the day, clouds reflect the Sun's energy back to space, before it has a chance to heat Earth's surface.

This cloud riddle has scientists scratching their heads and trying to figure it out. NASA is helping with satellites like Aqua and CloudSat, which study the Earth's water cycle and clouds in 3-D.

Image taken by a satellite of a hurricane. Below is a cross-section of the storm clouds, colored to show how much water is contained in the clouds at different heights.
The top image is a hurricane, as seen by a satellite. Below is a cross-section of the storm clouds. This colorful image was made with data from the CloudSat satellite. It shows with different colors how much water is contained in the clouds at different heights.

Water vapor and temperature are a negative feedback system. As clouds increase the solar decreases which lowers temps which lowers water vapor. So the greenhouse gas, water vapor, is self limiting.

CO2 and temp is a positive feedback system. As CO2 increases so does temps, which results in higher CO2 levels from outgassing/lower solubility of CO2 from the oceans.



But nice try at a red herring jem. Right out of the denier machine playbook.

 

[jem]

you are just an ignorant bullshitter who never even reads the science or admits science does not really know... well try factoring this in to your idea of self limiting. You really seem to lack the brain power to think in systems.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/earths-clouds-are-sinking-and-could-help-cool-planet



Earth's clouds are sinking lower in the sky, with fewer clouds at high altitudes and lower cloudtops in general, says a new analysis of satellite data. The coming fog means that Earth will cool down more efficiently — so the lowering of clouds could slow the effects of global warming.

This potential negative feedback loop is evident in about 10 years of satellite data, so not much at all in the grand scheme of climate research. But it's a hint that something interesting is happening, according to Roger Davies, the lead researcher on a new paper based on findings from NASA's Terra spacecraft.

Several NASA assets look at clouds in a variety of ways, measuring their size, structure, formation, altitude and other vitals. The data is important for weather forecasting as well as long-term climate forecasting. Among other instruments, the Terra satellite contains nine cameras at different angles that produce 3-D images of clouds around the world. The satellite launched in 1999 and the new study examined its first decade of data.

The data show that global average cloud height declined by roughly one percent over the decade, decreasing by around 100 to 130 feet. This was mostly the result of fewer clouds forming at the highest altitudes, according to a NASA release. Scientists are not sure why this happened, but it might be due to a change in atmospheric circulation patterns at high altitudes, Davies said. But they do know what it could mean: A drop in cloud height would allow more heat to escape the Earth into space, reducing the overall temperature of the planet. So differences in cloud formation, wrought by a warming climate, could help counteract the effects of that warming.

For all their impact on our weather and our moods, clouds are one of the most poorly understood variables in climate change models. Terra and other cloud-watchers, notably CloudSat, aim to improve cloud representation in those models. Terra is scheduled to keep gathering this type of data for another decade, so maybe by 2020 we'll know what the clouds are up to.

Quote from futurecurrents:

Water vapor and temperature are a negative feedback system. As clouds increase the solar decreases which lowers temps which lowers water vapor. So the greenhouse gas, water vapor, is self limiting.

CO2 and temp is a positive feedback system. As CO2 increases so does temps, which results in higher CO2 levels from outgassing/lower solubility of CO2 from the oceans.



But nice try at a red herring jem. Right out of the denier machine playbook.

 

[jem]

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/tselioudis_01/

The results of the study have important implications in the work of scientists who use climate models to examine whether our planet's climate will continue to warm in the upcoming century. This is because two leading climate models, one from NASA/GISS and the other from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, predict that in a future warmer climate, in which the temperature difference between tropics and midlatitudes that fuels storm generation will be smaller, the atmosphere will be producing fewer midlatitude storms. According to this study's results, in winter a reduction in storm events that tend to warm the planet's atmosphere will introduce a cooling effect on climate warming, while in all other seasons a reduction in storm events that tend to cool the planet's surface will introduce an additional warming effect on climate warming. The study made a simple "back of the envelope" calculation and found that those cooling and warming climate effects are potentially significant as they can reach values as large as 2 and 5 Watts per square meter respectively. This points to the need to improve the presently inadequate representation of storm clouds in climate models in order to accurately quantify their potential climate effects.

 

[futurecurrents]

Quote from gwb-trading:

You must be using Toronto Mayor Ford's crack pipe.

The sea ice is increasing. The recent land ice measurements are increasing on over 80% of the continent.

Yeah, it really is pointless to show us up-to-date charts that prove exactly what we are saying... which is why you always post charts from a decade ago in a twisted attempt to prove your fabricated AGW points.

No. Idiot. You are of course, once again deluded and wrong. Sorry you have to be that way. On balance, the land ice mass is decreasing.

"There is variation between regions within Antarctica (Figure 2, top panel), with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet losing ice mass, and with an increasing rate. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing slightly over this period but not enough to offset the other losses. There are of course uncertainties in the estimation methods but independent data from multiple measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly."

read this if you want to know the science..... in stead of the Koch bros funded right wing propaganda that is rotting whatever is left of your brain....

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

 

[jem]

new study out 2 days ago.
aerosols making things confusing as well.


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v503/n7474/full/nature12674.html




Abstract
Abstract• References• Author information• Extended data figures and tables•
The effect of anthropogenic aerosols on cloud droplet concentrations and radiative properties is the source of one of the largest uncertainties in the radiative forcing of climate over the industrial period. This uncertainty affects our ability to estimate how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gas emissions. Here we perform a sensitivity analysis on a global model to quantify the uncertainty in cloud radiative forcing over the industrial period caused by uncertainties in aerosol emissions and processes. Our results show that 45 per cent of the variance of aerosol forcing since about 1750 arises from uncertainties in natural emissions of volcanic sulphur dioxide, marine dimethylsulphide, biogenic volatile organic carbon, biomass burning and sea spray. Only 34 per cent of the variance is associated with anthropogenic emissions. The results point to the importance of understanding pristine pre-industrial-like environments, with natural aerosols only, and suggest that improved measurements and evaluation of simulated aerosols in polluted present-day conditions will not necessarily result in commensurate reductions in the uncertainty of forcing estimates.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from futurecurrents:

OK. I see the problem......................

No...you don't.

It IS absolutely true that every science organization in the world is in basic agreement about AGW. In addition there is none that dispute it.

"You Lie!"

In addition, Exxon, BP and The Weather Channel agree.

The founder of the weather channel does NOT agree.

What part of that do YOU not understand?