Has the world actually been cooling since 2002?

[watchwolf49]

@wolfpup

1. Climate sensitivity isn’t based on a “time frame”, but rather based on climate response to CO2 increase at the point of equilibrium

2. I’m not “assuming” anything. I’m stating the outcome based on the most probable values of climate sensitivity.

So, we have hundreds and hundreds of years to work on this. Do we have information about the equilibrium, one that includes all the climate change components? You second point is confusing to me, don’t you have to assume these probabilities, or which are most likely to change climate?

@wolfpup

If you mean climate sensitivity, there’s no possible “algorithm” for that like there is for forcings; estimates are based on a combination of paleoclimate (observations of how the climate responded to CO2 increases in the past), present observations, and modeling. It’s usually represented as a probability density function with plausible values between about 1.5 and 4.5ºC, very tightly bounded on the low end but not on the high, with the highest probabilities centering around 3.

Are these estimates or are these models? I did a little poking around and found that the climate models do use algorithms, the simplest being:

T = (((1-a)S)/4e[sub]e[/sub]o[sub]sb[/sub])[sup]1/4[/sup]

where T=temperature, a=albedo, S=the solar constant, e[sub]e[/sub] (epsilon)=emissivity and o[sub]sb[/sub] (sigma)=Stefan-Boltzmann constant.

The various climate models get more complicated from here. It would be very helpful in the future if you could specify which model or models are being used to generate your data and of special importance is the margin of error. In reality, we need to see the spaghetti maps and have a clear idea of what components are assumed to be negligible for each of the model runs. We can all see that by decreasing emissivity (by increasing CO[sub]2[/sub] concentrations) we would increase temperature, but that assumes both the solar constant and albedo remain the same. Those are bad assumptions, as neither has shown to be constant over the time periods in question.

Models are very useful to point us in the right direction for our research, but they themselves do not produce hard data, just estimates … and they’re prone to be full of error especially the longer the run is and/or the larger the unit volume is.

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You’re lucky, RaftPeople, you only got called a dirty rotten denialist. Gigo called me ignorant first thing. Whether his intent, he only succeeds in killing every thread about climate change. I’ve noticed this is the last one, so that’s why he’s here, looking for the bogey man denying global warming. On a regular basis, his are fully half the postings whenever this subject comes up. Frankly, I’m sick of having to scroll through pages and pages just to keep a single topic in discussion.

Even cats know when to quit (except mine, stupid fuckers).