NASA reads the election returns

From: NSPIRES-Help
Date: December 13, 2006 1:18:00 PM EST
Subject: ROSES-06 Amendment 23: Proposal opportunity for
Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology

With this amendment to ROSES-2006, NASA reestablishes a proposal opportunity in Appendix C.18 entitled “Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology.” The goal of NASA's Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program is to understand the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the Universe. Research is centered on the origin and early evolution of life, the potential of life to adapt to different environments, and the implications for life elsewhere. This research is conducted in the context of NASA’s ongoing exploration of our stellar neighborhood and the identification of biosignatures for in situ and remote sensing applications. Notices of Intent to propose are due January 19, 2007, and proposals are due March 15, 2007.

The perfect gift

Doing our holiday Christmas shopping on line we traipse from Tim Lambert who sends us to Zuzka from whence the comment by wardant lead us to Global Warming Watch

Wait a moment while the gift heats up or add hot water.




Available at Wacky Planet

UPDATE: As Steve Bloom points out in the comments, this is a bit extreme (it also may vanish again, it already has once, since it is hosted on the sales site.) On the other hand, Alex Tingle has given us an early holiday Christmas present, a really neat toy based on Google maps and NASA elevation data, which can show you sea level rises up to 14 m on any scale! and here are the instructions on how to do it yourself.

Oregon Petition: The Musical Anonymuse comes through again .......

UPDATE: After closing in New Haven, the show was renamed by TimL, a new cast was recruited by Ross and S. Fred, and gone on to flop on Broadway at a cost of millions.

Having accepted the Tom Lehrer challenge (scroll to bottom of the post), Anonymuse gifts us with this song about another one of those lovable old characters who go around spreading sweetness and light to the climate policy community

When the windowshades are falling,
cuz it's hotter'n hell outside,
the think tank wank comes calling,
to take you for a ride.

In the local paper you will find him,
and on blogs and websites too,
it's the AGW denier
getting rich while your grandkids get screwed.

He tells you "No need to worry
'Bout drillers and polluters."
cuz he knows those kids in car seats
Will be tomorrow's gas-guzzling commuters.

Here's a cure for that guilty conscience,
Here's an end to all distress.
It's the old oil peddlar
With his gas-powered happiness.

Music for the sing along (original Lehrer version and some appropriate unfathomable video):

Madame Rabett knows all (readings $5)....

Some time ago, Eli got into it with denialist riff-raff, and in the course of the debate, modestly pointed out that he had posted on everything they were saying before they said it. The Rabett mostly keeps his political political comments off this blog as opposed to his climate political comments and his political climate comments, but to show you why you should never, ever mess with the bunny, right after the US election Eli started to point out in various places that

Re: C-Span Washington Journal on Monday (none / 0)

A minor suggestion you might offer. Since the Republicans left the budget approval to the next Congress, the Democrats should strip out EVERY set aside and send the thing forward post haste. True some D set asides will go away, but think of the message.

by Eli Rabett on Sat Nov 25, 2006 at 08:21:10 PM EST

and what do we get today....

Democrats tidying up a cluster of unfinished spending bills dumped on them by departing Republican leaders in Congress will start by removing billions of dollars in lawmakers’ pet projects next month.
The move, orchestrated by the incoming chairman of the Appropriations committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate, could prove politically savvy even as it proves unpopular with other members of Congress. As a group, they will lose thousands of so-called earmarks, personal projects inserted in legislation during the process of preparing it for passage.

"There will be no congressional earmarks," Rep. David Obey and Sen. Robert Byrd, both Democrats, said Monday in a statement announcing their plans. The idea was quickly endorsed by incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Ms. Rabett demurrs and tells Madame Rabett to put the fishbowl back on the mantel.

Oregon Deception Project . . .

where we find John Humphreys in the graveyard resurrecting this unkillable climate denialist zombie. Tim Lambert, thermometer in hand tries to bludgeon the poor beast into eternal peace (and quiet). For those of you fortunate enough not to know what the hell Eli is babbling about, go, leave, get hence from this post, lest the spirit of love and kindness curdle in our season of good will and you try to stiff your loved ones (Ms. Rabett has informed Eli that any such attempt would be a health contraindication).

On the other hand, if you wish to plumb the depths of depraved indifference and greed, stay tuned. To come up to speed on this delightful tale, we recommend this merry case study on Source Watch. Another place to learn all about it is Myanna Lahsen's article on deceptive climate politics tactics (see this previous comment at the Rabett hutch). Under the rubric

Defining Science in Public Relations Campaigns: The Role of Nonscientists and Simulated Scientific Authority

Lahsen describes a noxious example

The Example of the 1998 Petition Campaign

In 1998, tens of thousands of U.S. scientists received an envelope containing a bulk-mailed letter, an article, and a petition form. The letter was signed by Frederick Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences and chairman of a think tank, the George C. Marshall Institute. Seitz’s letter asked recipients to join a campaign urging the U.S. government to reject international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Kyoto Protocol.......

Seitz, of course, learned the trade from the tobacco lobby, and certainly received wonderful fellowship support from them while studying. Lahsen continues

Accompanying the petition package was an article referred to as a “scientific summary.” It was authored by Arthur and Zachary Robinson, as well as two Ph.D. astrophysicists, Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. The former two were once again affiliated with their “Oregon Institute,” while Baliunas and Soon were listed as affiliated with the George C. Marshall Institute. ......

The “scientific summary”was another instance of deceptive manipulation of recognized symbols of science: it was formatted such that it looked like an article that had appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a renowned and peer-reviewed scientific journal issued by the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Yet the summary was not peer reviewed and, according to recognized climate experts, contained numerous inaccuracies and one-sided presentation of the scientific evidence—what one climate expert referred to as the “cherry-picking of facts.”15 According to the National Academy, many lay persons and scientists were indeed misled, as indicated by the many calls it received from persons wanting to know whether the Academy had indeed taken a stance against the global warming theory (Science 1998)......

As to the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine

Additional examples of “conjured” scientific authority emerged around the petition campaign. The letter asking people to sign the petition was accompanied by a copy of the Wall Street Journal editorial article by Arthur and Zachary Robinson, the two “chemists” quoted above. “Science Has Spoken,” read the title (Robinson and Robinson, 1997). The prestigious sounding institution with which they were affiliated — the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine—was elsewhere revealed to be a one room operation located on a farm on a rural road in the forested foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains. It consisted only of Arthur B. Robinson, a chemist with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, and his 21-year-old son, who has no advanced degree (Hill 1998).

Where do they get their funding from you ask, well in a 1998 article by Hill in the Oregonian, Robinson says that their income was ~$200K, split between donations and payments for home schooling material, but in 1999 their income was $400K, which gives us some idea of what their little project cost.

And what about our friends at the Marshall Institute

The George C. Marshall Institute, which was central in the 1998 Petition Campaign, presents itself as an objective source of policy advice on matters related to science, the environment, and national defense...... It offers itself as an alternative to a general trend toward politicized scientific appraisals.16

The claims to objectivity of think tanks such as the George C. Marshall Institute emerge as another obstacle for lay recognition of bias in scientific information. The Marshall Institute was established in the 1980s to influence opinion and policy. It was established and continues to be run by means of money from wealthy conservative elites, including the Mellon Scaife’s family foundation (McCright 1998; Sarah Scaife Foundation 1996). Between 1992 and 1994 alone, the Marshall Institute, which is part of the conservative antienvironmental movement (McCright and Dunlap 2000), received more than a million dollars from just twelve influential private foundations supporting the conservative movement (McCright 1998, 62). Despite the institute’s self-description, it is not unbiased. It shows a consistent bias toward free-market forces unfettered by regulation, which it also promotes.

Now I know Anonymuse, and lord knows, the bunny ain't a poet, but I do remember the songs of my youth. As Tom Lehrer said

You are no doubt familiar with songs about the old lamplighter and the old umbrella man and the old garbage collector and all these lovable old characters who go around spreading sweetness and light to their respective communities. But, it's always seemed to me that there is one member of this happy band who does an equally splendid job, but who has never been properly recognized in song or story, and this is an attempt to remedy, at least in part, that deplorable situation.
When the shades of night are falling,
Comes a fellow everyone knows.
It's the old dope peddler,
Spreading joy wherever he goes.

Every evening you will find him,
Around our neighborhood.
It's the old dope peddler
Doing well by doing good.

He gives the kids free samples,
Because he knows full well
That today's young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow's clientele.

Here's a cure for all your troubles,
Here's an end to all distress.
It's the old dope peddler
With his powdered happiness.

Feel free to take liberties.

The origins of climate cacophony.....

This being finals week, Ethon was in the library at Boulder chewing on a chopped liver sandwhich when he came across an interesting paper by Myanna Lahsen, a cultural anthropologist in RPJr's shop. Ethon, who likes to snack on cultured scientists himself, flipped it open and began to read Technocracy, Democracy, and U.S. Climate Politics: The Need for Demarcations which starts...

.....Since the early 1990s, the U.S. public has been subjected to numerous media-driven campaigns to shape understandings of this widely perceived threat. Political interests have instigated an important part of these campaigns, frequently resorting to ethically problematic tactics to undermine attempts at policy action designed to avert or reduce the threat. The disproportionate influence of such interests suggests the need for a more level political playing field characterized by more equalized access to power and influence.

Eth sent us an IM and the Rabett picked up the thread. Although our motto is RTFR, Eli was amused by several blunt, but true, statements in this paper:

Conservative financial elites and fossil fuel–related vested interests have been central driving forces in this “environmental backlash,” which has relied on a group of about ten of scientists as providers of essential scientific authority. The high-profile climate dissidents are largely a U.S. phenomenon: while Germany, Sweden, and England, in addition to a few other countries, host one or two such skeptics each, no other countries dispose of a similarly large “resistance movement” or the scientific cacophony they help create.......

A bit of backing and filling, the obligatory nod to Lindzen as a "real scientist", and the statement of a thesis

My critique is focused on the money-dominated machinery that seizes on the dozen dissident scientists, a machinery that (1) owes its success to the unequal distribution of financial resources and political influence, (2) often resorts to techniques that deceive rather than illuminate the citizenry, and (3) gives disproportionate influence to a minority of scientists and to non-peer-reviewed opinions on the part of the latter. The ways in which the dissident scientists are used by such vested interests illustrate the value of scientific authority as a political resource and the extent to which such scientific authority can be simulated. Such abuses of scientific authority (described further below), in turn, underscore the need for a general public equipped to identify them and to distinguish between better and worse sources of scientific information (i.e., the relatively greater reliability of the IPCC over a coalition of industry groups with vested interests in a fossil fuel dependence). Since the abuses are designed to be concealed, they are not easily identified. Publics also need to develop critical distance to the objectivist discourses commonly deployed by scientists and other actors on both sides of the issue.

Lahsen is loath to attribute malevolent purpose to the denialist scientist types, assigning that to their paymasters. Eli believes that naive in many cases. Her book is slated for completion in 2007: A Scientific Culture War: Global Warming and the New Production of Knowledge, although at a minimum you will have to read the paper to understand what she means by production of knowledge. However, we will be interested to see a copy when it appears.

Sing along with anonymous anonymuse....

The anonymuse is punch drunk from the climate wars. Moved from the comments:

On the Frist day of Christmas a denialist gave to me,
A "CO2 is life" video clip.

On the second day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
2 think-tank wanks and a "CO2 is life" video clip.

On the third day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Three Petro-geologists,
2 think-tank wanks
and a "CO2 is life" video clip.

On the fourth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Four blogging Frauditors,
3 petro-geologists,
2 think-tank wanks
and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the fifth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
4 blogging Frauditors,
3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the sixth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Six Oilmen alying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
4 blogging Frauditors, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the seventh day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Seven denialists a-shilling,
Six Oilmen alying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
Four blogging Frauditors,, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the eighth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Eight Bushies a-censoring,
Seven denialists a-shilling,
Six Oilmen alying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
Four blogging Frauditors,, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the ninth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Nine Singers singing,
Eight Bushies a-censoring,
Seven denialists a-shilling,
Six Oilmen alying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
Four blogging Frauditors,, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the tenth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me
Ten Lord Monckton's a-leaping,
Nine Singers singing,
Eight Bushies a-censoring,
Seven denialists a-shilling,
Six Oilmen a-lying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
Four blogging Frauditors,, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the leventh day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me.
Eleven tailpipes puffing,
Ten Lord Monckton's a-leaping,
Nine Singers singing,
Eight Bushies a-censoring,
Seven denialists a-shilling,
Six Oilmen alying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
Four blogging Frauditors,, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, a denialist gave to me,
Twelve Oil drums drumming,
Eleven tailpipes puffing,
Ten Lord Monckton's a-leaping,
Nine Singers singing,
Eight Bushies a-censoring,
Seven denialists a-shilling,
Six Oilmen a-lying,
Fiiiiive Inhofe rants,
Four blogging Frauditors,, 3 petro-geologists, 2 think-tank wanks and a CO2 is life video clip.

It is NOT BAU this month

From Singer, to Chilinger to Monckton to Inhofe, the drums are beating in the jungle of denial. Why you ask? Just remember the AR4 (IPCC Assessment Report 4) is due in January. Until then you can bet your bottom dollar everyday will bring something new and strange, but with certainty, not wonderful. Think of it as the Exxon Advent Calendar. Sometimes here at Rabett Run we think we should change the name Blogging the Science Atrocities Blogs.com.

Why you ask? Well when would it be more important to muddy the waters than before the release of an assessment document that will clearly identify the responsibility of humans for the deteriorating state of the climate and point to major future damage if no actions are taken.

Taken from this perspective the Stern Report, although it was at the far end of possible analyses was an important counter weight. Taken from this perspective it is increasingly important for those with standing in the reality based climate research and policy communities to get their point of view into newspapers. It's time to move out of the blogs and seminar rooms folks and start submitting those op-eds to major and minor newspapers, to your campus newspaper (for academics), to society membership journals like C&E News.

It's vital that between now and the release of the AR4 that every opportunity for outreach to local school groups, fraternal organizations such as the Lions, the Rotary, and, of course, the Bunnies (we meet in the carrot patch on the second Tuesday of the month. Carrot cake and juice will be served and Eli will be giving his talk on the 12th).

What would help is a presentation package that anyone could access, modify and use. Suggestions? Volunteers. We need someone to coordinate the effort. We know that several public relations firms are involved in meeting the challenge, but they too are not really organized in a coordinated effort. Time is short.

Of course, I'm but a poor bunny.

If you want to take a class this weekend....(Resource alert)

the next best thing might be to look at Don Wuebbles lecture notes for ATMS449 - Biogeochemical Cycles at the University of Illinois Urbana campus. Stunning work, informative graphics, and how we long for the sound track. Even a hard headed Rabett has learned much.

But he started this mom....

Among the comments on our latest Rabett Institute report on Where did all the CO2 go was this anonymous gem....

Where has all the carbon dioxide gone?
Long time outgassing.

Where has all the carbon dioxide gone?
Long time ago.

Where has all the carbon dioxide gone?
To rocks and plants and everyone,

When will the denialists ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Such a challenge could not long go unanswered, and it did not

Where have all the denialists gone?
Talk about outgassing.

Where have all the Inhofes gone?
Long time ago.

Where have all the Virgina State Climatologists gone?
Gone to greener ($) pastures everyone.

When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Which brought forth

Where has all the Exxon-Mobil money gone?
For Michael-Mann-harassing.

Where has all the Exxon-Mobil money gone?
We'll probably never know.

Where has all the Exxon-Mobil money gone?
Gone to denialist think tanks everyone.

When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

As Al Gore will be recording this for Fred Singer's IPod next week we welcome further suggestions. Pete Seeger is revolving (turn, turn, turn Pete).

Where HAS all the CO2 gone.......

Just when you think it can't get more stupic (combining stupid and stupification in a neat package), the denial crowd grubs down into the ditch and finds more. The latest is a couple of papers by two characters from USC civil engineering, L.F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar (K-C), who, in Environmental Geology inquire: "On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?" Friend Lubos provides a copy for your amusement. This little gem has been taken apart in the same journal by Werner Aeschbach-Hertig (WAH), also available in Lubos land until the copyright police break down the door.

Nexus has a whack at the K-C Pinata, and handed the bat off to Tim Lambert (handy for destroying English bowling too, something the Aussies seem to enjoy lately). Among other things, K-H claim that the amount of CO2 emitted from outgassing during the very early days, is huge, compared to the amount emitted every year by people. Unfortunately, as WAH point out, they forgot to divide the geological emissions by the number of years that it took. When you do so, the amount emitted by us per year looks large. Aeschbach-Hertig notes in passing that

It appears that the authors assume that the 4.63 × 10²³ g of CO₂ degassed from the mantle all remained in the atmosphere. Yet, the present day atmosphere contains less than 3 × 10¹⁸ g of CO₂, and compared to this number the total anthropogenic CO₂ emission of 1 × 10¹⁸ g certainly is significant.

This is not quite the case, at least if you read the Figures but here at the Rabettorium we also noticed that there ain't so much CO2 in the air, the mixing ratio is ~ 380 ppm, so where did it all go. Some of it went to us, that's where the carbon comes from, some to the stuff we eat, and the O2 went to well, O2, but mostly to various oxides. There is a nice illustration of the history of the atmosphere from a lecture by Don Wuebbles.
Early on who knows, but soon thereafter (4.3 billion years ago), the water vapor fell out of the sky and made oceans, with an atmosphere about 30% CO2, 10% methane and a bunch of nitrogen. The CO2 concentration then rapidly declined leaving a nitrogen methane atmosphere (where did it go besides the oceans? well be patient little bunnies). If you wonder why people get excited about Titan, the composition of that giant moon's atmosphere is not far off the atmosphere of the earth between 3.5 and 2.5 billion years ago when life arose, and, as its first parlor trick, started to generate O2.

So where did the 4.5 bil year ago CO2 go? As we said, a lot went and hid in the deep oceans, dissolving into the water and forming carbonic acid, and hydrogen carbonate and carbonate ions. Roger Revelle was one of the first to study how CO2 is absorbed into the oceans. A nice discussion of the carbon cycle can be found at the Hadley Center the bottom line being that there is a lot of CO2 at the bottom of the ocean but this is not a perfect guide as life has reared its ugly head and is a major part of the cycle. The carbonates produced by dissolving of CO2 into the ocean, can be incorporated into the earth's crust at the bottom of the seas in subduction zones and then be transported to the continents, hence limestone mountains. The carbonates weather over time returning CO2 to the atmosphere. When you have a couple of billion years, anything is possible.

Since there was no free oxygen back then, to form ozone and absorb light below 300 nm, water vapor and CO2 were photolysed by light whose wavelength was shorter than 200nm to form oxygen atoms. The oxygen atoms recombined to form oxygen molecules, but this oxygen was rapidly consumed by oxydizing iron (to iron oxide) and other metals to oxides and sulfides to sulfates (ok, suphides to suphates or S(2-) compounds to SO4(2-) compounds, sulphur being quiet common in volcanic eruptions and denialist fulminations.

This went on until about 2 billion years ago life arose (at the 2.o billion years ago START in the diagram above and also seen in the rise of atmospheric O2 in the figure at the top) and learned how to convert CO2 to O2 and carbon based stuff. Some of this carbon based stuff decided to turn into oil and coal and gas, which we are now burning.

Khilyuk and Chilingar, of course, only looked at the production of CO2 from outgassing, they somehow neglected to consider that a lot of it got reburied, much of it was recycled and a bunch was transformed by biogeochemical processes. They apparently don't realize the implications of their Figure 7 for example, which, btw has life arising much too late at less than 1 billion years ago. To paraphrase Ev Dirksen a billion years here, a billion years there, and sooner or later you are talking about real time.

UPDATE: The Pete Singer song contest is now open for new entries.

IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS:
Eli may have had the thought, but Anonymous had the rhyme (and the guts):

Where has all the carbon dioxide gone?
Long time outgassing.

Where has all the carbon dioxide gone?
Long time ago.

Where has all the carbon dioxide gone?
To rocks and plants and everyone,

When will the denialists ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Shine on shine on Monckton's moon......

There has been much ado about Monckton's folly, aka "Apocalypse Cancelled" which first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, complete with instructions to the unlettered, aka discussion, calculations and references. The overnight shift at Rabett Labs (we are growing stuff again, and it does take forever and two days) is extremely grateful to Monckton of Brenchley, for otherwise we might be doing productive things while we wait for the paint to dry.

Now Eli is an old and crafty Rabett (how the hell do you think you get to be an old Rabett with all them bears and program managers out there trying to get your grants, aka cheese), and he knows that when people start to wade through dense pack, they very seldom get far, and the really juicy stuff is oft hid at the back, where only the ghoulies and the ghillies go, so he started on page 30, where Monckton describes his M model (the references start on 34).

With the rest of the fun bunch, he steps through the standard Stefan-Boltzmann argument about the temperature of an atmosphere lacking earth. It actually is standard stuff that you can find all over the net. A nice example is this dry lab at the Colorado School of Mines. The calculation Monckton does starts on pg 10 of the dry lab, but there is much other information there that you might be interested in. Pretty much the same thing occurs in all the "M Models" (blame him for that, not me). The temperature of the Earth without an atmosphere would be given, on average by

If you use standard values for the solar constant, the albedo (alpha), and the Stefan Boltzman constant (sigma) you get T~ (255K) [UPDATE: that's a ~ for approximately, not a negative sign].

Monckton then notes that the average global temperature (surface, sea, whatever) is about 15 C or 288 K and then says that the greenhouse effect is ~ (30K), not the ~ (20 K) referred to in the IPCC TAR and elsewhere. He gets quite huffy about this.

So dear friends, we ask, why is 255 K the right answer to the wrong question?

Well it turns out to be interesting. In his calculation for the earth without an atmosphere, Monckton uses the average albedo of the earth with an atmosphere, about .31. That includes clouds (not there if you don't have an atmosphere), water (tends to go away in a vacuum), and ice to some extent, but surely not grass.

What value of the albedo SHOULD you use when the atmosphere ain't there: The Moon's albedo might be a good estimate or maybe that of Mars:

Astronomers have determined the visual albedos of our planets. From NASA’s planetary sites, the brightest is Venus with an albedo of 0.65. That means 65% of incoming sunlight is reflected from the cloud-covered planet. The remaining 35% contributes to the heat energy of Venus. Mercury, at 0.11, has the lowest planetary albedo. Earth’s albedo is 0.37; Mars is 0.15; Jupiter, 0.52; Saturn, 0.47; Uranus, 0.51; Neptune 0.41. Pluto’s albedo varies from 0.5 to 0.7.

It should be pointed out that these planetary albedos are averages. Taking Earth as an example, clouds vary from 0.4 to 0.8, snow varies from 0.4 to 0.85, forests vary from 0.04 to 0.1, grass is about 0.15, and water varies from 0.02 with the Sun directly overhead to 0.8 at low levels of incidence. So the Earth’s albedo varies, and depends on the extent of cloudiness, snowfall, and the Sun’s angle of incidence on the oceans. With an average albedo of 0.37, 63% of incoming solar energy contributes to the warmth of our planet. It’s obvious that if cloud cover were to decrease significantly, the Earth’s surface temperature would increase, contributing to other factors of global warming such as the amounts of greenhouse gasses.

Our Moon’s average albedo is 0.12.

So you plug a Mars like 0.15 in for alpha, and turn the crank and you get a warm 268 K, about 13 K higher than if you used the 0.31 albedo typical of an Earth with an atmosphere. And, as you can see, this gives a greenhouse warming of 20 K, and a lot of Monckton's arguments go down the drain.

UPDATE: We can gain another insight into the problem by looking at the Earth's Radiation Budget. Below (you may have to open the figure up in a new window) you can see that of the incoming ~ 342 W/m^2 about 102 are reflected in the atmosphere (the albedo of ~ .3), and about 15 W/m^2 are absorbed IN the atmosphere. If you look down at the bottom, about 160 of the 185 W/m^2 that make it to the surface are absorbed, which yields a surface albedo of 15/185 ~ 0.08. That makes sense. The earth, with all its water and green stuff should absorb more visible radiation than say the shining Moon.



However, let us be honest (why, why you ask...:because I am going to get a cheap publication out of this) Monckton was not the first to make this mistake, and I even know lots of textbooks on atmospheric chemistry that include the same error.

See what you missed...

Ethon is back from Thanksgiving (if you are sick of turkey, he is full up on liver) and was wandering over at the old place where he saw this from William Sweet

In a nutshell: Fermi had told the graduate student Isodor Rabi that the idea of an atomic bomb was "nuts." Rabi conveyed that opinion to Leo Szilard, who was sounding the alarm about the possibility of a Nazi nuclear weapon. Szilard suggested Rabi ask Fermi just why he thought the idea was nuts. Rabi did so, and Fermi told him he considered the possibility of a bomb being made successfully was ”remote.” So Rabi asked Fermi what he meant by that. Fermi said that the possibility of a bomb being built successfully was perhaps only about 10 percent. To which Rabi said: "Wait a minute. If I go to the doctor and the doctor tells me that there’s a remote possibility I might die, and that it’s 10 percent, I get excited."

Nice story, but Rabi got his PhD. in 1927 and was on the faculty at Columbia for most of the 1930s. Fermi got there in 1938/9. Besides which Rabi's name was Isidor Isaac, and was almost always called I. I. Rabi. We here believe that Rabi's real name must have been Rabitt, but the family shortened it when they immigrated. For sure he was a Landsman as the Rabetts hail from Galicia on dad's side.

However, for some reason Ethon's lunch has become enamored by an air capture method for CO2 dreamed up by a couple of Canadians. He handwaves the energy and disposal issues away, but everyone is ignoring the camel in the tent. There is an IPCC report on CO2 capture that is quite optimistic, at least for capture and disposal from large fixed sources (power plants). The estimate is that without capture and geological storage the cost/KWH from a coal plant is U$0.04-0.05, and with it is U$0.06-0.10

As for mineral carbonation, RTFR. Again, something that no one did.

More on boring holes.....

As you may recall, Eli got his ears sucked down the Monckton hole with respect to a rather fanciful reconstruction by Shaopeng Huang and friends. What was so strange about this was that the figure the Monckton used, was very different from the 500 year reconstruction published by the gang of Pollack, Huang and Shen in Science 282 (1998) 789 and shown below
Now this reconstruction itself is under discussion, because it falls much lower than most other proxy records. They are also in disagreement with the various bent, broken or distorted hockey sticks which makes them quite popular some places. Mann, Rutherford, Bradley, Hughes and Keimeg took this on in 2003, (for those without access see comments in EOS I and EOS II











The low black line is Huang, et al. (2000) (a slightly updated version from the one shown above) averaging over the northern hemisphere. The dashed one areal weights the borehole data by cos-latitude. MRBHK2003 think that part of the story is that

The overwhelming majority of Northern Hemisphere borehole data come from regions that experience seasonal snow cover. The snow cover partially insulates the ground from cold-season air temperature and fluctuations therein, providing a potential insensitivity of the underlying ground temperature to cold winter air mass outbreaks (and implying a warm-season bias in borehole GST estimates, the degree of which depends on extent and duration of winter snow cover). Little, if any imprint, of the cooling associated with cold air outbreaks is recorded by a ground surface buried beneath a sufficiently thick seasonal snow cover layer. The accumulated influence of such outbreaks on winter mean SAT is considerably greater than the quite modest (on the order of a degree C or less) SAT trends sough from borehole reconstructions. In regions where midwinter snow cover has increased over the past few centuries (which could potentially be associated with either warmer or colder winters, depending on the details of air mass influence in the region), borehole GSTs may therefore exhibit a spurious apparent long-term warming (i.e., colder conditions back in time) due to an increasing incidence of insulating winter snow cover in more recent centuries.

Without getting into the who is right who is wrong of this, we recently saw a reference to a new paper Pollack, H.N., Huang, S., Smerdon, J.E., 2006. Five centuries of climate change in Australia: The view from underground. Journal of Quaternary Science, 21 (7): 701-706. Now, if there is one place where it does not snow much, Australia is it. As big as Australia is, even including Tasmania, it goes from ~16 (cos = .96) to ~40 (cos = .77) degrees south, and the difference between the mean latitude and the max/min will only be ~ 10%, so at least two of the issues raised by MRBHK2003 (does that not just roll off the tongue), won't be very much there. Let us go to the video tape then and see how Pollack, Huang and Smerdon do on the MRBHK2003 scale












Follow the bright green line.......hmm. (I know, Australia is not in the northern hemisphere, but look look there is the little ice age. What more do you want from a poor bunny).

Real Climate Audit II....

What got the folks here in the burrow thinking about Real Climate AuditsTM was a report on the Past Millenia Climate Variability Workshop in Eos. They came up with an interesting test of paleoclimate proxy reconstructions.

The PR Challenge will follow a doubleblind protocol in which various international climate modeling centers will provide long-term climate model simulation results for use in the project; a subset (network) will be provided to an independent group of scientists who will produce synthetic proxy data networks with varying statistical characteristics that reflect the behavior of real-world proxy data, with their potential strengths, limitations, and biases. Climate scientists involved in paleoclimate reconstruction will be challenged to apply their methods, using the synthetic proxy networks and the ‘modern instrumental record’ (i.e., actual model climate fields of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, appropriately degraded to simulate actual instrumental data), to estimate the true past behavior of the model as measured by various data (hemispheric mean temperatures, surface temperature fields, sea level pressure fields, etc.). Further information is available at http://www.pagesigbp.org/science/initiatives/challenge

Real Climate AuditsTM are not naive mechanical tests of coding or statistics.

Real Climate Audits.....

The climate community, contrary to assertions by the usual suspects, has always engaged in testing of methods and measurements. Eli is most familiar with measurement intercomparisons, where several groups bring their instrumentation to a common site and test each other against ambient conditions and reference samples but there are also intercomparisons of modeling methods and more. Best practice and method recommendations emerge. It is pretty easy to find these, for example, just search under intercomparison in the AGU archive. Since these are critical intercomparisons, they always mention what has to be improved, what should be abandoned and where a lot more work is needed. That does not mean that the tested state of the art is wrong, just that it is not perfect.

Weakening of the thermohaline circulation has been much in the news recently, but over a year ago, AGU published an 18 author paper:

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L12703, doi:10.1029/2005GL023209, 2005

A model intercomparison of changes in the Atlantic thermohaline circulation in response to increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentration

As part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, integrations with a common design have been undertaken with eleven different climate models to compare the response of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC) to time-dependent climate change caused by increasing atmospheric CO₂ concentration. Over 140 years, during which the CO₂ concentration quadruples, the circulation strength declines gradually in all models, by between 10 and 50%. No model shows a rapid or complete collapse, despite the fairly rapid increase and high final concentration of CO₂. The models having the strongest overturning in the control climate tend to show the largest THC reductions. In all models, the THC weakening is caused more by changes in surface heat flux than by changes in surface water flux. No model shows a cooling anywhere, because the greenhouse warming is dominant.

What brings this up is a reminder in EOS of the EPICA Challenge. EPICA is the European Project for Ice Core Analysis, which, at the time the challenge was issued were beavering (rabbits are slower, calmer and altogether cuter, ask Ms. Rabett) away on a long Dome C ice core that would extend back 740,000 years:

The prospect of a substantially longer record poses some fascinating new questions:What will be the CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the weak interglacials of the earlier period? Will CO2 still be at the standard “interglacial level”of 280 ppmv, or will it scale with Antarctic temperature and stand at about 240 ppmv (and similarly for methane)?......

What do the modeling community, and others who are putting forward ideas, believe we will see, and why? The purpose of the “EPICA challenge” is not to find a right answer, and declare a winner; indeed with our present knowledge it is more than likely that someone can get the right answer for the wrong reason.Rather the idea is to provide an impetus for modelers to expose the assumptions and arguments behind their predictions, leading to a more open discussion once the data are revealed.

We therefore invite anyone interested in doing so to predict what carbon dioxide and methane will look like back to at least 800 kyr B.P.,and to explain their reasoning,whether the result comes from a simple concept or from a full model run.Time is short, because it is possible that the first outline data sets will be available for presentation at the AGU Fall Meeting (13–17 December 2004).The data groups involved will endeavor to keep the data under wraps until then. Some modeling groups may like to submit their ideas in full to journals or at meetings. However, the PAGES International Project Office has also offered to collate and summarize responses that are received there before 15 November.

And the results of the EPICA Challenge is....the usual spaghetti graph, but you can find the details here (RTFR) in the final EOS write up and a poster.


OK, this record only goes to 650KY, anyone know where the rest is....modelers would like to know.

The strangest internet site.....

for collectors of weirdness. There is an old joke about machine translation being used to translate out of sight, out of mind into French and back again. It came out blind idiot. A few days ago Eli posted on "the old dog learns the new dog's tricks" only to find it being linked to by motori. ricerca erotici. (to be seen to be believed...)

Of course, if you are looking for strange, there is always www.crank.net, with such goodies as

Expanding-Earth.org 2005 Dec 23
... geology . planetology . cosmology ... "The Earth is growing and expanding rapidly by external accretion (meteorites, dust and solar energy) and internal core expansion (by gravitationally induced heating) ... The mechanisms and a new cosmology ... The map shown here is PROOF of Earth's growth and expansion in just the last ~200 million years -- proving there were NO oceans (now covering over 70% of the planet) when it was 40% smaller than it is today. The evidence is obvious, unmistakable and irrefutable!"

and

Global Warming: Earth Can Explode! 2002 Jan 21
... planetology . meteorology ... "The real danger for our entire civilization comes not from slow climate changes, but from overheating the planetary interior. Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid nucleus of our planet is a nuclear reactor and that our collective ignorance may cause it to overheat and explode. The discovery, verified by experts in many disciplines of science, has been published in June 2001 by the new scientific journal NUJournal.net."

but the Rabett's favorite is

Using Pseudoscience as an Aid to Teaching General and Analytical Chemistry 2000 Feb 25
... science . chemistry ... "This paper briefly describes a four-level approach to using pseudoscience and pathological science as tools to further educational goals in second-semester general chemistry and analytical chemistry courses. It provides detailed information about five specific areas of pseudoscience, pathological science, or anomaly investigations that are applicable to chemical education, and describes two student special projects and student experiences at a conference on controversial research."

It's a big net out there.

This should be fun to watch....

AGU Fall meeting
11–15 December 2006, Monday–Friday
Moscone Center West, 800 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA, USA

AL GORE AT AGU! Arrive early or use the overflow room.
Climate Change: The Role of Science and the Media in Policy Making,
Presented by the Honorable Al Gore
Thursday, 1230h, Marriott, Salon 8, 1230h - 1330h

Roger tries to keep the Rabett out....

The Impact of Land Use Change in Southwestern Australia: The Australian Bunny Fence Experiment RM Welch, T Lyons, J Hacker, U Nair, RA Pielke, S Asefi, Y Wu

S Fred tries to be persuasive,

Singer, S F
singer@sepp.org
Science & Environmental Policy Project, 1600 S. Eads St., Suite 712-S, Arlington, VA 22202 United States

A Test of Model Validation from Observed Temperature Trends

How much of current warming is due to natural causes and how much is manmade? This requires a comparison of the patterns of observed warming with the best available models that incorporate both anthropogenic (greenhouse gases and aerosols) as well as natural climate forcings (solar and volcanic). Fortunately, we have the just published U.S.-Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report, based on best current information. As seen in Fig. 1.3F of the report, modeled surface temperature trends change little with latitude, except for a stronger warming in the Arctic. The observations, however, show a strong surface warming in the northern hemisphere but not in the southern hemisphere (see Fig. 3.5C and 3.6D). The Antarctic is found to be cooling and Arctic temperatures, while currently rising, were higher in the 1930s than today. Although the Executive Summary of the CCSP report claims "clear evidence" for anthropogenic warming, based on comparing tropospheric and surface temperature trends, the report itself does not confirm this. Greenhouse models indicate that the tropics should provide the most sensitive location for their validation; trends there should increase by 200-300 percent with altitude, peaking at around 10 kilometers. The observations, however, show the opposite: flat or even decreasing tropospheric trend values (see Fig. 3.7 and also Fig. 5.7E). This disparity is demonstrated most strikingly in Fig. 5.4G, which shows the difference between surface and troposphere trends for a collection of models (displayed as a histogram) and for balloon and satellite data. [The disparities are less apparent in the Summary, which displays model results in terms of "range" rather than as histograms.] There may be several possible reasons for the disparity: Instrumental and other effects that exaggerate or otherwise distort observed temperature trends. Or, more likely: Shortcomings in models that result in much reduced values of climate sensitivity; for example, the neglect of important negative feedbacks. Allowing for uncertainties in the data and for imperfect models, there is only one valid conclusion from the failure of greenhouse models to explain the observations: The human contribution to global warming is still quite small, so that natural climate factors are dominant. This may also explain why the climate was cooling from 1940 to 1975 -- even as greenhouse-gas levels increased rapidly. An overall test for climate prediction may soon be possible by measuring the ongoing rise in sea level. According to my estimates, sea level should rise by 1.5 to 2.0 cm per decade (about the same rate as in past millennia); the U.N.-IPCC (4th Assessment Report) predicts 1.4 to 4.3 cm per decade. In the New York Review of Books (July 13, 2006), however, James Hansen suggests 20 feet or more per century -- equivalent to about 60 cm or more per decade.

A convenient truthiness...

OK Eli tried to resist, he really did, you know how those Thanksgiving resolutions are (I will never, ever, ever eat another piece of turkey...) but something appeared in the other place that is so far ....out there.... that he really could not resist the mordant chuckle. Constant Reader has been inquiring of the junior Pielke:

Question: Why don’t I write about glaciers, solar variability, Fred Singer, or Pat Michaels?
Answer: I don’t know anything special about glaciers, solar variability, or the issues which are often discussed by Fred Singer or Pat Michaels. By contrast, I do know something about disasters and climate change. In fact, I know a lot, perhaps as much as only a few dozen people.

Now, other than the fact that Google turns up a mess of Singer/Michaels pronuncimientos about climate change and disasters, we here at the Rabettorium were under the impression that the good Prof. Pielke runs a SCIENCE POLICY INSTITUTE and is always telling us that he loves science policy and we don't. S. Fred and Pat have been playing in the science policy patch like forever, and maybe before. I am morally certain that RPJr has never, ever read a single word of that stuff. On the other hand, I am a bunny, and you know about the morals of hares. In the words of Dorothy Parker about a particularly childish children's book, Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like Roger knows S. Fred well enough to invite him to lecture his classes. FWIW, Trenberth, Sawitz et al also came. Roger also knows Pat Michaels work well enough to cite it in his publications on hurricane damage and elsewhere, as well as the fact that his father and Michaels are co-authors and long term collaborators. In short, the deniability here is not even plausible.

Whom the government would destroy they first defund....

In the comments on the disappearing mission of NASA to protect the earth, llewelly refers to a new article by James Hansen which concludes:

But may it be that this is all a bad dream? I will stand accused of being as wistful as the boy who cried out, "Joe, say it ain't so!" to the fallen Shoeless Joe Jackson of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, yet I maintain the hope that NASA's dismissal of "home planet" is not a case of either shooting the messenger or a too-small growth of the total NASA budget, but simply an error of transcription. Those who have labored in the humid, murky environs of Washington are aware of the unappetizing forms of life that abound there. Perhaps the NASA playbook was left open late one day, and by chance the line "to understand and protect our home planet" was erased by the slimy belly of a slug crawling in the night. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, let us pray that this is the true explanation for the devious loss, and that our home planet's rightful place in NASA's mission will be restored.

Bad as this all is, the bunnies at Rabett Labs had their whiskers all in a twitter about something else in this broadside:

When the administration announced its planned fiscal 2007 budget,NASA science was listed as having typical changes of 1 percent or so. However, Earth Science research actually had a staggering reduction of about 20 percent from the 2006 budget. How could that be accomplished? Simple enough: reduce the 2006 research budget retroactively by 20 percent! One-third of the way into fiscal year 2006, NASA Earth Science was told to go figure out how to live with a 20-percent loss of the current year’s funds.

The Earth Science budget is almost a going-out-of-business budget. From the taxpayers’ point of view it makes no sense.An 80-percent budget must be used mainly to support infrastructure (practically speaking, you cannot fire civil servants; buildings at large facilities such as Goddard Space Flight Center will not be bulldozed to the ground; and the grass at the centers must continue to be cut). But the budget cuts wipe off the books most planned new satellite missions (some may be kept on the books, but only with a date so far in the future that no money needs to be spent now), and support for contractors, young scientists, and students disappears, with dire implications for future capabilities

Hansen is quite the optimist. Last I heard they are going to close the library at Goddard and the grass looks pretty long and inviting. Me and my pals are going over for a snack tomorrow.

Oh yeah, Hansen rips Michaels some new ones.