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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8475)2/7/2012 6:14:18 PM
From: mel221  Respond to of 85487
 
Sorry, not a correction, but my opinion.



To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8475)2/7/2012 6:25:21 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
 
I personally believe that evolution is essentially survival of the fittest which is often just pure dumb luck. And if it is divinely inspired, I believe that the plan was for it to be survival of the fittest with a bunch of variables that often involved just pure dumb luck. Basically, god would have kicked off the whole experiment, but has been hands off since pressing the "start" button.

I don't believe that humans were planned and designed. I think we are the result of where the golf ball landed on the grass. (the odds of the golf ball landing on any specific blade of grass are astronomical, but it does have to land somewhere).



To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8475)2/8/2012 10:29:58 AM
From: Brumar891 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
 
Support for the saturated greenhouse effect leaves the likelihood of AGW tipping points in the cold
Posted on February 8, 2012 by Anthony Watts

From The Hockey Shtick, word of a new paper that supports Miskolczi’s theory of saturated greenhouse effect. We’ve seen this before, in the form of this graph.

In 2006, Willis Eschenbach posted this graph on Climate Audit showing the logarithmic net downward IR forcing effect of carbon dioxide relative to atmospheric concentration:



The flatter portion of the graph gradually smooths out, as the effect of CO2 forcing becomes saturated with increased concentration. And this graphic of his shows carbon dioxide’s contribution to the whole greenhouse effect:

IOW increases in CO2 are going to produce very little warming.




What’s more, in this new paper there appears to be some evidence for a negative climate feedback, in the form of slightly lowered relative humidity trend, which makes climate sensitivity lower. Relative humidity (RH) is the ratio of the actual amount of water vapor in the air to the amount it could hold when saturated expressed as a percentage OR the ratio of the actual vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure expressed as a percentage. The amount of water vapor the air can hold increases with temperature. Relative humidity therefore decreases with increasing temperature if the actual amount of water vapor stays the same. While the study found a slight increase in specific humidity (the mass of water vapor per unit mass of air), relative humidity (near the surface, 2 meter measurement) decreased by 0.5% per decade, resulting in an overall slightly drier atmosphere.

If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change.

Of note is the issue with station inhomogeneity which apparently had been masking the signal in earlier studies. This study looked at stations individually to determining where such inhomogeneity existed. Here’s an example in figure 3 of their paper:



From THS:

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds that relative humidity has been decreasing 0.5% per decade across North America during the 62 year period of observations from 1948-2010.

Computer models of AGW show positive feedback from water vapor by incorrectly assuming that relative humidity remains constant with warming while specific humidity increases. The Miskolczi theory of a ‘saturated greenhouse effect’ instead predicts relative humidity will decrease to offset an increase in specific humidity, as has just been demonstrated by observations in this paper. The consequence of the Miskolczi theory is that additions of ‘greenhouse gases’ such as CO2 to the atmosphere will not lead to an increase in the ‘greenhouse effect’ or increase in global temperature.

Journal of Climate 2012 ; e-View

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00003.1

Surface Water Vapor Pressure and Temperature Trends in North America during 1948-2010

V. Isaac and W. A. van Wijngaarden *

Physics Dept., Petrie Bldg., York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON Canada, M3J 1P3; e-mail: wlaser@yorku.ca

Abstract

Over 1/4 billion hourly values of temperature and relative humidity observed at 309 stations located across North America during 1948-2010 were studied. The water vapor pressure was determined and seasonal averages were computed. Data were first examined for inhomogeneities using a statistical test to determine whether the data was fit better to a straight line or a straight line plus an abrupt step which may arise from changes in instruments and/or procedure. Trends were then found for data not having discontinuities. Statistically significant warming trends affecting the Midwestern U.S., Canadian prairies and the western Arctic are evident in winter and to a lesser extent in spring while statistically significant increases in water vapor pressure occur primarily in summer for some stations in the eastern half of the U.S. The temperature (water vapor pressure) trends averaged over all stations were 0.30 (0.07), 0.24 (0.06), 0.13 (0.11), 0.11 (0.07) C/decade (hPa/decade) in the winter, spring, summer and autumn seasons, respectively. The averages of these seasonal trends are 0.20 C/decade and 0.07 hPa/decade which correspond to a specific humidity increase of 0.04 g/kg per decade and a relative humidity reduction of 0.5%/decade.

The full paper from the Journal of Climate can be viewed at this link.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:aFTVOZy5_MAJ:journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00003.1+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjpyKM8oeByWvliNhqN_h1AIXF2PcbKuOkRuOMq0wIYmSV-Z6xn26rvKVvp_lTqqeRBlW4TAlmjSbCAlCyVZdea_S0zH8TfnCzHXRKLQozYtsbbqYGM0qDJfw3j-jja8yUmJI2k&sig=AHIEtbSWD5j3cLkMp_Hly_SK_e2AaW9Wpw

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/08/support-for-the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-leaves-the-likelihood-of-agw-tipping-points-in-the-cold/