........and have written about this, trying to sound like an informed writer. Let's get back to square one, shall we, shall you?

How much has the planet warmed over the last 10 years? 20 years?

Before you go off on all your "ifs, ands, and buts" as these scientists also do.......because they use those same words proving that they can't predict the future..........why don't you tell us about the past and facts related to the facts? How much has the planet warmed? How are the averages taken? Etcetera.

And, while we're at it......while you confuse yourself trying to answer that basic question and get some kind of consensus on it...........STUDY one other historical detail. Look to see EXACTLY why our Senate voted 97-0 to NOT sign the Kyoto treaty disaster in 1997. That's right, the Senate including such stalwart jackasses like Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Joe Biden.......yes, all that jackasses even joined more rational Senators to pitch a shutout........97 to fricking zero. Please study up WHY they did. The reasons are STILL TRUE!!

maxwell 127 wrote:there are a couple questions I have. One, do these models assume a static carbon sink in the form of photosynthetic? I could not see it mentioned more than saying that plants can not use CO2 as fast as we're making it and that the models assume a "good" geographical land input. There was not much explanation of the different carbon sinks besides the oceans. Two, is it not true that most of these predictions, like that of 10 degree change in global mean temperature, are the high end of a range of possible temperature change that is tied to the uncertainty in the models? If these models give uncertainty in the range of 5 degrees for a 50 year integration, wouldn't they then give a larger uncertainty for a longer integration? I recently attended a talk at the University of Michigan given by Xianglei Huang who studies radiative transfer in the atmosphere. He showed that the standard GCM's underpredict the amount of outgoing longwave radiation and therefore, might be overpredicting the change in GMT because the atmosphere is not absorbing as much IR radiation. Also, the methane absorption band overlaps largely with that of the water vibration band, which is almost saturated right now. How could a change in absorption in these region of less than 10% greatly impact the climate?

A "couple of questions"? are you serious? Each one of those - and I counted more than two - would require a tome in itself to address. However, I will see if I can steer you toward sources that will address your issues in much more depth.

First, a lot of your issues to do with changes in absorption vis-a-vis the methane, CO2 and water vibration bands were well answered in Spencer Weart's superb article: The Discovery of the Risk of Global Warming, in Physics Today, Jan. 1997, p. 34).

The issues concerning radiative transfer in the atmosphere (e.g. overpedicting change in GMT) raised by Huang, were dealt with to some degree (or aspects related to these) by Donald Rapp in his excellent monograph: Assessing Climate Change: Temperatures, Radiation and Heat Balance, Springer-Praxis, 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-76586-8)

A somewhat related article worth perusing is 'Can Earth's Albedo and Surface Temperatures Increase Together?' in Eos Transactions of the AGU, Vol. 87, No. 4, 24 January 2006, p. 37

Underprediction also assumes (to an extent) that there is unequal radiative flue to southern and no. hemispheres. However, this need not present an impediment.

One mechanism, applicable to plane-parallel (stratified) atmospheres might be Rayleigh scattering in concert with standard gray atmosphere radiative transport. An equation of transfer that would be applicable resembles:

-dI/dt (1/k rho) = I – J

where k is a mass scattering coefficient, rho is the molecular density (e.g. in cloud cover) and J is the vector source function for a specific intensity I. If the correct Stokes parameters (I, Q, U, V) which describe degree of polarization are included, and the right incidence angle of radiation occurs, we can expect the propagation or radiant energy from the S. hemisphere to the north very effectively.

Also – don’t forget diffusive reflection and transmission of radiation. Chandrasekhar in Radiative Transfer, (Dover Publications) shows that for angles of incidence in the range : 0.5 < i < 0.8 radians, diffusive reflection allows the radiation reflected normal to the incidence direction to actually have higher intensity than the original. (E.g. for optical depths 1.0 < t < 2.0). Even values below that disclose at least equal intensities in his tabulated numerical example on p. 231. This is for diffusive reflection and transmission, btw.

Prof. Gale Christianson (Greenhouse) observes (p. 23 that all the general circulation models (differing only in single parameter changes at a time) of the IPCC disclose a uniformly warming world with “more uniform temperatures than exhibited by a cooler version. He continues (ibid.) :

"Thus, if greenhouse gases are warming the entire globe, temperature ranges ought to be narrowing, literally reducing the age-old difference between day and night. According to IPCC scientists, this is exactly what’s happening."

He then goes on to cite the IPCC work and the records obtained from China, the U.s. and the former SU. Noting that diurnal –nocturnal temp. differences have been observed minimized “day to day, week to week, and month to month.”

The clear imputation from this is there is NO overestimate, and further that forecasts of a ~6C change in global mean temperatures is not in some unattainable high range. Once the forcing factors are there, and positive feedback is operative, nothing is stopping the runaway greenhouse from being incepted.

Your questions to do with "carbon sinks", photosynthesis etc. were dealt with in a series of Eos Transactions papers the past year or so. I do not have these at my fingertips, but will have to dig them out from my files- then post the titles, issues, dates, authors.

As I seem to recall, photosynthesis is now integrated well into current model and indeed, plants (especially given massive deforestation and loss of other plant land, equal in area to about that of the state of Wisconsin each year) cannot be sustained as viable carbon sinks, hence the overflow absorption of CO2 into the oceans. (See also the excellent paper , 'Land Warming as Part of Global Warming',Eos, Vol. 87, No. 44, p. 477)