Comments on: Latest Research Shows That Clouds Do NOT Cause Global Warming

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:54:09 +0000

To be fair, Greg, it is possible that Steve has a large number of email addresses from which he engages in his spamming…er, congenial discussions.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:10:27 +0000

Steve, that would be you checking your email a couple of days late. Now, apologize for calling me a douche.

By: Steve Ortman

Steve Ortman — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 19:42:16 +0000

Douche – the reason I showed up on your stupid blog today is ’cause I got more spam from you. Today.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:30:14 +0000

Maybe.

By: Raging Bee

Raging Bee — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:28:11 +0000

Greg: speaking of obnoxious and threatening emails, are you going to show us that email you got from socially-challenged “tech geek” John Welch? We could all use a laugh on this dreary rainy day, and Welch’s obnoxious nonsense is probably a lot more entertaining than what we’ve seen from Steve here.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:10:16 +0000

Neil, think of the climate system as a bell. You strike a bell to get it to ring. Then, the ringing is a combination of factors that cause kinetic energy to move around in the system. If the bell was really large and you were really small, you might primarily observe that this big piece of metal you can see off in the distance gets farther and closer over time. That is the bell ringing.

Now, to explain the bell ringing you would have to discover that it is struck now and then by a clapper or hammer or something. that is the forcing mechanism. You would also have to uderstand what makes the metal go back and forth the way it does, rather than to just move or bend or fall to pieces or something else. The propoerties of the metal, the position of the bell in space, the relationship between the bell and whatever it is attached to, the relationship between the bell and the air around it, etc. etc. would be the feedback.

In climate studies related to global temperature, the forcing mechanisms are things like the primary properties of the atmosphere (does it even exist? Does it hold heat? How much?) and the sources of heat (like the sun, but more speficially, variation in sources, so, like the sun’s energy over time).

Within that system energy moves around, between the ocean and the atmosphere, or between different layers of the atmosphere, or between vapor and other gasses, etc. Those are the feedbacks.

Clouds are primarily involved in feedback systems. Changes in that which relates to clouds can be a forcing mechanism: Venus has more of a greenhouse effect than earth because it has more cloud. If you changed the dynamics of the earth’s atmosphere to get lots more or lots less cloud, which may also mean more or less vapor, and certainly means more or less albeto, then you’ve got a difference in the fundemental dynamics, the forcing mechanisms.

In the current climate system and the one that has been running for far longer than this conversation addresses, clouds appear to be mainly a feedback system and not a forcing mechanism.

By: Composer99

Composer99 — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:58:23 +0000

Neil, I don't think Greg needs to correct himself. Feedbacks, whether positive or negative, by definition do not cause climate change, even if they amplify it (in the case of positive feedbacks).

By: Neil Bates

Neil Bates — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:34:20 +0000

Greg, I wish you had been more careful when you wrote in a comment (September 6, 2011 3:42 PM): “No. Clouds are known to be part of a feedback system. Feedback systems don’t cause climate change (they are not “forcing mechanisms”).” I think you meant, “negative feedback system” don’t cause climate change? Surely positive (reinforcing, i.e. “forcing”) mechanisms like loss of ice can, that’s one of the big worries for why the warming will get worse.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:20:13 +0000

The douche that runs this site sends out emails without an unsubscribe link. I’ve asked said douche to stop spamming me on multiple occasions but said douche continues to send me his spam. So I’ll show up on the little turd’s blog and continue to comment off topic until Greggy Douche takes me off his spam list.

Steve, you are welcome here as long as you behave. I suspect you wont.

Yes, I sent you some emails with links I thought you’d be interested in. Then you asked me to not send you emails. So I didn’t. Have you gotten the two I sent out to the same list of people interested in climate yesterday? No. Because I took you off the list.

You see, if you ask me to take you off the list, and I do, you really have no way to know that I did that, do you?

Of course, the reason I sent you anything to begin with was because of the unsolicited emails you sent me some time back … I thought you were interested in an email dialog. The fact that those emails were obnoxious and threatening sort of like your comments on this blog tell us something about your character, but that’s cool, because I think that reflects global warming denialist activists in general.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:15:17 +0000

Maxewell, “Global Warming” refers to the increase in temperature of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans which happens to be due to the release of CO2 in the atmosphere from fossil sources during the last two centuries.

A proposal was made that clouds are a forcing mechanism for this effect, rather than the CO2.

The paper I write up here demonstrates that that paper is wrong and that this is not caused by clouds.

Again, you are cherry picking and distorting and playing games.

I’m wondering what motivates you to be a liar? I want you to address that question before you do anything else.