Houston Area Flooding Seen from Space

August 31st, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Today the skies cleared enough to see the huge amount of water flowing out of southeast Texas and Houston into the Gulf of Mexico.

Here is a before-and-after animation which shows the change from July 28 versus today (August 31), taken from the MODIS imager on NASA’s Terra satellite. Click on the image to enlarge and animate it.

Turbid water is seen flowing out up to 30 miles from the coast, with a huge plume exiting Galveston Bay.


276 Responses to “Houston Area Flooding Seen from Space”

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  1. jimc says:

    Everyone (including my stock broker) collecting for this one. Good.

    • lewis says:

      The problem will be getting water and food to people. With roads and warehouses inundated ete, the logistics become a nightmare.

      The people who become in charge don’t always know how to get done what they are charged with. Even if they do, the means is not always available.

      We’ll see.

  2. Francisco says:

    Well, I do feel for my friends down there, and keep them in my thought…. but the greening is impressive!!!!!

  3. dr No says:

    I wonder what summer has in store for Australia. There may, or may not, be implications for the cyclone season if temperatures remain above average. The Bureau of Meteorology has just noted:

    “Winter in Australia this year was hot and dry with the average maximum temperature up nearly 2 degrees Celsius above the long-term trend.

    Key points

    Hottest winter since records began in 1910
    Ninth driest winter on record
    More high pressure systems prevented rain
    The 2017 winter was the hottest since 1910 when national records began, according to Bureau of Meteorology figures released today.”

    • TedM says:

      “Hottest winter since records began in 1910”.

      Post homogenisation and UHI. Records preceding 1910 would dispute this claim, as do many Australian meteorologists.

      • Bindidon says:

        TedM on September 1, 2017 at 3:41 PM

        Post homogenisation and UHI.

        This comment I have seen at Roy Spencer’s site more than once.
        Could you please exactly explain what you mean?

        Because when I compare GHCN station data for rural corners with the grand total, and then with the GISS land-only record derived out of GHCN by intensive homogenisation, I see this:

        http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170902/fu2l3cqm.jpg

        Linear estimates for the Globe 1880-2016 in C / decade

        GHCN rural: 0.20
        GHCN all: 0.23
        GISS land-only: 0.10

        Maybe you can present different data?

        • Bart says:

          Funny, to me, your plot proves his point – these series look nothing like each other. Apparently, you are one of those people who think trend lines are magic crystal balls that contain all the information one needs to consider.

    • Laura says:

      Alarmist climate ghoul dr No is already drooling in anticipation of further natural disasters…

      • Bindidon says:

        … while Skeptic Queen Batwoman Laura thinks she’ll amuse us with her dull prose, yeah. Perfect!

        dr No is quite OK in comparison with e.g. these stoopid copycat people trying to link wood fires in France to the so called climate catastrophe where in fact they are due to crank or careless persons!

      • dr No says:

        Laura,
        On the contrary. I believe that all this “alarmist” talk about the evils of global warming actually has a positive effect. I can’t prove it, but I think it makes people take more notice of public warnings. This may translate into fewer casualties when these events take place.

        • Laura says:

          And the latest excuse to justify the covert and overt support of absurd, false, hysterical alarmist claims is that… “it makes people take more notice of public warnings”.

          • dr No says:

            Laura,
            You may be interested to know that the powerful international insurance industry has been taking notice about the risks of climate change for many many years. They fully understand the folly of ignoring scientific advice.
            I bet you and your fellow denialists would run away at a great rate of knots at the thought of taking on the risk that climate change is not/will not happen.

          • Laura says:

            Still waiting for those links to exchanges with alarmists, exchanges where you chastise them for their brutal ignorance and fearmongering.

            Until then, anything you say is worth nothing since, after all, you yourself consider your “facts” to have no value when in the presence of alarmist nonsense.

            Go fetch.

          • dr No says:

            Woof!

            “Still waiting for those links to exchanges with alarmists, exchanges where you chastise them for their brutal ignorance and fear mongering.”

            Sorry, I have my hands full chastising denialsts for their brutal ignorance and fear mongering.
            You should be worried because future generations will be of a mind to prosecute denialists for preventing due diligence.
            I would lock you all up now if I had the means.

          • Laura says:

            Your desire to harass (and jail) normal people is well documented as is the complete lack of value of your “facts” as I explained in the paragraph you had no choice but ignore. Below it is again for you to mull over.

            Anything you say is worth nothing since, after all, you yourself consider your facts to have no value when in the presence of alarmist nonsense.

          • Bart says:

            “…the powerful international insurance industry has been taking notice about the risks of climate change for many many years.”
            – dr No

            I have not seen anything yet that would cause me to change the way we look at evaluating quakes, tornadoes, hurricanes by atmosphere.
            – Warren Buffett

    • Mike Flynn says:

      dr No,

      A minor point.

      Official records began with the British occupation of Australia. The BOM decided to declare official temperature records prior to 1910 as “unreliable”.

      Slightly odd, as the temperatures were being recorded by the same officials, using the same equipment in the same locations, prior to, and post 1910.

      It would be churlish to point out that the record high temperatures and heat waves prior to 1910 were “disappeared”.

      In response to the Australian heat wave of 1896 –

      The Commissioner of Railways promised a deputation of members of Parliament to run a special train every Friday at holiday excursion rates for the next month to enable settlers resident in the Western part of the colony to reach the mountains to escape the great heat prevailing.

      Bizarre but true. People died in the streets from heat stroke – unreliable thermometers notwithstanding!

      On the other hand, declaring pre 1910 records mythical, means that any global records prior to 1910 are fairly pointless, I guess. So global warming stated in 1910, and the fact that the population has gone up by a factor of seven, and per capita heat production has increased around 100 times, is to be disregarded?

      One other point – no amount of fiddling with the past predicts the future. Leave that to fortune tellers, astrology, and climatology. Astrology seems to be self supporting without government grants, and preferred by many.

      No GHE.

      Cheers.

      • dr No says:

        “So global warming started in 1910, ..”
        Yes, anthropogenic warming did probably start about then.
        That is a huge admission on your part.
        (another denialist argument bites the dust)

        • Mike Flynn says:

          dr No,

          Unfortunately, the increase in thermometer temperatures is due to heat. Nothing to do with any GHGs. You may deny this simple physical fact all you wish, but it’s true.

          The Earth has been cooling for four and a half billion years, and now has a cooled, congealed crust. It continues to cool, and will do so until its temperature beyond the influence of the Sun is isothermal.

          At present, surface temperatures due to the unconcentrated rays of the Sun vary from around -90 C to +90 C.

          Burning stuff creates heat. Your cells burn stuff, you create heat. Your body regulates the output to maintain around 37C throughout. You produce CO2 as a result of burning stuff in your cells. You breathe it out – it doesn’t make you hotter.

          GHGs produce no heat. Their effect on a thermometer is precisely zero, if no other source is present. For example, GHGs at absolute zero provide no warming whatsoever. Nor at any temperature, for that matter!

          Any heat source produces rises of temperature, if in sufficient quantity above ambient temperature. Humanity is a prodigious producer of heat. Nothing to do with GHGs. No GHE at all.

          Cheers.

          • dr No says:

            Then how does insulation work?
            It produces no heat but does raise the temperature.
            Just like GHGs.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Dr No,

            You wrote –

            “Then how does insulation work?”

            I presume that you are aiming for a “gotcha”, but I’ll provide an answer because you obviously have no real clue.

            Here are a few clues. When the insulation failed on Columbia, the crew got so hot they died. Not enough cooling. Liquid nitrogen uses insulation to stop heating. My house is well insulated to keep cool, as I live in the tropics.

            Freezers, coolrooms, and beer coolers all use insulation to keep heat out.

            Dewar flasks keep hot things hotter than otherwise, and cold things colder than otherwise. Not magic, just insulation.

            Back to gotcha school for you, maybe. Still no GHE, eh?

            Time to try another irrelevant analogy, or vigorous hand waving.

            Cheers.

          • David Appell says:

            Mike Flynn wrote:
            “GHGs produce no heat.”

            The roof of a greenhouse building produces no heat either. So how does it make the air inside the greenhouse warmer?

          • David Appell says:

            Mike Flynn says:
            “Dewar flasks keep hot things hotter than otherwise, and cold things colder than otherwise. Not magic, just insulation.”

            Is the Dewar flask producing heat?
            Is it producing cold air?
            Is the insulation in a house creating heat?
            Creating cold air?

            So answer dr No’s question.

  4. Gary says:

    All that soil washing offshore has to settle out. Examination of sediment cores would provide a proxy for estimating the frequency and size of events like Harvey. Has such research been done in this area?

  5. Gw says:

    It blinks much too fast. U should be able to switch it manually so you can study the images for several seconds.

  6. Dear Dr. Spencer please slow the transition between these two pictures down a bit. You are going to induce epilepsy :>)
    BTW the work you do is the best of scholarship and I greatly appreciate it.

  7. Bindidon says:

    Today I read in the french newspaper ‘Le Monde’ that the Harvey bill might well approach 140 G$, i.e. 40 more than Katrina.

    Does anyone know about reliable numbers?

    Anyway, for us in Europe, such flooding levels are way above all we could imagine, let alone experience. But people in Bangladesh probably will think quite a bit different…

    • g*e*r*a*n says:

      When disasters occur in other countries, the US rushes in to help.

      How much is France going to contribute to help the victims of Harvey?

      • Bindidon says:

        Oh yeah. Do you mean Irak, for example?

        Where inbetween over 300,000 persons died due to terrorism as a consequence of the 2003 US invasion. Maybe you remember the story with the massive destruction weapons at the UN?

        We think here in Europe that help should be concentrated on poor regions. And be sure that there we do help, g*e*r*a*n.

        Nobody here has forgotten that the Allied Forces saved us in 1944, g*e*r*a*n. But will you wonder about some silently asking why it took the USA four years to start the job?

        • g*e*r*a*n says:

          Bin, you seek to pervert history also?

          • Bindidon says:

            No I pervert nothing.

            You just think your meaning about history prevails by definition, as does it for the rest.

          • Harry Cummings says:

            Hi

            What about the thousands and thousands of refugees pouring in Europe. Then there is the poster boy for climate change Mr Obama who was going to save the world then produced more nuclear war heads than any president in the history of United States

            Have happy day
            HC

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          bindidon…”But will you wonder about some silently asking why it took the USA four years to start the job?”

          The US was in it from the start but not officially. President Roosevelt worked closely with Winston Churchill to ensure Britain was not starved into submission. The US supplied Britain and Russia with food, armaments, planes, ships, etc. albeit as loans.

          It was not 4 years till they entered the fray. They came into the war on Dec 7, 1941, after Japan lost it’s mind and bombed Pearl Harbour. Thank you Japan. The German invasion of the low lands did not occur till May 1940, so the US were only late a year and a bit. The period between Sept 1939 and May 1940 was known as the phoney war since neither side did much.

          During that period, the US contributed mightily to the war effort, being sustained by Britain in the west of Europe. At that time, Russia was on the other side and when they joined the Allied effort they were initially useless, fighting a purely defensive action.

          US citizens also crossed the border and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and other military units. Some made their way to the UK and joined the RAF, etc.

          The Yanks have made questionable decisions world wide at times but there is no doubt the US has been a major ally in the war against oppression. Following the end of the war in Germany, the German nation was devastated, as were nations like Holland. The Allies, with the US helping lead the way, ensured the survival of European nations, including Germany.

          It was a horrible time for everyone, including Germans. Please don’t minimize the efforts of the US in that regard.

          • David Appell says:

            The US also refused thousands of Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust and put Japanese-Americans in a concentration camp. And annihilated hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

            US soldiers did amazing jobs and sacrificed beyond what should be asked of anyone. But let’s keep the full picture in mind.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Yes Davie, let’s also keep in mind that you like to pervert history. You would like to dismiss all of the US money and lives, just to jump on decisions made in the middle of a national emergency.

            In your mind, you’re the hero.

            Good luck with that interpretation.

          • Svante says:

            That’s a good summary Gordon.
            It’s important to be based in reality.
            Hitler had alternative facts and declared war on the US. Churchill said “All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force”.
            Same thing with global warming. We can ill afford to disagree on facts.

          • Bart says:

            “The US also refused thousands of Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust…”

            A stain on our honor.

            “… and put Japanese-Americans in a concentration camp.”

            Concentration camp is a loaded term. Those camps bore little resemblance to those in Germany. Another stain, to be sure. But, it is easy for us in these comfortable times to dismiss the very real fear instilled by Imperial Japan. The Japanese militarists were brutal and merciless.

            “And annihilated hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

            Case in point. More Chinese died in the Rape of Nanking alone than Japanese in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

          • Svante says:

            The way the Japanese behaved I don’t blame the US for dropping those bombs. A mainland invasion could have been even worse.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          bindidon…”Do you mean Irak, for example?

          Where inbetween over 300,000 persons died due to terrorism as a consequence of the 2003 US invasion”.

          You guys in Germany have really had a propaganda job done on you. That terrorism is related to a Muslim intent to take over the Middle East and eventually spread that to the entire world.

          Do you think Iraqis were safe under Saddam Hussein? They were brutalized randomly.

          The US is still over there fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan because the local armies are corrupt and incapable.

          The US soldiers in Afghanistan are not only fighting the terrorists they are fighting the politically correct like you. When US military personnel captures Taliban, or other terrorists, more often than not the politically correct let them go.

          • lewis says:

            Gordon,

            I suggest that Saddem’s brutality was not random, but focused on certain groups etc. I could go on, but our mistake was leaving about 8 years ago, before a new government was capable.

          • Bart says:

            “I could go on, but our mistake was leaving about 8 years ago, before a new government was capable.”

            +1e12

        • Bart says:

          “Where inbetween over 300,000 persons died due to terrorism as a consequence of the 2003 US invasion.”

          The Lancet claimed 500,000 people there had died because of the sanctions. Apparently, the only outcome pleasing to the numbers fetishists was to unleash Saddam Hussein, free and unfettered to do as he pleased.

          “But will you wonder about some silently asking why it took the USA four years to start the job?”

          Why didn’t you bail us out of our mess sooner? Would you care for fromage with that whine?

  8. Gordon Robertson says:

    meantime, the lesser news is that we’re having a heat wave here in Vancouver, Canada. Recent stats:

    “On Tuesday, Aug. 29, [2017] temperatures at the Vancouver Airport reached 29.7 C, breaking the previous record of 28.3 C set in 1967.

    A number of other temperature records were also broken on Tuesday:

    Vancouver Harbour 30.5 C (old record 28.9 C in 1967)
    Kamloops 38.5 C (old record 35.6 C in 1915)
    Princeton 36 C (old record 35 C in 1897)
    Sparwood 32.1 C (old record 30.6 C in 1972)
    Williams Lake 31.9 C (old record 31.1 C in 1967)
    Pemberton 35.1 C (old record 34.4 C in 1974)
    Whistler 31.8 C (old record 31.1 C in 1996)”

    Local notes:

    The Vancouver Airport meteorlogical facilities used to be located at the old airport building, across the main runway from the present facility. The entire area was still fairly rural in 1967, now it’s overgrown with highways and buildings. UHI effect anyone?

    The old records for Kamloops and Princeton were in 1915 and 1897 respectively. What was going on back then to cause such blatant warming?

    1967 seems to have been a very warm year locally but I don’t recall anything anyone would have taken other than as yet another hot summer. We had many rain-free summers over the decades and no one gave a hoot.

    I might add that the ’60s were considered a period of cooling. With such heat records why were people not jumping up and down claiming, “Oh, oh, oh…must be global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions”.

    I think we had more sense back then.

    • dr No says:

      Sigh !
      Well, if more and more record temperatures do not persuade you – then what will?
      Denialist answers: “Nothing will. I refuse to look at the facts. I only go with my gut feeling. The rest of you can all go to hell!”

      • Mike Flynn says:

        Double sigh!

        If the inability of anyone anywhere to make a thermometer hotter by using GHG doesn’t persuade you, then what will?

        The fact that the hottest places on Earth have the lowest GHG concentrations doesn’t change your mind at all, does it? Faith overcomes fact – if you’re a dedicated foolish Warmist!

        Cheers.

        • dr No says:

          Triple sigh with a twist !
          Would you like to sleep in a room in winter with no insulation in the ceiling?
          How about without a blanket ?
          How about a night with no clouds versus a cloudy night?
          How about a night with nothing between you and outer space versus one with an atmosphere?
          In all cases you will feel colder.
          A thermometer will confirm the differences in temperature.
          Your arguments make no sense at all.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            dr No,

            Are you claiming that CO2 makes thermometers hotter? You seem to be handwaving furiously. Or are you claiming that increasing the amount of CO2 between a thermometer and a heat source causes the thermometer to get hotter?

            As to the atmosphere and thermometers, thermometers are generally insulated from the Sun to keep them from getting too hot. A Stevenson screen is one such device.

            Without an atmosphere, ground temperatures would be like those on the Moon – above the boiling point of water.

            Just physics. Deny all you want – still no GHE. Maybe you could try selling CO2 powered heaters – no energy source required! Free heat for all! Probably not much use to people living in Death Valley or the Libyan desert, but might be useful in the Antarctic – what do you think?

            Of course, it’s complete nonsense. CO2 heats nothing except the already overheated imaginations of foolish Warmists. Want to try some more foolish attempts at gotchas? How about an appeal to non-existent authority? Let me know if you need assistance – others might think you’re not doing a terribly effective job at present.

            Cheers.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            dr no…”Would you like to sleep in a room in winter with no insulation in the ceiling?
            How about without a blanket ?”

            doc…are you trying to claim the 0.04% of CO2 in the room air has anything to do with warming?

            A blanket keeps you warm because it traps molecules of air which have been warmed by your body heat directly. Your body still radiates IR but the IR is now radiating to the blanket, trying to warm it.

            The insulation in the ceiling serves to allow the transfer of heat for conduction and convection only. It has nothing to do with radiation. To affect radiation you need a thermal barrier which is a reflective material that reflects radiant energy.

            If you had a flat roof with a sheet of plywood for a roof, the air molecules in the room, (99%+ N2/O2) would heat the room side by convection and conduction but also by radiation. The heated underside would set up a thermal gradient across the plywood assuming the outside is at a lower temperature.

            If you added another ceiling about the first, with no insulation, heat would be transferred through the bottom plywood where it would warm the air above by conduction. It should be noted that the 0.04% CO2 in that air is NOT a consideration in the insulation industry.

            Heat would be transferred from the lower plywood exterior to the outer plywood interior where the process would repeat re thermal conductivity.

            If you now add insulation between the sheets of plywood, with an R-value that increases the thermal resistance, the conduction and convection of heat would slow in the insulation area because the air molecules are prevented from circulating normally and a lot of air would be displaced.

            Nothing to do with radiation or CO2.

            In a normal ceiling with rafters, a thermal circuit is set up via the rafters themselves and a steady state heat flow would be established. By covering those rafter with insulation between rafters and above them (mineral wool insulation) you slow down conduction and convection.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Gordon,

            I’ll add a wee bit, if I may.

            “In current usage in Australia, sarking refers to a laminated aluminium foil layer (commonly described as RFL, or reflective foil laminate) that is installed on the roof trusses, beneath the battens, supporting a tile or metal deck roof. It acts as additional radiative and convective insulation and provides a condensation barrier.”

            Some people overlook that the reflective layer works in both directions. Keeps heat out, in the tropics, and keeps heat in, in colder clines. Must be magic! At least, magic is required to explain some of the more bizarre propositions put forward by foolish Warmists. Their magical GHE is such a mystery it can’t be explained in writing here, but is assuredly in existence elsewhere – just like WMDs in Iraq, I suppose. Always somewhere else, but they just can’t produce it at this precise moment.

            Maybe I don’t have enough blind faith to accept the miracle of CO2 global heating power – either directly or indirectly. Good for a laugh, anyway. Keep it up.

            Cheers.

      • Bindidon says:

        dr No on September 2, 2017 at 5:39 AM

        Don’t you see, Doctor, that Flynn is just phishing (no, not your bank account: your brain) ?

        He perfectly knows that no GHG could ever warm any thermometer. And he also perfectly knows why the planet isn’t about 33 K cooler at its surface.

        Don’t try to convince him: you waste time and energy, as he is already. I hear him lolling in the background somewhere…

        • dr No says:

          I know, I know.
          Some people suffer from the problem of ” a little bit of knowledge can be a bad thing”.
          Mike is one such sufferer – you can see his frustration (“bah”, “humbug” etc.) borne of never having properly studied radiative transfer in an atmosphere.
          It is such a simple principle to get hold of but one which is impossible to teach on a blog site.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Drano and Bin,

            Believing that the atmosphere is a “blanket”, and DWIR from the sky is “proof” of AGW, indicates you both are still taken in by the hoax.

            A blanket is a passive material. The atmosphere is an active, temperature-controlled heat energy transfer system.

            Being enchanted with DWIR further indicates your confusion. ALL mass emits IR, so it is no surprise DWIR exists. A bowl of fruit emits IR. So, to believe atmospheric CO2 can heat the planet is like believing you can heat your house, in winter, with a bowl fruit.

            Wise up, people are taking advantage of your naivete.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Bindidon,

            33 C cooler than what? Where? At what time, and under what conditions?

            The Earth is a large ball of molten rock and iron, with a temperature gradient ranging from the temperature of the inner core – maybe 6000 K, to whatever you judge the temperature of the outer limits of the atmosphere to be. Would 5 K suit you?

            At any given time, the temperature of the surface will lie between those extremes. You may use your vast physical knowledge to calculate the instantaneous temperature of the surface at any place. Of course, you have to first define the surface, which you can’t or won’t do.

            From your calculations, and basic physics, surely you can calculate when the coldest point on the surface was less than 100 C, allowing the first liquid water to appear. No? I thought as much!

            You really don’t realise that your assertions cannot be supported with fact, apparently.

            Maybe you now accept that heat, not GHGs, make thermometers hotter. Oxygen absorbs and emits heat. Its temperature can be therefore be measured. If you allow oxygen to lose enough heat, it becomes very cold, and then liquifies. As does nitrogen. Some foolish Warmists even claim that oxygen and nitrogen cannot emit IR radiation! Foolish Warmists!

            What’s your explanation of your apparent assertion that reducing the amount of GHGs between a thermometer and the Sun makes the thermometer colder?

            Complete nonsense, of course! No GHE, rather the complete opposite as John Tyndall demonstrated more than 150 years ago. Over to you.

            Cheers.

          • Bindidon says:

            So, to believe atmospheric CO2 can heat the planet is like believing you can heat your house, in winter, with a bowl fruit.

            To become a world-wide master in giving simple-minded evaluations of papers handling complex questions is by far not as simple as we all might imagine.

            But in the exercise of this delicate task, some commenters are simply unbeatable. I am glad to experience here one of the most powerful peer-reviewers at work.

            Thank you g*e*r*a*n for so wisely opening my eyes, and for so carefully putting me back on the right way!

            Mais que ferais-je donc sans vous?

          • Mike Flynn says:

            dr No,

            You wrote “It is such a simple principle to get hold of but one which is impossible to teach on a blog site.” Or anywhere else where some questions are allowed, probably.

            As with any cult, GHE proponents claim that the explanation is both extremely simple, and also requiring vast knowledge and years of study before it can be understood.

            Some now claim that climatology has now degenerated to the use of “probability distribution functions”. About as silly as proclaiming a fair coin has a 50:50 chance of coming down head or tail. Producing 1000 learned papers demonstrating the proof of this proposition does you no good at all.

            Claiming that something might or might not happen as a result of a particular action is child’s play, in general. I assume that the airplane which I board will not fall out of the sky whilst I am in it. No aeronautical modelling or engineering background required. So far, so good. I don’t need to seek expert advice, do I?

            Future climate states are the average of previously occurring weather, and unpredictable. Just recently, the Mayor of a US city decided not to issue an evacuation order as a hurricane approached. His assumption about the future seemed as good as any other. Can you prove his decision wrong? Of course not!

            Foolish Warmists believe that future climate states are both predictable, and usefully related to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. I find both propositions laughable, and so far I have not seen any evidence of useful predictions by foolish Warmists.

            If you can’t state your “simple principle” in writing, then you obviously don’t understand it yourself. Until you can actually state this apparently baffling “simple principle”, I’m entitled to believe it remains a figment of your imagination. You might as easily claim that a “simple principle” lies behind the existence of phlogiston, but stating what it is, it remains a fantasy.

            Cheers.

          • Bindidon says:

            Some foolish Warmists even claim that oxygen and nitrogen cannot emit IR radiation! Foolish Warmists!

            I just wrote that to become a world-wide master in giving simple-minded evaluations of papers handling complex questions is by far not as simple as we all might imagine.

            And again I must experience that in the exercise of this delicate task, some commenters are simply unbeatable.

            http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170903/h4jjxv4r.png

            http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170903/ldqddpje.png

            Compare intensity, number of lines, and proximity to the atmospheric window.

            I know in advance: the hint won’t help. To be unteachable is an incurable disease…

            C’est la vie.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Bn asks: “Mais que ferais-je donc sans vous?”

            Bin, you would likely be lost in pseudoscience. But, as you recognize, we’re here help.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            bindidon…”One could suggest him to read e.g….”

            It would be helpful if you understood either of the articles which say essentially nothing.

            The first is a report on IR from the atmosphere which is not under dispute as far as I know. There is definitely IR from the atmosphere and every molecule in the atmosphere radiates IR. They are measuring in the IR spectrum however and miss most of it.

            The question is what happens to the IR. During the last eclipse temperatures apparent dropped 5C to 11C during the peak of the eclipse under the area affected by it. Why did the temperature not plunge?

            It’s quite obvious that the air surrounding the measuring thermometers was stabilized by the energy in the air molecules which was 99%+ nitrogen/oxygen.

            The IR referred to as back-radiation could have no effect on the surface temperatures because it emanates from molecules in a cooler region of the atmosphere (2nd law). The reason is simple: IR from a cooler source lacks the intensity, frequency, and precise energy required to raise an electron to a higher energy level in a warmer atom/molecule.

            The second article from NASA is bush-league. They make fundamental errors in their understanding of the electrons in the atoms of molecules claiming: “Ignoring clouds to begin with, the atmosphere contains molecules such as H2O, CO2, CH4, O3, and many others that are excited by the available energy to move (translational energy), to rotate, to vibrate, and to excite their constituent electrons to higher energy states”.

            This description reveals a basic misunderstand of the physics of an atom/molecule. Atoms do vibrate but molecules are generally bound together by electrons or electric charges. The electron excitation is caused by an electron absorbing EM or thermal energy conductively. The absorbed EM must be the precise difference in eV between energy states.

            The vibration occurs because opposing atoms charges repel each other while the electron charge holds them together. The result is a vibration, which represent work, hence heat. That vibration is heat.

            They are clearly claiming the vibration and rotation causes the electron to rise to a more excited state, which is completely wrong.

            This sounds like something Gavin Schmidt would say and his understanding of basic physics is already questionable to me. Engineer Jeffrey Glassman has already taken him to task for messing up the definition of positive feedback. Schmidt gave the wrong equation and he’s a mathematician.

            They admit in article two that FIR is poorly understood but that does not stop them adding to the misunderstanding.

            The message is clear binny. You need to get off your admiration of NASA/NOAA and look at the science. Not all science coming from either is sound and to lack the skepticism to challenge them when they are clearly wrong is unscientific.

            Clearly, NASA GISS is a climate modeling agency and they are run by alarmist zealots. The last director of GISS was arrested for demonstrating against the Keystone Pipeline project. Do you think he or his current successor could be free of bias.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            bindidon…”Compare intensity, number of lines, and proximity to the atmospheric window”.

            What atmospheric window? You mean the one alarmists created to make it look like ONLY CO2 absorbs and radiates EM?

            All gas molecules absorb/radiate EM. If you have N2 in a gas cloud at T1 and a huge sink like space at T2 nearby, which is near absolute zero, N2 will radiate. N2 will radiate to the atmosphere if it’s cold enough wrt to the temp of N2.

            N2 does not have to radiate in an atmospheric window to cool, all it has to do is radiate. The AWG theory has us thinking myopically, reasoning that the surface can only cool in an atmospheric window via radiation.

            How do you think N2 cools? Or do you believe it warms and remains at that temp forever? Take a glass tank of pure N2 in a lab at 25C. Now cool the room to 0C. Will the N2 lose it’s heat?

            We are talking about 77% of the atmosphere but alarmists seem to think only GHGs can absorb and emit EM. N2 does not care what GHGs are doing, if the temperature around it is cooler it will gladly radiate away its energy.

            Therefore, if N2, representing 77% of the atmosphere, can scoop up heat from the surface, and rise high into the atmosphere where it’s cooler, it will be an effective method of transferring heat from the surface to upper atmosphere.

            Thermal equilibrium does not depend on the type of gas it depends on the difference in temperature.

            We are lead to think N2 only gets warmed by surface conduction. Has anyone really looked closely at the science to see if there are EM solar radiation frequencies it will absorb at, hence warm?

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            “All gas molecules absorb/radiate EM.”

            Obviously. But not absorb infrared radiation, which is what’s given off by the Earth’s surface. N2 and O2 do NOT absorb this IR — GHGs do.

            https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/curve_s.gif

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            “Therefore, if N2, representing 77% of the atmosphere, can scoop up heat from the surface….”

            How exactly does N2 do that?
            Give details.
            What does “scoop” mean?

        • Mike Flynn says:

          Bindidon,

          You have some way to go before you can aspire to the frequency with which David Appell posts links to pointless graphics in an effort to deny, divert, and confuse.

          Thank you for pointing out that I am unbeatable. You may of course continue to attempt that which you acknowledge is impossible – that is, to beat me.

          Einstein apparently said “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

          Do you intend to continue to attempt to “teach” me, then, knowing it to be impossible, in your opinion?

          If I am, as you say, unbeatable, you might as well follow that old saying – “If you can’t beat them, join them!”

          Welcome aboard, Bindidon. Join the crew of the good ship Reality. Let the Ship of Fools founder, under the mindless lack of control of its foolish Warmist masters.

          Cheers.

          • Bindidon says:

            Do you intend to continue to attempt to ‘teach’ me

            To think that a person is unteachable makes you not necessary able to teach her/him.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        dr no ….”Well, if more and more record temperatures do not persuade you then what will?”

        doc…I seriously don’t get why you are missing what I’m saying. The original records were in 1897, 1915, and 1967, all in supposedly cooler times. None of the warming we’ve heard about till this week have broken those old records.

        We’ve had reports from NOAA and NASA about record warming years since 2014 and not one of those broke records in Vancouver from 1897, 1915, and 1967 till last week.

        Even at that, the record was broken by a fraction of a degree C. In other words, it’s was just as warm in 1897, 1915, and 1967.

        Heck, the record for the entire US is still 1934.

        NOAA’s records in 2014 and 2015 were plain lies. Both were 0.5C cooler than 1998. It took a statistical fudge for NOAA to make 2014 a record, by dropping the confidence level to 48%.

        Why are you so easily taken in?

        • Mike Flynn says:

          Gordon,

          According to NASA and Gavin Schmidt, the probability of 2014 being the “Hottest year EVAH!”, was 0.38 or 38%. Worse than we thought. Not even 48% – that seems to be a NOAA Warmist adjustment.

          A bit better than a one in three chance is a near certainty in Climate-speak, it would seem. Two out of three are ignored as not fitting the narrative.

          Nobody has ever measured the “surface temperature” of the Earth, anyway, making NASA and Schmidt’s mad claims a farce.

          Cheers.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            Mike…”According to NASA and Gavin Schmidt, the probability of 2014 being the Hottest year EVAH!, was 0.38 or 38%”.

            As you claim, if you keep dropping the confidence level, eventually your statistic will reach the top.

            2014 is rated by UAH in 4th place which is equivalent to a 90% confidence level. UAH does not require a CL because they use real data but they do provide an error margin.

            The question is why NOAA and GISS feel they have to fudge the confidence level to make 2014 a record. At the 90% CL 2014 is a distant 4th place, about 0.5C below 1998 and 2016.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            “2014 is rated by UAH in 4th place which is equivalent to a 90% confidence level.”

            Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

            “UAH does not require a CL because they use real data but they do provide an error margin.”

            Very wrong. ALL data require a confidence level. UAH just doesn’t bother giving it. That’s why some of us had to calculate it for ourselves when this blog gave their 2016 annual average temperature. (It was about 61% that 2016 was their warmest, IIRC.)

      • Bart says:

        “Well, if more and more record temperatures do not persuade you then what will?”

        Such primitivism. If the rumblings of the volcano won’t convince you we need to sacrifice a virgin, what will?

    • David Appell says:

      Gordon Robertson says:
      “I might add that the 60s were considered a period of cooling. With such heat records why were people not jumping up and down claiming, Oh, oh, ohmust be global warming caused by anthropogenic emissions.”

      Seriously?

      There was very little public attention paid to AGW in the ’60s. For obvious reasons.

      But the scientists were already warning the Lyndon Johnson administration about it. A 1965 report to the Johnson administration had a chapter on CO2s potential to cause warming:

      Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, Presidents Science Advisory Committee (1965), pp. 111-133.
      https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira%20downloads/PSAC,%201965,%20Restoring%20the%20Quality%20of%20Our%20Environment.pdf

  9. Bindidon says:

    I’m not so very interested in polemic concerning any “hottest evah” with a probability of x or y %.

    Here are yearly and monthly top ten ranking lists for absolute temperatures obtained from the GHCN V3 unadjusted record.

    1. Globe, yearly

    2016 | 14.67
    1998 | 14.55
    2015 | 14.38
    1991 | 14.32
    2012 | 14.28
    1999 | 14.24
    1990 | 14.01
    1994 | 13.99
    1995 | 13.96
    2000 | 13.84

    2. CONUS, yearly

    2012 | 13.16
    1998 | 13.03
    2016 | 12.91
    1953 | 12.86
    1921 | 12.82
    1881 | 12.77
    1931 | 12.76
    1990 | 12.75
    1934 | 12.75
    1954 | 12.74

    3. Globe, monthly

    2006 | 7 | 22.94
    2012 | 7 | 22.90
    2002 | 7 | 22.87
    1901 | 7 | 22.80
    2010 | 7 | 22.68
    2005 | 7 | 22.59
    2011 | 7 | 22.55
    1998 | 7 | 22.53
    1999 | 7 | 22.51
    2016 | 7 | 22.50

    4. CONUS, monthly

    1901 | 7 | 25.55
    1936 | 7 | 25.31
    2012 | 7 | 25.26
    1934 | 7 | 25.09
    2011 | 7 | 24.86
    2006 | 7 | 24.85
    1931 | 7 | 24.70
    1980 | 7 | 24.68
    2002 | 7 | 24.63
    1881 | 7 | 24.50

    Remarks

    1. It is evident that when ranking anomalies e.g. wrt the mean of 1981-2010, the annual cycles are removed, what gives different results, especially when ranking monthly values: some winter month values then may supersede some for summer months.

    2. As usual, numbers differ from the narrative.

    3. This is raw GHCN station data, does therefore not contain SST, and is not a product of outlier elimination, homogenisation and infilling. Values are therefore higher than those communicated by NOAA or GISS.

    4. A daily ranking certainly would be interesting as well, especially in the CONUS context, where many Dust Bowl days sure would quickly emerge at top.

  10. Mike Flynn says:

    Bindidon,

    I’m sure the GHCN V3 has magical properties. It is a completely useless collection of numbers, unless you can point out a use for it.

    I’m assuming you’re going to tell me it relates to “surface” temperatures. Of course, it doesn’t. You might say you really meant to to say “near surface air temperatures”. Wrong again. About 70% of the surface is covered by ocean.

    In any case, it is easily observed that the diurnal variation of a thermometer exposed to the Sun can amount to tens of degrees C, and appears chaotic in its behaviour.

    Your figures are pointless and useless curiousities, unless you claim that you can make useful predictions of the future by close scrutiny of the past. You can’t.

    Keep trying – it might serve to keep from meddling in something which could be physically injurious to others.

    Cheers.

    • Bindidon says:

      Fell free to spare us your superficial blah blah, Mike Flynn.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        Bindidon,

        Thank you, but I really don’t need your approval to do whatever I feel like.

        I appreciate your interest, nevertheless.

        Cheers.

    • dr No says:

      This is hilarious.
      Denialists who pan the historical record when it does not support there argument, but defer to it when it does.
      The 1934 data set is assumed perfect, but “NOAAs records in 2014 and 2015 were plain lies”. !!! What a joke!

      Either the historical record is correct, and unambiguously shows the globe warming, or else it is not – in which case you cannot use it to to spuriously claim “a pause”, that 1934 was a the warmest year for the US, that Australia was hotter pre-1910, etc etc.
      Unless you desperately want to claim that data in some years are, for some mysterious reason, correct but in other years are not.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        dr No,

        Data is data. Some is accurate and useful, some is accurate, but not useful, and so on.

        If you accept that the Earth’s surface was once molten, it has obviously cooled since then. If you propose that the Earth was created with a surface temperature less than the present, then it has heated for some reason, once again, quite obviously.

        If you are claiming that thermometer temperatures can be lowered by reducing the amount of GHG surrounding them, or raised by increasing the amount of the same GHG, then it is likely you may be considered eccentric, if not barking mad.

        Maybe an experiment, wherein you demonstrate that increasing GHG between the thermometer and its heat source raises the temperature, and reducing the amount of GHG causes a temperature drop, might be in order.

        This would appear to contravene the known laws of physics, but would have immense advantages wherein heating and cooling could be easily effected, just by varying CO2 in an enclosed space. Nobody has managed the achieve this feat to my knowledge. Probably because it’s impossible, but you could always live in hope!

        Still no GHE. CO2 heats nothing. Not even during an eclipse.

        Cheers.

        • dr No says:

          ” CO2 heats nothing. Not even during an eclipse.” !!!!
          This statement betrays your “little bit of knowledge being a bad thing”:
          1. An eclipse affects short wave radiation.
          2. CO2 only affects long wave radiation.
          3. Therefore there is no link between CO2 and an eclipse.

      • g*e*r*a*n says:

        drano says: “…in which case you cannot use it to spuriously claim “a pause”, that 1934 was the warmest year for the US…”

        The use of the word “pause”, by Warmists, is most revealing. There is no meaningful warming, beyond that of normal variation, so they claim a “pause”. If the globe were trending cooler, as appears now to be happening in the Arctic and Greenland, then they say the “pause” continues.

        All they want to see is warming. To Warmists, cooling is just a “pause” in warming!

      • David Appell says:

        Mike Flynn says:
        “Maybe an experiment, wherein you demonstrate that increasing GHG between the thermometer and its heat source raises the temperature, and reducing the amount of GHG causes a temperature drop, might be in order.”

        Mike Flynn said:
        May 23, 2017 at 5:16 PM
        “I hate to bore you the real science, but the transmittance of the atmosphere increases as the amount of GHGs in it drops.”

        http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/05/uah-global-temperature-update-for-april-2017-0-27-deg-c/#comment-247988

    • David Appell says:

      Mike Flynn wrote:
      “In any case, it is easily observed that the diurnal variation of a thermometer exposed to the Sun can amount to tens of degrees C, and appears chaotic in its behaviour.”

      How so?

      Mine shows something close to a sinusoid. Hardly chaotic.

  11. ren says:

    The animation shows a strong east current in the Caribbean Sea. This may mean a return to rain on the Texas coast.
    http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=natl&timespan=72hrs&anim=html5

  12. ren says:

    Hurricane IRMA
    As of 06:00 UTC Sep 03, 2017:

    Location: 18.2N 46.9W
    Maximum Winds: 95 kt Gusts: 115 kt
    Minimum Central Pressure: 973 mb
    Environmental Pressure: 1013 mb
    Radius of Circulation: 200 NM
    Radius of Maximum Wind: 15 NM
    Eye Diameter: N/A

  13. Bindidon says:

    By now, I will simply discard replies produced by people who behave as ugly lying trolls. I simply waste precious time in answering to them.

    We all are able to choose between respect and lack of it.

    Persons having interest in clean and fair debate are of course welcome.

    • Mike Flynn says:

      Bindidon,

      You may have different ideas, but I am of the view that respect is earned, not demanded.

      Feel free to discard any replies from people you perceive as ugly lying trolls. Personally, I wouldn’t bother wasting my time – but of course you’re not me.

      I might point out that Nature is the final arbiter of any debate about physics. Nature may not always be clean, or appear interested in fairness. If you choose to argue with Nature, I fear you will be doomed to failure.

      Good luck with trying to generate heat using CO2. Nature doesn’t seem to be respecting your wishes as far as I can see.

      Cheers.

  14. Global temperatures are still high but the trend this year is down and I expect this to continue going forward.

    Global ocean temperatures +.306c making no progress to new highs.

    I say all things being equal it looks like a global cooling trend has set in this year.

  15. Bindidon says:

    How can persons think they give a meaningful contribution to a discussion when they ignore or discard that you can’t simply compare
    – raw data with homogenised data,
    – absolute temperatures with anomalies,
    – land-only temperature records with those integrating land and ocean,
    – the mid troposphere with the surface, even when they sometimes pretty correlate ?

    • Bindidon says:

      And…
      – different time periods…

    • Mike Flynn says:

      Bindidon,

      You wrote –

      “How can persons think they give a meaningful contribution to a discussion when they ignore or discard that you cant simply compare”

      What is it that you are trying to convey? Maybe you left a few words out by accident?

      Endless reanalyisis of dubious temperature records is unlikely to assist in predicting the future – or don’t you agree? CO2 provides no heat to thermometers, and the recent total eclipse demonstrates the dependence of temperature on heat from sunlight. Temperatures in a Stevenson screen drop rapidly by several degrees, even though the enclosure is specifically designed to protect the thermometer from the effects of the direct sun.

      The presence of CO2 has precisely no influence, it appears. Or maybe the thermometer is measuring something other than air temperature? If so, what use are your historical air temperatures?

      No GHE. No heating due to GHGs.

      Cheers.

      • David Appell says:

        Mike Flynn says:
        “The presence of CO2 has precisely no influence, it appears.”

        Untrue. Obviously untrue:

        https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/curve_s.gif

        • g*e*r*a*n says:

          Davie, there you go with the silly CO2 absorbs IR again. Haven’t you learned that CO2 ALSO emits IR?

          I guess not.

          • David Appell says:

            Yes, CO2 also emits IR — that’s exactly what is causing global warming!

            You’re finally starting to understand…

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            CO2 does not cause global warming.

            That’s what you fail to understand

          • David Appell says:

            CO2 emits IR. Therefore it causes warming. QED

          • Norman says:

            David Appell

            g*e*r*a*n strongly believes the untested and unverified conjecture of Claes Johnson that would claim the Earth’s surface cannot absorb the IR if it happens to be warmer than the emitting air.

            I have challenged his false belief but he never would answer why he thinks he is correct. He believes a that if you have two identical materials at the same temperature, one with a heat source will not absorb any IR from the non-heated material at the same temperature but the non heated one will absorb all the IR it can (based upon its ability to absorb). He thinks he is rational with this belief system and will not defend it.

            I think g*e*r*a*n could be a valid skeptic if he ever grew tired of being an annoying troll and actually would study some physics.

            I don’t think he can understand the concepts so it is easier for him to be a troll and insult PhD level physics students (who have mastered the material and understand it) and make himself fell smart or something.

            Nothing anyone can do about g*e*r*a*n or Mike Flynn. They really are not able to understand physics regardless of how many people attempt to help them learn and God forbid they actually read material from a physics textbook (even high school would be nice).

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Dave claims: “CO2 emits IR. Therefore it causes warming. QED”

            A bowl of fruit emits IR. Perhaps we need to outlaw fruit?

            Warmists avoid science as if it were the plague.

          • David Appell says:

            My name is David, not “Dave.”

            Your point demonstrates a very poor understanding of the situation — no one is trying to “outlaw” the radiation of anything. Because that cannot be done.

          • Norman says:

            Mr. Boring g*e*r*a*n

            I think you used this same concept numerous times already. Maybe you got a few laughs the first time and now think you are a comedic genius and can repeat it several more times to get an even greater amount of laughter.

            Boring. Dull and pointless.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Norm, most people don’t need such a simple example to expose the hoax.

            But obviously it isn’t simple enough for you.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Davie spouts: Your point demonstrates a very poor understanding of the situation no one is trying to ‘outlaw’ the radiation of anything.”

            Davie, your point demonstrates very poor reading comprehension. I was comparing outlawing fruit to outlawing CO2.

            Glad to clear that up for you.

          • Norman says:

            g*e*r*a*n

            I will attempt actual physics discussion with you once again. The odds are very much against you being able to understand what I am saying (since textbooks on the subject are not your choice of reading material).

            You state a bowl of cherries emits IR. I agree.

            Now if you have two identical chambers under a vacuum. In this case the walls are not heated in either chamber. One contains a large bowl of warm cherries. The other chamber has a same size bowl filled with liquid nitrogen. What will be the temperature drop from the walls in each case?

            1) Wall temperature drops at same rate in both cases since warmer walls are unable to absorb IR radiant energy from either item?

            2) The wall temperature with the bowl of cherries will cool at a slower rate than the one with a bowl of liquid nitrogen because the bowl of cherries is emitting more IR toward the walls (which is absorbed) than the liquid nitrogen slowing the loss of energy from the internal store within the walls substance?

            3) the wall temperature with the liquid nitrogen will cool at a slower rate?

            You could also have the chamber walls heated with exactly the same amount of input temperature and compare the wall temperatures in both cases. Textbook physics states that the chamber with the warm bowl of cherries will have a higher wall temperature than the chamber with the liquid nitrogen. Not sure what you would think but my guess is that you would think they would have the same temperature based upon your faulty thought process (not based upon any textbook physics) that the walls could not absorb energy from either item if they were warmer than the items present.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Con-man, you have no credibility with me.

            You have soiled yourself.

            (Do you need links to your atrocious behavior?)

          • Norman says:

            g*e*r*a*n

            Your post is a weak attempt to cover your lack of understanding of physics. You pretend you know what you are talking about. You don’t so rather than answer some questions you divert into an insult about my character and hope I will forget you are unable to answer some questions posted to you.

          • gbaikie says:

            “You state a bowl of cherries emits IR. I agree.

            Now if you have two identical chambers under a vacuum. In this case the walls are not heated in either chamber. One contains a large bowl of warm cherries. The other chamber has a same size bowl filled with liquid nitrogen. What will be the temperature drop from the walls in each case?”

            How big is chamber, how much vaccum- 1/2 atm? The moon’s vacuum which no one has made in very large vacuum chamber.

            Warm cherries will freeze or explode or simply evaporate in vacuum- even “vacuum” of 1/2 atm.

            Liquid nitrogen needs pressure to be liquid.

          • Norman says:

            gbaikie

            YOU: “Warm cherries will freeze or explode or simply evaporate in vacuum- even vacuum of 1/2 atm.”

            This is a movie myth developed for dramatic effect.

            Here is the real stroy.
            http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

            And here is one for liquid nitrogen in a vacuum. It boils faster but will remain for some time.
            http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/what-happens-liquid-nitrogen-vacuum/

          • gbaikie says:

            Norman says:
            September 5, 2017 at 4:57 AM

            gbaikie

            YOU: Warm cherries will freeze or explode or simply evaporate in vacuum- even vacuum of 1/2 atm.

            This is a movie myth developed for dramatic effect.

            Here is the real stroy.
            http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html
            “The decompression event itself can have disasterous effects if the person being decompressed makes the mistake of trying to hold his or her breath. This will result in rupturing of the lungs, with almost certainly fatal results. There is a good reason that it is called “explosive” decompression.”

            Can a warm cherry make a mistake?

            What is warm cherry? Warmer than human body. Maybe the warm cherry is slighter warmer than the liquid nitrogen [most people would call this a very cold cherry]
            But a warm cherry can explode in vacuum- particularly if warm cherry is closer to a hot cherry rather than lukewarm cherry [and depending on what is meant by a vacuum].
            But I used the word “or” and not the word “and”.
            So warm cherry comprised of 81% water content with it’s thin skin will evaporate in a vacuum. You don’t even need a vacuum, 1 atm pressure of dry air [very, very, dry air] would cause it to evaporate and freeze. Or cool down from evaporation until it was a cool cherry and the cooler it was the less it evaporates [but given enough time will change from a warm cherry to become freeze dried cherry.
            Or human in space without space suit will also become a freeze dried human [or the good news is, it will not rot and one will get well preserved freeze dried human].

            -And here is one for liquid nitrogen in a vacuum. It boils faster but will remain for some time.
            http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/what-happens-liquid-nitrogen-vacuum/–

            the Liquid nitrogen isn’t boiling faster it’s made to boil in the vacuum, or was evaporating before putting it in vacuum.
            Point is in vacuum it will rapidly cool because it’s boiling
            but on moon vacuum it can’t exist as a liquid or even a solid- 30 K is too warm without pressure.

          • Norman says:

            gbaikie

            Sorry you are just wrong.

            Here is a web site with many actual experiments done in vacuum chambers.

            What you post is not correct.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=w6U4lh7YnpE

            Liquid nitrogen in a vacuum actually turns solid, opposite of what you currently believe to be true. A statement you make with no research to support it.

            Tomato in a vacuum chamber. It loses some water but does not blow up.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92CuA6IKRvQ

            Here is one with some hot peppers
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM5N5oku_o

          • gbaikie says:

            What you post is not correct.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=w6U4lh7YnpE

            What posted was exactly correct, liquid nitrogen needs pressure to remain a liquid.
            In video the pressure was remove and liquid nitrogen didn’t remain a liquid
            Now if put that ice nitrogen in video in a Moon vacuum, it will evaporate. Wiki:
            “When the pressure is below the triple point, solid nitrogen directly sublimes to gas. The triple point is at 63.140.06 K and 0.12550.0005 bar.”

            The video said the pressure was .5 Bars.
            Which same as 1/2 atm or 14.7 / 2 = 7.35 psi
            0.1255 bar is .1255 atm or 1.82 psi

            Which btw is close to the armstrong limit:
            The Armstrong limit, often called Armstrong’s line, is the altitude that produces an atmospheric pressure so low (0.0618 atmosphere or 6.3 kPa (47 mmHg)) that water boils at the normal temperature of the human body: 37 C (98.6 F).”

            Well it’s about twice armstrong limit.
            “Armstrong was the first to recognize this phenomenon, which occurs at an altitude beyond which humans absolutely cannot survive in an unpressurized environment,”

            So it twice pressure of armstrong limit, or you could survive without pressure suit- assuming you had oxygen mask.

            Mars is well below the armstrong limit- boiling point of water is near 0 C. Though in Hellas basin of mars because of it’s low elevation, it has higher pressure, and boiling point of water is about 10 C. Though of course, still well below armstrong limit.
            And though you call Mars atmosphere vacuum, in comparison the Moon’s atmosphere, Mars has a lot atmosphere- about 25 trillion tonnes of CO2 or about 1/60th of earth atmosphere per square meter- or 100,000 ft elevation on Earth is fairly similar to Mars atmosphere- in terms of pressure.
            Or continuing wiki on armstrong limit, the line begins
            “Above Earth, this begins at an altitude of approximately 18 km (60,000 ft)to about 19 km (62,000 ft)”
            or 40,000 feet above armstrong limit on earth is about pressure of mars on at average elevation.

            I leave it you to figure out what elevation on Earth is equal to triple point of nitrogen.
            As hint it’s below the armstrong limit.
            oh, also on mars pressure not enough for frozen nitrogen.

            Another question is, if vacuum is 1/2 bar or atm or 7.35 psi
            does anyone live and play in a vacuum on Earth.

            And you get a hint:
            “El Alto is the second-largest city in Bolivia, located adjacent to La Paz in Pedro Domingo Murillo Province on the Altiplano highlands. El Alto is today one of Bolivia’s fastest-growing urban centers, with a population of 974,754 in 2011.El Alto is the highest major metropolis in the world, with an average elevation of 4,150 m (13,615 ft). “

          • Norman says:

            gbaikie

            At 1:50 in the video the experimenter clearly states he is at 0.1 bar not 0.5 bar when the nitrogen becomes a solid.

            Watch it again.

  16. Norman says:

    Mike Flynn

    Why do you post? Don’t you think you could help yourself more by reading a textbook on heat transfer so you can correct the incredible amount of misinformation that churns in your brain?

    • g*e*r*a*n says:

      Norm, that’s especially hilarious based on your inability to understand basic concepts of physics.

      • Norman says:

        g*e*r*a*n

        So have you decided to crack open a textbook on Heat Transfer to correct the many areas and flaws on the subject?

        • David Appell says:

          Of course he hasn’t. That’s not what trolls do.

        • g*e*r*a*n says:

          Norm and Davie–two of a kind, joined in pseudoscience.

          Cute.

          • Norman says:

            g*e*r*a*n

            What is the time differential between coming up with your thoughtless post (has nothing to do with scientific discussion) and opening a physics textbook and reading some real science?

            I think reading the textbook would help you to a far greater degree than whatever pleasure you get from your mindless and useless posting.

            What pseudoscience? What does that mean to you? You use the term like a two-year old kid that learned a new word. You apply it everywhere, valid use or not. It does not matter to you, you just think by using it people reading your posts will think you are a genius.

            You are one boring person. Do you have any original thoughts develop in your mind? You have yet to demonstrate one. Writing pseudoscience 153,976 times does not demonstrate an interesting thought process.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Con-man, you have proven yourself to be a complete reprobate, devoid of any interest in science or truth.

          • Norman says:

            g*e*r*a*n

            Boring. Yawn. Wake me up when you have something new to say. Maybe you need endless repetition like some small child. Adults need some new information to stimulate their thoughts.

    • David Appell says:

      Norman: I think the trolls here just post to get some attention. Which is weird, because they always insist on using fake names. For some reason some few people take delight (or so they think) in disrupting, insulting, lying etc. You have to admit it’s a very weird kind of hobby.

    • Mike Flynn says:

      Norman,

      Why do you want to know? Are you really just trying to be gratuitously offensive? What is the point of your question?

      Maybe you could point out in detail (for the benefit of others) examples of my “misinformation”, with appropriate corrections.

      For example, I state there is no GHE, as increasing the amount of GHGs between a thermometer and a source of heat will not cause a thermometer to become hotter.

      Maybe you could provide some proper experimental evidence to the contrary, rather than indulging in Appellesque handwaving, and puerile attempts at “gotchas”.

      Fill a room or other enclosed space with CO2. A charged CO2 cylinder will serve, if you want to avoid doing anything involving any real effort.

      Watch the temperature change not at all.

      No heating.

      Wait for nightfall if you wish. The temperature drops. Still no CO2 heating. More misinformation? Please correct me if I’m wrong. Or just keep trolling.

      Cheers.

      • David Appell says:

        Mike Flynn says:
        “Maybe you could provide some proper experimental evidence to the contrary,”

        Radiative forcing measured at Earths surface corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, R. Philipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)
        http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract

        “Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010,” D. R. Feldman et al, Nature 519, 339343 (19 March 2015)
        http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html

      • Norman says:

        Mike Flynn

        I have done it maybe 10,000 times. It has zero effect on you.

        You claim the Earth’s surface has continued to cool for billions of years since its molten formation. I have linked you easy to click on links showing your thought process is completely flawed and outright wrong but it does not change the course of your delusion in the sea of fantasy and make believe.

        The Earth surface cooled rapidly in a few million years then it reached a relative equilibrium temperature with the Sun’s input energy. You are not capable of understanding this physics.

        Here is a song that might explain your inner being.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lmAc3LKWM

        Please don’t keep asking for evidence that CO2 heats things. That is your own twisted and false understanding of what scientists are saying. I have explained the correct process to you many times but you are not able to understand it and persist in your fantasy delusional thinking.

        No one can reach you. Fantasyland is too pleasant for you, reality is not something that interests you. Also learning takes a lot of effort that you are not willing to put out. Neither you nor g*e*r*a*n have the necessary mental fortitude to actually dig in and learn the very difficult material presented in textbooks so you persist in your incorrect notions and pat yourselves on how much wiser you are than the rest of the scientists who actually spend some effort learning the material.

        Don’t be so incredibly lazy and open a textbook and start reading, there are good ones available for free on the Internet or maybe you library has some good ones. What are you waiting for?

        • g*e*r*a*n says:

          Norm rambles incessantly, again.

          Hilarious.

          • Norman says:

            g*e*r*a*n

            Yawn. Wake me up when you have something new to say. I have read this type of post maybe 20,000 times now. Really original there champ. You do show that you possess the greates ability to bore someone on this blog. I think Mike Flynn is a close 2nd. He endlessly repeats himself as well.

          • g*e*r*a*n says:

            Con-man must have broken his keyboard.

            Usually, he can ramble much longer.

          • Norman says:

            g*e*r*a*n

            Yawn.

  17. Norman says:

    A visual perspective on Texas Flooding over many years. Excessive rain is not a rare event in Texas. It is prone to hurricanes and tropical storms.

    http://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major-stories/article/Catastrophic-floods-that-swamped-Texas-6123342.php#photo-7628395

    • David Appell says:

      Interesting. One thing you have to account for when comparing past floods to modern floods is the impact of flood prevention projects since then — dams, canals, drainage, widening, and the like. Even water usage upstream.

      • lewis says:

        The problem with flood prevention projects is that they make people feel safe. But, if the rains outdo the prevention, those who felt safe become much more vulnerable than if the projects were never undertaken.

        Take the levees of lower Louisiana and Katrina.

  18. Geoff Sherrington says:

    Many are saying that the high rainfall over Houston was because hurricane Harvey just sat there and moved very little distance when it was intense. So it set some records.
    Is this logically much different to saying that a particular location experienced a record hot day because cloudless skies just sat there, letting the intense sun shine down unabated?
    If you are into lateral thinking you can find ways to express events, ways that are not abundant in the climate science handbook of approved expressions. Geoff

    • Bindidon says:

      Geoff Sherrington on September 3, 2017 at 8:28 AM

      1. This is an interesting thought, indeed of (intuitively felt) lateral nature, and all we know that mankind progresses faster when not keeping sitting on so called settled science. We need to explore all, if necessary orthogonal, alternatives visible from each standpoint we just arrived at.

      You seem to expect here however that your readers are experienced enough in meteorology to understand the link you build between a ‘record hot day’ and ‘the hurricane just sat there and moved very little distance’.

      Thanks for an explanation which at least I myself would need.

      2. Is the science settled as far as hurricanes are concerned? I have some doubts. Before we start thinking about why hurricanes slow down where, shouldn’t we first spend time enough to really understand their spatiotemporal behavior as a whole?

      For example, through sound comparisons of ocean heat content, sea surface and lowest tropospheric temperature anomaly changes along the traditional hurricane paths, thus bringing together climate science aka ‘meteorology-in-the-large’ (in a spatiotemporal sense) and the meteorology-in-the-small.

      3. But if in the discussion about how to compare temperatures we fail already, by opposing ideologies instead of bringing knowledge together, how could we ever go on?

      No: I don’t suppose that scientific persons waste their time with some chaotic exchanges a la ‘We are in front of a climate catastrophe’, ‘Harvey’s rain is due to climate change’, ‘No GHE! CO2 can’t heat thermometers’ or ‘GHCN is corrupt’, etc etc.

      But I am a bit afraid that this exacerbated controversy at societal level wont’t be without any influence on the real scientific debate.

  19. ren says:

    Irma hurricane heading to the Lesser Antilles.
    http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/carb/ir4-animated.gif

    • ren says:

      Hurricane IRMA
      As of 12:00 UTC Sep 03, 2017:

      Location: 17.8N 47.9W
      Maximum Winds: 100 kt Gusts: 120 kt
      Minimum Central Pressure: 969 mb
      Environmental Pressure: 1013 mb
      Radius of Circulation: 220 NM
      Radius of Maximum Wind: 15 NM

  20. Bindidon says:

    It is so funny to read comments pretending that the one or the other temperature series (in the actual case: GHCN) is corrupt.

    And that is done on the base of eyeballing at a low resolution graph like this one:

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_July_2017_v6.jpg

    Unexperienced or pretentious commenters manifestly do not understand that they accumulate error over error during their weird comparisons:
    – comparing raw data with high deviations from the mean and homogenised data;
    – comparing tropospheric temperatures at 5 km altitude with those at the surface;
    – subjective eyeballing instead of looking at computed values;
    – comparing absolute values with anomalies;
    – comparing land-only temperature data with data integrating land and ocean;
    – – comparing the ranking of a time series for 1880-2016 with one for 1979-2016.

    You couldn’t do it worse.

    Thus, the next time, such clever commenters should compare e.g. GHCN anomalies and UAH’s land anomalies (wrt to the same climatology of course), by taking care to eliminate all GHCN anomalies up to november 1978 before applying a ranking sort.

    That would be a very first step in doing proper work.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      bindidon…”And that is done on the base of eyeballing at a low resolution graph like this one:”

      If you are incapable of eyeballing the red running average curve based on calculus (area under the curve) and fail to see that it averages essentially to a flat trend from 1998 – 2015, why are you commenting?

      In engineering studies we not only worked it out via calculus, we drew 3-D curves to verify it. We became very good at visual inspection and on some exams you could get a quick 25 marks (out of 150) by claiming ‘proved by inspection’.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        “If you are incapable of eyeballing the red running average curve based on calculus….”

        Good lord. Calculus is the exact opposite of “eyeballing” — it gives the least squares method of curve-fitting.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”Good lord. Calculus is the exact opposite of eyeballing it gives the least squares method of curve-fitting”.

          DA…you need to start paying attention. I did not claim eyeballing replaced calculus I claimed it is based on calculus. I mentioned the area under the curve, between the curve and the x-axis, or whatever axes one is using.

          That’s what integral calculus does. Initially Newton based his calculus on the geometry of Descartes, the idea being to fit rectangles under a curve representing an equation. As you know, you cannot do that with precision due to the squareness of the rectangle, there is a small triangle of sorts left with a curved hypotenuse. As the rectangle becomes narrower you can approximate the area under the curve.

          Using integral calculus with it’s limits, you can get the area exact. However, you are summing the narrowing rectangles under a curve to their limit in width as x -> 0.

          After all, each point of a curve in the xy plane represents a specified distance from the x-axis. y, the curve itself, is specified as a function of x. In essence, with integral calculus, you are summing the distance from the x-axis to the curve over a continuous portion of the curve.

          The area under the curve gives you that summation. You can often see it visually as a ballpark approximation. Roy has done us the favour of providing the red running average curve.

          You also need to understand that oscillations around a baseline average to 0, in general. My baseline is approx 0.15C.

          If you inspect the area under the red running average curve Roy has drawn on the UAH graph you can approximate the overall trend of the data, provided you also visualize a baseline for your visualization.

          My baseline is around 0.15C and it’s apparent to me that the peaks and valleys of the red running average are balanced around that baseline from 1998 – 2015.

          The sharp 1998 EN peak area is balanced by the wider negative peak area (below 0.15C) from 1999 – 2002. Then the small oscillations from 2002 – 2007 are roughly balanced around 0.15C. There is an approximate cosine wave from 2007 – 2011 which averages to 0, followed by a dip at 2012 that rises by 2015.

        • David Appell says:

          Thanks, but I’ve known calculus since high school.

          The issue is you thinking “eyeballing” is superior to calculating statistics. Which is absurd. I suspect you only think that because you don’t understand statistics and can’t do the calculations for yourself.

          And the statistics don’t depend on the chosen baseline.

          • Bart says:

            Eyeballing without preconceptions is superior to forcing an inappropriate model on some data and calculating worthless statistics based on that model.

            The weak link isn’t the math, it’s the preconception.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      bindidon…” subjective eyeballing instead of looking at computed values;”

      I already knew the computed value, the IPCC admitted there was a flat trend from 1998 – 2012 and UAH claimed little or no warming from 1998 – 2015. Visual inspection of the red running average curve only confirmed it.

      You seem to be the confused party. Based on your appeal to authority you should accept the flat trend proclaimed by the IPCC and you should be questioning why NOAA found it necessary to retroactively created a +ve trend where both they and the IPCC had hitherto agreed there was no warming from 1998 – 2012.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        “I already knew the computed value, the IPCC admitted there was a flat trend from 1998 2012”

        Has there been any new data since then?

        (You always avoid this question. Every time.)

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”Has there been any new data since then? (You always avoid this question. Every time.)”

          Are you referring to the 2016 EN or the fudged retroactive data of NOAA? Seems to me you think NOAA has found a warming trend where both NOAA and the IPCC had found none in the past (1998 – 2012). I don’t regard that as proof of warming, I regard it as scientific misconduct.

          If you are talking about the trend from 2016 due to the EN, we are still waiting to see what happens. There has been no further warming for something like 12 months.

          You should note that all the warming we have experienced has been related to ENSO, not CO2.

          • David Appell says:

            GR: NOAA has been adjusting raw data for a long time. Why is it you’re willing to accept that data up to 2012 but not afterward?

          • David Appell says:

            GR wrote:
            “You should note that all the warming we have experienced has been related to ENSO, not CO2.”

            Why the 2015-16 El Nino the warmest ever recorded, +0.37 C warmer than 1997-98? (NOAA surface data)

  21. Bindidon says:

    I just discovered a horrible fact: all students learning about IR vs. CO2 and GHE at the University of Cologne are manipulated by a dangerous Warmist cell!

    Look at this perverse and silly document:

    https://www.astro.uni-koeln.de/sites/default/files/praktikum_b/anleitung_1.1.pdf

    Poor students! Incredible! How is that possible?

    • Mike Flynn says:

      Bindidon,

      Trolling seems to have sunk to new depths.

      Links to German language experiments, which definitely don’t show an increase in thermometer temperatures by reducing the amount of radiation reaching it by placing CO2 between it and the heat source – rather the complete opposite, supporting the results of radiative transfer equations.

      Maybe you can provide other examples of the same thing John Tyndall quantified around 150 years ago.

      How about finding results published in Mandarin, Greek, Cyrillic or Hindi? Foolish Warmists tend to deny, divert and confuse, but going out of your way to link to a foreign language document on an English language blog, possibly hoping no one will realise that the experiment does not support your implied claims, seems a bit odd – desperate , even!

      Others may draw their own conclusions about a fairly standard physics course bench experiment that has been performed for at least 100 years.

      Cheers.

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      bindidon…”I just discovered a horrible fact: all students learning about IR vs. CO2 and GHE at the University of Cologne are manipulated by a dangerous Warmist cell!”

      It’s called a paradigm.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn

      Some are legit while others are based on sheer stubbornness and bad science. However, once a student is immersed in a paradigm he/she as a grad student must accept it.

      John Christy of UAH studied under Kevin Trenberth as a grad student. He apparently accepted the alarmists paradigm presented by Trenberth but later, after making data sets from NOAA sat data, John had the integrity to admit that the NOAA sat data did not corroborate the paradigm.

      Universities who teach the relationship between IR and CO2 in the atmosphere are lying because they have no proof. However, that does not prevent them from claiming unproved science.

      • David Appell says:

        Gordon Robertson says:
        “John Christy of UAH studied under Kevin Trenberth as a grad student. He apparently accepted the alarmists paradigm presented by Trenberth but later, after making data sets from NOAA sat data, John had the integrity to admit that the NOAA sat data did not corroborate the paradigm.”

        Was that before or after the big sign error correction forced by Santer and others?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset#Corrections_made

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          DA…”Was that before or after the big sign error correction forced by Santer and others?”

          Nice try. You link to a wiki page crawling with William Connolly of realclimate.

          There was no sign change. The big issue was orbital decay circa 2005, which was fixed immediately. At worst, the error it introduced was in the Tropics and the error fell well within the error margin declared by UAH.

          Connolly’s understanding of UAH satellite data sets is seriously biased due to his uber-alarmist attitude. Connolly, Schmidt, Santer, and Mann want the sat data to go away. They have tried every form of pseudo-science to discredit UAH.

          Besides, UAH make it’s data sets from NOAA satellite data. You seem to staunchly defend NOAA on surface stations, even though they fudge the data using a climate model, after slashing 70% of reporting stations, then you turn around and infer the satellites they launched have faulty data.

          There’s no pleasing alarmists.

          • David Appell says:

            Gordon Robertson says:
            “Nice try. You link to a wiki page crawling with William Connolly of realclimate.”

            I’ve noticed that when you can’t answer a question, you always try to dismiss a site by whatever means you can find — here Connolley (a good scientist, BTW, certainly compared to you), or calling NOAA fraudulent, etc.

            Every time. It’s pathetic.

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            DA…”you always try to dismiss a site by whatever means you can find here Connolley (a good scientist, BTW, certainly compared to you), or calling NOAA fraudulent, etc. ”

            Connolley is a computer programmer, hardly a scientist. He rules the roost on wiki pages rejecting skeptical input. He hangs around at realclimate trying to absorb the pseudo-science they spew then he speaks as if he is a physicist.

        • David Appell says:

          Gordon Robertson says:
          “You seem to staunchly defend NOAA on surface stations, even though they fudge the data using a climate model, after slashing 70% of reporting stations….”

          I’d demand you prove this, but you never even try and always just ignore the question.

          “…then you turn around and infer the satellites they launched have faulty data.”

          I’ve never done that. I don’t even know what that means, the satellites were launched with faulty data. The satellites are TAKING data…..

    • David Appell says:

      Gordon Robertson says:
      “Universities who teach the relationship between IR and CO2 in the atmosphere are lying because they have no proof.”

      What??

      Tynall discovered in 1859 that CO2 absorbs IR.

      So what are you talking about??

      • Norman says:

        Gordon Robertson

        Sometimes you have good posts but you really need to support you allegations.

        David Appell is correct about CO2 absorbing IR and also emitting it.
        It has been tested many times with various instruments over long periods of time. Since it is so established scientists have even worked out the particular molecular motions of the CO2 molecule that produce its signature wavelength.

        This is a strong statement.
        YOU: “Universities who teach the relationship between IR and CO2 in the atmosphere are lying because they have no proof. However, that does not prevent them from claiming unproved science.”

        I think David Appell has linked to proof of a connection a hundred times. Actual measured values that show about a 0.2 W/m^2 increase in downwelling IR directly related to the amount of increased CO2,

        What is your counter evidence that allows you to make a strong declaration of intentional lying? What evidence supports you statement that there is not proof and they are lying? It seems as if you are just attempting to manipulate the unscientific laypeople with false and unverified allegations.

        Please provide some evidence to support your Conspiracy Conjecture or make a sound retraction until you are able to gather evidence to support you wild conjecture.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          Norman…”David Appell is correct about CO2 absorbing IR and also emitting it”.

          I have no argument against DA or Tyndall even though it will likely go to his head seeing his initials with Tyndall’s name. I agree that CO2 absorbs certain frequencies of IR.

          What you guys are missing is the thrust of my arguments that the atmosphere lacks the concentration of CO2 to absorb enough IR to warm it significantly and that the 2nd law applies here. CO2 at a colder temperature cannot transmit IR that will be absorbed by a warmer surface that warmed it. That would contradict the 2nd law.

          BTW…it’s not OK to claim that a net positive balance of IR accommodates the 2nd law. Clausius wrote the 2nd law about heat and he made not one mention of IR, which is EM. He talked about heat transfer by radiation but he was firm in his claim that heat transfer by radiation must obey the 2nd law.

          “Actual measured values that show about a 0.2 W/m^2 increase in downwelling IR directly related to the amount of increased CO2…”

          Even if that’s true, it’s a measure of IR, not heat. The IR from a cooler source like CO2 cannot be absorbed by atoms at a higher temperature.

          Furthermore, there is not enough CO2 to deliver enough IR to warm the surface, even if it could. The surface IR flux, a tiny fraction of which is absorbed by CO2, is massive in comparison to the flux CO2 can back-radiate to the surface.

          Trenberth-Kiehle show as much IR from the atmosphere as from the surface which is absolute nonsense. Sometimes I wonder how Trenberth got a degree.

          “What is your counter evidence that allows you to make a strong declaration of intentional lying?”

          It’s lying because it is taught as fact that CO2 in the atmosphere can warm the surface. It’s a theory and a bad one at that. If they taught it as a theory and presented alternative theories I would not call them liars.

          • Norman says:

            Gordon Robertson

            Sorry but Des is correct. If you did study physics at a University level at some point you have forgotten most of what you learned.

            Clearly stated your physics is terrible and goes directly against textbook.

            You are getting your concepts from untrained and delusional people like Claes Johnson. He is not as smart with physics as you believe him to be.

            YOU: “Even if thats true, its a measure of IR, not heat. The IR from a cooler source like CO2 cannot be absorbed by atoms at a higher temperature.”

            Where do you get these terrible ideas from. That is not what the 2nd law states at all. It is a made up notion not based upon any foundation and peddled as if it where an established fact.

            You, like g*e*r*a*n and Mike Flynn, do not comprehend the GHE and believe it to be something other than what is stated. You repeat a false notion and believe you are on top of things.

            YOU: “Its lying because it is taught as fact that CO2 in the atmosphere can warm the surface. Its a theory and a bad one at that. If they taught it as a theory and presented alternative theories I would not call them liars.”

            Where do you find this to be taught. Can you give a textbook citation of such material (not something of a blog).

            What is taught is that CO2 will allow the surface to reach a higher equilibrium temperature than a surface with no CO2 present, with the same amount of incoming solar input energy.

            YOU: “Furthermore, there is not enough CO2 to deliver enough IR to warm the surface, even if it could. The surface IR flux, a tiny fraction of which is absorbed by CO2, is massive in comparison to the flux CO2 can back-radiate to the surface.”

            You make stuff up and want me to accept it as some type of fact? Empirical evidence suggests you are flawed in you made up comments.
            Where do you dig this stuff up from?

            I would give you the same advice I give to the others. I know you won’t accept it. You guys never do. Open a textbook on Heat Transfer and start to read it and you will see your current understanding is made up, fake physics, not based upon anything but the power of your own belief that cannot be questioned by an outside person. Only you can change the flaws in your thoughts. But who would want to? Your ego will not allow you to accept you might have gone off the wrong rail in your thoughts.

      • Mike Flynn says:

        DA,

        So does all matter in the known universe.

        The sudden air temperature drop during the eclipse shows that that which is warmed by the Sun, cools rapidly in the absence of same.

        No magic – just physics.

        No GHE necessary or present.

        Cheers.

        • David Appell says:

          Mike Flynn: I was in the path of totality during the eclipse, in Oregon.

          Sunlight didn’t disappear completely. Totality was more like the night of a full moon, or dusk. There was sunlight from the Sun’s corona, and from Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere.

          The temperature dropped a little — I’ve read. I was too excited to remember to notice.

          The question is, why didn’t it drop a few hundred degrees, with so little sunlight? What’s your answer to that?

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            You have a PhD in physics, I believe. If you really can’t answer your own question, you might ask a NASA solar scientist. I suggest Mitzi Adams as a contact, even though she may be less qualified than yourself.

            If you are not satisfied with her explanations, there are several other solar scientists at NASA’s Marshall Spce Flight Centre who may be willing to explain what you claim not to know.

            Obviously, I know the answer. Given your PhD in physics, I assume you do too. I therefore conclude you are just trolling – trying to be gratuitously annoying.

            Please let me know if I am wrong.

            Cheers.

          • David Appell says:

            I asked you. And I notice that you avoided answering.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            I’ve informed you before – I don’t dance to your tune. Others may. That’s their choice.

            Bad luck for you. You may or may not realise that my care factor in relation to your opinion is precisely zero.

            If you’re as thick as a brick or two, it’s not my fault, is it? Keep on with the stupid gotchas – someone else might feel like playing your silly game!

            Cheers.

          • David Appell says:

            MF: It’s always satisfying to see you whine and kvetch when you realize youre trapped in the mess of your own lies and junk science.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            DA,

            Thank you for continued interest. I am pleased you are satisfied. I do my best.

            Cheers.

      • Gordon Robertson says:

        DA…”Tynall discovered in 1859 that CO2 absorbs IR”.

        No one has proved that the trace amount of CO2 in our atmosphere can cause the catastrophic global warming/climate change projected. In fact, the lack of warming since ’98 pretty well disproves the theory.

        This nonsense should not be taught in schools and universities.

        As I have tried to reveal to you, Dalton’s law of partial pressures and the Ideal Gas Equation disqualifies CO2 in it’s present mass as any kind of threat wrt warming. Anyone with a basic grounding in physics and chemistry would get that immediately.

        • Des says:

          Have you actually STUDIED science at university?

          • Gordon Robertson says:

            Des…”Have you actually STUDIED science at university?”

            I studied the Ideal Gas Law and Dalton’s law of partial pressures. You appear to have missed it.

            What school did you attend BTW….could it have been reform school?

            Tell me what’s wrong with my assessment. Alarmists are good at ad homs but fairly useless at scientific rebuttal.

  22. ren says:

    Hurricane IRMA
    As of 00:00 UTC Sep 04, 2017:

    Location: 17.3N 50.4W
    Maximum Winds: 100 kt Gusts: 120 kt
    Minimum Central Pressure: 959 mb
    Environmental Pressure: 1012 mb
    Radius of Circulation: 240 NM
    Radius of Maximum Wind: 15 NM
    Eye Diameter: N/A

    Atmospheric pressure decreases. Latitude decreases. The hurricane is moving to the Lesser Antilles.

  23. dr No says:

    I wonder what the nincompoops here think about the chances of Irma hitting the US so soon after Harvey.
    Possible answers:
    A: Impossible!
    B: Alarmist clap-trap!
    C: It would only be natural variation!
    D: Meh. It would only be unprecedented – so what?
    E: NOAA will invent and manipulate data to make people believe a hurricane will hit.
    F: Antarctica is still cold. Therefore there is no enhanced greenhouse effect.
    G: It was the solar eclipse wot did it!
    etc etc

    • Mike Flynn says:

      dr No,

      It appears you’re answering your own question. I see you’ve left your list incomplete, in typical foolish Warmist fashion – do you wish to indicate what etc etc is supposed to mean?

      I understand if you decline to provide any explanation. Just another trollish attempt at a “gotcha”, it might seem to sone.

      I’m a little surprised you appear concerned about what nincompoops think. Why do you value the opinion of nincompoops? I suppose nincompoops are a step up from many foolish Warmists – is this why you wonder what they might think, or are you just attempting to see where you fit in?

      I wonder (only joking – I don’t care at all!).

      Cheers.

      • dr No says:

        Mike,
        I was hoping to hear your thoughts on the matter. That is why I started a list – to help you make a decision!
        However, it appears you have declined to take my offer to offer any thoughts on the matter.
        I thought nincompoops at least do have thoughts. Maybe you should be put in the brain-dead class? (only joking).
        Lets be serious – tell me whether another hurricane strike would cause you to pause and change your opinion about climate change.
        Alternatively, what sort of event(s) over the next few months would be sufficient to shake your faith? I really am interested in what you think.

        • Gordon Robertson says:

          dr no…”tell me whether another hurricane strike would cause you to pause and change your opinion about climate change”.

          Eh, what’s up doc?

          Why should it? Warming has been upon us since 1988 according to ex-GISS leader Hansen. One would think every year from 1988 onward would have been rife with hurricanes.

          Why do think warming is suddenly upon us? You are surely smarter than to listen to the fudgings of NOAA and NASA GISS are you not?

          If NASA was smart they’d cut GISS adrift. Seems that GISS has friends in high places. When the last director of NASA wanted fire James Hansen for political stupidity he was overruled from on high. It’s well known that Hansen received funding from US political sources via Al Gore.

    • Bart says:

      A) not unprecedented
      B) 12 years since the last major one

  24. Harry Cummings says:

    He is not sure what comes after G perhaps he should use numbers next time
    HC

  25. ren says:

    Will there be an early winter in the northern hemisphere?
    http://files.tinypic.pl/i/00930/upknnv22t9qz.png

  26. ren says:

    This hurricane will cause great havoc and may reach Florida.
    http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00930/e5j9ogydbc9c.png

  27. Now that the EL NINO environment is ending let us see how much warmth will be present as we move forward. Answer nada.

    In the meantime the recent burst of solar activity (a surprise solar flux 120) lends credence to the idea that this cycle is going to be not only weak but long.

    Global ocean temperatures last check were +.293 c.

    My solar climate play is very low solar will result in overall lower ocean temperatures and an increase in albedo .

    Thus far this year the global temperatures have been trending down and I expect this trend to continue with global temperatures at 30 year means within a year.

    AGW will be in more trouble to justify this development if it occurs which is looking more likely.

    • dr No says:

      “Now that the EL NINO environment is ending”
      Huh?
      The last El Nino ended in May 2016.
      By my counting, that means it ended 15 months ago.
      Do you mean “La Nina” ? (The extreme Asian monsoon suggest La Nina-like conditions at the moment)
      If so, then wouldn’t you expect an end to cool conditions and a return to warm conditions?

    • gbaikie says:

      — Salvatore Del Prete says:
      September 4, 2017 at 7:19 AM

      Now that the EL NINO environment is ending let us see how much warmth will be present as we move forward. Answer nada.

      In the meantime the recent burst of solar activity (a surprise solar flux 120) lends credence to the idea that this cycle is going to be not only weak but long.–

      I was wondering if anyone was going to mention the uptick and what if any significant on solar cycles.
      So just looking at sunspot it’s Sunspot number: 96
      http://www.spaceweather.com/
      Why does this add to possibility of longer and weaker?

      “Global ocean temperatures last check were +.293 c.

      My solar climate play is very low solar will result in overall lower ocean temperatures and an increase in albedo .

      Thus far this year the global temperatures have been trending down and I expect this trend to continue with global temperatures at 30 year means within a year.

      AGW will be in more trouble to justify this development if it occurs which is looking more likely.”
      After holiday Roy will post temperatures, what do you think it will be, and in what will it be next month and month later? Roughly.

  28. I am talking about ENSO regions 1and 2 ,3,3.4 and 4 all cooling and turning negative now after being positive for the fist half of the year.

  29. https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/

    This will show the cooling of all the enso regions if you scroll down.

  30. dr No says:

    El Nino conditions are associated with NINO3.4 values as great as +3
    See:
    http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/indicator_enso.jsp?c=nino34
    Recent values have been less than +1 and correspond to neutral-like conditions – not El Nino.

  31. They have been in an El NINO environment meaning they were near El Nino territory but that has changed and there goes your global warming.

    • dr No says:

      OK then.
      What is the probability that:
      a new annual global average surface temperature record will have occurred by the end of the year?

      How about by the end of 2020?
      According to you, the probability must be very very low. Maybe as low as 100 to one?
      In which case allow me to place a dollar bet with you that a new record will have been set by 2020.

      I can offer you odds on these likelihoods without any problem.
      I have never yet found a denialist to actually provide me with their own estimates.
      That is because they are all cowards, afraid to risk a dollar by putting their money where their mouths are.
      Go on Salvatore – be the first brave soul to offer me long odds against a new record by 2020.

      • The odds of a new record temperature high by 2020 is ZERO.

        This is not a sporting event.

        If I am wrong I am sure you will make me own up to it.

        • dr No says:

          Bravo! Well done! A person with conviction !
          I will give you a dollar if you are correct.
          But you will owe me $100 if a new record is set. (if you were gracious enough to offer to pay me I would nominate a suitable charity).

          BTW, zero odds implies an infinite payout if I win, but I don’t want to be greedy.

    • Dave says:

      The odd thing about this statement is that the most recent El Nino ended in Jun 2016. Since then, we actually had a brief and mild La Nina until 6 months ago, and a subsequent (and likely ongoing) period of neutral temperatures. see:

      http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

      Much empirical data shows that the strongest positive correlation between El Nino and Troposphere temperatures has a lag of approximately 5 months, so is El Nino was all that was driving global temperatures, temperatures since January should have been below average, and return to average over the next few months. So how does this prediction compare to the observational data for 2017 so far?

  32. https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png

    Here is what is happening in region 3.4 and all of the other regions are acting the same.

    • Dave says:

      I wouldn’t get too excited that the world is about to freeze over. Here is the modelled prediction from the POAMA from early July:

      http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/wrap-up/archive/20170704.archive.shtml#tabs=Outlooks

      at that point they were predicting a swing from the slightly warmer than average, but still neutral SSTs in the Nino 3.4 region, to mild cooling by September – which is precisely what the graph you linked to shows has now happened. And here is the ongoing prediction from the latest BOM ENSO update:

      http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/#tabs=Outlooks

      At this point, the models pretty much unanimously agree on continued mild cool conditions in the eastern Pacific for the next 6 months, but most likely remaining within neutral territory.

      Nothing to see here. Please move along.

      • http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst8110.for

        The data Dave which shows we were in an El NINO environment until recently.

        Let’s see how much global warming comes about in this kind of temperature regime in all the ENSO regions which are now trending below average ,the answer is and will be nada proving once again AGW does not exist.

        Dave yes a reading between -.5 to +.5 may be officially neutral but it makes a big difference if the neutral reading is on the plus side of zero versus the negative side.

        • This data is sea surface temp deviation in ENSO regions and if one looks at the past few months the trend is down.

        • Bindidon says:

          Please Salvatore!

          The whole world uses a distantiated view on ENSO; why are you looking at minimal downs everywhere all the time?

          Look at Klaus Wolter’s ENSO in a few days:

          https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/table.html

          or at SOI’s 30 day ENSO mean

          http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/index.shtml#tabs=SOI

          There you read:

          Sustained positive values of the SOI above +7 typically indicate La Nia…

          Have a look at their 2-year graph, and you see that since october 2016 there were no real La Nina conditions, and that these are not about to be met actually.

          A further look at the Japanese JMA:

          http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/elnino/elmonout.html

          Fig.2 ENSO forecast probabilities based on JMA/MRI-CGCM2

          shows that till Feb 2018 the la Nina probability still is at no more than 30%.

          No Nino, no Nina. No warming, no cooling. Tieniti calma, Salvatore!

        • Dave says:

          Well, then given the good correlation between Nino 3.4 and Tropospheric temperatures (with a lag peaking around 5 months), and the weak La Nina which followed the large El Nino in 2016, we would now expect to be seeing the end of the cooling associated with that weak La Nina, and some gentle warming for the next few months (likely until the end of 2017) as a result of the warmer sea surface in Nino 3.4 that began around March this year. And if the dip back towards La Nina seen recently continues, then we might see some gentle cooling in early 2018.

          I see that Roy has now released the latest UAH 6.0 data for August, which are entirely consistent with the above. The only slight problem is that, with predominantly neutral conditions having prevailed for 13 months now, we are still 0.4 degrees above the long term average. The August anomaly of 0.41 degrees is, indeed, within the top few % of monthly temperatures ever recorded in the UAH series. Now I wonder why that is?

          • Bindidon says:

            If I have understood well, nothing influences tropospheric temperatures more than heat releases by various ocean layers.

            You wrote above about “the large El Nino in 2016”.

            If you compare, using e.g.

            http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/map/temp_map.html

            the El Ninos of 1982/83, 1997/98 and 2015/16, you will see that the sea surface temperatures show for the latter event a pattern going far beyond that of the typical El Nino.

            And that though in fact the 2015/16 edition was a bit weaker than 1997/98.

  33. Eyvind Dekaa says:

    How come there is no update on latest global temp. anomaly for August?
    Usually it’s updated the first of every month!
    🙁

    • Gordon Robertson says:

      Eyvind…”How come there is no update on latest global temp. anomaly for August?”

      Recall seeing one, the global for August was up to 0.31 if I remember correctly. The page has reverted to July.

      Then again, may be brain damage due to recent heat wave which is due to a stalled high pressure zone NOT global warming.

      • dr No says:

        I would bet on brain damage.
        Its like arguing that my coughing is due to congestion on the lungs, and nothing to do with contracting a virus.

        • Mike Flynn says:

          Or silicosis, or cancer, or mustard gas, or bacterial pneumonia or . . .

          Pointless, irrelevant, and useless analogy – typical foolish Warmist fare!

          As to stupid probability demands – any fool can provide guesses about the future, and as you surmise, foolish Warmists often do. The fact that such guesses are completely useless, appears to escape your notice.

          Demanding that others participate in your foolish Warmist fantasies is symptomatic of the delusional psychosis exhibited by many foolish Warmists. Maybe you should adopt the pseudonym of Nostradamus (or James Hansen or Michael Mann, if prefer a modern version of valueless prognosticators.)

          Climate is the average of past weather – nothing more nothing less.

          CO2 does not make thermometers hotter. No GHE.

          Cheers.

          • dr No says:

            Just as I thought.
            A lot of hot air, huffing and puffing, and irrelevance.
            Admit you are too afraid to estimate the probabilities in case somebody dares you to risk a dollar. Typical cowardly denialist!

          • Mike Flynn says:

            dr No,

            If you are truly of the belief that your probability estimating abilities are better than my guesses, take as many dollars as you like to your local casino. Good luck. I’ll wait.

            If you think there is too much blind luck involved, maybe you could try investing your dollar (even more than one, if you can spare it), in stocks. Applying your finely honed predictive skills, you’ll become fabulously wealthy in short order.

            And now for something a little harder, now your skills have been warmed up.

            Maybe you could try to predict the wind speed and direction with useful accuracy – say 30 seconds hence?

            Unfortunately, you won’t make a lot of money predicting that night follows day, or that winter is colder that summer. Even predicting that droughts are sometimes broken by heavy rainfall is not considered worthy of notice (except by foolish Warmists who express astonishment that weather and hence climate has been changing ever since the formation of atmosphere).

            I’m rather too sensible to gamble, although I’m prepared to make an exception for you – how can I lose? Do you really believe you can see into the future better than I? Gavin Schmidt thought so, a few years ago. He smartly changed his mind, after he gave the matter a few moments thought!

            I suppose I dislike danger or pain – if that makes me cowardly, I’ll just have to put up with it. You can take on my share of danger and pain, if that’s what you prefer,

            As to denial, I deny the existence of phlogiston, n-rays, caloric, and the GHE, amongst other things. You may choose to believe in them if you wish.

            It appears that being a cowardly denialist might be preferable to being a masochistic gullible cultist, but that’s just my opinion.

            Good luck with making money from your “probabilities”. I’ll guess that you can’t. Wanna bet? I thought not.

            Cheers.

          • dr No says:

            Mike , if it helps, why not pretend to bet with me?
            I promise not to ask you to pay up if you lose, but I will gladly forward you my bet if I lose.
            All you have to do is tell me if you think the probability of a new record by 2020 is:
            ZERO (i.e. infinite odds)
            25% (i.e. odds of 3 to one)
            50% (i.e. even money odds)
            75% (i.e. odds of 1 to 3)
            100% (i.e. zero odds)

            Salvatore was brave enough to estimate ZERO (see post above).
            Go on, give it a try – you have nothing to lose financially.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            dr No,

            I believe the bet is that you can predict better than I, or have I misunderstood?

            But anyway . . .

            You wrote –

            “All you have to do is tell me if you think the probability of a new record by 2020 is: . . . ”

            Who decides what the probability of a “new record” (whatever specious piece of nonsense that means) is?

            There will either be a “new record”, or there won’t. The probability, by definition, is 0.5. Either or.

            I have used the following definition of probability –

            “the extent to which an event is likely to occur, measured by the ratio of the favourable cases to the whole number of cases possible.”

            You can keep your dollar. You lose.

            Cheers.

          • Des says:

            Mike Flynn

            “There will either be a ‘new record’, or there wont. The probability, by definition, is 0.5”.

            Clearly you have no idea of the definition of probability.

          • Des says:

            When you said “ratio of the favourable cases to the whole number of cases possible”, you forgot to mention that you are counting the number of EQUALLY LIKELY “cases”, ie. “OUTCOMES” for the people who can actually speak in the language of probability.

          • Mike Flynn says:

            Des,

            You wrote-

            “When you said ratio of the favourable cases to the whole number of cases possible, you forgot to mention that you are counting the number of EQUALLY LIKELY cases, ie. OUTCOMES for the people who can actually speak in the language of probability.”

            As stated, there are only two outcomes – a new record, or not.

            A fair coin toss has two outcomes – heads or tails. Either or.

            You might try to claim there are an infinite number of values which may result in a new record, or an infinite number of values which may not. Irrelevant, as we are considering only two outcomes – record, or not.

            Maybe you could speak the language of probability (or tongues, if you prefer), and tell us what your calculation about a new record being set says. At the end of the period, a new record will, or will not have been set. The assumed wager is on that specific binary choice. Are you prepared to bet that your finely calculated probabilities, couched in the language of probability,, will outperform my guess?

            Gavin Schmidt claimed 2014 was the “Hottest year EVAH”, and NASA assigned a post fact probability of this event occurring as 0.38 – 38%. NOAA said 0.48 – 48%. I merely point out that if he event actually occurred, talking about whether it should have or not is pointless. The fact that two bodies, presumably familiar with the language of probability, differed about a supposed fact – maybe the probability language has different dialects!

            The past has occurred, the future is uncertain. You can’t even predict the next result of a fair coin toss, and even knowing that the last 20 tosses were all heads does not help one bit.

            You also wrote –

            “Clearly you have no idea of the definition of probability.”

            Maybe you overlooked the definition of probability that I quoted. I didn’t make it up myself. If you don’t like the definition I used, tough. If you can point out where it’s wrong, I’m happy to change my opinion.

            Cheers.

  34. ren says:

    Is Irma hurricane enters the Caribbean Sea?
    http://files.tinypic.pl/i/00930/hj6v9tqemstj.png

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