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Bob Loblaw at 13:49 PM on 9 January 2013A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
dana, lrg: Aren't you engaging in a straw[berrywo]man argument? (as long as the comments policy doesn't prevent bad puns...) -
Bob Loblaw at 13:45 PM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Klapper @ 27. Two questions: 1) How many of those 15-year regressions were statistically significant? 2) when you tested for statistical significance, did you do it for both an expected value of zero, and an expected value of the long-term warming trend? -
mikeh1 at 12:47 PM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Krapper @ 25 If you are going to make claims, please provide some supporting links. The Met Office forecast is for a record in 2013.2013 is expected to be between 0.43 °C and 0.71 °C warmer than the long-term (1961-1990) global average of 14.0 °C, with a best estimate of around 0.57 °C, according to the Met Office annual global temperature forecast.
See Hot Topic NZ for more details. -
dana1981 at 12:37 PM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Klapper, I'm not really sure what your point is. Yes, we're in the midst of a period when virtually every natural surface temperature influence is acting in the cooling direction, and that is temporarily offsetting a lot of human-caused warming. And? -
YubeDude at 12:36 PM on 9 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
Pete @ 9 "I'm sure we agree that roads, fields and whole towns, as well as active fire fighters, limit the spread of fire." It is true that the fire break aspect of development can and often does impact the general spread of a fire but that same development also houses and provides access for the number one contemporaneous cause of wild-fries and fires in general, humans. Cast off cigarettes, smoldering camp-fires, pyromania, heavy machinery, fireworks, land clearing with slash and burn, children playing with matches, transmission line arc, field burning to prepare for the next planting and other human endeavors play a significant role in the story of fire; a role that has no parallel component in the Eemain. Not offering support for your original assertion that claimed "...there would also have been an increase in wildfire..." leads me to infer that you are attempting to attribute a degree of natural variability but one that has no empirical evidence; begging the question, why, and to what end? "...the number of fire-prone days per year increases..." with warmer temps as you stated but without the spark it is just another warm day. The wildfires of NSW and Victoria over the last decade, what natural condition would have created these conflagrations in the Eemain and what evidence do you have in support? -
Klapper at 11:56 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
#22 Bert I've done a rolling 15 year linear regression on the HadCRUT4 dataset. The trend ending in 2012 is the slowest warming since the trend ending in 1980. The most recent 15 years is also slower warming than all trends calculated between about 1915 and 1950. -
Klapper at 11:29 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
#10 Philippe Do you have a typo in your post? 1982 to 2002 is nowhere close to being an escalator "step" (showing no warming). -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:29 AM on 9 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
Harald... Problem there is, language just doesn't work in such logical terms. Language has a life of it's own that you just can't control. The term "crowdfunding," regardless of its accuracy, has entered the lexicon and, at this point, there's not much chance in changing it. In fact, if you want to establish a new way of doing business, probably the best thing you can do is create a new word for what you do and see if you can get it to stick. It doesn't matter how perfectly accurate the word is, it just needs to be sticky. Crowdfunding is a very sticky word. -
Klapper at 11:27 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
#4 JasonB Regarding your ENSO effect graph, If you believe that 2013 will be ENSO neutral (the black points), the projection would be an anomaly record in the GISS dataset right? Of course there is a lot of variability but that would be the expection I think. We will know soon enough. On that topic The lastest Met Office long range forecast predicts 2013 will likely not be a record, maybe an anomaly of .35 against the 1971 to 2000 baseline (according to their published graph). If true this forecast will make the last step in the escalator even longer. -
dana1981 at 11:22 AM on 9 January 2013A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
LRG @1 - permission granted! -
Philippe Chantreau at 10:20 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
I don't Terranova. The difference is this: the weather events in India, China and Nort Korea are unusual, reaching or slightly breaking records established a number of years ago. What Australia is currently experiencing is beyond unusual; it's the bloody mother of all heatwaves, something of a magnitude that has never been recorded before. Just as I dislike to comment on sea ice before the September minimum, I won't elanorate beyond what's already obvious at this point. Let the Australian summer play itself out and then we'll tally heat and fire numbers. -
littlerobbergirl at 09:59 AM on 9 January 2013A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
Are we allowed to blow a big fat raspberry at madame laframboise? -
Jonas at 08:16 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Concerning variability: interesting graph of temperature and nino/nina + volcanoes: Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3
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Pete Dunkelberg at 07:46 AM on 9 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
Yubedude @ 5, Fires tend to start in seasons that are not winter, and both start and spread more readily in warmer conditions. In a warming period (coming into an interglacial period for instance the Eemian) the number of fire-prone days per year increases in many regions. I'm sure we agree that roads, fields and whole towns, as well as active fire fighters, limit the spread of fire. On the other hand, if it gets much warmer fire becomes nearly unstoppable. Another local resident said that “the trees just exploded” as he tried to help fire crews in the township of Murdunna, which was mostly destroyed by the blaze. -
scaddenp at 06:19 AM on 9 January 2013Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Or, consider the effects of the same concentration of HCN in the atmosphere. -
Bert from Eltham at 05:59 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
If the denial movement takes the last sixteen years of surface temperature data as proof of no measurable warming. Then they would have to admit this hypothesis was wrong four times in the forty years prior. Currently their delusion has just gone on for a bit longer this time. “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” ― Albert Einstein -
dana1981 at 05:11 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Esop @17 - you mean like this? -
kampmannpeine at 05:02 AM on 9 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
this is SCARRY! -
william5331 at 04:55 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Even with the great reduction in Arctic ice at it's minimum on Sept15, the Arctic is still mostly covered by ice for most of the year with the twin effects of reflecting solar radiation back into space and melting ice "keeping the cocktail cool". I wonder what the escalator will look like when the Arctic Ocean is ice free in, say, the beginning of July and the Arctic ocean can really start to accumulate some heat. Great that we have the escalator graph as a base line to compare with what is coming. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:37 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Esop... I think the difference this time around will be that, people are now seeing more evidence this is happening, particularly in terms of extreme heat events. If (when) those heat events get worse, then a very large portion of the world's population is going to understand this is real and extremely serious. -
Esop at 04:32 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
In reference to Singer in the second video above: what happened to his so called "unstoppable global warming every 1500 years". Will the deniers ever make up their minds? Two years ago they claimed that we would cool drastically in the coming years due to the weak sun cycle, but now, they tell us that the heat is due to the strong solar activity. Why do they get away with this flip-flopping? If this got pointed out to the average Joe, the denialist community would suffer a serious blow, but it does not happen, so they keep on flip-flopping. Maybe CNN will, as they (at least Amanpour)have repeatedly pointed out/corrected visiting (real) scientist that the "other side" are deniers, not skeptics, as the often too polite scientist tend to call them. Hopefully more of the press will follow that exemple. Looks like it is happening, and the deniers don't like it one bit, thus their increasing desperation. They got spoiled when they used to have near total control of the press from late 2009 to early 2012. -
JasonB at 04:31 AM on 9 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
BillWalker: France has had to shut down nuclear power plants due to overheating water as well, and a coal power plant in Queensland had to be taken offline a few years ago because the water level in its lake dropped too low. In each case the shutdown occurred when the power was needed the most. The "reliability" argument, especially in a warming world, is not as strong as its made out to be. Note that it's possible to use air cooling for many types of thermal power plants, including solar thermal, at the cost of some efficiency, but with a large reduction in water use. This would be an attractive trade-off for desert-located solar thermal plants. -
Esop at 04:20 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Suggestion for another escalator: sea level rise. Remember all the noise in the anti-science community last year, when sea level dropped somewhat from 2010 due to all that water being dumped on land (due to the La Nina). -
Terranova at 04:00 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Phillipe, don't forget about the deadly cold snaps in India, China, and North Korea. -
Esop at 03:58 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
#11 (Rob): One could hope so, but remember that they did the same thing during the 2008 La Nina. Then we had 2010, but as long as the science side doesn't make a point of pointing it out, the anti-science side gets away with it time and time again. BTW, UAH lower troposphere temps is in record territory and way above 2010, (of course Spencer had to write a v5.5 to lower the warming) so a good chance of 2013 seeing a new record, but I would not be surprised if we saw a triple dip La Nina. -
vrooomie at 03:52 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
A friend of mine, a biologist who lives near Perth, reported that one of the weather stations he has used in the past, about 4 hours east of him, reported 52C yesterday. Oi! This is why I *never* complain about a rare 39C day in Colorado, never mind it's a dry heat...;) -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:42 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
And I thought the Texas summers of 10 years ago were bad... -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:40 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Meanwhile for you guys living down under in the great brown land of Oz, things are heating up and going up in flames. The French newspaper "Le Monde" has an article in the online edition reporting that the BoM had to add a new color to their temp maps because of the abundance of forecast temps above 50 deg Celsius. They mentioned a forecast 54 deg Celsius temp in the center of the country. http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2013/01/08/hors-limite-il-fait-si-chaud-en-australie-que-la-meteo-a-ajoute-une-nouvelle-couleur-a-ses-cartes/ Can you let us know if that materializes John? Not cooling too fast down there it seems... -
Son of Krypton at 03:30 AM on 9 January 2013Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
@10 John Russell I've only been at the process of combating climate misinformation for a few years now (to which this site has proven indispensable), so other will certainly have seen the transformation you mentioned more than I, but in this time I have noticed the outright denial that warming is occurring start to drop and their arguments have changed. I remember when several deniers in the Canadian blog/news/literature circles I follow were aboard the "greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics" train. It seems positions such as that have been (more the time being) all but given up for the arguments of low sensitivity or it's not anthropogenic. Slowly but surely, progress is being made. @Bert, I remember going through a similar exercise about 6 years back. Fantastic analogy, I wouldn't have thought to compare the two -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:23 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
In a way, the fact that the deniers seem to be putting all their eggs in the "16 years of no warming" basket could be a really good thing. We know, without any doubt, that surface temps are going to jump at some point to keep pace with the long term trend. Basic physics dictates it. It's just a matter of when the jump occurs. When that happens, it's game over for denial. -
BillWalker at 03:15 AM on 9 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Re sailrick @53 and others, a further problem with nuclear that hasn't been mentioned is the decreasing availability of cooling water. Several nuclear reactors in the US had to be shut down at times this past summer because their cooling water supplies became too warm. Some rivers are also running too low. That's a problem that's only going to get worse as the climate warms. And of course, this problem also affects other thermal technologies. -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:10 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
In addition to what's been pointed, Klapper might be a little lazy. One can easily find longer periods of no warming or even slight cooling by carefully picking the end points. For instance, 1982-2002 shows no warming (I may be wrong by a smidge in the years, as this is pure eyeballing). It is hardly believable that some go for that tired nonsensical meme. Fake skepticism working its hardest... -
dana1981 at 02:22 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
BWTrainer @7 - I did try to create a heat content escalator, but there's less noise in the heat content data, so it's hard to find any 'steps' longer than 3 years. Which is of course why denialists focus on the noisier surface temperature data. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:17 AM on 9 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
I've long stated to climate "skeptics" on the internet that, they might have something if global temps started to fall below the 2-sigma range of the trend. If that were happening then there would be some hard work to do to figure out why rapidly increasing CO2 levels was not translating into increased warming. BUT... That's not the issue. We are not outside the 2-sigma range and therefore we are still within the bounds of what is expected for GHG driven warming. -
BWTrainer at 23:36 PM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
What Klapper fails to notice (one of several things, really) is that the Earth has continued to warm, and that warmth is going into the oceans. The Escalator is clearly labeled as "Global Surface Temperature Anomalies". Would it be possible to create an escalator that also took ocean heat content into account? Or could SkS always show the Escalator along with a graph of ocean heat so that we won't have to be subjected to comments along the lines of Klappers? -
bath_ed at 23:18 PM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Given the fact that there will always be noise obscuring the warming signal, Klapper and his type could simply move onto the next 'step' of the escalator and argue in 2020 that there has been no warming since 2014 and so on. Using this 'logic' one could continue arguing 'no warming since x' till alligators bask in a palm fringed arctic. -
CBDunkerson at 21:55 PM on 8 January 2013Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Julesdingle, I usually go with; 'Without atmospheric CO2 all green plants would die. Without green plants nearly all animals would die. Trace? Yes. No effect? Don't be stupid.' The official SkS writeup for that myth (#76) is here. -
Harald Korneliussen at 21:02 PM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
I wish the "crowdfunding" word would die, because it obscures what's really novel about approaches like Kickstarter - and this project misses it. Rather, it should be called "treshold pledge funding". The crucial fact of Kickstarter, which distinguishes it from fundraisers of the sort every charity has prior art on, is that pledges are taken, not money, and pledges are only upheld if the campaign reaches the goal. But people who want money don't like to think about failure. They tend to just want money now, and don't put the contributors interest first as they should. This project is an example: It is not a treshold pledge system! They take the money whether they raise enough to do the expedition or not. There is no good reason for them to do that. I don't care about charitable deductions (I don't get them anyway). A scientific expedition isn't charity. We should fund this because we get something out of it, because it matters to us. Charity is the wrong way to think about that, even if it pays tax-wise. If the meaningless neologism "crowdfunding", which just is a synonym of fundraising, would die and be replaced by "treshold pledge funding", then maybe these people would do things right next time. -
Dikran Marsupial at 19:38 PM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
Klapper perhaps you would care to wait until the last step has become sufficiently long that it provides statistically significant evidence of a discrepancy between the models and the observations, rather than fixate on periods to short to draw any useful conclusions? ... or even just statistically significant evidence that the underlying rate of warming has dropped? -
JasonB at 15:54 PM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
The main value of Klapper's contribution is as a perfect example of the utter failure to comprehend the point of the graph that Doug is talking about. I don't think there is a way of presenting the facts that can convince such people; they merely serve as an illustration of how blinded you need to be to hold "skeptical" beliefs for anyone who immediately understands what the graph means. Personally, I also quite like showing how the recent temperatures fit well within the expected range of the earlier trend, like Tamino's gif, and I think John Nielsen-Gammon's method is an incredibly powerful way of illustrating why "the last step is the longest step":
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Daniel Bailey at 15:09 PM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
1. AGW is referred to as "settled fact" by the US National Academy of Science (Pp. 44-45; free download after free registration). It is a robust theory, not an hypothesis. So try again. 2. It is your established wont to file a 1-off statement at odds with the science and/or the thread on which you place it. And to then not respond to the follow-up comments by others. Perhaps we should just ignore this current comment as the incipient ideological pap it purports to be, no? -
Klapper at 14:27 PM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
The problem for the movement to promote the hypothesis of catastrophic global warming is that the last step is the longest step. When will this last step break upward? -
Dave123 at 12:53 PM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
I've also seen claims that this merely replicates work already done by Shindell, hence a junket. I don't know that Shindell has that kind of data...does anyone? My quick look at his work doesn't suggest he does, but I've not been reading all the full papers. -
julesdingle at 12:28 PM on 8 January 2013Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
A frequent ignorant comment is that CO2 makes such a tiny component of the atmosphere 'how can it change the climate?" Tiresome as it is I have tried various analogies but the final explanation that at least shuts them up is their acceptance of O3 as a UV shield and its low 8ppm, the other trump is their acceptance of volcanoes changing weather for years after huge eruptions of sulphur yet 20 million tonnes can bring years of poor summers. a tiny co2 link would be helpful to direct sceptics toModerator Response:[DB] Per SkS contributor Gary McGuigan, here is another interesting example of how trace concentrations can have a large effect:
The Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria) or banana spider appears in the Guinness Book of World Records 2007 for the most venomous spider and is the spider responsible for most human deaths. This spider is believed to have the most potent neurotoxic venom of any living spider. Only 0.006mg (0.00000021oz) is sufficient to kill a mouse.
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Doug Hutcheson at 10:55 AM on 8 January 2013Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
I have pointed numerous contrarians to the escalator, in other fora. Never do they seem to learn from it. The most common response has been a variation of "Skeptical Science is a warmist religious site, where argument is not allowed". Data know no religion, they just are what they are. The laws of physics are not Papal Bulls. Science is not faith: in fact, it is the opposite to faith. Sigh. This is faith that the high priests of denialism should ponder:Hosea 4:6 King James Version (KJV) 6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me
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YubeDude at 10:44 AM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
Pete @1 "However, in warming periods in the distant past there would also have been an increase in wildfire and the fires could spread over much larger areas..." What do you consider the distant past? Why would there have been an increase in wildfires? Why would these fires spread over a larger area? What is the empirical basis for this claim? This sounds all rather "IMO"...IMHO. ------------- They are attempting to raise 150k for a research project that will involve, among other cost, chartering a plane for the duration of their stay. I have already seen postings to the YT thread talking about the "green gravy train" which deskepticons use as a form of ad hom argument to discount the science...a get rich quick fraud perpetrated so as to fatten the wallets of the research by fleecing the unknowing public coffers; well, at least that is what the are trying to spin this as. -
Doug Hutcheson at 10:33 AM on 8 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
villabolo @ 47, we are straying off topic a bit, but the mods have been lenient so far. To drag our conversation back to the topic of the OP, I agree education will be a major hurdle, but this will be largely because most of the available human energy will be dedicated to acquiring food. Food security, along with access to safe drinking water, will define the scope and limitations of the remnant populations. Foodstuffs will be valued much more highly than at present. Surpluses will be stored and preserved against future need, as there will be no supermarkets offering fruit and vegetables from the other side of the world in our off-seasons. Farmers and herders will be people of status, unlike the taken-for-granted primary producers of today. There is unlikely to be sufficient surplus food to sustain a population of non-food-producing service providers, such as politicians, computer programmers and telephone sanitisers (h/t Douglas Adams). People who can read and write will become scarce and teachers will be revered. Much that we know today will be forgotten. Intellectual pursuits like cosmology and quantum physics will be abandoned, as they do not contribute to our ability to grow, catch and kill our food. Abstract ideas, like religion and democracy, may be discarded because they have not helped humanity avoid its excesses: they have been part of the problem, not part of the solution. It will be of academic interest to see what group dynamics, spiritual distractions and political systems arise from the ashes of our greed. I hope the next wave of humanity is smart enough to learn from our mistakes. As an aside, remnant populations will not be able to support the medical and prosthetic industries we take for granted today. There will be no lens grinders making corrective spectacles for our vision, no chemotherapy for cancer, no psychiatric drugs to help the depressives and sufferers of conditions like bipolar disorder. Natural selection will operate to breed a healthier humanity. Medical interventions will be the domain of witch-doctors and herbalists. The weak, the frail, will have to find a way of contributing, or they will die earlier than similar people do at present. Charity is a luxury many may be unable to afford in a warmer world. -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:43 AM on 8 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
numerobis... The advantages are going to vary from industry to industry, but ultimately I think people put far too much emphasis on labor costs. I was able to compete with a high labor cost product (sewn shoulder bags) and still produce that product domestically and cost effectively. The other benefits, that aren't nearly as apparent, can tip the advantage toward domestic production. In my case one big factor was that I could produce product on demand. That meant I was never out of stock on any product. That meant no close outs and no stock-outs. Close outs and stock-outs can have a tremendous impact on the resulting profitability of a company. It also leads to a high level of uncertainty in the standard business model from season to season. Fundamentally, the success of a business can hang on how well they forecast. And at some point, regardless of how well anyone does their forecasting, they will get their forecast dramatically wrong. Regarding shipping to the east coast, what a business should endeavor to do is open production facilities close to their customers. That's hard for a small company, but for larger companies, if you can properly scale your operations to your regional markets, they should be managing multiple production facilities close to their markets. -
numerobis at 06:48 AM on 8 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
With regards to the tradeoff between resilience and efficiency, I agree the curve exists, but I rather suspect that most economic activity is well below the curve. That is, they could get more resilient and more efficient, both. Eventually you get to being forced to make tradeoffs. With regards to manufacturing in the US: why is that necessarily any better? You could build a PV-powered vertically-integrated plant in China or India or whatever, near a port. You'd get the cheap labour and the efficiency, and cheaper transport to consumers in all countries that aren't the US. It's probably comparable also to ship to the US East coast by boat across the Indian and Atlantic oceans than by rail or truck across the US. For transport cost, assess it either in dollars or CO2. -
Tom Curtis at 06:39 AM on 8 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Humanity Rules @44, while individual models have ENSO like variations, and include randomly placed volcanic events, because the timing of these events is random, they are filtered out in the multi-model mean. Further, forcing projections do not include variations in solar activity. Consequently the multi-model mean does not include ENSO, volcanic and solar variation after (approximately) 2000, although they will include solar and volcanic forcings prior to that. Consequently, your essential premise is just false; and a more accurate comparison is between ENSO, volcanic and solar adjusted temperatures and model projections. A still more accurate comparison is with the trend line of the adjusted temperature series, which excludes the residual variability in observations which also vanishes from the multi-model mean (againg, because the timing of the fluctuations varies between model runs).
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