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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). -
Tom Curtis at 06:29 AM on 8 January 2013Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Mathew L @239, plants have a low albedo, meaning that an increase in foliage will increase the albedo of of a region. For rough figures, the albedo of desert (land without plants) is 0.4; for grassland and tundra it is 0.25; for deciduous forest it is 0.15-0.18; and for coniferous forest it is 0.08-0.15. That means the presence of plants increases the absorption of solar radiation substantially. Most of the increase becomes waste heat at the point of absorption. The rule of thumb from ecology is that only 10% of incident solar radiation is converted to sugars by photosynthesis. Most of that energy, however, is returned to the environment as waste heat as the sugar is used to power chemical reactions in the plant, or in some animal that has eaten the plant. A vanishingly small amount is fossilized to become a future fossil fuel. Consequently, the presence of plants will overall increase surface temperatures, but will even out surface temperature differences by causing some of the waste heat to be released at night, or early evening or morning when received solar energy is low. It may also cause the waste heat to be distributed over a wider region geographically as animals transport the chemical energy and release it at other locations; but the percentage so carried is small. Climate models certainly account for the change in albedo with changes in vegetation. I am not sure whether, or to what extent they account for the change in timing of the release of energy. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:28 AM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
So, Jason, is the idea here that soot caused darkening of the ice is a previously understood, and an unaccounted for, positive feedback? Is that an accurate way to phrase what you're looking to research? -
Doug Bostrom at 05:43 AM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
$55K+ raised already! -
william5331 at 05:03 AM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
The NSIDC site has this paragraph up at present. November air temperatures at the 925 hPa level (approximately 3,000 feet) were above average over most of the Arctic Ocean. Notably, temperatures in the Barents and Kara seas were up to 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average. This reflects in part the lingering open water in the regions, allowing strong upward transfers of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. Unusually strong winds from the south contributed to the warmth and also helped keep the region ice free. This looks very much like the first indication of a reversal of the flow of the Polar Hadley cell. If quite a bit of soot reaches Northern Hemisphere ice at present, imagine a year in the future when the Arctic ocean is ice free in, say, July and some serious heat is absorbed by the Arctic ocean. If this little bit of open water is sucking air from the south, what will a whole, warm Arctic ocean do. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2008/07/arctic-melting-no-problem.html -
sailrick at 04:28 AM on 8 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Regarding farm equipment and their internal combustion engines. Farmers can grow their fuel for tractors, etc. They certainly have the raw materials for farm waste to methane conversion. This isn't 0 carbon, but is better than burning ancient fossil fuels. As far as nuclear energy, I share Doug H's skepticism about the ability to maintain proper safety in a rapidly expanding nuclear power world. Fukishima showed me, that the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies did not take the power of nature seriously enough, to make proper siting and other decisions. What I see is an industry that is overconfident and underestimates what can go wrong. For example, the 9+ magnitude earthquake that generated the huge tsunami in Japan is not really that rare. There have been 5 earthquakes that big since 1950, and they all generated dangerous tsunamis. Imagine if the shores of Sumatra, southern Thailand and southern India had been lined with nuclear power plants in 2004, when 225,000 people were killed by the tsunami. From what little I do know about nuclear energy, LFTRs (Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors) seems like the direction nuclear should go, because it is safer in a number of ways. Don't fast breeder reactors lend themselves to increased nuclear weapons proliferation dangers? LFTRs do not. And they too can use existing nuclear waste, which is touted as one of the advantages of fast breeders. If this path were taken, it would take a few decades to get up to scale in commercial development. So, in the meantime, build solar and wind as fast as possible, as we don't have decades to wait. LFTRs could contribute to the grid later. In that case, some money should be spent on R&D for LFTRs and pilot plants, while continuing to spend larger amounts in support of renewables development. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:37 AM on 8 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
Boehm is excellent at showing people exactly how he's managed to convince himself that he's right. He's a wonderful example of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. -
Pete Dunkelberg at 02:24 AM on 8 January 2013Dark matter for Greenland melting
Soot is produced from both wildfires and human activities. 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, producing more soot. -
dana1981 at 02:01 AM on 8 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
showme @51 - all of the states in white in Figure 1 lacking renewable goals or standards are very politically conservative states, with the exception of Florida, which is moderate, but has had Republican governors and probably a Republican state legislature for quite a while. -
showme at 01:34 AM on 8 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
what is the reason(s) that the southeast U.S. region doesn't have renewable goals or standards? all those states seem to have something in common? What? -
The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
HumanityRules - See the discussion of Rahmstorf et al 2012 for roughly that approach, where the F&R 2011 variation corrected data is compared to projections without those variations, an exercise resulting in confirmation of the IPCC models:
Observed annual global temperature, unadjusted (pink) and adjusted for short-term variations due to solar variability, volcanoes and ENSO (red) as in Foster and Rahmstorf (2011). 12-month running averages are shown as well as linear trend lines, and compared to the scenarios of the IPCC (blue range and lines from the 2001 report, green from the 2007 report)...
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HumanityRules at 23:59 PM on 7 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
"For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. I think a reasonable range for "about" would 1.5C - 2.5C per decade." Rather than guess at what the IPCC mean by about 2oC it would actually be possible to download the model mean from the CMIP5 ensemble and use that as another data set in this tool. Then we could have a true apples to apples comparison. It's possible to get the data from KNMI climate explorer. As an example here's the model mean from the rcp45 experiment. Just as a word of warning I think comparing F&R2011 with the expected warming rates from the model means is somewhat flawed. F&R2011 have removed some of the forcings (solar and volcanic) from the observational data in order, in their words, to make the global warming signal evident. The model means still have these included, you can see the volcanic effects in graph I linked to as short, sharp periods of cooling. Again if you wanted to do a true apples to apples comparison of the expected trend with F&R then you would have to return the volcanic and solar forcing to the data. I think a comparison of the model mean with F&R2011 with volcanic and solar effects returned to the data and therefore just the short term variability of ENSO removed would be an interesting experiment. -
villabolo at 23:41 PM on 7 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Doug H. @ 46, The major problem that I foresee would be a trans-generational illiteracy. Once you disrupt the education system we will get an entire generation of people with no reading skills. However, if even a small percentage of people (20%?) are literate then you could have a network of mini-civilizations spread throughout the most habitable regions (wherever that may be). 50,000 people would be sufficient for light industry and road repair (a minimum of roads for purposes of trade). A network of these 100 of these communities could scavenge whatever is left of this civilization. It would be a civilization with a mixture of 19th, 20th and even some 21st century technology. They may not be able to go to the moon but think of all the vehicles they could build.
PS: Minimizing the weight of a vehicle by ten fold would reduce the required energy for it's construction by roughly an equal amount.
PPS: :-)
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CBDunkerson at 23:00 PM on 7 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
StElias, a ten year 'trend' is virtually meaningless when talking about climate... even local climate. As noted in the study, the Arctic has been warming more rapidly than the rest of the globe. In the early part of the 2000s a lot of that warming was over Alaska. The past few years it has been more focused over the Kara and Barnets sea area. That's likely just weather patterns. Give it another 20 years worth of data and we'll be able to start talking about a climate trend... but given that 1981-2010 show a clear warming trend for Alaska the odds are that 2000-2029 will too. Unless there has been some sort of fundamental change in global climate processes... which this study doesn't even suggest, and observations from the rest of the world clearly disprove. Basically, this study is like saying 'the Alaska temperature trend for 10 days in May showed cooling'... a bit unusual given the procession of the seasons, but in truth it happens all the time and it is certainly no reason to believe that the underlying climate realities (i.e. that temperatures rise in Spring/Summer or with AGW) have suddenly changed. -
Matthew L at 22:57 PM on 7 January 2013Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Science Question that I am struggling to find the answer to anywhere. About 50% of Humanity's output of CO2 is absorbed by carbon sinks, partly the biosphere. Obviously that photosynthetic activity uses solar energy to convert CO2 and H2O into carbonates, carbohydrates and (eventually) hydrocarbons. How much solar energy is absorbed in this process? Obviously that absorbed energy will not find its way out of the top of the atmosphere. Is that energy accounted for in the energy budgets and climate models? -
CBDunkerson at 22:37 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
The truly sick thing with the IPCC 50 year estimate for the 'distinct possibility of seasonally ice-free' is that, if the observed trends continue, then there is a 'distinct possibility' that in 50 years the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free year round. If the PIOMAS data is charted by total volume rather than anomaly you get;
Note that the Winter maximum values have decreased from ~33 to ~22... almost as much as the ~17 to ~3 decrease in Summer minimum values. If we take that Winter maximum decline as a flat rate then it'd be about 65 more years before it hit zero... but the decline is visibly accelerating and thus 50 years is in the ballpark.
Of course, there have been arguments for a long time that the declines in the Summer minimum will level off (any time now)... and the whole 'months with no sunlight' thing would certainly argue for there being some kind of floor on how low the Winter maximum can go without a profound change in climate.
The large 'ice islands' which break off land ice areas will prevent a true zero sea-ice volume until Greenland has largely melted out, but we will almost certainly see a 'near zero' ice volume before 2020 if the PIOMAS results are accurate. After that we should start seeing just how warm Arctic waters get with no ice cover and be able to start making better projections for what is going to happen to the Winter maximums.
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Tom Curtis at 22:28 PM on 7 January 2013Greenhouse effect has been falsified
JasonB @99, he also fails to explain why temperatures fall with increasing pressure as you go deeper into the ocean. He tries to conceal this by asserting that:"PV=nRT ,Avagadro number and all that.Pressure is proportional to temperature. This also explains why temperatures fall(1 degree per 200 metres) with altitude and rise in the deep sub sea level areas of the earth."
But, of course, temperatures do not rise in the ocean abyss except at the sites of volcanic vents. Even there, while the water emitted from the vent may be as warm as 400 C, within meters of the vent the ambient temperature is a frigid 2 degrees C. Worse for high treason, the ideal gas law alone is not sufficient to explain the temperature profile of the troposphere. You also need to employ the laws of thermodynamics, the universal theory of gravitation, and the assumption that convection is the main form of heat transfer within the troposphere. And worst of all for high treason, he forgets is earliest lessons in algebra. Taken together, basic physical law explain the approximate -6.5 C per kilometer altitude temperature profile of the troposphere; but that only gives you a line with a slope. Knowing only the slope, you cannot deduce the intersection with the x-axis, ie, the surface temperature. Not only has he got his high school science wrong - he can't even get his primary school maths right. -
JasonB at 21:09 PM on 7 January 2013Greenhouse effect has been falsified
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." High treason, your hypothesis fails to explain why the stratosphere warms with altitude. Perhaps more reading is in order? -
high treason at 21:01 PM on 7 January 2013Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
Humans are responsible for some of the rise in CO2 levels, but not all. Basic high school science- if water rises in temperature, gases are less soluble and thus released. (---snipped---)Moderator Response: (Rob P) Please familiarise yourself with the comments policy. This site does not exist for the purpose of hosting contrarian graffiti a.k.a sloganeering. Stick to one aspect of the science at a time so that others may respond, and also find an appropriate thread in which to paste that comment. If you use the search function, you'll find thousands of posts which cover most aspect of climate science. As for your un-snipped comment see the OA not OK series - ocean warming is too small to affect the seawater CO2 uptake in any significant way. -
mercpl at 20:51 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
The PIOMAS volume graphs are quite scary. I actually took the last PIOMAS graph and gave it to a few friends and changed the x-y axes to represent some stupid made-up values like vampire movie gross ticket sales, they all predicted a zero of about 2015-2020. Then I showed them that they were really predicting Arctic sea-ice volume. http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/ -
high treason at 20:40 PM on 7 January 2013Greenhouse effect has been falsified
There is a very simple explanation for the 33 degrees extra temperature on planet earth and it is basic high school science from around 10th grade. PV=nRT ,Avagadro number and all that.Pressure is proportional to temperature. This also explains why temperatures fall(1 degree per 200 metres) with altitude and rise in the deep sub sea level areas of the earth. As for planet Venus, apart from being closer to the sun, pressures are 92 times that of Earth at the surface. As on Earth,temperatures fall with altitude. You would think that temperatures would be more even in the atmosphere of Venus if the "runaway greenhouse" were for real. The same effect I think occurs on Jupiter- the outer gas is cold, but deeper in the atmosphere as the pressure builds, it is considerably warmer. Think how refrigerators work- they compress the refrigerant gas, which get warm. The heat is radiated out, then when the pressure is released, the gas cools to allow us to have that icy cold beer on a stinking hot day. I lay down the gauntlet for some physicist out there with more brains than myself to check this simple hypothesis and gain immortality and cudos. -
JasonB at 19:22 PM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Another point worth making about those EIA levelised costs is the regional variation. Solar PV is $152.7/MWh on average, but as little as $119.0/MWh in what are presumably the sunniest places in the US, and wind drops to $77.0/MWh in the windiest places. Wind and solar tend to have larger cost ranges due to location so including nonsensical locations when determining the average is probably a little unfair. Yet another point is the cost of CCS, especially for coal. Given the intrinsic problems with storage (in particular the sheer scale required and the long-term risks of containment failure) I don't think this is going to be a viable option and research into it seems to be more of a PR exercise to justify further expansion of fossil fuel usage. KJD: It appears subsidies are not included in those costs because it specifically mentions "Note: These results do not include targeted tax credits such as the production or investment tax credit available for some technologies, which could significantly affect the levelized cost estimate." -
Sapient Fridge at 18:57 PM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
The interesting thing about the EIA levelised costs of power generation is the speed that solar PV seems to be dropping at. In the 2012 estimates for 2017 installations solar has a cost of $152.7/megawatthour, but the previous year's 2011 estimate for 2016 quotes $210.7! -
Doug Hutcheson at 17:55 PM on 7 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
villabolo @ 45, I concur that a 4°C warmer world may not see the extinction of our species, but I wonder about the goods and services that would be available in an isolated population of even 50,000. Ancient civilisations had relatively low populations by today's standards, but they also had numerous robust civilisations in the same neigbourhood, with which they could trade. A group that specialised in metallurgy could trade its goods with another group that specialised in shipbuilding, who in turn traded with groups based on intensive farming, and so on. In the future I fear we are headed for, survivor pockets of humanity may be separated by long and inhospitable distances, making trade less possible. A remnant population of 50,000 is not going to be manufacturing flat screen TVs, or transmitting podcasts, or making mobile phones, or delivering any of the other gadgets and services we now consider benchmarks of our civilisation. Remember, all the easily accessible resources have already been extracted from our environment. Without the machines we rely upon today, nobody is going to be able to smelt aluminium, steel, zinc, or titanium, even if the group had sufficient surplus food to enable them to dedicate some of their people to extracting the ores. On the contrary, I expect 'incompatible with organised human society' to mean smaller, mobile extended-family groups will develop into hunter-gatherer or simple agrarian communities, whose concentration will be on acquiring adequate food, shelter and clothing to sustain life, whilst defending their territory against hostile invaders. That's why I made the comment about an Old Testament future being wishful thinking. On the other hand, a cure for our dirty habits with carbon may magically appear and make predictions like mine ludicrous. Nothing would make me happier than to find I am making a fool of myself over a mere 4, 5, or 6°C. While hoping for the best, I am preparing for the worst. I have moved my family from a coastal city to a country town 433m (1421ft) above sea level; I am growing veges, fruit and nuts; we have a chook run; we do not fly anywhere and drive only when public transport or Shanks' pony can't get us to where we need to be; we have the ability to live off-grid. Not that any of our preparations will help our personal security when the brown stuff hits the revolving cooling device. Alarmist? I am certainly alarmed at where the smart people are saying we are headed. I would be extremely happy if trustworthy people could show me why my gloomy, worst-case prognostications are wildly inaccurate. (Note: denialist attempts to cheer me up by overturning the laws of physics are bound to fail, so please don't try.) -
JasonB at 17:29 PM on 7 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
The strangest thing about Boehm/Smokey's contorted graphs is that they still show acceleration despite his protestations otherwise. The earliest HadCRUT data lies above the magenta line, the middle section dips down to the blue line, and the end part breaks through the magenta line again. It's easier to see (Ha! What a concept...) if we look at the residuals after removing the trend, and even clearer if we use the non-obsolete HadCRUT4. (The figures of 0.741546672 and 0.7562876736 come from finding the linear trend for the period and multiplying it by the number of years in that period; the green line is both to help visualise the residuals as well as prove the detrend figure is correct by showing the result is horizontal.) If you try fitting a polynomial to those residuals then a quadratic does a nice job of showing what's left after the linear trend has been removed. Who to believe? Boehm/Smokey or the data? The good thing about his claims is that they have to be one of the easiest to debunk. :-) -
desertphile at 15:46 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
I am not a math wizard, but just fitting a simple curve function on the observed data it looks closer to seasonally free of sea ice closer to year 2022, conservatively. William M. Connolley might yet lose his wager. -
KJD at 14:48 PM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
The central claim that the Heartland Institute is making is that "renewable" energy is more expensive than "conventional" energy. There are inevitable ambiguities in such a statement, but the normal method to compare generic costs of different types of generation plant is levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), which converts capital and running costs into a single metric. See EIA data for US here. This suggests that gas combined cycle is typically the cheapest plant, with wind , hydro and geothermal comparable to coal, but solar power somewhat dearer. The data is 2017 forecast; historically coal would have been cheaper than wind. I haven't checked the methodology in detail, but subsidies and externalities such as CO2 emissions are usually excluded unless specifically stated. Actual costs will vary from this due to site-specific factors as well as fuel contracts and the cost of capital. Hydro and geothermal are only available in very specific locations, and new large-scale hydro is often strongly resisted due to its local environmental impact. So under renewable mandates, wind is often predominant. But wind, along with solar has the drawback that it is not dispatchable, i.e. you can't bring it on when you want to. High penetration of such technologies will inevitably require large-scale (or widespread smaller-scale) storage, and maybe investment in grid management to deal with more intermittent supply. Another factor is whether the renewable mandate in practice is meeting some or all of a demand increase or whether it is cannibalising existing production (if demand is flat/falling due to energy efficiency and/or economic downturn). If the latter, which is certainly the case in some electricity systems outside the US, then the mandate forces new investment that would otherwise not be required at all. On balance, on currently available costings, mandated renewable energy will be incrementally more costly than no mandate under most circumstances. Frankly, as has already been pointed out, if it wasn't, then there would be no need for the mandate; utilities would choose renewable power as a matter of course. How this additional resource cost manifests itself in retail prices - which is the focus of the analysis in the original post - depends on a number of other factors. Generation costs are only a part of the total cost of supplying electricity to end users. Renewable energy policies may include subsidies that do not get funded through retail prices. Electricity markets are highly regulated, in some cases with a price cap that may have limited sensitivity to changes in underlying costs. Even where market pricing prevails, the supply and demand dynamics may mean that a small increase in the underlying cost mix of generation does not immediately result in higher prices. If the market is working efficiently, though, you will see the price effect over the longer term. There is obviously one large gap in the above analysis. It does not include the cost of the externalities. you can make a case for various externalities for all sorts of generation, but greenhouse gas emissions are the most significant. any valuation of these is inevitably highly contestable and so for purposes of analysis it is better to consider it separately. It does mean however that you cannot say with certainty that renewable energy mandates are economically inefficient. Conventional economic wisdom would however suggest that pricing the externality is the most economically efficient way to deal with it. -
JasonB at 14:12 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
Agnostic: One of the sad things about this "debate" is how "conservative" is taken to mean "assume things won't be bad unless proven otherwise", or "err on the side of optimism despite evidence to the contrary" — the opposite approach to that normally taken in risk management. A doctor notices something suspicious. Which is the more conservative stance? 1. "Let's get some tests done to make sure it's nothing serious." 2. "Let's assume it's OK until you start showing signs of serious illness." Given the almost ludicrous extent to which the IPCC underestimated the rate of Arctic sea ice loss in the last report,
it's appalling that they have apparently been bullied into updating it to the meek claim that "A seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean within the next 50 years is a very distinct possibility".
Here we have a doctor looking at someone already showing signs of serious illness and still thinking "conservative" means "Let's not break the bad news because they might still get better"...
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villabolo at 13:38 PM on 7 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Doug H. @ 44, I personally believe that we'll have pockets of civilization here and there. You can have a civilization with as little as 50,000 persons. -
Doug Hutcheson at 10:55 AM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
CBDunkerson @ 45Further, since the carbon being emitted here comes from plants... which took the carbon out of the air in order to grow... there is no ongoing accumulation of atmospheric carbon as a result.
Doh! Thanks for pulling me up on this. Stupid mistake for me to make, considering I have pointed this out to others in the past. The only methane I need to worry about is that currently sequestered in frozen form, as tundra or clathrates, because it is not currently taking part in the carbon cycle. You also saidmethane in the atmosphere quickly breaks down into CO2 and water
I knew it broke down eventually, but did not characterise that conversion as happening quickly. I have read that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for many years (a century?), but thought methane stayed in the atmosphere as methane for a smaller, but still significant, number of years. So, I did a bit of googling and found the IPCC list of greenhouse gasses, which includes both an indication of their persistence and their global warming potential. The link is here, for any who are interested. Thanks for making me do my own homework - it is the best way for me to learn. -
bibasir at 10:36 AM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
How about "where it is and where it's going." -
Riduna at 10:15 AM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
Interesting comment about IPCC authors of the soon to be published 5AR – that they would prefer to be conservative in their reporting, findings and conclusions rather than accurate. Probably explains why they conclude that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by the end of the century. The problem of course is that such seemingly wrong assertions on Arctic sea ice cast doubt on other conclusions reported by the IPCC. -
StElias at 09:16 AM on 7 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
Does anybody have any insights on this latest bit of Alaska weather research? "The overwhelming majority of Alaska is getting colder and has been since 2000, according to a study by researchers with the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks." Having lived in Alaska all my life (73 years) this doesn't come as a great surprise, since, other than north of the Brooks, the last three years have been somewhat more overcast and cooler, particularly in South Central. However, it seems to me that the winters, although still long and cold, have not been as harsh. Fairbanks shows a significant cooling trend over the last 10 years according to this study, yet you never see interior weather get down to those -80F shots anymore or experience long 8-12 week stretches of -35 to -45. Per the study, it is another story though on the slope, Barrow does show significant warming which we all are aware of up here. When Umiat has the warmest day temperature in the state, like 74 last summer, then something is strange. http://www.adn.com/2013/01/05/2743379/study-shows-alaska-got-colder.html -
Philip Shehan at 08:52 AM on 7 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
Thanks to the moderator for the links. I assumed that they would just come up when I copied them with the text. Thanks KR for providing the "provenance" for the graph. -
Don9000 at 03:31 AM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
An interesting report (based on data through last April) on the ongoing shift away from coal in the US can be found at the US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA): Monthly coal- and natural gas-fired generation equal for first time in April 2012 Of course, the shift--quite visible in the accompanying graph--is predominately from one carbon-based fossil fuel to another, but at least it is from coal to natural gas. The EIA has another interesting graph which illustrates, even as the report focuses on our ongoing reliance on fossil fuels, just how sharply the US managed to break away from its upwardly trending dependence on oil in the mid-1970s following the OPEC oil crisis: Energy Perspectives: Fossil fuels dominate U.S. energy consumption I think the sharp break in the upward curve, while it reflects a serious economic disaster, nevertheless illustrates that things can change dramatically in a short period of time. With these two reports in mind, I suspect a well-implemented carbon tax could give green energy a dramatic and rapidly realized boost. It is probably necessary too, in order to counter the new attractions posed by natural gas. Unfortunately, one big obstacle to progress is that the same blank states we see in the map Dana has included are in a general sense dominated by Tea Party politicians who have shown what I'll charitably call a deep-seated reluctance to acknowledge the reality of global climate change. -
The Y-Axis of Evil
Philip Shehan - Oh, and Boehm/Smokey has been called on that particular graph before... As discussed in the opening post, he appears to have quite a hobby of generating what turn out to be misleading figures with compressed axes, cherry-picked and statistically insignificant short time frames, of representing something like the Central England Temperature (CET) record as representing the globe, on and on and on. I don't expect him to suddenly change his mind when these issues are pointed out... -
The Y-Axis of Evil
Philip Shehan - That graph is from Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino, and is an average of 10 temperature records brought to a common baseline. That averaging should minimize biases from any particular dataset involved. The fit appears to be a simple quadratic trend line. -
CBDunkerson at 01:23 AM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Doug H, methane causes more warming than CO2 on a 'per molecule' basis, but is not a major factor in the current AGW for the simple reason that methane in the atmosphere quickly breaks down into CO2 and water. Further, since the carbon being emitted here comes from plants... which took the carbon out of the air in order to grow... there is no ongoing accumulation of atmospheric carbon as a result. Effectively, it is a transitory boost in warming potential due to atmospheric CO2 being temporarily converted into atmospheric methane. There is no ongoing accumulation. The only way for the greenhouse effect from this issue to increase would be to significantly increase the amount of land devoted to paddy fields and/or livestock. As to ocean acidification... I'm not sure whether the continued absorption of 2 ppm emissions would cause sufficient upper ocean acidification to offset the effects of greater dilution. However, that's also at 50% of current emissions, which we can get well below. If we reduce the atmospheric CO2 level then we will also reduce ocean acidification. Replacing electricity generation and automotive transportation with renewable energy would accomplish both. -
mdenison at 23:03 PM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Planet offers independent record of global warming A graphic comparing the proxy and measured GST can be seen on the lead authors pages here -
Philip Shehan at 18:30 PM on 6 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
In a current discussion on WUWT (http://tinyurl.com/by6lp2h) concerning a paper where a figure incorrectly (in my opinion) states that there is no acceleration in the temperature trend from 1880 to the present, D Boehm is caught out in a flagrant manipulation of the Y axis to flatten the data set. My initial comment is at Philip Shehan says: January 4, 2013 at 8:43 am The discussion with Boehm and others continues thereafter but his manipulation is evident here where my losing patience unfortunately leads me to being a little rude Philip Shehan says: January 4, 2013 at 4:42 pm D Boehm, Look, don’t try to blow smoke. You have been caught out manipulating the data sets to produce a chart which attempts to hide the trend. Here is your chart going back to 1850: http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or and here is your chart with the irrelevant camouflage removed. http://tinyurl.com/af5xwmv Your linear fit, stripped of the camouflage is inferior to the nonlinear fit: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png Later Boehm describes the non linear fit of the data as being “without provenace” and “John Cook’s cartoon”. I rebut that but I often get this from “skeptics” when I present this figure. Is anyone there able to give details of the actual temperature data set used and the function used for the nonlinear fit?Moderator Response: [RH] Added hot links. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:24 PM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
John Hartz, the second bullet point has a typo:2022: the year we did our best to abandon the natural world
2022 should be 2012Moderator Response: [JH]Typo corrected. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:19 PM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
villabolo @ 43, I have read that an increase of 4°C to 6°C in global average surface temperature would be inconsistent with organised human society. If true, and if we are stupid enough to let it happen, an Old Testament future might be only wishful thinking. Let's hope that I am a Jonah, not a Cassandra. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:04 PM on 6 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
CBDunkerson @ 42, I'm glad my concerns are unjustified. I must have misunderstood the information I read about land use being a significant contributor to AGW. What I (mis)thought was that methane emissions from paddy fields and livestock made up a large CO2e contribution to our greenhouse gas emissions. It is refreshing to find something about AGW that is not as bad as I feared! John Cook might have some ideas about how I absorbed this incorrect meme, considering I don't read the Pielkes, or WTFUWT. If natural sinks are consuming ~2ppm/year and one of those sinks (the biggest?) is the oceans, will our continued emission of 2ppm/year not continue to acidify the oceans? -
adavid at 09:25 AM on 6 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
William @6 A cliff it certainly is, but the ocean carbonate system has always been near the bottom. I always say you can't talk about OA without reference to a Bjerrum Plot as it distinctly shows the relationships between pH and carbonate species. The FAQ would be improved by one and an associated discussion.
As for titration, it is a standard test of seawater samples to determine Total Alkalinity.
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shoyemore at 09:18 AM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The UK's Channel 4 showed a documentary tonight asking the question Is Our Weather Getting Worse?" The answer was an uncompromising Yes, with AGW as the culprit, and not a Lord Lawson, Viscount Monckton, or a James Delingpole in sight to argue about it. Since the year 2000, the UK has had the warmest, wettest, coldest and driest periods in its history. The documentary emphasised weird weather in previous centuries, like an actual Medieval tornado, but showed that frequencies of extreme weather, even of tornados, were rising. And it pointed out this was true not only in the UK. Channel 4 "Is Our Weather Getting Worse" What is refreshing is that Channel 4 has taken many fringe positions in the past, like screening the downright dishonest The Great Global Warming Swindle -
hig314 at 07:51 AM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The last article about volcanic activity is poorly written with some mistakes and misrepresentations. Probably better to go to the more detailed LiveScience article that it was based off of: http://www.livescience.com/7366-global-warming-spur-earthquakes-volcanoes.html -
villabolo at 07:33 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Mark-US @ #41 Nomadic goat-herding? Are we back to Old Testament days? ;-) -
KenM at 06:50 AM on 6 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Scaddemp, thanks. That would explain it. I am just using the LS error. -
Mark-US at 06:20 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
@John (39), How big a rectangle? Is the drainage moat as cheap and as effective as just burying drain tile? -
Mark-US at 06:15 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
@Andrew (25) and those who replied; Best place: Desert wastes, to poor for farming, but can sustain goats. Rationale: The "best place" is anywhere the human population remains within local carrying capacity. Since everyone is just as smart as we are, when the migrations come in earnest the entire population is going to seek their own idyllic Keweenaw (or Michigan's Beaver Island for that matter). No matter how stable these places might be for gardening and homesteading, they will be loved to death by EVERYONE. In the end, carrying capacity in these oases will be overshot by a long margin more than the nomadic goat-herding carrying capacity of desert wastes they walk away from. And their will be a lot fewer guns per hectacre in the scrub as well. So I'd say, figure out where everyone else is running, then figure out how to live wherever they left. See http://www.amazon.com/Goatwalking-A-Guide-Wildland-Living/dp/0670828467
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