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chriskoz at 15:59 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Your cost analysis, Dana, is simplified by the fact that you provide the average costs only. As a side note, I don't knoiw if your actual $ are wholesale or consumer prices. If consumer, then they seem quite cheap, at least comparing to the prices in most AUS states, where I live. The actual cost of electricity producton may vary wildly. The baseload is reliable and cheap. Peak time may be several times more expensive. We know that the technical problem with renewables is ake the as reliable to compete with baseload coal, which is reliable because the techology is well established (100y old) and very cheap because the various externalities including climate change are excluded. I'd like to see some more detailed analysis how renewables compete with baseload coal in both price and reliability. Perhaps solar (either theral or PV) could ultimately become our baseload power if we argree the grids become international (the "daylight" states selling power to "nighttime" states) but I guess that last condition is just in my dreams: I don't even know the feasibility of the power transport over such big distances in the first place. -
Doug Hutcheson at 15:13 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
dana1981 @ 3, to my mind, we should use whatever safe technology we have available, as the cost of not replacing fossil fuels is far more important to our collective futures than the cost efficiency of any one technology. If someone could come up with a demonstrably safe design for nuclear generation, I would be happy to include it in our future energy mix. That is my 'all the above, excluding fossil carbon' approach to future electricity generation. Delay is our worst enemy. -
dana1981 at 14:59 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
GillianB @2 - I added the suggested text. Doug H @1 - at the risk of turning the comment thread into a nuclear power discussion (which I hope doesn't happen, but tends to occur), it's a bit ironic for nuclear power backers to criticize the cost of renewable power, because new nuclear projects always run way over budget and schedule, and often default on their loans at taxpayer expense. I'd support nuclear power if it could be cost-effective, but right now that's not the case. And an individual nuclear plant is so expensive that you have to put a lot of eggs in that high-risk basket. Renewables are a much safer bet. -
GillianB at 12:47 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Thanks for this excellent summary of key facts. As ALEC is very active at the state level as well as the national level, I suggest a minor edit to the sentence "..and then pass it along to legislators who will introduce and attempt to implement their bills in US Congress" to include State Legislatures as well as US Congress. Cheers... -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:23 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
I have been following an at times vitriolic comment thread at The Conversation, on the topic Wind is no answer if it leads to higher emissions. The premise of the article is that wind generation is intermittent and requires fossil-fuelled backup generation capacity. To my surprise, almost none of the comments attacks the fundamental idea that CO2 emissions are a bad thing. The interesting argument on the comment thread is between pro- and anti-nuclear proponents, with the pro-nuke crowd claiming that renewables are too expensive and their intermittencies create costly engineering problems for the distribution network, so the logical thing is to start a crash programme of building nuclear generators, instead of spending resources on wind, solar, tide etc. capacity. Sadly, by strenuously opposing renewables, the pro-nuke crowd are playing into the hands of the do-nothing, BAU, burn-baby-burn crowd. I'm not sure where I stand regarding nuclear generators. On the one hand, I see the dangers of catastrophic failures, such as happened at Chernobyl and Fukashima. On the other hand, I know that great strides have been made in engineering and safety aspects, as well as the ability of newer designs being able to use spent fuel from earlier designs currently in operation, thus eliminating the dangerous waste products of existing nuclear plants. On balance, I am sceptical of the ability of humanity to rush the building of new nuclear plants, while maintaining the highest standards of safety, so I am uncomfortable with the prospect of rapid deployment. This caution, however, does nothing to solve the problem of renewables having intermittent generation capability. -
dana1981 at 11:47 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
peggy @30 - all projections are based on a certain GHG emissions scenario. In Figure 12 they used the IPCC FAR 'business as usual' scenario discussed towards the top of the post. -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:28 AM on 3 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Simon @ 243, Bob Carter's Gish Gallop is still worth reading, as an example of faulty reasoning by someone who should know better. His opposition to AGW seems rooted in his politics, rather than in his superior understanding of the evidence. No doubt, this polarised view is being passed on to his students. Sad to see. -
curiousd at 10:50 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
In regards to my comment 29 above, despite John Cook's valient efforts to help me out in cyberspace, my graph still did not plot! This is a polite website but perhaps an "Oh Piffle!" is o.k. However, I was able to post my plot onto http://tinypic.com/r/29faz45/6 -
peggy at 10:46 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
A simple question on the IPCC predictions, in fig.12 for example- do they hold GHG constant or do they also include a social policy prediction? If so, what CO2 level are they designed around? No doubt the answer is in the references, but such critical information should be presented with the predictions. I speak as a casual reader with a PhD in biology. -
curiousd at 10:37 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
In regard to above comments about multiple data sets, perhaps a clearer case can be made to help prove the point by indeed combining many data sets extending over a long time period but then linearizing the expected relationship between CO2 and temperature by plotting aveage temp anomaly versus log base 2 ( Concentration CO2 by year / Concentration CO2 in 1850). I have used the averaged temp anomaly since 1850 in the SKS temperature trend calculator to do this, including CO2 from Law Dome data plus Keeling. Then I performed this linearization. Here is the result:
The statistical analysis of my data processing program shows that an uncorrelated relationship between these variables has a probability of less than 1 in 10,000. The R value is strong at 0.91
Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed image. -
Tom Curtis at 07:45 AM on 3 January 2013The Dirt on Climate
To raise the obvious point, glacials (by current understanding) commence when weak Northern Hemisphere summer insolation fails to melt the winter snows, thus leaving high albedo snow cover throughout the summer. That snow cover then accumulates to form ice sheets; but it is the high albedo during the period of maximum NH insolation that reduced global temperatures. The mechanism does not work in the SH for the simple reason that, in the relevant latitude, snow in the SH falls into the ocean where it simply melts. As a result, NH, not SH insolation drives the transitions between glacial and interglacial - a point acknowledged by Hao et al by their use of June insolation at 65 degrees North to indicate the likely onset and termination of glacials (figure 3). Prima facie, this mechanism is inconsistent with an increase of Antarctic glaciation preceding an increase in NH glaciation. Given that ice sheet extent in Asia was very limited due to arid conditions (see diagram below), it seems far more probable that delay in onset of winter monsoon dominance is a regional effect rather than a hemispheric effect, ie, that it is not indicative of the timing of NH glaciation.
Of course, there may be some odd effect here picked up by the climate models and loess, but we need significantly more detail to assess it.
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Andy Skuce at 03:16 AM on 3 January 2013The Dirt on Climate
Thanks for this informative post, jg. And great diagrams, too! -
Simon8049 at 22:33 PM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
The link to Bob Carter's Telegraph article no longer works. It has moved to: There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998 -
JasonB at 15:49 PM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
This has always struck me as a bizarre complaint. Spend any time on WUWT and you'll see numerous posts positively dripping with hatred towards those who dare try to present data in a graph with a scale they disapprove of. Isn't that why the values are shown on the axes? Even Excel, the fake sceptics' statistical analysis tool of choice, defaults to automatically adjusting the axes values to best fit the data when you use it to create a graph. And why stop with the Y axis? Surely the X axis should start at "0", too? Let's see, instrumental record ~150 years, X axis scale ~14 billion years, you'd need a sheet of paper 4 km long to have the entire instrumental record represented by a single pixel at 600 dpi on that graph. :-) -
Bernard J. at 15:15 PM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
DB at #238. Thanks for the tweak. I'm not sure what the issue is with my addie - I tried mailing it from my institutional address, and there was no problem. I shall have to remain intrigued, and wondering... ;-) -
Bernard J. at 15:12 PM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
That's torn it Daniel - there'll be a rush on now. You might want to ask the moderators to deleted the pot! ;-) -
villabolo at 13:23 PM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
@35, Thanks for the link Daniel. -
Daniel Bailey at 11:04 AM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Like all things with real estate: it depends on the location. Acreage with frontage (inland lake or Lake Superior) costs more. As do more "urban" parcels (by most standards, even cities in the UP are not "urban"). A quick search brought up this site where one can find a specific parcel more to their liking. Cheaper parcels seem to run between $4,000 and $6,000 per acre. Frontage...varies. But the views are spectacular... -
villabolo at 10:23 AM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Daniel Bailey @#32: "And by urban standards, land is quite cheap right now. And there's over 600 square miles of it." Daniel, how much per acre? -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:15 AM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
As an example of Tom's point, go look at pretty much any graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the NASDAQ for the prior, say, 24 month. You will never see such a graph starting with zero. Go to Google Finance and experiment with different time periods. The Y axis will automatically scale with the range being displayed. If you don't do this then, as Tom says, you run into troubles trying to discern any changes. -
villabolo at 10:07 AM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Doug H. #31: "Wherever you go, be sure to arrange strong defenses against those gun-toting desperadoes who would try to take your safe place away from you by force. Remember, if the climate changes as projected by models, the bad guys are going to be migrating to more comfortable climes, along with everybody else. This time around, the meek are unlikely to inherit the Earth." Well put, but individuals and family groups will be insufficient to arrange a strong defense against roving gangs. If we are to survive we need to organize in eco-villages/Arco-Santi like communities. 500 or more people, in a cohesive community, will allow for maximum efficiency of horti-permaculture as well as self defense. I suggest networking with such survivalist like minded people for a possible future relocation. A sense of community is of utmost importance. -
Tom Dayton at 05:00 AM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
No, william, it is neither necessary nor desirable to always start the graphs at 0. Scaling should be appropriate to the purpose of the graph's readers. If you want to maximize the readers' ability to discern changes in the graph, you should make the graph fill the space as much as possible. {...snip...}Moderator Response: [KC] Inflammatory snipped -
william5331 at 04:41 AM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
The Y axis on ice extent and ice volume graphs should always have started at 0. {...snip...}Moderator Response: [KC] Inflammatory snipped. -
Tom Dayton at 02:00 AM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Punksta, even based purely (and therefore inappropriately) on statistics, the +0.14 C trend of the last 16 years is the most likely "true" value--the expected value. 0 is not the most likely value. Nor is +0.13, nor is +0.15. But trend values close to +0.14 are more likely to be the "true" value than trends far from it are. Statistical significance merely provides one estimate of the probabilities of those different trend values. Nor is there anything magical about the 95% confidence level; it is merely a traditional value. The 94% confidence level encompasses only values closer to the 0.14 most likely value. Statistics does not dictate what the confidence level should be. The situation outside of statistics dictates that. If you must make a decision based on your best estimate of the true value, you must weigh the costs and benefits of acting based on the several incorrect and correct decisions you might make based on that best estimate. You leaven those costs and benefits with the probabilities of the various errors and correct decisions. But even if you do make such a sophisticatedly thorough judgment, you are a fool if the statistics are the only knowledge you use to make your decision. Knowledge of physical processes such as causality, and a plethora of other factors, should be even more important in your decision. Statistics is merely one tool in a very large scientific toolbox. This failure of pure statistics to provide clear answers is not at all unique to climatology. I used to do massively complex ANOVAs in a completely different field, and usually had difficulty dissecting the complex relationships because the component, less complex statistical tests rarely were significant at the same probability level for them to logically support the overall, complex test. In other words, a naive perspective on the entire set of tests would be that they were internally inconsistent and therefore nonsensical and impossible. That's a similar phenomenon to what folks here have pointed out to you: Often all the short time intervals fail to reach significance at the same probability level as the longer time interval. That's why real scientists do not base their judgments solely on statistics, and even to the extent that they do rely on statistics, they do not rely on a naive, high school level of statistics. -
Tristan at 00:18 AM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Neat image Bernard! -
Bernard J. at 23:19 PM on 1 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
I should probably explain the approach that I used to determine the intervals I derived for the post above. All I did was enter various start years until I obtained for each of the end years a minimum-sized interval where there was no way to describe a negatively-sloped line through the whole range. It's not the best way to derive the info, but it was quick and it's a good approximation and I didn't want to waste time with something that has been debunked countless times in the past. -
Bernard J. at 23:13 PM on 1 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Punksta seems to come from a long, long, long line of denialists who are ignorant (often deliberately so...) of the fact that a minimum amount of time is always required to be able to identify a signal emerging from inherently noisy data. I have two points, in addition to the many others made above, to put to this person. The first is an exercise in thinking (yes, I am being optimistic...): 1) If there had been no "statistically significant" warming for twelve years, does this disprove a relationship between CO2 and warming? If there had been no "statistically significant" warming for ten years, would this disprove a relationship between CO2 and warming? Five years? Two? What is the basis for claiming that there is no relationship between CO2 and planetary warming? 2) using the trend calculator to which many people have directed Punksta, I constructed a graph showing how many years prior to a particular year are required to identify a statistically significant warming trend at the 2 %sigma; (~95%) level. It's quick and dirty - I didn't muck around with the autocorrelation period and I only used GISTemp - but it's enough to demonstrate for any year in the last three decades how many years of prior data was required to observe a "statistically significant" warming trend.
The graph itself shows two further things:
1) there is nothing unusual about the current period required to identify statistically significant warming - indeed, over all there is a trend to the period becomng shorter.
2) prior to 1981, the post-World War II hiatus (significantly attributable to aerosols) triples the period required to identify warming. However, there was warming occurring then too, but it was being compensated for by other factors. This did not alter the physics of greenhouse gases though, and the same is the case today - CO2 is still warming the planet.
[I apologise for thumb-nailing the image. Try as I might, my efforts to use the width tag would not produce a visible graph.]
Moderator Response: [DB] Improved image width. Bernard, I tried to email you the proper image width code but the message proved undeliverable. -
Daniel Bailey at 12:48 PM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Well, I'm reluctant to mention it (because I don't want to make it a target destination), but the Keweenaw Peninsula portion of the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan would make an excellent long-term destination. Connected to the mainland portion of the UP via the lift bridge at Houghton/Hancock, the Keweenaw (also called Copper Country) is separated from the "mainland" UP by a natural "moat" and (counting Lake Superior) is completely surrounded by fresh water. The climate is harsh still in winter, but continued warming will greatly lengthen the growth season, fresh water is virtually inexhaustible, it's defensible (just drop the bridge and it's an island), it has abundant forest and farmlands and there's still copper and other ores (albeit deep) in the ground. Basically, one of the few areas in North America that figures to have its climate improve over the next couple of centuries: winters will grow milder, with snow becoming less of an issue [the record is 390" in 1979] and even less common [about 24" thus far this winter]; summer heat will still be ameliorated by the enormous thermal inertia of the big lake. And by urban standards, land is quite cheap right now. And there's over 600 square miles of it.
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Doug Hutcheson at 12:42 PM on 1 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
Regarding Whitehouse, how refreshing it is to see a politician telling the plain, unvarnished truth! Tony Abbott and the Australian Tea Party wannabes, are you listening? (Cue sound of crickets ...) -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:51 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
andrewfez @ 25, you asked "Where do you guys think the 'best' place in America is going to be to survive/thrive at around 2050?" Wherever you go, be sure to arrange strong defences against those gun-toting desperadoes who would try to take your safe place away from you by force. Remember, if the climate changes as projected by models, the bad guys are going to be migrating to more comfortable climes, along with everybody else. This time around, the meek are unlikely to inherit the Earth. -
Mal Adapted at 11:33 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Vrooomie:I'll say an area centered roughly around Bend, OR: decent glacial soils, reasonably temperate, year-round, and good precip.
Hmmm, Bend's climate makes agriculture challenging, on account of a pretty short growing season (90 days is optimistic), and not enough moisture without irrigation. It will get warmer, but it may or may not get wetter. Precipitation models currently show wetter winters, drier summers in that area. Having lived in the inland PNW, I'd pick Moscow, ID or Cle Elum, WA myself. -
dana1981 at 11:01 AM on 1 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
It's a travesty that a senator named Whitehouse isn't in the White House! Especially given that he's one of the few American politicians who understands and is willing to speak out about the biggest threat we face. -
chriskoz at 10:54 AM on 1 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
I'll start the first comment in 2013 on the positive note: I've heard voices "senator Whitehouse for whitehouse". I sincerly wish those rumors (sic!) were true and Whitehouse won in 2016... I clearly see Obama accepts the science but he is too affraid (or maybe disempowered/corrupted) to act on it. But from the video of Whitehouse's great (perhaps historic) speech, we must say he wouldn't be affraid to act strongly and perhaps vindicate US to the leading position in GW mitigation. -
John Mason at 09:33 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Commiserations to all growers too! I couldn't reach my garden today - half a mile of raging floodwater stood between me and it. A slug-free New Year to you all, those of you I know and do not know. Best wishes - John -
padruig at 08:04 AM on 1 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
While compressing or expanding an axis (as well as clipping and truncating data sets) is an old tactic frequently used in advertizing. When I see this, I just get out my red pencil and shift into 'peer review' mode. Typically, published journal articles do not present results in absolute temperatures but instead compare temperature to an average datum period which variance from is considered an anomaly. These average periods, in the US are from 1961-1980 and in the UK and Australia is 1961-1990, are intended to even out seasonal influences as well as the larger periodic cyclic processes such as ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) and the AO (Arctic Oscillation) Comparing temperature anomalies gives a bit more value in making comparisons and it also makes the statistical hurdles a bit less challenging. As a point of reference here in the United States, most of our meteorological services are provided by NOAA and the National Weather Service. These agencies along with DoD, NASA, GISS, NFS, NPS, BLM are just a few of many agencies conducting climate studies as these changes affect our policy making. -
SoSethSays at 06:41 AM on 1 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
By the way, the source of the graph is NOT from the US Bureau of Meteorology that D. B. claims; it is quite evidently (by the domain) from the Australian Bureau...and shows a rising graph in any scale.Moderator Response: [DB] Note that the chart depicted in Fig 1 itself notes that it is derived from US Bureau of Meteorology data, NOT from a reproduced work originally from the US Bureau of Meteorology. -
Nick Palmer at 06:07 AM on 1 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
The degree sign on a PC can be got by using alt 167 ºººº -
CBDunkerson at 04:43 AM on 1 January 2013Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Punksta, you're treating '16 years without statistically significant warming' as if it means there has been little or no warming. It doesn't. It means the time period chosen was too short to prove statistical significance. You acknowledge that the 30 years prior to that showed warming... but there were numerous 16 year periods within that 30 year duration which did not show statistically significant warming. Thus, the current 16 year 'hiatus' as you call it could be part of an unchanged warming trend. Indeed, the past 30 years (including that 16 year 'hiatus') do show statistically significant warming. So do the past 20 years. Choosing a time period too short to establish a statistically significant trend and then arguing that it means anything is inherently nonsense. Show me a statistically significant 'cooling' trend and we'll talk. Chopping the ongoing warming trend to a duration short enough to avoid statistical significance is just flim-flammery. -
CBDunkerson at 04:31 AM on 1 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Punksta, suppose that air temperatures went up for 30 days in the Spring, but then for the next 16 days there was no statistically significant warming. Meanwhile the oceans continued to warm slightly. Would you argue that this was conclusive proof that the cycle of the seasons was not causing the warming of the oceans or the previous warming air temperatures? This is a direct parallel to your argument 'against' global warming and ought to make clear why it is wrong. There was a study about a year ago that found the minimum period needed to establish a statistically significant trend in global temperatures was about 17 years. They could have saved the effort and noted that 'skeptics' so frequently use 'no warming for 15 / 16 years' to surmise that the boundary must be a year higher. Put another way... there hasn't been a statistically significant 'cooling' or 'flat' global temp anomaly trend since the 70s. -
dana1981 at 04:13 AM on 1 January 2013Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Punk @73 - your first point isn't wrong because CO2 isn't causing global warming (it is), it's wrong because the greenhouse effect doesn't work by "warming CO2 in the atmosphere". That's not an accurate description of the greenhouse effect. -
villabolo at 03:47 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
andrewfez @ #25 "I keep hearing food prices will double in real terms by 2030..." Food prices are likely to double before 2030. That estimate sounds like it based on linear models taking only temperature rise into account. Commodities, however, tend to jump in price in a non-linear fashion e.g. oil prices in 2008. 2020 is when the arctic is bound to get ice free in the summer and the great alterations in weather will affect crops. It's safe to assume that the Arctic meltdown is not included in whatever model was used to calculate those prices. Nor are drenching thunderstorms. -
citizenschallenge at 02:10 AM on 1 January 2013New research from last week 52/2012
Thank you Ari for all the work you've put into this. It is important for folks to have a source of reliable news, when it comes to the steady flow of scientific papers and information. it's been useful and very valuable! Happy New Year -
vrooomie at 01:51 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
andrewfez@25: Keeping this focused on food security, and tossing in a bit of geological data to gin up a SWAG about your question? I'll say an area centered roughly around Bend, OR: decent glacial soils, reasonably temperate, year-round, and good precip. -
Punksta at 01:02 AM on 1 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
(-sloganeering snipped-).Moderator Response: [DB] Please respond to Dikran's question above:"In that case, can you tell me exactly what it means for the observed trend to be not statistically significant?"
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Phil at 23:53 PM on 31 December 2012Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Sorry, Cross posted with JasonB - seems we had the same idea ! -
Dikran Marsupial at 23:51 PM on 31 December 2012Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
punksta Consider an atmoshere and ocean in thermal equilibrium, so that the amount of heat radiated/conducted from the oceans is precisely balanced by the amount of heat recieved by the ocean from solar radiation, back-radiation from the atmopshere and by conduction from the atmosphere. No suppose an upwelling cold current replaces relatively warm water across a large fraction of the tropical Pacific. Clearly the ocean will now be radiating less IR as part of the surface is colder than before, but the incoming solar radiation is the same, so the oceans will begin to warm up. However, as part of the ocean surface is now cooler than before, the atmosphere will beging to cool a little in response. Now of course the energy transferred between the atmosphere and oceans will change a little (for instance there will be a little less back-radiation from the slightly cooler atmosphere). However the heat capacity of the atmosphere is small compared to the oceans, so I suspect the difference has relatively little effect. Now I am no physicist, but it seems fairly obvious that it isn't a given that ongoing atmospheric warming is a precondition to ocean warming. P.S. it is called "La Nina". -
Phil at 23:46 PM on 31 December 2012Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
RobP said: On the upper left hand side of the SkS homepage is the trend calculator. One simple experiment (with regard to this topic) is to use the trend calculator to do the following: 1. Determine the trend and uncertainty for the period 1996-2012 2. Determine the trend and uncertainty for the period 1980-1996 3. Determine the trend and uncertainty for the period 1980-2012 And then ask yourself: is the trend for 1. greater than or less than 2. ? Is the uncertainty in 1. greater than or less than 2. ? Are either of the results in 1. and 2. statistically significant ? Is the result from 3. a summation of 1. and 2. or is it different, is it statistically significant ? You might then come to your own view about whether there really has been a "pause" (whilst gazing at figure 1!) Caveat: I tried this with about 4 of the various datasets. They all showed similar results but I didn't try them all. -
JasonB at 23:41 PM on 31 December 2012Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Punksta, The problem with what you are saying is that: a) The warming of the atmosphere needn't be "ongoing" for the ocean to keep warming over the last 16 years, merely that the ocean has not yet caught up, in exactly the same way that the car continues to accelerate until it has reached the speed it will eventually reach based on the final accelerator position, and the kettle continues to warm until it has reached the temperature it will eventually reach based on the final knob position. You have not shown any research that would suggest the time it takes for the world's oceans to reach equilibrium is only 16 years. b) The atmosphere has continued to warm anyway. You appear to be mistaking a lack of statistically significant warming for a lack of warming, which is something else entirely. There will always be a period of time that can be quoted that the warming is not statistically significant over. The lack of statistical significance is entirely due to the shortness of the period of time, not due to the lack of a trend. Think about this for a second: The GISTEMP warming from 1980 to 1996 was 0.081° ± 0.149° per decade — not statistically significant. The warming from 1996 to now was 0.113° ± 0.122° per decade — also not statistically significant. But the warming from 1980 to now was 0.153° ± 0.049° per decade — very statistically significant. How can that be? Here's a clue — the English phrase "statistically insignificant" does not mean the same thing as the statistical phrase "not statistically significant". So, the premise of your argument is false, and the argument itself would be incorrect even if the premise was true due to your failure to take into account inertia. -
Tom Curtis at 23:19 PM on 31 December 2012It hasn't warmed since 1998
Punksta @232: (1) Trends 1996.92 to 2012.83 (ie, the most recent 16 years of data): Gistemp: 0.087 C per decade (0.139 trend increase in temperature over the 16 years). NCDC (NOAA): 0.047 C per decade (0.075 trend increase over the 16 years) HadCRUT4: 0.053 C per decade (0.085 trend increase over 16 years) UAH: 0.093 C per decade (0.149 C trend increase over 16 years) RSS: 0.003 C per decade (0.005 C trend increase over the 16 years). Of these, Gistemp is the most accurate in that it: a) Alone of the three surface temperature indices, has global coverage; b) Has more stations than NCDC, and significantly more stations than HadCRUT4; and c) It is a surface record, and is not contaminated by data from the stratosphere (which is cooling) as is the case with RSS and UAH. I note that a 0.03 C decadal trend taken over 16 years is a trend increase of 0.048 C, so even Punksta's cherry picked data set with its cherry picked period does not give a result of no warming, contrary to Puncksta's claims. It also leave grave doubts as to his maths, as he apparently thinks 16 years equals 10 years (to expect only a decades warming over the full 16 years); and that 0.048 = 0. Once again, there has been a warming trend on all data sets over the last 16 years. That trend has not been statistically significant on any data set. That just means that on all data sets, the error bars are wide enough so that they do not exclude underlying trends equal to zero, or indeed, equal to or greater than the IPCC predicted warming. Dressed up in its best form, Punksta's argument comes down to the inference: If we restrict our data to just the last 16 years, there is insufficient data to conclusively determine that the trend is not zero, or to determine that the trend does not equal the IPCC predicted trend. Therefore, the IPCC predicted trend has been falsified. -
Punksta at 23:11 PM on 31 December 2012Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Rob, I am not claiming the earth or oceans are cooling. I am merely saying, pretty much in line with conventional wisdom on the topic, that since AGW happens by means of warming of CO2, and hence of the atmosphere, that ongoing atmospheric warming is a precondition of ongoing ocean warming.
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