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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 50451 to 50500:

  1. Models are unreliable
    JackO'Fall - "...re-running a 2004 scenario (for example), yet adding in 'known future' levels of things like CO2 and volcano emissions. If that exists, please let me know." See Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011, Rahmstorf et al 2011, which does exactly that. "...they (models) are primarily tuned by trial&error, not scientific principles [please note the word 'tuned']" I would have to call this an incorrect assertion based upon not knowing how these models are developed - ie, from the physics. "What I was referring to is a lack of source-code with documentation for the GCMs. If it exists, I am clearly wrong and fully retract that statement." See the RealClimate links for GCM model codes, also radiative transfer models and others. Again, these are widely available, and have always been. "The range of uncertainty for those models is so large it doesn't really tell us anything. A result so broad that it would be difficult for it to ever be wrong is also not very right." On the contrary - predictions of climate change due to anthropogenic influence data back 120 years, and have been demonstrated to be correct over and over again. --- To be blunt, Jack, you have made a long list of assertions that are (a) wholly incorrect, and (b) you would have found to be so with only a little effort in looking things up. I strongly suggest you do a bit more reading.
  2. Add Frame and Stone to the List of Papers Validating IPCC Warming Projections
    Mighty Drunken @22 & @24 You raised the same point that I did, which is that it is difficult to claim that Figure 1.4 of the draft shws the data right in the middle of the scenarios. If you're still following this thread Tamino has an excellent discussion of this exact point and shows that the problem is that the draft aligns all the projections at 1990, a warm year, rather than to a trend line to the data. In brief, this resolves the discrepancy between the draft report and what Dana is showing above.
  3. Foster and Rahmstorf Measure the Global Warming Signal
    Sphaerica, the link below seems to work for me: http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=7634&Method=Full That being said, when someone uses the phrase
    "...my imaginary denialist is now asking me..."
    it raises the hackles on the back of my neck.
  4. Foster and Rahmstorf Measure the Global Warming Signal
    curiousd, Please provide a working link. I'm also confused by the wording of your "argument." "Has allowed?" It passed peer review, that's all. That doesn't make it true, that just makes it good enough for everyone to decide if it's true. What are the published comments on the paper? Have subsequent papers been published that rebut it? Is it being properly interpreted in this context? I personally have never seen such an argument, and even if it is, I don't necessarily see it as incompatible with F&R 2012. My next step would be to see if, when adding stratospheric water vapor to the F&R methodology, how much and in what direction it contributes.
  5. Foster and Rahmstorf Measure the Global Warming Signal
    I find myself these days asking the question...."What would be hard questions to handle if a denialist queries part of my presentation on AGW?" Since the Foster - Rahmsdorff multiple regression analysis is one of the important parts of any AGW presentation,IMO, my imaginary denialist is now asking me: "The establishment, peer reviewed literature has allowed publication of an article to the effect that lessening of stratospheric water vapor has temporarily slowed global warming ...see http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=7634&Method=Full.... SKS had no particular quarrel with this article, I recall; only in its over interpretation by others. Then why is this effect of lessening stratospheric water vapor (apparently) completely removed by the method of Foster and Rahmsdorff?
  6. Models are unreliable
    Jack, Anyone who has looked at this issue at all should know that GISTEMP has two web links. One gives their code and documentation for determining the anomaly of surface temperatures and the other gives code and documentation for their climate model. That includes all the source code and documentation that you can desire,including old models. You need to do your homework before you criticize hard-working scientists efforts. Look at GISS again and find the climate model link.
    Moderator Response: [TD] Typo: "GISTEMP has two web links" should be plain "GISS."
  7. Models are unreliable
    @ Tom Dayton: I never said a modeler doesn't want to improve their model, just that I would like them to continuously improve and that the need to include new feedbacks is not bad. I threw that in there in hopes of showing that I'm not rooting against the models. Apparently I missed getting that across. My apologies. My time is limited, so I know I miss a lot of data out there (and don't have a chance to reply to a lot of what gets written back at me). However, I looked at the GISTEMP link, it doesn't look like a climate model, but an attempt to recreate the corrective actions that go into adjusting the raw data from the temperature stations and producing the GISS results. Still, cool that they are doing it. What I was referring to is a lack of source-code with documentation for the GCMs. If it exists, I am clearly wrong and fully retract that statement. I also read the RealClimate FAQs on GCMs, as suggested. It seemed to agree with many of my basic contentions. (they have estimations that they know are off, they don't include everything we know, they are prone to drifting-though less than in the past, they are primarily tuned by trial&error, not scientific principles [please note the word 'tuned']) @KR: While both of Hansen's graphs seem to do a good job estimating future temperatures, that's not what I was referring to. I believed Tom Curtis was proposing re-running a 2004 scenario (for example), yet adding in known 'future' levels of things like CO2 and volcano emissions. If that exists, please let me know. Of course, the other link was inconclusive, so be polite. The range of uncertainty for those models is so large it doesn't really tell us anything. A result so broad that it would be difficult for it to ever be wrong is also not very right. @scaddenp: At the very least, if the ENSO correction is more natural variability than previously understood, that is very helpful. In terms of modeling that, it will probably increase the uncertainty range, but would allow for a better run at what I believe Tom Curtis proposed. That may be more helpful in time scales of less than 30 years (I'm not sure anyone will wait 30 years to see if the current models accurately predicted the future). My apologies for off-topic discussion. I should not have made my initial off-the-cuff economic response, and certainly should not have replied more extensively.
  8. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    KR @ a2, thank you for posting the graph. The caption makes sense now.
  9. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #50
    Bernard J. @ 13, why didn't I think of that? Doh! Thank you. vrooomie @ 14, on my tight budget, that is a luxury I will have to forego. With any luck, the State Library service will be able to track down a copy for me.
  10. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    John Russell astutely commented:
    "...optimists... [are] ...generally healthier and happier than pessimists..." They are until overtaken by events they didn't foresee due to their irrational optimism. It's interesting that there are so many optimists around -- I'd have thought that, thanks to evolution, we'd have lost them all to lions hiding behind rocks.
    This reminds me of Douglas Adams' observation on the phenomenon, which most people blithely assume is simply a comic instrument:
    The Book: It is important to note that suddenly, and against all probability, a sperm whale had been called into existence, several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity. This is what it thought, as it fell: The Whale: Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? Its a sort of tingling in my... well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Yeah, this is really exciting. I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello, Ground! [Cuts to a distant view as the whale hits the ground and spews up a large mushroom cloud of snow] The Book: Curiously, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias, as it fell, was, "Oh no, not again!" Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly *why* the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
  11. Solar Cycle Model fails to predict the recent warming
    Philip: comments in journals are actually a fairly rare thing, and a lot of journals don't really like them much. Some may not allow them at all. It can also be a lot of work to prepare one, and you don't get much credit as an academic for them. To advance a career, time is better spent on full articles - but for that to be a "response" to a bad paper, it has to have enough new stuff in it to merit publication on its own (but then can also be submitted to any journal you want, not just the one with the bad paper). For a bad paper in an odd journal, the editors may not want to publicly acknowledge that they let utter crap through their peer review process - which may mean that the subject was one they didn't really know much about to begin with (and therefore can't judge the merits of the comment, either). You'll see frequent mention here at SkS by dana1981 to the paper discussed in the post Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues. That was published as a comment, but the original idea was (I think) to submit it as a stand-alone paper, and the journal/editor decided it was more suited as a comment. Dana may wish to weigh in on the difficulties of the process.
  12. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    I really don't understand the likes of Ridley. This year in the UK we started with drought, now we have to much water everywhere and we are no where near seeing the worst of climate change! There are businesses really suffering as well as home owners. The risk is clear in the UK, do nothing and the costs are going to be astonishing.
  13. Solar Cycle Model fails to predict the recent warming
    HPJ@12, I hope it's not amiss to ask a question about scientific publication protocol rather than climate: Why not send a comment to the journal? Granted, the information is now out in the world, but it's not right in front of the people who saw the original article. And it doesn't seem to me that it would need to be anything elaborate, just 'Adding solar cycle numbers to the dots in their figure X (see figure Y) shows that their model fails increasingly badly after solar cycle 20.' And a reference to this posting. At worst you waste a couple of hours. At best you can point out to deniers and journalists that SSH have been shot down where they were originally published. Granted, I may completely underestimate the difficulties, but that's why I'm asking.
  14. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    Markx, if you are more interested in the politics than the science, then perhaps you can make a positive contribution on this thread GHG reductions - a challenge for the right? One of the worrying sources of "skepticism" is a knee-jerk antipathy from people who find proposed solutions at odds with their political beliefs. This leads to hunting down disinformation to feed their skepticism instead of an honest search for the truth.
  15. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Victor@18 Actually, I read your blog post several days ago. Like you, I had seen the post on WUWT, then I did a google search on NVAP-M which led me to your blog. After I read your post, I went back and read the Colorado State paper. Nice catch on how WUWT (as well as Matt Ridley) distorted the conclusion in the report by quoting a single sentence out of context.
  16. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    (-Moderation complaints snipped-)
    Moderator Response: [Sph] Posting on SkS is a privilege, not a right. This site exists first and foremost to present the science and to debunk misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the science. Discussion of the science is welcomed. This site does not exist to allow fake skeptics to create the impression of a false debate, fair or unfair.

    Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

    Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators intentionally submit offensive comments. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.

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  17. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    BBD and Neven, Fortunately, someone has invested the time to look closer at the curios claims made by Ridley and Lewis. It seems the more "sophisticated" the fake skeptics are, the more skilled they are at deluding themselves and anyone who will listen or take them seriously. A post by ThingsBreak titled "Matt Ridley and the Wall Street Journal misrepresent paper cited in Ridley column" exposes just how "creative" and sly Lewis et al. had to be to force their desired narrative. "Ignoring the two main findings of a paper for values that you’re either estimating from a curve or are creating yourself based on data not used by the paper will be seen by at least some people to be misleading. Claiming that ECS cannot be estimated by paleo data is absurd, especially when so many are aware of efforts like the PALAEOSENS project and various paleoclimatic intercomparison groups." So yet another alleged "nail in the coffin of AGW" is, pardon the pun, vapourized. Water vapour is not our friend in this situation, I'm inclined to call it "Darth Vapour" ;) Physics cares not one iota for the shenanigans of fake skeptics....
  18. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    JoeT: "Victor @6 Nice write-up on your blog. Perhaps, with your permission, skepticalscience might want to reprint it." Joe, thank you for your nice words. Everyone has permission to reprint any post. I must honestly say, that I do not see it as a special post. Anyone with access to the literature could have written it. We need more open access publishing to make the life of the climate ostriches more difficult. I am just amazed as the boldness of the climate ostriches and hope that the post helps to speed the demise of this PR circus a little and the word "climate sceptic" will again be reserved for sceptical people. The discussion on the best response to climate change is difficult enough without misinformation.
  19. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    If we bank (pardon the pun) on Ridley's optimism and it turns out to be unfounded, we will be on a path headed towards catastrophe. But I'm sure Ridley will be fine. He was born into the 1%. My sense is that the more sophisticated contrarians are going to run with this. Indeed.
  20. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    @ 15 Albatross I'm sorry even to have to suggest this extra workload, especially the *weekend before Christmas*. Unfortunately, it looks as though it needs to be done, and to halt the nonsense, done properly. If it makes anyone feel any better, just consider how much time and effort went into constructing NL's analysis. So very, very carefully.
  21. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    Philippe Chantreau at 20:23 PM on 22 December, 2012 said: "...In Shanghai, .... outside elevators. One looses sight of the ground in smog when reaching the 15th floor on a good day. ..." I had the opportunity to take a job in Shanghai last year, and that was one of the reasons I chose not to. It is interesting to note that the Chinese are addressing that problem to some extent by opening coal fired power stations at the rate of about one every two weeks. While that may sound counter intuitive, those power sources are replacing millions of old inefficient coal burning boilers which are largely charged with often wet, usually dirty coal. I think you will see in the future that they continue to deal with these issues in their own way. In some systems, direct government action and policy may play a predominant role.
  22. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    (-snip-). Philippe Chantreau at 20:23 PM on 22 December, 2012 said: 1. A major downfall of capitalism, which has nothing to do with the basic concept or its intent, is the "immunity" given to some corporations and certain individuals, enabling them to consolidate their power and exploit their positions to entrench and enrich themselves. 2. …. there never was communism in the Soviet Union, or China, or Korea. These places have experienced totalitarian socialism, as defined by state ownership of the means of production. 3. ….. socialist countries have a notoriously poor record of environmental performance, far worse than capitalistic countries. 4. ….. strong environmental regulations, and consistent enforcement thereof, are theoretically possible only where there is adequate separation of powers….. Philippe, I absolutely agree with your points 1 to 5 above, but am not sure if I can make any valid comparison of the EPA to the market crash. DSL at 14:46 PM on 22 December, 2012 makes very good points, “…… does this year's corn production mean that global warming is benefiting corn production? Or are there other, more significant factors at work?....” Which can be applied directly to show the meaninglessness of Killians’s statement: Killian at 18:44 PM on 31 July, 2011 said: ".... crop reductions of 3% are already being realized..." My point still remains that government action is not necessarily always in everyone’s (or anyone’s) best interests, subject as they are to lobbyists of all types and from all directions. (-snip-).
    Moderator Response: [DB] Allegations of impropriety snipped. You have been warned about making such before, with the previous such comment warranting you being given a 2nd Warning. This is now your Final Warning; further such violations of this site's Comments Policy will result in a revocation of commenting privileges.
  23. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    BBD @11, Scientists at SkS are looking into the blog article written by financier Lewis. However, like grading/evaluating any bad paper, it takes time to separate the (little) wheat from the copious chaff.
  24. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    This nonsense is so consistent with fake skeptics and those in denial being completely incapable of advancing a internally consistent and coherent hypothesis. The contradiction here is very clear. In the same week fake skeptic and denier web sites have touted two hypotheses that are completely at odds with one another. First, they rehash the long debunked Galactic Cosmic Ray hypothesis. Second, the trot out another favourite that climate sensitivity is low. Well, if GCRs play a big a role as fake skeptics and those in denial claim, then the climate system has to be sensitive to very small forcings, in other words climate sensitivity must be very high, not low.
  25. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Re the trend in specific humidity, plots of Dai (2006), HadCRUH (2008) and Barry & Kent (2009) can be found here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/humidity HadCRUH data download link here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcruh/ Tamino looked at this data here: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/urban-wet-island/
    Moderator Response: [TD] Linked the URLs.
  26. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #50
    Doug H, I *highly* recommend you buy acopy of Friel's book: it is dense, it is excruciatingly detailed, and I used it as a reference book, a lot.
  27. More ice loss through snowfall on Antarctica
    markx - Very interesting. Of course, as has been said in many contexts, "size matters". Drop in relative sea level at the grounding edge of an ice sheet is an influence on ice sheet loss rates (-). So are the warming water at the grounding level (+), changes in precipitation due to atmospheric water vapor levels (-?), lubrication of the ice sheet from percolated melt water (+), and acceleration of sheet movement due to reduction of the grounding line dam effect (+), among others. Unfortunately, given the observations on ice sheet thicknesses, the sum of these influences is still (as far as I can see) leading to ice sheet loss in Greenland and parts of Antarctica.
  28. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Doug H - That figure has apparently been reformatted/redone to a more horizontal orientation than the original (not certain of its provenance), and I suspect the vertical bar has been lost due to resizing (dropping a few pixels is always risky with thin lines). The full illustration of interest from Knutti and Hegerl 2008 is Figure 3a:
  29. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    I urge you to give Lewis' estimate of climate sensitivity a careful review. Thoughtful commentary has already begun, which suggests that there is merit in subjecting his assumptions to very close scrutiny. If it should turn out that there are assumptions in NL's work which bias its conclusions, then a reference page here would be extremely valuable. My sense is that the more sophisticated contrarians are going to run with this.
  30. More ice loss through snowfall on Antarctica
    Some degree of 'self regulation' occurs due to gravitational effects - new research by Gomez (student of Jerry Mitrovica)
    Evolution of a coupled marine ice sheet–sea level model Natalya Gomez,1 David Pollard,2 Jerry X. Mitrovica,1 Peter Huybers,1 and Peter U. Clark3 Received 16 June 2011; revised 18 November 2011; accepted 6 December 2011; published 14 February 2012. [1] We investigate the stability of marine ice sheets by coupling a gravitationally self-consistent sea level model valid for a self-gravitating, viscoelastically deforming Earth to a 1-D marine ice sheet-shelf model. The evolution of the coupled model is explored for a suite of simulations in which we vary the bed slope and the forcing that initiates retreat. We find that the sea level fall at the grounding line associated with a retreating ice sheet acts to slow the retreat; in simulations with shallow reversed bed slopes and/or small external forcing, the drop in sea level can be sufficient to halt the retreat. The rate of sea level change at the grounding line has an elastic component due to ongoing changes in ice sheet geometry, and a viscous component due to past ice and ocean load changes. [......]
  31. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Several points to make here. I've noticed that most of the 'more sophisticated' sceptics have dropped denial of warming and its anthropogenic origins and now base all their arguments around the climate sensitivity issue. So 'it wont be bad' seems to be the 'meme du jour'. Ridley fits the mould perfectly. To John Brookes: "...optimists... [are] ...generally healthier and happier than pessimists..." They are until overtaken by events they didn't foresee due to their irrational optimism. It's interesting that there are so many optimists around -- I'd have thought that, thanks to evolution, we'd have lost them all to lions hiding behind rocks. The Ridleys of this world (especially given his financial background) tend to fall optimistically into the 'short-termist' camp. It's also a more general failing. I was struck by this graph the other day showing longer timescales than we usually see. If the concern is future generations, rather than our own self-satisfaction, the cherry-pickers need to think a little more deeply.
  32. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Victor @6 Nice write-up on your blog. Perhaps, with your permission, skepticalscience might want to reprint it.
  33. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    It was Sir John Sulston (biologist, Nobel Prize winner) who called Ridley an "irrational optimist". http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017mrbd
  34. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #50
    Doug at #10. I feel your pain, as I frequently have exactly the same problem. One way around it that usually works is to copy a word string from the search return for which you want the original thread. Paste the string into G00gle, and include in the search field "site:http://www.skepticalscience.com/". Where SkS's engine fails to deliver the URL, G00gle usually succeeds.
  35. Climate's changed before
    I came across this article http://www.nature.com/news/polar-research-trouble-bares-its-claws-1.12015 about how crabs, which had been excluded from the Antarctic continental shelf for 30 million years because of the cold, are invading due to the incursion of warmer ocean waters. They are preying on an ecology that had evolved free from hard-shell-crushing predators. This is evidence that the current climate change is far beyond normal natural variation
  36. Philippe Chantreau at 20:23 PM on 22 December 2012
    The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    Re Markx: A major downfall of capitalism, which has nothing to do with the basic concept or its intent, is the "immunity" given to some corporations and certain individuals, enabling them to consolidate their power and exploit their positions to entrench and enrich themselves (2008 crash anyone?). See? I can do rethoric too. The reference to the EPA would be laughable if it wasn't so grotesque. Tell me Markx, how much did the 2008 market crash cost to the world economies? Sorry, that was an unfair question, because these costs are still unfolding as we speak. If everything was really accounted for, we'd be in the multiple trillion range. All because of a way too small number of individuals controlling way too large an amount of wealth and having no clue about risk management, or plain economic reality. And of course nobody to effectively watch them. When did the EPA ever wreak such havoc on the entire world? I'll add that there never was communism in the Soviet Union, or China, or Korea. These places have experienced totalitarian socialism, as defined by state ownership of the means of production. The only instances of socio-economic systems truly akin to theoretical communism are known among primitive societies, and are aptly called primitive communism. It is to be noted that socialist countries have a notoriously poor record of environmental performance, far worse than capitalistic countries, except perhaps for Cuba (I'm not even sure). In these countries, environmental regulations are virtually non existent, and what few there are can't be enforced. In fact, strong environmental regulations, and consistent enforcement thereof, are theoretically possible only where there is adequate separation of powers. And that is exactly what is observed in geopolitical reality. Furthermore, environmental regulations are actually a late feature of fully mature states with a long, functioning history of separated powers. In Shangai, luxury high rise hotels have sprouted, where they fancy outside elevators. One looses sight of the ground in smog when reaching the 15th floor on a good day. In more mature countries, there are laws that aim at preventing that sort of thing. Not sure about you but I know where I'd rahter live.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Note to all participants:

    Please restrict the discussion on communism by tying your comments back to the OP with an establishment of relevance. Comments solely focusing on communism will be subject to moderation under the "No Politics" portion of the Comments Policy.

  37. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Its funny, but when it came to running a bank, Ridley was an optimist. Everything would be fine. I once heard a lecture on learned optimism. Basically it said that optimists were generally healthier and happier than pessimists, and that we should all learn how to be optimists. However, it did offer a caution. If you are in an aeroplane, and are heading for a thunderstorm, you should very much hope that your pilot is a pessimist. It appears that Ridley has learned little from the failure of his optimism at Northern Rock, and is now applying it to climate science. On a slightly related note, it has been found that the presence or absence of optimism in people diagnosed with cancer does not affect their outcomes. However the presence of hope does lead to more positive outcomes. One hopes it will work for climate change as well.
  38. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    One of Ridleys arguments that indicates "that the water vapor feedback is weak" is that water vapor does not show any trend. He probably got this piece of misinformation from WUWT. In his guest post at WUWT Forest Mims makes this claim, by citing one sentence from an article on the NASA NVAP global humidity dataset. Had he quoted the entire paragraph, not just one sentence, the message would haven been that the authors did not try to study the water vapor trend. They did not do so because the dataset is currently only suited to study "seasonal to interannual variability" due to inhomogeneities in the dataset. For example, because the types and number of satellites changed during the observation period. But Mims knows better than the authors and does not feel the need to say that the authors of this paper do not agree with his original science without arguments. Furthermore, this dataset is only 23 years long and thus not interesting for trend analysis as the uncertainty would be huge anyway, even if the dataset would not be biased. Another clear piece of misinformation.
  39. CO2 effect is saturated
    Thank you again. The application of Modtran by Professor Fiedler is most illuminating. I tried the MONASH program and have given feedback to their group. Another program on David Archer's website is the NCAR radiation code. The out put table has symbols 1ev p z T q What do these mean? I am certain 1 eV cannot mean one electron volt?
  40. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #50
    vroomie @ 11, thanks very much for the suggestion. I will have to see if my local library can order it in for me (I live in a rural town). The book review presents it as just what I was looking for. I have provided that link to the person who called him an expert, but doubt it will change their mind.
  41. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    The caption to figure 1 includes this:
    The IPCC likely range (2 to 4.5°C) and most likely value (3°C) are indicated by the vertical grey bar and black line, respectively.
    I could not see either a vertical grey bar or a black line in the image - am I going blind? Perhaps, like Ridley's credibility, they are figaments of the imagination ...
  42. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Ridley's answer to a question at the parliamentary enquiry to the Northern Rock fiasco was revealing: Q406 Mr Fallon: But you were wrong? Dr Ridley: We were hit by an unexpected and unpredictable concatenation of events. Except that the events were predicted by some analysts. With respect to climate change, just because there are uncertainties does not mean that terrible outcomes are unpredictable or unexpected. Wishful thinking is not an admissible defence against gross negligence. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Ridleyriddle3.html
    Moderator Response: [DB] Hot-linked URL.
  43. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    Regulation of pollutants and failed pseudo-communist totalitarian states, connected in just a couple of sentences. Who knew that "don't pour your used motor oil into the gutter" leads directly to being dragged out of your government-owned flat by the NKVD in the wee hours of the morning? Reasonable, much?
  44. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    markx, Really? You are going to equate the EPA with the totalitarian communist dictatorships of post-WW II? Really? And you want to be taken seriously?
  45. The Ridley Riddle Part Two: The White Queen
    Penner et al (2010) paper mentioned above:
    "......Warming over the past 100 years is consistent with high climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide combined with a large cooling effect from short-lived aerosol pollutants, but it could equally be attributed to a low climate sensitivity coupled with a small effect from aerosols. These two possibilities lead to very different projections for future climate change....."
    This seems to me to be a point of some importance. They go on to say:
    "....These uncertainties in atmospheric chemistry and physics must be reduced to build an optimal control strategy for short-lived pollutants that affect the climate. We propose that, given a focused effort including atmospheric observations and sensitivity studies using climate models, the questions needed to address an optimal strategy can be answered within the time frame of the Fifth Assessment from IPCC, that is, by 2013...."
    I think they come to a very logical conclusion. It seems this would be worth knowing.
  46. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    markx, any real-world instance of communism or capitalism is a historically-developed instance. At some point, Soviet communism was no longer communism. You start out talking about the concept, and then you replace the concept with an historical instance. My advice to you is to avoid discarding ideas and instead address specific instances and their historical development. As for corn, does this year's corn production mean that global warming is benefiting corn production? Or are there other, more significant factors at work? How much corn was planted this year, and how close was the planting to a record? And what of other crops? Here's the Financial Times on the year's global grain production: "The year just ending has seen the third major price rise, with the price of corn reaching an all-time high. The culprit has been bad weather in almost all of the world’s top food producing regions: the Black Sea area of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, the Latin American farmland belt of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and the US Midwest. Only Australia, India and the rice-producing nations of South East Asia have enjoyed relatively good weather."
  47. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    Killian at 18:44 PM on 31 July, 2011 ".... crop reductions of 3% are already being realized..." Must have missed the memo http://www.grains.org/index.php/chart-of-the-week/3953-world-corn-production-predicted-to-be-second-highest-on-record-for-fy1213 World Corn Production Predicted to be Second Highest on Record for FY12/13 Published on Friday, 02 November 2012 20:40 "This week's U.S. Grains Council Chart of the Week shows world corn production of 839 million metric tons (33 billion bushels) for the 2012/2013 marketing year will be the second highest on record..."
  48. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Ridley practically ran his bank into the ground. And we're supposed to take his advice on how to run national or global economies with regards to climate? No thanks. Stick a fork in Ridley-as-climate-advisor. He's done.
  49. The Ridley Riddle Part One: The Red Queen
    actually thoughtful at 13:17 PM on 30 July, 2011 says: "...The fallacy is the premise that government spending is "waste" or negative...." The fallacy to this particular fallacy is the concept that government will always act in everyone's best interest. Zealotry driven noble causes are probably the worst case scenario. Communism is a case to point: A plausible enough theory, but it did not work, and it took 80 years for the majority to recognize the case, completely overtaking the lives of several generations in some regions. A major downfall of communism which had nothing to do with the basic concept or its intent was the 'authority' given to government bodies and certain individuals enabling them to consolidate their power and exploit their positions to entrench and enrich themselves. (EPA anyone?)
  50. Matt Ridley Risk Management Failure Deja Vu
    Darn denialists. We could be having an interesting and educational discussion of how to rightly do a risk analysis -- do you use the mode, the mean, or the entire distribution, weighted by severity of risk? -- but instead we have to go over and over again the dangers of cherry picking for your desired result. I hope for the day when people (especially those active in the media) will self correct when they are tempted to cherry pick.

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