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Comments 50551 to 50600:

  1. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    An afterthought, have any of the gardeners here thought of permaculture? Can orchards be more resistant to the weather than other crops?
  2. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    I believe that any future civilization will have to rely on solidly built greenhouses to shelter crops from the local weather.
  3. The Y-Axis of Evil
    @ vrooomie & jimspy Jimpsy, I know you're thinking from a PR point of view but there is a flaw in your terminology. "Milli" is a well known term by the public for thousandths thus using it will give the impression of triviality. A more public friendly response to this pseudoscientific nonsense would be to simply state that the chart has been "compressed" or "squashed down" or some similar phrase that the public can understand. vrooomie Most Americans, uneducated as they are, won't fully appreciate what a 6C rise would do; especially if they live in a relatively cool place.
  4. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    @catamon at 12; it's real easy to find (myth 5, it's cooling should get you there). Here's the basic version, click on intermediate for more complex details: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htm
  5. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    Ive found this a REALLY USEFUL APP but since Ive started using Windows8 it doesn't accept my log-in. Ive tried logging in on Sks but the app (sorry add-on) asks me to log in again, i do so but nothing happens. Anyone else having this problem?
  6. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Respectfully, jimspy, and from my POV as a earth scientist, I see absolutely no reason whatever to muddy up the discussion with a new metric of temperature. Degrees are widely-and well-understood by lay and scientific folk, and though we (Americans) still cling to our Fahrenheit, over the *rest* of the world, there is still a plenty enough comprehension of what a 6C temp rise will be: Uninhabitable.
  7. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    Ron King, you're really asking the wrong question. Relevant questions are: "What qualifications do Drs. Douglass and Knox have as "climate scientists" Douglass and Knox paper on ocean heat content is the one that Nuticelli et al. (2012) address] answer: none. Douglass is a low temperature superconductivity physicist. He gained his PhD in 1959 and essentially retired as a publishing physicist in 1991 (his last paper in the area of his expertise was published in 1991). Knox is a spectroscopist with a particular focus on biological photochemistry. He gained his PhD in 1958. "Why are Drs Douglass and Knox writing occasional papers in an area completely divorced from their expertise in their late 70's? answer: Difficult to understand. Their first paper in their late career choice [Douglass, Blackman and Knox (2004) Temperature response of Earth to the annual solar irradiance cycle. Physics Lett. A. 323, 315-322] was scuppered by their error in not accounting for the fact that the (albedo-corrected) total solar irradiance has to be divided by 4 to account for the spherical geometry of the Earth when considering the Earth-absorbed irradiance. The smattering of papers this pair have published since on climate science have almost uniformly been shown to be blatantly flawed by rebuttals published in the scientific literature. The answer to your question: "...is John Church the only recognised climate scientist among the co-authors..." answer: John Church is a recognised climate scientist. That's ONE MORE than the authors of the paper Nuticelli et al. are addressing. Robert Way is a graduate student studying glaciology, climate statistics and climate change attibution. John Cook is at the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. That seems like quite a bit of climate expertise status to me (If it's "staus" you're after which seems to be the case). Judging by the postings at this site the other authors have the requisite qualities to address the issues, i.e. a strong physical understanding and honesty. Three questions for you Ron: 1. Couldn't you have found this out for yourself? 2. Don't you think it's a little odd that two elderly physicists choose to write very occasional papers on subjects completely outside their expertise, and that are objectively shown to be wrong? 3. Don't you think it's quite a good idea that objectively flawed analyses that find their way into the scientific literature are robustly rebutted?
    Moderator Response: (Rob P) Ron King was yet another sock puppet of Ken Lambert - banned some time ago for troll-ish behaviour.
  8. Mexican Climate Legislation and Other Hopeful News
    Alberta has had a carbon tax since 2007.
  9. 2012 SkS Bi-Weekly News Roundup #12
    I was navigating the internet when I found this posts in WUWT: Why ice loss and sea level measurements via satellite and the new Shepherd et al paper are highly uncertain at the moment Where, after briefly reviewing the Shepherd et al. paper A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance that makes a review on ice sheet melting related sea level rise, show this: The Geodetic Reference Antenna in Space (GRASP) -A Mission to Enhance the Terrestrial Reference Frame Where is stated that there are systematic errors in the Terrestrial (GPS?) Reference Frame that would make highly uncertain the measurements of the TOPEX-POSEIDON-JASON1-JASON2 satellite altimeters and GRACE ice sheet and ocean mass gravimetric data. They show, for example, this slide: As an example that “TRF errors readily manifest as spurious sea level rise accelerations” So that WUWT concludes “A good first step would be to get the GRASP mission funded and then go back and redo Shepherd et al to see if it holds up. Until then, it’s just noisy uncertain data. ” I do not know what to think about it. If true, this is a serious blow to the satellite missions and all their data. Note: sorry for the big size of the slide. In the comments policy page the HTML tag to re-size images does not work.
    Moderator Response: [RH] Fixed image width that was breaking page formatting.
  10. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Bernard J: I realize that, which is why I went for the more specific "millitherm = 1/1000th of a degree CELSIUS." Creating a new term gets the media's (and their readers') attention. And attention is what is needed, and quickly. It also allows us to speak in terms of hundreds, and not "hundredths."
  11. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    Have added an image of a waterlogged arable field to the end of the post. Right across the English Midlands similar scenes are everywhere. Had a few beers with a local farmer last night and the conversation revolved around ground conditions and how on earth these fields could be ready for spring planting.
  12. Mexican Climate Legislation and Other Hopeful News
    At pwc page Low Carbon Economy Index 2012: Overview we have the following statement: "Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation, would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees of warming by the end of the century. To give ourselves a more than 50% chance of avoiding 2 degrees will require a six-fold improvement in our rate of decarbonisation." The full report in pdf format can be downloaded from a link at the bottom of the page linked above.
  13. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Uncle Pete @ 8 and Michael @ 4 Allowed = advertised (Fairfax publishes books)
  14. Mexican Climate Legislation and Other Hopeful News
    Try this, although I haven't checked whether it does give a prediction of 6 degrees: http://www.pwc.co.uk/sustainability-climate-change/publications/low-carbon-economy-index.jhtml
  15. Mexican Climate Legislation and Other Hopeful News
    The Price Waterhouse Coopers reference/link is weak. It points to a Guardian blog piece which itself refers to other Guardian pages, which in turn are a bit dead. I would like a reference to the actual PWC information.
  16. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    "What is more, they do so only by a massive and deliberate cherry pick of an interval with an extreme El Nino at the start and multiple strong La Nina's at the end - a circumstance that should lead to a strong cooling trend. Instead we have a weak warming trend indicating a strong underlying trend." Can anyone point me at any actual research out there examining this proposition in detail? The proposition makes sense to me, and should, i think, be an "oh dear, WTF is actually going on here" moment in the "debate" about anthropogenic climate change. Yet the "no warming for 16 years" is the current "killer" meme amongst the skeptic lobby when the data its based on, maybe, has serious implications for a warming future.
  17. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    Ron @60, "...should not be attacked for not being a climate scientist by people who aren't climate scientists." Your red herring argument dismisses one and all critiques made by non-climate scientists in this faux debate? You are conceding that the opinions Monckton, Watts, McIntyre, Ridley, McKitrick, Morano, Michaels, Pielke Jnr., Inhofe, Bastardi, Douglass, Knox, Singer, Easterbrook, Peiser, McLean, Jo Nova, Montford, Mosher, Baliunas, Loehle, Tom Harris, Muller, Liljegren, Condon, Happer, Lewis, Plimer, Soon, Idso, Tisdale, Dyson and many, many other fake skeptics and contrarians are to be ignored when it comes to climate science. For the record, in science it is not considered an "attack" to note legitimate and noteworthy errors and flaws in arguments made by fake skeptics and those in denial. Trying to invoke that hyperbole in a scientific debate is conceding that you have lost and are grasping at straws.
  18. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    Ron King - Global energy is increasing, despite all variations (ENSO, low solar cycle) and some forcings (aerosols) currently acting to decrease that warming. All that, and the trend is still up, which shows the strong long term warming trend. If there wasn't a trend under the noise, we would be seeing a strong temperature drop right now - which we are not. You can continue to claim that short term variations in warming indicate (to you) that the world is now cooling - and those with any knowledge of statistics will continue to see that you are just looking at the noise. Year to year variations are on the order of 0.2-0.4°C (peak-to peak ENSO is ~0.4°C, for example). The trend shows 0.8°C over the last hundred years or so, 0.16°C per decade over the last 40 years - and to see that you need to look at enough data for the signal to be larger than the noise. Stats 101 - make certain you're looking at signal, not at noise. The rest of your post consists of, quite frankly, Arguments from Authority. That does not support your argument.
  19. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    dana 1981 (-argumentative wordplay snipped-). Regarding your cited paper 'Nuccelli et al 2012' - is John Church the only recognised climate scientist among the co-authors? (-reverse argument from authority snipped-).
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] "...is John Church the only recognised climate scientist among the co-authors..."

    Non sequitur. As noted, arguments from authority used as denigration do not advance the dialogue. If you have nothing positive to add to this conversation, then refrain from detracting from it. Please thoroughly review this site's Comments Policy before composing any future comments.

  20. The Y-Axis of Evil
    I've seen similar trolls on Slashdot: . Note that the average depth of the ocean is 3790 meters. Graph that including zero, and I think it is safe to say that a 0.1% increase would look like no change at all -- a mere 3.79 meters.
  21. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Michael @ 4: Somehow the myth of Sandy as just another storm has persisted…check Jeff Masters’ blog for a more fact based look: This is a storm that essentially simultaneously blew over things in Indiana and Nova Scotia, 1500 miles apart. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2293 Science Michael, bring us some science….as scaddenp suggests….
  22. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Perhaps Michael would like to point us instead to published science that supports his point of view. That would be a worthwhile topic of conversation. Even perhaps pointers to where this site is making claims that are not supported by published science might be educational.
  23. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Rob @10, typically, as you know, the constant barrage of insults, accusations of fraud, and/or conspiracy against climate scientists and their defenders in both blogs and commentary on denier sites is invisible to their perpetrators. Despite the barrage of invective they hurl, they are always ready to take insult on the slightest pretext.
    Moderator Response: (Rob P) Please focus on the science. Michael's attempts to draw readers attention away from the facts (blimp-pointing) should be ignored.
  24. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Look, rather than me speaking for Boswarm, let us ask him if he will clarify what exactly he meant by his statement.
  25. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Michael of Brisbane @4, 1) Weather is actually becoming extreme, as illustrated by the 2010 Moscow heatwave (a on in a thousand year event, according to the Russian weather service); or the recent heatwaves and droughts in the United States. Deniers like to play the silly game that just because there is a one in a thousand chance of an event occurring without global warming, therefore global warming did not contribute to the event. That reasoning is, of course, simply denial. 2) Hurricane Sandy was unprecedented in its diameter, and exceptional in terms of its Accumulated Cyclone Energy for a Hurricane making landfall so far north. Just because it is not unprecedented by all measures does not make it "not unusual in any way". 3) The Age article was a disgrace, trotting out denier talking points with no evidence of independent thought of analysis. The simplest case of this is the claim that the last 16 years represents a "pause" in global temperature rise, base on the fact that the continuing positive trend over that period is statistically indistinguishable from zero. That claim is, first, nonsensical. The trend over teh same period is also statistically indistinguishable from rates of warming higher than those predicted by the IPCC. If the inference from being statistical indistinguishable from zero is valid; then so also is the parallel and opposite inference. Denier's who push this claim, therefore, avoid contradiction only by selective and inconsistent reasoning. What is more, they do so only by a massive and deliberate cherry pick of an interval with an extreme El Nino at the start and multiple strong La Nina's at the end - a circumstance that should lead to a strong cooling trend. Instead we have a weak warming trend indicating a strong underlying trend. The extent of the cherry pick is made clear by comparing the trend over the last 32 years to that of the first 16 years of that period. The 32 year trend (0.158 C per decade) is appreciably greater than that of the first (0.093 C per decade) and last (0.87 C per decade) 16 years of that interval. The closeness of the 16 year trends shows that, by denier reasoning, warming occurred in neither the first 16 years, nor the second. Therefore, deniers are logically committed to the claim that there has been no warming over the last 32 years, despite the strong warming trend. The simple fact is that if you allow yourself to play silly buggers by deliberately misinterpreting statistical facts, and cherry picking your data, you can pretend to prove anything you desire. This is something deniers take full advantage of. 4) I am unimpressed that you take offense to a term first used in writing the English language 400 years before the Holocaust. Because of its ancient history, the pretense and manufactured outrage about the supposed imputation that deniers of climate science are the moral equivalents of holocaust deniers is ludicrous. Frankly, I take offense at the denier's blatant attempt to manipulate the language so that a plainly accurate descriptive term will not be applied to them. Indeed, I take greater offense at the retreat from rationality inherent in the entire climate science denying movement - a retreat from rationality that will have real, and harmful consequences to my children, and theirs.
  26. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    Michael @4... Clearly you do not live in the NY region. Nor are you paying attention to what the science is saying about weather extremes.
  27. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    @ Michael. Have you actually read/studied the most used used climate myths on this site. They are available for your perusal anytime. Just scroll to the top of the screen and look left, where it says in BOLD RED printing. Most used climate myths. As for Boswarm's term "allowing". Try looking up the meaning of the word "irony". OK ? Now be a good boy and do your homework.
  28. Michael of Brisbane at 06:53 AM on 30 December 2012
    Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    I think that what will "wake the sleeping masses" is for at least some of the predictions from modelling (and alarm) to actually happen, and for weather to actually become "extreme". Hurricane Sandy was not unusual in any way when compared historically, nor is any weather event that is blamed on AGW nowadays. Thanks Boswarm, for the link to that article in The Age too. (did you really use the word "allowing"??) That article sums up my stance on AGW pretty well. (especially what it says about the use of the word "denier".) I am indeed one of the "sleeping masses" and I am very much awake already, thank you.
  29. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    For some reason I couldn't access the video. May just be my slow system. The only thing that will wake up the masses is a few more Sandys squared. There are already signs that the drought in the USA, Sandy, Arctic ice melt and a couple of other relatively mild events (relative to what is likely coming) are already having an effect on public opinion. I find it very hard to believe that even the most extreme measures at this late date to reduce carbon emissions would stop the brown stuff from hitting the wind pusher.
  30. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    Ron, yes the overall decadally (or multi-decadally) averaged ENSO will be small over the coming decades. However ENSO can make a large contribution over a period of several years to a decade (depending on the length of time ENSO persists in an overall positive or negative mode). Can't really say what solar/volcanic influences will be in the coming deades since their variability is (as far as we can say) stochastic outwith the solar cycle. The solar contribution is expected to be small. However a prolonged solar "downturn" can make a persistent (small) contribution to surface temperature. So inspection of the ENSO index indicates it's been largely negative especially during the last 6 or 7 years. Likewise there has been a rather anomalous progression of solar activity with an extended minimulm out of cycle 23. These add up to a significant negative contribution to surface temperature since about 2005/6. So the decadal temperature trend just past is suppressed. That's not difficult to understand I think. However neither of us needs to attempt to characterize these contributions in words since Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) have done the calculations!
  31. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    Tom Curtis #114-That is an excellent point,and I would like to add to your comment: "Rawls, very carefully keeps the two analyses separate to avoid that falsification; but such methods turn his theory into pseudo-science." I would amend that to read "...such methods turn his theory into Pathological Science"
  32. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    My response is that you're going down the up escalator.
  33. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    Ron, read the paper. You're basically saying "I don't agree with the results of FR11 because my eyeballs disagree". Sorry, eyeballs are subject to bias, statistics are not.
  34. Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
    dana 1981 Looking at your post on FR201: The authors conclude by averaging all of the data sets together (Figure 4): "Because the effects of volcanic eruptions and of ENSO are very short-term and that of solar variability very small, none of these factors can be expected to exert a significant influence on the continuation of global warming over the coming decades. ." This says that the effects of ENSO, volcanoes and solar are effectively small to negligible over the coming decades. Yet you conclude that those 3 factors were significant (cooling) effects over the last 2 decades - effectively masking the AGW warming signal with natural cooling factors. Again there are nearly 2 solar cycles in the last 20 years which should neutralize TSI effects which are small anyway according to FR, volcanic chart shown Pinitubo (1993?) as the only major volcanic cooling effect (short term), which leaves ENSO which is also short term and not expected to be decadal factor in the future. So practically the whole case rests on ENSO being a major cooling factor in the past 20 years - so much so that it has flattened the temperature trend from 0.18 down to 0.06 deg/decade. Sorry, I can't see this from the MEI chart from FR 2011 from 1990 - 2010. Neutral to slightly positive over 20 years looks more like it.
  35. This is Global Warming - A Lesson for Monckton and Co.
    dana 1981 Any response to my correction to your statements?
  36. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Chriskoz: don't say this "I become depressed and I really wish that "polar bears" be replaced with "homo sapiens" in their silly, ignorant talk" Don't give up - it's the only way to defeat the mindset of the Cranks above. The collective will win.
  37. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Bernard @26, Denialists often show your temp graph (of the Cenozoic era from d18O proxy) but dress it in precisely opposite ethical considerations: "the Earth was far warmer few My ago, so a little bit of warming ain't bad... Acrtic ice will melt and polar bears will go extinct as the result? So what? Extinctions have always been happening and old species have been replaced by new ones. Polar bear will be replaced by a better species" When I'm looking at such thoughtless crank, and see other egotic cranks or such being our policymakers (i.e. reps in US, libs in Australia), I become depressed and I really wish that "polar bears" be replaced with "homo sapiens" in their silly, ignorant talk. If homo sapiens' collective mindset is determined by the lowest denominator (i.e. a crank above), then this species is not worth living on this planet.
  38. CO2 effect is saturated
    Now a specific question: In NACAR from Archer web site I keep everything default except I increase the high cloud fraction from zero. The temperature goes down, not up. As an amateur here I have absorbed the "high clouds tend to add to the Greenhouse Effect, low clouds tend to reflect" (over?)generalization. So why does adding high clouds cool in this NACAR program at default settings? I do not think there is a way to ask a question on line with that course.
  39. CO2 effect is saturated
    Never mind, The Archer course web site has many bugs but I am able to at least learn what the parameters do by ignoring the bugs and proceeding as best I can.
  40. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    The sleeping masses won't wake up! The Age is now allowing alternative views. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/sceptics-weather-the-storm-to-put-their-case-on-climate-20121228-2bz91.html
  41. Perspectives of 8 Scientists Attending AGU Fall Meeting
    The weather effects of an ice free Arctic, let alone those of sea level rise, will propagate across the planet. Living as I do in the Southern hemisphere will be no defence against an angry planet. One has to wonder what it will take to wake up the sleeping masses. Anyone who is not alarmed by now must be living in an alternative universe where the laws of physics do not apply. Fool's Paradise, my Gran would have called it.
  42. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Rob Honeycutt at #25. Business as usual for a few more decades will likely take us to (and perhaps beyond) temperature territory visited only four times in the last 55 million years. Humans as endotherms are frankly not designed for such conditions, and nor is the environment in which we evolved and on which we rely.
  43. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    The oddest thing in Rawl's new post is his claim that:
    "When the peak level of forcing appears in the rearview mirror, the downward trend in the forcing that begins at that point does not cause cooling. It just causes warming to be a little less rapid. Only when the energy pouring into the climate system falls to the level of the energy escaping back out does the system stop warming. Empirically, that turns out to be mid-afternoon, mid-summer, and approximately the first decade of the 21st century."
    Analyzed logically, that means Rawls in predicting that warming from 1980-2010 (after the peak) will be less than warming from 1950-1980 (before the peak). You can check how that works out on figure 2 above. The simple fact is that the case for the solar origin of twentieth century warming is based on the close, non-lagged correlation between solar activity and temperatures - up till 1980. It is inconsistent to insist that the correlation is lagged post 1980, but not before. Yet if we do not lag it after 1980, the correlation fails, refuting the theory. Alternatively if we lag prior to 1980 so that the period after 1980 does not falsify the theory, the period prior to 1980 does. Rawls, very carefully keeps the two analyses separate to avoid that falsification; but such methods turn his theory into pseudo-science. Finally, there is a much simpler and more direct test of Rawl's hypothesis. If Rawl's is correct, from 1980, the Top Of Atmosphere energy balance should have declined to zero as solar forcing held steady while temperatures rose, driving up outgoing radiation. That would result in the surface heat content falling away towards a plateau. Instead, the rate at which heat has been absorbed by the Earth has increased: Once again, Rawl's only keeps his theory intact by carefully not examining the relevant data that could be used to test it.
  44. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Reading through my post again I was just realizing something. We're already committed to temperatures outside the past 5 million years, regardless of what we do. The question is, how far outside of the Holocene are we going to push it. Just how bad are we going to make this. That is the predicament we face and the choices we are making today.
  45. CO2 effect is saturated
    Hi, Thanks to the help here, and hours of struggling, I can now demonstrate some cool things with Modtran, which if used with care, is a great teaching tool. Potentially that NCAR program on the same website would also be useful. Maybe there is some kind of workshop people hold for users? In my own research field they hold such workshops at synchrotrons to help people hone their software analysis skills. If there were at least a handbook on NCAR with worked examples? Sigh! Just one example of where I go awry here, follows: 1. I find the temperature corresponding to no GHG for the default incoming solar flux. That should be T earth, which averaged over the globe would be about 255 K. 2. I go back to default and put in CO2 375 ppm. 3. The output gives you temperatures associated with various altitudes. 4. If the T earth for the setting you use were 255 K for no GHG - then go back to 3 above and write down the altitude for 255 K 5. Now try 750 ppm. The surface temperature goes up but the altitude for 255 K should go up too. It does this, but.... 6. Check against equation: change in this altitude times lapse rate = change in temperature. 6. I get a much bigger change in temperature using the altitude change method than the actual computed change in temperature. I have a feeling I am careening around in a complex vehicle randomly trying to make sense out of tweaking the controls. I probably need to go someplace to learn this one on one?
  46. littlerobbergirl at 11:06 AM on 29 December 2012
    Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    Mark, we who read apocalyptic fiction, from 'death of grass' to 'the year of the flood' know the drill: hole up in the hills until the bad men finish killing each other, try not to look like you are worth robbing, have an emergency exit - a few of us cooperators always survive, but i just dont want us to have to do it again! Ive been preparing for it all my life but like the man said let this cup pass ... Anne - Hey polytunnels! If we put up enough, could we cancel out the albedo change from the arctic ice loss? You can already see the ones in spain from space :)
  47. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Cornelius and villabolo. Spencer's fit was actually a third order polynomial, and many of us disparaged him over the years for the statistical uselessness of prediction that it provided. I suspect that Spencer omits it now because the most recent values for time have reached the point where the record and the polynomial are starting to permanently part ways as the polynomial decends toward y = minus infinity. Of course, Spencer can always go up an order or two - but then he'd be an even greater laughing stock (if such is possible) amongst people with any operant understanding of appropriate curve fitting... Jimspy, 1/1000th of a degree Celsius would simply be a millidegree, just as 1/1000th of a metre is a millimetre!
  48. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    Aside from containing a few dozen ad hominem attacks and personal insults, Rawls' latest post is just an exercise in ignorance. By definition a change in temperature is caused by a change in forcing (dT = lambda*dF). Yes, there is a 'lag' and thermal inertia, but the solar forcing is too small for the temperature response to take more than 5-10 years. Rawls even admits as much, saying "The strongest temperature response to a change in solar forcing is seen with a lag of about ten years (Usoskin et al. 2005)". So how does Rawls figure we're still warming in response to the solar activity increase 60+ years ago? To be blunt, Rawls doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
  49. IPCC Draft Report Leaked, Shows Global Warming is NOT Due to the Sun
    Rawls has published a response to this post at WUWT (not linked). I noticed that his Cosmic Ray data only goes up to 2001. The graph appears similar to the one in the OP here because Dana used an 11 year average. A close examination of both graphs indicates in the last ten years the GCR count has gone down, the opposite of the effect Rawls claims. Several posters at WUWT have asked for a complete record of the GCR count, it will be interesting to see if Rawls posts one. WUWT does not allow posters to post graphs so I cannot post an up to date graph of GCR.
  50. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Very convincing rebuttal; slam dunk! I would like to see two more charts inserted into the article. Take the last two charts and then "blow" the Y-axis back up. 1) Add a Fig.4b. It would be same as Fig.4 except change the upper & lower Y-axis limits to the Holocene limits. 2) Add a Fig.5b. It would be the same as Fig.5 except change the upper Y-axis limit to equal the BAU red-line (or slightly greater) and change the lower Y-axis limit to equal the Holocene lower limit. Doing so, would allow us to better see the true extent of the temperature changes relative to these properly set boundary limits. ... Excellent article!

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