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Nick Stokes at 19:32 PM on 7 December 2012DIY climate science: The Instrumental Temperature Record
Kevin, Very nice. I tried it - it worked well. A couple of suggestions: 1. The trend line is hard to see - at first I thought it wasn't there. Could it be darker or thicker? 2. I found it a nuisance that the documentation was hard to access once the app was launched (OK, I did open another SKS tab). Could it be included in a frame? 3. Could it indicate the colors for land/ocean etc? - even though one can work it out. Just coloring the words would be one way. -
Bob Tisdale at 19:31 PM on 7 December 2012It's El Niño
Sorry for the delay. I was responding to comments at other blogs and writing new blog posts.
skywatcher at 138 says: Bob, in all your focus on one region of the Earth, you have apparently neatly dodged important questions with relation to global warming and your unusual conjectures…”
Apparently, skywatcher, you’ve missed the fact that the discussion of sea surface temperatures was broken down into two parts of the global oceans, the East Pacific (90S-90N, 180W-80W) and the Rest-of-the-World (90S-90N, 80W-180). How is that “one region of the Earth”, skywalker? Sure looks like it covers the global oceans to me.
Also, are you aware that the warming of land surface air temperatures is primarily in response to the warming of the oceans, skywatcher? Refer to Compo and Sardeshmukh 2009: Oceanic influences on recent continental warming. The abstract reads:
Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. The oceanic influence has occurred through hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections, primarily by moistening and warming the air over land and increasing the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences.
That study was based on climate models by the way and you can get an idea of the order of magnitude using the ModelE Climate Simulations – Climate Simulations for 1880-2003 webpage, specifically Table 3.
And as I’ve shown, the satellite-era sea surface temperature and ocean heat content records do not confirm the existence of an anthropogenic warming component. Maybe you’ve missed this: the divergences during the La Niña events of 1988/89 and 1998-01 are when the Rest of the World data acquires its long-term trend. If the Rest-of-the-World sea surface temperature data cooled proportionally during the La Niña events of 1988/89 and 1998-2001, it would have no warming trend like the East Pacific!
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2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
jibal - Appalling, isn't it? The lesson I take from this kind of discussion is simply this: There are, and always will be, idjits (IMO, apologies if strongly stated) who cannot be convinced (suibhne, Damorbel, Doug Cotton, others), who have blocks against a rational discussion, who are driven more by their personal worldview than facts that might contradict those. But clearly explaining their errors, even if they themselves cannot accept the data, provides the vast majority of reasonable people rational support they (I sincerely hope) appreciate for judging the issues. Most people can look at a discussion and recognize who is speaking from the data, from reason, and who is denying reality. While there is an element, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, of "At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid", I honestly believe that discussing the issues in a rational fashion can only assist those in the majority who might not have the time or training or inclination to personally dig into the for/against data issues. While I discuss matters with the deniers who raise objections, I try (insofar as as possible) to speak to the rather more silent majority. There are those who will never be convinced, but most people can clearly distinguish (given enough context, enough of an exchange) between a presentation of facts, and someone speaking from their nether regions. -
jibal at 14:51 PM on 7 December 20122nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
At the beginning of this thread there was b-j-m insisting that CO2 must block incoming and outgoing energy equally because both contain IR components, even after being shown that the emission spectrum of the sun and the Earth are nearly disjoint. Here, 1400 posts later, is suibhne, whom I remember from the the G&T debates years ago, still treating heat and energy as synonyms despite the many times that physicists and others have pointed out, with numerous familiar examples, that energy freely travels from cold to hot (and in every other direction). In between are numerous other examples of the same phenomenon -- simple, indisputable refutations of claims being rejected out of hand, ignored, or otherwise having no effect on the claimant, who simply repeats the claim in the same or a different form. All of the claims that the greenhouse effect is a violation of the 2LOT were already refuted in the original article, yet numerous people have simply repeated the claim. (And we even have at least participant here claiming in another thread that the assertion that people deny the greenhouse effect is a strawman.) People have patiently explained at length the errors in these claims, to no effect. Something can surely be learned from this, some lesson about pedagogy or psychology, but other than bad news I'm at a loss as to what can be taken from it ... how we can use this knowledge to improve our situation. Anyone? -
vrooomie at 13:58 PM on 7 December 20122nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Soooo..did "PhysSci" ever get his paper published? We *could* have us an 'a-ha' moment from it! >;-D -
DSL at 13:46 PM on 7 December 2012DIY climate science: The Instrumental Temperature Record
Nice, Kevin -- and I was just trying to set up the same kind of deal in Excel, which would have taken me the rest of my lifetime (and I don't plan on dying for at least another five years). Know what'd be funny? If Watts et al.'s station siting regime could be optional selectable. -
Dawei at 13:15 PM on 7 December 2012DIY climate science: The Instrumental Temperature Record
Wow, very impressive. It took me a little while to figure it out -- not because it's unintuitive, but just because there's a surprisingly high amount of functionality here. Glad I made the effort effort though, I've already made some interesting plots that I may share in the next few days (don't want to ruin anyone's fun with spoilers!) The CSV export option is really handy too for those who want to analyze their results in more detail. Thanks for making this, I'm sure I'll be coming back to it again and again for a long time. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:16 PM on 7 December 2012DIY climate science: The Instrumental Temperature Record
Just a couple of teething issues:- The page title of the calculator page is "Skeptical Science Email Subscription".
- I think the sentence "Ocean station data: Click to launch a file selector to select the land station data ..." should read "Ocean station data: Click to launch a file selector to select the ocean station data ..."
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Doug Hutcheson at 11:37 AM on 7 December 20122012 SkS Bi-Weekly News Roundup #7
chriskoz @ 1I wonder why we are witnessing the repeat of Kyoto today
Because the countries which disliked the idea of making moderate changes to their lifestyles then are even more entrenched in disliking making drastic changes now. See Professor Kevin Anderson's half-hour 'Rhetoric to Reality' video here. -
DIY climate science: The Instrumental Temperature Record
Very nice! -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:10 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Phil @ 34, I didn't get past the statement "Air, pure oxygen and pure nitrogen all absorb more infrared radiation than pure CO2." Not very scientific of me, but I stopped reading then, before my head exploded. Perhaps I should have continued reading, to see what experimental support was provided for that statement. I can sense a Nobel for this alarming overturning of conventional physics ... -
DSL at 08:03 AM on 7 December 2012The Economic Damage of Climate Denial
This model has received play at The Economist. It seems, at first glance, to take an oversimplified view of climate change by reducing it to the relationship between temperature and agricultural output in a select range of major crops. In may get play in deniersville because it appears to make the argument that moderate change (~2C) will be beneficial (as long as migration is embraced). -
Chris G at 07:10 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Doug Bostrom @ 29, Now that you've said that, I have to agree. To generalise, I think most responses will fall under the "It's not my fault." category; I believe that can be applied to the present as well. DSL, Indeed, not that we should be looking at patterns without considering physical processes, but the record is full of ups and downs, but there hasn't much of a down for a while, and that should strike people as odd. -
vrooomie at 07:01 AM on 7 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Oh, jeez...wrong thread for my comment @36, re: "We will see if Bob returns...... Kevin C, stunning work! This entire thread has been most illuminating and educational." Yoop/mod-on-the-beat, could you please delete that part, here, and move it to the Tisdale/ENSO thread? That's what I get for having eleventy windows open at once...;)Moderator Response:[Sph] We can delete what's here, but we don't have tools to easily move comments (yet, look for it in 2013). You should re-enter the comment in the right place, and when you do, I'll delete these.
[DB] First comment is deleted; please repost on the correct thread per SPH.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:07 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
As an example of being in denial without recognizing it, what about Aaron (comment #8)? He says early in his commentWhat ignorant small minority believes that there is no greenhouse effect and why do you address them?
and then finishes withCO2 by comparison, is inconsequential in moving heat into the atmosphere.
So, he says he (and implies everyone else) believes in the greenhouse effect, but his closing statement would seem to say that he believes at least one of the following: - CO2 is not a greenhouse gas - greenhouse gases do not "move heat into the atmosphere" (whatever that means - I'm going to guess "heat the surface") - that greenhouse gases do move heat into the atmosphere as part of the natural greenhouse effect, but do not do so with respect to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases - that the warming due to the greenhouse effect does not constitute "moving heat into the atmosphere". It seems that Aaron has not yet followed up his original contribution, so I don't know if I can expect a clarification on what he means by "move heat into the atmosphere", but it seems to me that he "accepts the greenhouse effect", but then just doesn't accept that increasing a greenhouse gas will increase the greenhouse effect. That looks a lot like denial to me. -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:23 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Vroomie, that thread is indeed a kind of epitome of denial. Peruse through again and you'll understand why some of us long timers of the site can be short on patience with the nonsense that keeps popping up. The heaps of bull that one like "Damorbel" could pile on would exhaust patience in even the best of us. Countless posts in that thread fall in the category "can't make this stuff up", the rest goes in "not even wrong." What is truly disgusting is that, as KR points above, the prominent deniers mentioned in this current thread officially endorse reality while paying lip service to delusion on their blogs. This current thread, however, has also tremendous entertainment value: it brings deniers denying that deniers deny obvious stuff, like Steve above. Years ago, it took me about one evening to figure where were the people who couldn't be taken seriously in this pseudo-debate. The likes of Steve Case greatly facilitated the process... -
Bob Loblaw at 03:51 AM on 7 December 2012PMO Pest Control: Scientists
This thread has been quiet for quite a while. Oddly enough, so have Canadian government scientists - largely due to continued silencing by the Harper government. Latest news story on the issue: Federal Bureaucrats Stayed Mum During Discussion About Silencing of Scientists [h/t on the story to a source within Environment Canada, who shall remain anonymous] The story begins:"At first, a top Environment Canada official seemed game to discuss “unmuzzling” government scientists during an international science conference earlier this year. ... Instead, she sat in the audience as a spectator during the session at the Vancouver conference, and was informed she should refer questions about the government’s strict communication policy to Ottawa, where a government “tactics” committee was working on a response...
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Esop at 03:38 AM on 7 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Reading Ivar Giævers newspaper Op-eds, one of his main arguments for AGW not being a problem is that despite the grave warnings from environmentalists and scientists, Ozone depletion and acid rain turned to be non-issues (according to him) since we don't hear much about those problems any more. This from a Nobel Prize winner. You can't make this stuff up. -
It's El Niño
Kevin C - Extremely clear, thank you so much for working through the details. It certainly looks like Tisdale has been working from a bad model, one that simply doesn't fit the data. This seems to be a theme in some of the more scientific 'skeptic' approaches - build a model (which doesn't match reality), then make claims contrary to the consensus only supported by that (poor) model. We see it here with Tisdale - other examples include both Spencer and Lindzen on climate sensitivity and feedbacks, and many skeptic temperature predictions. Bad models lead to incorrect conclusions - Kevin C's two-lag model including volcanic forcing is demonstrably a better match to the data (and quite frankly to the physics) than anything so far presented by Tisdale. -
Kevin C at 02:45 AM on 7 December 2012DIY climate science: The Instrumental Temperature Record
Note: The CSV download button is currently not working. As far as I am aware everything else is fine. A fix is on its way to John Cook. I'll update this comment once it's fixed.Now fixed, thanks Doug! -
The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Steve CaseWhat you've done is set up a straw man argument implying that skeptics dispute that the greenhouse effect is real, but you provided no supporting evidence.
There are entire organizations based upon denying the greenhouse effect, devoting themselves to writing self-approved polemics on their points of view and (mis)labeling them science. The comment threads at sites such as JoNova, WUWT, Curry's blog, and elsewhere (wherein a quick Google search seems to indicate that you visit all of those forums) are filled with statements of denial - and the owners of those blogs simply don't call their posters on the errors. And now you claim there is no evidence of this denial??? Pull the other leg, Steve - it's got bells on...Moderator Response: [DB] Mr. Case has decided to recuse himself from further participation in this venue. Apologies for the distraction. -
JoeT at 02:03 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
And just to show that not all the denialism is on the right, here is the recently deceased Alexander Cockburn using "the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument" plus a whole slew of other denier talking points. -
Phil at 01:34 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Steve Case @30 Here is a denier that disputes the greenhouse effect. -
vrooomie at 01:03 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
In the vernacular of the young folk, and in response to DSL's pointng out the 1421 comments on the 2nd law page... OMG!!! I thought I'd found the SkS thread with the msot posts, but nooooo, I had not. Good grief, talk about a textbook example of D-K, write large...;( -
DSL at 00:32 AM on 7 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Chris G: "So, a coworker the other day showed me the Rose article on there being no warming for 15 years." And of course the great irony is that the claim is actually a strong argument in favor of warming. If one starts at the top of a mountain (1997/1998 El Nino), one expects to walk downhill. That didn't happen, even if the warming is slightly less than significant using carefully chosen start points within the least representative L-O series. --- You're right, Steve, because there are only 1421 comments on the 2nd Law thread. No self-described "skeptics" could possibly have contributed. -
curiousd at 00:01 AM on 7 December 2012CO2 effect is saturated
Thanks again, Tom Curtis. Especially new to me is that at present, aerosols are close to offsetting the GHG effect other than CO2. Also, the good news that presently, were there to be no more CO2 emissions, CO2 should decrease enough to about cancel the rate at which the "other shoe" warming takes place. I presume - since you did not comment - that you agree with my post 181 that the results of Chen et al experimentally prove that the standard science of the CO2 greenhouse effect is correct and therefore indeed roughly every doubling of CO2 creates the same increase in temperature (about 1.2 degrees C), due to CO2 alone, with no feedbacks included? -
chriskoz at 23:07 PM on 6 December 20122012 SkS Bi-Weekly News Roundup #7
Missing link to US Obstructive Force at Climate Talks. I wonder why we are witnessing the repeat of Kyoto today. How is it possible that the political will of developped states essentially did not change in all those years, despite the science (and GW sympthoms) moving ahead and even denialist abandoning their hardcore stances as we reported recently here...Moderator Response: [JH] Link inserted. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. -
Bernard J. at 22:34 PM on 6 December 2012It's El Niño
Kevin, your compelling posts as they stand are quite accessible anyway, so I wouldn't rush to a summary version. And it would be extremely interesting to first wait for Tisdale's response to your approach. He might also consider properly answering the hanging questions directed at him, so that the underlying physical assumptions of your model and his can be appropriately referenced and grounded in real-world conditions. Without a proper summary from him, beginning at first principles, his implicit-bootstrap model of global warming is laying rather bloodied in the middle of the road. -
Tom Curtis at 22:33 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
I get rather tired of asinine deniers whose first response to a rebutal is "What you've done is set up a straw man". Such purely tactical claims are well known to be false. In this case, they can be seen to be false by anyone willing to read the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics thread, which begins with the quote:""The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist." (Gerhard Gerlich)"
The simple problem here is that, it is a fact that there are deniers who deny even the simplest science; that this is embarrassing for deniers who wish to pretend that denial is rational; and so many such deniers resort to their basic strategy for dealing with uncomfortable truths - denial. -
Kevin C at 22:10 PM on 6 December 2012It's El Niño
The final step in testing the the validity of Bob’s and my models of the relationship between Nino34 and Rest-of-the-world SST (and what conclusions may be drawn from them) is to validate the models. I thought this was going to take multiple posts, but the results are so clear cut that we can do it in one. The most fundamental test which can be applied to any scientific hypothesis is whether it has predictive power - i.e. whether it can predict observations which were not used in making the hypothesis. In Popper’s model of the scientific method, this constitutes a ‘severe test’, which can falsify a model if the prediction is wrong, or strengthen our confidence in it if the prediction is right. So let’s apply that kind of test to both models. We need some data which the models have not seen. Fortuntely, ERSST SST and Nino34 data are available for over a century, although on monthly rather than weekly resolution. The change in resolution means that we will have to ensure we can reproduce Bob’s results when we switch to the longer data run. The ERSST monthly anomaly and Nino data (in various versions) is available on the KNMI data explorer, and you can also select latitude and longitude limits to reproduce Bob’s rest-of-the-world SST anomaly. I’ve made two relevant claims here: Firstly that Bob’s detrending of the data on 1982-2012 without including a volcanic term produces the wrong result, and secondly that matching the scales of the Nino and temperature data produces artifacts through upscaling the artifacts caused by inadequacies of the model. To test those, we’ll apply Bob’s scaling method - i.e. detrend only on the 1982- data, and match the variances of the data and model. The result is shown below:
First we need to check that the post 1982 features are still present - they are, and show the same features as Bob identified in the weekly data.
However, when we look at the pre 1982 agreement, the fit is nonexistent. As I predicted, the trend is well off.
So, what if we were to fix the trend? We’ll let Bob’s model cheat and see the trend for the whole data by detrending the SSTs on the entire period. What you got is this:
The fit is still very poor. If we follow Bob’s approach and interpret the deviations, we do see the Mt Agung eruption in 1962, but we also predict major ‘warming events’ in the 50’s and early 60’s. No such steps are present in the SST data - in fact the 40's-60's show very little trend at all.
That’s it. The hypothesis is falsified.
For completeness, we can also apply the same tests to my model. Since I fit the Nino term, the volcano term and the trend simultaneously, it makes no difference to the model if or how how we detrend the data beforehand. Here is the model fit using the temperature data detrended as in the first figure above:
And here is the same result using the trend from the second figure:
The fit is fairly good, and well within the uncertainty bounds on the trend term. The 2-lag + volcano model seems to have predictive power, even to the extent of predicting a trend over a period equal to the model period.
Finally, we can check what my model gives when it sees all the data:
Apart from a slight correction to the trend, the results are almost identical.
So that’s it. Not only do the post-1982 statistics overwhelmingly favour my model over Bob’s, Bob’s method is falsified by looking at the pre-1982 data, whereas mine performs pretty well. In retrospect we could have saved a lot of time by going straight to the longer data, but then we probably wouldn’t have worked out all the details of what was going on.
It's been suggested that I try and write an accessible summary of this. I'll try, but I've put in a lot of time already, so don't expect it immediately.
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Steve Case at 21:00 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
What you've done is set up a straw man argument implying that skeptics dispute that the greenhouse effect is real, but you provided no supporting evidence. -
Esop at 20:31 PM on 6 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
At least Ivar Giæver is honest about where he gets his funding: He admits to being sponsored by Statoil (the worlds 13th largest oil company). He says so in his Bio at the Nobel prize organization website: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1973/giaever-bio.html -
dana1981 at 17:12 PM on 6 December 2012Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
mjp @65, I'll include the last individual frames in the next Escalator update, which should come in the next couple of weeks. -
Doug Bostrom at 17:07 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Chris G: And then they will convince themselves that no one told them, or there wasn't enough evidence, or ... Most likely a paradoxical "the government failed us," ignoring any attention to consistency w/regard to whining about regulations, forgetting that "the government" obediently and as demanded took its cues from citizens who insisted on ignoring external costs, overlooking decades of complaining about "government scientists" and their "liberal agenda," etc. Don't expect compunction. -
scaddenp at 16:41 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
"and him responding 'Obamacare'." To which I would say surprise, surprise - a right-winger. It would be interesting to know why pre-disposed to deny then - didnt like Al Gore, or doesnt like the proposed solutions. Surely choosing fantasies cant be a political bias - left-wingers have their own share of fantasies - but climate denial and the right wing go together. -
Chris G at 16:25 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
It shouldn't really be pick-on-Aaron-day, but I would like to point out that some of the most popular spokesman in the list above, Watts, Nova, Monckton, can hardly be called 'experts'. They are just very good at telling people what they want to hear. Some of the other are, or have been, valuable researchers, but they are in a very small minority with regard to the seriousness of the problem. If I have a strange lump, and I'm not an oncologist myself, I'm probably going to choose the course of action recommended by the majority of those who are. Eating enzymes and hot peppers has not worked out so well for one of my family members. She really, really did not want to believe her situation was that serious. It is a sad metaphor. -
Chris G at 15:56 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
... this would have happened no matter what we did. I didn't know how to finish that thought for a minute, but I think this is going to be the most typical/common view from the ex-denier group. I'm thinking maybe they're right, but we must try. -
Chris G at 15:50 PM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
So, a coworker the other day showed me the Rose article on there being no warming for 15 years. We went back and forth a few times on the flaws in the article, and ended with me asking him what physical process was stopping CO2 from absorbing and emitting IR, and him responding 'Obamacare'. (He knows better; I think it was an attempt to change the subject.) My point is, it doesn't matter what is said about the greenhouse effect or anything else; nothing short of harsh reality will convince him that BAU is not going to last indefinitely. His mind becomes like a greased pig in a corner; try to pin him down hard facts, and he either acts as though the last century or two of research is all hypothetical, or he switches to, 'Even if what you say is true, there's nothing we can do about it.', and then accuses environmentalists of wanting to kill off half the people by wrecking the economy. Ironically, that is the path we are trying to avoid. (See the World Bank report on 4 degrees.) I think it will take some large shock to reset the world view of people like this. Unfortunately, nothing so far has seemed to be enough, which leads me to believe that things will be bad, and we'll be committed to worse, before this happens. And then they will convince themselves that no one told them, or there wasn't enough evidence, or ... -
mjp at 12:56 PM on 6 December 2012Climate of Doubt and Escalator Updates
guys the update version of the escalator is great can you provide non-animated versions of the skeptic and realist gifs for use on forums that don't allow animated posts? -
skywatcher at 11:59 AM on 6 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Non-physicists can always claim acceptance of 1st and 2nd law but then fail to translate into more complicated physics. The latest we have seen here is "LW doesnt warm the oceans because it only penetrates a few microns".
And that includes such skeptic luminaries as Bob Tisdale, seen in response to KR on comment #134 on this thread... Physics... Who needs it when you can doubt anything! -
scaddenp at 09:33 AM on 6 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Gingerbaker - "Cloud Cuckoo Land? Teleported to Venus? " Well interesting answers. Favourite would be "sensitivity is low - usually needs a magical negative feedback (Spenser, Lindzen like clouds) or a belief that empirical data has somehow disproved Clausius–Clapeyron. Or perhaps more reasonably that a sensitivity of 2 "isnt that bad" (better than taxes or anything else that might interfere with "freedom" or change lifestyle). Non-physicists can always claim acceptance of 1st and 2nd law but then fail to translate into more complicated physics. The latest we have seen here is "LW doesnt warm the oceans because it only penetrates a few microns". In short, a lot of people more interested in finding some plausible excuse for doing nothing than facing reality. My favourites are those who hold to a political ideology more strongly than a commitment to reality. The argument goes like this. "Solutions for AGW violate my political ideology ergo AGW doesnt exist" rather than trying to find a solution within their ideology. Basically an admission of a bankrupt political ideology. -
Bernard J. at 07:40 AM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
DB re my post at #21. I have no problem with the page. It shows the options to view or to download the video, and it asks me for my name and password. I originally registered using a work computer, but I did access it once from this computer about a year ago. If I can find the diary in which I wrote my log-on details I'll comfirm that the video can be accessed, but if I can see the front page I assume that it's OK.Moderator Response: [Sph] The link was apparently broken in some way, but (again, apparently) Dikran fixed it, so... all should be well. -
Tom Curtis at 07:23 AM on 6 December 2012CO2 effect is saturated
curiousd @182, the way to read the graph is to take a projected increase in CO2 in the lower section, and draw a line across till it intersects with a particular climate sensitivity. From that point you take a vertical line upwards to read of the expected temperature increase and environmental consequences. The graph shows an example of that procedure for the central climate sensitivity estimate at 450 ppmv (dashed lines), showing also the 95% confidence interval on climate sensitivity. The graph needs two important caveats. First, it shows only CO2 increases, but CO2 is not the only anthropogenic forcing in the atmosphere. As it happens, CO2 represents about two thirds of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcings, and the negative anthropogenic forcing from aerosols approximately balances the forcings from anthropogenic GHG other than CO2. Therefore, for now, the total anthropogenic forcing is approximated by that of CO2 alone. However, aerosols have a short lifetime in the atmosphere, and it is expected that as China and India develop their economy, they will follow the West in limiting the emissions of aerosol. This will increase the expected anthropogenic forcing by up to 50% above the CO2 approximation by the end of this century. On the plus side, the graph above shows the Charney (or Equilibrium) Climate Sensitivity, ie, the climate sensitivity after equilibrium is achieved with no changes to slow feedbacks like albedo from ice sheets. (Note that albedo change from changes in snow cover and sea ice are considered fast feedbacks.) The Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity takes time to be achieved. The immediate challenge is from the Transient Climate Response, which is the approximate immediate temperature impact of a slowly increasing CO2 level. It is about two thirds of the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (though estimates vary). This means that the estimate of current temperature increase since the pre-industrial for a 380 ppmv CO2 increase is approximately two thirds of the 1.3 C ECS, or about 0.8 C - which is a reasonably accurate prediction. That is just shy of the point where major impacts are going to be felt, according to the chart, but means there is another 0.4 to 0.5 degrees C "in the pipeline" even with no further increase in CO2. "In the pipeline", however, is an uncertain consequence. It turns out that in the short term (one to two centuries), and with no further emissions, CO2 levels fall at about the rate that the pipeline increase comes through. That means that under ideal conditions the effective increase in temperature could be limited to approximately the transient climate response. Of course, that assumes no further emissions, including from agriculture and construction, or from feedbacks such as methane release from tundra; and ignores the expected increase from reduced aerosol load. It does give us some hope of undershooting the full Equilibrium Climate Response if we genuinely initiate a zero carbon economy. Finally, the BEST temperature indice is a land only temperture, and overstates global temperature increase as a result. You should use (in order of probable accuracy) HadCRUT4, NCDC, or GISTEMP LOTI instead. -
Klapper at 06:09 AM on 6 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Dana1981@27: I looked at your Table 1 from the March post on 2013. I was attempting to reverse engineer to see what baseline you were using for the GISS anomaly. I regressed the observed vs predicted anomaly and got an RSQ'd of 0.29 (2001 to 2011 inclusive). However, looking for the baseline by backcalc'ing from the predicted number and ENSO/TSI/CO2 adjustments, I got a jumble of numbers. If I took the baseline to be 0.427 and redid the prediction through straight addition of your by year adjustments I got a much better RSQ'd (0.63), quite impressive actually. I may have made an error, or your formula may have exponents or coefficients I don't know about. Either that or Table 1 has some errors. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:59 AM on 6 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Klapper @25... No, actually, it has very little impact on the conclusions, if any at all. And, in fact, if we were to turn the question around and apply it to a "skeptical" argument I might wonder why there was a truncation and I might look into it. If it did not change the overall conclusions I would certainly not make any accusations of deceit as you did. -
vrooomie at 01:10 AM on 6 December 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #48
AML, I'll be interested in your thoughts on Stefansson's book. -
citizenschallenge at 00:41 AM on 6 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
Thanks SkS, Daniel, great post. Regarding Pieter Tans "What's Up With the Weather?" ~ ~ ~ "WHAT'S UP WITH THE WEATHER?" PBS Airdate: April 18, 2000 Transcript: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/27gwwarming.html ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ YouTube - Global Warming. Part 3 - Man-made or natural? (1of2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUhP_XJyztE -
JohnL4 at 23:55 PM on 5 December 2012It hasn't warmed since 1998
plfreeman? So... what ever happened to plfreeman, who was going to re-analyze your data and come up with better curves?Moderator Response: [DB] That was the only comment ever placed at SkS by that person. -
Gingerbaker at 22:59 PM on 5 December 2012The Latest Pre-Bunked Denialist Letter in Lieu of Real Science
Ever notice how these meticulous folks claim there has been no warming, but never seem to offer an explanation for where all the trillions of calories of heat incrementally added to the system by the Greenhouse Effect may have wandered off to. Cloud Cuckoo Land? Teleported to Venus? Should that not be our first question to these highly ethical gentlepersons? -
Gingerbaker at 22:37 PM on 5 December 2012The Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club
As far as I can tell, none of the members of the "Greenhouse Gas Effect All-Star Fan Club" really truly believes in the Greenhouse Effect. Because if they did, when they make claims like "There has been no warming since year xxxx", they would accompany such a claim with a hypothesis about where those greenhouse-derived incremental calories of heat disappeared to. Yet I have never seen such an accounting ever offered. Evidently, energy CAN be destroyed, or at least ignored, comfortably compartmentalized away with an ironic twist of the arm of the Laws of Thermodynamics.
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