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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 54301 to 54350:

  1. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    H/T to DSL: "Arrest that guy with the hockey stick! He smashed all of our antique lightbulbs."
  2. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    While walking the dogs, this one popped into my head: "It's hard to screw in a lightbulb that's been sprayed with Obfuscation oil."
  3. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Yes, Sph - you know, and I don't care what you and your studies say about the Great Darkness being just in a few places on one side of the room. The author of those studies uses "tricks" to "hide the light." Yep. I know. A Low Watt Bulb told me that I'm right, and I believe him.
  4. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Oh, and "You can't prove that my taking a baseball bat to the fixture has anything to do with the sudden darkness. (and funding to study the connection between my bat and the darkness should be given as subsidies to baseball bat producers)"
  5. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    DSL, Are you referring to the Medieval Dark Period?
  6. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    What are you fraudsters talking about? It's light where I'm at! And I've done my own research on this. Where I'm at, the light cycles on and off (with occasional variations when one of my twins pulls the lamp down); therefore, this darkness is just part of a natural cycle. It was darker during the Dark Ages.
  7. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Vrooomie, See comment 101. [Extreme trolling comments have been deleted from the thread.]
  8. Climate Change, Irreversibility, and Urgency
    "It seems clear to me that, in the natural world, change tends not to happen in a smooth progression; it happens in fits and starts as various tipping points, large and small, occur." John, in case you're not aware of it, here's a link that robustly supports your supposition. Punctuated equilibria As a geologist, one of the most stark examples of this is the Burgess Shale, in Canada. I am *very*, very worried we're at, if not past, an imprtant tipping point in our 'open, uncontrolled' experiment with the world's biosphere. My experiences at Biosphere II, and knowing its intimate history, also have led me to the same point as your last statement. "It's psychiatry we need, even more than climate science."
  9. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Curious question for a/the Mod(s): My intial view of this thread indicates 128 comments, but what I *see* is 121....what am I missing here?
  10. New research from last week 36/2012
    the Lucas-Paper of JGR produces empty pages after page 3 ...
  11. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    John Hartz, enquiring minds wanna know: is it *really* the coffee, or the ~additives~ IN the coffee?? In either case, this entire thread is a thing of beauty, to watch....methinks a poster could be made from this, and the thought occurs that it would be WAY more an effective tool to battle denialists with than our "reasoned" scientific data. My vote for the best, so far? "Al Gore just wants us to think it's dark, so he can make billions selling us light bulbs!" Sphaerica, +10...;)
  12. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    More coffee please... "Don't worry. Gish is galloping to our rescue." "If no one else can do it, we'll let Ad Hominem take over."
  13. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Blame it on my morning coffee... "Just throw the bulbs at the ceiling. One of them is bound to stick."
  14. New research from last week 36/2012
    What about these news here? http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/6/global-warming-fanatics-take-note/#ixzz25u4FCzsb Is there an article which helps to put that into context or is this really new stuff to consider?
  15. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    A theme with much potential... "Don't worry, the strawman will rescue us."
  16. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Note that at Neven's blog (for instance this comment here) people have named that hole in the ice the Laptev Bite, and the prevailing theory there is that the warm current from the Barents Sea that is forced downward is hitting the underwater Lomonosov Ridge, deflecting upwards, and causing the hole. I would not be surprised if this September, and certainly next August and September, we don't start to see the icepack being split down the middle as the current follows that underwater ridge, dividing the ice pack in two before melting it completely away.
  17. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Oh, and of course it was darker in the mediæval period. If one takes a dendrochronological core, there's less light in the centre of the tree. Ergot, those crazy darkists are cereal liars, liars, pants-on-St-Anthony's-fires. Quod erratic demonstrandum.
  18. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    The balloons just keep coming... "Stop! You're standing in six inches of seawater."
  19. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Dark is the Emperor's New Light"
  20. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Al Gore just wants us to think it's dark, so he can make billions selling us light bulbs!"
  21. Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
    Ugg. As I stated at RC, I honestly do not understand how that Humlum paper gets through peer review with that interpretation intact. It such an elementary error in interpretation to think the correlation explains the mean value in annual CO2 change. And it's not as if it isn't well know that ocean pCO2 is increasing, stable isotopes of atmospheric CO2 have changed and we can't account for all anthro emissions. How can anyone think the ocean is a source of CO2 given that fact? Who reviews these things? I really think Rasmus was too deferential in his evaluation at RC. Sometimes short and direct is the best policy. Long winded rebuttal suggest that there is some meat there.
  22. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    35. A new dawn, a new beginning... "Stop! If you replace the lightbulbs, people will be able to see the multiple lines of evidence hanging from the ceiling."
  23. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    As possible evidence of my theory, consider the following overlay of the currents onto today's Cryosphere Today image. I have circled the area that is still rapidly melting in orange. You can see the ice concentrations as magenta, red, yellow and green (magment and red are the most concentrated, then yellow, then green). This is Nasa's image for how the freshwater flow has changed:
  24. Sceptical Wombat at 00:24 AM on 12 September 2012
    Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    I don't have any problems with Australia buying carbon offsets from other countries instead of reducing our own carbon emissions - provided that the offsets are genuine. What matters is that we reduce and ultimately eliminate global carbon emissions. If it is more cost effective to pay someone else to reduce theirs faster so that we can reduce ours more slowly then that is what we should do. The danger with cap and trade systems is that carbon allocations are in effect a form of money and (as with water allocations or money itself) there will be a strong temptation for governments to simply create more, which of course results in a lowering of the price. It is crucial that the integrity of the system be maintained. Unfortunately Jason is wrong in thinking that a lower carbon price will result in lower compensation. The household compensation is fixed so a lower carbon price will result is a budget problem.
  25. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    I spent some time looking at the Arctic currents yesterday, such as here: I'd love to know more about the models that point to the Arctic being a two state system (all ice, or no ice, year round). I'm wondering if one of the problems is that without the icepack, the warm water flowing in from the Barents Sea won't easily dive beneath the fresher water flowing in from the Siberian rivers? Or is salinity the key factor, and that won't change?. But scientists have already detected a change in those (freshwater) currents, so maybe this will happen... freshwater will flow counterclockwise around the coast, while warm, Barents sea water will flow through the pole to Greenland. We may be seeing some of this effect right now... look at what is still melting in the Cyrosphere Today maps. If so, with the ice gone, it could mean more warm water flowing through the pole to the coast of Greenland, and that alone could potentially keep ice form forming, even in the cold dark of winter. But if the two-state theory is correct, this whole "when is it zero" argument may well be a very, very short discussion.
  26. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    To put Glenn's statement more concisely... Pretty soon the amount of ice by any measure really is going to be zero, so the question will be moot. "No ice" will mean no ice. Of course, then "skeptics" will say that "well, water is just warm ice, so really there's still lots and lots of ice in the Arctic. In fact, all of the world's ocean's are ice, which means we're going through a period of catastrophic global cooling! Global warming is a hoax!"
  27. Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
    That Humlum et al. 2012 paper is discussed in a new post at RealClimate.
  28. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    This reminds me again of that old saying by, IIRC, Churchill: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."
  29. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    More about world's renewable capacity (including PV) because Figure 4 gives not enough details. This report, esp. Table 2 at page 6, shows the world's capacity as 1342GW in 2010, and projected to become 2167GW in 2017. The continuous consumption in 2009 was 15 terawatts, according to quick search on wikipedia. Of course, caparity does not equal production, and we
  30. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    More about world's renewable capacity (not just PV) because Figure 4 gives not enough details. So, I'd like to provide better perspective below. This report, esp. Table 2 at page 6, shows the world's capacity as 1342GW in 2010, and projected to become 2167GW in 2017. The continuous consumption in 2009 was 15 terawatts, according to quick search on wikipedia. Of course, caparity does not equal production, and we all know problems with their integration, insufficient reliability to provide baseload, itd. So total renewable capacity is still only 10% of demand, while realistic production would be at best I guess 50% of capacity, thus 5% of demand. PVs are even smaller percentage of theat. The numbers above are probably the only guidance to Romney, who does not seem to look beyond just his potential 4 year term. However, the growth rate and price drop is more important consideration, IMO. And those, are about to reach or reached grid parity within this decade according to this analysis. If that forecast is believable, then we should see a big boom of PVs later in this decade. Pending the resolution of the PV energy storage issues, the fossil-powered plant imminent collapse will follow. That last vision suggests how short sighted is Romney's policy, if he puts renewables at the near-last place in his list.
  31. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    I strongly agree with U.S. assessment and it should be far stronger as a global technology leader. I'm still concerned that Obama has accepted a 100 year natural gas national supply in State of Union and this campaign. His recent action to double MPG requirements by 2025, CAFE, was welcome. It is regularly ignored in U.S. that global prices set fuel prices and increased production will likely result in increased export making self-sufficiency little more than a talking point. Approving deeper wells and Arctic drilling approval should be balanced against increased clean energy production. State level clean energy action is progressing in some states much faster than a national program. I'd much rather see high-speed-rail cross national lands, if anything, versus mining. Your point regarding Obama and the Keystone concerns me, current action is delay. Coal production versus coal power production are two points often ignored here. Coal mining will result in increased export as energy is reduced. Obama's DOE has accepted the vast supply of methyl hydrate gases as viable. That isn't carbon reduction. We waste power on a 50 year old infrastructure that neither party is likely to make serious efforts to catch up with the EU. Increasing and stronger weather events are still often accepted as flukes, ignoring similar global activity. I didn't know whether to smile or cry when middle U.S. temperatures were comparable to Australian Outback this year. Insufficient information was made available about reduced nuclear power production due to temp rise in cooling supplies. Grumpy old electrical engineer. U.S. should be leading the world in all climate beneficial and carbon reduction activities.
  32. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Kevin C - Owen Paterson (the new environment minister) took part in a Shropshire wind farm planning consultation in 2008. The letter he wrote was recently used by George Monbiot in a blog post. Since then Shropshire Council have posted their planning officers report which has a summary of the letter. http://planningpa.shropshire.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=K0YDKRLO02U00 http://www.monbiot.com/2012/09/06/declaring-war-on-the-environment/ Paterson definitely opposed the wind farm and expressed a lot of dubious reasons for the opposition. In the officers report Bill Cash MP also opposed the wind farm. Interestingly whilst Northern Ireland minister Paterson did appear to support offshore wind, at least in official statements.
  33. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    There often seems to be a basic disconnect occuring in discussions of future ice conditions in the Arctic. One perspective focuses on the area metrics - Sea Ice Extent/Sea Ice Area - and whether looking at the trends in the data or model projections seas a Summer Ice Free Arctic in a couple of decades. Because that is what the trends are saying. The other perspective focuses on the volume of ice in the Arctic,and what the trends say about that. And this data is throwing up figures for a Summer Ice Free Arctic in a handful of years. So how to reconcile these two perspectives? Arctic Sea Ice is relatively thin and very flat. So melt & accumulation occurs mainly on the top and bottom surfaces. Yet the areal metrics are basically measuring the sideways dimensions of the ice. And Models/Projections into the future may be looking at how these 'sideways' dimensions change. Imagine a hypothetical 'ice floe'. It is 1 meter thick and 10 metres by 10 metres. Over the course of the melt season, lets assume that it loses 0.5 meters in each dimension. It is now 9.5 * 9.5 metres in area and 0.5 metres thick. So its area has dropped by around 10% while its volume has dropped by 55% Now imagine a more severe melt season. Loss over each dimension is now 1.1 meters. So Area has now dropped by 21%. But it's thickness is now -0.1 metres. It has melted away. So in reality, its area is now zero. This is the problem with using area metrics as a basis of future projections. They only hold valid while the volume projections remain above zero. Once volume starts to approach zero, area will start to crash to zero as well, and all projections of area/extent suddenly become invalid. Without some process to reverse the decline in volume, and quickly, within a handfull of years, area/extent will crash.
  34. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Kevin @ 8. Don't forget we also have an equalities minister who opposes equal rights for gay people, and a health minister who want to wind up the NHS. Who would have thought Kafka would take over the government!
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed text.
  35. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    I've made a new animated graph of Arctic Sea Ice Volume with PIOMAS data to 2012-09-02. The previous version was used last week by the BBC's Newsnight programme: Arctic ice melt 'like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions' - a nice surprise!
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed text.
  36. Dikran Marsupial at 21:13 PM on 11 September 2012
    Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
    The pre-bunking of Prof. Salby's yet to appear article applies equally well to the new paper by Humlum et al., who make exactly the same mistake of using a correlation between rates to justify conclusions about long term changes.
  37. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Oneiota at #26:
    But it was much darker during the MWP!
    That's why it was referred to as the Dark Ages...
  38. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Back then in MWP there was no need to ever change a bulb!"
  39. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    On a related note, the UK now has a climate skeptic (or possibly just a wind farm skeptic - h/t Stoat) as environment minister - however he has no responsibilities with respect to climate change, except for possibly being able to affect wind farm permitting (The Register), and a health minister who believes in homeopathy (Telegraph).
  40. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Yes Bill, if you go over to John's original link that started all this, http://theconversation.edu.au/how-do-people-reject-climate-science-9065 The denierati (mainly consisting of 4 or 5 hard core denialists blessed with truly epic stupidity), are too busy making what they imagine to be clever rhetorical debating points, whilst avoiding discussing the actual science intelligently (or at all); totally oblivious to the fact that with every asinine comment, they confirm the original thesis of John's article. Their DNA obviously doesn't carry the irony gene! On another note, we seem to have lost all the fake skeptics, including Eric (pity, I sort of enjoyed his convoluted attempts to reconcile his mutually contradictory positions), hence we appear to be talking amongst ourselves.... Ah, for the good old days...
  41. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    When I heard Romney's acceptance speech I think he did mention renewables but that part of the sentence was drowned out by appluause for the fossil fool bit.
  42. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I agree that the reaction is more interesting than the original survey. Questions of methodology and the questionable nature of online surveys aside, most of us who've been in the debate for a while were simply unsurprised, because the results aligned with our own experience. 'Who knew?', as Monbiot tweeted sarcastically. And there the matter may have rested... But the fake skeptic response has really been the gift that keeps on giving. And an ever more convincing confirmation of the original results. The (over)reaction also reminds me of those Fundamentalist groups that apparently cannot stop themselves stridently decrying the perceived 'blasphemy' of some relatively obscure Arthouse cultural production, turning it into an international cause célèbre - and hit! Spreading its message across the globe in the process. Not only do some people apparently not get irony, they also cannot seem to grasp the basic wisdom that sometimes the less said really is the better...
  43. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Dale @ 2, It has occurred to me that the government changes are actually very smart politics, nullifying attacks from both directions simultaneously. Firstly, look at it from the "green" side: provided the number of carbon certificates issued by the Australian government gradually decreases over time as proposed, emissions will decrease. They may not decrease in Australia if Australian firms decide to buy them from Europe instead, but buying them from Europe prevents another European firm from buying them which means the reduction is still real. It doesn't matter if the CO2 is not emitted here or if it's not emitted in Europe, as long as it's not emitted. Australia will be doing "our fair share" and nobody can argue otherwise because the bottom line is the total emissions. Now look at it from the economic side: a large part of the scare campaign has been based around the idea that it will wreck our economy because our businesses will be uncompetitive and we're sticking our neck out too far beyond what the rest of the world is doing. This change neutralises that attack — we won't be paying too much and won't be sticking our neck out too far because we'll be in the same boat as hundreds of millions of other people, participating in the largest carbon market in the world. If other countries in that market limit emissions even more, we automatically have tighter constraints on emissions because we're competing in the same market for those emissions. If they loosen them, we automatically have looser constraints. Once the ETS is in place, Australia automatically plays its part and avoids becoming uncompetitive without having to change anything. (This becomes more true the more our competitors join the same market. I suspect that these benefits will convince more and more countries to do so, although it may take some time.) As for the coal power stations: their owners felt they were worth more than the government was willing to pay. If the government can reduce the same amount of emissions for less money elsewhere then they should do that. Those owners may turn out to be wrong: the European price may go much higher over the next few decades than they've assumed, which will greatly devalue their asset, but that's their problem now. I never really liked the "direct action" part of the plan anyway — it's like giving tobacco companies money in exchange for not selling cigarettes. I haven't looked at how the legislation works, but I would have thought none of this should have too much of a detrimental effect on the budget. If carbon costs much less than forecast, then the compensation required is less as well, so that should roughly balance out.
  44. Philippe Chantreau at 16:02 PM on 11 September 2012
    A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Thank you Bill for that update. We are all anxiously awaiting Foxgoose comments. These stories always end the same way, it's as predictable as a Hollywood movie. Incidentally, the reactions speak volume on the validity of the studies' results. Perhaps the methodology wasn't perfect but the conspiracist ideation is definitely there. This is quite comical.
  45. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    "President Obama's energy policies are good, although his lack of leadership on the climate change has been insufficient to take us off the potentially catastrophic climate path." This sentence seems to mean the opposite from what is intended. What is an insufficient lack of leadership? This could be replaced with "...his leadership hasn't been sufficient to..." or some such phrasing.
  46. New research from last week 36/2012
    Link to the full text of Polvani and Solomon fixed, thanks. :)
  47. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Al Gore and IPCC have blinded us!"
  48. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Dale @ 2, Yes, it looks like the Australian government is backpeddling, but some observers point out that the link to the EU scheme will make dismantling of the Australian scheme more difficult. Of course political considerations seem to slow and weaken climate action at every turn.
  49. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I wrote:
    I've seen a really good graph somewhere...
    I've found it: Credit goes to Michael Tobis and Stephen Ban.
  50. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    The second is also used in many posts here (example) and originally comes from Foster and Rahmstorf 2009.
    Oops — that should be Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, not 2009. Tamino's analysis is excellent, as you would expect. ;-)

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