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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 54401 to 54450:

  1. Philippe Chantreau at 04:23 AM on 11 September 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Bob, that makes perfect sense. An entirely self consistent argument. It is in fact very close to the stuff we can find on the thermodynamics thread. Sigh...
  2. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Re: cartoon. Thermodynamics, schmermodynamics. You've got the physics entirely wrong. They're not even "light" bulbs, they're dark bulbs. They don't give off light, they suck out dark. Haven't you ever heard of blackbody radiation? The natural state of the world is to be filled with dark. A dark bulb lets us see by removing the dark, so it doesn't block the view any more. Proof? What does a bulb look like when it stops working? It's black - because it's full of dark. There's no more room for it to suck more dark.
  3. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Two more balloons: "Do you really want to spend trillions of dollars on a lightbulb?" and "There is only one true light, but you'll have to wait for his Second Coming to see it."
  4. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Unless you are a scholar and a well known scientist, no one may seriously listen to what you say, write or research. I am not a scientist but an electronic engineer with long years of interest in geology and history. This perhaps prepared me to look into multi-disciplinary branches of science, geology, history and planetary system simultaneously and address the cause behind 1) more than 10% drop in the magnetic field, 2) doubling of the number of quakes above 6 Richter in the past 5 years, 3) thermosphere increased influence on the temperature belts, 4) the planetary warming on Earth and on Mars, 5) the slowdown of the spinning speed of Venus and Saturn. Upon pulling all lines into cause and effect chain I was able to estimate the like of “Earth Changes” including the melting of the Arctic ice cap, the slowdown of Earth spin speed, the complete “Climate Exchange”; where some regions will get warmer while others will turn colder to name a few. The history records that are kept in ancient text, petroglyph and the history citation within the holy books helped to establish a timeline for the cycle of Earth Changes of 3562 years. (-Snip-) I bet that you must have guessed it already that the answer to the complete ice cap melting is 2017! I wish scholars and scientists such as Ian Allison, Nathan Bindoff, Robert Bindschadler, Peter Cox, Nathalie de Noblet-Ducoudré, Matthew England, Jane Francis, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and many others who authored the 2009 Copenhagen Diagnosis report to come to read what I summarized on the above mentioned website but more important is to debate and raise all questions and I am glad to respond as much. I hope many of them do visit skeptical science, as I failed miserably to reach scientists through the normal email channel ! I believe in what Einstein had once said, that imagination is more important than knowledge. I add that humility brings us wings to help to rise.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Link-snipped. Please return to your earlier comment and answer the questions put to you there.
  5. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Dale@57 If you compare the two scenarios of say a square mile with ice and a square mile without. The scenario with ice gets the energy away from the planet more efficiently than if the sea is warmed and has to radiate IR into the atmosphere. So basically, even if energy is emitted from the oceans, it is less efficient than reflecting it, which means warner conditions than if you had ice.
  6. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Another missing balloon in the toon: "Are you crazy? We will not replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs or LEDs!"
  7. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Heh. "If God had wanted us to live in the Light, than He would have made some well-lit Garden for us, um, ah, somewhere..."
  8. New research from last week 36/2012
    Re "socioeconomic carbon sinks," I wonder if we could bribe our way out of this problem by promising to continue paying hydrocarbon companies for their product, converting it to polyethylene* and then reburying instead of burning it? I'm fairly sure we'd see a large segment of climate change denial wither away if such an agreement were made. A pragmatic arrangement, sort of like "Danegeld." Various thermodynamic problems with that, I suppose, unless we used solar steam generators for the PE production process. Also, would it be ethical to bribe our way out of planetary destruction? *Nature's Plastic!
  9. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Awesome cartoon. Except he forgot "Light bulbs violate the second law of thermodynamics."
  10. New research from last week 36/2012
    The link to the text of Polvani and Solomon isn't working for me. The following link does: http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/polvani+solomon-JGR-2012.pdf
  11. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    OK. I will prime the pump. Winston Churchill For context, see the What say you? section of the OP. Your feedback is welcomed and desired.
  12. New research from last week 36/2012
    Does that wine data cover English exports during the Medieval Warm Period? :))
  13. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @51 timothyh - Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Bad choice of words. What I meant to say was we should be trying to sway those who could be swayed and not waste too much time trying to convince those who don't listen to evidence (irredeemable fake skeptics). If the rebuttal adds to the case, great, otherwise, the practice of linking to established arguments (as use widely here) provides the way for those seeking truth to find it. In reflection, all I meant was DNFTT.
  14. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    jasonB@106: "One of the great ironies is how the same people decrying "appeals to authority" when it comes to the IPCC and climate scientists will fawn all over someone they perceive to be an authority who agrees with them or will artificially inflate their own authority to suit." I recently finished reading the book and associated supplements available for free download from the following web site: The Authoritarians. It is written by a social psychology prof, about his years of research into something he calls "authoritarian followers" (and also the "leaders" that take advantage of them). It makes a very interesting case into the psychology of bowing to authority, and one of the issues is the selectivity of the acceptance of authority. Compartmentalized thinking, hypocritical application of "principles", having an "in group" vs. an "out group" mentality, etc., are also part of the picture. The web page I've linked to gives a brief description. The book itself is quite long. Take a look - it's fascinating in a scary kind of way...
  15. New research from last week 36/2012
    Great papers Ari! Willie Soon needs to read Pasini et al. (2012) ;) NIce to see that Trenberth and Fasullo put an end to the speculation about the Russian heat wave and Pakistan floods. Weather on steroids. And to compliment/corroborate Hansen et al's recent work, researchers find that exceptionally warm temperatures over Europe are increasing in frequency.
  16. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    YubeDude, And I don't mean to recast your comment as being applicable only to those extreme cases, such as weathermen-turned-skeptical-climate-science-expert-journalists. People need to learn to read every comment and to recognize that odds are it is being posted by some bored, lonely shmuck (much like myself) who has too much time on his hands and too inflated a view of his own value and the importance of his opinion. If it doesn't contain an insight that makes you think, or a fact that leads you to do some researching and fact-checking yourself, then it's little more than noise in the ether.
  17. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    YubeDude, Good point, except that society and social training just need to catch up. The world needs to (slowly) develop Internet street smarts (it is, with new concepts like "flaming" and "trolls", but it still needs more time). When I was a kid, my mother told me "don't believe everything you read." Not that much has changed, except that today there's a whole lot more not to believe than their used to be. People need to get used the fact that there are self-described Galileos out there. People need to learn to recognize and absorb them. More than that, people need to learn how to avoid feeding their egos. As a case in point, there is one such person who posts regularly at WUWT with his own outlandish theories of climate change. Like many before him, he cries out for attention. He begs to be noticed, and for him and his theories to be recognizes as the "genius" that they are. The travesty there is that moderation at WUWT is limited to deleting comments by people that don't agree with their position. People have no idea how many comments are deleted at WUWT (which is very funny, considering all of the moderation complaints that occur here, where this is a well thought out and explicit comments policy, one which strives to do exactly what we are discussing). But at WUWT, these self-described Galileans are given free reign to promote their nonsense. At WUWT it's "let the buyer beware" or, more accurately, "don't believe everything you read."
  18. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Great cartoon.
  19. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Andrew Keen's excellent read, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, details many of the points being made here and in particular his comments have a very real application to internet postings on technical forums The internet allows the anonymous an ability to pretend and bloviate far beyond the braggadocio of mere bar talk; at least in the bar you have to physically cover the checks your ego tries to cash. On the internet, no one knows the "real" truth nor can they prove any personal claims proffered, it is a wild-west of fallacious credentials, Wiki-intellectuals, trolling tautologist, lying liars, and one kid in his mom's basement who only wanted to Rick-Roll you, that is until he took an arrow to the knee. The book clearly outlines how the cachet of credentials has been turned on its head by the standard-less standards of the internet. If you doubt this, buy my self publish book, visit my website, listen to my podcast or read my blog, I also edit for Wikipedia; after all, along with my MD, there is a law degree and multiple PhD's. And did I mention that I can out-drive any Formula One driver and pull in deeper than any ASP pro, I just choose not to; humble and handsome. The parts of the internet that work wonders for artist and musicians by allowing their creations access to a structured market place which they normally would not have has unfortunately impeded reasoned and intellectual discourse with a flood of unqualified noise and finger painted beliefs. As long as any opinion can carve out a position of equality with educated understanding we can expect this noise of the unwashed masses to drown out the reality of peer reviewed insights. Thanks to the internet we get talking points in a thread that quote a blog, which links to a cable news video where a fellow from a think tank, who used to be a speech writer, is telling us how it is all natural forcings without detailing what these forces are or the mechanics involved. And these are the days in which we live…
  20. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @JasonB thanks for the graphs (#100): could you post sources? On journalists (#106), scientists are often accused of being poor communicators but journalists are meant to be professional BS detectors. I commented on this at length at my own blog. I'm now at a university in South Africa with a big journalism school so I can work on the problem at source. The problem is not just laziness about making sense of science. Superficially, fake balance accepting the logic that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge implies that journalists need to learn more science. But really, it's simpler than that. The mode of argument and the chief sponsors are exactly the same as for a range of other faux debates from tobacco to ozone hole. Failing to spot this is a major fail.
  21. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    31, Dale,
    What climate impact will a summer ice-free Arctic bring to the World?
    You've gotten several answers to this, and SkS really should do a post focused on it, but (from me): First, recognize that this problem does not extend only to the sea ice. The surrounding land is also losing snow cover earlier and gaining it later. So, first and foremost, the albedo of that part of the planet -- which is in 24/7 sunlight for much of the year -- is changing. That means it is absorbing more sunlight and getting hotter. That's a positive feedback that makes it (and Earth) even warmer. Second, both the permafrost (on land) and sea (in the seabed) contain vast stores of methane, a powerful GHG that stays in the atmosphere as CH4 before "degrading" itself to CO2 (and then staying in the atmosphere in that form). That's a second positive feedback. Third, the dynamics of heat and water vapor transfer are completely changing. Once, wind and waves had no effect because the Arctic Ocean was for the most part a sheet of thick ice year round. Now low pressure areas can create cyclones that can whip the water around. That water can evaporate to form clouds. The system is changing. It is hard to predict what this will mean. It's complex. More clouds in winter that hold in the warmth? More clouds in spring or summer that help keep the albedo high? Is it even harder to form ice, because the melted ice gets mixed more thoroughly by the now active wind and waves? Do ocean currents change? Scientists have already figured out that the course of outflow of Siberian rivers has changed, dumping more freshwater into the Beaufort Sea where it used to go elsewhere. And how will these changes in weather patterns affect more civilized areas? There are strong theories that blocking patterns will become more common. This will mean that heat waves and cold snaps and droughts and the like, when they do hit, will last longer and perhaps be more severe. One of the problems with a drought, for example, is that normally, the ground cools through evaporation. But in a serious drought, all of the water has evaporated. This becomes a powerful positive feedback -- with no water to evaporate and cool the ground, the ground gets hotter, making it harder to accumulate moisture with which to cool the surface. So if blocking patterns make heat waves last longer, the chance of drought grows markedly. And who knows how ocean currents may change as a result of all of this? The earth hasn't seen a truly ice free Arctic in a very, very long time. So you can see there are very, very serious implications to the Arctic melt that we're seeing now (and what we're seeing now isn't by any means the worst -- this may be the "oh, sh*t" moment when we realize we're on course to go over a cliff, but that will be nothing compared to when we are actually on the precipice, or actually plummeting down). Bottom line: 1) Positive feedbacks that make temperatures worse, in the Arctic and globally 2) Side effects on weather patterns that have unpredictable consequences for every day life. Someone is going to go hungry, someone is going to have to move, and some things are going to have to change. I predict that within 50 years the USA may well have at least 1 if not 3 "ghost cities" -- major population centers that must be abandoned due to a combination of intractable water shortages, excessive weather dangers and difficulties generating enough food. Exactly where and when is the question.
  22. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    chuck101, I have always assumed that the false claims of expertise were a tool to sway others, who don't know any better, that they are just as qualified as the other scientists to hold an opinion and they disagree with those other scientists and thereby create an illusion of "debate", muddying the waters and leading onlookers to think the "science is not settled". The Oregon petition is another example of this. (One of the great ironies is how the same people decrying "appeals to authority" when it comes to the IPCC and climate scientists will fawn all over someone they perceive to be an authority who agrees with them or will artificially inflate their own authority to suit.) What I always find amazing is how transparently bad their attempts are. I mean, really basic mistakes that I would wish were obvious to anyone who completed high school. They become amusing when they attempt to dress them up with what they apparently believe is technical-sounding language that actually renders it gibberish, but the fact that so many seem to get sucked in by it is a sad indictment of education standards. The ones that really annoy me are journalists. Their role in a democracy is pivotal and as a consequence they have a duty to their readers to become informed. If they can't get their head around the science, hire someone who can — the basics are really not that complicated, and the errors made by the misinformers are so obvious there's no excuse for not picking them up on it.
  23. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I just have a further comment on Fake Expertise. This applies equally to real scientists like Carter and Plimer who claim expertise in a field unrelated to their own. Carter, for example, has 50 or so peer reviewed papers to his credit, in Geology (when he obviously didn't have an issue with the peer review process). That however doesn't qualify him to comment on climate science authoritatively. In fact, when he was co-author of a climate related paper in 2009; it failed the review process miserably: http://www.skepticalscience.com/denialgate-highlighting-bob-carters-selective-science.html It really does seem this is a defining characteristic of climate change deniers
  24. Bert from Eltham at 19:18 PM on 10 September 2012
    Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    RH, I forgot to say that sea ice forms at about -2C because of the salt content of the water. The majority of the salt actually gets excluded from the ice that does form. The thickness of ice formed is largely dependent on the differential temperature of air and water below. It is very disingenuous to say that the ice is making a recovery when it is thinner and less stable than before. By the way if it was not for this property of water to be densest at 4C all the lakes in cold climates would freeze to the bottom so killing all aquatic life in them. Bert.
  25. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    One more characteristic of denial we could add to the list is the claiming of fake expertise. This happens quite a lot in the Denyosphere, eg, Anthony Watts, a Uni dropout and ex TV weather man who claims to be a meteorologist. Over on the sister blog that started all this off: http://theconversation.edu.au/how-do-people-reject-climate-science-9065 We have several examples. Firstly, there is an anthropologist who doesn't seem to understand graphs, or at least can't recognise a blatant cherry pick when she sees one. Nor does she seem to be able to distinguish between local and global temperatures. Hard to believe for someone who has (supposedly) been through undergraduate school. Then there is an IT Teacher who claims to have read many research papers and to have found unsupported assertion after unsupported assertion after unsupported assertion. (I guess he feels repetition makes his argument stronger); thereby implicitly claiming Phd level expertise in climate science. When challenged to give just one example, he could not or would not, give either a reference to a paper or what he found wrong with it. How can you have a discussion, let alone an intelligent discussion with people like these? Then there is a 'climate scientist' who appeared not to know a great deal about climate science and turned out to be a Physics major working at the Antwerp patent office on patents for Plasma screens. (Interesting qualifications for climate science). When challenged on this, here is what he said, I kid you not: 'Depends on your definition of a scientist; I study and analyse data and hypotheses on climate matters, that makes me a climate scientist. Are you one too?' Well mate, my definition of a climate scientist is someone with a Phd in climate science (or some associated discipline), who is actively working in the area. Otherwise you are just a bullshit artist! It is interesting to ponder why people feel the need to claim this false expertise. Maybe it's because, deep down, they know they are talking rubbish, but can't admit it even to themselves. What is even more interesting is that they naively think they will get away with it.
  26. New research from last week 36/2012
    And the graph harvest dates show... a [hic] hockey stick.
  27. Dikran Marsupial at 18:46 PM on 10 September 2012
    A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Eric wrote "Dikran, my comment in #2 is no different from my first paragraph in #84." My comment obviously related to the second paragraph of your post, not the first, so this is just more evasion. "But I want more detail behind that number and unfortunately do not have time right now to look for" Perhaps you should spend less time posting and more time reading. If you make many posts asking many questions, repeatedly going off on tangents, and not paying much attention to the answers you will learn very little. In science understanding generally requires depth of study. Here is two questions for you to consider - what does it matter what the credible interval on S that would satisfy X% of climatologists, isn't it what the science says that matters? Secondly, why do you think the IPCC credible interval is not representative of nainstream opinion on the plausible range of S?
  28. Bert from Eltham at 18:34 PM on 10 September 2012
    Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Dale a very simple model is that open Arctic ocean will very quickly form ice on its surface due to the lack of Sunlight in your northern winter. This insulates the greater part of the oceans water from heat loss to the atmosphere or radiation into space. There will be a gradual accumulation of heat in the Arctic oceans that is due to the radiation imbalance caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere in the summer months. The simple proof is both the loss of volume and extent of arctic ice. Just like your drink cooler if there was not a slow accumulation of heat the ice would never melt! Water has this unique property where it has a maximum density at 4C. This means even ice formed in salt water will float on the water that produced it. RG the very large circumpolar current around Antarctica is warming. If this gets to the stage the water in the Arctic seas are at now we will be in a lot of trouble. Bert
  29. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    mikeh1,
    To that end, I am bemused by sites like The Conversation which has a large readership and this charter http://theconversation.edu.au/our_charter but also allows the climate science denier trolls free rein. They have some great articles from actual climate scientists which are impossible to have a sensible discussion about because of the organised and intensive trolling.
    I appreciated that commenting on the moderation policy of other sites is OT but I'd just like to say how strongly I agree with the above comment. The Conversation is a great idea, but without moderation to keep comments on topic and maintain some sort of standard the posts quickly get swamped by ignorant and generally incorrect claims, logical fallacies, and eventually personal abuse. Allowing the readership to contribute meaningfully can have benefits, but allowing mindless drivel by a small number of people to derail the "conversation" and use it as a platform for their oft-repeated and debunked opinions only detracts from the site. What makes The Conversation special is the fact that articles are written by experts, not the comments on those articles by the uninformed. There are plenty of venues for them already.
  30. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    A point of order here: If Sean Lamb makes any further comments complaining about the moderation he is forcing the moderators to perform on his comments, do not reply to them, as your comment will likely then be excised along with his. This pointless exercise in Lets-Violate-The-Comments-Policy-As-Long-As-Possible is now over. Please now return the discussion to the OP.
    Moderator Response: [DB] NOTE: Sean has chosen to pursue other venues rather than comply with this site's Comments Policy.
  31. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sean Lamb,
    On the matter of La Nina and El Nino a simplistic understanding would be that these are just moving heat around the globe and might not necessarily impact on average global temperatures signatures.
    They are "just moving heat around the globe" — specifically, between the ocean portion of the globe and the atmosphere portion of the globe. This is precisely why they do impact on average surface temperature records, which are atmospheric measures. When you compare the relative sizes of their heat capacities, it becomes pretty obvious why, when the ocean sneezes, the atmosphere catches a cold. It's also clear why looking at a short portion of the atmospheric temperature record is a double cherry-pick — it's a too-short portion of a tiny portion of the Earth's total heat content.
    And I would also have thought a 10 year cooling trend against a background of increasing CO2 (assuming it had occurred) would be something Climate Science would hope to have been developed enough to try and comprehend rather than just use the hand-waving term "Natural Variability".
    Of course it has. Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) is but one example of what happens to the underlying temperature signal when you remove known exogenous factors like solar activity, ENSO, and volcanic activity. These are considered "noise" or "natural variability" because they do not have a trend and cancel out over longer time frames, so they are completely irrelevant when it comes to discussions about climate. However, over short time periods, they have a significant impact on the trend you calculate from the raw data so if you want to determine the underlying trend over a ten year period you need to remove their effect: When you do, you find that there has been no "slowdown" in the rate of atmospheric temperature increase at all -- the apparent slowdown is caused entirely by the normal decline in solar insolation during that period coupled with the characteristics of ENSO during that period. Climate Science not only explains why you can get ten year periods of negative trends, models demonstrate "many 10 year periods with little warming" due entirely to "natural variability" while still having the inexorably increasing trend due to CO2. As noted by Santer et al, 17 years would be required before you could start calling into question the models: The Skeptical Science trend calculator is a good resource if you want to experiment with statistical significance of various temperature records at different timescales, and, of course, Skeptical Science itself is an excellent resource if you want to pre-empt the inevitable responses to your questions by learning more about the subject before posing them.
  32. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sean: Well the evidence I put forward was the fact that there were signs of human habitation on the northern tip of Greenland, Peary Land, for punctuated intervals. And it logically follows that not just the coast of Antarctica but also Domes A,C and F of Antarctica have all been ice-free within our lifetimes.
  33. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @ Sean Lamb #103 "non-sequiur"??? PS - Pride goeth before the fall.
  34. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Implications for effective debunking? Clearly the overwhelming evidence and - yes - "consensus" on the reality and threat of AGW is not matched by any such consensus on what to do about AGW. That is reflected in the varied points of view expressed in this thread. Then say one wishes to "undo" a previous talk given by a member of the denial machine by volunteering to give a free talk telling the truth. One is careful not to make too many counter arguments, one emphasizes proper visuals, one follows the general suggestions in "The Debunking Handbook". But at the end of the talk someone is likely to ask "What do you think should be done about AGW?" Clearly, "I don't know" is an unacceptable answer and will result in undoing all the good mind changing that may have happened in your first 50 minutes. I am soon to be retired, and believe I would like to travel around from place to place where first a misinformer has misinformed and present there a free rebuttal, rather like a "Johnny Debunkerseed" . But IMO, one would need a really good answer for "What do you think should be done about AGW?" to be effective in such a role. I would appreciate suggestions.
  35. Philippe Chantreau at 13:53 PM on 10 September 2012
    A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sean Lamb, you are wrong again on logical fallacies. In every day speech, a non sequitur is a statement totally disconnected from the prior exchange, such as the example you give. However, you claim yourself in no ambigous terms that your argument is on logical fallacies, not every day speech. In logical reasoning, non-sequitur is an argument in which the conclusion does not follow from the premises. It takes a variety of forms involving middle, precedent, antecedent, disjunct, conjunct. You should do basic research before making authoritative assertions on a subject like logical reasoning.
  36. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    It is the question of communication and the potential for miscommunication be it by accident or with clear intent that is my focus and area of concern. This is the right thread to pose the following. Here is a question for the sake of discussion… Let’s begin by making a few assumptions as foundation. 1. Climate science has “knowns, unknowns, and unknown unknowns.” Rumsfeld’s Wager. Known data metrics are in place for a vast variety of components but there are also metrics that range from vague in there inference to overtly inexact in their inability to generate accurate historical comparisons or show the long range trend, there is an ever changing technology that creates new and more precise ways of measuring which in turn may alter or go so far as to invalidate previous findings, and there are data components that we have not been able to quantify or qualify though we assume that they are playing a role though it is currently undetermined as to how much if at all; these are the unsure/unknowns. Lastly there are the bits that we have not discovered so we can not know what if any input they may have. These are the Quarks of knowing that one day may cross our radar, but until they do… 2. Anthropogenic Climate Tipping (ACT) is real and ongoing, it involves not only atmospheric emissions but includes among others; deforestation and loss of wetlands as insult to the natural carbon sink, chemical pollution that is increasing near shore and fresh water acidification, and drought conditions being exacerbated by an over allocation of available resources. 3. The states of understanding and current technologies are incapable of redirecting let alone “stone-cold” stopping the trajectory of ACT. Other than ceasing particular activities we currently have no ability to repair the damage done or prevent further forcings that may feedback from the inputs to date. 4. Models are the only way of determining the trajectory of ACT and predicting the potential fallout from ACT. All models are only as good as their data inputs, the integrity of the statistical analysis and the structure of the model in relationship to the conclusion offered. So here is the question, if we accept these four points and we acknowledge that the status of climate science offers a preponderance of evidence to support in particular the idea of AGW, why is opinion to the contrary tolerated let alone entertained? Has the democratization of opinion been validated to the point that we tolerate a lay person shouting down an atmospheric chemist when discussing atmospheric chemistry? Why is there no reality “strike force” willing to beat down the cabal of denial and disinformation? In the movie The Social Network the Winklevoss brothers choose at first not to directly confront Zuckerberg because “that is not what Harvard men do.” Part of the problem in communicating the global condition is that the scientist who are developing the data sets and publishing papers whose conclusions indicate a growing problem are not getting in the face of those in the cabal because “that is not what scientist do.” Maybe the science of reality, which is support by overwhelming data and empirical observation, needs to hire a kennel of feral pit-bulls who don’t mind bloody knuckles and are willing to take the cabal’s lies and make a rope with which to slip around the neck of denial. Now it is different when dealing with scientist who either cherry-pick data metrics and purposefully apply inappropriate and unintended observations or who quibble over model predictions as thought an end result observation from a model disqualifies the input metrics completely. Often this is a very skilled sophistry that dances to a tune of plausibility so as to catch the lay-publics ear but uses the unseen footwork of fallacy that the unqualified fail to witness. “Gee, that scientist sure did make sense. He has to be right, he’s a scientist.” This is sadly the hardest battle to fight. Maybe a theoretical physicist will claim that GHG forcing can not exist as it violates TD law, or an engineer will raise an issue over the excessive reliance on models that have in the past posited conclusions that were later found faulting, or a medical doctor will simply states that there is nothing to this, it’s all natural. These three are all highly educated professionals who have a history of working with the scientific method; how is the lay-public to discern the difference between an expert and an Expert. It appears to me to be a question of either a proactive or reactive approach. We can either fiddle as Rome burns and try to react against an onslaught of sophistry and obfuscation whose reason for being is unknown or we can proactively leave the city walls and meet the barbarians on a field of our choosing, a field where we can use the high ground of empirical data and observable metrics to not just fend off but rather to pummel the misinformation and strip bare the face behind the mask. That is what Harvard lawyers do.
  37. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Thanks R Gates. I figured the water cycle would kick in at some point. Though don't low level clouds reflect more sunlight? Do you mean high level clouds? (In the dark period this is basically irrelevant I suppose). End of you day you're right, it's a lot more complicated than I probably made out (though didn't intend). The biggest concern I think is what's been trapped under the ice for so long, will now be able to sneak out.
  38. It's the sun
    A Granger analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granger_causality), an analysis method in economics, has been done on different climate predictors. Result starting from the 1960s, the solar radiation cannot be used as a primary predictor of global temperature: http://simpleclimate.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/sun-loses-grip-on-earths-temperature-changes/
  39. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Dale@52, More open water in the fall months means of course that more heat can leave the ocean, however, there is one more factor to consider in this. Some studies are showing an increase in lower clouds in the Arctic that naturally form when more water vapor is leaving all that ocean water. These lower clouds of course have the effect of increasing DWLWR (downwelling longwave radiation), and thus, it acts as to keep temperatures higher than they might have been with clear skies. Thus, it gets a bit more complicated than just thinking that all that heat is going right out into space as some might think. Overall, what we can probably expect to happen once we get our first ice-free summer in the Arctic, is that sea ice will continue to form during the ensuing winter, but it will of course all be thin first year ice that will quickly melt the next summer and it will melt earlier and earlier in the summer as well. Eventually, the maximum winter extent of even that first year ice will slowly recede until the time might come that some very small amount of first year ice forms (maybe less than 5 million sq. km.) and it will be confined to the Arctic basin and along the north shore of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago. Within most of our lifetimes, the Arctic will be quite open to navigation 12 months a year.
  40. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sean, Your position is: 1) Humans inhabited northern Greenland at time X 2) Therefore temperatures were warmer at time X But #2 does not follow from #1. It is thus a non sequitur.
  41. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    RH - Faster warming in the Northern hemisphere is primarily due to the ratio of land to ocean differs. Oceans are much larger thermal masses than land and hence warm more slowly. Arctic amplification is higher than Antarctic due primarily to geography: The Arctic is a body of water surrounded by land, mostly covered with a few meters of ice, subject to warmer waters moving in from further south. It's also highly subject to albedo feedback - open water absorbs much more light during the Arctic summer, which provides a positive feedback leading to more open water. The Antarctic, on the other hand, is a land mass surrounded by water, coverd in ice averaging 1.6 km thick, with a roughly circular weather pattern around it that to some extent isolates the Antarctic from warmer northern air. While the Antarctic is warming, and contributing to sea level rise as a result (as per the GRACE data and surface observations), it's a huge thermal mass - and will take longer to warm than the Arctic. --- I'm of the opinion that the much faster than expected warming of the Arctic is (in part) due to poor modeling of sea transport of thinned ice - the thinner ice is far more prone to be simply washed out of the Arctic to warmer waters at lower latitudes. It's my understanding that few of the models accurately represent this change in behavior, and hence predictions from just a few years ago are startlingly incorrect about the current rate of mass loss.
  42. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    84, Eric, You are misrepresenting what that 97% number means -- I think willfully. And you and I both know that no one has conducted a study to see what the consensus is on climate sensitivity in particular. You are play games.
  43. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    MarkUS, The sooner than expected melting of the Arctic (say,if we get an ice free summer before 2020, rather than 2070 as previous models would have it) would have the biggest impact on the rate of slow feed backs, or what Hansen calls "earth system feed backs". Rates of change are interesting and complicated things when it comes to the nonlinear behavior of dynamical systems. Specifically, many natural systems exhibit and entirely different responses and set of feedbacks based purely on rates of change. When systems get overwhelmed by rates of change too fast for one set of feedbacks to kick in, their final new equilibrium point can be affected. No reason to think this might not be the case with the rapid sea ice melt. Thus, I think your question related to this is an excellent one, and certainly given that no one is quite certain what it might mean if the ice is gone sooner than later, we also can't be certain that some other feedback processes might not kick in based on this more rapid melting that otherwise might not have existed if the melting was slower.
  44. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sean, I have two questions: 1) If there has been a cooling trend since 2001, why are the two hottest years in the record 2005 and then 2010? It has been shown that La Nina's have dominated most of the past 10 years. This completely explains the lesser heating (not cooling) for the past 10 years. See the Escalator. 2) If there has been cyclic melting in the Arctic for the past 2000 years, why did the 4000 year old ice shelfs that recently melted in Northern Canada not melt in the previous cycles? Please provide links to data that supports your claims.
  45. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Hi, just a general question regarding the melting of the Arctic ice: I'm interested in why the rate of warming in the Northern Hemisphere is faster than the rate of warming in the Southern Hemisphere. Is it due to the following factors: a. The greater proportion of land to water surface in the North. b. The fast-spinning ring of air over the Arctic which affects the jet stream that helps drive the movement of winter storms. c. The localised effect of positive feedbacks such as Arctic amplification. Are these factors correct? Are there any other factors influencing this phenomenon?
  46. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sean, there doesn't appear to be any evidence of a "cyclical disappearance" of Arctic sea ice during the past 2,000 years. Rather than imagine it might have happened, it's probably better to deal with the reality of the present. I'm also puzzling over how and why one is supposed to argue against an imaginary scenario of the kind you mention w/regard to falling temperatures vs. rising C02. Why not stick with something real? Natural variability: La Nina versus El Nino. Not difficult to find examples.
  47. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Rather than hair-split over which logical fallacy Sean has actually committed, can we use an informal description of his arguments? Such as ... "baloney".
  48. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Yeah vroomie, it's as though nothing happened at all. Waste heat, so to speak. But perhaps it's not a waste. On a hopeful note we can probably trust that some unknown count of readers will notice how these conversations always start at the consensus position, then meander around the consensus only to return neatly and seemingly inexorably back to where they started: the consensus. The people who came up with ~3°/doubling have their reasons. Incessant rotation through those reasons as led by Eric et al. is maybe not such a bad thing, assuming people have the patience to help crank the wheel.
  49. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Dikran, my comment in #2 is no different from my first paragraph in #84. Regarding my 2nd paragraph, looking again at K&H 2008, I see there is a 2-4.5C range for "expert elicitation". That's at least part of the answer to my question to Sphaerica. But I want more detail behind that number and unfortunately do not have time right now to look for it. vrooomie, your request is valid. I don't have a lot of time, but I found a thesis http://orca.cf.ac.uk/24182/1/2012capsticksbphd.pdf which may provide some raw data. I'll look through it when I get some time.
  50. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    DB: Thanks for that. *thumbs up* I have a further question (if that's ok) in regards to the disappearing ice cap. In the Arctic daylight period, more heat will be absorbed by the additional open water. Does this work conversely in the Arctic darkness period where more heat will dissipate from the additional open water? And if so, has anyone looked at the ratio of change and what that could mean? For instance, I mean something like: in the daylight period, +X heat, in the darkness period -Y heat, net result is +/-Z? vrooomie @45: I say this as honest reader feedback and mean no digs, or slights or anything as such. My intent is constructive. SkS's aim is to help Joe Citizen see through the myths of climate science. Correct? The target audience (I can only assume) is the average non-scientific citizen. Using scientific academic tactics on non-scientific citizens may cause more harm. A good chunk of this site is dedicated to the psychology of climate denial and how to deal with it in the average citizen. A good post dealt with ensuring you don't push them further into climate denial. IMO (as I recognised it in me) the attacking prose taken against some of my comments in the past, made me resent the message more. However now that I recognise that I can take a different approach (hence, not arguing, just asking to learn). But you can't rely on most Joe Citizen's to recognise it. Please take that into consideration.

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