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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 55101 to 55150:

  1. Will the Wet Get Wetter and the Dry Drier?
    Chriskoz - I'm not familiar with research suggesting a permanent future La Nina state. A permanent El Nino was implied during the Pliocene (around 5-2.5 million years ago) but more recent work indicates otherwise, i.e ENSO existed throughout that time too. The increased precipitation variability (mainly ENSO as you point out) in the simulations is due to increased specific humidity (greater moisture holding capacity) in a warmer atmosphere. This drives greater moisture convergence & divergence - see: 1.Evaluating the rich-get-richer mechanism in tropical precipitation change under global warming - Chou (2009) 2. Does global warming cause intensified interannual hydroclimate variability? - Seager (2011) So a warming climate means greater extremes in precipitation even if La Nina & El Nino don't change much. And if you look at the abstract from Durack (2012)in the post above you'll note that actual trends are double those projected by the climate models.
  2. Will the Wet Get Wetter and the Dry Drier?
    Yeah, Rob - it means certain parties can always dust off Dorothea Mackeller...
  3. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    Kevin - I was referring to the land-based ice, not sea ice. Slightly off-topic I know.
  4. Will the Wet Get Wetter and the Dry Drier?
    The simulations, I guess, include MEI (ENSO index), so it runs under "hopeful" assumption thet ENSO variability is to stay, as opposed to the suggestions that permanent LaNina could potentially develop. However, in the other side (and the other coast), by mid-2050, Perth WA seems to be entering the permanently "red" territory, and even edging "dark brown".
  5. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    Rob: Are you sure? My initial unconsidered reaction is that the loss of sea ice will have the essentially same effect on the earth's moment of inertia as it will on sea levels - i.e. to a first approximation zero. The water released by melting will be needed to fill up the hole left by the ice, so there will be no redistribution. When it comes to Greenland of course you have a point (at least over centennial timescales). (I may be completely wrong though - I've not thought it through properly.)
  6. Will the Wet Get Wetter and the Dry Drier?
    Well spotted Bill. But note that, in the simulation, there are successive years where greater-than-normal rainfall occurs over Australia. Sound familiar?
  7. BEST Results Consistent with Human-Caused Global Warming
    From the standpoint of education, I think the BEST result is great because of the following: BEST: 250 years time span with observed 1.5 degrees C temp increase.Then experimental 40% increase in CO2 since indust revolution,gives C2/C1 = 2^(t1/3) ~ 1.4 gives t1 ~ 1.5 degrees C indeed AND SINCE 1980: Since 1980 from Keeling curve, to present now different C2/C1 ~ 1.2 then C2/C1 = 1.2 = 2^(t2/3) gives t2 ~ 0.75 degrees C a little higher than observed for that time frame but not bad SO two different ranges of time and temperature change pretty consistent with same climate sensitivity of 3 degrees C and you can show a physics trained but "climate physics challenged" audience that climate sensitivity of 3 is a robust experimental result that does not depend on a simulation to be proven. Without Muller and BEST going back 250 years this argument is much less strong.
  8. Will the Wet Get Wetter and the Dry Drier?
    I trust all the Australians kept an eye on the wide, even-browner land? Wet-wetter and dry-drier ain't likely to bring much joy to the southern continent in particular! You know; where we all, um, live?...
  9. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    Old Mole @ 85 claims that there is no record of premature deaths as a result of exposure to O3 in the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Sam Atwood, a spokesman is reported (New Scientist 25 August, 2012) as saying that in 2010, some 5,000 premature deaths occurred as a result of exposure to much reduced levels of O3. It is reasonable to assume that premature deaths were much higher in the past when O3 concentration was higher.
  10. Newcomers, Start Here
    Hi, CuriousD back. Not sure where to post this but as a pretty much still Newbie this is probaly an o.k. place. Just realized: 1. Looked at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) web site and they get 1.5 degrees C increase over 250 years. Then since 40% increase since industrial revolution in CO2 one has C2/C1 = 1.4 = 2^(t1/3) assuming 3 degreeC C.S. Solving, indeed t1 = 1.5 degrees. 2. And from 1980 (Keeling Curve) to present, CO2 increased so that C2/C1 ~ 400/340 = 1.2= 2^(t2/3) Solving, t2 = 0.75 degrees. Neato Mosquito , hey?
    Moderator Response: [DB] The Search function is your friend; using it you would find that a more appropriate thread for BEST discussions would be BEST Results Consistent with Human-Caused Global Warming.
  11. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    In general "lukewarmers" seem to be expecting a myriad of graphs to exhibit strange and unlikely bends, that we'll see a chorus line of knees cocked in a comforting and attractive pose, an artful arrangement of "up" and "down" reversals just where we'd like them most. How likely is that?
  12. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    tmac57 @18 - I agree they're not called out on their economic alarmism often enough, but it's something we at SkS call them out on quite frequently!
  13. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    The 'lukes' and 'deniers' also have their own brand of alarmism that they rarely get called out on,concerning what they describe as "catastrophic" effects on the world wide economy and massive deaths to third world citizens if we turn our backs on petroleum fuels and pursue alternative energy.
  14. Michael Hauber at 11:13 AM on 29 August 2012
    Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    I remember the alarmism of the CFC issue. I remember the alarming impression that even the proposed gradual phase out would see us scared to go out in the sun by about now. This was from a casual reading of local newspapers at the time and without any real detailed investigation of what was being said by reliable sources of scientific information. I also remember other alarming claims that action to combat CFCs would destroy our economy because CFS were in so many things that we take for granted on a day to day basis which would all become more expensive with further positive feedbacks resulting in economic catastrophe. Even our fast food was going to be more expensive as McDonalds used to use a CFC based styrofoam container, and the CFC based alternative would be more expensive. Until they decided to wrap the burgers in paper instead of a plastic box....
  15. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    In reality the "lukewarmers" are disproportionately over-represented, particularly in the mainstream media.
    This is an important point. I would like to see a graph comparing congressional testimony in the U.S. congress by AGW deniers, vs consensus climate scientists,and comparing that to their representative numbers i.e. 3% vs 97%. My guess is that the deniers are very much over represented in their place at the table.
  16. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    Some people, if they are remembered for anything, it will be: persistently, determinedly and loudly wrong about an important topic for which they had little expertise for a meaningful opinion.
  17. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    re: 12 Yes: the Canadian Shield in particular is rocks, with minimal topsoil, because the glaciers moved it down into the US, as far as ~Kansas. Try this for images. This is not farm country.
  18. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    ok just that the GIS seems such a massive shift /loss of weight . I guess "wobble " is not very scientific , i guess there is a word for it Google here i come . thank guys .
  19. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    witsend @12 - we'll have a post on what the future climate might look like, on Thursday I believe. But we're not at a catastrophic point yet, and the idea is to avoid major disruptions to human society and economies. Immediately ending fossil fuel use would do just that. I think we have to be realistic about what we can do, and suggesting an immediate ceasing of all fossil fuel use is not at all realistic.
  20. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    I've always used the website maintained by the Physics Dept, of the University of Bremen for a number of years now.. If you look at the graphs for the Arctic Sea ice extent over time you can see that the 2012 line has simply fallen off a cliff to be colloquial. I initially assumed it would show signs of reverting towards the mean, this simply hasn't happened. No doubt come the Equinox it will reverse direction but at the moment it is way out on its own. try this Link http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/index.html
  21. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    Ridley's loathsome distortions made me so crazy I couldn't do anything when I read it other than click out and hope to forget by any means possible. However I think some of this rebuttal is less than complete. For instance this sentence which I suppose was meant facetiously, but could be construed as a real possibility: "Northern Canada and Siberia may become suitable for agricultural productivity - do we want to move all of our crops to those regions?" Regardless of warming, the soil and topography do not lend themselves to agriculture. As to this: "...nobody suggests that we should immediately cease burning all fossil fuels." Personally, I do - or at least, strict rationing. We've run out of time to wait for "carbon pricing" in the magic economic market or new "green" technologies to make a dent in the warming disaster already in the pipeline. We are in a global emergency and nothing less than drastic curtailment of consumption - serious sacrifice and a drastic reduction in the developed world standard of living will do. If we want to survive, that is. The mass extinctions have already begun...isn't that what the science says?
  22. How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
    Well, vroomie, I don't think that argument's going to get any traction. I mean, evidence is where the rubber hits the road. It's been a good year for GW, and we're rapidly turning the planet into a fire stone. This tread is kind of petering out, isn't it?
  23. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    If you look at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ there is a curious anomaly, especially when you realize that we have passed the previous record for low ice extent and the the melt is proceeding like an elevator with it's cable cut. Look along the coast and note how much freezing is occurring. Go down on the right of the site and select August for previous years. Much less ice in previous years along the coast. This fits with the hypothesis that we are seeing the beginning of the reversal of the Polar Hadley cell. Air is being pulled off the rapidly cooling land around the Arctic ocean and is freezing coastal water. We probably have a 4 cell system at present. As the Arctic becomes more open, the rising air in the fall from the warmer ocean may be powerful enough to reverse the whole polar cell. We will then have a two cell system. Think what this will do to the wheat growing areas of the northern hemisphere. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2008/07/arctic-melting-no-problem.html
  24. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    Daved - the loss of ice from the polar regions will have an affect on Earth's rotation - slowing it down. Not that anyone would be able to notice because the effect is so minuscule. Think of an ice skater spinning and then pulling their arms in toward their body - it causes them to spin much faster, and conversely when they straighten out their arms their rate of rotation slows. The same deal applies to the Earth, melting polar ice (near the Earth's axis of rotation) and its redistribution into the ocean (away from the axis of rotation) slows Earth's rotation. As for wobble - it depends where most of the melt occurs, but if the West Antarctic disintegrates (as it has done in previous interglacials), then the Earth wobble will cause a greater-than-global-average sea level rise off the east coast of the USA.
  25. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    Daved, short answer?....no. Though the mass of ice is large, it's not nearly large enough to affect the 'wobble' of the earth, nor its tilt. I don't ahve the numbers right here in front of me, but if you're interested, I can scare them up for you. To answer a bit more accurately, yes, there would be an infinitesimal change in the tilt and wobble, but literally *nothing* that would throw the Earth out of kilter.
  26. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    BWT @10 - yes, irrespective of caricatures of us, SkS is all about getting the science right :-) The picture still isn't pretty after the update. Basically we're looking at super extreme drought becoming the norm as opposed to super duper extreme drought.
  27. Arctic sea ice breaks lowest extent on record
    Will the loss of ice mass in the Arctic and on Greenland affect the tilt and or the wobble of tilt and if so what climate affect if any would there be ? . Thanks
  28. Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
    I hate to quote this because it means that I have lost some hope but... Friedrich Schiller: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens" which means "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain"
  29. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    Dana @9 - you mean you actually updated your post to correct a figure based on new information, and the update made the situation less dire? But that goes against everything I've been taught by the deniers! I thought climate scientists were a bunch of alarmist, lying criminals trying to scare us all into Communism! Now I don't know what to think.
  30. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    JoeT @5 - thanks, I've updated the PDSI figure as well. ralbin @6 - I also agree that regulation tends to drive innovation by increasing demand for low emissions products.
  31. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    Even if Ridley was correct about seeing only 1-2°C warming this century, with the warming from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the turn of the century taken into account that brings us to 3°C warming. I don't think I'm going out on any kind of limb by saying that Ridley's projection still leads to disaster. Lukewarmer, indeed!
  32. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Daved@42: No wukka! I understand *completely* how the culture in which one resides, however 'micro' it may be, can color how one reacts to words, spoken and/or written. I try to take that into consideration, when interpreting comments that otherwise might be taken wrong. We both learned, and isn't that the whole point?
  33. New research from last week 34/2012
    Thanks for the note, I fixed it. The text editor here has serious problem with smaller than characters having something to do with HTML. I went around the problem simply by writing the character's name instead of using it. Originally I tried to use the HTML name for the character, and that seemed to work, but it seems that problem came back.
  34. How much has nuclear testing contributed to global warming?
    TC, ModComm@20....what?? Now there's a "tires cause GW" argument? Jk...;=)
    Moderator Response: TC: I meant "tired", of course, and as you obviously realize. I shall allow the misprint to stand so that your joke can as well. (It is not often I get to start my GW reading in the morning with a chuckle.)
  35. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    ralbin@7: I am acutely aware of this, both in its verity and in how those who *hate* regulation are, as you say loathe to admit it. My experience was from many years in the car repair/racing/fabrication business, and through the 70s, when pollution controls were being implemented (and *nobody* knew what they were doing) I saw this very thing occur. Now, we have IC engines, even diesels, which run so clean as to defy belief: heck, ~I~ never believed there would be V8-engined cars that regularly get 30+ mpg, and make in excess of 500 hp. Then there are the numerous other technlogies, such as on coal-fired power plants, that run way cleaner than they did, 30 years ago, directly due to regulation. I firmly believe that had the government not stepped in and forced the issue, we'd all *still* be driving ca. 1965 cars, at least in terms of pollution controls. I also do not recall when the Cuyahoga River last caught fire....pollution regulations, by and large, work as intended. Regulation does indeed drive innovation, and I see the same opportunities in the crisis we face. this "regulation, *always bad*" meme is misguided and dangerous.
  36. New research from last week 34/2012
    The abstract for Wang et al 2012 (paper about Greenland mass balance) seems to be truncated in the OP.
  37. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    Note the "driven partly by regulation and partly by innovation" statement. Another inaccurate separation. Regulation is often a strong incentive for technological innovation - something people like Ridley are loath to admit. This has been particularly true for pollution abatement. See the work of the excellent historian David Hounshell on this point.
  38. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    Dana, thanks again for a great article. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you are still using the incorrect data from Dai’s 2010 paper. There was a recent retraction published by UCAR here , in which PDSI values of -20 really should have been more like -10. Recently Dai published a new paper this month in Nature Climate Change with what I guess are improved calculations. This is a critical issue – and as someone said in a very recent post in one of the comments – the key component in all of this is food, food, food. I still would like to see a post that explains the basic physics of drought – and specifically why the US is predicted to become increasingly arid while the Sahel region may actually have increased precipitation. In the post on new research for the last week there is the intriguing paper about Hadley circulation response to the greenhouse. I haven’t had time to look at it, but perhaps someone could inform us whether it sheds some light on what their findings might tell us about drought prediction. Thanks!
    Moderator Response: [Sph]: Links fixed by request.
  39. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    vroomie, I think you're right, and you're overlooking one other important factor--the economics are finally turning against them, too. We've already seen a drop in CO2 output this year as natural gas replaces coal based purely on cost, and renewables are becoming cheaper and more efficient every year. Technologies like solar shingles and miniturbines are becoming more cost-effective and will be more widely available in coming years. The only question is which governments will be subsidizing the research to make these products more affordable--will I be buying American, or Korean or German or Chinese products in 2022?
  40. New research from last week 34/2012
    You might want to let people know the gentle humor of your reference to the number 42. It comes from the book "Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy" where the answer to everything is 42. Also found elsewhere.
  41. New research from last week 34/2012
    hahaha love the hitchhikers
  42. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    To think I once purchased and read a book by Ridley where another reviewer also found political bias.
    So overall, an enjoyable, interesting, and informative book, however the more I became aware of the authors tendency to dress his own political agenda up as scientific fact, the more I began to question the perhaps misleading perspective on the subject that the book may be giving.
    Yes Ridley does have an agenda one displayed more strongly in 'The Rational Optimist'.
  43. Daniel J. Andrews at 00:36 AM on 29 August 2012
    Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    His part on acid rain effects on forests and lakes had me wondering what studies he was cherry-picking. I suspect he was looking at forests and lakes on more alkaline soils which neutralized some of the effects of rain. Up in Canada on the Canadian shield in the east, our soils are already naturally acidic with very little buffering capacity. They did sustain damage, and a large number of our lakes died. Plus the extra acidity leached mercury from the rocks/soil into the lakes so any fish still in the lakes were high in mercury content. Some of our most heavily effected lakes still haven't recovered. And in extreme cases where localized pollution made the rain even more acidic (Sudbury, for e.g.) the vegetation disappeared. Even with the regreening effort, you can still tell this area has been heavily effected (small stunted trees, small birch trees with many dying limbs).
  44. Matt Ridley - Wired for Lukewarm Catastrophe
    MOTS. All we can hope is, this recent uptick in desperate dispersion of lies, half-truths, and logical fallacies in the denialosphere (aided and abetted by the near-worthless media) is a sign that recent climate events, plus the ever-growing support of climate change viz. AGW, is driving the denialists into ever-increasingly weird and tin foil-hatted tomfoolery. Give'em the rope with which to hoist themselves. Science moves forward....let's hope that rate of increase is ever slightly greater than the increase of folks like Ridley.
  45. The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
    Michael sweet@11: my suggestion for 8 sigma? KYAG. Said in other words, we're *done,* as in, stick a fork in humanity.
  46. Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
    DB@62.....*yikes*.
  47. Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
    Bob Loblaw That's a great graph look forward to the update.
  48. Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
    Excellent response, Daniel. That's what people need to see. Not graphs that they need to abstractly interpret, but images like these that make the truth of the matter fairly plain. Really? Christy was comparing (in words) 1938 to 2012? Really?
  49. Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
    The head-to-head comparative: Arctic Sea Ice Extent August 1938: [Source] Arctic Sea Ice Extent August 2012: [Source] Comparable?
  50. Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
    Dave123 @ 21, Danske Meteorologiske Institut published a series of annual reports on arctic sea ice covering most years from 1893 to 1956. The link has one folder per year, with each containing individual pages (month identified by the trailing digit) and the whole annual report (about 5 meg each). Just referring to August extent... Its true that ice extent was lower in the 1930s than it had been in the preceding 30 years. In particular, 1938 saw a dramatic reduction from the previous years - it was probably 1.4 M km^2 below the then long term average and maybe 0.6 M km^2 below the already low years in the late 30's (carefully measured using Eyeball, Mk I). But then we see something of a recovery, with extent returning to close to climatology in 1939 and 1946. Unfortunately we don't have measurements for 1940 to 1945, due to the Second Great Unpleasantness. So, it is fair to say there were some big melts in the 30's. But Christy's false equivalence is an epic fail - "similar melts" is pretty nice weasel-wording for mine. 1.4 M km^2 below recent climatology? Considered like that, 1938 was like 2010, I guess. But in absolute terms, August 1938 extent was much greater (4 M km^2?) than today. So any attempt to conflate the two is...well...I can['t think of an adjective suitable for polite company. Taking the Kinnard graphic - the 1930's "similar melt" is the second last dip on the graph, the first decline with modern observational data. This saw a return to "normal" after a peak that had seen the greatest extents in 500 years. Compared to the current decline on Kinnard (even without "enhancement")? Well, even on Sesame Street they could tell you when one of these things was not like the other...

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