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jyyh at 15:53 PM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
This is going towards of topic...delete if necessary. In the case of CO2, the explanation of 12preference in plants in #42, would mean that the central C in O=C=O rotates horizontally along the long axis of the molecule while the slight excess of negative charge would be located perpendicular to it, making the O=13C=O look a bit fatter than O=12C=O. I'm pretty sure there are better explanations about this within physical chemistry, but I'm not that advanced in that discipline. -
jyyh at 15:28 PM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Oops. Of course the change of rate in weathering should be different to 12C and 13C to explain that. It's quite astonishing the binding sites of enzymes in plants can be so selective they may differentiate between atoms of different nuclear charge distribution (the amount of neutrons and their locations). I'd presume the distribution of charge in the nucleus gets mediated to the exact configuration of molecular orbitals and this is sensed by the appropriate coordinated bonds within the photosynthetic machinery. If one wants to go by with the simple model of atoms based on positive-negative charge, one might think that the distribution of the nuclear charge in 13C gets polarised more to the one side of the nucleus so the electrons on that side would be on thighter orbits than usual. -
jyyh at 15:06 PM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
oh, I think I found out one item missing on the list. The weathering of rocks. I would suspect there hasn't been a change of rate so large in that, and one that would have started when industrial revolution started, that would explain the changed 13/12C ratio. For the sake of completeness this might be included to the list. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:14 PM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Thanks a ton, Tom, for taking the time for such a detailed response. We'll see if he endeavors to respond. -
DSL at 13:11 PM on 29 July 2012The BEST Summary
Muller officially comes out in the NYT today -- with predictions: "What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years." -
Tom Curtis at 12:40 PM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Correction: As originally published, section (2) reads in part:"The increase in CO2 concentration over the long term (1850-2005) almost exactly correlates (corr.: 0.981; R^2: 0.962) with cumulative anthropogenic emissions from all sources including Land Use Change (LUC). The close correlation has continued in recent times, with a correlation of 0.977 when compared to the Mauna Loa record (r^2: 0.955). "
Immediately after posting, this will be amended to read as follows:"The increase in CO2 concentration over the long term (1850-2005) almost exactly correlates (corr.: 0.997; R^2: 0.993) with cumulative anthropogenic emissions from all sources including Land Use Change (LUC). The close correlation has continued in recent times, with a correlation of 0.9995 when compared to the Mauna Loa record (r^2: 0.999). "
(Emphasis added in both quotes to highlight the amended values.) The figures initially published show the correlation between CO2 concentration and annual emissions, not cumulative emissions as stated. The corrected figures are for cumulative emissions. -
Chris G at 12:00 PM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
I had the same thoughts as several: Misleading implication of a 150-year cycle resulting from averaging a non-uniform distribution. (Which I had guessed, but not confirmed; thanks Physicist-retired.) Handing skeptics an out on silver platter, etc. I also thought "will be worrisome" was an odd turn of phrase choice. The state of arctic ice isn't worrisome already? In the context of an accelerating ice mass loss, a strong warming trend globally, and polar amplification, I might have used 'expected'. I can't see why one more symptom on a terminal patient would change a state from not 'worrisome' to 'worrisome'. It somewhat appears to me that Dr. Koenig was caught unprepared at an interview, and of course, the skeptics will give more credence to her casual reply than to the actual distribution of events in the data. -
Daniel J. Andrews at 11:26 AM on 29 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
Thanks John. It is always hard to know where to start when learning a new subject that you have no familiarity with. I just found Dr. Mann's facebook page. Already I'm finding it a good resource as he links to new material and articles on climate change that are on sites I either don't frequent often or haven't even heard of. -
Tom Curtis at 09:22 AM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Rob Honeycutt @37, firstly, and fairly obviously, the strong correlation between CO2 increases and cumulative human emissions (2), the mass balance (3), the change in the C14/C12 ration (4), the fact that Oxygen levels have declined by less than would be required to explain combustion of fossil fuels (6), and the known record of changes in biomass (9) are all strong evidence against the claim that the CO2 increase is from changes in biomass. More specifically, however, just as the combustion, decay, or respiration of (or by) biomass) will add more C12 than C13 to the atmosphere relative to the existing proportion, so photosynthesis will take out more C12 than C13 by exactly the same amount per tonne of biomass generated. Given that the total amount of biomass in the world is stable, the biosphere can have no net effect on C13/C12 ratios except due to a small deletion of C12 relative to C14 due to biomass lost from circulation by fossilization. Consequently, if the person you are debating wants seriously to argue that the biosphere is the source of the changes in CO2 concentration, they are compelled (if they are consistent) to argue that the biosphere is rapidly shrinking. How rapidly is shown by the fact that the biosphere contains approximately 1,000 billion tonnes of Carbon. (I apologize for referencing wikipedia on this point. Unfortunately searching google scholar simply returned page after page studies into biomass as fuel or as carbon sequestration.) One part per million by volume (PPMV) of CO2 in the atmosphere has a mass of 2.13 tonnes of carbon. That means an increase in CO2 concentration from 280 to 390 ppmv represents 234.3 billion tonnes of Carbon, or over 20% of the world's total biomass. That may seem like to large a decrease to be contemplated, but as it happens, humans have caused the destruction of biomass to the extent of cumulative emissions around 165 billion tonnes of Carbon (17% of the world's total biomass) since 1850 (Houghton 2008, extended to 2011 by persistence). The margin of error is certainly large enough that the 20% could come from human activities alone. Of course, the 20% estimate is letting your debate opponent of lightly. It is known that increases in atmospheric CO2 only represent 57% of total human emissions. Consequently, allowing for the extent of emissions not retained by the atmosphere your opponent would need to claim that over 400 billion tonnes of biomass had been lost. What is worse, in order to account for known human emissions and the known increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere, to claim the increase is primarily from changes in the biosphere, he would need to claim an even larger fraction of emitted CO2 was not retained in the atmosphere. Just to assume 50/50 responsibility, they would need to claim the airborn fraction was just 28% of all emissions, requiring more than 500 billion tonnes emissions from biomass (on top of the human caused emissions). I think we would have noticed. Of course, such a large net combustion of biomass is also going to require a larger net source of oxygen to account for the limited drop on O2 concentrations. I would say that I cannot wait to see what possible sources would be suggested, but I know better. Pseudo-critics of any scientific theory to not feel it incumbent on themselves to flesh out a coherent alternative proposal. They think it is sufficient to say that biomass has the same C13/C12 ratio as fossil fuels (approx true) and think that that is a devastating criticism even though no coherently worked out counter proposal that implies natural changes in biomass is remotely plausible given the sum of the evidence. -
Papy at 09:20 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
I find three points troublesome about this article : 1 - The Lora Koenig's 150 years periodicity allegation, as notified before, so waiting for enlightenments. 2 - The SkS headline in which, as explained in the Joe Romm's article and on Carbonbrief : "the description of 'unprecedented' needs to be qualified - on the latest satellite measurements it's certainly the case, but longer-term records suggest this kind of melt may have happened before." So shouldnt it be : "Satellites see unprecedented Greenland ice sheet surface melt" just like the NASA press release, or "Record Greenland ice sheet surface melt" to put it in a geological era context ? 3 - The missing perspective of this event, however begun by the Gavin Schmidt's comment : "The NASA results are clearly unprecedented in the satellite record (and this is obviously what was being referred to), and come at the tail end of a strong increasing trend in summer surface melt area (as seen in data from the Steffen and Tedesco groups)." Perhaps a graph, presenting maximum ice sheet surface melt extent and its trend like in Mernild et al. 2011, with this new 2012 value plotted, could be usefull ?
Just in order to explain us the diverse hypotheses :
- "whether this year's melting is a one off or the start of a trend".
- or even if it could be both : the consequences of an extreme weather pattern (noise) on a continued multi-decadal upwards surface melting (trend).
Moderator Response: TC: Ask and you shall receive (some times):
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SEAN O at 09:17 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Neven #14' I think that Twemoran nailed it at your place: "Undoubtedly accurate, but there are other ways of expressing how unusual the event is. How about "Only once since Columbus's discovery of America" or "Only twice since the signing of the Magna Charta" Probably cherry picked, but relating historic events to the data might make an effective headline. The thing I drew from the chart was that averaging events that occur in clusters can be misleading. The most recent cluster occurred in the Viking Age with a long dry period following that." I agree with his point that relating the melt event to a well known historical event help the less enumerate among us. -
oneiota at 08:28 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
I have to agree with Neven @ 14. I first caught wind of this on Peter Sinclair's site. How could JPL say in the headline "unprecedented" and then in the body of the artcle say that the last event was in 1889 and part of a cycle of 150 years? Sloppy and naive I thought. It gives the rabble something more to froth at the mouth about. I went looking for the Alley paper without success so it is good to see it referenced above. -
Neven at 08:03 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Unfortunately, that 'averaging' was made by a Goddard glaciologist, not a climate skeptic. No 150-year melt cycle exists in the Greenland ice core record, and implying that this melt is 'right on time' is highly misleading. Thanks a lot for this, Physicist-retired. I didn't give it much thought, as I figured it was entirely irrelevant to the event itself, but now that I have thought about it, I find it amazing that Koenig has said this and even more amazing that the people over at NASA put this quote in. They handed the fake skeptics everything they needed to mislead and obfuscate on a silver platter. Wow. Just wow. -
tmac57 at 07:20 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
What I would want to know is what is the probability of Greenland's surface melting to this degree in a 10,000 year time frame,given that the climate sensitivity = 3°C,and applied to our current understanding of the historic levels of Co2. (I'm not sure that I phrased that correctly) -
MA Rodger at 06:23 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
And you've read the press releases here but have you seen the film by ASCAT - "Greenland Melts July 4-13" Its the sequence of ASCAT daily images during the melt event which had ended by the time the image (18 July) in the post above was taken. An astute commenter at Neven's spotted it & animated it. -
Physicist-retired at 06:08 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Thanks for that link, Sean. It's good to know that Gavin and Joe are already on this. Rob, No harm, no foul. I've done the same thing myself - more than once. And while I've been reading SkS regularly for some time now, I haven't commented here before. -
MA Rodger at 06:06 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
When I first saw the 600+ gap prior to the 1889 event on the Alley & Anandakrishnan 1995 graph, my initial thoughts on this claiming of a 150 year average was that it was wrong to use the 10,000 average. But I've revised that view. The 1,000 average has been running at 250 years which isn't that big a difference from 150 and there have been big gaps similar in size to the 600+ one in previous millennia. And with this recent 2012 event, hasn't the running 1,000 year average risen to 200? So it wasn't very exact to claim 150 years. Indeed it was sloppy using that 10,000 year average. But to call it flat wrong? I don't think so. -
SEAN O at 05:27 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Gavin Schmidt as quoted by Joe Romm on : Climate Progress The NASA results are clearly unprecedented in the satellite record (and this is obviously what was being referred to), and come at the tail end of a strong increasing trend in summer surface melt area (as seen in data from the Steffen and Tedesco groups). However, we know Greenland was warmer than today at many intervals in the past – the Early Holocene (from isotopes and borehole temperatures), the last interglacial, the Pliocene etc. so there is no claim that this is something that has never happened in the history of the planet. Furthermore, the ‘every 150 years’ quote is very strange. The data on Summit melt layers – (discussed in the paper you reference http://www.igsoc.org/annals.old/21/igs_annals_vol21_year1995_pg64-70.pdf ) and more easily visible here: http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/DATA/alley1.html – indicates that the [1889] event was actually the only event in the last ~700 years, and there have only been 6 in the last 2000 years (4 of which were associated with the Medieval Climate Anomaly btw 750 and 1200AD). Hardly a frequently recurring ‘cycle’! The all-Holocene average that Koenig is referring to includes the warmer Early Holocene where orbital variability was driving warmer northern high latitude summers — and which is not relevant to the expected frequency in today’s climate.Moderator Response: TC: Link corrected, quoted links made active. For those who are interested, the first quoted link is to the paper (Alley and Anandakrishnan, 1995) that discusses previous melt links. The second is to a colourized version of fig 1 from that paper, which is shown by Daniel Baeley @2 above, and has the caption:"Figure 1. Melt against age (upper panel) and July insolation against age (lower panel) for the GISP2 site. Years containing melt features are shown by thin dotted lines. The heavier textured line is the 100-a running mean of melt frequency (number of melt features per 100 years), and the heavy black line is the 1000-a running mean. The lower panel shows deviation of July insolation from modern values in calories/cm2/day, from Berger (1978; 1979); positive values indicate more insolation than today. Data from: Alley, R.B. and S. Anandakrishnan. Variations in melt-layer frequency in the GISP2 ice core: implications for Holocene summer temperatures in central Greenland. Annals of Glaciology 21, 64-70 (1995)"
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:02 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
My apologies, Physicist-retired. I misinterpreted your comment. I spend too much time debating on other forums where people claim to be scientists and will reject basic radiative physics. -
Physicist-retired at 03:57 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Thanks, Daniel. -
Daniel Bailey at 03:31 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
You make a valid point. It would probably deserve a more in-depth treatment than just a comment on a related post. I'll send an email off to Dr. Box and to some of the other glaciologists for their thoughts and insights. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:27 AM on 29 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Hey guys, I have someone on Peter Sinclair's channel who won't come and comment here but I wanted to post his comments related to Tom's point #5 and see what the responses are. He states... "We were talking about C13/C12 ratio. It's the same for burning FF as it is for decaying plant matter, as they are both from organic/photosynthesis sources." He says that the C13/C12 ratio can not be attributed solely to FF burning. Now, I know what my response would be but I wanted to see what others have to say. -
Physicist-retired at 03:22 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Rob, Perhaps I haven't made my point clear. I am aware of Arctic sea ice trends, the 'sticky' jet stream, the numerous warm high pressure ridges that formed over Greenland beginning in May (culminating in early July), and other atypical phenomena that led to this startling GIS melt event. I've also read Box (2012). To anyone following this closely, the July melt should not be too much of a surprise. But even scientific reporting on the melt infers that it could be part of a 'natural 150-year cycle', which does not actually seem to be accurate. My comments are not intended to request clarification on the drivers behind this melt, but rather to inspire SkS authors to explain that Koenig's comment is inaccurate and misleading. I've seen no one do that to date, and I believe it's important. Perhaps I'm wrong. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:06 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Physicist-retired... I think you also have to put the current ice melt into context with the many other lines of evidence. We have been seeing the Arctic sea ice disappearing far more rapidly than the model projection. We are looking at seeing seasonally ice free conditions within the next decade, or maybe sooner. That is clearly a condition that has not been seen for at least a million years and potentially much longer. We certainly have not been seeing a seasonally ice free Arctic every 150 years. And that's just for starters. You can't just look at the data in isolation. -
shoyemore at 01:25 AM on 29 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Tom #197, Thanks. You made my day, possibly my week. :) -
technophile50 at 01:10 AM on 29 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Re "The Greenland ice cap is not saddle shaped..." - 'Tis too, and the melt is already there. "Map showing where the albedo reduction is greatest; the southern ‘saddle’ region, the peripheral low elevation areas, and the northwest." http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=580 updated map of ice sheet albedo decline from Dr Jason Box - Box, J. E., Fettweis, X., Stroeve, J. C., Tedesco, M., Hall, D. K., and Steffen, K.: Greenland ice sheet albedo feedback: thermodynamics and atmospheric drivers, The Cryosphere Discuss., 6, 593-634, doi:10.5194/tcd-6-593-2012, 2012. If he says there's a saddle, I trust him. "An elevated occurrence of above melting temperatures are observed 11-14 July near the ice sheet topographic summit in an area typically considered to be melt-free, a.k.a. the “dry snow zone”. http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=556 "The process, named ‘saddle-collapse’, was found to be the cause oftwothree rapid sea level rise events: the Meltwater pulse 1a (MWP1a) around 14,600 years ago,andthe ‘8,200 year’ event, and the unanticipatedly nonlinear Anthropocene Greenland event ca. 2000-2100." &;>) -
Physicist-retired at 00:59 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Daniel, "those that would have us debate the existence of gravity try to average-away the decline" Unfortunately, that 'averaging' was made by a Goddard glaciologist, not a climate skeptic. No 150-year melt cycle exists in the Greenland ice core record, and implying that this melt is 'right on time' is highly misleading. I see absolutely no discussion of this in any of the scientific reporting (most frustrating). The 'this is right on time' statement completely masks both the non-periodic nature Greenland melts in general, and the extraordinary anomoly of the July 2012 melt. Which is why I left my original comment here. My hope is that someone will cover it in more detail, and that it gets the attention it deserves. -
Daniel Bailey at 00:26 AM on 29 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Physicist-retired, indeed those that would have us debate the existence of gravity try to average-away the decline in extreme melt years evident since the Holocene Climatic Optimum, needing ever-more-extreme temperature excursions to drive extreme melt conditions.
When one examines the insolation table above, the data shows good evidence that current temps are now forced well above HCO temps relative to available insolation (especially given that temps are a long way from equilibria).
The takeaway I see is that, even at the summit, a very warm year puts the GIS at near-total ablation-zone status. Given the near-unprecedented, anthropogenic-derived warming currently being experienced and yet in the pipeline, coupled with a meandering and increasingly-sticky polar jet, total-melt-zone status will be a regular occurence in the very near future (per Box 2012). Like 2012, 2013...
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Physicist-retired at 23:51 PM on 28 July 2012Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Regarding the current melt in Greenland, and this quote: "Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig... I’ve looked at the Greenland ice core data for the last 10,000 years. You can see it here: http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/DATA/alley1.gif It’s true that if one divides the total number of melt incidents over that 10,000 year record, it does average out to ~1 melt every 150 years or so. But it’s also true that only one melt event has happened in the last 800 years or so (1889). Am I missing something here? From that graph, this 97% July melt looks anything but 'typical'.Moderator Response: [RH] Hot linked GISP2 gif. -
Tom Curtis at 22:43 PM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
shoyemore @196, that joke still cracks me up. You may be interested to know that I passed it on to some other SkS authors, one of whom passed it on to Michael Mann. He liked it! -
shoyemore at 20:52 PM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
An Irishman was travelling in South America, where he fell in with two climate science deniers. They travelled together for a bit, but then had the misfortune to be captured by a gang of bloodthirsty banditos. These banditos had little use for foreigners so decided to execute them on the spot. As usual in these jokes, the three were allowed one last request. "Well," the first denier said "I will take time to tell you about the iniquitous Professor Michael Mann and his nororious Hockey Stick." "And, me "said the second denier, "I will tell you about the disturbing Climategate e-mails from the University of East Anglia.! "Oh, J**** Chr***!" said the Irishman, "Shoot me first! I can't stand antother lecture about bl***y Michael Mann and the Hockey Stick." -
Kevin C at 16:37 PM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Not sure it's worth adding this, but given that I'm playing the polymath today I may as well dig myself a hole... From a literary theory perspective there is not one 'Mikes' Nature Trick'. There are lots of different ones. Which one of them is real is a non-trivial question. Whether you can even claim one of them as 'real' is also a genuine issue. Here are the versions I identified after a too-brief consideration. 1. The calculation Mike did. 2. The calculation Mike thought he was doing at the time he did it. 3. The calculation Mike wanted the readers of MBH98 to think he had done. 4. The calculation a reader of MBH98 might infer from the text that Mike had done. (Technically there are as many of these as there are readers, although we could probably reduce that to a list of common interpretations.) 5. The calculation Mike thought he had done years later when the issue was first raised. 6. The calculation Mike thought he had done after checking back over what he had done. 7. The calculation Jones thought Mike had done from MBH98. (An instance of point 4) 8. The calculation Jones thought Mike had done on the basis of subsequent communications. (There may be multiple examples of these.) I suspect some of the confusion arises from the fact that we don't clearly distinguish which version of 'Mikes's Nature Trick' we are talking about. All this is fascinating if you are a literary theorist, but given the only impact is an irrelevant tail of an early and outdated analysis, it bears no relevance to the science. The fact that this article even had to be written, let alone that we have to discuss whether it is right, and get into these details, show how far the public debate has perverted the scientific process. MBH98 was groundbreaking science. Groundbreaking science is usually flawed, and gets refined in subsequent work. The subsequent work is probably still wrong. Give it another 30 years and we'll probably have a fairly clear picture. However to pretend this is pivotal to climate science or any political implications it may have represents at the very least a failure of perspective. -
JohnMashey at 16:30 PM on 28 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
4,26: 1) Whether Mann is a public figure, a limited public figure or not, 2) The extra bar for such is *not* that someone knew it was false, but that it was malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Of course, for such, past history can be *extremely* useful in showing malice. Google: libel reckless disregard OR libel malice 3) In any case, Mann's suit against Tim Ball in Canada is being handled by Roger McConchie, who wrote *the* book on Canadian libel law (1000 pages, I own a well-marked copy). The National Review complaint is being handled at Cozen O'Connor, by John B. Williams. I would suggest that people might want to do 2 things: a) Take a look at these lawyers and see if it sounds like they might know what they are doing. b) Study up a bit on libel law. See CCC p.184, for a few starting points, for example. -
dr2chase at 14:11 PM on 28 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
Sceptical Wombat @4 - I do not know the law, but it seems unjust if one can be transformed into a public figure only through one's fame from being slandered and libeled. -
curiousd at 12:21 PM on 28 July 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
John Cook, I am working on the project quite seriously. But there are many issues to consider and some of this may even require travel on my part. -
Tom Curtis at 12:15 PM on 28 July 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
curiousd, John Cook like most of the contributors to SkS is very busy, and not paid for his contributions to SkS, nor for hosting it. I am sure that he attempts to read the comments on a regular basis, so that commenting here or on the SkS facebook page are probably among the most reliable ways to contact him. There is, however, no guarantee. For what it is worth, I have drawn attention to the fact that you are trying to contact him on another forum I know he frequents. There is no guarantee that he'll read that, either, and even if he does he may well be too busy in any event. -
curiousd at 11:52 AM on 28 July 2012AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
Is there any way to post a response to something from John Cook and know he reads it?Moderator Response: [DB] I have sent a message on your behalf to him. -
Eric (skeptic) at 11:45 AM on 28 July 2012Water vapor in the stratosphere stopped global warming
Daniel the issue does deserve a better analysis. Strat. WV is increasing in the stratosphere above Boulder (fig 2 above) long term. And SWV arrives in the stratosphere from storms (observations described in the article I linked). Ozone is off topic in this thread, but when I looked it up I saw this simple page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewer-Dobson_circulation There are influences on Brewer-Dobson such as ENSO http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JAS3433.1 There are other contributions to SWV like methane oxidation.Here's some support for the "stronger storms causes SWV" hypothesis: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA.....1794W
Recent observational studies indicate that the lower stratospheric water vapor concentration increased by 1 to 1.5% annually in the midlatitudes in the last 35 years. The mechanism proposed here may serve as a key process in the possible explanations for the observed trend.
On the other hand, there's evidence for the opposite conclusion for SWV trends, http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/H2O_after_2001.pdf "Global satellite observations from HALOE show a substantial, persistent decrease in stratospheric water vapor since 2001." Obviously 5 years won't say anything about long term trends and attribution, but it rules out simple depictions like the paper I originally linked unless their explanation also includes these natural fluctuations. -
tmac57 at 11:19 AM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Brandon, if Mann's so called 'trick' is so central to your critique of mainstream climate science,and results in what appears to be nit-picking on your part,what then,do you make of the many errors that the 'skeptical' climate scientists have been called on? Do you or McIntyre,Watts,etc. endlessly probe the minutiae of those scientist's works for any cracks in the facade of their scientific credibility,searching endlessly for fraud? Point me to any 'climate skeptics' who did this same level of trashing of the Douglas et al 2007 paper for example. Why do I have the feeling that you have only challenged the consensus climate science? -
Daniel Bailey at 09:45 AM on 28 July 2012Water vapor in the stratosphere stopped global warming
"It sounds to me like this is a strictly localized effect."
Not exactly up to your usual standards of analysis, Eric. Heart just not into it today? -
Tom Curtis at 08:54 AM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Hameiri @190, when the so-called hockey stick was first presented to the public by Nature in 1998, there was no truncation. MBH 98 and MBH 99 did not use any data with a divergence problem, so there was no "hide the decline" either, which is a separate issue. Nor was the proxy record extended by the use of instrumental record. Individual proxies that terminated before 1980 where extended to 1980 by persistence, ie, by repeating the last value up until 1980. As proxies tended to follow temperature, and temperatures were rising in the 20th century, this would introduce a cold bias to the proxy record in the 20th century. Instrumental values were used to create end points beyond 1980, ie, where no proxy record existed, in creating the smoothed function. However, as discussed above, the smoothed function was not the reconstruction, and was not used in deriving any scientific results. What is more, using other methods (persistence, proxy mean, mean of last 25 values) all represent a choice to "predict" that global temperatures cooled significantly after 1980 and that therefore the proxies would show that "cooling" when in fact we know global temperatures warmed. This is what really annoys the fake skeptics about Mann's choice with regard to smoothing. He chose not to show a cooling in the smooth which he (and they) knew to be spurious. -
KR at 07:55 AM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Hameiri - Rob Honeycutt is quite correct. The _right_ way to disprove someone's conclusions is to provide your own, with better support from the evidence. Every year there are more science papers submitted. Many don't get through peer review due to obvious mistakes. Others pass peer review, and are found lacking - additional papers point out the issues, and we learn, and we move on. Others are found to be rather pointless (gravity proven for the Nth time!) and are just ignored. There are no paleotemperature reconstructions that contradict the basic conclusions of Mann's work, whether the initial 1998 paper or later ones (including by Mann himself) - recent warming is faster, and currently warmer than, any time in the last few thousand years. If you disagree, present your evidence and let everyone take a look at it. That's science, not whining about minutia and claiming it invalidates the broad strokes of the work in the field. And so far, skeptics have not ponied up... -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:31 AM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Hameiri... If anyone bothered to actually read the papers it would be clear what Mann was doing. Heck, the color version of the graph clearly uses a different color for the instrumental record. What more can you want? Also, Sphaerica didn't say that "he" doesn't care, he said, "no one" cares. I have to agree with him. It's really a completely pointless exercise to "audit" a scientific paper the way McIntyre has. Scientists are allowed to get things wrong! But wrong results become apparent when further research shows things to be different. That's not what has happened with Mann's work. Further research has, in fact, confirmed MBH's conclusion... repeatedly. So far no multiproxy reconstruction has shown anything other than what MBH showed. So, the "skeptics" need to put up or shut up. Either produce a good quality reconstruction that produces results that calls the other research into question, or... (self snip) -
Klaus Flemløse at 06:13 AM on 28 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
I have tried to transfer money to Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, but it the donation page does not work today. -
curiousd at 06:07 AM on 28 July 2012Newcomers, Start Here
To John Cook, I have been deep into contacting, and reviewing various kinds of solar charities/offsets and found a lot of interesting things. But to do this right is going to take a while. There are complications. For instance, say you have two efforts that were equivalent otherwise, but one was in a population that had a high growth rate within a forested area and another was in a stable population. It might be argued that for the rapidly growing population, improved birth control would be the better choice for a contribution and in the stable population case, the solar offset would be better. -
Kevin C at 06:07 AM on 28 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
Disclaimer: I am not a sociologist or a social anthropologist. Therefore the following analysis is at risk of Dunning-Kruger. There is something interesting going on. Many of the same blogs which condemned the Heartland unabomber poster, and in some cases also the SkS hack, are posting the Mann slanders, or at least posting material which allows the reader to infer them. How can the skeptic community not have learned from Heartland? What is going on? The easy answers are that they are morally deficient, or maybe saw an expediency in condemning one case but not another. I don't believe either of these. Most people don't do things they recognize to be evil. I think we are seeing the scapegoat mechanism at work. A community at stress seeks outlets for that stress, frequently through finding a figure to blame: The well known fictional archetype is Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's '1984', although there are also obvious historical examples. The scapegoat becomes an archetype, a dehumanised recipient for all of the frustrations of the community. This explains why the targeting seems so arbitrary. Why a palaeoclimatologist, when there are much more obvious targets? It was chance, but once established in the role, the myth takes over. It also explains the apparent double standards, condemning some outrages but turning a blind eye to anything concerning Mann. If correct, this analysis gives some pointers in responding:- We must not accuse those who are perpetuating this material of evil. To do so represents a failure to understand what is going on, and in doing so shuts down communication. Point the unfounded nature of the accusations and the injustice of the comparison.
- We must be vigilant in avoiding casting prominent skeptics in scapegoat roles ourselves. Otherwise we just perpetuate a cycle of rhetorical violence, and the outside observer will rightly conclude that neither side is capable of reasoned discourse. However, the scapegoat mechanism is part of our anthropology: Avoid it involves constant and careful self examination.
- Bear in mind that the scapegoat mechanism is a stress relief mechanism. If things get worse, that may well indicate that stresses within the skeptic community are also increasing. (Note: I am studiously avoiding the obvious Gandhi quote here. Persecution can be an result of progress, but should never be mistaken for a measure of progress.)
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Hameiri at 05:37 AM on 28 July 2012Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
Sphaerica - That you don't care is interesting. When the "hockey stick" was first shown to the public in presentations and documentaries, I don't believe this truncation and appending was made clear. They were trying to prove a point, and they didn't want to muddy the waters. Well, whether you care or not, the waters are muddy now! -
IanC at 05:09 AM on 28 July 2012Hurricanes aren't linked to global warming
Dikran, Yes it is really a subtle point, and I probably won't have picked it up either if David hadn't point out the problem. However no matter how simple the argument is, I agree that the argument should be as accurate as possible. Given that the strength of a hurricane theoretically depends on temperature contrast between the surface and tropopause, rather than the temperature itself, we should make that clear. I suggest that instead of "extra heat in the air or the oceans is a form of energy, and storms are driven by such energy", we can replace it with "due to the greenhouse effect, the surface is warming relative to the top of the atmosphere, which in turn increases the amount of energy available for driving hurricanes." I believe it is consistent with the physics, yet avoids the need to discuss the thermodynamics. An advance version, where the thermodynamics can be examined in greater detail, will certainly be useful. When I attended a talk given by Kerry Emanuel a few months ago I was quite fascinated by the theory, and found thermodynamics to be interesting for once! -
CBDunkerson at 05:04 AM on 28 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
HS, by 'lawsuits going the other way' I assume you mean climate scientists suing 'skeptics' for defamation. Why would you "wonder whether people want this door open"? I'd say it is long past due. The simple fact is that the courts in most countries have strict standards on what sort of 'scientific' is admissible... and virtually the entire body of 'climate skepticism' would not qualify. Basically, climate 'skeptics' are even more at a disadvantage in the legal arena than they are in the scientific... and getting trounced in the court-rooms will make it much harder for them to make progress on 'public opinion' - the one area where the facts being against them isn't a major impediment. -
HS at 04:23 AM on 28 July 2012Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse
(snip) Either way, this will open the door to further lawsuits going the other way; there was the Rahmsdorf case in Germany already. I do wonder whether people want this door open. (snip)Moderator Response: [RH] Moderation complaints snipped.
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