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Comments 56751 to 56800:

56751. realscience at 07:56 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       Rob, Mann himself in 2009 produced that multi-proxy work, that had the MWP come back into view. It is in the front page of this discussion. There has been new proxies since then that look like they raise the temperature of the MWP. Daniel, I did not say I wanted an audit of mann, I said that like the earlier work, 2009 needs to be redone. It certainly does not need to be done by mann. That later 2009 work was actually put up for real peer review in a timely manner, and did not have the math errors of previous work. No trolling going on, simply statements that say new evidence seems to point to a hotter more global MCA. As to peer review working fast for M&M, that is doubtfull, but those doing the new construction are inside the climate community. IMHO the best course is to be open to new information. Some recent mann research says that some of the cold is not csptured well in the tree ring studies, as no rings grow in these years. Esper's criticism of previous TRW proxies has to do with underestimating cold years. There is room in science. A hotter MWP does not mean that today's hot temperatures do not have strong correspondence to ghg, and the sensitivity appears to be 2.5-4 degrees c for a doubling of concentration of carbon dioxide. Nailing down solar forcings, volcanic forcings, and ocean oscillations is helped not hindered by better historical models.
56752. realscience at 06:41 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       "[DB] Please note that the graphic given to you above is from Oppo's own study, showing that today's SST's are unparalleled in the reconstructions. The point is not there there wasn't a MCA (the appropriate term that the science uses for your MWP). It's that today's temps are global, are well above those of the MCA and are driven by mankind. And that a warmer and more synchronously warm MCA means a much higher climate sensitivity than is the current understanding. And that spells disaster." Did you look at Oppo's data points. Some are clearly at this level, meaning that it is within the margin of error that sea surface temperatures could have been higher. That is far from the certainty of unparrelleld. Have you read the text of the paper? Since we have many places hot during the MWP or MCA, and some colder, how is this different from today's climate anomaly, where some places are warmer and some are colder? There certainly is reasonable doubt that today is significantly warmer than the MWP. As to your later statement that this would mean ghg forcing would even be higher, that does not follow. What follows would be a more refined model based on better historical data. Higher variability does not at all require a stronger forcing. When looking at new evidence isn't it important to incorporate it instead of rejecting it out of hand. Is not the science more important than the politics? Certainly the existence of a MWP, does nothing to say today's temperatures are natural. There is strong evidence that they are not, that there is a forcing from ghg and feedback. But really, this thread is about the MWP, or MCA, as some that would like to erase the concept from history would call it. I am merely presenting the current evidence that the MCA was global in effect. That is unless you think Lapland, England, Indonesia, and Antarctica responded to the same local only warming. A MWP says nothing about the climate change we are going through now. There is strong evidence that ghg are a major component of that. But having good scientific, non-political, historical temperature reconstructions is important to accurately model future change.
56753. Rob Honeycutt at 06:33 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       realscience @ 142... You know, McIntyre has had over a decade to produce a multiproxy reconstruction that shows something different than Mann's work. Nearly a dozen other multiproxy reconstructions have been produced in the interim, all confirming the conclusions of MBH98/99. I just don't believe that the peer review process works any slower for McIntyre or anyone else (the Idso's also seem to have taken a long term interest in the MWP) than it does for the other scientists doing the same work.
56754. Tom Curtis at 06:28 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       BC @12, Anderegg et al state:

       "The UE group comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers of the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding researchers present in both groups (Materials and Methods). This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that ≈97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC (2). Furthermore, this finding complements direct polling of the climate researcher community, which yields qualitative and self-reported researcher expertise (2). Our findings capture the added dimension of the distribution of researcher expertise, quantify agreement among the highest expertise climate researchers, and provide an independent assessment of level of scientific consensus concerning ACC."

       That is entirely consistent with the graph shown, with the only group containing more than 10 scientists in which the ratio of UE (Unconvinced by the Evidence) to CE (Convinced by the Evidence) is better than about 3% is among those researchers having published between 20 and 50 papers on climate science. The total ratio is irrelevant. Anderegg et al composed their list of UE and CE scientists by looking at lists of names from various publications supporting, or dissenting from the IPCC AR4 concensus. There is no reason to presume the numbers from each group are representative of the proportion among all groups. For what it is worth, there where 904 CE and 472 UE scientists from the initial lists, and yes that does mean that nearly all of the scientists CE had published more than 20 papers on climate science, while only about 20% of scientists UE had.
56755. Rob Honeycutt at 06:26 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       realscience @ 140... "Magically the MWP reappears, but following the old line of defense it is now called MCA and down played as being local." And here we have another erroneous assumption that barely skirts the commenting policy here at SkS.
56756. Rob Honeycutt at 06:23 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       realscience @ 140... "The removal of the MWP seemed key to mbh '98..." How could that possibly be when MBH98 only went back 600 years?
56757. Daniel Bailey at 06:20 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       Now you stray away from the science into trolling. The point was that you wish an audit of Mann. And that the peer-reviewed science has been waiting on McI to much the same for years now. The Muir-Russell commission did so in essentially 2 days, pronouncing it a "not difficult" task. All of this is off-topic anyway. Please return the discussion to your supposed evidence regarding the MCA. Or lack thereof, as we are finding from the peer-reviewed literature.
56758. Rob Painting at 06:12 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       The global sea level trend is another approach to constraining global temperatures during the Medieval Period: This reconstruction isn't quite accurate, the trend was actually much flatter until the 20th Century, but it does give a good indication that the Greenland & Antarctic icesheets were stable during the Medieval Period, whereas melt is rapidly accelerating today.
56759. realscience at 06:12 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       Daniel, Reconstructions are being done, by those more skilled than I as we speak. Peer review takes time. I hope you anticipate better temperature reconstructions and follow the data, not just the personalities.
56760. Tom Curtis at 06:07 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       As an addendum to my 40, from my memory (which isn't the best) the formula for the means surface temperature of a planetary body with no atmosphere is (((1-albedo)*(Insolation/2)/(2*5.67*10^-8)^0.25)/2), which for a presumed albedo of 0.2 would yield an expected mean surface temperature for the Earth with no atmosphere of 160 K. For comparison, the Moon has a mean surface temperature at the equator of 220 K, and 130 K at 85 degrees North. It has an expected mean surface temperature of 200 K using the above formula, and an albedo of 0.14. Edit 13/7/12, 8:00AM - corrected bracketing in formula and the result; edited text noted in bold.
56761. dana1981 at 05:54 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       BaerbelW @ 39 - interesting point about the videos and views and ratings on that website. I guess that shows Giaever was right about one thing - you get a whole lot more attention for contrarian views on climate change(even if that contrarianism is based on total ignorance of the subject) than mainstream views (even if those mainstream views are based on sound science). But you don't just get criticism, you also get a lot of positive attention (hence Giaever's video's wholly undeserved high rating), which I suspect is why Giaever continues to speak on the subject - I suspect he likes the accolades from climate contrarians. This reminds me of curiousd's comment @9, where certain individuals would prefer to take a contrarian stance because it increases their odds of having a groundbreaking opinion. It also increases their odds of being very wrong, as Giaever is here.
56762. Daniel Bailey at 05:46 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       "These data points disagree with those in mann 2009 reconstruction, so it needs to be redone." Feel free. We're still waiting on McI...
56763. Tom Curtis at 05:39 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Various, when discussing the temperature of an Earth without an atmosphere, it is important to remember that in that case it would have no means to redistribute heat on the surface (the oceans would either freeze or boil away). As such, it would have both much higher and much colder temperatures than at present, as indicated by CBDunkerson @22. However, because energy radiated increases with the fourth power of temperature, that would make it much more efficient at radiating energy to space for a given global mean surface temperature. Therefore its global mean surface temperature would fall by at least 60 degrees C to be comparable to that of the Moon, and probably lower because the Earth would probably have a higher albedo than the Moon (although possibly lower than at present). Therefore Giaever's claim as stated is simply false.
56764. realscience at 05:37 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       Composer99, The removal of the MWP seemed key to mbh '98, but they had serious doubts about the proxies. Some excuses were made that it was really local. There was some bad math. Mann 2009 corrected the bad math, and used some better proxies. Magically the MWP reappears, but following the old line of defense it is now called MCA and down played as being local. These new studies seem to have more reliable proxies, and cast doubt on some of the proxies used. Certainly not using SST, when it is a major part of warming is a problem. The work needs to be redone with the new data. Certainly any good scientist would incorporate new data into the model, would they not. These data points disagree with those in mann 2009 reconstruction, so it needs to be redone.
56765. realscience at 05:31 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       For those interested in a blog from Duke on the SST reconstruction mentioned above http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/hockeystick-revisited Virtually all the proxies used to reconstruct temperatures over the past millennium — the proxies that yielded the hockey stick — have come from land-based sites. But what about the ocean? With oceans covering some 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, how can we infer global temperatures without using sea surface temperatures? These were just the questions asked by Delia Oppo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues, and they decided to do something about it. They analyzed sediment cores lying beneath the Indonesian Seas in the so-called tropical Indo-Pacific Warm Pool. Using the ratio of magnesium to calcium in the sediments as a proxy for sea surface temperature (SST), they found that “reconstructed SST was … within error of modern values from about AD 1000 to AD 1250, towards the end of the Medieval Warm Period.” In other words, temperatures during the MWP were comparable to today’s temperatures, putting a significant bend in Mann’s hockey stick stick just above the handle. and further comment about this means about ghg it does not follow that the current warming also must be due to natural causes even if MWP temperatures were comparable to today’s. Regardless of the cause of the MWP warming, the preponderance of the evidence is that the current warming cannot be explained by natural causes and is due to greenhouse warming from emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
       Moderator Response:

       [DB] Please note that the graphic given to you above is from Oppo's own study, showing that today's SST's are unparalleled in the reconstructions.

       The point is not there there wasn't a MCA (the appropriate term that the science uses for your MWP). It's that today's temps are global, are well above those of the MCA and are driven by mankind. And that a warmer and more synchronously warm MCA means a much higher climate sensitivity than is the current understanding.

       And that spells disaster.

56766. BaerbelW at 05:29 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Thank's Dana for this comprehensive rebuttal! Ivar Giaever's presentation and accompanying video must be deemed a "special gift" for the "fake-skeptics" who just like to see and hear their misconceptions validated by somebody who is a Nobel Laureate, regardless of how wrong he is about the topic. A point in case are the video statistics on the Lindau Laureate website: If you look at the list of best rated videos, Giaever's video is currently at rank 10 with 183 ratings and an average of 4,64 and it even tops the list of most viewed videos with 3223 views. These numbers are quite the outliers compared to the other videos available on the website. Mario Molina’s talk (which was given directly before Giaever’s) is the second most watched video, but still only has 274 views and 8(!) ratings with an average of 3,88. Something is clearly “wrong” with these ratings – especially as it is a no brainer of which of the two videos is the factually correct one. So, how can it be that a factually wrong presentation has been viewed a lot more and rated a lot better than a correct one? Most of us here will have an answer to this obviously rather rethorical question I guess!
56767. Composer99 at 05:23 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       realscience: As far as I can see, nothing in those documents necessarily shows that the MCA was a monolithic global warm period. They do show that those regions had their own warm spells during the medieval era. I do not think these papers are enough to cast doubt on the conclusions of Mann 2009 and your suggestion that they should is IMO vastly overstating the "take-home message" the three documents present.
56768. Tom Curtis at 05:21 AM on 12 July 2012
       Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
       Dikran Marsupial @46, the Mass Balance argument establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that net natural carbon sinks are larger than net natural carbon sources. That, however, is insufficient to establish that natural emissions are not the cause of increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Consider a situation in which an increase CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes an increase in the rate at which natural sinks draw down CO2 such that, up to a limit, any increase in CO2 is completely drawn down within a year or two. Suppose also that the increase in rate of draw down is capped, so that a sufficiently large increase in emissions will result in an increasing atmospheric concentration. Let the maximum rate of draw down by natural sinks be equal to k. Thus if En+Ea k, Un = k. Suppose then we have the situation that Ea = 0 before 1850, and k/2 after 1850. Suppose also that by coincidence, En increased from k/4 before 1850 to 2k after 1850. In this situation, emissions would have been k/4 before 1850, so atmospheric CO2 would have been constant. After 1850, if there had been no increase in En, En+Ea = 3k/4 so there would have been no increase in atmospheric concentration. In contrast, if the increase in En had occurred but the increase in Ea had not, net emissions would be 2k, so k CO2 would accumulate in the atmosphere every year, increasing the CO2 concentration. Therefore, in this scenario, the increase in natural emissions is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for the increase in atmospheric concentration. That makes it the cause of the increase in this scenario (although anthropogenic emissions would be a contributing factor to the rate of increase). Although you can set up bizarre scenarios like this that are (counterfactual) counterexamples to the mass balance argument as an argument that anthropogenic emissions are the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2, such scenarios are a small portion of all possible scenarios, and are complex (and hence relatively improbable). Therefore they have a low intuitive probability. Consequently the mass balance argument is a strong inductive argument to the conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are causing the rise in CO2, but it is not a deductive argument. (It is, of course, a deductive argument to the conclusion that net natural sinks are larger than net natural sources.)
56769. Daniel Bailey at 05:02 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       1. Your lead source has been misrepresented by the fake-skeptics (they studied 1 site in the Antarctic Peninsula), per the lead author (Li) himself. 2. Per your second source, todays temps are quite a bit higher than those during the MCA: 3. Your third source, the Esper study, delineates a long-term pattern of cooling that mankind has interrupted with the massive bolus injection of formerly-sequestered, fossil-fuel-derived CO2 back into the carbon cycle. There is nothing natural about that. Furthermore, given the already-realized warming and that yet in the pipeline (paid for but not yet delivered), there is little possibility remaining on resumption of that long-term cooling. Per Tzedakis et al 2012, “glacial inception would require CO2 concentrations below preindustrial levels of 280 ppmv” (for reference, we are at about 395 right now…and climbing). Earlier, Tyrrell et al 2007 examined this, concluding that we have already skipped the next glacial epoch. Furthermore, Tyrrell concludes that if we continue our present fossil fuel consumption, we will skip the next 5 glacial epochs. So no glacial epochs the next million years…now that's unnatural. We are currently at 395 ppmv CO2 and growing about 2+ ppmv year-over-year. No down elevators for mankind on this ride. Now a real skeptic would take pause and try to figure out why their understanding of the science was so out of whack with that of the mainstream climate science. Hmm, thousands of scientists (the real skeptics) devoting their lifetimes to studying something on one hand or some guy commenting on a blog on the other...tough call.
56770. tmac57 at 05:02 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       This article made me think of something that I had read on Wikipedia about the famous 'Monty Hall Problem' that gained much attention after being posed in Parade Magazine in Marilyn vos Savant's column. From Wiki:

       In her book The Power of Logical Thinking, vos Savant (1996:15) quotes cognitive psychologist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini as saying "... no other statistical puzzle comes so close to fooling all the people all the time" and "that even Nobel physicists systematically give the wrong answer, and that they insist on it, and they are ready to berate in print those who propose the right answer."

56771. Tom Curtis at 04:49 AM on 12 July 2012
       Christy Exaggerates the Model-Data Discrepancy
       angusmac @23, if you are not suggesting that you agree with those other criticisms, your comment is an irrelevant smoke screen.
56772. Tom Curtis at 04:46 AM on 12 July 2012
       Christy Exaggerates the Model-Data Discrepancy
       Angusmac @22, quoting my discussion of the 2 sigma range of Hansen 88 as evidence that observations are skirting the lower bound of the 2 sigma range of CMIP-3 (AR4) model predictions is disingenuous. Hansen 88 had a lower 2 sigma range, primarily because it did not include major forms of natural variability, in particular ENSO events and random (in time) volcanic eruptions. Therefore, that actual temperatures are skirting the bottom of the 2-sigma range for Scenario B from Hansen 88 implies nothing about their behaviour with respect to the AR4 models. The loose way in which you treat facts if they can be distorted to appear to support your position is very disturbing.
56773. realscience at 04:41 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       Danial and DSL, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X12000659 http://www.whoi.edu/main/news-releases/2009?tid=3622&cid=59106 http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html 3 very geographically diverse sets of data, constructed with good scientific methodolgy that should make anyone take pause and think that mann might be wrong. If the south pacific SST, antarctic, and N Scandinavia show the MWP, perhaps it is the global phenomenon that was theorzed before 1998, and not simply some localized events. That should make anyone skeptical about the mann2009 temperature Reconstruction. Do you have information why these papers should not be given strong weight?
56774. vrooomie at 04:28 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       I think an important point, in this discussion of what the temp of an airless Earth would be, is that on neither side would there be conditions under which present-day life would exist. Dr. Giaever asks the standard deniers' canard, "What is the optimal temperature of the planet?", as if that has never been investigated...and it has, and it's well-known. Roger D@34: your points are well-made, and dead-on, IMHO. For what it's worth, I've gotten *really* good at quickly identifying which conversation with any given denier/skeptic is going to be worth my time, by paying close attention to how they respond to established scientific research: I'm not old, by any means, but 55 is old enough to recognize how much of my remaining time should be spent yelling into the void...>;-/
56775. vrooomie at 04:19 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Thanks, DB: I missed the black body data of earth when I looked first.
       Moderator Response: [DB] Anytime, glad to help.
56776. Roger D at 04:04 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Daniel J. Andrews: You wrote @28: “it seems to me that the energy accumulating here on earth is negligible”. I have to say that this statement could be used as a handy but misleading sound bite along the lines of one that Giaever made when he publicized his APS resignation: He said something like “temperatures have been remarkably stable”, indicating there was no concern regarding earth’s energy accumulation because after all, average global surface temp is only less than a degree Celsius different than it was a hundred years ago. OK, the rate of accumulation may be subjectively “negligible” in comparison to the output of the sun, or to an extraterrestrial studying the energy distribution of our solar system, but it is far from “negligible” with respect to the climates that a significant fraction of life forms on earth will have to put up with.
56777. Roger D at 04:04 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       I have a "skeptical" acquaintance that occasionally emails news articles me. He sent one when Giaever resigned his membership in the APS over their statement on AGW. I contemplated a response along the lines of "well, that's his prerogative but from everything I can tell regarding his reasons, it seems he doesn't really understand the scientific case in favor of AGW and therefore APS's acceptance of the case” – but in the end I just sighed to myself and never responded knowing from experience the attention span for meaningful drill-down into the heart of Giaever’s criticism was unlikely. I am convinced that most “skeptics” in the general public simply just aren’t that interested in the science. A handy but shallow sound-bite will do just fine, thank you. Basically, I think that much (most ?) of the public believe that when a “really smart noble prize-winning scientist” says he doesn’t believe AGW is a problem, then that in and of itself counts as valid counter-evidence against the science. …” I suppose we all use simplifications but in my experience listening to “skeptical” friends and acquaintances, there is little or nothing below the surface. If say to Frank “OK Frank, I agree, water does account for the largest part of greenhouse effect, please continue and tell why human generated GHGs are not important with respect to climate change”, I almost always get another sound-bite. So Dana, thanks for the post. I will politely bring it to my “skeptic” friends’ attention.
56778. Daniel Bailey at 03:53 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Vroomie, the blackbody temperature of the Earth without atmosphere is essentially the same as that of the Earth with an atmosphere lacking in noncondensible greenhouse gases (assuming both are at thermal equilibrium). In addition to the Science of Doom resources I referred you to earlier, please see: 1. NASA Earth Fact Sheet 2. Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature (Lacis et al 2010) 3. Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect (Schmidt et al 2010) Not that it should matter, but I asked Dr. Mann for clarification on this and he indicated the above to be an appropriate response to this situation.
56779. DSL at 03:30 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       Esper et al. (2012) is getting serious play out in the trenches -- and being seriously misread. It's a strawman party: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/07/11/new-study-thoroughly-debunks-global-warming-will-media-notice
56780. vrooomie at 03:28 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Woops..sorry: I forgot to add to my prior post that I used the moon data because we're essentially in the same orbit as the Moon; there'd be some difference in albedo, but I couldn't find that data. Always learning!
56781. vrooomie at 03:27 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       I'll not pursue this much farther, in order to not stray too far off-topic but I believe an airless Earth would be MUCH hotter than 255K on the hot side. Source The bottom line that DOES relate is, Dr. Giaever's presentation was poor, at best, and deeply embarrassing, at worst. My point about having to battle "fake experts who happen to have a Nobel prize in some utterly unrelated field" stands....:(
56782. Composer99 at 03:03 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Personally speaking, Dr Giaever's admission that his stance on global warming is the result of a few hours' work on Google makes me very embarrased for him. It puts him in such august company as anti-vaccine activist and not-quite-celebrity Jenny McCarthy, who credits "The University of Google" for her understanding of vaccinology and the aetiology of autism spectrum disorders. If your understanding of some subset of science ends up being functionally equivalent to Jenny McCarthy's, then "Google U" is not your friend.
56783. Daniel J. Andrews at 03:03 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       

       I knew you meant 'antidote,' but I think 'antidope' is *way* funnier....;)

       Agreed! Very much funnier. I'm going to incorporate "antidope" into my vocabulary now.
56784. Daniel Bailey at 02:42 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       "It seems there is strong evidence that the MWP was glogal, not a local event" This is exceptionally vague (the word seems is the dead giveaway); you'll need to provide a link to substantiate what is effectively your personal opinion. While I'm pretty sure of both the source of your opinion, the blog you read it on and why both of you are wrong, the onus (i.e., homework) is on you to provide it for sensible discussion to ensue. And no, Virginia, regional studies doth not global make. Regardless of spelling. (BTW, a warmer MCA implies a greater climate sensitivity than is commonly accepted...do you understand the ramifications of that greater sensitivity?)
56785. Daniel J. Andrews at 02:38 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       

       In addition to this rapid surface warming, the global oceans have also been accumulating heat at an incredible rate - the equivalent of more than two Hiroshima "Little Boy" atomic bomb detonations per second, every second over a the past half century.

       Yes, but the sun produces the equivalent of 10^11 bombs going off every second, so if true, it seems to me that the energy accumulating here on earth is negligible. Just the part where he uses Kelvin to make his point is rather a boggling display of something not complimentary ( [-Snip-]). The lower parts of that scale aren't conducive to life, and don't occur here on earth anyway. On the other hand, that is an argument I hadn't yet seen so kudos for creativity?
       Moderator Response: [DB] Speculations on motive/character snipped.
56786. Daniel Bailey at 02:37 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Vroomie, IIRC, the temperature difference between the Earth as a black body at thermal equilibrium with no atmosphere and the Earth at thermal equilibrium with no non-condensing greenhouse gases is indeed negligible. Again, this is non-intuitive, so I refer you to the awesomeness that is the Science of Doom (listing of pertinent pages here with this page here being a good starting point. Additionally, relevant pages can be found at Skeptical Science here and in this paper by Ramanathan.
56787. JohnMashey at 02:36 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       See Reasons. Clearly: TEC5 (going emeritus in the bad way). Likely: PSYa (Austin, Happer, Singer), maybe IDE2/POL2. It is truly embarrassing when someone who once did good work goes like this. In the APS Petition list, Syun-Ichi Akasofu (retired eminent aurora researcher) is another sad case like that, although many of the signers haven't had particularly notable careers, and almsoet none ahve done credible (or any) climate research.
56788. Tristan at 02:18 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       BC, from the abstract: Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
56789. Kevin C at 02:13 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       vroomie, CBDunkerson: The difference between a (presumably rotating) planet with an IR-transparent atmosphere and no atmosphere is more than I can do in my head! I think this is the place to start, but I don't have time to dig through the issues.
56790. Tristan at 02:02 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Interestingly, I quoted the same Giaever passage when rebutting his speech on a contrarian site as evidence of his opinion's irrelevance.
56791. CBDunkerson at 02:00 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       vroomie, without an atmosphere the side of the Earth not facing the Sun would be much colder than 254K... but the side which WAS facing it would be much warmer. The average global temperature would indeed be 254K. Also, an atmosphere without greenhouse gases would likely actually be COLDER than no atmosphere at all... because the atmosphere would block some of the incoming radiation. Earth's current atmosphere retains more heat through greenhouse warming than it blocks as incoming radiation, but both effects exist.
56792. realscience at 01:54 AM on 12 July 2012
       Medieval Warm Period was warmer
       It seems there is strong evidence that the MWP was glogal, not a local event. We do have the wood's hole reconstruction of SST in 2009, that has similar temperatures. Esper in N. Scandanavia Mxd and TRW supports consistant higher temperatures. The new proxies seem to indicate that past temperatures may well have been above current temperatures. The margin for error is higher than Mann 2009 seemed to indicate, and this had much higher temperatures in MWP than mann 1999. Both of these newer proxies indicate the climate models that say today's temperatures are the highest they have been in 1400 years need to be reexamined. This does not mean ghg are not contributing to current warming, but does mean that natural variability is higher than current reconstructions seem to indicate.
56793. vrooomie at 01:26 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Piet, I believe English may be your second language (nothing wrong with that) but given your use of the word "antidope" in referencing the really good works of Molina and Crutzen, I had to laugh out loud at its accuracy..that's my takeaway of the day...thanks! I knew you meant 'antidote,' but I think 'antidope' is *way* funnier....;)
56794. vrooomie at 01:24 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Correct, Kevin@14: without *GHGs,* indeed Giaever is about right, but as DB said, Giaever stated "without an atmosphere." That's a glaring example of not much thought being put into a statement, by someome ostensibly thoughtful. W/o an atmosphere, Earth would be WAY colder than 254K! Words--and grammar-- matter...;) In any case, it's somewhat embarrassing to watch an otherwise intelligent person get it so notably incorrect.
56795. shoyemore at 01:17 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       I found Giaever's presentation uncomfortable and embarrassing in the extreme. So much so I had to turn it off. It is an object lesson for any Emeritius to stick to what he knows best, and not go shooting his mouth off. It was dreadful to see a once-respected scientist make an ass of himself. But no doubt there are those who will pander to his vanity, and seek to gain from the confusion spread.
56796. Piet R. Zijlstra at 01:08 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       After listening to Mr. Giaever I used as antidope the presentations of Mr. Crutzen and Molina. Together with the above rebuttal of Dana I do feel good again! During the speech of Giaever the public reacted on the humor, they laughed. I really wonder why nobody of the audience stood up and told Mr Grieaver to stop his non-scientifical talk. IMO it was not even pseudoscience.
56797. JohnMashey at 01:01 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       re: physicists I know a few Nobel physicists and they are quite sensible. In the APS Petition writeup mentioned in #6, {Austin, Happer, Singer, Lewis, Gould, Cohen}, with much campaigning,m managed to get ~200 signers out of ~47,000 aps members, I.E., <0.5%. Id' guess that's lower than most segments. The demographics were very skewed older, slightly skewed male, and somewhat skewed politically conservative.
56798. dana1981 at 00:58 AM on 12 July 2012
       Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
       Alexandre - I'm pretty sure grey means no data available. As noted, it's difficult to determine exactly what qualifies as a subsidy, and to obtain that information from every country. The IEA wasn't even able to estimate it for most of the green countries in Figure 1.
56799. dana1981 at 00:56 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       John @7 - as someone with a physics background myself, I prefer not to speak ill of physicists! At the same time, I've seen the Giaever xkcd behavior first hand quite a few times. Physicists tend to think pretty darn highly of their intellects, usually for good reason, but it can lead them into Giaever behavior :-)
56800. Daniel Bailey at 00:43 AM on 12 July 2012
       Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
       Kevin, what probably threw vroomie was the bit about "Without an atmosphere". IIRC, we know from Lacis & Schmidt that without the non-condensing GHG's Earth's temperature would plunge some 35ºK to it's effective black body temperature, 254ºK. The problem is that this is not necessarily intuitive as being the same as atmosphere-free.

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