Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 1148 1149 1150 1151 1152 1153 1154 1155 1156 1157 1158 1159 1160 1161 1162 1163 Next
Comments 57751 to 57800:
-
thepoodlebites at 04:52 AM on 19 June 2012Hansen 1988 Update - Which Scenario is Closest to Reality?
Why use predicted forcings instead of predicted/observed temperature change for IPCC scenario C? Predicted forcings assume what is being debated. I don't understand the reasoning here, please see IPCC scenario C. -
michael sweet at 03:16 AM on 19 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
In this article in press Hansen discusses estimates of climate sensitivity over a large range of past climates. The climate sensitivity varies somewhat depending on the surface conditions. Hansen gives references to other papers that make similar estimates. When I said "Few people seem to care if all the great cities of the world are gone in 300 years." I did not mean to include posters at Skeptical Science. -
Dennis at 03:10 AM on 19 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
ralbin @15: The point you're making follows up nicely with what I was asking Tom. There are precious few conservatives left in the USA who are willing to disgree (in public at least) with their bottom line argument that government can do nothing right. It's become an ideological litmus test for them that didn't exist twenty years ago. Hence, people like Adler and Wehner are few and far between. And I would bet that they don't get much funding for their work from self-identified conservative sources. A good example of type of person who once used to be considered reliable to at least recognize facts and offer a conservative response to them is George Will. But look at how he gets smacked down for misuse of facts (e.g., Arcic ice, the 70's "consensus") when he does try to deal with science. -
michael sweet at 02:54 AM on 19 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
Curiousd, "The only calculations I am doing is taking the climate sensitivity for the various effects as calculated by Hansen, et all, and plugging into C2/C1 = 2 ^ (t/tsensitivity). What is wrong with that? " The fast feedbacks include the time it takes for the ocean to reach equilibrium with the new atmospheric temperature. This is difficult to estimate, but shall we say 90% of equilibrium after 40 years. You need to take into account that the ocean cools off the atmosphere until it reaches equilibrium. The ocean has such a large heat capacity that it takes a long time to equilibrate. Your equation assumes that equilibrium is reached instantaneously. Dana at 37 suggests that the transient climate response, which is what you are calculating, is about 2/3 the equilibrium response. Most people do not try to estimate climate sensitivity after all the ice has melted. The climate will be so different then that the error bars would be very large. The sea level would rise 70 meters!! That would cover the first 20 stories of the buildings in New York! At some point you have to say it is too far out to work on. The fact that there is even a small possibility of all the ice melting should get people concerned. Few people seem to care if all the great cities of the world are gone in 300 years. Good luck with your class, it sounds like a challenging crowd! -
L. Hamilton at 02:43 AM on 19 June 2012Scientific literacy and polarization on climate change
Eric, those polar questions were designed by other researchers back in 2005-6, for use on the 2006 and 2010 GSS. I've taken a different, very specific and present-oriented tack when designing new questions for 2011 and 2012 surveys. But in terms of the general conclusions, it appears that details of question wording matter less than one might think. -
dhogaza at 02:39 AM on 19 June 2012Simply Wrong: Jan-Erik Solheim on Hansen 1988
dana1981 - wording's better, thanks. -
Composer99 at 02:34 AM on 19 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
ralbin: With regards to: So, what are the legal barriers and how would they be reduced? How would permitting be simplified? In the USA, this would mean reducing reducing local and state authority and de facto strengthening federal authority. Equally important, Adler's suggestion would likely involve reducing the ability of existing property owners to use court systems to obstruct wind developments. Again, this would tilt authority to administrative bureaucracies, most likely Federal level ones. This is hardly a libertarian, "conservative" approach. As far as I can see, from a logical perspective the "de facto strengthening" of federal authority does not follow from reducing local or state authority. In addition, you appear to be omitting the property rights of the wind farm developer in your statement about the property rights of nearby owners. Logically, reducing the ability of non-owners to override the developer's property rights (by interfering with a wind farm development) does not, of necessity, require additional bureaucracy or administration. -
dana1981 at 02:12 AM on 19 June 2012Simply Wrong: Jan-Erik Solheim on Hansen 1988
Lloyd @1 - I agree, the reason this myth persists is that certain individuals desperately want Hansen and co. to be "wrong", so once they arrive at that desired conclusion, their brains shut down and they don't investigate further to see what Hansen being "wrong" means (what it means is that fast feedback climate sensitivity is ~3°C, which is what Hansen currently argues). I still have yet to see a climate contrarian perform an intelligent and throrough analysis of Hansen's 1988 projections. Solheim, Michaels, Christy, etc. all stop when they reach the convenient "Hansen was wrong" conclusion. dhogaza @2 - fair point, I re-worded that sentence, although as Kevin notes, it's not quite as simple as just having better coverage. The point I was trying to get at is that Solheim should not be using HadCRUT3 when it has a known cool bias and has been replaced by HadCRUT4. There is absolutely no reason to continue using an outdated data set like HadCRUT3, unless of course the outdated data are convenient for the argument you're trying to make. -
Kevin C at 01:42 AM on 19 June 2012Simply Wrong: Jan-Erik Solheim on Hansen 1988
Except that HadCRUT4 didn't really address the coverage bias either. -
dhogaza at 01:33 AM on 19 June 2012Simply Wrong: Jan-Erik Solheim on Hansen 1988
"most likely from HadCRUT3, which due to its cool bias has of course been replaced by HadCRUT4..." This could be worded better ... it can be read as though HadCRUT4 was created for exaclty the reasons denialists claim adjustments are made to various temperature datasets, to make things seem worse than previous work indicated. HadCRUT4 was released because it has better coverage. Which just happens to remove the cool bias HadCRUT3 suffered from because of more limited coverage ... Anyway, call me paranoid but we don't want to toss the denialsphere things that can easily be quote-mined, right? -
Lloyd Flack at 01:23 AM on 19 June 2012Simply Wrong: Jan-Erik Solheim on Hansen 1988
This is an example of what happens when you try to win rather than understand. Rater than try to understand Hansen's calculations and then criticize based on that understanding Solheim has read Hansen maliciously, looking to find fault and missing context and reasoning. Hardly the only denialist that I have seen do that. In fact most of their rebuttals of climate science pieces suffer from this flaw, at least in my experience. -
curiousd at 00:20 AM on 19 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
Hi Sphaerica, Sure, all kinds of surprise effects might come about - like releasing methane from the Arctic....but my motivation here is just to find out: Is the temperature increase, including all effects long and short term, always given by concentration proportional to exponential of the increase? This academic question is of interest to me because my path to do my bit here runs through education and includes being able to explain this stuff accurately to people most of whom have PhDs in physics, but none of whom have much of a clue about climate science. They will think this exponential dependence of the concentration on temperature increase is really neato in a geek like way and quite unexpected, but will ask questions. The first question likely will be: if this relationship includes the effect of the ice albedo, then how can you continue to have the same exponential dependence, in principle, even after the ice is melted? I think the discussion you give in post 38 tells me that "No, the exponential relationship cannot be in principle constant over the very long term with unchanging climate sensitivity." Tom Curtis, Your post was extremely helpful. So in my post 38 all I did was to use the exponential dependence and apply it to the climate sensitivities calculated by Hansen, and then I found out that only if one includes the effects of the Aerosols in 1951 - 1960, as is proper to do and is what they did by their normalization of the baseline, then the predicted temperature increase is bang on what happened. But Dana, none of that 2.8 degrees in the 1981 paper was a long term effect. -
curiousd at 22:46 PM on 18 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
Hi, Dana and Michael and everyone else here, I am trying to pin this down, that's all. So I understand it. In the 1981 Hansen calculation he used a succession of models and his 2.8 climate sensitivity included (a) CO2 alone (1.2 degrees) (b) water vapor feedback by holding the relative humidity constant (1.9 degrees)(c) something called the moist adiabatic lapse rate - which I have no clue about yet (down to 1.4 degrees) , and "Clouds at fixed temperature levels so they move to higher altitudes as temp increases" (back up to 2.8%) so that 2.8 % does not contain any long term feedbacks!! Elsewhere on this site I have been told that indeed the 2.8 does not contain the long term ice - albedo feedback. The only calculations I am doing is taking the climate sensitivity for the various effects as calculated by Hansen, et all, and plugging into C2/C1 = 2 ^ (t/tsensitivity). What is wrong with that? -
Eric (skeptic) at 21:13 PM on 18 June 2012Scientific literacy and polarization on climate change
From the paper about the survey: "Hunting is more likely than climate change to make polar bears become extinct.” It's a trick question. Before polar bears could be hunted to extinction in the 1970's there was a treaty banning their being hunted from airplanes, etc. and they were not endangered by climate change at that time. Similarly, efforts to prevent their extinction from climate change would be similarly successful although with the criticism that it would result in a limited preserve and not a geographically wide and sustainable habitat. In general the survey is biased against respondents who believe in adaptation, e.g. "“Sea level may rise by more than 20 feet, flooding coastal areas.” By when? Hundreds of years from now? -
pvincell at 20:12 PM on 18 June 2012Scientific literacy and polarization on climate change
To elaborate, my experience thus far leading public discussions on climate literacy suggests that respect for differences will open the door to a populace that is more accepting of the scientific consensus on climate change. Most conservatives are people of good will, just like most liberals. I don't see how I can play a role in opening minds to the science of climate change if I am criticizing or demonizing people with ideologies that differ from mine. Furthermore, while I may not agree with the solutions my conservative friends propose, they have a right to bring to the table, those solutions that fit their values. -
redscourge at 18:31 PM on 18 June 2012Carbon Pricing Alarmists Disproven by the Reality of RGGI
I would not be such an opponent of the carbon trading schemes if [snipped accusations of dishonesty]Moderator Response: TC: Posting at Skeptical Science is a privilege, not a right. Please review the comments policy and ensure your posts comply so the privilege is not withdrawn. -
redscourge at 18:29 PM on 18 June 2012Carbon Pricing Alarmists Disproven by the Reality of RGGI
@funglestrumpet: This sort of thing is why the skeptics claim that they are being silenced; because people such as yourself are actively wishing for them to be silenced, and others who happen to be in higher places are [snip]! if they're wrong, they don't need to be silenced, just shown to be wrong.Moderator Response: TC: All caps snipped. Please review the comments policy and ensure your posts comply with it to avoid moderation. -
DSL at 13:16 PM on 18 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
Gillian et al., I've had decent success when I avoid using absolutes (labeling, categorizing, using terminal rhetoric) and when I ask questions. The paid-for machine gains traction on the closed minds of those who want the silly memes to be true. Work on some of those minds publicly in comment streams and in face-to-face discussion. Open them up to the possibility not that AGW is real, our responsibility, and bad, but simply that it's possible that you can be reasonable, that someone who accepts the theory is not actually an ideologue or memebot. Model reasonable dialogue. Find common ground. Pop a few hypotheticals. Draw the person out from behind the curtain of ready-made opinion. Even spending a week working on one person in a public venue is worth it, because of the sharp contrast it provides to the Rush Limbaughs and Christopher Bookers of the world -- the opinion-makers. And, of course, modeling effective and respectful dialogue is a gift that keeps on giving. In the last few weeks, I've been able to move people from very loud and cliched claims of hoax to being open to talking about solutions to the problem. Of course, this has typically been something like, "Well even if you're right the carbon tax will be a total fail." It has taken a lot of time, but I'm pretty sure I'm not just working on one person at a time. It also confirms and informs the people who accept but don't understand the details. It's better than a "Shut up, you Repubnutter." -
sidd at 13:08 PM on 18 June 2012New research from last week 22/2012
Further, re Rignot, can we derive a figure for the amount of ice sliding into the ablation zone ? -
chuckbot at 11:58 AM on 18 June 2012Greenhouse gases are responsible for warming, not the sun
I think that fingerprinting is a powerful attribution tool, but occasionally I run into someone who claims that the GHG signatures (upper atmospheric cooling, night/day and winter/summer trends) are caused by increased humidity, which is ultimately caused by the sun. Of course, this is contradicted by observations of the solar activity, but I am curious if there are other problems with this hypothesis? One answer might be that model results don't show the same fingerprints from solar forcing, even though they do show the effects of increased humidity (eg, http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends ). But then again such people tend to dismiss model results. Any other ideas? -
Eric (skeptic) at 11:36 AM on 18 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
GillianB: "the main game is persuasion, not classification" I am glad that other people see that. There have been other threads here that discussed potential ways to appeal to conservatism like promoting self sufficiency and getting government out of the energy subsidy business. Seems to me that a steady dose of persuasion along with some facts about inevitable long term consequences and the carbon commons will be more effective than horse trading to try to win over politician by politician. -
From Peru at 10:53 AM on 18 June 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #24
Hmmm, unlike things like "sustainable growth" , sustainable development is not an oxymoron. Of course if "development" is identified with the economic model that rules the world since the Industrial Revolution, that is, an endless economic growth that depends on the intensive use of limited and non-renewable natural resources, sustainable "development" is an oxymoron. However, if "development" is identified not with identified with things like the GDP growth, but with the quality of life of the common people (health, a purchasing power that permits everyone to cover at least the basic needs, social equality, education, etc) then not only sustainable development isn't an oxymoron, but sustainability becomes a necessary condition for development. -
Riduna at 10:12 AM on 18 June 2012Carbon Pricing Alarmists Disproven by the Reality of RGGI
Unlike the RGGI, the Australian Carbon Tax ($23/tonne) is far more pervasive, affecting all parts of the economy and comes into effect on 1 July, 2012. The relevant legislation was strenuously opposed by the Liberal-Country Party Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott. every step of the way. Its application continues to be bitterly opposed by him and his Party with dire warnings of economic doom, loss of export markets, food prices escalating, entire towns being wiped off the map, industries closing, mass unemployment, the nation being driven into poverty. Unprecedented drivel coming from a supposedly responsible politician who aspires to become Australia’s next Prime Minister. The present Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is of course rubbing her hands with glee, knowing full well that none of these outcomes will result from introduction of the carbon tax, a tax which is levied on the 500 or so largest GHG emitters, not on individuals. The Australian price on carbon is much higher than that levied by other countries and, unlike the RGGI has far wider coverage and applies nation-wide, so it will be the one to watch over the next year or so. Its effects on the economy are predicted to be zilch and that being the case, we may see Tony Abbott loose his position as Opposition Leader and prospective Prime Minister. Where global warming and its effects are concerned, Abbott makes the Tea Party look moderate! -
GillianB at 09:28 AM on 18 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
ralbin@15 & 18 -- "Trying to be nice to these people in hopes of persuading them to come to your side is a delusion." Yes, it certainly appears that no amount of persuasion will convince the right. Indeed this is almost a definition of "the right" these days. Far-right and central-right in the US and Australia seem prepared to cause a lot of damage on their way to getting and keeping power. That makes for an asymetrical power struggle because the left isn't prepared to trash the economy, the environment and science itself. Thanks for the perspective on the right in post-WWII Europe. It makes sense. I think Germany's position is also bolstered by the fact that Angela Merkel is scientifically literate. As was Margaret Thatcher. -
Tom Curtis at 09:04 AM on 18 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
curiousd @34 and 35, on page 958 in the article, Hansen writes:"The radiative calculations are made by a method that groups absorption coefficients by strength for efficiency. Pressure- and temperature-dependent absorption coefficients are from line-by-line calculations for H2O, CO2, O3, N2O and CH4, including continuum H2O absorption. Climatological cloud cover and aerosol properties are used ..."
That means aerosols equivalent to the average over the period of climatology (probably 1951-1980, although I am unsure) where used in the model. This means changes in aerosols after that period are not included in the model, but because of clean air acts in Western Democracies in the 1970s, and the collapse of Eastern European industry with the fall of the Soviet Union and unification of Germany, the increases in aerosols have been small over that period. -
Bob Lacatena at 06:45 AM on 18 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
CuriousD, Concerning this comment:How can there be a constant climate sensitivity, including long term feed backs, if large fractions of the world ice were gone? If there were no ice left would there not be an "as bad as it can get" effect on the climate sensitivity? No ice left means no ice-albedo feedback anymore? (Yes? No?) I am completely on board with the notion that AGW is probably an existential threat exceeding all out nuclear warfare, but for me it is really, really important to have all my ducks in a row when teaching this stuff. So I do not see how the idea of a constant eventual increase in temperature is associated with CO2 doubling if you compare the situation with lots of ice left (now) with no ice left (eventually BAU), because of the "as bad as it can get effect in terms of "ice melting - albedo lessening feedback".
You seem be making two errors in your general appreciation of the situation. First, you seem to have latched onto the ice-albedo feedback as "the feedback" (possibly because it is something that is very easy to visualize and conceptualize). Second, you seem to think that climate sensitivity is a hard and fast "universal constant." There are many feedbacks in both directions. The feedbacks for any particular configuration (starting temperature, type of forcing, continental and ocean current configurations, etc.) are very, very different. Those parameters affect the exact feedbacks that occur, and that in turn varies the climate sensitivity. No two scenarios have exactly the same climate sensitivity. It's not a simple linear equation. It's an extremely complex, multi-dimensional problem with thousands of variables. There is no way to truly know exactly what the climate sensitivity is in our particular situation... short of running the exact experiment we're running right now, which is to apply a forcing and then see what happens. What we do know is that: 1) Studies of immediate observations point to a climate sensitivity between 2.5˚ to 4˚ C. 2) Studies of models, which attempt to incorporate as many factors as we can, as best we can, point to a climate sensitivity between 2.5˚ to 4˚ C. 3) Studies of many past climates -- admittedly all different from today's, as they all must be -- point to a climate sensitivity between 2.5˚ to 4˚ C. It's never going to be a scenario where you can say "well, ice albedo feedback will do exactly this, and methane feedback will do exactly this, and... it all adds up to exactly this." [As an aside, concerning the Arctic... suppose all of the ice does melt? What about all of the methane that is stored, on land and in the oceans? What temperature change would it take to release that, and how much might be released? Part of the problem here is that one can't necessarily anticipate all of the feedbacks, and properly quantify them. No matter what you think of, you're likely to be in for some rude shocks.] -
WheelsOC at 05:23 AM on 18 June 2012Seagrasses Can Store as Much Carbon as Forests
I'm wondering if there's an appreciable ecological difference if the carbon being sequestered came from dissolved CO2 or from the carbonates in the water. Lots of hardwater and marine plant species take carbonates in preference to CO2 for their metabolism, and if the seagrass is removing more carbonates that CO2 from the water to store in the soil, isn't that making the stuff less available for organisms that depend on carbonate skeletons and shells? -
zinfan94 at 03:58 AM on 18 June 2012Seagrasses Can Store as Much Carbon as Forests
The next step: Estimate the amount of carbon that could be sequestered if we rebuilt the Mississippi River delta and the Gulf of Mexico coastline. Then do a cost analysis that would allow us to carry out this important task. Then examine river deltas around the world, to see if similar actions are warranted. -
dana1981 at 03:08 AM on 18 June 2012Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong
Russ - I guess that depends on what's considered 'significant'. Transient climate response tends to vary fairly proportionately to equilibrium sensitivity, so a lower sensitivity also means a lower transient response, and a smaller short-term warming. Not a huge difference, but like I said, it depends what you consider 'significant'. -
dana1981 at 03:05 AM on 18 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
curiosd - as michael sweet notes @36, the 2.8°C climate sensitivity value is an equilibrium value. That's how much the planet will ultimately warm once it reaches a new energy balance. That takes time because of the heat storage in the oceans. This is called the thermal inertia of the climate system. It takes many decades - even over a century for the new equilibrium state to be reached. What you're looking at is called the transient climate response - how much the planet warms immediately - which is roughly two-thirds of the equilibrium response. -
L. Hamilton at 01:23 AM on 18 June 2012Scientific literacy and polarization on climate change
Lloyd, you might check our Polar Geography paper cited above for a different take on these issues, based not on worldview but on self-identification ranging from 1=extremely liberal to 7=extremely conservative. We also use the 11-item GSS "science literacy" scale, different from the 8-item science literacy (w/o old-Earth questions) + 15 math word problems that Kahan et al. use for "science & numerical literacy." Anyway, our findings (highlighted in our Figure 1 and Table 3) replicate theirs in certain respects while differing in others. A journalist asked me recently for a more detailed comparison. That could appear online as a footnote somewhere soon, I'll link to it here if so. -
ralbin at 00:07 AM on 18 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
GillianB@16. The game is developing sensible policies to meet the challenges of global climate change. Encouraging the (-snip-) of individuals like Adler is potentially self-defeating as these long-falsified libertarian ideas are part of the problem. This problem has two dimensions; one is the actions and influence of sincere but misguided individuals like Adler. The second and greater dimention is that "(-snip-)" like Adler provide the ideological justification for what would otherwise be transparently exploitative actions of the wealthy. This is a major feature of public life for the past few decades. For a concise and actually prescient account, try David Harvey's short history of neo-liberalism. Developing sensible climate policy requires combating these powerful and deeply entrenched special interests, An important aspect of such efforts is discrediting their ideological support. Lloyd@17 - Thatcherite Britain was one of the major sources of neo-liberalism, though I agree that the strong evangelical component of American conservatism is a pretty distinctive feature. When you refer to the pragmatic secular conservatism of the rest of the world, I suspect you are mainly thinking about Europe (possibly Australia as well, I'm not competent on this point). The relative moderation of conservatism in much of western Europe is an interesting consequence of WWII and the nature of the postwar reconstruction of western Europe. The catastrophe of WWII had the general effect of discrediting a large spectrum of right wing politics, pushing the political center leftward. There is a nice discussion of this point in Tony Judt's fine book Postwar. Conservatism in Europe and America has been consistently obsessed with attacking the left for approximately 2 centuries.Moderator Response: [DB] Inflammatory snipped. -
michael sweet at 23:14 PM on 17 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
Curiousd, Geoengineering schemes have been proposed using sulfates to lower surface temperature. The Chinese have started implementing these efforts ;). One side effect of this scheme that is not often mentioned by proponents is that it significantly lowers evaporation from the ocean surface. This causes drought. Sulfates also make ocean acidification worse. Choose your poison: heat or drought. The 3C climate sensitivity is an equilibrium change. You are doing your calculations using only the realized temperature change. The climate is not in equilibrium so you are substantially underestimating the sensitivity. All the observed change so far is from the "fast" feedbacks. These take decades to come to equilibrium. Remember, we are talking about the entire Earth. The slow feedbacks, like melting ice sheets, take decades or centuries to come into play. These are difficult calculations to make. Read more before you make any conclusions based on your own calculations. For myself, I rely on Hansen's papers (and the IPCC) and do not attempt to check the calculations. -
Lloyd Flack at 22:47 PM on 17 June 2012Scientific literacy and polarization on climate change
I think their world view measures both confound some different variables. Is communitarianism a concern for and identification with the community as an entity itself that should be cherished? Or is the community seen as a means to look after the welfare of its individual members? That is, is it really universal altruism? A couple of the questions used to measure it were definitely the latter. The others could be measuring either. Is egalitarianism a desire for equality of outcomes? Or is it a desire for equality of rights and opportunity? Or is this axis about authority and responsibility? Some of the questions concern the first of these. Some concern the second. None as far as I can see have much to do with the third. The way these axes were conceived and the questions asked reflect the political viewpoints and concerns of those who asked them. In this case it looks like how a progressive would frame things. Interestingly, I've seen libertarian attempts at a two dimensional array of political orientations. These are motivated by not feeling that they are accurately represented by the usual left-right political axis. Quite fair enough, but what they choose for axes does reflect their concerns and others may see them as not the most useful ones. -
curiousd at 22:32 PM on 17 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
O.K. Tristan. Maybe I see it? They normalized their zero point on the graph to 1950, and by the 1940s there had already been a lowering of temperature due to aerosols. So the predicted 0.8% increase was by this kind of normalizing, taking the aerosols into account. So if I am right that 2.8% climate sensitivity would have produces a 1.3% increase with no aerosols, maybe this means that the aerosols we have contribute about half a degree cooling? BTW the sensitivity doubled in their model four when they put into the model that clouds move to a higher altitude as temperature increases. Does this mean we can fight global warming by having vehicles/factories that produce as much of certain kinds of obnoxious smog emissions`as possible? Only partially kidding, here. -
curiousd at 22:01 PM on 17 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
Tristan, I can find no place in the article by Hansen, et al in 1981 that states they include sulfates in their calculations. GHG effects only. And at the same time on many places in this site the fact that the 1981 calculation gets the 0.8 degree C increase right is taken as excellent confirmation of their approach. I don't see how all this agrees with your statement, which is - I guess? - that the observed temperature increase is not expected to agree with a GHG only calculation?? -
Russ R. at 21:38 PM on 17 June 2012Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong
"Forecast temperature trends for time scales of a few decades or less are not very sensitive to the model’s equilibrium climate sensitivity. Therefore climate sensitivity would have to be much smaller than 4.2ºC, say 1.5-2ºC, in order to modify our conclusions significantly." Hansen (1988) -
Tristan at 17:50 PM on 17 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
CuriousD The temperature anomaly is not the same as the increase in temperature due to GHG forcing. Human activities force the temperature both up and down. Therefore the temperature impact of GHGs = temperature anomaly + temperature impact of sulfates et al. -
Lloyd Flack at 15:15 PM on 17 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
I think conservatism in the US has become different from conservatism in the rest of the West. I think conservatism there has become obsessed with attacking the left and will attack most things that the left supports just because the left supports them. Libertarianism is threatened by the market not having an answer to AGW and hence is looking for reasons to believe it does not exist. Denialism is a club created by libertarians that has been enthusiastically adopted by many conservatives as something to beat the left with. With the libertarians the matter is what they are protecting. With conservatives it is part of the general attack on the left. Most other Western countries have a pragmatic secular conservatism rather than the religious conservatism or the libertarianism that seem to form most of the right in the US. What denialism you fing elswhere is i think mostly ispired by the denialism in the US. . -
curiousd at 14:33 PM on 17 June 2012Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
More focused statement about what bothers me about understanding how climate sensitivity concept jibes with 1981 model result..what is a fast response, what is a slow one and so on. Here are two answers that were given to my questions about the fact that apparently the concentrations of CO2 C2/C1 = 2^(t/2.8), and then about the 1981 calculation of Hansen. I had asked which of his models were plotted in the graph. 1. Dana 1981: Hi curiousd. I believe Figure 6 is a plot using Model 4, actually. If you look at the top of page 3 of the paper (page 959 in the journal), it says Model 4 has the climate sensitivity they're using of 2.8°C for doubled CO2. Prior to that they note that they didn't have enough knowledge at the time to include the vegetation feedback for Models 5 and 6, so 4 was advanced as they could get with reasonable confidence. 2. Am not sure string for this next comment here but: curiousd @53, across a wide range of CO2 concentrations, including all those that have been experienced on Earth in the last 600,000 years or are projected under anthropogenic emissions, doubling CO2 results in a 2-4 degree increase in temperature if we ignore slow feedbacks such as melting of ice sheets. The IPCC best estimate for that figure is 3 degrees C. But if (second comment) the climate sensitivity of about 3 degrees is not slow feedback, then if CO2 has increased by ~40% since pre industrial levels, doesn't this mean, since by first comment they have climate sensitivity of 2.8 in 1981 graph, that C2/C1=1.4 if 40% increase in CO2 since pre industrial era. But C2/C1 = 2^(t/2.8) should have been observed, t is temperature increase. (Check....at t = 2.8, C2/C1 = 2) So 1.4 = 2^(t/2.8) ; solving t - the temperature increase - would be about 1.3 degrees. But we have only seen about 0.8 degrees. I do think they get the 0.8 degrees for 1981 model that had just CO2 direct effect plus holding relative humidity constant to get a water vapor feedback.But then the "climate sensitivity" is not 2.8 degrees????? This all would make sense to me if that 2.8 degrees climate sensitivity did contain a long term feedback we have not seen yet. But from the second comment, that 2.8 does not include the ice/albedo thing, and should therefore be short term??? But then we should have seen over a degree by now? There is a good possibility I am just being dense about this, I know. -
GillianB at 11:10 AM on 17 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
Ralbin@15 -- Surely it's OK to discuss 'rhetorical strategy'. It's just another phrase for climate communication and that's a valid topic for discussion. I guess that labelling people and putting them in boxes is valid too, as long as we keep sight of the fact that the main game is persuasion, not classification. -
ralbin at 09:59 AM on 17 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
Tom@7: I'm afraid that you are discussing rhetorical strategy, not real policy choices. This kind of conservative ideology is one of the major reasons we're in this predicament. Trying to be nice to these people in hopes of persuading them to come to your side is a delusion. The reason so many conservatives repudiate the concept of global warming is that they implicitly, and occasionally explicitly, recognize that admitting the existence and magnitude of the problem undermines their ideology. For a good example, take a look at the part of Rachel Maddow's interview of Senator Inhofe where he admits that global warming seemed reasonable to him until he thought about the consequences of conceding its existence. You may think the conservatism means defending the status quo, but Adler's version of conservatism, widely prevalent in the USA, is a form of neo-liberal (Coasian) libertarian radicalism. Composer@9: So, what are the legal barriers and how would they be reduced? How would permitting be simplified? In the USA, this would mean reducing reducing local and state authority and de facto strengthening federal authority. Equally important, Adler's suggestion would likely involve reducing the ability of existing property owners to use court systems to obstruct wind developments. Again, this would tilt authority to administrative bureaucracies, most likely Federal level ones. This is hardly a libertarian, "conservative" approach. Several of Adler's proposals are sensible, including regulatory reforms to facilitate offshore windpower developments, but claiming that these are "small government, conservative" policies is window dressing. -
Charliec65 at 09:49 AM on 17 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
On the conservative side of things, the Economist, has a great special on global warming in the current addition. They don't start from a position of denial, represent the data accurately, and speak to the benefits and dangers of the warming. Absolutely nothing is going to come from the Earth Summit, except more warming. -
michael sweet at 09:32 AM on 17 June 2012Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
Dallas Texas suffered $1.5-2 billion dollars of damage from a hail storm last week. This link to a Reuters article gives some detail. Apparently from 1990-2010 the total damage in the USA from severe weather (except hurricanes) was about $20 billion. This single storm was 10% of that. Doug Bostrom has some interesting links at Real Climate in the monthly thread look around comment 206. Dougs links include peer reviewed articles about the frequency of hail storms and global warming. -
JohnMashey at 07:48 AM on 17 June 2012Pal Review - the True Story and the Fairy Tale
re: 65 yes It was not accidental that I though the de Freitas / Michaeles / CR history worth writing up, starting a year ago. -
funglestrumpet at 07:24 AM on 17 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
The way things are going, I am grateful that anyone on the same side of the fence as Monckton can show that they have actually considered the situation. What we always seem to get is denial that Climate Change is happening, or if it is, denial that it is anything to worry about. Adoption of these positions seems to be a right-wing rite of passage, even though it is obvious that they neither know nor care where the passage in question is leading them. I rather think that we are at the last chance saloon. The science is not going to win the day with the denialati. Even the knowledge that YouTube etc. has a wealth of evidence showing those who are responsible for the lack of action on tackling Climate Change does not deter them, and I would not be in their shoes for all the tea in China when the public eventually sees through the deception. So let's encourage Professor Adler. We might as well, nothing else is working. Overly pessimistic? Possibly, but who reading this seriously expects anything dramatic to come from next week's Earth Summit 2012? And we really are now at the stage where only dramatic action is going to guarantee a tolerable future for the next generation and beyond. This blog should now be at the stage where it is discussing the scientific merits, or otherwise, of the remedial actions currently proposed instead of seeing a "Glimmer of hope" because a right-winger speaks some sense for a change. -
scaddenp at 06:34 AM on 17 June 2012Fred Singer Promotes Fossil Fuels through Myths and Misinformation
My basis for worrying about coal is the very large volume of it available and very cheap price of it. Tar sand oil is very expensive. I think it is likely that technological advance and increasing oil price will move us away from petroleum and leave tar sands behind as well. However, this is also likely massively increase demand for electricity and in many places, coal is the cheap way to do create it - especially if you have subsidies. -
r.pauli at 06:18 AM on 17 June 2012Glimmer of hope? A conservative tackles climate change.
What a great discussion. But we have let go of science to talk about politics. As politics should properly be separated from science. But if politics is to enter this fray, then Alder should be scientifically vetted. Most politicians seem to regard the 2007 IPCC as the accepted science - quite dated. Like trying to fight a house fire based on initial reports of smoke. Rather than the flames before us now. -
Andy Skuce at 05:43 AM on 17 June 2012Scientific literacy and polarization on climate change
L. Hamilton: Thanks for those comments. I'm looking forward to reading your paper when it's published. An open access version of Lawrence Hamilton's Polar Geography paper is available here. -
Mike3267 at 05:11 AM on 17 June 2012Hansen 1988 Update - Which Scenario is Closest to Reality?
This post at RealClimate does a good job of discussing model-data comparisons more generally.
Prev 1148 1149 1150 1151 1152 1153 1154 1155 1156 1157 1158 1159 1160 1161 1162 1163 Next
