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Bob Lacatena at 09:09 AM on 17 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
54, koyaanisqatsi, That's why they are not, in any reasonable sense of the term, "skeptics." -
Tom Curtis at 08:49 AM on 17 May 2012CO2 has a short residence time
Martin A @114, does your two-box model include a term for ongoing volcanic emissions of CO2, or does it tacitly assume that all volcanic activity ended with the onset of the industrial revolution? -
Tom Curtis at 08:41 AM on 17 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
Helena @119, as the graph was not present in the first and second drafts, it was obviously added in response to comments on the second draft (see section 4.2.5 of the IPCC procedures). As such revisions are explicitly described in the procedures, such revisions are part of the the full IPCC review process. Following that revision, the final draft is voted on and adopted by the panel (section 4.4). For the graph to not be a product of the full review process, it would need to have been added after adoption by the panel, a claim you have no evidence for. As it stands, a brief skim of early pages of the second round of review shows at least two reviewer comments that may have suggested to the lead authors the need for the revision. In particular, the reviewer for the US Gov suggested "more discussion of better characterized shorter period trends" (3.34), and the reviewer for the Australian government suggests that using simple linear trends obscures important details. (3-11) While neither reviewer requests the specific modification made, the addition of the shorter trend lines to the graph would certainly help satisfy each reviewers stated concern. Regardless, the issue here is whether or not an unjustified inference is made from the chart, and as clearly and repeatedly demonstrated above, it has not been. In contrast, Monckton not only makes unjustified inferences from his alternative chart, but grossly distorts the data in the chart to begin with. -
skywatcher at 08:18 AM on 17 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
Helena is that the best you can do? Nothing quantitative, no analysis, and a request that others should go away and do work for you? I think, from this, we can safely say that Helena has nothing to add to this discussion. -
Piet R. Zijlstra at 08:00 AM on 17 May 2012Richard Alley's Escalator
How can we count the number of people who change their mind after seeing this video? I will help!! Pieter -
KR at 07:37 AM on 17 May 2012CO2 has a short residence time
Martin A - You might want to look at some of the earlier discussions of this topic, such as Bolin and Eriksson 1958, where this theory is discussed/developed. You might also be interested in looking up the Bern model, also here, which was supplied to IPCC researchers for (relatively simple) mid-term carbon cycle modeling. Generally speaking, a two-box model will not be sufficient to examine ocean sequestration. The Bern model (not the most complex out there) uses one atmospheric box, four ocean boxes, plus an additional four for the biosphere. -
funglestrumpet at 07:14 AM on 17 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Doug H @ 6 From what I can see we are already at Peak Oil, or rather the plateau at the top before the decline. The important point is that supply is only just keeping up with demand while the developing economies are building and buying more and more cars and other products which use oil, which can only exacerbate the situation. (China now buys more cars each year than America does.) An IMF research team is now warning of $220 oil per barrel by 2020, so I guess we will soon find out what happens when people cannot afford the stuff. As for unintended consequences, catastrophic collapse of food production might be another. It is obvious that growing regions will move polewards or upwards as the climate warms, indeed it is already happening. We can analyse the matter scientifically. If we plot food production on the ‘y’ axis of a graph, and put time on the ‘x’ axis, we can put rate of change on the ‘z’ axis. If this graph follows Catastrophe Theory, then we can expect a sudden and dramatic collapse in food supply to occur as part of the process. Perhaps not all crops, and not those that do collapse all at the same time, but catastrophic nonetheless. We might adapt to a gentle change, but hardly the almost complete loss of a staple food. Perhaps this has already been studied and all is well. But if it hasn’t, one wonders if those that are so opposed to taking action to combat Climate Change realise the magnitude of the risk they want us to take. -
Martin A at 06:31 AM on 17 May 2012CO2 has a short residence time
"Individual carbon dioxide molecules have a short life time of around 5 years in the atmosphere. However, when they leave the atmosphere, they're simply swapping places with carbon dioxide in the ocean. The final amount of extra CO2 that remains in the atmosphere stays there on a time scale of centuries." Can you let me have a reference where I can look this up please? When I write down the differential equations for a simple two-box model, with an injected mass of CO2, in addition to an ongoing equilibrium exchange between atmosphere and sink, the result I get does not agree with your explanation. I want to resolve the difference. -
PT_Goodman at 06:20 AM on 17 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
Thanks for the responses. The AGW skeptic in question claims to have read all--give or take--research papers. But when I pin him down on what any particular research paper actually concludes, he always provides links to CO2 Science and/or WUWT rather than to the supporting paper itself. I end up locating the article in question and provide him with a link, but he will not read it. he has no technical background, so it is no doubt difficult for him to comprehend most papers. That may make it necessary for him to depend on AGW entertainers (Limbaugh claims it be "just an entertainer" as will) such as Anthony Watts. There is a dishonesty to his debating. You can't debate someone who is not interested in the truth, someone who believes what they believe because they believe it. I think I'm probably done with him. -
Helena at 03:49 AM on 17 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
Tom : "The more interesting point is, was the graph a product of the full review process, and quite plainly it was." I cannot find any review comment asking for any kind of change to the original graph. I obviously cannot prove that i cannot find any, as it is impossible to prove a negative. Can you therefore provide me with any review comment(s) that would suggest that the final graph is "the final product of the full review process" ? Thanks. -
chriskoz at 00:19 AM on 17 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Good point raised in this article. Thanks dana and Molly. I think more alike points will be raised in future. I begin to realise that our adaptivity to changing climate as the society is far smaller than our adaptivity as individuals. Deniers don't understand that: they will keep saying "1 or 2 degrees, no big deal, I can deal with that...". However, a society is as fragile as the echosystem within which it lives... I am waiting for more evidence of that type of vulnerability, which would eventually convince the contrarians that climate change is real and will affectr them, just like smokers are convinced that lung cancer is real and affects them (as the overal group, even though some narcistic individuals think they can escape it). -
heijdensejan at 23:12 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
CBDunkerson: Even with their deliberately biased results they still have a problem as some regions are warm around the year 1000 and others around the year 1300, from some they only use one proxy and other proxies in the same report show something completely different etc. etc. Also they do have a spacial issue as some regions are under represented. I'm sure they have tried one time or another in the past and the result might not have been "satisfactory" I'm also amazed that people "believe" them immediately and without any scepticism. -
Bob Lacatena at 22:59 PM on 16 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
This alone should be clear evidence of Monckton's ability to accurately present data. Compare his hand-drawn graph in Tom's comment to these... using the exact same time frames, with both the HADCRUT and BEST data. It should be noted that the GISTEMP data cannot be used, because they don't go back prior to 1880, deeming the data before 1880 to be to unreliable to use.
Here is the same graph with one more trend added, for 1979 to the present...
[Click on each to go to the original woodfortrees.org plot]
Honestly, how can anyone trust his interpretation of the data when it is as sloppy as this?
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muoncounter at 22:57 PM on 16 May 2012It's cosmic rays
Move over, galactic cosmic rays! Bring on the 'blazars:' ... black holes can emit high-energy gamma rays and are then called blazars. ... This particular radiation interacts with the optical light that is emitted by galaxies, transforming it into the elementary particles electrons and positrons. Initially, these elementary particles move almost at the speed of light. But as they are slowed down by the ambient diffuse gas, their energy is converted into heat, just like in other braking processes. The process of converting electron/positron kinetic energy into heat by 'braking' seems a bit mysterious. But have no doubt, the 'ABC' crowd will spin this into their next version of 'the answer.' -
CBDunkerson at 21:26 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
heijdensejan, obviously the problem is that no reputable scientific journal would publish the 'CO2Science temperature record' because, even ignoring the fact that the papers are misrepresented, they have specifically picked out only papers which show 'temperature increases' (though some are things like rainfall changes which they falsely claim to be temperature increases) around the time of the MWP. In short, they are deliberately biasing their results. Frankly, it always amazes me how many people can look at their collection of '100% warming data' and not immediately realize what a sham the site is. -
heijdensejan at 18:49 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
If the MWP was indeed warmer then today and the "evidence" shown by CO2Science would actually support this, then McIntyre should make a multi proxy analyses from the data and publicise this in a scientific journal (not E&E). The Idso's are already funded by Heartland, the data is already selected and gathered so the job to compile a global multi proxy analyses should not be to big / expensive. As they have not done so, it is clear that either they are not interested, or the outcome would undermine their conclusion. Of course then they would also have to face the fact that a warm MWP would also mean a high climate sensetivity -
missk at 17:32 PM on 16 May 2012World Energy Outlook 2011: “The door to 2°C is closing”
Hi, I'm in a college Environmental studies class and for the term paper I wanted to write about Geothermal Energy and why my city should make the switch. Is there anyway to calculate seattle wa's current use of energy (which is hydropower) and see what the prediction of environmental damage avoided and money saved if we made the switch to relying on Geothermal 20 years from now? I'd appreciate any resonses, Thanks K -
Arnost at 15:18 PM on 16 May 2012Tiljander was flipped upside down
No it wasn't. McIntyre is incorrect. -
skywatcher at 14:30 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
koyaanisqatsi, you are quite correct that CO2science misrepresents the results of papers in their database. Apart from the OP, I can say this from personal experience, as there's a paper of mine in their database, conclusions suitably misrepresented. The paper documented an observed warming of climate, CO2science suggest that this immediately means the climate is 'returning to normal' so there's nothing to worry about!! The paper actually made no discussion of the forcings involved (climate needs a forcing to change), and climate's not a pendulum, desperate to stay in one place, that will swing the other way when nudged one way. I asked them to remove the paper from their database, you can guess the result of that... -
KR at 13:46 PM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
I seem to remember the same issues in Pittsburgh, PA, in the 1980's-1990's - older sewage systems that shared overflow with storm drains, resulting in river pollution when overstressed. Just a fact of life for older drain systems - but unfortunately affected by changes in precipitation. Change always affects more than you expect, plus and minus - because nobody has a good grasp on all the side effects. -
scaddenp at 13:27 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
As far as I can see CO2 science depends on people believing their representation of the science papers, secure in the knowledge that their audience will not actually read the papers. Get him to actually read the papers instead. However, as to changing the mind of someone desperately looking only for confirmation of a bias, then good luck. We are all guilty and the only good trick we have against the bias is science. You could ask what data would change his mind. If he can imagine no data that would do that, then dont waste your time. -
Composer99 at 13:06 PM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Pertinent to the points raised by Steve Case & dana1981, Skeptical Science has one or more posts discussing the ecological impacts of global warming in which a graphic is shown with relative current and projected future weight of global warming and other concurrent impacts. All of these impacts, of course, are in action at the same time, meaning that each is a 'force multiplier' of the others. The impression I get from such articles, which is an impression that crosses into the impact of global warming on weather and economic affairs, is that much of the damage from global warming is not really a result of its direct effects, but rather from its action as a force multiplier of other, concurrent events. The Moscow heat wave in particular springs to mind as an example. -
DSL at 12:58 PM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
colinc, whatever other reasons there may be, the use of all-caps is also an accessibility issue. -
DSL at 12:52 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
koyaanisqatsi, feel free to tell the interlocutor that SkS, one and all (doubters included, no doubt), say, "put up or shut up." That person will be treated with respect as long as the claims are evidenced and the mind is open. Evidence-free rants will be discarded or be the subject of mirth (and then discarded). As for me, I'd love to hear solid evidence for either "it's not happening" or "it's not bad." It would be the best news I've had in 16 months. I'm not holding my breath, though. People keep saying that stuff and they never deliver. -
dana1981 at 12:48 PM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Steve Case @5 - the point is that due to the increased frequency of heavy precipitation events in the Great Lakes region as a consequence of global warming, the sorts of sewage problems you describe will happen more frequently. Nobody is claiming that the problem wouldn't exist in the absence of global warming. -
Paul Magnus at 12:32 PM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Here something that may be unexpected... but certainly is shocking.... when we close the border what happens to the animals....? "While the fences around Israel are necessary, according to Soffer, so too are corridors to allow the free passage of animals. Such passages could be monitored by soldiers for days at a time to allow the animals, such as snakes, to cross both ways." Defending Israel’s borders from ‘climate refugees' http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=269948 -
otter17 at 12:24 PM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
To me, I find mitigation worthwhile if just to prevent large portions of the Great Plains of my home country (USA) from turning into a desert climate. Though, I guess the regional research indicates we may be too late to prevent that, since the region is marginal prairie. Sad, but the farmers and ranchers will have to make due or quit, reducing America's proud farming heritage in the region (and food production). Aside from my sentimental value attached to that, I do not get the ridiculous risk management practices that some contrarians follow. We have a very manageable, human-controlled risk to the economy on one hand, maybe even a benefit to the economy according to some analyses. On the other hand we have a quite likely uncontrollable and irreversible risk to livelihood, ecosystem services, and economies. Sounds like a no-brainer unless you believe in a conspiracy theory that the whole climate change risk portion was made up (a position even my father took for a short while). -
PT_Goodman at 12:24 PM on 16 May 2012Medieval project gone wrong
I'm currently debating a Climate Change "skeptic" (denier would be the appropriate term). He has been using "data" from the CO2 Science web site. So naturally, I've looked at the graphs he links to at that site. [He dismisses SkS and will not read articles here.] My take has been that the CO2 Science misrepresents the data and research done by the actual researchers, such as Mann and Jones, Moberg, etc. I'm happy to learn, by coming to SkS, that I am not imagining things. Still, my skeptic acquaintance clearly will never change his mind about AGW. I'll read this article again; there a strategy for dealing with such people. This comment is no doubt OT. If so, move it. -
skywatcher at 11:37 AM on 16 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
Tom, points taken re FAQ, my bad! Not that I have ever suggested that the graph is anything but scientifically accurate of course. Monckton's chart, complete with its egregious line painting (the "1860-1880" line is particularly misleading as he's drawn a line from ~1852 to ~1885) ... is it the "anti-Escalator"?? According to Monckton's chart, global warming is almost always happening very rapidly (more rapidly than the long-term mean), and periods of apparent hiatus are mere illusions. We should be even more worried! Monckton is an alarmist!!
Does Helena think Monckton's graph is better than the one in the IPCC report?
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Doug Hutcheson at 11:09 AM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
colinc @ 2, the irony is that your scenario also plays for Peak Oil: when energy gets too expensive for the average family to use, the outcome is the same as if that energy was not available at all. Perhaps PO, which is likely to be a creeping crisis rather than a crunch, will give us the incentive to progressively wean ourselves off the fossils and onto renewables, in a time and manner that gives us a better chance of survival. Having said that, your scenario of drought-induced blackouts is apocalyptic, but not unreasonable. This is just another negative impact that the nay sayers are happily blind to. The OP should be a wake-up call to the fact that AGW is likely to have profound and unpleasant effects that, at the very least, balance any possible benefits. -
Steve Case at 11:07 AM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
the 1993 Cryptosporidium outbreak in Milwaukee wasn't "Global; Warming" I drove by the Howard avenue purification plant every day on my way to work. And at that time there was a great deal of construction going on at the plant. I have no idea what it was, but the fact that there was never seemed to make it into the Milwaukee Journal. We talked about that fact at work. I live on the north side of Milwaukee and I wasn't affected. I don't recall that anyone at work was either. The reason for the overflow into Lake Michigan is that cities like Milwaukee have a combined sanitary storm sewer system and when it rains, shit flows into lake Michigan. It's been that way for years. We have the "Deep Tunnel" which is supposed to store water when there's a rain storm, but everyone knew that it really wouldn’t work for "cloud Bursts" which do occur "Global Warming" or not. I remember flying back to Milwaukee in 2008 the airline flew over the Milwaukee harbor on the approach, you could clearly see the sewage line spreading out into the lake. Local State and Federal government didn't want to spend the money to separate the storm and sanitary sewers and we got sold a bill of goods with the Deep Tunnel project which cost billions and really doesn't work. We all knew from the start that a few thirty foot diameter tunnels weren’t going to hold all the water from a big storm -
Tom Curtis at 10:41 AM on 16 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
skywatcher @115, while I agree that the graph was intended to summarize information in a simpler form, it was also in the Technical Summary of the IPCC report. Indeed, the version above is the version from the technical summary, which differs from that in the FAQ in the relative placement of the maps and line graph. Further, the FAQ is still intended to be scientifically accurate, with FAQ's being referenced by other parts of the report. Far more importantly, the IPCC explicitly discusses the rapid warming in the early to mid 20th century in the report. There is no question of their attempting to hide relevant information here. So the question of the appropriateness of the graph realy comes down to two issues - is the "inference" from the graph of accelerated warming justified; and is the graph simple enough to be understood by its intended audience of politicians and policy makers. Some of the utterances of politicians and policy makers give me reason to doubt that any graph could be simple enough for them to understand, but there is no doubt that the "inference", ie, the point it was designed to illustrate, is justified. It is interesting to note that Monckton has given us an example of what he thinks the graph should have looked like:
This graph he calls "the unvarnished truth". Careful examination shows otherwise. To start, the three clearly marked lines, which are given as being "equal slopes" in the legend, are not equal slopes, with the 1910-1940 line being slightly steeper than the 1975-1998 line. In contrast, the actual trend for 1975-1998 is greater than that for 1910-1940 (see table below). What is worse, the duration (length on the x-axis) of the lines do not correspond to their stated duration, with the 21 year 1860-1880 line having the same width as the 31 year 1910-1940 and the 1975-1998 interval. Further, although the 1975-1998 trend is only just greater than the 1910-1940 trend, the 1975-2005 trend, ie, the trend corresponding in duration to the actual "trend line" shown by Monckton is 0.188 C per decade, a difference from the 1910-1940 trend if Monckton had drawn in the actual trend lines.
Being fair to Monckton, he does not call those bold pink lines "trend lines". But if they are not trend lines, then they can have no legitimate purpose on the graph. Their purpose is solely to deceive the eye, which is notoriously bad at estimating trends. By giving the eye a bold target, Monckton seeks to exaggerate the similarity between the three warming periods, both as to duration and slope.
No doubt, as a fair minded person, Helena has noticed these "errors" by Monckton, and can point us to her public criticism of them? Or is she so busy trying to reheat false "skeptic" talking points that she has no time to criticize the genuine errors of fake "skeptics".
HadCRUT3v +/- HadCRUT4v +/-
1860-1880 0.105 0.159 0.109 0.16
1910-1940 0.153 0.056 0.135 0.056
1975-1998 0.156 0.08 0.071 0.077
1975-2006 0.189 0.052 0.195 0.05
1850-2006 0.042 0.007 0.042 0.008
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Glenn Tamblyn at 10:35 AM on 16 May 2012CRUTEM4: A detailed look
Thanks for this post Kevin. I knew CRUTEM3 didn't have as good station coverage in the Arctic, but I was flabbergasted by their land record not being hemisphere-weighted. This update was obviously needed. -
bill4344 at 09:45 AM on 16 May 2012New research from last week 19/2012
Seconded. These compilations are greatly appreciated, Ari and co.. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:44 AM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
colinc... On SkS it's preferred if you bold or italicize your emphasis rather than using all caps. If you're not familiar with the techniques for doing this you can click on the "Click for tips on posting..." and it will show you the HTML tags. -
colinc at 09:36 AM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Pardon me, what do you (the "moderator") mean by "all-caps (now converted)"? I did not, and "your" [Preview]-button confirmed, that no more than a half-dozen words were "all-caps."Moderator Response: [Sph] The rule is not "too much all-caps." It is no all caps. If you follow the link to the Comments Policy you will find instructions for how to use bold and italics for emphasis. -
Tom Curtis at 09:05 AM on 16 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
scaddenp @21, giving Carbon500 the benefit of the doubt, he (or she) has concluded that because "there are large regions where the oceans are cooling", that there are individual oceans which are cooling, while others are warming. If that is his/her conclusion, then it is false. Every ocean, and every ocean basin on Earth is warming, although small regions within each ocean basin are cooling. This confusion may have been aided by the fact that "oceans"can act as both a mass noun, as in the passage quoted above (in which it refers to all the water within the worlds oceans), and as a collective noun, in which usage it would refer to all of the Earth's oceans (ie, the Pacific, the Atlantic, etc). To suppose there is a contradiction between the quoted passage and the statement that the worlds oceans are warming, one must suppose that "ocean" is used as a mass known in the quoted passage, and a collective known in the statement. -
skywatcher at 09:02 AM on 16 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
Agreed Tom, Helena's post smacks of rather desperate trolling, as clearly she has no supportable quantitative substantive issue with the published graph, that was in an FAQ and is correspondingly uncomplicated. Recent warming is faster than earlier warming. -
Tom Curtis at 08:54 AM on 16 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
Helena @113, while interesting that the second draft of the IPCC AR4 included a simpler graph than that included in the final product, your concluding question is simply fatuous. Any revision to the first or later drafts of IPCC reports, by there nature, have not gone full the "full review process". The only way to ensure that everything in the IPCC reports has gone through the full process is to avoid any revisions, so that the final report is identical to the first draft. The more interesting point is, was the graph a product of the full review process, and quite plainly it was. This attempt by you to beat up a fake controversy over the graph shows to my mind that your interest here is only in generating controversy, with the purpose of obscuring the obvious. Your comments are the result of deliberate trolling rather than genuine inquiries or differences of opinion. I suggest readers bear that fact in mind when reading any of your future posts. -
colinc at 08:22 AM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
Molly's observations are quite astute and accurate but fail to grasp the "real" problem with water. Imagine, if you will, 2 consecutive winters (N.Hemi.) in which western US states see less than 1/2 their "normal" precipitation. (Greater than 80% probability w/in the next decade.) Water levels in Lakes Mead & Powell (just 2 out of many) no longer have enough water to drive the turbines in the base of their respective dams. The power goes out, "permanently" (recall that most Americans have the attention-span of a gnat), for roughly 20+ million people from L.A., San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc. That means NO water coming from anyone's tap, no pumps to fuel vehicles, no refrigeration... you get the picture, sorta'. The "thing" is, when the bottled-water runs out (off store shelves) there will not be a single "safe" drop of water to drink for anyone within 100 miles or more of those sprawling eyesores. At least 1/2 of those people will be dead within a couple of weeks. Sure, some may be able to haul out buckets from "found-water" and rub 2 sticks together to make a fire to boil the water. However, that will not eliminate all pathogens and does absolutely nothing to remove VOCs. Moreover, that is the situation for the inhabitants of every major metropolis on the face of the planet. If you live in a city, when (not if) the power goes out in "your area," the odds of your survival are not good and diminish exponentially (or at least geometrically) with each passing day. Note, there are a plethora of reasons for power-outages in every region, CME's, "terrorist" attack or another "economic" shock as bad or worse than the one we find ourselves in still. There are more than a few financial bloggers who perceive the latter as a high-probability event within the next decade.Moderator Response: [DB] Please refrain from using all-caps (now converted to lower case). -
scaddenp at 06:13 AM on 16 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
Carbon500 - cut straight to point. In what possible way does the IPCC statement contradict "the oceans are warming"? More to the point, do you not agree that the OHC measurement show that the oceans are warming? More to point, the OHC measurements show Plimer is misleading. -
actually thoughtful at 05:57 AM on 16 May 2012Climate Change Consequences - Often Unexpected
I am quite convinced the "negative feedback" that the skeptics keep searching for will be a reduction in human population, most likely from a disease that finds it niche in a warmer, wetter world. The other choice, to voluntarily reduce emissions and maintain the world we have now, is deemed "to risky". This makes me sad. -
funglestrumpet at 05:51 AM on 16 May 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #19
There is a good series of programmes on BBC R4 Tuesday mornings (over three weeks) covering extinction events. The first one (available on their 'listen again feature') cites global warming as a major player and compares the current meteoric rise in CO2 with the glacial rise during these events. Next week's programme is going to investigate whether we are experiencing another extinction event. It might be an idea to post a link to each of them. As for issue of the week - my answer is 'no', I think this site has a lot to be proud of, especially the courtesy and profesionalism it displays. -
Helena at 05:39 AM on 16 May 2012IPCC graph showing accelerating trends is misleading
It seems that first and second order draft of the IPCC report didn't show the published graph, but this one instead : http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/7768990?n=383&printThumbnails=no I cannot find any critics to it, but it takes a while to go through all the comments. I sure wouldn't criticize it. Does this mean that the published graph did not go through the full review process ? Did it go through any ?Moderator Response: [RH] Fixed typo. -
Dikran Marsupial at 01:31 AM on 16 May 2012Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
Mastzdj wrote "Now please help me understand what is steadily increasing in response to the accelerating atmospheric concentration of CO2 ." The key here is to realise that the observed climate is a combination of a deterministic response to a change in the forcings (e.g. CO2 radiative forcing), known as the "forced component", and the chaotic variability that does not depend on the forcings (e.g. the El-Nino/La Nina oscillation - ENSO), known as the "unforced component" or "internal variability of the climate" or simply "weather noise". It is difficult to see the effect of one element of the forced component in a graph that shows both the forced and unforced component. If you want to see the effect of CO2 more clearly, then first you need to control for the effects of things like ENSO and changes in other forcings. If you do so you will get a plot like this:
Where the effect is clearly evident (click the "intermediate" tab for an explanation and a link to the journal paper).
"Are you willing to open this site to not only beating down the stupid comments made by the right wing talking heads on TV, but to honestly looking at the experiments, the data, the interpretation of that data, and the alternative conclusions that can be drawn?"
Yes of course, however do bear in mind that the interpretation of the data and allternative conclusions may not be as strong as you may think. A pysical explanation for a step change would be a bit start, I am a statistician, so I am much more impressed by statistically significant evidence and a plausible physical explanation than I am of subjective interpretation of data with no statistical support or physical mechansim.
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:12 AM on 16 May 2012Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
There are statistical tests that can be used to determine if there is evidence of a step change in time series data, and when used correctly show that there is little evidence for a step change. IIRC this has been discussed in detail at Tamino's blog. It seems to me that the step change is essentially the eye being fooled by the spike caused by the 1997/98 el-nino event. If you plot the UAH data without that blip, it looks to me rather like the warming has continued at pretty much the same rate throughout, certainly it no longer looks as if there has been a step change.Our eyes are very easily fooled into seeing structure in data that simply isn't there, which is why we have statistics. While there are problems with statistical hypothesis testing, it is very useful for guarding against incorrect intuitions. If the evidence for an hypothesis is not statistically significance, then you should not promulgate the hypothesis on the basis of the observations alone. If you also have convincing theoretical justification, that is a nother matter.
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dana1981 at 01:03 AM on 16 May 2012Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
The 'step change' myth is addressed here. -
Composer99 at 01:02 AM on 16 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
Carbon500 @17: You appear to be confusing or conflating linguistic accuracy with precision. As long as there is a global-scale energy imbalance causing accumulation of energy within the world ocean (causing the ongoing increase in global oceah heat content), then the statement The oceans are warming is entirely accurate. Increasing resolution and documenting or discussing temporal or spatial variation in the accumulation of ocean heat content adds to the precision of this statement but does not change its accuracy. As far as encouraging investigation & critical thinking in the classroom goes, Plimer's How To Get Expelled From School is a decidedly inferior tool. Indeed, the way the questions are worded it appears to encourage disruption in the classroom and thoughtless contrarianism among students - rather than a spirit of critical inquiry based on reviewing theoretical, experimental and empirical findings in the sciences. -
dana1981 at 01:01 AM on 16 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
Carbon500, people often simplify complicated issues when communicating with non-experts. Sure, there are some regions of the oceans and some regional land areas which have cooled, but on average, the oceans and land have warmed a lot. We're talking the equivalent of detonating two Hiroshima atomic bombs per second in the oceans, every second over the past 50 years. So yes, it is entirely accurate to say the oceans have warmed as a whole, even though some small ocean regions may have cooled. Sometimes when you try to get too nuanced you lose sight of the big picture. -
Bob Lacatena at 23:18 PM on 15 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
17, Carbon500, "Were I a school teacher, I’d be getting my class to investigate this further..." I'm a little surprised you didn't take this advice to heart before posting, because all of the questions you posed are easily answered with just a little research. Really, Plimer was spewing nonsense, and you are reinforcing it here as if there is some grave doubt about the reality of the answers. Why? If you yourself don't understand and know the answers to the questions, why are you defending Plimer's untenable position (or attacking the response)?
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