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Riccardo at 03:20 AM on 11 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
The overall efficiency of a wind turbine is limited mainly by the amount of kinetic energy from the wind it is able to convert into blades movement. It does not produce waste heat, the energy remains as kinetic energy of the wind. Friction and efficiency of conversion to electricity produce heat; they are are much smaller, though not negligible. I don't have any reliable number but I don't think that the waste heat from wind turbines has any significant effect. Thermoelectric power plants probably produce much more heat per unit power output. The boundary layer mixing explanation isn't very convincing too. As it happens, wind turbines are often placed on top of a (windy) slope, where vertical mixing should already be significant. An intriguing result, though clearly irrelevant from an energy and climate point of view. -
70rn at 03:08 AM on 11 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
I think you need to clarify your point; re - 'no such thing as local warming'. Sure - an energy input will disperse over a wide area - and the amount of joules will be fairly fixed - but the resultant temperature change is spatially dependent. If I introduce heating from a gas burner in my house - the temperature change is greater near the source. Similarly with figure 1 above, it's very much a localized effect. But this is moot point regardless. Night time does create a thermal stratification of a given air column - with warmer above and cooler below. If you mix up that air column - you end up bringing warmer air down towards the surface - and thus the temperature at the surface goes up. You havent created any new warmth - there's been no enrgy input to do so - you've just moved what's already there around. Amazingly, there's a marvellous example of this mixing process creating spatially localised temperature fluctuations, with out changing the earth's global heat budget as a whole, on a much larger scale. It's called weather.Moderator Response: TC: Edited to remove all caps. Compliance with the comments policy is not optional. Please ensure you comply in future, as failure to do so may result in deletion of your post, which requires much less effort from moderators. -
John Hartz at 02:24 AM on 11 May 2012West Antarctic Ice Shelves Tearing Apart at the Seams
ajki: Thank you for bringing this new paper to everyone's attention. I will proceed to transform the news release into an SkS article. The graphics that are provided by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research are extremely well done. -
ajki at 01:46 AM on 11 May 2012West Antarctic Ice Shelves Tearing Apart at the Seams
Another paper, another area, same topic: Press release AWI (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research) Hartmut H. Hellmer, Frank Kauker, Ralph Timmermann, Jürgen Determann, Jamie Rae: Twenty-first-century warming of a large Antarctic ice shelf cavity by a redirected coastal current. Nature 10 May 2012, Vol 485, page 225. DOI: 10.1038/nature11064 [nature.com, Abstract] -
vrooomie at 01:19 AM on 11 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
"The critique on the course was conducted in an unethical fashion by people who are untrained in the field and so had many errors and naive assertions." Tom@2, I do hope you are not referencing any of the folks who regularly moderate and/or write articles on this site: To refer to them as "unethical" and 'untrained in the field" is a folly, in and of itself. They have shown themselves to be exemplars of rigorous, honest, and unmotivated-by-policy scientists, who use the scientific method, strictly. ALL are highly qualified to instruct and, indeed, to critique courses such as yours, without the ad hominem pokes such as you've employed. -
chriskoz at 01:04 AM on 11 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
According to Professor Tim Patterson in the radio interview above, the course in question has been scrutinised and approved by the relevant department in Carleton Uni. Also the balance between "academic freedom" and the scrutiny of peer reviewed verification is mentioned to underscore both the legitimacy and the high standard of the course. But clearly the above self-touted balance have failed miserably in this case: the course being evident and undefendable nonsense, in contradiction to any peer-reviewed literature. The teacher of the course (Tom Harris) rather than defending his ideas considered here, as the adherance to the Aristotelian ethics would suggest, instead apears to create confusion with his drive-by comment @2. Where is the source of such uttermost failure of educational ethics at Carleton? Who is the dean responsible for this course and how was is approved? These are very obvious follow-up questions that beg to be answered. Academic freedom can be sacrified in favour of any inquiry, as too much freedom has been apparently given to some irresponsible people here. -
Composer99 at 00:38 AM on 11 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Tom Harris: I should also like to inquire how you think the demonstrably false claims made in the course square with, say, the obligations set out in the CUASA collective agreement on academic freedom: Academic freedom carries with it the duty to use that freedom in a manner consistent with the scholarly obligation to base research and teaching on an honest search for truth. -
Composer99 at 00:14 AM on 11 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Tom Harris, you assert of your CASS critics:Several of their issues were completely false factually
No doubt you can provide specific examples? With references to back up your position? -
Bob Lacatena at 23:27 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
It speaks volumes that Mr. Harris dropped in to emotionally lambast his critics (and yet with no substance offered whatsoever behind his complaints), and yet he does not himself address or defend a single point raised in the post. -
muoncounter at 23:01 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
I fail to see how the report can be considered 'unethical,' when it offers quotes attributed directly to Mr. Harris: - "There hasn’t been an acceleration in glacier retreat worldwide" (TH) - When you look at most rural datasets, you don’t see global warming.‛ (TH) These are factual statements and presumably Mr. Harris offers his students some documentation to back them up. Or is this version of 'teaching' no more than 'take my word for this'? - You know, we haven’t had any warming since 2003 and CO2 is still rising. I know that’s not climate, but still it just doesn’t really make a lot of sense.‛ (TH) If it is not climate, why mention it at all? - Every day in the newspaper I read about another idiot biologist who says that the world’s biota is going to be destroyed by another temperature rise of a degree or two. -- video shown in class I am not aware of newspapers being reputable scientific sources. If these aren't direct quotes from Mr. Harris, then the study can be considered unethical. That's something he or his students could verify. -
JMurphy at 22:18 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
I was involved with a 'discussion' about this over at The Martlet (the student newspaper at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), which mainly involved Paul MacRae, another self-proclaimed climate 'expert'. Unfortunately, Poptech became involved and it spiralled quickly into a dark abyss of his own creation...as usual ! -
Kevin C at 22:03 PM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
Nick: That doesn't seem right to me. My understanding of the UHI (from Wikipedia) is that it is primarily associated with changes in albedo and heat retaining properties of surfaces, rather than heat emissions from human activities. We might be able to check this: Sunlight ~ 100W/m2 High city population density = 10^4/km2 = 10^-2/m2 Domestic energy consumption ~ 10^3 W/capita Thus human energy emissions ~0.1*sunlight Suburbs probably 10 times lower. How about wind farms? A 5MW turbine sits in a space of about 5x10^5m2, generating an average of 1-2MW. Again about 2-4W/m2. A bit lower than dense city, but higher than suburb. OK, it's not clear cut. -
Alex The Seal at 21:28 PM on 10 May 2012Scientist Sets Record Straight on Medieval Warming Research
Excellent study on the European MWP Here "A gridded reconstruction of spring-summer temperature was produced for Europe based on tree-rings, documentaries, pollen assemblages and ice cores. The majority of proxy series have an annual resolution. For a better inference of long-term climate variation, they were completed by low-resolution data (decadal or more), mostly on pollen and ice-core data." Using a number of different proxies they mapped temperature anomalies giving a detailed regional view of the warming. -
Daniel Livingston at 20:30 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Rpauli @ 6 "It is vastly disruptive to embrace anthropogenic global warming." I understand where you're coming from, and share some of your values, but that is the point: your statement above is a very value-laden statement -- ideological in fact. One can logically embrace the science of AGW with no disruption at all. Whether there is disruption or not is a question of values and policy, not science. If one values the sustainability of life as we know it on planet earth, where "life" is more about egalitarian and environmental values than individualistic and entrepreneurial values, then it might logically follow that one who holds such values may also embrace solutions to AGW that are potentially disruptive. But there are a few steps of logic there, and logic that is based on assumed values and, thus, I would argue, ideology. One of the appeals of this site, to me, is that it separates the policy, values and ideology from the science. Not that we should ignore values and policy response, but that we should understand how problems and solutions are discursively framed - accounting for and understanding both cognitive and normative elements. -
monkeyorchid at 18:36 PM on 10 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
The Geological Society website has a ridiculously uncritical review of Plimer's book, by Julian Vearncombe, at the link below. The review even makes a virtue of having "few references, hidden at the back". How is that a good thing? http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/geoscientist/page11359.html Not the society's finest hour! -
monkeyorchid at 18:31 PM on 10 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
Answer 19 misses one main point: most of the CO2 originally present was turned to oxygen by early photosynthesis. Otherwise, excellent resource! -
Dikran Marsupial at 17:54 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
TomHarrisICSC Simple question, was this quote representative of something actually said by a lecturer during the course? "...the majority of the rise of CO2 has nothing to do with humans....One of the things I find astounding about this whole climate debate is that some of the most basic tenets – you know, the idea that CO2 rise is mainly caused by humans, the idea that temperature rise is definite, its occurring, - many of these things are either not true or are simply unknown, or highly debatable." Do you agree that the majority of the rise in CO2 has nothing to do with humans? Yes or no. I am not remotely interested in the ethics of your critics, I am interested in the accuracy of your scientific position. If you are not willing to defend a particular point, the readers can draw their own conclusion. -
r.pauli at 17:00 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
It is vastly disruptive to embrace anthropogenic global warming. This makes for a greater cultural upset than the heliocentric solar system or rejecting flat earth. AGW means a total rethinking of our civilization. No wonder it is resisted so. -
Doug Hutcheson at 16:54 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Tom @ 2, I have a few questions for you:- How is it that you have no qualification to teach such a course, yet you object to a critique by people you regard as untrained?
- Can you provide names for the people you refer to who are unethical and for those who are the untrained?
- Do you regard the teaching of such a university course by an unqualified person to be ethical?
- Who do you (an unqualified person) regard as sufficiently well trained to assess the accuracy of the information you gave to your students?
- Does your association with the Heartland Institute create a conflict of interest when teaching?
- Was the information you gave your students in accord with current, published, peer-reviewed science, or did it run counter to the mainstream?
- Who assigned student grades following the course?
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Sapient Fridge at 16:38 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Summary of the radio show clip: 1) Twist the word "denier" to link it to WW2, then complain that people are calling you a holocaust denier 2) Attack a critic by saying they are an activist geneticist, not a climate scientist 3) Say that your critics don't understand climate from a geologic perspective 4) Complain that your critics didn't go through official channels 5) Claim that the planet is not particularly warm today from a geologic perspective (true, but irrelevant) 6) End by saying that the weather is awfully cold outside Yep, I would agree that it shows Tim Patterson dismissing your critics. It's a shame, though, that he didn't include any science in that defence. -
Dave123 at 15:21 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Tom- Such a great example of "squirrel". Patterson's dismissal comes across as a man living in an alternative reality. Talk about everything but the content of the course. Nothing substantive in it. Unimpressed. {snip}Moderator Response: TC: Ad hominen snipped, compliance with the comments policy is not optional regardless of your view point. -
TomHarrisICSC at 15:02 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
The critique on the course was conducted in an unethical fashion by people who are untrained in the field and so had many errors and naive assertions. Several of their issues were completely false factually, which is not surprising since they did not have the notes for the course that only registered students had (where the many scientific references were listed and much more details were included). Listen here to the course originator, Professor Tim Patterson dismiss their findings and their ridiculous approach: http://www.fcpp.org/media.php/1996 Tom Harris climatescienceinternational.org -
Doug Hutcheson at 14:20 PM on 10 May 2012Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
Perhaps Carleton could help students to focus on how to think, rather than what to think. Those who know how to think will see through Harris' misinformation; those who rely on him to tell them what to think will not realise that he is subtracting from the sum of human knowledge. -
Paul Magnus at 13:07 PM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
Yes Dana, I agree it seems to have been politically influenced. I did see the links, but think it would be a good exercise to cover it more systematically to see how the concensus formed around it. @18 John, yes I saw the report. I meant I couldn't find any links to the Oxford/Princeton research that the reuters news item refered to. -
muoncounter at 12:12 PM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
It seems this story started a few months ago: How the 'windfarms increase climate change' myth was born The article that really gave this idea a push online was published on Sunday evening [Feb 5] on the Daily Mail's website. It was delivered with the headline: "Wind farms can actually INCREASE climate change by raising temperatures and causing downpours, warn academics." The original study is Roy and Traiteur 2010: Data from a meteorological field campaign show that such wind farms can significantly affect near-surface air temperatures. These effects result from enhanced vertical mixing due to turbulence generated by wind turbine rotors. The impacts of wind farms on local weather can be minimized by changing rotor design or by siting wind farms in regions with high natural turbulence. -- emphasis added So this 'windfarm heat island' is weather, not climate. I guess we can't expect the denialosphere to know the difference. The Guardian goes on to describe how the original author's work was misused to suit the Daily Mail's preconceived notions. "I am already getting emails on this. I will have to categorically say that the headline is not an accurate representation of my work. But I guess there is little I can do now." Sounds like the recent 'ikaite in Antarctica means MCA/MWP is global' flap. A pattern emerges that is disturbingly familiar, if you know your Ingsoc. -
cliffd at 11:42 AM on 10 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
@ 2. I don't think Plimer actually sent copies of his book to schools; I think it was the Institute of Public Affairs, an Australian right-wing "think-tank" which does not disclose its donors. -
Sceptical Wombat at 11:30 AM on 10 May 2012rbutr Puts Climate Information In Front of Those Who Need It Most
Shane That's good to hear. -
bill4344 at 11:00 AM on 10 May 2012101 responses to Ian Plimer's climate questions
Many of the questions and answers in Professor Plimer’s book are misleading and are based on inaccurate or selective interpretation of the science
chriskoz, the format of Plimer's book - and it is a book - is to pre-arm the kiddies with the 'correct' answers to the questions, that they then may go well-equipped to waylay their potentially errant, overworked and warmism-addled teachers with a succession of 'gotchas!' All for the greater good, of course. Hence this counter-response from the Australian Government. And hence I think your 'acknowledgement' is rather too kind. Should you wish to subject yourself to the original it's available here. (I did get a chuckle when I observed the second publication in the 'Customers who bought this product also purchased...' list! ;-) ) Interestingly, Graham Readfearn reports that review copies were refused to some news outlets. -
bill4344 at 10:30 AM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
Like 70rn I find it hard to credit that many of those spinning this are doing much more than going through the motions. (There's a hell of a lot of whistling in the dark going on among the contrarians at the moment, and, to further mangle some metaphor, any straw must be not only clutched, it must be brandished aloft and proclaimed as a mighty oaken bough!) But who's really fooled? There was even a higher-than-usual count of 'hang on a minute' responses when this came up over at WUWT. You'd really have to be crazy-like-Fox to swallow the 'windfarms cause warming' tosh. But don't they just hate the windfarms? With a passion? The level of hysteria is palpable, and more than a little unsettling; the fervour required is, after all, inversely proportional to the inherent inoffensiveness of the technology. Why? Because the turbines represent the possibility of a workable future that simply must not be, lest the 'skeptic' be revealed as an irrelevant anachronism, and their world-view be blown to the winds. Spend some time at WUWT and Bishop Hill, and discover that, for some, any success of any renewable technology is an existential threat, so much so that they'd rather that the future be impossible. -
Nick Stokes at 08:08 AM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
I don't think Zhou (as reported) does have the fluid dynamics right. There's nothing to "bring warm air down to the ground". In an uninterrupted flow over a flat surface you get a fairly thin boundary layer with a more uniform velocity above. The boundary layer has a large velocity gradient and transfers heat very well; the uniform layer transfers heat poorly. Making the flow more turbulent enhances heat transfer in the uniform layer. But it thickens the boundary layer, which diminishes heat transfer there. A lot of the thinking about inversion layers (as here) is misplaced. It relates to a calm atmosphere. But then the turbines aren't doing anything. My view is that the effect is heat generated from turbulence - the part ofd the wind KE that was not converted to electricity. The scale matches. A wind farm generates enough power for a small town, and that power can create a UHI. The turbines are probably less than 50% efficient overall, so equivalent heat is also released at the wundfarm. You're seeing a UHI. But it isn't nett warming. The KE of the wind was always going to be converted to heat somewhere. The turbines move the location of the conversion. -
DSL at 07:32 AM on 10 May 2012There is no consensus
YellowElephant, you can easily tell when a consensus has been reached by working scientists and scientific organizations. Consensus occurs when scientists stop spending time, money, and energy to test hypotheses within an area. People stopped working on testing the radiative properties of atmospheric gases decades ago. The radiative properties of CO2 are well-established. Now, you might get the odd working engineer or geologist who doesn't understand the idea of pressure broadening, and who will make a claim like "CO2 effect is saturated!" The basics of AGW are old hat, even though blog sciency types keep making bizarre claims about them. Actual science has long since moved on to build successfully on those basics. As far as the human element goes, I've never heard an argument from a working scientist that makes the claim that we are not the source of the additional atmospheric CO2. I've read the opinion and work of hundreds and hundreds of working scientists who readily accept the mass balance argument corroborated by isotope studies. If you think you have evidence that there is not a consensus, present it. Change my mind. I take it that you have no time, energy, or training to work on understanding the science yourself. If that is the case (as it is with most of the general population), ask yourself why you believe what you believe. Why believe source X (who argues with great passion but no evidence) rather than source Y (who argues with evidence from a broad range of scientific disciplines). -
funglestrumpet at 07:28 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
If you listen via BBC iPlayer 'listen again' feature to 'Costing the Earth', BBC Radio 4, U.K. time 20.00 today (9th May), it will break your heart. It is all about coal, need I say more? I just hope that the denialati are called to account for their actions, especially Monckton. -
scaddenp at 07:21 AM on 10 May 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #2
"If you left any doubt consult a physicist" - that's a funny comment to leave on this forum! As Riccardo says, your statements here clearly show that you are criticizing something you havent understood. The responses have been trying to find out where you have gone wrong (eg do you understand why lapse rate is important?) and to encourage further study. It would be far more constructive if you took some time to study what the theory actually says instead of what you think it says. You can get plenty of help here on that. -
Riccardo at 07:13 AM on 10 May 2012Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
Fleming's book is a good read, The disagreement between Fleming and Weart on Fourier is marginal. It's true that Fourier was more interested on the temperature of space; nevertheless the idea of the role of the atmosphere is his. Callendar, instead, is rarely quoted despite he was the first (to my knowledge) to try to put up a global surface temperature record and to show the concomitant increase of CO2 and temperature. Maybe it's because he was wrong on several accounts. Archer and Pierrehumbert included one of his articles in their "The Warming Papers". -
Composer99 at 07:09 AM on 10 May 2012Prudent Risk
Tom, thanks for the clarification and my apologies for the misinterpret to Paul Magnus. -
jsam at 06:57 AM on 10 May 2012It hasn't warmed since 1998
Thank you, Daniel. I've seen worse in a thread, for sure. But, yes, agreed, I've also seen much, much better. :-) -
John Russell at 06:25 AM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
Everyone who grows trees -- as I do -- knows that large structures create microclimates around them. I can take you to areas in my woods where trees planted ten year ago are twice the height of those in other areas, even though they were all planted at the same time. The difference is that the first trees were planted in the shadow of a group of much taller, mature trees and thus they've been exposed to warmer temperatures and less wind than those in the open. The same also happens when buildings create a wind shadow. The fact is, I'd have been astonished if it had been shown that tall structures like a wind farm didn't take energy out of the air and create microclimates. More on micro-climates here. -
Daniel Bailey at 06:19 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
@ Paul Sokolov et al 2009 (blogged on by Romm here) shows all 400 model runs exceeding 2C by 2100. Fig 8b shows SAT exceeding 2C before 2050:
(middle red line above is ensemble mean for Sokolov)
Betts et al 2011 (blogged on by Romm here), published in the Royal Society A, details a 4C world by 2070...
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John Hartz at 05:30 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
@les #7 I personally endorse the strategy for communicating the reality of manmade climate change set forth by Bill Blakemore of ABC News (US) in his recent essay: “ ‘Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate)” -
Composer99 at 05:26 AM on 10 May 2012There is no consensus
There is obviously not consensus since not all scientists agree on whats happening or whats causing it.
Perhaps you can clarify here, YellowElephant, as to which scientists disagree. Are they climatologists or scientists in closely-related disciplines? And what is the basis of their disagreement? To my knowledge, even abject contrarians such as Spencer & Lindzen agree that heat-trapping gases (CO2, CH4, H2O, etc) cause global warming and that humans have emitted significant amounts of long-lasting heat-trapping gases. Their points of disagreement with the mainstream position lie elsewhere. When over 97% of scientists with relevant expertise agree on the basics of AGW and, as far as I am aware, every major national scientific body (NAS, Royal Society, &c) agree with the major conclusions of climatology as identified by the IPCC, and when even contrarian scientists agree with the basics, then IMO there is no "large debate" going on at all. Instead, there is what medical blogger Orac calls a 'manufactroversy'(*), where non-scientific interests attempting to defend or upend a status quo rely on various contrary arguments, increasingly of poor quality, to create the illusion of a genuine scientific debate. ----- (*) I'm not certain that Orac coined the term, however his use of it is the first I am aware of. (Orac blogs elsewhere under his real name, so my pronoun use is correct.) -
John Hartz at 05:06 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
@Paul Magnus #16 The new Club of Rome report, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jorgen Randers is actually a 304 page book that will not be available until Jun 1, 2012. The report is summarized in the article, “New Report issues a warning about humanity’s ability to survive without a major change in direction” posted on the Club of Rome’s website. The article also contains information about its publication both as an e-book and as a traditional hard-copy book. To access the article, click here . -
dana1981 at 04:51 AM on 10 May 2012There is no consensus
YellowElephant @507 - you just contradicted yourself, first saying consensus is "a large majority", then saying there is no consensus because "not all scientists agree". Which is it, a majority, or unanimity? You were right the first time - consensus is a majority. In the case of man-made global warming, it's a vast majority (over 97% of scientific experts in agreement), as discussed in the post above. -
dana1981 at 04:49 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
Paul - we do have a fairly detailed analysis. Click the first link in the 'What's Dangerous?' section. A lot of it has to do with what's policitically feasible, since ultimately it's a policy goal. I think most groups would agree that zero additional warming would be the best goal, were it feasible to achieve. -
Paul Magnus at 04:49 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
John @ 6 cant find any links to report.... "Research last month by the University of Oxford and Princeton University said global warming was likely to be between 1.4 and 3 degrees by 2050, but that 3 degrees was at the upper end of what was likely." http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/08/us-climate-clubofrome-idUSBRE8470JE20120508 -
YellowElephant at 04:46 AM on 10 May 2012There is no consensus
Consensus means that a large majority of people, or in this case scientists, agree that something is happening. There is obviously not consensus since not all scientists agree on whats happening or whats causing it. The large debate going on here is proof of that fact. Obviously there isn't enough information because science is fact and if the evidence was in there would be a consensus. Science is clear and if there was proof that the world was getting warmer or even not getting warmer scientist would agree and make up there mind like they did with gravity! Thank you -
John Hartz at 04:37 AM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
As detailed in the following article, the ultra-conservative spin machine in the US has embarked on a massive campaign to discredit clean energy, especially the use of wind turbines. “Conservative think tanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy”, The Guardian (UK), May 8, 2012 -
Paul Magnus at 04:36 AM on 10 May 2012Lindzen's Clouded Vision, Part 2: Risk
Really would be useful if we had a dletail analysis on why we came to agree on the 2C threshold. It is amazing that this was not challenged until around 2005 when Hansen started to look at it more closely. One gets the feeling that we are sticking to it because the 1-1.5C is now impossible and if we do accept that 2C is in fact way too much we will lose hope. Considering what is happening in the arctic and the acceleration of global extreme weather and climate events/changes, 2C is catastrophic. We are looking at around at least 3C and counting, depending on what action we take. The thing is once we get up to around 1C, climate disruption is going to ensure that our economic engine grids to a a halt. So interesting times.... -
CBDunkerson at 04:34 AM on 10 May 2012Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
Jim Powell, yes Fourier thought that cosmic radiation (i.e. "the temperature of space") was the most likely reason for the increased planetary warmth he detected... but we now know he was wrong on that and his ideas about something in the atmosphere holding in the heat closer to the truth (though his description of how that might happen weren't how the greenhouse effect actually works either). I don't see this as disagreeing with Weart... it's just an additional bit of information. Fourier suggested several possible explanations for the extra heat... Weart just concentrated on the one which came closest to being correct rather than the one Fourier himself thought most likely. -
jsam at 04:14 AM on 10 May 2012It hasn't warmed since 1998
Composer99 & Daniel - thank you both for your responses. I'd pointed him to other data sources and he dismissed them out of hand with comments such as "extrapolation is just guessing". So I've now simply disengaged. He expected me to trawl through is dataset and interpolate his method, but he won't acknowledge the peer-reviewed material. Life's too short. Daniel, your comment about Mike's leanings - I did a Google of his name and variants and some likely qualifying terms - and came up with nothing (unless he runs Arizona U). I've missed summat - how did you reach that very possible evaluation.Moderator Response: [DB] Try Patrick Lockerby's blog, The Chatter Box. Look for Mi Cro in the comments thread here... -
muoncounter at 03:48 AM on 10 May 2012Turbines in Texas mix up nighttime heat
"At night the Earth's surface cools quickly" That statement needs modification when talking about Texas. Sweetwater, TX is in the midst of the wind belt (and is within the geographic rectangle of Figure 1). In August, peak daytime temperature (~ 33 C on average) is reached in the late afternoon (5pm) and overnight lows, at about 6am, average 22C. That's a change of 11C in 13 hours. In January, the maximum is also at 5pm and the nightime low at 5am, but the daily temperature range is -1 - 15C, yielding a slightly higher cooling rate of 14C/12 hours. It cools more rapidly in the winter because the overnight humidity is lower - and it did that before there were any wind farms. Another important observation is that these wind turbines are on flat-topped ridges with a local topographic relief of 100 ft relative to the valleys below. The hilltops are bare pasture; the low ground tends to be covered with brush, suggesting different warming and cooling rates to begin with. I would take issue with the 'downwind' claim, as wind directions can vary considerably - especially around topography.
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