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Tom Curtis at 10:38 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
RW1's bizarre claims assume that solar forcing results in no feedback response. That is, if the world's oceans are heated by 1 degree C by an increased GHG concentration, that will result in increased evaporation and an increase in absolute humidity (and hence a water vapour feedback), but that an increased temperature of the same proportion brought about by a brighter sun will not increase evaporation at all, nor melt any snow, or in any other way have feedbacks. RW1 can only attribute this view to climate scientists because, as always, he operates in complete disregard of what climate scientists actually say. As KR ably demonstrated, climate scientists make no such assumption. Indeed, in the only direct comparison in the chart above, CO2 forcing is around 10% more effective than solar forcing, and WMGHGs in general are 20% more effective - a far cry from the 300% claimed by RW1. These small differences are because the CO2 GHE and solar warming have their strongest effects at different latitudes, and at different times of the day and year. Still more bizarre is RW1's claim that CO2 should result in less warming because of the energy needed to modify the internal energy structure of the atmosphere. What is bizarre here is that inside the troposphere, there is no significant difference in the change in temperature structure with time under GHG and solar warming. But solar warming heats the stratosphere, while increased GHG cools it - so as usual, RW1 gets the science completely backwards.Moderator Response: [DB] Please take this discussion to one of the more appropriate threads. RW1 must perforce translate everything climate related into electrical engineering terms instead of learning the science in question; a very slogging approach, detrimental to thread health. -
scaddenp at 10:36 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
"excessive linearization" is inappropriate attempts to linearize a non-linear system. That's the only way to conclude "The AGW 3C rise hypothesis requires that watts of GHG 'forcing' have a 3 times greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun." As KR's plot show, AGW requires no such thing. -
Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip Knappenberger - Climate change is just that: change. And changes, even if successfully adapted to, always cost money for those adaptations. Monies that would not have to be spent otherwise - new costs... -
muoncounter at 10:17 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Eric#58: Are you equating deaths that occur in a particular calendar month with deaths due to a specific set of causes? Clearly there were more deaths in the US during each of the years given in the NWS chart/table - but my father's death this past February, for example, was not due to cold weather. He was 95. -
Bob Lacatena at 09:42 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
62, Chip, You have a rather simplistic view of things. Clearly if things get hotter (1) climate control equipment must run longer, more frequently, and at higher power, (2) there will be areas that would not have needed anything before but do now and (3) there will be more extreme events, even for prepared areas, that exceed or strain capacity (or require the expense of much greater capacity simply to prepare for such peaks). We're not talking about costs "that were going to be spent anyway." We're talking about adding (substantially) to those costs. That is fairly obvious for anyone to see. Or did I misunderstand your statement? -
Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
RW1 - "It's the non-linearity of the system's response to the forcing of the Sun that contradicts GHG 'forcing' being 3 times that of solar." Nobody claims that GHG forcing efficacy is 3x that of solar.
They are roughly the same according to current data, with long-lived GHG's perhaps 10-15% more effective than solar due to where the energy goes. But if the solar input increased by 3.7 W/m^2 (as per a CO2 doubling), we would still expect ~3C of warming total.
Moderator Response: [DB] If RW1 persists in his refusal to understand this point, then he will have to take it to a more appropriate thread. This will be about the 4th go-round for him, if so. -
RW1 at 09:13 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
scaddenp (RE: 81), "Climate science agrees solar and CO2 forcing are about the same. It's your excessive linearization that makes you think that CO2 is required to be 3 times solar." Actually, no - it's the exact opposite. It's the non-linearity of the system's response to the forcing of the Sun that contradicts GHG 'forcing' being 3 times that of solar. -
scaddenp at 08:59 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Sigh, numerous people have tried to help you see this particular error, RW1, but since you wont do your homework, I doubt it is worth trying. Just for the record, the efficacy of the various forcings are approximately the same (see here and Hansen 2005. Climate science agrees solar and CO2 forcing are about the same. It's your excessive linearization that makes you think that CO2 is required to be 3 times solar. -
Chip Knappenberger at 08:24 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
dana1981 (#60); You have made the point on several occasions that adaptation to heat waves is occurring without consideration of a changing climate. So, a certain value of your “significant cost” of on-going adaptation is unrelated to climate change. I hypothesize that climate change may hasten the adaptation saving more lives sooner. Does it add costs beyond those that were going to be spent anyway? Like I said, I am not an economist. But doesn’t the possibility exist that money spent now is cheaper than money spent later? I don’t know the answers, but I think it is a possibility worth considering and not one summarily dismissed. One way to reduce the threat of wolves on sheep is to kill all the wolves, another is to train a sheep dog to keep the wolves at bay. -Chip -
RW1 at 08:23 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Actually, if anything, the ability of a watt of incremental GHG 'forcing' to warm the surface would be a little less than solar because some of the internal energy would have to be expended to reorganize the temperature structure of the atmosphere. -
noelfuller at 08:20 AM on 26 April 2012Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930
Sometimes, while thinking of the importance of infra-red in this whole business, I like to start with Herschel in 1800. His realization provided a backdrop to all subsequent thinking on climate science even though he was not thinking about climate. Noel -
RW1 at 08:07 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
How do I know I'm right? Very simply. The AGW 3C rise hypothesis requires that watts of GHG 'forcing' have a 3 times greater ability to warm the surface than watts forcing the system from the Sun. Give that each incremental watt from the Sun causes proportionally less and less warming in the system, and a watt of GHG 'forcing' can only do the same amount of work as a watt of solar forcing, Occam's razor prevails. -
grypo at 07:23 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Who cares if the endangerment finding looked at the question of what it would be like if no adaption or no mitigation occurred? That's a different argument and question. You are avoiding the argument being presented here. You've yet to show how mitigation is harmful. Your reasoning doesn't address ethical concerns. Your evidence doesn't back your claims. -
dana1981 at 07:15 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Well Chip, to return to my analogy, your argument is akin to saying we should require everyone to buy bulletproof vests instead of taking measures to reduce gun violence. Your approach doesn't address the existing threat, it simply forces people to adapt to it (at a significant cost). The problem is that you're arguing the threat doesn't exist, when you should be arguing that there are different ways to address the threat. I agree with that. I believe it was Lonnie Thompson who said that climate change will result in some combination of mitigation, adaption, and suffering. But your fundamental argument, that the EPA is wrong to call increased AGW-caused heat events a threat, is incorrect. -
Chip Knappenberger at 06:44 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
dana1981 (#55), Thanks for the hosting the discussion. I don’t think we’re really that far apart on this particular topic, but obviously, if we were in complete agreement, you wouldn’t have written your piece in the first place. :^) I agree that adaptation to extreme heat (a threat) is ongoing (even without climate change). I just think that climate change hastens the adoption of adaptive measures. And thus more quickly induces us to reach a point where we are better off than we were before. Heat can kill if you aren’t prepared. This is true today, in the past, and in the future. We could try to force the climate to a state where there are no heat waves and thus potentially solve the whole problem. Or, we could try to force the climate to a state the same as today’s (or the 1950s, or whenever) when heat waves presumably occur less frequently (and with less intensity) than they will in the future. It is not clear to me , although admittedly it seems clear to most everyone else on this thread, that this solution produces less heat-related mortality than will occur under, say, midrange scenarios of unmitigated climate change. You just can’t say that since heat waves are a threat, that more of them are a bigger threat. Most any type of weather is a threat of some sort. That’s why “shelter” is a basic need. But once you have sufficient shelter, then the threat is reduced. Right now, many places don’t have sufficient shelter from heat-waves which occur in the course of a normal climate. Global warming may hasten a solution to that problem. It seems to me, that an assessment of the impacts on public health and welfare should at least consider such a possibility and that short-term negative impacts may be replaced by positive ones in the long-term, once sufficient shelter has been established. -Chip PS. And grypo (#57), I am somewhat familiar with the EPA’s adaptation strategies when it comes to extreme heat events, in fact, I had a hand in the development of their Excessive Heat Events Guidebook. But none of that matters when it comes to how the EPA assessed endangerment from GHG emissions. This is what they have to say about adaptation: "EPA considers adaptation and mitigation to be potential responses to endangerment, and as such has determined that they are outside the scope of the endangerment analysis." -
Eric (skeptic) at 06:27 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
muoncounter you are pointing to 138 deaths from heat versus 76 from cold (2010) but the statistics from 2006 show 60k more deaths in DJF than in JJA. There can be explanations that are not strictly weather-related like the seasonal spread of flu, but I don't think that explains the whole difference. -
grypo at 06:22 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip #54 More nonsense. The EPA has pages and pages on local adaption strategies. It's almost as if Chip is suggesting that because he wrongly believes the EPA is making decisions without considering other strategies (adaption) then any other strategy (mitigation) is wrong. - the adaptations make you better off than you were before. - So what? What does that have to do with mitigation and the EPA? Your original article says that we should let heat waves happen and then people will adapt. You are saying that in preventing disaster, we are causing more disaster. You've yet to show any logic, science, statistics, or anything else (besides the twisted logic about people learning their lesson and letting poor people unnecessarily suffer) that actually supports your point. And even if you did, your theory is highly unethical. Read what you wrote: -- “longer, more intense and more frequent heat waves” may actually improve the public health and welfare, and that in trying to prevent them, the EPA is causing harm. -- How about adapting beforehand. Then mitigate for the next few generations. How is that possibly harmful? Not enough people dying to get them to adapt? You are being so ridiculous. -
scaddenp at 06:12 AM on 26 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist - why do you say that? Where is the evidence of any subsidy? In the '80s and '90, economic reform here screamed about level playing fields and any form of business subsidy became a dirty word. Health care and education get subsidies and there are some schemes for getting government contribution to research, but nothing for generation and delivery of electricity. I'd say there was evidence that dumping subsidies doesnt send electricity costs through the roof (and your taxes go down - or would if your government could balance its books). If you feel that you must subsidize electricity on social grounds then put subsidy on the delivery so all forms of generation are on an equal footing. -
Composer99 at 05:31 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip Knappenberger:Composer99 (#50): My link was supposed to be back to my upthread comment #12.
Thanks, I believe a mod fixed the link. -
dana1981 at 05:19 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip, I think you're still having some logic problems.My original article that dana1981 wrote this thread in response to was regarding the EPA’s failure to consider adaptation when assessing whether greenhouse gas emissions were endangering the public health and welfare in regards to extreme weather events"
If people need to adapt to a threat like increased heat waves, then they endanger public health and welfare. This gets back to my gang violence example. People can adapt to gang violence by staying indoors more, for example, but the fact that they can adapt to the threat doesn't mean the threat doesn't exist. Adaptation also has a cost, as we've noted repeatedly. I do agree that adaption will likely continue. However, you still have these two logical problems. 1) You haven't shown that people are adapting because of the increase in heat events. That's an assumption, and thus you have not demonstrated that the EPA is wrong to classify AGW as a heat-related threat to public health and welfare. 2) Even if people are adapting as a direct result of increased heat waves, that also doesn't undermine the EPA conclusion, because they are adapting to the threat. Your argument is that we're better off adapting to the threat than if the threat didn't exist. That may or not be true, but even if it's true, the EPA is correct to call this a threat. It just happens to be a threat that we can successfully adapt to, up to a certain point, at a certain cost. -
Chip Knappenberger at 05:04 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
KR (#53) and Moderator (#45), Of course I am not considering what would happen in the absence of adaptation…as my original Master Resource article points out, that is precisely what the EPA did, and such a consideration is completely unrealistic. People don’t want to die, so they adapt as best they can. And sometimes, as I believe to be the case with heat-related mortality, the adaptations make you better off than you were before. -Chip -
Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip Knappenberger - Most of your links have been inoperative; you might want to review the Comments Policy notes on link insertion. I would have to agree with MMM's post - you claim the Jacobson conclusions are pre-determined without actually providing any issues with the causal chain between CO2, pollution, temperatures, and mortality. Secondly, as MMM pointed out, effects on mortality due to adaptations are a different question than whether AGW will produce higher mortalities than would occur otherwise. You are trying to change the question, and numerous posters have (quite correctly, IMO) called you on it. -
Chip Knappenberger at 04:29 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
michael sweet (#46): My original article that dana1981 wrote this thread in response to was regarding the EPA’s failure to consider adaptation when assessing whether greenhouse gas emissions were endangering the public health and welfare in regards to extreme weather events—I used heat-related mortality trends as an example of why I think the EPA was wrong. So, my primary focus is on the U.S. I am not sure what qualifies as a “poor” country, but here is a (non-peer reviewed) study out of India that shows that very simple adaptive measures (i.e., public awareness campaigns) seem to result in lowered heat-related mortality. I imagine that they could do so in the future as well. MMM (#47): I understand that the your two statements are not contradictory. I don’t think that your #2 is a given—that is my whole point! Composer99 (#50): My link was supposed to be back to my upthread comment #12. Martin Lack (#51): I am not an economist. -Chip -
Martin Lack at 04:20 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip (#45), Is it my imagination, or are you deliberately dodging the issue that, the longer we wait to take effective avoiding action such as de-carbonising our energy generation systems (since we will remain highly dependent on hydrocarbons in the manufacturing of plastics etc), the more money will have to be spent on the kind of adaptation your laissez-faire attitude is going to make unavoidable? Goodness knows, we are already in one hell of a financial mess - a global debt crisis out of which we cannot spend our way... What makes you think we will be any more capable of spending our way out of an environmental crisis if we allow it to overtake us? -
Composer99 at 03:51 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Knappenberger's link in #45 is broken. Whether Chip or a mod accidentally put in the wrong link, I don't know.Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed, thanks! -
muoncounter at 03:45 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Eric#38: Here's a NWS graph with some multi-year averages:
A related table gives annual counts going back to 1986. There are separate columns for 'cold fatalities' and 'winter fatalities,' but even if you combine these two heat wins by nearly 2 to 1.
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MMM at 03:43 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
ps. My personal objection the Jacobson study is his statement on policy implications: eg, that a small number of local deaths means that a cap-and-trade is not appropriate. -
MMM at 03:41 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip: Please tell me you understand that the two following statements are not contradictory: 1) Heat mortality will decrease in the future. and 2) Increased temperatures due to AGW will increase heat mortality. If you want to be pedantic, I suppose we could add the clause to (2) that, "Increased temperature due to AGW will increase heat mortality compared to a future without increased temperatures". Half of your statements seem to revolve around trying to convince us that because our response to heat events will improve in the future, therefore we don't care about increased heat, while most other people are arguing that the number of deaths we'll see in the AGW case are larger than the number we'll see if the climate stayed constant, and your arguments don't seem to bear on that. Regarding the Jacobson study: while the study may have been overhyped, your arguments seem somewhat sophomoric. First, the idea that Administrator Jackson has unpublished academic studies sitting in her back pocket is dangerously close to tin-foil hat territory. Second, your objection that the study results were predetermined - eg, that more CO2 equals more deaths - is an odd objection. Perhaps, if you could point at any of the links and show that they were wrong (more CO2 emissions -> more concentration, more concentration -> higher temps, higher temps -> more ozone, more ozone -> more deaths), you'd have something. But all you can do is complain that maybe it isn't 792 deaths, maybe it is 300 deaths, and further complain that we can't observe those deaths because of the noise - which doesn't say that they aren't there (or that they couldn't be 1200 deaths). -
otter17 at 03:07 AM on 26 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Excellent article topic and discussion. My domain is engineering, but I find the mindset that many scientists have to be worth emulating. For me, I have made a habit of re-evaluating my stance every once in a while, realizing that it is a strength, not a weakness. It is good to see the authors here think along the same lines. -
michael sweet at 02:51 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip, Do you have any references that consider how poor countries will respond to higher temperatures? After all, that is the majority of the globe. It seems to me that your references select only developed economies that have the most money to cope. Poor people (like the middle East) do not have the money to make these adaptations. Most of the problem will be with agriculture. How do you propose we adapt cattle to higher temperatures? In Texas they exported them. What will we do when there is no-where left to export them to? -
Chip Knappenberger at 02:25 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Guys, I have pointed to a collection of studies which have found declining sensitivity to extreme heat even in the face of rising temperatures. This adaptation is driven both by spontaneous, background improvements, as well as by climate changes (both local and global). I guess our point of departure comes as to what we think will happen in the future. In my opinion, the adaptations will continue, to the point that population standardized heat-related mortality may even be lower in the future than it is now (or in the past). If I am generalizing the opinions of most everyone else on this thread correctly, you all seem to think that climate driven increases in heat-related mortality will outpace adaptations—an outcome which would buck the current trend. But to not even consider an adaptive response—even though it is ongoing and demonstrable—when making a determination as to whether future changes in heat-related mortality will result in a net positive or negative outcome (as the EPA has done) results in an improper, incomplete, and unreliable assessment. -ChipModerator Response:[DB] And yet you ignore research which points out that, in the absence of adaptation, the human influence on climate would have been the main contributor to increases in heat-related mortality and decreases in cold-related mortality. Remember, adaption has limits. And not all of those affected will be able to adapt (or simply lack the resources/infrastructure to do so)
In your haste to prosecute your agenda you cherry-pick only evidence which supports your preselected conclusions (you ignore the larch, poplar, birch and oak and state the the forest is full of pine trees).
Fixed bad link.
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Chris G at 01:53 AM on 26 April 2012Two Centuries of Climate Science: part one - Fourier to Arrhenius, 1820-1930
RE: "Not only that, total saturation in the lower atmosphere is not a problem for the Greenhouse Effect: if the upper layers of the atmosphere remain unsaturated, they will still prevent heat getting out into space." I understand what this means, and it is not wrong, but I think it could be misinterpreted to mean that unsaturated levels of CO2 still prevent _all_ heat from getting to space. The effect is more of a restriction of outflow than a prevention. Absorbance is a function of density, and density drops with altitude. Raising the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere raises the density (partial density to be pedantic) throughout the column, and that effective raises the altitude of whatever you might consider the cutoff between saturated and unsaturated. A thicker blanket reduces heat loss more than a thinner one. It strikes me as supreme hubris when I come across those who doubt that more CO2 will lead to more energy retention; it's as though they think they know something that 200 years of hashing out the details of how this works has not already discovered. It's not impossible, but you'd better bring the goods, and no one I've ever come across has. -
Bernard J. at 01:49 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
I am extremely pleased to see this subject addressed, because a few days ago I'd typed a long, long post about exactly this material and then, as I explained on the Eeocene thread, I lost it as a result of an overheated laptop, seconds before submitting. Dana's excellent post addresses a number of the points I made, so I'll be able to sleep tonight without further grinding my teeth. There are a few points worth reiterating, in addition to the physiological focus of dana's piece: 1) agriculture and vital (to Homo sapiens) ecosystem services will collapse at far lower temperature increases than are required to push humans beyond their physiological thermal tolerance 2) occurences of temperature extremes even just a little greater than have been experienced over the last decade will damage, and possibly beyond repair, transport infrastructure such as rail track. On a country-wide scale, such events could destroy existing infrastructure beyond the capacity of today's strained economies to replace them 3) similarly, increases in temperature would likely overload the electrical infrastructure of a number of countries, including the USA. Again, the cost of repair/replacement may be greater than could be afforded, especially after the "quantitative easing" spree of the last few years. Several decades and more into the future, in the post-peak fossil carbon world, the ability to successfully produce food, and to produce and to deliver energy, on the scale at which we do today, will be a rapidly receding memory*. In such a world the three points mentioned above are not just risks associated with increased temperature, they will be inevitabilities to face, and that will be exacerbated by any increase in temperature. Chip Knappenburger's fanciful notions of adaptability to higher temperatures are nothing else but proof of his citizenship of cloud-cuckoo land. Humans have already brought themselves - and much of the global ecosystem integrity - to the edge of functional resilience, and turning up the thermostat will make the consequences worse, not better. Anyone who imagines otherwise has both hands firmly and deeply thrust into his pockets. To finish, it's worth adding to William's point... With sufficient selection pressure evolution can operate very fast indeed - by choosing extinction rather than adaptation as an endpoint. [*In my lost post I spent some time going into some of the salient thermodynamic points that make it effectively inevitable that humans will not replace, on anywhere near the current scale of usage, fossil energy with any alternative source. However, such discussion is not pertinent to this thread, so anyone who wants to lock horns on the matter should probably post elsewhere.] -
dana1981 at 01:33 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Paul Magnus @37 - see here for the 2°C danger limit explanation. -
dana1981 at 01:27 AM on 26 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
adelady @7 - we've got a post on that graphic coming up in the near future. Steve L @8 - looks like the caption (which I copied from the paper) is incorrect. Good catch, I'll fix it in the post. From Peru @4 - I should also note that ENSO - one of the factors considered by F&R - acts to transfer heat to the lower ocean layers, which is what Levitus are observing. So the two are not incompatible. -
Lazarus at 01:10 AM on 26 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
"Knappenberger cites a paper he co-authored, Davis et al. (2003), which found that heat-related deaths are less common in hotter cities. This makes sense" Also the most vulnerable have already succumbed to the heat - survival of the fittest. -
Steve L at 00:58 AM on 26 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
In Figure 2, the legend indicates the black line to represent 700-2000 m. The caption, however, says "the grey-shaded area represent +/- 2*S.E. about the pentadal estimate for the 0-700m estimates." The grey-shaded area is around the black line. Is the legend or the caption correct? -
Bernard J. at 00:27 AM on 26 April 2012Eocene Park: our experiment to recreate the atmosphere of an ancient hothouse climate
Sometimes chance is a bastard. A few days ago I spent about two hours and about two thousand words comprehensively addressing dr2chase's difficulty in understanding the proximal and distal effects that an Eeocene climate would have on the physiology and ecology of humans in a post fossil carbon world. I was more than anguished, then, to be about four words from clicking 'submit' when my laptop shut down automatically, and sent the entire piece to the æther forever. I am in no mood to repeat the hours spent typing, but I will make two points that I had previously elaborated on for a number of paragraphs...You seem to have a theory that because we did not evolve under these conditions, we will not persist under these conditions. How do you explain all the people living in warm places already?
Easily, once the temporary benefit of technology, the brief evolutionary span of its operation, and the confluence of a number of other factors are accounted for. I attempted to detail the overall situation once, however self-education would be perhaps even more valuable for dr2chase, and it would permit me to direct those several hours to other endeavours.I seem to be completely talking past you, because have I've said all of the above before. The way it looks to me, you have a theory. I have data. My data is inconsistent with your theory. Data wins. How could you disagree with this?
I have the advantage of scientific theory. You have incomplete data. Incomplete data rarely wins, especially when it appears to contradict soldily established scientific theory. When you rely on (very) imcomplete data for your conclusion-drawing, any attempt by others to inform you is almost certain to end as an exercise in simply talking past you. Oo, and Tom - don't worry, I am fully cognisant of the pace of evolution! I had elaborated on the significance of this for the likely future of our species in the contexts of both finite energy density availability courtesy of fossil carbon, and of the climate alterations that will result, but despair prevents me from trying again, and anyway it's probably not central to the thread. -
adelady at 23:45 PM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Seeing as someone mentioned Foster & Rahmstorf, here's a different way to look at the trend. Not by cancelling out ENSO effects, but by displaying them. (And just omitting the volcano years.) Three separate trend lines, one each for El Nino, neutral and La Nina years. Funnily enough, they all seem to have the same slope. The graph (pdf) The page it's from -
Glenn Tamblyn at 23:10 PM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
This paper, the 0-2000 m data and Meehl et al packaged together make a convincing case. The skeptic refrain for some years has been 'It (the surface) hasn't warmed since X and the climate scientists don't know why' Well here is a big part of the answer. Thats one of the good things about science, many people, all chipping away at problems, often finds the answer So queue change of opinion from skeptics in 3...2...1........ chirrup... -
Realist at 23:10 PM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
#39 William, 33 degrees and 100% humidity is a very common occurance on the equator when it rains. Just check out Jakarta. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 22:47 PM on 25 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
elektron @66 read this earlier post I wrote some time ago here. It discusses how the magnitude of the warming we are experiencing limits the range of possible explanations. Jet exhausts in the Stratosphere are certainly a contribution because water vapour in the stratosphere doesn't get removed from the atmosphere quickly. The stratosphere is also the main location where Methane gets converted to CO2 & Water Vapour. Jet Con-Trails have also been identified as having a small cooling effect as well. The principle reason why evaporation of water from land is only a relatively small component is because evaporation from the oceans is so massive. Also, as I discussed in my previous comment, it isn't necesarily increased evaporation that is the issue. It requires increased temperatures to allow the atmosphere to hold that increased amount of water, otherwise it justs rains out again. Increases of GH gases other than water are needed to cause a warming that allows more water vapour to be held by the atmosphere. -
muoncounter at 22:42 PM on 25 April 2012It's cosmic rays
Svensmark must have read 'Star-Begotten' by HG Wells. However, Watts can in no way take the role of the 'quiet little man'. ‘Those cosmic rays of yours,’ he said. ‘They are the most difficult part of your story. They aren’t radiations. They aren’t protons. What are they? They go sleeting through the universe incessantly, day and night, going from nowhere to nowhere. For the life of me I find that hard to imagine.’ ‘They must come from somewhere,’ said a quiet little man with an air of producing a very special contribution to the discussion. And when all other arguments against AGW have failed, they invoke a mystery. ‘And so, having eliminated everything else,’ said the barrister, ‘you lay the burden of change and mutation — and in fact all the responsibility for evolution — on those little cosmic rays! Countless myriads fly by and miss. Then one hits — Ping! Ping!— and we get a double-headed calf or a superman.’ -
Glenn Tamblyn at 22:27 PM on 25 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Steve Case @33 Sorry about the delay in replying - just in the middle of selling my business and life has been hell Yo asked "Glenn's list is a good one for the basics of the greenhouse effect, but I should like to know if he's sure he's right about the positive feed backs that elevate CO2 Climate Sensitivity from the basic 1.2°C to 3°C or more." I think the ground for thinking that CS is something like this is quite solid, although there is still significant margins on the current estimates.Item 10 on my list about the Clausius-Claperon eqn goes to the heart of this. Warmer air can hold more water vapour. It is often suggested that increased evaporation will produce increeased water vapour levels but actually, in a warmer world, water vapour levels are likely to be higher even without greater evaporation. Put simply, evaporation pumps water vapour into the atmosphere and precipitation pumps it back out again. Water vapour levels will be in long term balance when global evaporation and precipitation rates are qual (obviously at short time scales and regionally this doesn't hold; I am talking more about longer averages) But precipitation needs clouds. No clouds, no rain. And clouds largely only form when water vapour content is close to the saturation level for the atmosphere; when relative humidity is nearly 100%. This is why clouding seeding has never been too successful. If the air temperature is higher, the amount of water vapour needed to reach saturation is higher. And clouds can't form until reaches that level. So evaporation will keep increasing the water vapour content of this warmer air until it does reach saturation so clouds can form. If we could wave a magic wand and instantly increase the air temperature everywhere by 5 Deg C, the most immediate and visible impact that much of the cloud around the world would vanish - re-evaporate back into the air. Only when evaporation has built water vapour levels up higher can cloud formation and precipitation start again. There are obviously local effects, dry air regions etc but this basic property that rain can't happen unless their is enough water vapour in the air is absolutely fundamental science. Thus water vapour MUST producea positive feedback. There are valid questions of how much. Clouds in contrast have both cooling and warming effects, depending on the type of clouds. The net impact is thought to be a slightly positve effect. So for changes in clouds to counteract the definite positive feedback of water vapour, there would need to be not just a change in the total amount of cloud, but a change in the mix of cloud types. No one has put forward a reasonable explanation for why that might happen. Without this, clouds can't counter the positive feedback from water vapour. There is however a whole range of other evidence in support of CS values in the 3 range. This come from a wide range of studies looking at past climates going back centuries, 100's of 1000's of years, Millions and even 100's of millions of years, responses to volcanic eruptions etc. It isn't just climate models predicting CS values of that range, it is physical evidence from past climates. And since temperatures significantly higher than now have actually been the norm for much of the last 1/2 billion years, warming now isn't unusual, unprecedented or unlikely. The climate could quite easily return to a warmer state if we push it that way. Human Civilisation developed in a relatively cool 'Goldilocks' climate. -
william5331 at 22:07 PM on 25 April 2012Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
In this article it seems they are talking about an increase in temperature that then remains at this level. This results in faster growth rate at first but then diminished growth over the years. There is a somewhat related phenomenon which is well known for plants and animals. They grow faster and faster as the temperature is increased but the lethal temperature is only a degree or two above the temperature of maximum growth. At first thought you might expect a bell shaped growth curve. However it is only like a bell curve on the left (colder) side. It is a cliff on the warmer side. -
Tristan at 21:09 PM on 25 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Cogent and succinct, Fran. -
Martin Lack at 20:57 PM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip (#32), No matter how many times you protest otherwise, your position appears to be that "mitigation is too expensive". As many others have pointed out, this myth no longer stands up to scrutiny. Therefore, despite your probable antipathy towards him, your position reduces to invocation of Charles Darwin's 'evolution by natural selection' (and to hell with everyone else)... and for what? Just so that your friends in the fossil fuel lobby can continue to sell us the "idea" that it is not yet time to invest in alternatives! We have the technology to solve our problems (superconductors instead of copper cables in our electricity transmission systems, etc) but, in order for the political will to emerge to implement the solutions, we must first acknowledge the nature, scale and urgency of the problem we have created (by pumping CO2 into the atmosphere 1000s of times faster than the Earth can recycle it). Because you are not doing this, you remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Please stop kidding yourself that CO2 is not the primary cause of the increasingly-obvious climate change we are seeing, put down your shovel, and help us all stop digging this hole any deeper than it already is. See also my 'Jared Diamond’s warning from history' (15 Feb 2012).Moderator Response: [DB] Text revised per request. -
bill4344 at 20:51 PM on 25 April 2012It's cosmic rays
Well, my first thought upon reading Watts' rapturous acclaim was 'so the Astrologers were right, after all'! ;-) If this thing holds up I'd expect triumphalism from that quarter, too, and not just our contrarian friends. (Just think of the woooo impact of Quantum Mechanics. As Terry Pratchett says 'It's Quantum'!) Let's face it, if it doesn't hold up, we'll get triumphalism anyway (in fact, that's what Watts comments thread is full of, with the occasional brave soul pointing out that he/she thought they were all supposed to be, um, 'skeptical'!) Yet again: hundreds of papers arising from years of hard-won science that builds on findings dating back over a century - it's all BS mate, crap! Particularly all that dodgy paleo crap and expecting us to believe minute trace gases make any difference. But give 'em one paper based on paleo reconstructions of the impact of rays from the outer reaches of the universe - doubts, who has doubts? Hypocrisy and just plain silliness I can identify; but me, I make no claims to being able to assess the science, hence my bringing it up here. -
indulis at 20:32 PM on 25 April 2012Cliff Ollier: Swimming In A Sea of Misinformation
Sorry I should have said "Not one of whom has published a single scientific paper on climate science in a reputable (peer reviewed) journal." -
william5331 at 20:32 PM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
I read somewhere that humans can tolerate 33 degrees wet bulb temperature but not much above that. ie, while you will be OK at 40 degrees if it is dry and you can ingest enough fluid, at 100% humidity 33 degrees is your upper limit. With the expected added moisture in the atmosphere, if we do warm up one would expect some parts of the world to become uninhabitable except with mechanical aids.
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