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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. -
indulis at 20:22 PM on 25 April 2012Cliff Ollier: Swimming In A Sea of Misinformation
Prof Cliff Ollier is also part of the Australian Climate Science Coalition which includes such well known and respected thinkers in the climate field such as: - Prof Bob "My logic is impeccable CO2 lagged temperature rises in the past, so it can't be the cause now" Carter - Dr David "I will ignore BEST and continue to claim that 'heat islands' are being used to "inflate official temperatures" Evans - Professor Ian "The CO2 is mostly from volcanoes, I will ignore carbon isotope analysis of atmospheric CO2, and any facts to the contrary from the USGS- anyway the world is not warming!! Plimer Not one of whom has published a single scientific paper in a reputable (peer reviewed) journal. The ACSC web site also has links to the Heartland Climate Conference and other denier hangouts. -
Robert Murphy at 20:18 PM on 25 April 2012It's cosmic rays
Sounds like Svensmark has decided to go full Climastrology. -
indulis at 19:59 PM on 25 April 2012Cliff Ollier: Swimming In A Sea of Misinformation
Some more facts which from The Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO's "State of the Climate 2012" contradict Prof Ollier's opinion (it was an just opinion piece after all). - "Most of Australia has experienced warming over the past 50 years" including Western Australia at 1.2 to 1.6C. - "Lowest on record" rainfall in Western Australia (WA) in 2010. - 6mm to 7mm sea level rise per year in WA. -
indulis at 19:40 PM on 25 April 2012Cliff Ollier: Swimming In A Sea of Misinformation
Does Prof Ollier really expect us to believe that the effort and scrutiny he has put into his opinion piece matches the science used by CSIRO in putting together the Australian Coastal Sea Level Rise maps? Any peer review by someone knowledgeable in the field before publication? Anyway, The Australian newspaper (Murdoch's New Ltd stable) is well known to be reporting on "bizzaro world", and not on the dimension we inhabit. While 99%+ of qualified scientists working in climate science agree with AGW and the magnitude of its effects, The Australian's climate change reporting is the opposite. Australian Science magazine- "Australia’s authority on science since 1938" and published by the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science- analysed climate science coverage by The Australian newspaper and found the coverage Biased Against Climate Change "“In the real world, scientists accepting the climate consensus view outnumber denialists by more than 99 to one. In the Alice in Wonderland world of [The] Australian, their contributions were outnumbered 10 to one [by articles authored by deniers].” The tone of editorials on the subject tended to be abusive, and implied that scientists were in league with extremists to overthrow civilisation." The Australian is no better when it comes to climate policy coverage- according to Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) "When neutrals were discounted, there were 84 per cent negative articles [opposing climate change policy] compared to 17 per cent positive [supporting]." If Prof Ollier doesn't trust instrument data he can go to the South Perth Sea Scout Hall and Deep Water Point jetties, which are now a LOT closer to the water level at both high and low tides (both on the Swan River which runs through Perth, Western Australia, and which ). He will find that if he walks out on the Scout Hall jetty he will likely get his feet wet as it is almost always under water. Summer or Winter. High or low tide. I am sure they did not build it that way, when I was a kid in the 60s the jetties were a lot higher above the water. Maybe they built them out of shrinkwood? -
Eric (skeptic) at 19:36 PM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
"more people die from heat than cold in the United States every year." It's not that simple. I downloaded the 2006 all causes link from here http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mortality/gmwkiv.htm and scrolled quickly through the mortality causes by month. Cancers and a host of lesser diseases, alcohol abuse seem to kill with no clear distribution. There is more winter mortality with diabetes, dementia, and Parkinson's, and hypertension has Dec, Jan, and March peaks. Likewise with heart attacks and chronic heart disease (Jan, Mar, Dec peaks while Jun, Aug and Sep have the least). There are fewer strokes in summer. Pneumonia has clear Jan and Mar peaks. I probably have missed some important skewed diseases. -
bill4344 at 19:23 PM on 25 April 2012It's cosmic rays
According to Watts, Svensmark has now unveiled a GCR Theory of Everything! There's no need for a link, he's tethered to piece to the homepage so the gang all know the world as we knew it is now over (think I'm exaggerating? Read Watts' piece!) I'm sure you're probably already aware of it, but I thought I'd point it out!... -
Rob Painting at 15:41 PM on 25 April 2012Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
Markx - the oceans have around a thousand times the thermal capacity of the atmosphere.In other words they can absorb a great deal more energy, than the atmosphere, before this causes a change in temperature. This is due to the greater mass of the ocean - there are simply more molecules in the ocean to 'divvy up" energy to. The actual process of ocean warming is very complex, but we fully expect the oceans to warm much more slowly than the atmosphere. -
Paul Magnus at 15:36 PM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
"2C above pre-industrial levels – the limit of safety, scientists say, beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic." Can someone tell me where this comes from? We're did we agree that a 2C warming was the right limit to try for? It just seems to have appeared from thin air. How do we know that 2C is safe? -
dana1981 at 14:54 PM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
From Peru - F&R found that the warming hasn't slowed if you first filter out those three factors. However, without removing those factors, the warming trend has been dampened in recent years. That's what I meant. In addition to the 3 factors considered by F&R, deep ocean heating and human aerosol emissions likely played a role in that dampening. -
From Peru at 14:33 PM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
This post says: Levitus et al. have once again reminded us that although the surface warming may have been dampened in recent years, (...) Isn't this inconsistent with the results from Foster & Rahmstorf 2011 that found that the warming have continued without any slowdown?
Or the "surface warming" of what dana1981 is talking about is not the global surface temperature but just the sea surface temperature?
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Tom Curtis at 13:17 PM on 25 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Muoncounter @69, I find it interesting that Spencer used the more appropriate UAH LT channel in a blog post in 2009, but that by the time it came to publication, he was using the less TMT channel:
The reason for the switch seems evident. Not only does the TMT data give more of a "striated" look", but it has more line segments that appear to match his magical slope of 6. The reason for that is that by switching from TLT to TMT, he has contracted the range of temperature variation from approximately 0.7 degrees C to 0.4 degrees C, and thereby increased the slope of all line segments.
Despite reducing the temperature range, he has the gall to warn us that by using the TMT channel he has increased the temperature range, saying:
"The midtropospheric temperature anomalies are somewhat magnified compared to the surface temperature anomalies, a fact which must be kept in mind if comparing feedback parameters computed relative to the different temperature measures."
Based on models, it is expected that mid tropospheric temperatures will increase more rapidly than surface temperatures. But the TMT channel does not measure mid-tropospheric temperatures, but a weighted average of temperatures from the surface up into the stratosphere, and are not expected to increase more rapidly than surface temperatures. Even if Spencer had not been deeply involved in developing the TLT channel to compensate for this, he would have known it anyway simply by comparing the temperature scales of the two plots. More directly relevant to this discussion, however, is that most line segments in the plot do not have anything like the slope he so desires. This is not clear in the TMT plot because the mass of lines in the center conceals the detail. Therefore I have blown up a detail of that section so that you can judge the slope of the lines for yourself:
Clearly the majority of the line segments are near vertical, which if interpreted literally based on Spencer'theory would indicate that no change in forcing could result in a change in temperature. Comforting news indeed, for it implies that whether the Sun snuff's out quietly, or goes Super Nova, the Earth's surface temperature will maintain a pleasing constancy.
Uncle Ben rightly objected that such a finding would be ridiculous. What he has not shown is any reason why neither the near vertical lines nor the near horizontal lines indicate the climate feedback parameter (or the inverse of the climate sensitivity), but the carefully selected 5 or 6 segments that happen to match Spencer's pre-chosen slope do.
In fact, the very assumption that some segments will reflect the climate feedback parameter uncontaminated by noise, while others will only reflect noise, seems absurd to me. Nature does not conveniently compartmentalize the year into periods when only the feedback parameter is influential, and periods when noise completely dominates. Yet that, essentially, is what Spencer's method assumes.
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markx at 12:44 PM on 25 April 2012Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
Rob, a question (thanks!): How is it that the oceans have apparently only warmed about 0.1 C over the past 57 years but the atmosphere has warmed by about 0.8 C since 1979? I find it hard to understand, as the oceans are the major heat sink and I'd have thought the water cycle would rapidly equilibrated such a discrepancy. -
muoncounter at 12:15 PM on 25 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Tom Curtis#64: Well done, sir. Your clear presentation of these somewhat cryptic figures leaves us with little room to 'agree to disagree.' The point about the lower figure d's progressive drift to the right in response to long term forcing is worth emphasizing. It is clear that if you follow the curve from left to right, there's been an overall warming of some 0.5 degrees. But that's just a model run, the 'skeptics' say. Per Uncle Ben#66, "in the real data, it appears to me that conditions are not nearly as noisy..." Oddly enough, we can see what the real world looks like courtesy of this Sept 2009 blog post.
-- sourced immediately above
These data are Lower Troposphere (eliminating the TMT problem you identified above) and are averaged over a 3 month interval. The upper and lower trajectories in the circled 'cooling event' are on a much lower slope than the 6 (Watt/m^2)/degree line shown. Spencer describes this event as showing "a classic radiative forcing signature." Recalling that these slopes are inverse sensitivity, lower slope is higher sensitivity: Spencer's own analysis of the real data thus shows that sensitivity to radiative forcing is far greater than he has subsequently maintained.
Similarly, the entire packet of data points fall on a lower slope (on the order of 1.5 (Watt/m^2)/degree by eyeball). This figure resembles the lower figure d you showed, which has a comparable overall slope of 1.3. Further, the 3 month averaging reveals that the low sensitivity 'slope=6' is based on transient, short-term noise.
BTW, the magical slope=6 comes from Spencer 2007:
Our measured sensitivity of total (SW + LW) cloud radiative forcing to tropospheric temperature is -6.1 W m^-2 K^-1.
However, he concludes:
While the time scales addressed here are short and not necessarily indicative of climate time scales, it must be remembered that all moist convective adjustment occurs on short time scales.
That short-term (weather and seasonal) sensitivity is greater than long-term (climatic) sensitivity should be no surprise. Thus goes the Nobel Prize.
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Fran Barlow at 11:49 AM on 25 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Those interested in supporting Grahame Readfern over at his blog on the Anna Rose v Minchin I can engage in a flawed debate on Climate Change can follow the link to do battle. I've had my say. -
Realist at 11:41 AM on 25 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Before wanting subsidies removed, the electricity price is in an unsubsidized market should be considered as that will ultimately be the price. Even at 24 c/kwh in NZ, I doubt that is without subsidies. -
grypo at 10:37 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
- Knappenberger is not talking about the biological adaption of the human race, but about changes in behaviours to better cope with high heat levels. - Yes, I certainly know what Chip is suggesting. Changes in behavior do not need that we treat the poor and elderly as canaries in the coal mine in order to adapt. We don't need a 'wake up call'. As Chip points out there are fairly well known adaptions that need to take place to deal with rising temperature. It is his twisted logic on mitigation and the EPA that everyone is taking issue with.
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