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Chris G at 13:44 PM on 24 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
I'm wondering who 'we' are. What's the criterion: Someone who actually does research in the field, or someone who just believes that the majority of scientists are more likely to be correct than the very small minority who say we have nothing to worry about? I mean, for most people, it is an appeal to authority, isn't it? For my part, I can fit the various aspects within the physics, chemistry, statistics, etc. that I learned in school, and I can not fit any argument put up by the opposition. But, while my education is much less than a researcher's, it is also much more than an average layman. How is the average person supposed to know if they don't understand even basic physics? I thank Rob for putting this up, but I am starting to think it really doesn't matter how researchers know. People with a high level of understanding on the subject are a small minority. There are way too many voters who believe whatever sounds good to them, and there are too many people happy to tell them what they want to hear. Who in their right mind would enthusiastically embrace the notion that they have contributed to something which will be detrimental to the well-being of their children? That's what the facts lead to, but given that kind of psychological pressure, it should not be surprising that all sorts of irrational ideas come squirting out of people's minds. It doesn't matter; faced with that awful conclusion, almost anything else is easier to believe. -
Tom Curtis at 13:38 PM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Moderator @58, don't tell him to run. I am still waiting for his response to my questions @39 given the supplemental information @43. Uncle Ben, like Spencer is wrong in so many areas it is difficult to pick a point of attack. But I believe the answers to my questions will show that even their most fundamental premise is simply false, and indeed was shown to be false by Spencer himself, though he chose not to notice.Moderator Response: [DB] Ben is welcome to continue to interact here, minus the histrionics. If he has anything substantive to prove, he will do so. Thus far his agenda has been assertion, intimation and misdirection. -
scaddenp at 13:03 PM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Good start. Just need to keep going. -
Bob Loblaw at 12:54 PM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Ben: nothing I said should give you the idea that you understand the processes involved. Water vapour does not respond directly to changes in CO2. The response time of water vapour to temperature changes is not the issue - it is the response time between CO2 and the change in temperature that matters. You used audio feedback as an example earlier. If I record your voice and play it back at extreme volume a year later, and blow out the speakers, do you think the lack of feedback 5 seconds after you speak into the micropphone will prevent it? -
actually thoughtful at 12:28 PM on 24 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
Quote: "The world is warming. Man is to blame." This is what I came up with when I wanted to summarize the issue of climate change for my electronic signature where characters count. It often has the desired effect - people comment and react. Which I think is necessary so that the issue never fades out of discussion. -
Uncle Ben at 12:13 PM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
KR 51 The title of Spencer and Braswell is about sensitivity and the accuracy of its extimation. When he presented calculations of sensitivity from IPCC modes, the ones he chose showed the range of sensitivities they embrace. It is a wide range. The point of the paper was not to try to fit the temperature record. To say that he chose models to do anything more than show the range of sensitivities is to misunderstand what his purpose was. After the storm of protest by those who wanted to do something different, he did publish results for all the models. About noise, if you look at the plots of points in the usual dH/dt vs dT plots, you might well think there is a lot of noise in the measurements. But when Spencer connects the dot in time order, one sees that there is considerable regularity in the curves. In the plots with many straight lines, one has to admit that there is no noise to be seen. The satellite data are apparently much more precise than that. Instead of noise, one sees evidence for processes that have not been acknowledged -- fast processes. About short-term vs long-term sensitivity, again, the straight lines in the plots are evidence that the process being measured for sensitivity reaches near-equlibrium in the time between points. Therefore the slope can be measured. The curly parts show no such equilibrium and if they are part of what you call climate sensitivity, then I have to agree with you. You need a long, long time -- maybe a century of data. But there is more than one process going on, you see. I am trying to quit, if the moderator will allow me the courtesy of exiting gracefully and not appearing to be slinking off into the shadows. Pretty please?Moderator Response:[DB] "I am trying to quit, if the moderator will allow me the courtesy of exiting gracefully and not appearing to be slinking off into the shadows. Pretty please?"
Moderator baiting is not an endearing trait in any venue; desist.
If you cannot handle the hard questions from knowledgeable persons then you should not posit what amounts to curve-fitting mathturbation/climastrology. From the inception of your comments on this thread you have offered up nothing of substance to support your assertions.
Like Spencer, you serve up vacuous handwaving, smoke, mirrors and blustrous intimations of conspiracy to suppress the New Truth. You follow that up with failed, disingenuous threats of running away from requests for answers. Run then.
Just stop wasting everyone's time.
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Daniel Bailey at 11:29 AM on 24 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
Quotes & principles I have lived my life by, First and foremost: "There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape." ~ Oriana Fallaci On our belonging to the brotherhood of mankind: "One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship and compassion." ~ Simone de Beauvoir On dealing with those whose ideology keeps them in denial: "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." ~ Voltaire and: "Prejudices are what fools use for reason." ~ Voltaire (Yes, I have a soft spot for Voltaire) What to remember about those who espouse delay: "The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake." ~ Meister Eckhart On personal resolve: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr How to handle those dark times when despair strikes: "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus On the perils of ignoring the lessons of the paleo record: "History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, "Can't you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club." ~ John W. Campbell The philosophy to hold when having to buck the trend, and to take an unpopular stand: "People laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at you all because you are all the same." ~ Jonathan Davis And, lastly, from the Great Philosopher: "If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past." ~ Master Po -
Andy Skuce at 10:54 AM on 24 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Friedrich Nietzsche, the renowned philosopher, famously wrote, in 1888: What does not kill me, makes me stronger. He died twelve years later at the age of 55, after having endured three strokes over three years. -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:41 AM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
scaddenp, please browse through this http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CRSR42374.pdf -
scaddenp at 10:18 AM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Eric - ours is 33% and no subsidies. I'd say the problem is elsewhere - time for the voter to get rid of them. -
Tom Curtis at 10:14 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
The more I look at Spencer's argument from "The Great Global Warming Blunder" the more I am troubled by Spencer's disregard of good scientific practice. I have not looked at it in any detail before, and was only drawn into the debate because I objected to Uncle Ben's nonsense about maths never lying (whereas, of course, people lie using maths all the time). However, having been drawn in to looking at the issues, the numerous flaws in Spencer's analysis just leap out at you. But none more so than the one he hid in plain sight:
Do you see it?
It is concealed better in Spencer's later plot using a slightly different period that was reproduced by muoncounter. There Spencer labeled the x-axis "Tair change", and naturally I assumed he was discussing the change in surface air temperature. But in the plot above he clearly labels it as TMT Anomaly. That is, the temperature plot is for the TMT channel of the satellite data. I have confirmed the data in the plot reproduced by muoncounter is from the same source.
The significance?
About one third of the data for the TMT channel comes from the tropopause (which is not changing temperatures) or the stratosphere (which is cooling).
As a result, the TMT trend is just over half of the TLT trend, and less than half of the trend in surface air temperatures. Climate sensitivity predicts the change in surface temperature for a given change in forcing. By using a source of temperature data which is well known to have lower temperature trends than the surface data, Spencer has weighted the scales against finding a high climate sensitivity. Indeed, if we were to use the more appropriate surface temperature, it is quite possible the net radiative feedback parameter (lambda on the plots in in the formula) would be half to one third lower than calculated by Spencer using TMT data.
I am not suggesting that Spencer has committed scientific fraud, or that he has been dishonest. He said what he was doing. But it is a "sharp" practice which is likely to con the gullible. And of course, he has immediately taken this sharp practice to the gullible in the form of a popular book. Perhaps Uncle Ben could quote from us the sections in that book where Spencer explained that he was using TMT temperatures, and that TMT temperature trends were much lower than surface trends due to contamination from tropopause and stratospheric data. After all, we know Spencer knows about that. He, along with Christy, was part of the team that first attempted to compensate for that compensation by data analysis to produce what is now called the TLT channel.
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GillianB at 09:51 AM on 24 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
Words to live by... Don't ask little of me, you might get it. -
Eric (skeptic) at 09:44 AM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Philippe, I should have been clearer, the highest nominal rate, our complexity is basically a product of the favors (including subsidies) doled out, and you are right that the effective rate is often the same or less than other developed countries. But one piece of your information is 23 days out of date: Japan no longer has the highest nominal rate, see http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/27/pf/taxes/corporate-taxes/index.htm -
Doug Hutcheson at 09:34 AM on 24 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
Words I (try to) live by:- Nil illegitimi carborundum
- Know thyself
- As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.(Proverbs 3:27)
- Do no harm
- A closed mouth gathers no foot
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Philippe Chantreau at 09:25 AM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
"we in the US have the highest corporate income tax rates of any large economy" This is somewhat difficult to assess because of the complexities of tax laws. Nonetheless, it is most certainly false, as Japan has higher rates. Other countries are probably comparable in terms of what is actually paid, as there are myriads of ways to escape taxation in the convoluted US tax code. -
Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben - While we're on the topic, you might find the discussion of the Dessler paper worth looking at. As opposed, for example, to Spencers rather poor work. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:57 AM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
scaddenp, since we in the US have the highest corporate income tax rates of any large economy, our politicians are always subsidizing business via tax breaks in exchange for campaign donations. It's a much bigger problem than just the subsidies for producing CO2 like the 10:1 oil and gas to wind subsidy ratio. No, we don't like it, but there are a variety of political barriers to keep the system in place. (Note this is not a political post, I am pointing out the existence of a more general problem) -
Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben - "KR: That charge has been answered quite often. It show a complete miunderstanding of the paper." I'm afraid I take Argument by Assertion as a logical fallacy. If you are referring (I'll note that it would help if you were more specific) to the extremely short time scales, I believe Tom Curtis has more than adequately pointed out Spencers flaws. The time frame used is simply inadequate for climate sensitivity measurements. If you are referring to Spencers conclusions regarding climate sensitivity and models, and Spencers egregious failure to present all the data he ran (including those that weakened his conclusions), you're going to need more support for your statements than simply asserting a "misunderstanding". -
Uncle Ben at 08:07 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
KR 51 That charge has been answered quite often. It show a complete miunderstanding of the paper. Bob Loblaw 52 Thanks for the reassurance that I understand the process. The first few times around this merry-go-round is enough to establish the rate at which it is going. That is enough to permit measurement of the feedback sensitivity, since equilibrium is quickly established in the atmosphere within a month. No more posting for me, please. If you think I am wrong, let me live in my fantasy world in ignorance. Time will tell who is right. -
funglestrumpet at 07:40 AM on 24 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
You ask what quotes we live by. I particularly like the work entitled 'Desiderata'. I know that there is a dispute about who wrote it, but I couldn't care less. I resolve that issue by turning to one of the main tenets of logic: The veracity of a statement is independent of the person who states it. If I had to single out only part of Desiderata, it would be: “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.” Seeing as we are in poetic mode, I will pass on some advice that someone once gave me about how to deal with anyone in a senior position who was behaving as a 'Little Hitler': "Imagine them sitting on the toilet." He did also advise that it is essential to only laugh inwardly. Somewhat circuitously, that brings me back to another saying to live by, this time from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -
Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Don9000 - "...people will be more prone to remain inside or inactive, and thus obesity rates will tend to increase. Or perhaps people will be more likely to remain prone in the heat? With the same effect on obesity? -
Don9000 at 07:12 AM on 24 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Of course, if all the people in regions experiencing more frequent and severe heatwaves go out and buy air conditioners, this will increase the use of electricity, and in most instances the production of Carbon Dioxide, since fossil fuels will often need to be burned to power them. Similarly, people will be more prone to remain inside or inactive, and thus obesity rates will tend to increase. Of course, it won't surprise me if I read a skeptic argue that the air conditioners will contribute to global cooling, and that inactive people generate less heat through work . . . -
RW1 at 07:07 AM on 24 April 2012Radiative Balance, Feedback, and Runaway Warming
Chris, Nice hypotheical explanation, but ultimately in the real climate you can't arbitarily separate the water vapor feedback from that of clouds and the latent heat of evaporation. All three of these physical processes are interconnected, and act together in a highly dynamic manner to maintain the current energy balance from the forcing of the Sun. -
Bob Loblaw at 06:32 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Ben@52 Increasing CO2 causes radiative imbalance. After X time, temperature rises. With higher temperature, atmospheric water vapour content increases, stablizing in a time period measured in days. That causes another radiative imbalance, which takes X time to cause another temperature rise, which leads to another increase in water vapour, ad infinitum. Now, Ben, are you really so poorly informed that you think that the "few days" it takes water vapour to adjust to a new temperature is the same length of time that it will take the earth-atmosphere system to adjust its temperature to the radiative imbalance? Or are you just trolling? [Hint: the time X is what you need to know before you can use observations to determine the long-term sensitivity to CO2 changes.] -
scaddenp at 06:20 AM on 24 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist - I'm from NZ. Domestic electricity charges are around NZ$0.24 kWh. A bit of 50% is from hydro, ~11% from geothermal but wind is fastest growing sector. Gas is biggest part of the remaining thermal generation. For a country that espouses the free market so much, it's amazing the amount of subsidies that US citizen's tolerate. -
Daniel Bailey at 05:21 AM on 24 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
Alas, poor TOP! Once again you get things wrongeth! Not only doth thee misapplyeth the term ad hominem (Note: My noting your wont of making assertions proven time and again to be wrong without owning up to the error, thus constituting a lack of credibility on your part, is hardly ad hominem; it is on a par with saying that since the sky is blue, it is not green), thou dost err in in saying that I cannot proveth thee a denier (straw man argument: I said, quote "The credibility of denial is always zero")! Hadst thee but said that I had intimated thee to be trøll then perhaps there maight be substance to thy yon gossamer rhetorical bones thee jangleth. While unintended, the maladroit malaprops are appreciated. -
dana1981 at 05:14 AM on 24 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Daneel @6 - not predicted by 2100, no. As the post says, we're talking a few centuries in the future. That's the relevance. -
DaneelOlivaw at 04:58 AM on 24 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
What's the relevance of the Sherwood & Huber? I mean, 10ºC is a huge increase in temperature, not even projected by the most extreme climate models. -
Uncle Ben at 04:25 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Tom 50 Thank you for contributing to my education (sincerely). You say that equilibrium of water vapor effects are reached in a few days. That is the effect that amplifies CO2 warming, is it not? So where is the absurdity? I will once again say goodbye and thanks to all who have contributed useful eedback to me. -
ajki at 03:52 AM on 24 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
As to climate questions, especially global climate, I'm not only not qualified, but absolutely unable to gather data, test & qualify, discuss & describe, interpret & model or combine & evaluate within in even one single field of the broad spectre of relevant sciences. This situation is nothing unusual for me - in a highly specialised modern world there are very few areas where I myself have enough knowledge, experience and practice to come by with at least educated guesses. Heck, I can't even repair the damned car anymore because of the load of built-in electronic components today. But I've also learned - as anybody else - to delegate the workload to specialists. And here in Germany, there are a lot of great institutions bound to climate sciences - for decades now. If those "specialists" publish through formal channels and their findings are based on empirical data and their findings have a reasonable and coherent outcome, I trust them. Why shouldn't I? And then it really helps to consider between right and wrong when you permanently find those ad hominem attacks on denier blogs (e.g. calling Drs Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber "... so called climate scientists ..." on EIKE - don't look for it, it's WUWT, only worse). -
TOP at 03:51 AM on 24 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
In addition to Dr. Masters appearing in this video he has made an addition to his wunderground website allowing viewers to plot a line on temperatures showing temperature rise or fall anywhere in the world where records have been kept. Climate Change -
Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben - "My understanding is that Spencer is looking for the sensitivity of temperature to the feedback from CO2" As Tom Curtis noted, what Spencer presented does not address anything commonly defined as climate sensitivity, due to the time factor. What he is looking over these short terms is the noise, not the signal - short term cloud variability is strongly affected by many variables, and climate sensitivity will be lost in the variability on these time scales. This inappropriate use of short term variations has been a pattern in a number of these studies, such as the various Lindzen and Choi papers. Spencer has, in addition, misrepresented the data - presenting the 6 models with the least and most sensitivity, claiming that lower sensitivities are closer fits - when he did not show additional models he had run, models with intermediate sensitivities but that better tracked the data. His test was in reality not of climate sensitivity, but of ENSO replication, a different question entirely. Not showing data in hand that contradicts his hypothesis is more than questionable. I would strongly suggest you read Dessler 2011 and Trenberth 2011 (links in my previous post) before claiming that Spencer is correct. -
TOP at 03:42 AM on 24 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
@8 Michael Sweet Which post on a denier blog are you attributing to me? This is the only climate blog I hang out on. @8 Daniel Bailey As usual the ad hominem attack. He can't even prove I am a climate denier. I wonder if apophenia can be treated? Maybe I should post a copy of my heating bill when it arrives. Of course Summer in March was a phenomenon affecting an area in the Midwest United States in which I live.
(Courtesy of WunderGround for Niles, MI)
Effect of blocking system on SW Michigan temperatures followed by below normal temperatures. Other nearby locations saw far lower (hard freeze) temperatures.
#12 Killian
It is typically touch and go with fruit trees the last few years. This year was really bad, but I think my orchard may have squeaked by except maybe the fact that the bees may not have been as busy as they should have been in March. Ants and wasps are very confused right now.
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Tom Curtis at 03:21 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
There are three commonly used definitions of climate sensitivity. The slowest is the Earth System Sensitivity. The Earth System Climate Sensitivity is the change in temperature for a given forcing once equilibrium has been reached for all feedbacks including slow feedbacks. As slow feedbacks include the melting of ice sheets (with a time scale of thousands of years) and the equilibriation of atmospheric and deep ocean CO2 concentrations (time scale in the hundreds of years), ESCS measures sensitivity in the long term. More commonly used is the Charney Climate Sensitivity, which is the temperature reached for a given forcing after equilibrium is reached including all fast feedbacks, but no slow feedbacks. "Fast feedbacks" include such things as the watervapour feedback (time scale to equilibrium of days), changes to the cryosphere excluding ice sheets ie, snow and sea ice (time scale to equilibrium - decades) among a host of others. The short term climate sensitivity is the Transient Climate Responce, which is defined as:"The transient climate response is the change in the global surface temperature, averaged over a 20-year period, centred at the time of atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling, that is, at year 70 in a 1% yr–1 compound carbon dioxide increase experiment with a global coupled climate model. It is a measure of the strength and rapidity of the surface temperature response to greenhouse gas forcing."
(My emphasis) So even the most rapid of the commonly defined measures of climate sensitivity is a response over decades. But by fiat, Uncle Ben declares that "... effect of feedback from CO2 warming does not involve the slow process of ocean waming ...". From that he concludes that measuring the sensitivity to only those processes which reach equilibrium in a matter of days measures the Charney Climate Sensitivity which is known to take decades, indeed up to a century or more, to reach equilibrium. It is amazing what absurdities you can believe when you allow yourself to use false premises asserted by fiat anytime they are needed. -
Uncle Ben at 02:51 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
muon counter 46 KR @ 47 Many thanks for the link to the part of Tamino's treatise that you find most relevant. The beginning is quite clear, something that Spencer might have written. He supports the importance of speed of the process being discussed, including the fact that warming of air by ocean surface is fast and warming of ocean by the sun is slow. Where he diverges from Spencer is his undertaking to compute the sensitivity of the composite process from the jagged line. He says that to take the slope of just the jags is an error if you want to measure the sensitivity of the entire system to radiative forcing. My understanding is that Spencer is looking for the sensitivity of temperature to the feedback from CO2, which is what Hansen and others blame for the total strength of global warming. Since the effect of feedback from CO2 warming does not involve the slow process of ocean waming, it is quick, as acknowledged by Tamino. That is why the use of the slope of the jags is not a mistake but is added information. In Spencer's plots, showing short-term effects, the curvy parts show the ocean surface not in equilbrium. That is why one does not attempt to fit them with straight lines. The critics are right that to include everything in these short-term plots would be a mistake. But the parts of the plots that Spencer uses are straight, which indicates that the cause of the change happens quickly, reaching equilibrium in weeks, not years. So I think Tamino is correct up to the point where he objects to the use of the jags. -
les at 02:33 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
45 - Ben. Ummm, ahhh... eh? Anyway. I had thought, with your history in statistics etc. maybe some detailed discussion... I'll leave it at that. -
miffedmax at 02:22 AM on 24 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Since, as the article points out, we can't evolve to deal with the increased heat, the answer is going to be running energy-burning air conditioning to deal with the problem (which will be fine for those of us in First-World cities, I suppose). And that's just going to drain more energy and require investment in infrastructure that may not be the most economically advantageous place to be putting our money--and, since we don't know where the electricity will be coming from, we may be making the matter worse by firing up more fossil-fuel powered plants or bringing old plants back on line to meet the ever-soaring demand for electricity (energy that's not being used to produce goods and grow any economy, but just to keep us from dropping dead). Many major cities already experience brownouts or blackouts during the hottest parts of the year. For all the shrieking the deniers do about correlation not implying causation, you'd think they'd do better than this. -
Composer99 at 01:36 AM on 24 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Arguably, the rate of change is the strongest factor creating an imperative for action and negating Knappenberger's arguments. As noted in the discussion of the PETM, those changes took place over a period of ~200,000 years (a temperature shift of 2.5*10-3 to 4*10-3 °C per century given a temperature change of 5 to 8 °C). In contrast, the shift in modern times thus far ends up being about two orders of magnitude more rapid (if memory serves). -
Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben - You have now been pointed to multiple issues with Spencers work. These criticisms include some peer-reviewed papers: Dessler 2011 - "It is also shown that observations of the lagged response of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) energy fluxes to surface temperature variations are not evidence that clouds are causing climate change." Trenberth et al 2011 - "...some efforts have been shown to contain major errors and are demonstrably incorrect. ...cloud variability is not a deterministic response to surface temperatures...many of the problems in LC09 have been perpetuated..." They also include Taminos analysis, comments here, and the noteworthy problems in many of Spencers works with basic statistics. If you continue to hold to Spencers work without considering or addressing these issues, I would have to suspect you are suffering from confirmation bias. -
muoncounter at 00:51 AM on 24 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben#40: "He did it by utilizing periods of time when clouds were heated more by some non-radiative forcing, such as ocean currents, than by the sun." That's quite a trick! If the figures posted above are representative of this great work, where are the gaps between monthly observations that represent months when the sun was doing the heating? As far as 'heating clouds by some non-radiative forcing,' that mechanism needs a bit more substantiation. FYI: tamino's analysis was linked here. -
Uncle Ben at 23:59 PM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Les, (44), my reply was that the post I referred to was not signed, and I relied on commenters to say who wrote it. It may have been someone else. You may be right. -
jzk at 23:56 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Since these plans seem be over the longer term such as several decades, is it really a myth that "renewables can't provide baseload power" since they can't provide it now or in the short term? There are exciting new technologies coming out like vanadium redox batteries that seem to have the potential of solving the indeterminacy problem of wind and solar (and traditional power generation sources as well). -
Cornelius Breadbasket at 23:06 PM on 23 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Why do I think I’m right? I don’t know if I do. I’m a layperson when it comes to science, so I feel that it is possibly harder for me to ‘know’ I’m right than many others who post here. I apologise if my reasoning and arguments are simplistic, I am not a complex thinker. What does ‘right’ mean? Throughout my life I’ve learned that in order to make informed decisions you have to continue to question everything until you perceive a balance of evidence. ‘Right’ about what? Right that human activity is warming the planet, changing the climate and could be dangerous. The evidence that I have seen and the experts that I trust help me to make decisions about AGW. Again, the following list is extremely simplistic but it is genuinely part of my personal decision-making process. Personal experience:- I’ve been a gardener/small farmer for 30 years. Food production is becoming harder because of recent weather pattern changes
- I live in the UK and we are seeing new species of insects migrating to the UK from southern Europe
- Occasionally there are Daffodils at Christmas – in my childhood and youth they came in March and April
- Garden birds are nesting in March instead of April and May
- There have been more extreme weather events than during my childhood and formative years. We are currently experiencing a drought
- I have had dramatic personal experience of a near-fatal flooding event in 2007 (I understand that this was a one in a thousand year event. We have had two more similar flooding events in the UK since then)
- Insurance premiums increasing because of increased flood risk
- I have seen that human activity can have a detrimental effect on landscapes, levels of pollution and biodiversity so it is probable that human activity has an effect on the atmosphere of a finite planet
- People with qualifications in the field in which they speak
- People who admit if they are wrong and re-evaluate their claims based on evidence
- People who have access to the latest and most up-to-date equipment and research methods
- People who are open about any political, corporate or financial motivations that may influence their opinions
- Those who are not motivated by fame or notoriety
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John Brookes at 22:43 PM on 23 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
So I'm a skeptic. I find it hard to believe that warming of 2 or more degrees will happen this century. But that seems to be what the smart people are saying, and you'd be a fool to ignore them and just hope it won't happen. But as with many other commentators here, its the "skeptics" themselves who make me feel more confident that AGW is a problem. The "skeptical" position is totally undermined by their own arguments. Once you've seen a "skeptic" embrace a particularly silly idea (Salby's is just another one), it is very hard to take them seriously on anything else they say. Their weird ideas on economics and government also make it hard to give their views on climate any credence. It is worth noting that extreme environmentalists are the same as "skeptics". They are only too willing to incorporate the latests silly idea into their world view. -
otter17 at 22:08 PM on 23 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Wow, I thought the "heat waves are good for you" argument was relegated to the amateurs in the blogs. Thanks for pointing to and explaining some of the peer reviewed literature on the subject. Sad that some will so callously be willing to burden the future with such a risk as reduced inhabitable areas. -
Realist at 22:08 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Michael Sweet Thats a quote and obviously meant to be millions. My point is that virtually all electricity is subsidised. You cheery-picked that nuclear was uneconomic without a subsidy in Florida, when Florida ONLY pays 10 cents per kwh retail. But did you mention which sources of electricity would be economic at 10 c/kwh retail? No conveniently ommitted. Here is a link to Wikipedia for the cost of generation for the various sources. This is wholesale and excludes the costs for transmission, distribution, billing, marketing and profit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source -
Michael Whittemore at 20:10 PM on 23 April 2012Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
The next comments in a numerical order that William has to answer is 100# which asks if William understands that "surely the [temperature rise of] 7% proposed by Shakun et al for the initial, pre CO2 warming includes any feedback due to water vapour". Only if William had the ability to read a couple of comments ahead. -
michael sweet at 19:58 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist: "The federal government provides hundreds of billions for renewable energy projects". It is a waste of my time to argue with someone who contradicts his own posts. What is your point? I have made mine that nuclear is uneconomic. -
Piet R. Zijlstra at 18:24 PM on 23 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
"Take one risk per day" becomes with our global carbon management "Take every day the biggest risk" -
adelady at 18:22 PM on 23 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Even in areas accustomed to high temperatures, the effects can be devastating. Everyone knows the high number of spectacularly awful deaths by bushfire in Victoria a couple of years ago. What they overlook is that more people died, quietly and unspectacularly, in the heatwave that made the fires possible.
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