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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. -
muoncounter at 10:30 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip K#23: "It is not obvious to me that ..." You're entitled to your opinion, but not your own facts (although this isn't the thread for GHG mitigation arguments). Doc Ford#33: "... combat any perceived effects of short-term climate change through the use of air-conditioning," Ah, the 'let 'em get air conditioning' response. One can almost hear an echo of the fabled line of Marie Antoinette in that: 'The poor have no fans.... ' As usual, there is a more complicated response to consider: ... cold adaptation is usually more difficult physiologically for humans since we are not subarctic animals by nature. We do not grow dense fur coats nor do we usually have thick layers of fat insulation like polar bears. Despite this reality, more people die from heat than cold in the United States every year. Those who succumb are usually babies left in locked cars on hot days and the elderly poor who cannot afford air conditioning. The effect of heat on our bodies varies with the relative humidity of the air. High temperatures with high humidity make it harder to lose excess body heat. As for the glib assurance 'we can quickly adapt,' some can, others can't: Heat-related deaths among high school and college football players in the United States nearly tripled between 1994 and 2009, according to a new study. -
dana1981 at 10:30 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip @32 - I do reckon that improved technologies and deployment and communication will continue to improve, but firstly that does not support your argument that a higher frequency of heat waves would be beneficial, nor do I think those advances will keep up with the increased heat wave frequency caused by global warming. The reasons it's not a good thing are 1) in the meantime you get events like the 2003 European heat wave and 2) the costs of adaption are not low, and particularly difficult for poorer regions to cope with. Doc Ford @33 - nobody claimed that global warming proves human-caused global warming. Causation is discussed in many other posts on this site if you'd like to learn about the subject (i.e. see here and here and here). Regarding the myth that mitigation will be costly, see here. These myths are off-topic in this post. -
Chip Knappenberger at 10:12 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
dana1981 (#30), You say, "already adapted" but I gave you three examples of cities which in matter of only a couple of years, were able to take measures to reduce the impacts of heat-waves. Adaptations, in many cases, are fairly straightforward. Also, earlier in our discussion, you made a point that you thought that some of the adaptations that were taking place (which were responsible for the declining high temperature sensitivity trends over time) were not being driven by climate change. Don’t you reckon that such trends (e.g., improved medical technologies, heat watch/warning systems, etc.) will continue? Adaptation to heat takes place somewhat spontaneously, as well as being in a direct response to an increased threat of heat waves. It proceeds gradually over time perhaps accelerated by a wake up call. The net result is a declining sensitivity to heat waves. It is hard for me not to view this as a good thing. -Chip -
Tom Curtis at 10:05 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
First, to clear up some confusion (william @25; grypo @28), Knappenberger is not talking about the biological adaption of the human race, but about changes in behaviours to better cope with high heat levels. Such changes include (but are not limited to) stopping strenuous work, staying in shaded areas, drinking plenty of fluids, immersing yourself in water, and air conditioning. As Dana and others point out, such adaptations come at a cost, both in increased electricity and water requirements, and in lost economic productivity. What I find odd about Knappenberger's argument is that it shows no recognition of the scale of the problem. Below is a chart comparing a range of temperatures experienced over the 20th century with those expected by the end of the 21st century with Business as usual:
The image was made by taking Lindzen's image of annual station averages from about 1850-1990 and superimposing a copy of itself in red with a 4 degree higher mean. As can be seen, what we are looking at is current record breaking years becoming the long term mean.
This graph understates the issue in two ways. First it is a graph of annual averages, and the divergence from the mean of heatwaves will be greater than that for annual averages. Second, as Hansen has shown, the standard deviation of temperatures is increasing so that the maximum temperature and frequency of extreme heat events is increasing faster than the mean.
So, what we are looking at is the current economic cost of adaption becoming an ongoing, daily cost year in year out, plus an exponentially increased cost of adaption to future heat waves.
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sidd at 09:41 AM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
I am impressed by Fig. S5 The amount of heat accumulating in (mostly) the 0-700m layer north of 70 degrees in the Atlantic over 50 yr. is on the order of 5e21 J this is a trend of 1e20 J/yr i note that melting 300GT/yr ice as indicated by PIOMASS is a heat sink of that order of magnitude. sidd -
dana1981 at 08:25 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Again Chip, cities which are already adapted to heat waves and variability aren't the issue. It's the cities which are unaccustomed to high temps, but which will see ever-more frequent heat waves which are the problem. As grypo @28 notes, while cities will eventually adapt to the increase in hot weather, in the meantime people will die until they are prepared for the changing climatic conditions. This will particularly be a problem in developing nations where adaption will be more of a challenge, since the necessary adaption measures cost money. -
Don9000 at 08:13 AM on 25 April 2012New research from last week 16/2012
Thank you Daniel--I have in the past managed to find a few items via google searches--usually from government sites, but hadn't thought to go through the authors. I find it a bit odd, to say the least, that the author can make even a pre-press version of the article available in this way, when the host publication takes the approach it does. Oh well! Ours is not to wonder why . . . -
Chip Knappenberger at 08:04 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
dana1981 (#27) "global warming may very well lead to greater temperature variability, and certainly more heat waves." That may be true, but 1) Zanobetti et al. did not look at heat waves (but the studies I listed above did), and 2) in the Zanobetti study, the cities in climates with the greatest amount of summer temperature variability were the cities whose populations were the least sensitive to temperature variations. So, it follows that if temperature variability increases, then the population's sensitivity to it should decline--just as I expect will happen as heat waves become more frequent. As Zanobetti et al. note, "there is strong evidence of adaptation to usual temperatures." -Chip -
grypo at 07:39 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
This is probably the first time I've ever heard a suggestion that we sacrifice lives in hopes that adaption down the line will save some lives used as an anti-mitigation argument. This type of thought process is rather dangerous. I would hope it gets ignored. The logic gets even more tortured when saying that attempting to prevent these initial outcomes is dangerous (as in the EPA). Let's all try and imagine this type of thought process being used all types of these situations. We can do better than this. I guess we should learn that they will say almost anything. -
dana1981 at 07:36 AM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
ribwoods @1 - thanks, typo corrected. -
dana1981 at 07:36 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip - global warming may very well lead to greater temperature variability, and certainly more heat waves. -
Eric (skeptic) at 06:58 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
As clearly spelled out in the OP there are two topics in this thread, short term mortality attribution and long term extreme heat impacts. It would be nice if everyone clearly specified which topic they are referring to. (most appear to be addressing the short term attribution issue) Also, needless to say, carbon mitigation economics, regulations, etc is off topic. IMO I think cost of heat adaptation is a separation issue too, but JMO. -
Flakmeister at 06:39 AM on 25 April 2012New research from last week 16/2012
This goes with #9... http://www.stsci.edu/institute/conference/faint-sun/posterList -
Flakmeister at 06:29 AM on 25 April 2012New research from last week 16/2012
Opps... I may have mispasted things... http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/science/T120420005829.htm This concerns the suns field becoming quadrapolar... -
william5331 at 06:28 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip is of course, absolutely correct. If we have heat wave after heat wave, the human population will, over time, become adapted to higher temperatures. What he forgot to mention is that this process involves cutting off the non-heat-tolerant part of the population. In other words lots of deaths. Evolution is a remarkably fast process when you apply heavy selection pressure. Look at how fast we have changed wolves into everything from Pekaness to Rotweilers. Has anyone asked the heat intolerant tail of the population if they agree to this process. -
Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip Knappenberger - Your discussion of Jacobson 2010 is primarily an emphasis on uncertainties. But please note that uncertainties cut in both directions - these CO2 related issues (particulates, ozone, local heat) may just as well have much worse effects as much better. Christidis et al 2010 shows that adaptation is reducing both heat and cold related mortality, which is good. But using adaptation to claim that heat events do not increase baseline heat related mortality on those grounds is merely pushing the cost off to adaptation. The discussion over whether GHG emissions regulations would be effective is another discussion, and I would suggest taking a look at: Northeast USA Carbon Pricing Benefits Exceed Costs The economic impacts of carbon pricing Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits where these are discussed. The overwhelming conclusion of the studies that I have seen is that GHG mitigation is immensely less expensive, to the point of being quite profitable, than adaptation/fixing it afterwards. I realize that you are part of an advocacy group, and that the general thrust of New Hope is towards reducing regulations (as per the group publications) - but even if adaptation reduces the impact of heat event mortality, it's going to be more expensive overall than avoiding the heat increases in the first place. -
Chip Knappenberger at 05:54 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
muoncounter (#21), Whatever you or I may feel about the need for "regulations," at the very least, we would want them to be effective. It is not obvious to me that GHG emissions regulations in the U.S. would be when it comes to mitigating climate change. -Chip -
nealjking at 05:52 AM on 25 April 2012New research from last week 16/2012
Something bothers me about the paper that says that increased levels of CO2 will drive the foraminifera extinct: As I recall, the lifecycle of foraminifera (specifically the creation of their exoskeletons from the CO2 in the ocean; and the deposit of these exoskeletons at the bottom of the oceans; eventually being compressed into limestone) is the principal means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere/ocean/biosphere, and is denoted as "the biological pump". If the biological pump breaks, we'll be stuck with excessive amounts of CO2 for a lonnnggg time. Are these different foraminifera that we're talking about, or are we kicking the football out of the stadium? -
Chip Knappenberger at 05:36 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
dana1981, Thanks for your response and the discussion. Zanobetti et al. looked at temperature variability. And they did not look at trends over time. So, their results are only tangential to the current discussion. You are correct that in the series of Davis et al. work we did not specifically examine what was prompting the U.S. population in major cities into becoming less sensitive to extreme high temperature events. However, other papers have suggested that decreased heat-related mortality in subsequent heat-waves (after particularly deadly ones) was directly related to adaptation measures put into place in response to the threat of heat-waves (see the Fouillet paper I mentioned above, or, Tan et al. 2006, or Palecki et al., 2001). And the measures were shown to be effective in reducing heat-related mortality. So, I think it quite reasonable to assume that in the face of increasing frequency and severity of heat waves, that adaptations will take place—and the evidence suggests (to me at least) that there is a good chance that these adaptations will be effective. With the probable net impact of reducing heat-related mortality in a standard population (i.e. after changes in demographics/age structure have been accounted for). -Chip -
muoncounter at 05:33 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
ChipK#19: Your opinion piece certainly pokes holes in Jacobson's model, but does not offer any new data of its own. Hardly a strong reference. My colleague Pat Michaels refers to this as the EPA’s “whack-a-mole” strategy—while effort is concentrated on trying to beat down one of its pesky and ill-founded CO2-regulating proposals, the EPA pops up another and another and another. Basically you've said 'let's not regulate because we don't like regulations.' All of Jacobson’s reported changes, with the exception of the transient existence of the CO2 dome itself, are only detectable in computer-model world, where all other factors are controlled for and each model in each step is presumed correct. So like all good deniers, your advice is to do nothing, wait and see. In this case, the signal we're talking about will emerge when people start dropping in the streets. Oh, I forgot, they can just 'adapt.' -
philipm at 05:26 AM on 25 April 2012Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
I don't agree with Muller that no one cares what journalsts said 10 years ago. What about the global cooling prediction in the 1970s that was more in the media than the scientific literature? -
dana1981 at 04:56 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
I think the argument itself is faulty. Heat-related mortality may be (or may have been in the past) declining in certain areas as those cities implement various measures to address the problem, but you haven't shown that they implemented those measures because of the increased heat wave frequency. Morevoer, most of your references are to very specific and small areas. Zanobetti at least looked at 135 different US cities and found a different story. Really what you've shown is that if cities implement measures to reduce heat mortalities, they will reduce heat mortalities. You haven't shown that a higher frequency of heat waves will lead to fewer heat mortalities. And again there's the problem of the cost of those measures, and the cost increases as the frequency of heat waves increases. -
Chip Knappenberger at 04:24 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Lionel A (#13): No doubt that there will be short-term hardships for places where heat-waves are currently rare. But once adaptation measures start to be adopted, the sensitivity of the population to extreme heat declines rapidly (see Fouillet et al. for a European example) Dana1981 (#14), All of the papers I referenced support my argument that the sensitivity to heat-related mortality has generally been declining. I am very aware of Kalkstein et al.’s opinion about heat-related mortality in the future, but I don’t think that it fully takes into account the power of adaptation which is apparent from observed trends. As to observed trends, Kalkstein et al. say “Our results generally show a reduction in EHE-attributable mortality rates since 1996.” Dan Bailey (#15): I credit all the decline in heat-related mortality to adaptation! muoncounter (#17): Here is my opinion about Jacobson 2010. jibal (#16, #18), Obviously, you are free to judge my arguments/argument style as you see fit. -Chip -
jibal at 04:04 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
This dialog between Mr. Knappenburger and blogger "TokyoTom"(self-described as "a right-leaning enviro-libertarian"), in which Mr. Knappenburger freely participated, and agreed to have published on the web, in informative about the usefulness of his research to those seeking the truth (see principle #2 in "A Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion"): http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/04/02/update-on-science-advocacy-and-pat-michaels-correspondence-with-chip-knappenberger.aspx -
ribwoods at 03:44 AM on 25 April 2012Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Typo in the first sentence under "Consistent with Meehl's Hiatus Periods": "plateu" should be "plateau". -
muoncounter at 03:40 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Let's not leave out Jacobson 2010, as heat is not the only factor in increasing mortality. Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone as well as particles in urban air. Similarly, Jacobson 2007 found ... increased water vapor and temperatures from higher CO2 separately increase ozone more with higher ozone; thus, global warming may exacerbate ozone the most in already-polluted areas ... About 40% of the additional deaths may be due to ozone and the rest, to particles, which increase due to CO2-enhanced stability, humidity, and biogenic particle mass. I really like the 'adapt and do it quickly' philosophy. -
jibal at 03:23 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/resources/a-code-of-conduct-for-effective-rational-discussion/ because you're failing to adhere to most of these principles, notably in this case the rebuttal principle. -
Daniel Bailey at 02:23 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip's shotgun approach (a gentler term than the link-vomit term that comes so readily to mind) still lacks any cogent analysis. Conspicuous by its absence is the recent work of Christidis et al, which looked at: 1. The trends of the changes (if any) in Cold-Related-Mortality (CRM) and Heat-Related-Mortality (HRM) 2. To see what portion could be explained by human adaption (if any) and what could be attributed to climate change (if any) Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales Nikolaos Christidis, Gavin C. Donaldson and Peter A. Stott Climatic Change Volume 102, Numbers 3-4 (2010), 539-553, DOI: 10.1007/s10584-009-9774-0 Synopsis: "Cold related mortality among people aged over 50 in England and Wales has decreased at a rate of 85 deaths per million population per year over the period 1976–2005. This trend is two orders of magnitude higher than the increase in heat-related mortality observed after 1976. Long term changes in temperature-related mortality may be linked to human activity, natural climatic forcings, or to adaptation of the population to a wider range of temperatures. The need for a formal statistical tool when one attempts to make attribution statements that link impacts of climate change to possible causes is clear. A less stringent approach could be very misleading. For example, it would be easy to compare the recent decrease in cold-related mortality with the increase in temperature and make the seemingly logical assumption that fewer people have died because of milder winters. Our work, however, shows that this is not the case. Here we employ optimal detection, a formal statistical methodology, to carry out an end to end attribution analysis. We find that adaptation is a major influence on changing mortality rates. We also find that adaptation has prevented a significant increase in heat-related mortality and considerably enhanced a significant decrease in cold-related mortality. Our analysis suggests 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." (Emphasis added) -
dana1981 at 02:02 AM on 25 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
Chip, it would help if you actually point out which of the papers you reference are supposed to support your argument. For example, Kalkstein et al. specifically say they don't know how increased heat events as a result of global warming will impact heat mortalities. You also reference Davis et al. (2003) which I addressed in the post above. There's also the problem of the costs of the necessary adaptions to cope with increased heat waves. Somehow people who argue that mitigating global warming will be expensive seem to forget the costs of adapting to global warming if we fail to mitigate it.
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