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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. -
Realist at 17:45 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Michael Sweet If Florida pays $1bn subsidy to build a power plant, well that is only $52 per person living in Florida. I would be happy to pay a $52 subsidy if I could then get electricity for 10 cents per kwh like you do. I would recoup the $52 in about 2 months as I pay 21 cents per kwh. -
Doug Hutcheson at 17:43 PM on 23 April 2012Global Warming Causing Heat Fatalities
the costs of losing the habitability of large regions of the planet are incalculable.
Incalculable, eh? Right there is another reason for not acting too soon, until we can calculate the cost. Those warmist alarmist greenie pinko world dominators are just tryin' to scare ya Mabel. Gimme another beer! </sarc> -
Slioch at 17:19 PM on 23 April 2012Global Surface Warming Since 1995
#8 KR, #9 Sphaerica and #10 dana1981 Thanks for responding, and I'm sorry to be a little late getting back to you - I've been away for much of the last few days. Having looked at the matter again, I must say, yes, you are right: I had misinterpreted the Jones 1995 statement and he was merely concerned with the question of whether or not there had been warming since then. I still find the Santer paper somewhat ambiguous from the quote given above, since he refers to "identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature" rather than simply to "warming". As for Forster and Rahmstorf 2011, they show that when ENSO, solar and volcanic influences are removed from the temperature series there is still a warming trend. I cannot see how interpreting that by saying that the remaining warming trend cannot be attributed to ENSO, solar and volcanic influences is incorrect, though my final sentence in #7 went too far. -
les at 16:14 PM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
35 - Ben "I am willing to try to answer your questions regarding Taminos post" I don't recall asking you any questions regarding that post other than how could you say that tamino denies dH/dt vs dT represents inverse sensitivity when he says explicitly that. You did not respond to my correction (which, itself could be wrong, and if so you could say why). I'm doubtful... -
Tom Curtis at 14:47 PM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben @40, let me assure you that the x-axis represents temperature anomalies in degrees K, the y-axis represents TOA net radiative flux anomalies in W/m^2, just as in the previous figure shown by me, and as in the figure shown by muoncounter @26. Further, just as in the previous figure I showed you, radiative flux is the only source of heating (something which is not true in the figure muoncounter showed). Therefore based on the reasoning you stated in 5, and which is the foundation of your case, the slope of the lines which approximately parallel the red line must "give the sensitivity". If they do not, then you must provide a reason for the exception or admit the counterexample refutes your theory. -
Michael Whittemore at 14:47 PM on 23 April 2012Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
@ Sphaerica 146 I would have to agree, the paper by Clark et al. 2012 explains the H2O/CO2 aspect of the warming seen in the last glaciation. -
Realist at 13:57 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
@52 Places without subsidies a few and far between in or out of US. Your lquestion implies you know some. Would you like to share including the price? -
Doug Hutcheson at 13:51 PM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben @ 40, you ask:What hypothesis do you refer to?
Earlier in your comment, you claimed:Spencer has discovered how to separate feedback from forcing in satellite data and has used it to measure the sensitivity of feedback to solar heating.
Until Spencer's 'discovery' has been reviewed and validated, I regard it as only an hypothesis. Clearly, from comments here and elsewhere, there is a weight of scientific analysis suggesting that Spencer is wrong. In other words, Spencer's science is not yet independently supported. When there is a weight of scientific analysis that supports his claim, I will elevate it from hypothesis to theory. Does that sound fair? -
scaddenp at 13:13 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
"Do you agree virtually all electricity is subsidized?" Can I assume that is this only talking about the USA? -
indulis at 13:10 PM on 23 April 2012The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
Could the next version of the document please NOT use the 2-column layout. It is a pain reading this on a screen or e-reader, you have to continually scroll up/down. The 2 column format is suitable for a magazine, and looks nice but it is impractical for electronic reading IMHO. -
Realist at 13:02 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Michael sweet Florida has electricity at 10 cents per kwh. Believe it or not, you have subsidized electricity. Try joining the rest of us paying nearly twice that. I again make my single point that virtually all electricity is susidised to keep the price down for consumers. Do you agree virtually all electricity is subsidized? And please stop accusing me of claiming "hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies".I didnt say that. I think you have the posts mixed up. -
Bob Lacatena at 12:46 PM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
40, Uncle Ben,Spencer has discovered how to separate feedback from forcing in satellite data...
No, he hasn't. Repeating it as often as you can does not make it so.He did it by...
No, he didn't. He didn't succeed. His logic was grossly flawed, and your tacit and uncritical acceptance (acceptance? praise and worship is more like it) is singularly unconvincing. Your arguments to date amount to nothing more than "Spencer is great" and "I like what he said." -
michael sweet at 12:34 PM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist, My point, as I stated in my first post, was that nuclear power appears to be uneconomic. You have not produced any useful references. Eric's post states that the entire wind industry in the USA receives less than 500 million per year. Your claim of 1Bn/yr for Texas alone is false (as was your claim of "hundreds of billions"). I cited a single nuclear plant that has received over 1Bn in subsidies (over several years). It is not clear what your point is. Renewables receive less subsidies than established power industries in the USA, which is backwards from what should happen. The OP in this thread discusses whether renewables can produce baseload power. You have produced nothing to support your apparent claim that renewables will not be able to handle all power needs in the future. -
Uncle Ben at 12:25 PM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Tom 39, that is a curious plot. If it refers to a system like the ones we have been discussion, I can't imagine what process creates the bowing out of the nearly vertical lines. Assuming that the horizontal axis represents temperature and the vertical axis represents rate of heating, it is clear the temperature is being affected by something else and heating has almost no effect. Doug 38 You refer to Spencer's hypothesis. To my way of thinking, he has put forward no hypothesis. Feedback is the question of the century. Previously one could not measure feedback without including solar forcing. Spencer has discovered how to separate feedback from forcing in satellite data and has used it to measure the sensitivity of feedback to solar heating. 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 eliminated the sun from the forcing leaving only the feedback radiation. What hypothesis do you refer to? -
Realist at 11:39 AM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Michael sweet Just recapping:- Your post was that the florida nuclear plant was subsidized and you believed it shouldnt be. My point was that virtually all electricity is subsidized so that the electricity cost to consumers is kept down. Your point was that you didnt think wind in Texas would be subsidized. I came back with an article that the wind industry in Texas wants the $1bn in a year subsidy to continue. You have now read the link by Eric and quoted the subsidies for the different forms of energy. I take that as you acknowledge the subsidies for electricity are widespread and across the different forms of electricity production. I am not clear what your point is. Can you please be concise as to what it is? -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:37 AM on 23 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
bill @ 63, I gave up reading the comments at JoNova, after finding this gem:It is probable that oil existed before plant life – that fossils found in coal are merely plant life enveloped in solidified oil.
And this one:“‘controlling the natural flux of CO2 is ... a fool’s errand to try”" How do we get this message into the public domain after so many years of “scientific” indoctrination in schools??
Sigh. -
Eric (skeptic) at 11:24 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
Killian, for the record we agree completely that the crop losses can be blamed on anomalous warmth in March, not the normal April weather. Some trees in some places were as much as 3-4 weeks early. For that I blame AGW on top of a modified La Nina pattern which kept the eastern US much warmer and drier this past winter. More importantly (and on topic) we had a positive AO winter, except for February. This is consistent with the traditional theory of AGW, e.g. http://courses.washington.edu/pcc587/readings/Held1993.pdf that the relatively weak NH winter jet (compared to the SH) with more Rossby waves due to irregular land masses would become more like the SH jet: stronger polar jet, weaker meridional penetration and very cold polar temperatures. This Held reference is old, 1993, but I have yet to find a paper that disputes it or any of the many papers that followed the same theory up until about 2002. To me it looks like a common source of the change from the theory of stronger jets with AGW to weaker came from the Alexander paper (my last link in #5). I've been looking through the references in that paper, but many are paywalled. One that is not is http://acacia.ucar.edu/cas/cdeser/Docs/deser.arcticseaice.jclim00.pdf where they show that as sea ice decreases, NAO increases (see fig 5). Again as I stated above this means less blocking, stronger jet, less undulation, etc as sea ice decreases. I could certainly be wrong, but in order for me to be wrong there should be an explanation somewhere that the stronger jet (Held, etc) theory and weaker jet theory have been simultaneously investigated over the years and the weaker jet theory has been found to be more supported (or stronger jet less supported). I have yet to find such a statement in any paper and not for lack of trying. My conclusion until other evidence shows up is that the Alexander results are unsupported. -
Tom Curtis at 11:00 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben @32, thankyou. In light of your response, I want you to consider the following graph derived by the same means, but using a different data set to that shown in my post 31:
If you recall, in your post 5, you wrote:
"Not much calculation is needed, in fact. If you take the trouble to look at his plots, you will see that the straight-line segmenmts are numerous, parallel, and obvious. It is quite convincing. It is their slope which gives the sensitivity to dH/dt."
This closely parallels a suggestion by Spenser:"Note the linear striations in the data that are approximately parallel to the feedback specified in the model simulation indicated by the dashed line. This potentially explains the linear striations seen in Figure 3a as a reflection of the net feedback operating in the climate system on intraseasonal time scales."
Given this, do you agree that the slope of "linear striations" in the graph above (approximately parallel to the red line) also "give the sensitivity"? -
Doug Hutcheson at 10:53 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben @ 18 says:I am astonished at how little attention has been directed at this novel contribution. To me, that is worth a Nobel Prize.
That raises two interesting questions:- In what field of endeavour should he be awarded the prize?
- What are the criteria for earning a Nobel?
The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; ...
As can be seen, the important criterion is to bring a great benefit upon mankind, through an important discovery or invention. This is where it gets sticky for Spencer: it would have to be proved that he had made an important discovery and that it brought a great benefit to mankind. If his hypothesis were correct, it would certainly be important, but would it bring a great benefit? I suggest that that would depend upon how it changed the progress of our civilisation, or the welfare of our population. Arguably, if Spencer had proved that the Earth is not warming, then it could be said that a monetary benefit would accrue in the form of wealthy nations not having to reduce their CO2 emissions and a psychological benefit would accrue in the form of the removal of significant worry for those who currently accept the theory of AGW. Would that be enough to justify a Nobel? I am not qualified to judge. On the other hand, if Spencer's hypothesis has been demonstrated to be junk science and if his paper does not have great literary merit, we can save the Nobel committee the trouble of deciding these questions. I guess it is up to his followers to nominate his work for a prize and see what happens. Perhaps Anthony Watts could start the ball rolling, as Spencer supporters seem fairly thick on the ground at his blog. -
michael sweet at 10:20 AM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist, According to Eric's link (the state of Texas), coal is subsidized at 6.9%, nuclear at 21%, wind at 12% and solar at 12%. Since coal and nuclear are mature industries that should receive no subsidies. It is clear that wind and solar are doing well for new industries and their government subsidies are reasonable. This reference states less than 1Bn subsidies total in the US for both wind and solar. They do not count the Florida subsidy of nuclear, because it is paid by the customers and not the government. I imagine that Texas would exaggerate the subsidy of wind and solar and underestimate fossil fuel subsidies. The fact is that investors will not build nuclear because it is not economic. They are not building coal because there is not enough coal supply to provide coal for the length of the life of a new coal powered generator. Wind and solar are dropping rapidly in price even without much government support. Your claim of "hundreds of billions" of subsidies is so much crap, as are your right wing references. Provide some real data to support your wild claims. -
muoncounter at 10:11 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
UncleBen#32: There are some problems with your feedback analogies. 1. 'Three seconds is enough time' to identify audio feedback - audio frequencies are in the 100s to 1000s of hz. A few seconds represent 100s to 1000s of samples, which is indeed sufficient. However, seven years of monthly data = 84 samples at best; from the figures presented above, it is not clear how many of these are responding to the supposed small feedback. That raises a significant possibility for aliasing. 2 and 3 are both unsubstantiated assertions on your part. If you wish to play by the rules of this house, provide references for your claims. As to your 'rebuttals' thus far, permit me to say, I have not seen any convincing evidence other than your assertions. That we are even discussing a study based on monthly changes in a climate science context already places this entire idea on thin ice. However, it would be helpful if you would focus on the objections you deem #6, 7 and 8; these are substantial - and have not been rebutted. -
Bob Lacatena at 10:06 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
32, Uncle Ben,(1) Three seconds is enough time to measure audio feedback in an auditorium.
Irrelevant.(2) One month is enough time to measure temperature feedback from ocean currents to the lower atmosphere.
That's not a feedback, that's simple heat transfer.(3) One year is surely not enough time to achieve equilibrium to the solar heating of the top layer of ocean.
Why? Because you say "surely"? Your answer he is completely nonsensical. You also dodged my last questions. Have you read the criticism above? Why do you put so much effort into lauding him (Spencer) without addressing those criticisms? -
Killian at 09:31 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
Sorry, Erik, but your declarative statements about what is and is not are not useful. Not only are they essentially ad hominem, they are also not supported by the evidence, imo. We know with good confidence that the correlation between alterations in the ice and changes in the jet stream are more than just correlation. To turn that on its head by claiming changes to the jet stream are now causing the strangeness with the ice after being initiated by the strangeness with the ice is simply not logical. While there may be a positive feedbacks involved, you are dismissing that the jet stream is being changed by the warmth and ice changes. We know, for example, that ice loss and the resulting warming signal can extend up to 900 miles inland from the Arctic Ocean. Are you claiming this would not influence the temp differential thus the jet stream? How do you not see the lag? The largest pulse of warmth from the Arctic is in the fall when the sea ice is freezing and heat is lost to the air from the water. This pulse is slowing the fall freeze, shifting a lot of heating far later into the winter. We are not having full freezing till late December. Your comment, and the pejorative finish, merely cause me to question your objectivity. @ TOP: Your comment at #6 is merely dismissive of facts. The extremely warm March - not a mild spring, but a massively anomalous spring - Was, in fact, a direct result of a stalled loop in the jet stream, which is, as discussed above, a direct result of a reduced temp differential between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes - which is a result of melting sea ice from warmer sea water, more runoff, warmer air temps, reduced albedo, etc. As for your comment about the crop losses? You are correct, but your implication is completely backwards. The April is essentially normal. MArch was anomalous. Without the warm March, the fruits would not have budded and blossomed. The did so completely out of sync with typical weather patterns precisely because of the Arctic-jet stream dynamic. The crop losses were completely expected once the month-early blooming occurred because we already know that while spring is coming sooner, spring frosts have not shifted towards early spring. This actually makes sense because low temps are extremes in the variation. Extremes have no reason to shift overall any faster than the overall warming while the shifting of seasons are very sensitive to small changes in overall average temps. See Masters' excellent posts on the spring temps, frosts and crop losses. He, and pretty much anyone who has ever grown food, expected the crop losses as soon as the blooms came out. Your critiques seem to ignore the knowledge at hand.Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed attribution per request. -
Uncle Ben at 09:07 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
@les 35 Les I am willing to try to answer your questions regarding Taminos post. I found a list of complaints as follows: "Spencer does it “without going into the detailed justification” by: ■Ignoring data from polar areas, where most of the climate change has occurred.(1) ■Comparing global radiation data to ocean temperatures.(2) ■Pretending that 7 years of satellite data is a sufficient time span for climate analysis (try 30 years).(3) ■Restricting his plot to just month-to-month variation.(4) ■Using only monthly temperature changes that were greater than 0.03°C.(5) ■Ignoring decades of independent empirical studies that conclude that climate sensitivity must be somewhere between 2.3 to 4.1°C.(6) ■Sweeping away the 0.6°C warming over last 100 years as natural (therefore a similar estimated rise for this century must also be natural).(7) ■Ignoring the reality check that ice ages are impossible if CO2 sensitivity is as low as he declares.(8) "What does Dr. Spencer end up with? I mean besides the WUWT comments declaring him a shoo-in for a Nobel Prize. He ends up with an artificial statistical correlation with no physical explanation to support it." And I remember among his 3 posts titled 'Spencers errors" I think in which he claims that the ratio of two derivatives means nothing, IIRC. It is this last that I commented on and responded to, but three long posts are too much to search through without printing the out. If you can send me a link, it would help. His name does not appear on these posts, so I am relying on the words of commenters that they are Taminos. Am I mistaken? Among the bullet points, I have already rebutted some. Would you let me know which bother you the most and I will try to answer, if I can. You can refer to them by number. -
Sapient Fridge at 08:41 AM on 23 April 2012CO2 is just a trace gas
Another analogy would be putting a very thin layer of paint on a glass window. It wouldn't make much difference if you doubled the thickness of the glass, but painting even an incredibly thin layer of paint on the surface would make a huge difference to the transparency of the window. The point is that most of the atmosphere (O2 and N2) don't take part in trapping heat, so comparing the CO2 levels to them makes no sense. -
jzk at 08:35 AM on 23 April 2012Polar bear numbers are increasing
Is it relevant that the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, the creator of the 2009 report cited herein, excluded Mitch Taylor from the 2009 Copenhagen meeting, not because he wasn't eminently qualified on the topic of polar bears, but because he doesn't believe in global warming? Is that relevant to the science?Moderator Response: [DB] Even "if" true, not relevant. -
Realist at 08:32 AM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Michael sweet If you have an interest in the breakdown of subsidies, I suggest you do your own research. Note that you have not given a breakdown of the massive coal subsidies you mention but expect others to provide breakdowns for you. Now is that fair? However I suggest you start with the excellent link by Eric @43, it's very informative. -
les at 08:22 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
32 - Ben. I did read your post - clearly, better than you read Taminos! which clearly demonstrates which resolutions are appropriate to demonstrate compliance with known science and when the data is being mis-analyses. I've no doubt you've had experience, when teaching, if people finding features due to oversamplung... Again I plead with you to use your statistics insight! -
From Peru at 08:05 AM on 23 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
Hapy Earth Day!? It should not have been written happy Earth Day? -
desertphile at 08:04 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
"I find it difficult to believe that I am the first researcher to figure out what I describe in this book." -- Dr. Roy Spencer If his "discovery" were valid, why did he publish it in a book? Science is published in science journals. "Either I am smarter than the rest of the world’s climate scientists--- which seems unlikely--- or there are other scientists who also have evidence that global warming could be mostly natural, but have been hiding it." --- Dr. Roy Spencer Fallacy of false dichotomy. (Dr. Spencer's statement is identical to ones some Creationists have made.) There are other explanations: 1) Spencer could be mistaken; 2) Spencer could have cherry-picked his data. 3) Spencer is so incompetent that he just accidentally left out of his study all of the evidence that refutes his desired conclusion. It seems hyper unlikely to me that Spencer accidentally left out more than half of the data available, and accidentally excluded the best of the data---- which, if he (they) had left in, would have shown his conclusion about climate sensitivity wrong. If I had done this in high school the teacher would have graded my paper an "F," and then castigated me for lying.
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