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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. -
Uncle Ben at 08:00 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
@Sphaerica 29 and Les 30. (Complaint about only 8 years of data) Friends, you would not say this if you had been able to read my response to muon counter at 28. (1) Three seconds is enough time to measure audio feedback in an auditorium. (2) One month is enough time to measure temperature feedback from ocean currents to the lower atmosphere. (3) One year is surely not enough time to achieve equilibrium to the solar heating of the top layer of ocean. @Tom Yes, this is kind of plot I have been talking about. I have been reluctant to post copies of the plots for fear of copyright violations. My motives were fear, not craftiness. :-) (How we suspect each others motives! But the answer to suspicion is openness. I have nothing to gain by trying to fool anyone. My personal interest is in chasing skirts.) This plot is a little harder to recognize than the one Tamino published, but you can still distinguish the straight parts from the curly parts. -
grypo at 07:48 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
Eric, I'll get to your individual complaints on the papers in due time. But, I'd politely ask that you please keep the editorial nonsense out of the thread. By that I mean, phrases like "Their poorly worded paper" and "The people who wrote these papers need to go back and reread their references". Just allow your comments to stand on their own, as I'm sure you can defend them without the unjustified commentary. It doesn't help your case. -
Pete Dunkelberg at 07:38 AM on 23 April 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #16
Happy Earth Day? Earth Day means nothing if We Don’t Limit Carbon Emissions. -
actually thoughtful at 07:37 AM on 23 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
The question really drives at what is science? How do we know anything? What we DO know - we know from science. Science tells us AGW is by far the most likely theory. When science tell us a different theory explains AGW (and the chances of this are less than 1%) - then I will "know" that is right. -
Eric (skeptic) at 07:13 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
The title of the fourth paper "Winter Northern Hemisphere weather patterns remember summer Arctic sea-ice extent" is provocative considering that weather is a short term function of conditions and conditions are not the same thing as anomalies (weather doesn't care if a condition is normal or not). I looked through the paper for explanations of the lag between summer ice extent and winter weather. The authors says "the pattern in the north Atlantic is reminiscent of the North Atlantic Oscillation [Hurrell, 1995]..." As with the third paper, the SLP anomaly is not "reminiscent" of negative NAO, it "is" negative NAO. The connection between low ice and negative NAO, as with the third paper, is coincidence, they both decrease in the interval studied but showed no correlation previously. Hurrell 1995 http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/science1995/sci.html lends no support to the memory or lag between ice extent and NAO. The best explanation is persistence. The NAO and AO reflect patterns that will determine summer ice extent (from clouds, temperature, wind). The NAO and AO are somewhat seasonal but also persist, Thus summer ice extent can correlate with NAO the following winter. The fifth paper "warm Arctic—cold continents" doesn't explain much. Might as well quote the whole meat of it:Attribution for the cold mid-latitude winter is difficult given the largely chaotic nature of atmospheric circulation. Since 2002, warmer lower tropospheric temperatures are associated with thin sea ice in marginal Arctic seas (Fig. 5) preceding the autumn period (Schweiger et al. 2008; Serreze et al. 2008). Model studies (Singarayer et al. 2006; Sokolova et al. 2007; Seierstad & Bader 2008; Honda et al. 2009) show a relation between years with minimum sea-ice cover and the negative phase of the AO (weaker zonal wind), although regional details are complicated by storm track and atmospheric long-wave/low frequency dynamic processes. They further suggest that the regions of high and low geopotential heights form a pattern of atmospheric teleconnections with length scales between relative high and low centres of 700–1000 km (Francis et al. 2009). The Arctic 850 mb temperature anomalies and geopotential height fields in December 2009 and 2010 (Fig. 8b, g), may have partially contributed to the resultant meridional hemispheric wind pattern
Looking at Singarayer http://www.cpom.org/research/jlb-jc19.pdf I see that that there is no correlation between extremes in NAO (highly negative or positive) and the models. More importantly there does not seem to be any support for negative NAO or declining NAO with lower sea ice in that reference. I obviously don't need to go any further with this. The people who wrote these papers need to go back and reread their references. Frankly I am astonished at how poorly this hypothesis is supported. -
william5331 at 07:13 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
Great video They talk about the Jet Stream weakening. Jet streams occur where Hadley cells meet, Each hemisphere has three Hadley cells and It is likely that the polar jet stream will simply disappear. This will occur if the Arctic, when it becomes ice free and hence a giant solar collector, becomes an area of rising air rather than as at present an area of sinking air. This would likely give rise to a two cell system rather than the present three cell system with a jet stream at about 45 degrees north where the two cells meet. Of more interest, this will shift the wheat growing areas of the northern hemisphere with obvious results. We only have, at best, two months of food reserves worldwide. The replacement of Lodge Pole pines by Poplars in the High Chilcoten and in Washington State is an indicator that this process may already be underway. -
Tom Curtis at 07:01 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben, you did not explicitly confirm or deny that the graph shown by muoncounter above @26 is the type of graph to which you refer. Could you please do so. Could you also do the same for the following graph:
Quite frankly, your discussion to date has been essentially meaningless because you have not provided an example of the graph which is central to your case. Without your explicitly providing such a graph, or explicitly acknowledging some example, you give the impression of intentionally keeping the center piece of your discussion carefully hidden to avoid criticism.
-
les at 06:24 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
28 - Uncle Ben A couple of things. In tamino's post he exactly equates sensitivity as the inverse of the slope and derives, via the method, and says; "estimated climate sensitivity is 1/1.553 = 0.644 K/(W/m^2), very close to the true value 0.667 K/(W/m^2)." What's the problem with that? Did you read the article? If not, shame, because his commentery on Spencer's error relates closely to your insight: "the half-serious view of statistics is, if you need statistics to make your point, improve your experiment". As you clearly know, that is said because statistics is only important if your are dominated by statistical or systematic errors. A better experiment could reduce the former (more data) or the latter (less measurement errors). Now, as I read it, it is exactly Tamino's point that if you look to closely (to short a time scale) you will be dominated by the systems internal dynamics. as he says "He’s based his estimation of climate sensitivity on time spans which are so brief that feedback (in the usual sense) in the climate system doesn’t have time to operate!" I'm pretty sure if you read Taminos post as a statistician (indeed, as one statistician to another!) rather as attacker/defender of some bit of work; you will see his insight. -
Daniel Bailey at 06:20 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
The reader will note that TOP has a history of asserting falsehoods in drive-by fashion, such as noted here. The credibility of denial is always zero. -
scaddenp at 06:17 AM on 23 April 2012Shakun et al. Clarify the CO2-Temperature Lag
Note also that is has to backed by some arithmetic - warming of surface needs to be accounted for in joules leaving ocean. -
scaddenp at 06:15 AM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Well subsidies are a dirty word here, on anything. Wind power gets built without it. Coal, not so much. Electricity generation at 75% renewable and well on track for 80% by 2020. -
michael sweet at 05:52 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
TOP, Your comment about winter in April is simply false. The deniers are claiming that normal April temperatures are unusual. see these graphs that show April temperatures are normal. As Dr. Masters pointed out in March, one of the problems with a warm March is that normal April temperatures freeze the plants that came out in leaf early. Please provide some sort of reference to support your hand waving claim that April was cold in the USA. Use some skepticism when you read these wild denier claims. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:48 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
TOP, since I live in an area forecasted to get a little snow tonight, allow me to clarify the situation. The current weather disturbance is simply weather, nothing more nothing less. It is not a function of low sea ice, or other global warming effect. However our mild Match was a direct result of two things: a natural pattern (the rest of the globe was more or less average) and a mild winter. The mild winter was a direct result of two things (I am simplifying to keep it simple). First the La Nina pattern, and second, global warming which added to the warmth. Thus, it is safe to say that the current "winter in April", although natural, is worse than it would be without CO2 warming over the past 6 months (and obviously decades before that). -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:43 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
grypo, thanks for the reply and references. First let me clarify that we are talking about winter only, as is the second video (I haven't watched the first but assume it is the same topic). The first paper in post 3 notes a trend in lower latitudinal temperature gradient mainly in fall due to lower sea ice and an associated increase in blocking (slower propagation of Rossby waves). However the trend does not extend into winter. Their poorly worded paper e.g. "further exacerbates the increased probability of slow-moving weather patterns" also seems to be poorly researched as one of their references http://weather.missouri.edu/gcc/barriopedro2006etal.pdf shows clearly that blocking is decreasing through 2002 in sectors where sea ice loss is greatest, namely the Atlantic sector. Like the video the second paper improperly places cause and effect in a single direction. Low Barents sea ice is both a cause and an effect of weather patterns, but seems to be more effect than cause. It is a better paper and a better study as they systematically vary the Barents sea ice in their model. Two things are noteworthy in their model, first that the atmospheric response to Barents ice anomaly is highly nonlinear, for example comparing fig 4a to 4b and 4b to 4c. Second, a related phenomenon is the weakening of the westerlies going from 80% to 40% ice coverage switches to a strengthening going from 40% to 1%. Also this model is for winter so it is applicable to the OP. The third paper is speculative and somewhat confused. The correlation that they point out between the Arctic SLP and low sea ice may be part coincidence. The high pressure Arctic & low pressure outside does not "resemble" negative AO, it "is" negative AO. They have worked the problem backwards ignoring other more obvious causes of negative AO. They show a snippet of declining AO from the late 80's ignoring the secular rise before that. Their references are heavy on sea ice but thin on atmospheric response papers. Their hypothesis is supported by the one I read through: http://esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/michael.alexander/alexander.etal.jclim_04.pdf which simulated higher Arctic heights with diminished ice. I'll read the other papers next. -
TOP at 05:42 AM on 23 April 2012Weird Winter - March Madness
They spend a lot of time mentioning the Summer In March, but don't mention the Winter in April. It is the Winter in April that is doing bad things to the fruit crops in Jeff Master's stomping grounds. -
Riccardo at 05:21 AM on 23 April 2012Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 2 - an interview with Dr Natalia Shakhova
Looking at the graph linked above by Sky Osawa I find surprising that methane anomalies in the northern and southern emispheres go together. -
michael sweet at 05:15 AM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist: Your citation for the supposed $1.3BN for wind does not list how the money is paid out. As I recall, those are production tax credits. The coal and oil industries get massive tax credits that you have not mentioned. Citing incomplete, right wing propaganda in newspapers does not make a believable argument. Provide a specific example against my $1Bn nuclear example. The nuclear plant has not yet started construction. -
michael sweet at 05:08 AM on 23 April 2012Renewables can't provide baseload power
Realist: "The federal government provides hundreds of billions for renewable energy projects," This is obviously a false statement. The federal government does not provide hundreds of billions of dollars for all renewables combined. Provide a reliable source for this absurd claim. Please provide data from a peer reviewed source, not a right wing think tank. Find a single renewable project that has received $1 billion dollars of subsidy. I have provided an example of such a nuclear facility. They have received $1 billion dollars of subsidy and it has not even started construction yet! You cite right wing propaganda against my specific example. -
Sky Osawa at 05:02 AM on 23 April 2012Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 2 - an interview with Dr Natalia Shakhova
Apologies for the links above, but they do work ... just copy/paste. -
Sky Osawa at 04:59 AM on 23 April 2012Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 2 - an interview with Dr Natalia Shakhova
Here is a recent Methane Satellite Chart from March 2012: ftp://asl.umbc.edu/pub/yurganov/methane/MAPS/NH/ARCTpolar2012.03._AIRS_CH4_400.jpg Graph Chart - March 2012: ftp://asl.umbc.edu/pub/yurganov/methane/AIRS%20CH4%20%202002-2012.jpg -
Bob Lacatena at 04:58 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
28, Uncle Ben, Your worshipful attitude towards Spencer is wholeheartedly unskeptical. Especially when the flaws are so obvious. Muoncounter has already quoted the single most important fact, from Tamino:He’s based his estimation of climate sensitivity on time spans which are so brief that feedback (in the usual sense) in the climate system doesn’t have time to operate! If you eliminate feedback (in the usual sense) from consideration, you’re not going to get a realistic estimate of climate sensitivity.
That's it, right there. What Spencer has done is equivalent to proving that you aren't aging by demonstrating that you weren't more prone to illness after a week of elapsed time. It's meaningless. When you add to that the other problems with his report, the whole thing is a waste of time (have you read the criticism above? Why do you put so much effort into lauding him without addressing those criticisms?). -
Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
bill - "...take time to savour what happens here [HVR* warning] to even one of the faithful where he dares point out that Salby's Emperor is, um, starkers!..." As someone else who participated in that discussion, noting the concentration adjustment time factors for CO2, I would have to once again quote Nietzsche: "At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." Quite frankly, if the 'skeptics' had any actual points regarding the science - well, they would make better arguments. -
yarnoiser at 03:49 AM on 23 April 2012Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature
Its so frustrating. People in the blogosphere will keep cycling back to this quote about 'nature tricks' and 'hiding the decline'. They keep using it, even after you point out that it's about tree rings, not global temperatures. I'm not sure how to present the evidence to convince some people who seem to think that there HAS to be a massive conspiracy out there. -
John Hartz at 03:43 AM on 23 April 2012Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
Suggested reading: “Global warming: Alpine plants swiftly losing ground” by Bob Berwyn, Summit County Citizens Voice, Apr 22, 2012 http://www.skepticalscience.com/admin_author.php?Action=EditBlog -
Uncle Ben at 02:29 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
@muon counter I suspected that you are a physicists from your username. The Tamino reference is quite interesting. Thanks. He does not seem to accept that the slope on the dH/dt vs dT represents inverse sensitivity. I thought that was well accepted. He complains that a mere 8 years is too short a time to measure feedback. Doesn't that depend on how fast the feedback is? Feedback to the heating of the ocean, if any, is certainly quite slow. That is why what I have called the curly parts curly. Ocean currents are affected chaotically by many things on the way to equilibrium. But it is certainly helpful to have the usual (non-time-connected) plots recognized as showing points that are certainly not at equilibium, and in that case there is no reason to expect a proportionality between rate of heating and temperature. But the heating of air by warm water is quick. The ratio of specific heats of air and water is quite small. That is why the segments are straight. So the 8 years of data are plenty for the feedback of cloud effects. The parallel segments measure the (inverse) sensitivity at equilibrium between rate of heating by oceans of the atmosphere. Of course, the reason for using the brief span of satellite data is that we have the dH/dt data and the time of measurement. The temperature data inferred earlier is informative for temperature, but we cannot estimate the forcings that caused it. This makes it hard to infer sensitivity. Regarding ice ages and sensitivity, here we are talking about feedback of a different kind. Feedback to albedo is certainly strong and positive. @Tom Dayton Some decisions require statistics and some do not. If you measure each line slope, you can do the statistics and find the std. deviation. But some things are actually obvious. If you look at the plots in the Blunder book, you will see. In physics, the half-serious view of statistics is, if you need statistics to make your point, improve your experiment. That one has tongue in cheek, but there is some truth to it. I have taught statistics and have examples where they are needed. -
KeefeandAmanda at 02:11 AM on 23 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Well, when all the causal possibilities except one have been pretty much falsified, by the process of elimination that's pretty darn well close to being sure. Here is what I mean: I like to simplify and generalize things as much as possible when talking to people about global warming, especially when they are fake skeptics. Here is what I say: To simplify and generalize things as much as possible, let's realize that apart from heat from the interior of the planet, there generally are only three possible ways to heat the planet's fluidic system (atmosphere and oceans taken together as a system - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_dynamics for an idea of what I mean): (1) More heat falling onto Earth from space (from the sun); (2) more of the heat falling onto Earth being absorbed - that is, decreased albedo or less reflected sunlight; (3) less of the absorbed heat radiating back out into space via increased greenhouse gas activity. (All talk of such things as cosmic rays, clouds, aerosols from volcanic activity or human pollution, etc. is covered by the general case of (2).) Atmospheric heating by either of general cases (1) and (2) alone or together implies that, globally: (A) the nighttime temperature rises slower than the daytime temperature; (B) the arctic temperature rises slower than the equatorial temperature; (C) the winter temperature rises slower than the summer temperature. Atmospheric heating by general case (3) implies that, globally: (D) the nighttime temperature rises faster than the daytime temperature; (E) the arctic temperature rises faster than the equatorial temperature; (C) the winter temperature rises faster than the summer temperature. Guess what has actually has been happening on average over the past several decades? Conditions (D), (E), and (F) happened, the opposite of (A), (B), and (C). Since (1) or (2) alone or taken together implies false conditions, the fake skeptic claim that only one or both of (1) or (2) has been causing the heating - that (3) has had nothing or essentially nothing to do with it - is falsified. By the process of elimination, there has to have been very significant involvement of (3) to result in the heating, an involvement much more significant than the fake skeptics are willing to admit to. -
John Russell at 02:07 AM on 23 April 2012Why Are We Sure We're Right? #1
Why am I sure I'm right? Well as of this moment I can be completely sure -- though that's not to say contrary evidence might one day make me change my mind (well; we can live in hope). But, if I look at all the various lines of evidence in thousands of papers produced by thousands of climate scientists and the thousands of explanatory blogs written by climate science supporters, then it all adds up to a coherent picture. A picture that's not completely formed and has a few missing pieces -- but is very much hanging together. On the other hand, if I read all the fake sceptic and denial literature I don't see a coherent picture: I see a mish-mash of cherry-picked, discrete examples of evidence, many of which contradict one another. What's more, when I see climate scientists and lay people discussing the evidence, sometimes disagreeing about detail I see that generally they learn from each other in an atmosphere of discovery. On the other hand, with fake sceptics and deniers, I see just people spreading denial memes and failing to argue with one another: if you're in climate denial and you're having a go at 'the team' then you're a good egg. So the answer to the first question is very clear to me. -
Tom Dayton at 01:42 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben wrote:Then see if, among the scattered connection lines, it jumps out at you that half of them are all parallel. It doesn't take a linear regression to estimate their common slope as about 6.0 (dashed line).
Uncle Ben, humans are very good at seeing patterns, because that's a crucial survival skill. It is such an important survival skill that humans are biased toward seeing patterns in samples of data even when those patterns do not exist in the population of data from which those samples are drawn. That was a good bias in our evolutionary history, where usually there was a low cost of acting on the basis of perceived patterns that are not really in the population, compared to the high cost of failing to act due to not recognizing patterns that really are in the population. For example, a shrub rustling could indicate a bear. Changing course to avoid that shrub has the slightly negative expected value of missing whatever food might be in that shrub (low probability of there being more food in that shrub than elsewhere, low value of food in that shrub versus elsewhere, even if it is in that shrub). In contrast, not changing course has a large negative expected value (fairly low probability of being killed by bear, but very expensive cost if true). The inferential statistics that you so casually dismissed are crucial tools for mitigating those biases in judgment based on visually detecting patterns. All that long ago was well established in the empirical science of judgment and decision making. For example, Tversky and Khaneman (1971) called it "belief in the Law of Small Numbers." They found it existed even among 84 scientific research psychologists all of whom had extensive training and experience to avoid that bias. So I'm not picking on you, I'm simply pointing out how difficult it is to counteract that bias. You can't really avoid that bias, because it's a core part of being human. Instead you must acknowledge the bias's existence and consciously override your instinct despite what your gut is telling you. There are some utterly reliable examples of judgment and decision problems whose correct answer violently disagrees with people's gut, to the extent that when I try to force my gut to match my head, I literally start to feel nauseous despite my years of training as a decision researcher. I find that fascinating. I suspect you, too, will find it fascinating, so here are some links to get you started; I suggest dipping in to the references on these pages, especially the peer-reviewed publications, instead of stopping after reading just these particular pages: the clustering illusion in the Skeptic's Dictionary, the clustering illusion in Wikipedia (remember, don't just trust Wikipedia--read the referenced papers), and apophenia in Wikipedia (I'm not at all suggesting you suffer from apophenia; I'm linking there because it has a wide range of references relevant to a particular judgment bias.) Being disciplined in doing that overriding of your gut is a big part of scientific training in fields that inherently have messy data. Perhaps the scientific field from which you are now retired had relatively tidy data and so does not require so much vigilance against that bias. But you need to recognize that your expertise in one narrow field of science does not transfer to all other areas of science. -
muoncounter at 01:37 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
Uncle Ben#25, While I appreciate the continued double-quoted shout-outs, I am not sure they contribute to productive discussion. If you are curious as to the origin of my login name here, I do indeed count muons (in my spare time). "You do understand that the technique displayed in Spencer's plots has not been seen before in this field." No. Others have tried to prove their misconceptions by looking at short term changes alone (notably, that year-to-year changes in atmospheric CO2 were supposed to show a natural source). Tamino did an excellent analysis of this type of mistake (which Spencer made as far back as 2008): He’s based his estimation of climate sensitivity on time spans which are so brief that feedback (in the usual sense) in the climate system doesn’t have time to operate! If you eliminate feedback (in the usual sense) from consideration, you’re not going to get a realistic estimate of climate sensitivity. After some searching, a graph similar to the one you describe as so revolutionary is shown here:
-- source
In this graph, many 'segments' are indeed parallel. But what does that signify? Rather than declare that 'Mother Nature is trying to tell us something,' look at the graph itself. In a plot of change in flux vs. change in temperature, we are looking at derivatives. What is the significance of the slope of a derivative in this context, except as a very effective means of removing the longer term trend? A derivative, after all, is a high-pass filter. And in climate contexts, high frequency equates to noise.
Note: If this is not the type of graph you are describing, my apologies.
There are numerous criticisms of Spencer's method, both on the source page for the graph above and on the RealClimate review of Spencer's blunder. At the minimum, Spencer somehow equates global radiation to ocean-only temperature change, presents (without saying so) a very short time span of data and emphasizes monthly variation (which of course, obscures the longer period terms).
To make matters worse, Spencer's own words betray a certain lack of scientific objectivity:
I find it difficult to believe that I am the first researcher to figure out what I describe in this book. 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.
So let us lose the Galileo references, the 'witchhunt' fears and the appeal to 10 minute exercises. Let us lose the proclamations of Nobelity (which seem to be prevalent only on the pages of WUWT). I do agree that we must always be on the alert for hints of paradigm change. But this wasn't it.
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Daniel Bailey at 01:20 AM on 23 April 2012Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
So Steve reads part of a post, finds the parts which support his preconceptions and ignores the rest. How unsurprising. -
Kevin C at 00:49 AM on 23 April 2012Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
You've got the right quote but missed the important point: The encroaching species which overtook the transplanted species were less productive, and yet still managed to overtake the transplanted species. The effect of the simulated warming was a shift toward less productive species, and therefore a reduction in CO2 uptake. That is the part which was surprising. -
Steve Case at 00:14 AM on 23 April 2012Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows
- The team transplanted four grassland ecosystems from a higher to lower elevation to simulate a future warmer environment, and coupled the warming with the range of predicted changes in precipitation--more, the same, or less.
The grasslands studied were typical of those found in northern Arizona along elevation gradients from the San Francisco Peaks down to the Great Basin Desert.
The researchers found that long-term warming resulted in loss of native species and encroachment of species typical of warmer environments, ultimately pushing the plant community toward less productive species.
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Uncle Ben at 00:08 AM on 23 April 2012Roy Spencer finds negative feedback
@Skywatcher I appreciate your post. No, Crichton did not persuade me, but he did present some ideas that were new to me. The result was that I started digging deeper. Onl later was I persuaded that there was something going on here with the concensus that was not right. If you want to be wrong (which I understand completely) you should spend ten minutes on the exercise I just recommended to Delmar. (I am not offerring to buy everyone a book, but that is another matter.) Your scientific curiosity must be aroused by the hint of a new phenomenon. You do understand that the technique displayed in Spencer's plots has not been seen before in this field. He has, at least, shown that there is more information in the dH/dt vs dT plots than has previously been recognized. If "muon counter" considered it impossible, someone should be able to poke a hole into the claim that it has been done.
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