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muoncounter at 15:54 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
The Inhofe interview can be found on youtube. It should be required watching, as it fully illustrates the duplicity of this Inhofe character. 'I was on your side until I found out how much it would cost' is just the tip of the iceberg. -
Bob Lacatena at 14:35 PM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
19, Eric (skeptic), You are fooling yourself. No chance. None. -
michael sweet at 13:10 PM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Eric, What a wonderful suggestion. All the third world can change their economies into manufacturing from agriculture. Then they can eat the cars they build!! Think through your suggestions. What will people eat after their agriculture fails due to drought? You have been making a lot of these types of suggestions lately. -
Doug Hutcheson at 13:00 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
How refreshing to see a member of the MSM actually seeking the truth! I'd love to see her debate Jo Nova, for example, but she makes a pretty good job of deflating Inhofe. I wonder how much hate mail she gets from the pawns at WUWT? -
michael sweet at 12:55 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Eric (skeptic) This is supposed to be a scientific discussion. Please cite a peer reviewed source for your wild claim that it will be thousands of years for the heat to return. In reality, it is estimated that it is only about 40 years for 90% of the surface warming to occur. (Since you do not provide references I will not bother either). If you are younger than 40 that heat will come back to get you. When you make wild, unsubstantiated claims people stop taking you seriously. You have made a number of unsupported opinion statements lately. Please try to reference your wild claims. You will find that many of your questions have already been answered. -
owl905 at 12:47 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Sincerest thanks to SKS for not making anyone sit through the interview with Senator Inhofe. The missing link in Ms.Maddow's terse deconstruction of the decline issue, was the revelation at the time that the divergence problem was known and peer-published before the temperature reconstructions. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline.htm -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:47 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
william, you askWhat happens if we melt enough of the Greenland ice to shut down the overturn by the Gulf stream.
Could you explain that process to a complete layman, please? I had not realised that the one could cause the other. -
YubeDude at 11:09 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Sceptical Wombat Thank you for your reply. I am interested in the tonality of the message and not the content. All the charts and graphs, the science in general, sail way above my pay grade. I am one of those in the masses who is the target of the communication barrage. It appears to me that though the science community has the facts to support their position they don't have the catchy spin and subsequently lose ground to those that doubt. Arm wrestling the data should be a rather one sided affair but it is not and the reasons it is not is what interest me. The science side uses the data to lever their opponent while the other side uses smoke and mirrors to distract the audience; they make claims that kids will go hungry and old ladies will freeze if this Socialist restructuring happens. They turn the argument on its head and beat it with illogical non sequiturs I opened with a post wondering if Singer and his minions had started to rebrand their message in an attempt at re-positioning the argument. They can't fight the science so why not target the perception. Not wishing to invoke Godwins Law...let's not forget that the second most powerful man in the NSDAP was Dr Goebbels. I think Karl Rove and Sean Hannity were tied for third. Thanks again for your reply. -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:07 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Doug H, I think they were assuming that all the proceeds would be used for emission mitigation and they did not count any economic benefits from that mitigation since they would presumably come much later. -
Doug Hutcheson at 09:36 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Eric, you quote from the Heritage report, but miss the following passage in the OP:The reason the Heritage estimate was so high is that it evaluated the costs of a carbon cap, and then ignored the distribution of those funds. ... The Heritage Foundation report effectively assumed that the generated funds would disappear into a black hole. Their analysis was the equivalent of doing your household finances by adding up your expenditures while ignoring your income. It sure looks bad, but tells you nothing about your overall finances.
The economic cost of acting now is incorrectly represented in the Heritage report, which smacks of a scare tactic. Yes, there will be a cost to mitigation and everyone will share the burden, but there will be a greater societal and personal cost to be borne if we delay. -
Eric (skeptic) at 09:01 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
JoeTheScientist, considering the entirety of the oceans, the equilibrium time you are talking about is 1000's of years, simply not worth caring about. The oceans are sinking heat that won't come back (i.e. water is being warmed from 35 to 35.1 or something along those lines). If that water comes back to the surface it will cool the atmosphere. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:56 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
The technology to sequester will be there, just a modest amount of government research funding and extensive cross-fertilization from commercial technology (e.g. nano-tech) will make it happen. What we will lack is the economics to perform the sequestering on a large scale anything close to the scale of the automobile and other fossil fuel burners. For that reason I don't see it happening either. But I do see a variety of things happening that will all add up. If, for example, we can build a space elevator or something like that, we can also build large chimneys to suck excess heat into space. The updrafts created in the chimney would provide alternative energy. That's just one idea off the top of my head. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:44 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Sphaerica and scaddenp: From the Heritage report (link in the OP):It is no surprise that the economy responds to cap and trade as it would to an energy crisis. The price on carbon emissions forces energy cuts across the economy, since non-carbon energy sources cannot replace fossil fuels quickly enough. Energy prices rise; income and employment drop....As the economy recovers and the caps tighten, the detrimental effect of cap and trade gets more and more severe. In the worst years, GDP losses exceed $500 billion per year.
As DSL said above: "The system [capitalism] requires poverty, desperation, and unemployment. It requires taxation without representation (capital is a tax imposed by property owners on "their" laborers). It lifts all boats, but it requires the water to rise faster and faster, but the boats are chained to the dock of material and historical reality--some with longer chains than others." The system of capitalism does have those features that DSL points out. It has one more, relevant to the discussion on the other threads which should be on this thread. Namely that the externalities of burning fossil fuel are not currently priced into the fossil fuel. The increase in those prices from any of the proposals listed in the OP will (to borrow DSL's phrasing) keep some boats tied to the dock as temperatures rise and the consequences arise. An example of a boat tied to the dock is a small pizza place. The current propane bill to run the ovens is $1000 / month and will rise under the proposals to where the business will probably shut down. Another boat tied to the dock is the long distance commuter, common in my area. I pay $250 / month to ride in the van and that would likely be at least $350 using the Heritage gas price rise of 75%. I don't have a problem with that but other people will. In the sensitivity thread Sphaerica said "40% chance of a cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year for decades to centuries (or more, with higher sensitivity)." I don't think centuries is realistic, that would assume practically static technology. But Heritage points out the GDP loss of $500 billion per year which is guaranteed unlike the 40% chance of the higher cost. The biggest difference between the two types of expenditures are that the cap and trade money goes into offsetting emissions whereas the 1-2 trillion that I proposed goes straight into infrastructure (mainly better water retention systems to prevent floods and alleviate drought). With that infrastructure we all benefit from more water resources for public and farming uses. Note that I do not propose doing "nothing" but put forth solutions here. Some of those would in fact require a modicum of cap and trade, but many would be implemented by policy changes (e.g. we pay farmers and tell them what to do already). -
wild monkeys at 08:15 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Am I right it's more than 2300 tonnes of heat? -
william5331 at 07:44 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
The escalator graph seems to be a reflection of periods when there is more mixing in the ocean, absorbing heat and allowing the atmosphere to cool a little and periods when mixing is less (el Nino conditions?) and the atmosphere temperature jumps. We should be due for an El Nino very soon and it will likely fall within the present, fairly weak solar maximum. Perhaps the next upward lurch in the Escalator graph will convince the skeptics but I doubt it. Perhaps the accompanying Arctic sea ice melting will be more convincing. What happens if we melt enough of the Greenland ice to shut down the overturn by the Gulf stream. That could be interesting. -
jatufin at 07:44 AM on 18 March 2012Newcomers, Start Here
Perhaps this money thing would deserve its own article? Most people have very vague understanding of research funding. When it's told that some project has received so and so many millions of grant money, there might rouse suspicion individual scientists walk away backpacks full of greenbacks. If it were so, Harrison Schmitt would be one damned rich geologist, all the Apollo dollars in his bank account. -
JoeTheScientist at 07:08 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
@Eric (skeptic)40 Plotting CO2 vs T may give a climate sensitivity of 2.0 to 2.5C/doubling (e.g. http://i44.tinypic.com/m1wcm.gif) , but this is a non-equilibrium state, because there will be more warming as the oceans "catch up" even if CO2 stops dead in its tracks. I think what climate scientists report is "equilibrium sensitivity", which will inevitably be higher than what we can pull off a graph. Us amateurs have no way to estimate the difference between equilibrium and non-equilibrium, which is why we have to put some trust in professional scientists to do the estimates. Taking that into account, 3 to 4C/doubling sounds very reasonable. If any significant amount of methane disgorges from permafrost or deep sea methane ices, watch out! I agree civilization will not end, but consider that more than 50,000 New Orleans citizens were refugees from hurricane Katrina. Imagine the chaos that might result from the equivalent of 100-400 Katrinas (5-20MM new refugees) worldwide every year for decades (from flooding, storms, droughts, etc.). Civilization would certainly be strained! -
actually thoughtful at 07:01 AM on 18 March 2012Roy Spencer's Bad Economics
The real problem with the analysis is it assumes costs to reduce emissions. Over the medium to long term, there are HUGE savings to renewables. And when you factor in the trillions saved in avoided wars - the ledger tilts dramatically towards renewables. We are in no brainer territory. -
Bob Lacatena at 07:01 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
88, Eric, So... 30% chance of 2.5˚C or more 10% chance of 3˚C or more 40% chance of a cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year for decades to centuries (or more, with higher sensitivity). And your position is that technology is certain to improve and save us from this, so there is no need to take simpler, cheaper, and more conservative action now? -
JoeTheScientist at 06:35 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
@Sceptical Wombat 41 My skeptical "friends" would have called you a warmingista. (but I have a new set of friends now. ;) I don't think the Arctic Ocean ice sheet will melt in this decade either, but consider this: Right now the summer melt zone goes up to about 75N latitude, clearing a Northwest passage through Canada's arctic islands by the fall equinox. Once the melt zone gets as far as the top of Ellesmere Island though, winds and currents will push the ice into a melt zone whichever way they move and the last bit of ice will melt "catastrophically". -
scaddenp at 06:26 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
But I note Eric, that you seem very keen in past posts that the costs of adaption/geoengineering be paid by those affected by the issues, rather than those who are causing the problem. I would suggest though that this discussion belongs elsewhere. This doesnt seem like a discussion of why sensitivity could be lower. -
r.pauli at 06:05 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Singer is a paid lightning rod deployed to attract all our energy. His task is to deflect criticism and distract true science involving the tobacco indust... er, make that the carbon fuels industry. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:43 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
A correction to the above, the Army Corps budget for flood control is about 0.1% of US GDP not 1%. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:40 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
No, I don't include sea level rise. If you want to pick a thread for that, I will explain why I don't think I need to include it. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:38 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Sphaerica, I don't know whether the Thai estimate was one-time or ongoing annual, but assuming the magnitude keeps increasing, your estimate sounds reasonable. In that case I would point out that the extra precipitation is a negative feedback, so it has the benefit of limiting warming, see my explanation here. The American SW is already partly a permanent desert. Perhaps Texas will end up in the same condition. The expanding Hadley cell theory is sound, but mainly applies to summer. Texas got a lot of unpredicted rain this past winter when the drought was predicted to continue. -
Joel_Huberman at 05:36 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Thank you, Glenn, for an informative, but alarming, article, and thanks to the commenters for their further refinements and contributions. I have one question: haven't meteorologists, atmosphere scientists, and climate scientists made measurements of the ratios of low clouds to high clouds over the past 50 years, or at least over recent decades? I'm surprised that data relevant to calculating the contributions of clouds to global warming do not appear to be readily available. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:14 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
85, Eric, Also... does your number include sea level rise? If not, no matter... no need to argue about how great that will be and how fast. We'll just stick with 3%-5%... that's more than enough for our purposes. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:11 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
17, Eric, Certainly, agreed, multiple incremental solutions will be needed. My point in the redwood analogy is to demonstrate the scope of the problem. That's what I'm afraid you don't appreciate. You're waving future technology like a magic wand that will make everything just go away in the nick of time, when I don't think the technology will ever exist to restore the balance. The problem is quite simply too large for that. We have spent a hundred years running uncounted millions of motors, small to large, that create energy by burning carbon and emitting CO2. The reverse process will at best require uncounted millions of filters, running for a hundred years, using energy from some unknown source simply to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and somehow sequester it so it can't get out again. I just don't see it happening. Ever. -
DMarshall at 05:05 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Is the rightwing trying to head off a backlash? ClimateCrocks.com report that Ann Coulter smeared Sarah Palin and other leading GOP loons as charlatan conservatives. I'll pass on the clear irony of Coulter's statement and comment that it seems the US Republicans might FINALLY be waking up to the reality that a leadership composed entirely of radical ignoramuses is no longer palatable on the national stage. I imagine Singer's remarks, given his history going back to the Acid Rain days, are equally ironic. -
Bob Lacatena at 04:58 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
85, Eric, Okay, so we have anywhere from 3-5% of USA GDP, which in turn is about 25% of the world GDP. The "civilized" world (USA, EU, Japan, China) all account for about 63% of the world GDP. Can we assume that all of those will be affected in roughly the same proportion, so that by ignoring the developing world, climate change will cost, per year, about 3-5% of 63% of the world's current GDP of about 63 trillion US $? That would mean an annual cost, not counting the effects of suffering and lost lives as being priceless, equal to about $1.2 trillion to $2 trillion dollars per year, every year, for fifty or more years, and potentially a whole lot more if it takes that long to clean up the mess, which is assuming that the mess can be cleaned up (that the American Southwest doesn't become a permanent dust bowl, that sequestration technology can draw down atmospheric CO2 levels on what amounts to a Herculean scale, etc.). Do you agree with this appraisal? -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:46 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
Sphaerica, your comment here points out that a single solution can't solve the entire problem. But as I point out above, there are no silver bullets, we will need lots of solutions. Your comment about it being much easier to burn the fossil fuels than capturing the emissions is very valid. Your tree growing example that I linked above points out that difficulty using photosynthesis as the primary solution. But we will undoubtedly have technology for that as well, it's only a matter of time. Nano-Engineered Bioconstructs Perform Photosynthesis Faster Than Nature Does -
citizenschallenge at 04:45 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Glenn I agree great article. I shared it at SkepticForum and our old pal X had a few things to say. In particular, I'm curious how you would reply to this (at #21): Tamblyn seems to be making the claim that ocean heat content is the only significant measurement, despite that scientists do not have a very good understanding of the ocean's heat content. Trenberth is at least honest enough to admit he does not know where the heat went (assuming it exists and went somewhere). -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:38 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Sphaerica, nobody should die from floods. If the frequency increases due to global warming, that does not change the needed preparations. But the magnitude will also increase. In Thailand that means about 2.5% of GDP for flood control and other costs, see http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/NESDB-boosts-growth-forecast-to-5-5-6-5-30176305.html for the costs, about 15 billion US dollars. For the US, our costs will be a bit smaller percentage, but for developing countries a much larger percentage of GDP. Bear in mind that there is some cost regardless of global warning. Temperature can be mitigated and there are savings from lower heating costs (US on average spends 1/2 as much on cooling). Droughts will be harder to mitigate than floods, maybe only with a long term change from agriculture to some form of industry. Like with floods the third world countries will have the largest impact relative to their economies. My ballpark cost for both flood and drought is 3-5% of GDP versus 1% (mostly Army Corps funds) without global warming. -
dana1981 at 02:39 AM on 18 March 2012Prediction: New Surface Temperature Record in 2013
John Russel - to be honest, I'm not terribly concerned about how the denialists will misrepresent what we say. That's just what they do. However, for the most part, they're just talking amongst themselves. Nobody in the mainstream media is going to say "did you hear that a climate blogger's prediction about a record temperature in 2013 was wrong?", and nobody is going to pay attention if a climate denialist blog says so. -
Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Excellent piece, Glenn! If reasonably open-minded people with some science background read this, it’s hard to understand why they should not be convinced the Earth is still warming, and that an increased greenhouse effect is the only possible explanation. Maybe I will translate it to Norwegian, but in order to make it more interesting for Norwegian readers, I would like to add a paragraph about how fast the increasing heat content could boil away lake Mjøsa, the largest lake in Norway. The volume of lake Mjøsa is about 56 cubic kilometres, and its average temperature is close to 5°C. On that background I would be grateful if someone could confirm that the following calculations are accurate: The heat capacity for water is 4.2 J/g/K, so it should take 4.2 x 95 = 399 joules to heat each gram of water in Mjøsa from 5°C to 100°C. According to Wikipedia, the water’s heat of vaporization is 2257 joules per gram at the boiling point, so it should take 399 + 2257 = 2656 joules to heat each gram of Mjøsa to 100°C and then boil it away. The total amount of water in lake Mjøsa is 56 km3 x 1 billion x 1 million = 5.6 x 10^16 cm3 or grams. Boiling all this water away once should therefore take 2656 x 5.6 x 10^16 = 1.49 x 10^20 joules. If the total heat content change the last 50 years is 2.1 x 10^23 joules, this is enough to boil away lake Mjøsa 2.1 x 10^23 / 1.49 x 10^20 = 1409 times. And if the present energy imbalance is 0.58 w/m² or 2.96 x 10^14 watts globally (twice the average for the last 50 years), this should be able to boil away lake Mjøsa in a little less than 6 days! Is this calculation more or less correct, or have I missed something here? -
Jose_X at 02:16 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
owl905 #25. Huge oceans slow down a rise in temperature but later slow down a fall. Also, the inertia of the oceans might possibly mean we overshoot the equilibrium value by a larger amount (if not, we simply exponentially decay towards it) since everything we gain today we pay for tomorrow. Deep oceans vs shallow oceans may not change the equilibrium value by much (if by anything), and it will mean "momentum" we have to stop tomorrow. Are we going to leverage the extra time the oceans are giving us today or are we going to let a much larger avalanche accumulate for our descendants? I foresee a future where we find many ways to control the climate temperature. This is a great time (say the next 5 decades) to figure out how to cheaply lower the GHE since it is easier to work at this solution under current temperatures than under the hotter ones of tomorrow. -
Bob Lacatena at 01:56 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
81, Eric (skeptic), First, I don't want to derail from our train of thought, but as far as solutions go... once the CO2 genie is out of the bottle... you need to realize that it was very easy to extract 337 gigatons and counting of carbon in liquid form from the ground, burn it, and release it into the atmosphere as a widely scattered gas. See this past comment of mine on the numbers to see exactly how gigantic that problem is now (let alone after we reach 560ppm). Also note that your hopes for technological progress are in fact very dependent on maintaining the robust nature of our civilization. If climate and resource pressures grow too great, if some countries see their infrastructure collapsing while others invest their energies in other directions (defense in an increasingly unstable world, the need to maintain dwindling food supplies, the need to find new energy sources), then the resources available to dedicate to the difficulty of correcting the problem will be less. We might have been able to do so, if everything stayed the same, but will we be able to when civilization is under severe pressure exactly caused by our lack of solutions today? But that's a digression... more to the point: You accept certain guesstimated probabilities for higher levels of sensitivity. We have as yet not quantified the chances of future technological miracles which allow us to ignore the simple, available solutions we have at present. We will get to this eventually. But, given possible climate sensitivities of 2˚C, 2.5˚C or 3˚C or more, and recognizing that at least some of the extreme fire, drought, flood and temperature events that we see today are almost certainly connected to the meager global temperature change that we have achieved to date (which, because of lag time, is far less than the change to which we are already committed, even if we were to stop all emissions completely today), and that those events point to the expense and hardship their continued and increasing existence would pose... Can you put a number (in lives, dollars, whatever) to what you think the impact of a 2˚C, 2.5˚C or 3˚C or more climate change will be on the citizens of your own country, and on various people around the world in general? Can you in any way (just for the purposes of ball-park decision making) quantify the danger that a higher climate sensitivity implies? -
Eric (skeptic) at 00:47 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Sphaerica, yes I assumed doubling to 560ppm. I think all three of your statements are very likely to be true based on various possible positive feedbacks. I also think there are chances of technological progress in 50-100 years to offset those possibilities, see my post on this thread It could also be that we get larger positive feedback and fail to attain sufficient technological progress, but I think that is a very small probability because progress in science and technology is not contingent on political will or economic incentives (although they both help). -
Eric (skeptic) at 00:44 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
There are no silver bullets, there is no one solution that will mitigate all CO2 and/or heat effects but there are several solutions for 1/4 to 1/3 of the problem like soil sequestration, CCS, carbon tax and rebate, alternatives, and yet-to-be-designed ways to pump heat to the upper atmosphere (I'm an engineer so that's generally how I would approach it). Some of these policies imply a need for cap and trade, but that may be mitigated by the fact that we subsidize traditional farming already and would change that to techniques like this: http://epsc413.wustl.edu/Lal2004_Geoderma.pdf -
Doc Snow at 23:28 PM on 17 March 2012The History of Climate Science - William Charles Wells
Nice link, perseus. Thanks! -
Sceptical Wombat at 22:59 PM on 17 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
YubeDude Most of the things I that I would take a denialist approach to are in fact straw men created by the fake sceptics to try to justify their use of the term "alarmist" - though some of Hansen's descriptions of worst case scenarios (for instance complete evaporation of the oceans) fall into that category. Hansen of course makes it clear that these are worst case, would take multiple centuries and are not likely - but the fake skeptics tend to ignore that. I also think that some news outlets have a tendency to automatically associate any problem of inundation from the sea with sea level rise and global warming. A recent example would be the ABC's treatment of problems in the Torres Straight. Now I will accept that, in a business as usual scenario, future sea level rises are likely to cause major problems with huge economic costs - but I very much doubt that anything significant has already happened. The other thing I absolutely do not believe is that transitioning to a carbon neutral energy regime would wreak havoc with the worlds economies. The people who claim that it would are in my opinion the real alarmists. As far as I know there is nothing in the FAR that would put me in the denialist camp - with the obvious exception of the Himalayan mistake. The point I was trying to make was there is nothing particularly wrong with Singer's classification - its just that he has drawn the boundaries in the wrong places. -
MA Rodger at 21:39 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Glenn Tamblyn @38 A long shot, but neuro-scientist Talia Sharot had a book out last year that got her into New Scientist. Coincidentally, she appeared on BBC 2's Horizon last Tuesday. This i-player link sadly does not work worldwide (perhaps even extra-UK). Sharot was featured in the programme (about 20 mins in) quizing folk while watching their brains to find out why their responses were so stupid. To make this comment more meaningful for those unable to access BBC i-player, it goes something like this:- Subjects were asked 80 questions (this is a test from psychology) about chances of them in future suffering something bad, a broken bone, cancer etc. After answering, they were given an answer based on real-life data which is acceptably a more accurate figure. Afterwards they were asked the same 80 questions again. Where they had over-estimated the bad outcome first-time-round, the happier 'accurate' data-based figure tended to be their answer second time round. But where their 'less accurate' initial response gave the happier answer, the second response tended to ignore the 'accurate' data-based but unhappy answer. Sharot's work shows the bit of brain that deals with negativity doesn't work so well in humans. Humans have a built-in optimistic "yeeehaaaa" bias. -
perseus at 20:38 PM on 17 March 2012The History of Climate Science - William Charles Wells
Yes, Wells is not a well known as the other climate pioneers, perhaps this is due to his work being more applicable to weather, although the two disciplines clerly overlap. Here is an alternative timeline For later developments, Guy Stewart Callendar predicted in 1938 an that doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning would lead to a global increase of 2°C, with the poles warming more.Response: [JC] I converted your URL to a link as the full URL was widening the website design. -
John Russell at 20:05 PM on 17 March 2012Prediction: New Surface Temperature Record in 2013
@Tom #51 While I agree with what you say in general, we both know that however many sensible caveats are included, those in denial will completely ignore them when they loudly trumpet the fact that you were wrong. And that's the point, the negative impacts of being wrong completely outweigh any positive effects of being right. I worry that it plays into the hands of those who make mischief. I should say that I think my hang-up is purely regarding the use of the word 'prediction'. Perhaps if it was expressed differently I'd not feel so uneasy. -
adelady at 19:29 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
"Its basic psychology that although most of us learn our arithmatic at school, we don't treat it as a toolbax for looking at all facets of life. ... doubly so when we then need to deal with number of a size that are outside our experience." School arithmetic! I find tutoring primary aged children who are 'worst' at simple calculation are the ones who have the most trouble when asked to "see" numbers in the world around them. Car wheels, bird wings, fingers & toes. I'm pretty certain that the older ones who come to me for algebra, totally unable to write exponents, let alone understand them, would have been unable to name 2 as the relevant number for bicycle wheels a few years earlier. As for counting zeroes .... (but even the best of us can have trouble, sometimes.) -
ubrew12 at 18:06 PM on 17 March 2012Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Personal
Loved this article. My own conversion was much more prosaic. An engineer specializing in 'thermal fluids', I got accepted into a PhD program in Atmospheric Science, studying mesoscale meteorology. The guy who taught me basic Atmospheric Physics was the resident climatologist, who was studying the 'Urban Heat Island Effect'. Mind you: this was in 1980. Ever since, it has amused and astonished me to watch the skeptics trump the 'Urban Heat Island Effect' as something they discovered sometime in the '90s. But, honestly, I left Atmospheric Science, when the climatologist asked us to calculate and describe the atmosphere in Arthur C Clarkes spaceship 'Rama'. This did two 'damaging' things: It reignited a teenager-love of all things 'classic science fiction'. And it re-affirmed what, as an engineer, was bugging me about the atmosphere: the old complaint that 'everyone complains about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it'. Its not a system you can change, like a good engineer would want to. (How wrong I was!) I've been designing satellites since then. The issue of how a satellite, like Earth, finds its internal temperature has been my bread-n-butter for 25 years now. I cannot BELIEVE how embracing of idiocy my fellow Americans have been on this subject. We need to build 'Rama' just so I can escape to it... -
Glenn Tamblyn at 16:02 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
A small correction. I gave a figure for the worlds oceans as being around 2,300,000 times the size of Sydney harbour. Actually the figure is more like 2,300,000,000 times larger (2,313,167,259 times actually). I screwed up when combining one figure in cubic metres and another in cubic kilometers. Note to self, turn thousands separators on in Calculator, helps with magnitude checks. Thanks to nuclear_is_good for the spot. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 15:49 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
zinfan94 @35 I agree. Way to much out-of-sight, out of mind stuff. I have just seen 'John Carter' at the movies so it set me thinking. Imagine a nearly desert planet, no oceans. Then add the extra CO2 we have done. There would be no question that we were warming the planet - it would be far more visible and obvious. Our Blue-Green planet may be wonderful but it poses the most sever cognitive challenge to us. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 15:42 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
doug_bostrom Agreed. Being able to assimilate quantitative information as a routine part of daily life is a relatively rare trait in people. Its basic psychology that although most of us learn our arithmatic at school, we don't treat it as a toolbax for looking at all facets of life. We tend to compartmentalise quantitative thinking as to be used for 'numbers stuff', not for all of life. And it certainly isn't most peoples default mental mode. So doubly so when we then need to deal with number of a size that are outside our experience. Most people probably then fall back on using more qualitative reasoning processes instead rather than trying to engage with the quantitative. This was encapsulated wonderfully in an interview I read years ago in New Scientist with a Professor of Psychology - I wish I could find the article now or remember her name. However, she used the expression 'Insensitivity to Magnitude' to describe much of our mental processes. For most of us most of the time, qualitative style thinking processes are the norm and we have to stretch a bit to apply quantitative reasoning. This is not a criticism of people, just an observation of the nature of human psychology. But in rare situations such as AGW, where we need most people to 'buy in' to understanding it, this aspect of human nature has a serious cost. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 15:30 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Seeking Answers The difference is in the type/altitude of the clouds. Low level clouds are dense so reflect sunlight back to space, thus having a cooling effect. In contrast their contribution to the GH effect is small because, being closer to the ground they are at a temperature closer to the surface temperature. So when they absorb IR radiation then reradiate it, they are doing it at a temperature close to surface temperature. High clouds in contrast tend to be much thinner. So they are poorer reflectors of sunlight. But they are still dense enough to absorb IR. And being higher and colder, when they re-radiate that IR it is at a loer total energy because of their lower temperature. Thus they restrict energy flow to space and contribute to the GH effect All told, clouds (and the atmosphere itself) reflect around 23% of incoming solar radiation. And low level clouds contribute about 25% to the Greenhouse Effect. So it is the relative change in the two different types that would have an impact. Roughly equal increases or decreases of both types would tend to cancel out.
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