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Comments 62351 to 62400:

  1. A Sunburnt Country
    Glenn Tablyn What I find most odd about your Munich Re graphs is that the actual number of 6+ magnitude earthquakes have been steadily increasing in numbers but there is not reflection of this on the Munich Re natural catastrophe chart you posted. USGS link. If you add up the earthquake number by decade given in the graphs of the above link. 1980-1989 average is 109.5 (6+ magnitude quakes/year) 1990-1999 average is 149.2 (6+ magnitude quakes/year) 2000-2009 average is 161.3 (6+ magnitude quakes/year) There is a 32% increase in the number of 6+ earthquakes in the 2000's decade over the 1980's decade but the Munich Re graph does not show this nor does it indicate the vastly increased number of deaths due to earthquakes over that period. Something is not right here.
  2. GreenCooling at 16:05 PM on 8 March 2012
    Wall Street Journal 'Skeptics' Misrepresent the IPCC
    Actually thoughtful @87 Without wanting to endorse any particular company the Bitzer Refrigerant Report is a very useful source of detailed information on refrigerant properties. Natural refrigerants include the "friendly five" of Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, Hydrocarbons, Air and Water, but NH3 or HCs (R290 or R600a or a blend) would be most useful in Ground Source Heat Pumps, although some kind of heat exchange or secondary loop might be required if leakage into occupied spaces is a possibility. The folks at ammonia21.com and hydrocarbons21.com have a lot of good information available, and I've seen HC GSHPs in use at supermarkets in Sweden, so it can be done. There are some amazing new developments in ammonia chillers using waste heat or solar, have a look at what Firechill is doing for instance. If you'd like to get in touch directly i'd be more than happy to put you in touch with some real experts - brent at greencooling dot org
  3. A Sunburnt Country
    KR @14 It is not so easy to find data of actual events independent of people to see if the trend is increasing as stated in the OP. Here is one attempt to show actual event numbers for global flooding. It only covers 1998 to 2008 but it has a graph of total events that have taken place within this document. On page 419 of this linked document they show a graph of global flood events. This is the only valid type of data to access if conditions are truly getting worse as the globe warms. Disaster amounts are biased with humans involved (life and property). I have stated before since population and property are variables in the equation they can distort the actual picture. Also about the earthquake data. It is rather misleading approach to the actual severity of earthquake data. You look at the Munich Re chart and things don't look so bad. Going just by the numbers of events that are listed as natual catastrophes. It does not paint the correct picture at all in terms of human misery. Here is the USGS Earthquake link. If you look at the decade graphs: From 1980-1989 estimated deaths were 58880 From 1990-1999 estimated deaths were 114646 From 2000-2009 estimated deaths were 471015 From 2010-2012 estimated deaths were 341642 On the Munich Re chart the number of natural catastrophes from geophysical events was down. Looks good on paper but does in no way indicate actual impact on people.
  4. A Sunburnt Country
    scaddenp: Published papers? That research was published in the well-known and authoritative voice of science, the Wall Street Journal. What is stunning is this line is also embraced by those who say climate change isn't real. That it's simultaneously not happening and causing earthquake or volcano clusters is a bit of a paradox, but what of that?
  5. A Sunburnt Country
    So is there any published papers (as opposed to magazines/book articles) to support this? The big earthquakes in recent times have taken place pretty much where they always have, and the really big ones on oceanic crustal boundaries. I dont buy it.
  6. A Sunburnt Country
    Writing in New Scientist, Richard Fisher argues that crustal sensitivity to mass redistribution is greater than generally supposed. In his recent book Waking the Giant, Bill McGuire comes to a similar conclusion. A couple of short articles in New Scientist worth a read are at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327273.800-climate-change-may-trigger-earthquakes-and-volcanoes.html?full=true and http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328522.500-climate-change-may-stir-geological-mayhem.html
  7. Glenn Tamblyn at 10:36 AM on 8 March 2012
    A Sunburnt Country
    LukeW I doubt that better monitoring is the likely cause, not over this time scale. Rather an event triggers insurance claims and this data is extremely well recorded - it is essentially the actuarial basis that insurance is based on. Although their are predictions regarding specific events like Hurricanes, the Munich Re data covers a much larger range of weather/climate impacts - drought, forest fires, flooding and land-slides etc. That is why it is a useful metric. Prediction of the changes in rate of individual types of events is one thing.But this is giving the aggregate over all classes of events.
  8. Glenn Tamblyn at 10:30 AM on 8 March 2012
    A Sunburnt Country
    The geophysical data can easily include clusters of events, particularly earthquakes, that are related and this can look like an increase when we look at timescales of a few decades. If a major fault line is under stress, a quake at one point on the fault can relieve the stress at that location but then result in a section further along the fault being under higher stress and resulting in a later quake. So a fault line can conceivably 'unzip' progressively releasing stresses over years or decades. Then it might be stable for centuries while the stresses build up again. Possibly the best recent example of this is the Boxing Day Earthquake & Tsunami in Indonesia. Since then there have been several more significant quakes further along the fault line running through Indonesia. Another region that has seismologists worried is Norther Turkey. Over decades there have been some major quakes, each occurring along the same major fault, each a bit further west. And this fault-line is pointed like an arrow at Istanbul. So related geophysical events can easily create a 'bulge' in events over decades that then subsides away again. And this data, at several decades, is still relatively short. In this context, the time scales needed to discern any trends are probly much longer than the scales needed for Climate - centuries & millenia rather than decades. So personally I don't read anything into Munich Re's trend for geophysical. Global warming might have a very small impact on geological events due to changes in mass distribution. But this is likely to be very slow. Several things could cause a possible impact. As major ice sheets melt, the crust beneath them that has been supporting that weight starts to rise slowly - this is called Isotatic Rebound. But it is very, very slow. Scandinavia for example is still slowly rising, recovering from the weight of the Ice Sheets that melted 1000's of years ago. As this rebound occurs it could slowly change the stresses associated with fault-lines, possible triggering tremors or quakes. But a lot would depend on how close to fault lines the uplift zones are. And localised melt of glaciers that happen to be near faults might have an impact. Secondly, melt of large amounts of ice, particularly Greenland & Antarctica redistributes that water into the world oceans. This adds extra total weight to the oceans, although trivially small compared to the total ocean mass. However another effect is that the extra mass of that ice sitting there creates localised regions of slightly higher gravitational fields, in turn slightly attracting more sea water to that area. So sea levels near large masses - land and ice - will on average tend to be a bit higher than far from those masses. So if ice melt of the large ice sheets is removing ice from those regions and spreading it out around the worlds oceans as water, the slight decline in the local field then tends to lower the local bulges in the ocean in those regions as well, increasing the local rebound effect. Both these effects however happen very slowly. So there well could be geophysical events caused by this but the rate of change is very slow. This doesn't mean that a cluster of geophysical events couldn't happen because of AGW, but the clustering is going to be due to geological links between the events rather than any change in the underlying rate of stress accumulation due AGW. A process that could trigger geophysical events, particularly at a local scale is changes in local water storage. This is both depletion of ground aquifers, and construction of surface dams - concerns have been expressed for example about the impact of the 3 Gorges Dam in China and furure planned ones. These type of changes may not involve the masses of ice sheets but could be locally significant. And this process could happen on time scales of decades. However, this isn't caused by AGW. Anthropgenic yes - we are using the water. But not Climate Change related yet. If climate changes increase temperatures enough this could alter precipitation levels that influence water table accumulation. But this would probably be a process over centuries - all but the most shallow aquifers tend to need this long to recharge.
  9. A Sunburnt Country
    However - how much of their "trends" are due to better data and better reporting. In fact looking close to John's home, the Queensland coast, tropical cyclones making landfall have markedly declined since the 1970s and we know the trends have high decadal/multi-decadal variability as well as variation with ENSO. www.cawcr.gov.au/.../fd/.../Power_SPCZ_wshop_Apia_2010.pdf www.cawcr.gov.au/staff/sbp/.../Callaghan_and_Power_CD_2010.pdf "The extent to which global warming might be also be partially responsible for the decline in land-falls—if it is at all—is unknown." they say And is not the general AGW modelled future for tropical cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons for fewer or the same number events but an increase in intensity?
  10. A Sunburnt Country
    Norman - I would agree that these are "observed catastrophes" affecting people and property, and I would likewise agree with CBDunkerson that they are event counts, not costs. All such events will scale with observational coverage (population growth, property expansions) - and as Glenn Tamblyn has pointed out, the differences in trends between geophysical events (which should be unaffected by the climate) and others shows a clear climate influence. I think CBDunkerson could have stated it better by noting that population and property expansion should have no impact on the difference in trends.
  11. rustneversleeps at 09:28 AM on 8 March 2012
    PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    Kent overlooked calls for 'transparency' on climate science research: memos Environment Minister Peter Kent overlooked calls from his department in 2011 to show more "transparency" and he delayed the release of a scientific paper on Canada's climate change challenges — prepared several months before the May 2 federal election — until late July, newly released internal memorandums reveal. The memos referred to an analysis of Canadian trends in greenhouse gas emissions that projected a sharp rise in emissions from the energy-intensive oilsands industry.... "Public release of this detailed paper (and associated tables) would permit the government to proactively frame Canada's current progress and challenges in managing greenhouse (GHG) emissions, while maintaining the commitment to transparency and informed public dialogue consistent with Environment Canada's status as a world class regulator," wrote the department's deputy minister, Paul Boothe, in a May 30, 2011, memo to Kent, released through access to information legislation.... . . . But instead of signing off on Boothe's request that the research be released in response to another access to information request that was due on June 10, Kent waited until he received a second memorandum requesting that the material be released in late July. A spokesman for Kent said the minister was too busy in early June to respond to the department's request, but followed up on it in the summer after getting a reminder from Boothe.. . . ... The date of the first memo coincided with intensive international media coverage about Environment Canada's decision to exclude data showing a substantial rise in pollution from the oilsands in a mandatory inventory report on emissions to the United Nations. The missing data revealed that the oilsands industry's annual emissions were greater than annual pollution from all cars on Canadian roads and almost as much pollution in a year as all light-duty trucks in the country.. . . ... Environment Canada recently has declined to release a separate discussion paper that estimates emissions per barrel from the oilsands sector, arguing that it contains information that may harm Canada's national security and foreign relations. The department also said, in response to an access to information request, that this discussion paper includes privileged advice to the government on a matter under consultation. . . . ... Kent has recently indicated he will introduce a plan to regulate emissions from the oilsands in the coming months. But questions about whether the industry is actually reducing its emissions per barrel have become controversial in recent months, with industry stakeholders suggesting they are making progress, while the most recent government statistics show that oilsands companies are no longer collectively achieving reductions...
  12. Lindzen's Junk Science
    Dick @4, There is no bug. The "skeptical" (==ignorant or willfuly misleading) version draws from incomplete 2011 data and goes out of whack. The realist version draws from complete data. It is explained in this thread: http://www.skepticalscience.com/going-down-the-up-escalator-part-2.html
  13. Lindzen's London Illusions
    Hi Dana, It was in the 26 February 2012 email, together with articles by Chris Colose and John Cook.
  14. A Sunburnt Country
    Hi Glen, I too am Australian and this poem has always been a favourite of mine. I also used to live in Wagga Wagga, and I watched as the area surrounding my house went under water. Just a small point though, and as much as I hate to be a pedant, could you please change 'loose' in the second paragraph to 'lose'. Cheers
  15. A Sunburnt Country
    CBDunkerson @7 I have to disagree with your post about the meaning of the Munich Re graphs. They are of Natural Catastrophe's not actual events. An F5 tornado in a field that causes no damage is a natural event and potential catastrophe but will not be logged as one unless it causes some damage or kills someone. If you do not believe me here is something from Re itself. On this Google link (I can't link directly to the document) Google link. Click on the NatCatSAV1 link 4 down and you can read what a catastrophe is yourself and it definately involves people and property.
  16. Dick Veldkamp at 09:01 AM on 8 March 2012
    Lindzen's Junk Science
    Sorry, this is somewhat off topic, so you can delete this after reading. Your excellent Escalator graph seems to have a small bug: in the 'Skeptical' version the temperature drops completely at the right end of the graph (but without a point??). I know we have had some 'flattening' over the last decade, but we didn't drop to the 1973 value, did we? Also in the 'Realist' version I don't see the drop. P.S. Of course if the value really occurred, we should include it!
  17. Lindzen's Junk Science
    Lintzen making an accusation of deliberate falsification by NASA is repugnant. Tony T. Watt holds court with this kind of smear tactic. Lintzen has drifted so far from his academic roots, it's MIT that needs to splain things to him. Historical records are revised whenever new data or errors of interpretation are uncovered (ask the guys at UAH about a career in it). Lintzen should accuse Spencer and Roy of the same thing. The U.S. Government just cancelled a NOAA project to do a detailed reconstruction of American weather conditions for the entire 20th century. That certainly would have revised the ddata sets, and by extension the global data sets. There is a current blog-buzz over apparent temperature adjustments to Icelandic data - without consulting the meteorologists in Reykjavik. Lintzen is no better than the blogs. The MET is coming out with a 'new and improved' HadCrut4. Ricky MIT might want to leave England before he smears that one. Lintzen, beyond whatever data-selection errors he may or may not have had, is playing the Janus when he points at inaccurate or insufficient data, and then cries 'fix' when the dataset is upgraded. He's jumped the shark on this one.
  18. Lindzen's London Illusions
    I don't keep old copies of the daily emails - it should be in the email on 26 or 27 February.
  19. funglestrumpet at 08:33 AM on 8 March 2012
    Lindzen's London Illusions
    dana @ 43 It's no good trying to sweet talk me by calling me 'fungles'! It will cost you a couple of drinks at least. I accept what you say, but I still cannot find Monckton Part 3 in the daily listings, so where am I going wrong?
  20. It's not bad
    JMurphy: The abstracts are all I had access to, and I apologize for any misunderstanding. The figures are already present in the abstracts though, so I would still consider my statement valid. I'm going to ignore the quotation you pasted in from the abstract because it does not mention percentages at all and it's the percentages that I said Barnett must have got wrong. Once again, the relevant sentence from the abstract is: "Reduction of water availability during the summer period, which contributes about 60% to the annual flow, may have severe implications on the water resources of the region..." Here we have an actual figure, 60%. The way I read this sentence is that there may be water flowing all year in this river, but the *water* from the summer period specifically represents 60% of the annual flow; i.e. the water from fall, winter and spring together makes up only 40% of the annual total. Do you agree with my analysis of this sentence? If not, please ignore the paragraphs below and clarify how I read this sentence wrong. Now if *all* the water flowing in the river in the summer period came from melting glaciers, this would mean that 60% of the annual flow does indeed come from glaciers, since the summer water accounts for 60% of the annual flow. However, I made the reasonable (wouldn't you say?) presumption that the summer flow does not only come from glacier melt, but also snow melt and rainfall. If you agree with my presumption, then you would agree only a fraction of the summer flow is from actual glacier melt, which means only a fraction of 60% of the annual flow is from glaciers. That's how I arrived at this "fraction" and I stand by my previous statement. How big is the fraction from glaciers? If 5/6 of summer runoff comes from glaciers (that seems pretty generous, but without further evidence I admit it's possible) then Barnett would still be OK using a figure of 50%, but any less and Barnett's figure wouldn't be accurate. Without searching the full text of the paper for a percentage for glacier melt specifically, we have no way of proving or disproving this. Considering his sloppy use of the other 2 sources, I don't have much confidence in his referencing of this source either. If you have access to the full text, by all means let me know if there is a figure for glacier melt specifically. If not, we'll just have to leave a question mark on this one. However, I'll take your lack of comment on the other 2 sources as agreement that Barnett's misrepresented the data in saying that "melting glaciers provide....50-60% of the flow" in these rivers. It is not melting glaciers alone, but the combination of melting glaciers and melting snowpack.
  21. Lindzen's Junk Science
    Me thinks I should be emailing Dr. Hansen about this. In fact, I will.
  22. PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    This sounds a lot like the George W. Bush administration. I know nothing about Canadian politics, but it would appear that they are are a few years behind the U.S., in political trends.
  23. Lindzen's London Illusions
    Professional misconduct complaint against Professor Richard S. Lindzen Sent by me to MIT today: Dear Sirs, I should appreciate some guidance about whether and how - as a non US citizen - I can make a formal complaint against Professor Richard S Lindzen for apparently repetitive hypocrisy, obfuscation and misdirection of several audiences, including the following: 1. At the Heartland Institute's 4th International Climate Change Conference in May 2010; 2. In testimony to US House Subcommittee on Science and Technology hearing in November 2010; and most recently 3. At a meeting in Committee Room 14 of the Palace of Westminster (at which I was present) on 22 February 2012. I have now sent Professor Lindzen 3 emails (on 23 and 25 February, and 5 March but, as yet I have had no explanation - let alone a satisfactory one - for the issues I have raised in my emails to him. Transcripts of my 3 emails have been published on my blog as follows: An open letter to Richard Lindzen (28 February 2012) - 1800 word email with questions from me. Prof. Lindzen – try this instead! (29 February 2012) - Many of my questions re-formulated as 17 statements via which I invited Professor Lindzen to explain his position. There is no cause for concern? You cannot be serious! (5 March 2012) - about 900 words - plus some very interesting comments from me and others. If nothing else, Professor Lindzen's repetitive divergence from - and ridicule of - the genuine scientific consensus regarding the nature, scale and urgency of the problem we face (i.e. anthropogenic climate disruption) and/or his invocation of conspiracy theory as a grounds for dismissing the validity and reliability of that consensus would appear to be in severe danger of damaging the international reputation of your highly-esteemed establishment. Therefore, if I do not hear from you within 7 days, I shall forward this email to Suzanne Goldenberg (US Environmental Correspondent for the Guardian newspaper) suggesting that she publish it forthwith because, in the continuing absence of a satisfactory explanation from him, I am inclined to believe that Professor Lindzen is part of an organised campaign to downplay, deny and/or dismiss anthropogenic climate change being orchestrated by right-wing, ideologically-prejudiced Conservative Think Tanks (CTTs) such as the Heartland Institute and the CATO Institute. I have reached this conclusion, in no small part, as a result of my reading of research done by Peter Jacques et al., the findings of which may be summarised as follows: In prefacing their research, Jacques et al. observed that: “Since environmentalism is unique among social movements in its heavy reliance on scientific evidence to support its claims… it is not surprising that CTTs would launch a direct assault on environmental science by promoting environmental scepticism… (2008: 353). Furthermore, based on their findings, they concluded that: “Environmental scepticism is an elite-driven reaction to global environmentalism, organised by core actors within the conservative movement. Promoting scepticism is a key tactic of the anti-environmental counter-movement co-ordinated by CTTs…” (ibid: 364). Jacques has also highlighted the central aim of CTTs as being to cause confusion and doubt amongst the general public, in order to prevent the creation of a popular mandate for change (i.e. achieved by using a tactic developed by the tobacco industry of countering supposedly “junk” science with their “sound” science), which he refers to as the “science trap” (2009: 148). Based on the findings of the research published in 2008, Jacques therefore also concluded that environmental scepticism is a social counter-movement that uses CTTs to provide “political insulation for industry and ideology from public scrutiny”; and that this deliberate obfuscation stems from a realisation that “anti-environmentalism is an attitude that most citizens would consider a violation of the public interest” (2009: 169). However, Jacques does not blame the CTTs for the ecological crisis he feels we face, as they have merely exploited a dominant social paradigm; “because neoliberal globalism and its logic are protected from critique” (ibid: 119). I therefore trust that I may hear from someone regarding this in the very near future. Kind regards, Martin C. Lack. BSc (Geology), MSc (Hydrogeology), MA (Environmental Politics). Author of the Lack of Environment blog - 'On the politics and psychology underlying the denial of all our environmental problems….' References: Jacques, P. et al. (2008), ‘The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism’, Environmental Politics, 17(3), pp.349-385. Jacques, P. (2009), Environmental Skepticism: Ecology, Power and Public Life. Farnham: Ashgate.
  24. Lindzen's London Illusions
    Am I the only person on the planet that wants to know why the most apalling piece of data manipulation to make a point out of nothing – a mismatched graph of Keeling Curve v Temp (at 28m30s in the video)? And why won't Lindzen answer any of my questions: Is it because it was a blatant piece of hypocrisy that Lindzen left out because he knew third parties would spot; but which went un-noticed by an un-critical audience and left them all with the very strong impression that CO2 and temperature rise do not correlate? surely Lindzen should be censured by his fellow AGU members and/or MIT for such blatant hypocrisy, obfuscation of relevant data, and misdirection of his audience; on at least 3 occasions since May 2010?
  25. Lindzen's London Illusions
    fungles - all new posts are automatically included in the daily digest emails. Lindzen's Junk Science will be included in tomorrow's email.
  26. funglestrumpet at 07:00 AM on 8 March 2012
    Lindzen's London Illusions
    Can we please ensure that all latest posts are included in the daily 'Skeptical Science posts' email for the day of their release? I missed Monckton 3 recently because it was not notified via this Sks posts email, and judging by the lack of comments, I suspect that I was not the only one to miss it on the day of its release. (I only found it eventually by mistake!). I now see that there is another post: 'Lindzen's Junk Science' post appearing at the top of the latest posts list side bar. Please, a policy of all or none at all. Not this 'it should be here, but isn't' policy we now appear to have.
  27. Lindzen's London Illusions
    @WheelsOC "Lindzen might not have even made the graph, just swallowed it uncritically." We'll see if he defends it tooth and nail a la Monckton (or rather, tries to change the topic), or steps up, won't we?
  28. Lindzen's London Illusions
    #38 If you want to get the measure of the Rev Philip Foster, check out my review of his book, While the Earth Endures: Creation, Cosmology and Climate Change on Amazon, which I entitled Rev. Foster - For God's sake stick to theology!... (N.B. It is not ad hom - it is entirely factual criticism).
  29. Lindzen's London Illusions
    Rob wrote: "What I always see happening is, they torture some data in the attempt to establish low sensitivity, then they just ignore every other implication that holds." What, you think the laws of physics have to be consistent? Maybe the albedo of ice and the saturated vapor pressure of water change over time. Ever think of that, huh? :]
  30. Paul from VA at 06:22 AM on 8 March 2012
    A Sunburnt Country
    @10 Funglestrumpet. The last points are pretty close to unchanged, but broadly the number of events are higher than in the initial years. If the trend went up then went down, fitting a single trend would still appear upward.... There's an interesting cost graph in the docs linked by fpjohn@4, and it looks like the costs in recent years are highly variable, mostly due to major earthquakes. In fact the Tohoku earthquake was something like 80% of insurance paid out for all disasters in 2010. However, they didn't break down disasters by climatological vs. geological and instead did man-made vs. natural, so it's not easy to directly infer from the doc if climate-related disaster costs are also rising.
  31. Lindzen's London Illusions
    Re: Russell@32 Noticed the Lindzen event advert you linked to includes Rev Phillip Foster. In fact I think he was sitting next to Monkton in the Lindzen talk. Here is his famous armchair video, attempting to do some science: [link] It's sad really.
    Moderator Response: [RH] Hot linked URL.
  32. Lindzen's Junk Science
    If Lindzen had a real & robust case to support his claims re: contemporary climate changes, he would have published it in the peer-reviewed lterature, received the gratitude of almost every other climate scientist (who would be relieved to find that their concerns were no longer supported) and on the way to Stockholm for a Nobel prize. Instead, he's stuck presenting junk science such as documented here (or in the London Illusions post) to political figures and, for lack of a better term, celebrities, with political, ideological or financial interests in preventing effective policy action to avert warming.
  33. funglestrumpet at 05:38 AM on 8 March 2012
    A Sunburnt Country
    Is it possible that the trend graph is based on cost as opposed to frequency? As mentioned in the post, the geophysical events portion of the bar chart is reasonably level, considering that it must, by its nature, fluctuate. Yet the trend for the same component is shown as rising, which is either wrong, or the product of some other influence and the only thing that comes to my mind is cost inflation.
  34. A Sunburnt Country
    I wonder what the presumed rising premium costs passed on to the reinsurance buyers amounts to annually.I don't suppose that AGW 'skeptics' like to include those figures in their cost benefit analysis.
  35. Rob Honeycutt at 05:21 AM on 8 March 2012
    Lindzen's London Illusions
    What I never quite get from people like Lindzen who claim very low climate sensitivity is, how do they manage to reconcile this with even just glacial-interglacial cycles, much less any of up to 20+ other sensitivity estimates that suggest much higher figures? What I always see happening is, they torture some data in the attempt to establish low sensitivity, then they just ignore every other implication that holds.
  36. Lindzen's London Illusions
    #31 As I attended the Meeting they should not be able to refuse me if I request the info (although I am now labelled as 'hostile') I will see what I can do. BTW if people want background info on the politicians who were there, search the Category index on my blog for loads of insane quotations and psychoanalysis (it will make a nice change from all that complicated mathematics)... http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com #35 "This does not reflect at all well on Lindzen's employer, MIT." Therefore, if you are a US Citizen and/or a former or existing MIT student or employee, you should submit a formal complaint to MIT...
  37. Lindzen's London Illusions
    WheelsOC @33, "Lindzen might not have even made the graph, just swallowed it uncritically." Lindzen has yet again shown that, like Pielke senior, he is guilty of one-sided skepticism, and also appears to be willing to cherry pick and misrepresent the data to arrive at a pre-determined answer. This does not reflect at all well on Lindzen's employer, MIT.
  38. Lindzen's London Illusions
    WheelsOC @33, thank you for the advise. If we compare the URL for the 2008 data as provided at Real Climate with that for the current data, it is clear that Hayden's claim to have got both sets of data from the same website literally cannot be true. The reason is that the 2008 website has as part of its adress: /tabledata/ In contrast, the equivalent section of the address for the current data reads: /tabledata_v3/ The change in address from tabledata to tabledata_v3 was presumably concurrent with was presumably made with the switch from GHCNv2 to GHCNv3 in December 2011. The odd thing is that the address shown on the chart is indeed the current address. However, even a cursory check shows that he cannot have used both the Land Ocean Temperature Index of 2008 and of 2012. Further, he cannot have used the Surface Stations only data from 2008, for that would have generated a negative, not a positive sloping trend. Ergo, while he lists the correct current address he did not use the correct current address to obtain his data. It is difficult, therefore, to see how this can be explained by an accident.
  39. PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    Just based on current and recent past events, I would assert that it is in every human's individual interest to avert future rapid human-generated warming. That said, individuals can have competing interests which may overwhelm their interest in averting warming (e.g. financial or ideological interests). However, as you examine aggregate interests of larger and larger numbers of people, countervailing interests against averting warming IMO fall away fairly quickly. Certainly I can think of no nation-state which actually has a rational interest in propagating warming. Not even Canada.
  40. Newcomers, Start Here
    This is kind of a high level comment, more perhaps on perspective. Unless one subscribes to some form of naive falsificationism, it is not necessary that AGW debunk all arguments or apparently contrary evidence. It is only necessary that it do it better, and perhaps quite a bit better, than opposing theories. In this sense, perhaps this website format puts to much stress on a defensive stance rather than also taking the offense in addressing the shortfalls of skeptics. It's true that specific arguments that skeptics have are addressed here, but not the fact that there is no real "theory" advanced by the skeptics. Maybe we need a visual- a jigsaw puzzle of climatology with various components fitting together, and a jigsaw puzzle of various "arguments" on pieces that clearly do NOT fit together. Maybe you could pull out all the stuff that might comprise some kind of skeptical theory as a whole (given that it is trying to explain climate change- not deny its existence) and go on the offense. Not sure how this could be done exactly.I'm arguing for a change in perspective.Thanks for listening.
  41. A Sunburnt Country
    Sapient Fridge at 20:33 PM on 7 March, 2012 says Maybe this explains why the "Geophysical event" line in the re-insurer's graph also had an upward trend? I'd say that all of them should have upward trends, because of the larger population and larger populated areas (assuming the graph plots events with human relevance). So I would understand the Geophysical event line as the baseline. The steeper trends from the other ones is the telling detail in the whole graph.
  42. Nordhaus Sets the Record Straight - Climate Mitigation Saves Money
    Regarding Fairoakien at #5: I don't see anyone addressing the fact that if Canada benefits, while at the same time USoA suffers from a temperature rise, then there will be a meaningful 'greener grass over there'-effect also which surely will be seen as a cost for Canada to handle. According to this study, this is partially already the case between Mexico and USoA.
  43. A Sunburnt Country
    Bernard, the Munich Re data in the article is showing number of events... with no consideration of cost or how many people were impacted. Thus, population changes have absolutely no impact on the trends shown. Actually, it is interesting that they have started presenting the data this way. Obviously number of people filing claims and total dollar figures are the most important factors for re-insurers and thus have long been carefully studied by them. Presumably they have are showing 'number of events' data precisely to counter claims that the increase in damages is entirely due to rising populations and standards of living. Re-insurers need their share-holders to understand that there is a rising trend not just in the 'cost per disaster', but also in the 'disasters per year'. Re-insurers compete with each other and thus are always striving to set their reinsurance premiums as low as possible. Yet they also have to charge enough to build reserves sufficient to cover projected future losses. They are thus always looking for the best possible analysis and projections and, as the article indicates, would be at a serious disadvantage if they planned based on faulty estimates. If any of the major re-insurers believed that 'global warming is all a big hoax' or 'it will not be that bad' then they could plan for fewer future disasters and significantly undercut their competitors on price and make a killing. Yet none of them are doing that. So not only must they all be in on the 'biggest conspiracy in history'... they are all participating in it against their own financial interests. Either that or deniers are crazy people. It's a tossup.
  44. Lindzen's London Illusions
    @Utahn and Tom Curtis: In the comments at RC, Hank Roberts identifies an earlier source for the graph in a post to Junk Science by Steve Milloy on Feb 7th, crediting it to Howard Hayden. I'll note that the URL Hayden claims to have used to get both sets of data is consistent, and doesn't switch between station-only and LOTI data, but with the result of Gavin's attempt at replication it looks like Hayden must have gotten it wrong somehow. Lindzen might not have even made the graph, just swallowed it uncritically.
  45. funglestrumpet at 01:51 AM on 8 March 2012
    PMO Pest Control: Scientists
    Brian Purdue @ 13 "When are politicians going to realise you can’t keep putting the national interest ahead of the interests of the planet?" It isn't even in the national interest to combat climate change. Pity that politicians just don't get it. It isn't like any other political issue when bullying and shouting will win the day. Old Mother Nature is a wily old bird who will have her way, regardless of what the politicians decide the laws of nature should be.
  46. A Sunburnt Country
    With only a verly slight alteration, I think two lines from the fifth stanza could be considered rather appropriate also, especially considering the statistic from the Munich Re report "[In] flood and fire and famine, She pays us back threefold"
  47. Stephen Baines at 01:38 AM on 8 March 2012
    Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years
    Scaddenp...Understood. My question wasn't to do with the PETM so much as your response to Trent1492s query about variability in pH.
  48. A Sunburnt Country
    Nice to see that insurance industry analyses have been added to SkS's quiver of denialist debunking points. I used to bring this up elsewhere in the past: now all I need to do is to link to this page (hello to the people whom I have directed here!). For the sake of thoroughness though I am curious if there's a methodology that explains whether increasing and/or shifting population factors are accounted for in the definition/detection of an event. This will be the Denialati's first target for debunking the whole field, so it would be useful to know how robust these data are to demographic changes.
  49. John Russell at 00:50 AM on 8 March 2012
    Lindzen's London Illusions
    It's interesting to read the publicity for the meeting. I see that the meeting room was booked by Sammy Wilson(DUP), quote, "man-made climate change is a "myth based on dodgy science ..and ...an hysterical pseudo-religion." Note the recommended reading list at the end, which includes such seminal reference works as Donna Laframboise's 'The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert: IPCC Expose'; and, James Delingpole's, 'Watermelons: How the Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children's Future'. The general slant of the recommended reading suggests that the audience was very much drawn from those with an anti-windpower, pro fossil-fuel agenda.
  50. A Sunburnt Country
    Swiss Re discusses earthquake frequency trends here http://media.swissre.com/documents/sigma1_2011_en.pdf yours Frank

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