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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 63801 to 63850:

  1. Global Sea Level Rise: Pothole To Speed Bump?
    It will be interesting to see how much sea level rises over the next few months as conditions in the tropical Pacific move toward neutral. There seems to be greater volatility in the sea level response, but it may be temporary.
  2. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    I presume elsa would also decry those who had to come up with dark matter and dark energy to iron-out discrepancies in the standard model of cosmology. Those dastardly scientists, eh ? They can only solve this problem by coming up with stuff that is very difficult to falsify, let alone prove ! In fact, I would go so far as to state : The facts did not fit the theory, as the expansion of the universe accelerated and discrepancies were found with regards to the mass of large astronomical objects. So the big-bang group has then to add other factors to make it work. But such a theory is no longer testable, it will always be right.
  3. DenialGate - Infographic Illustrating the Heartland Denial Funding Machine
    Why spend time on this? There are so many valuable studies and data that could occupy the space.
  4. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    Hijacking amendment – yes. It is a good policy to keep the discussion relevant, besides it is already the unwritten policy. Written policy and practiced policy should match.
  5. Medieval Warm Period was warmer
    As far as being global, it does certainly seem that the MWP was global. Southern South America temp proxy record. This study is done on Southern SA temperatures, the results indicate that the Southern South America region recognizes proxy data that supports temperatures within the expected anamoly of the NH MWP R. Neukom et al
  6. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    The Monckton response to Abraham (or, more accurately, the Monckton response to what Monckton creates as being from Abraham) also contains the following fallacy : "Santer who rewrote the IPCC’s 1995 report, on his own, so as to change its principal finding by 180 degrees" Completely made-up and shown to be wrong. The only 'difficulty' is deciding whether you believe the people actually involved, or those who believe in conspiracies. But I don't understand this Monckton claim : "What evidence do you have that I cited Caillon et al. (2003) in my talk?" Listening to the Abraham presentation again (especially slide 62), I couldn't hear or see any such claim, and certainly couldn't hear/see anything along the lines of what Monckton claims is a "papraphrase" of Abraham : "And what he says, ... temperatures always change first and CO2 follows, and he cites the paper which I’ve got the citation listed here, [Caillon et al., 2003], which deals with the timing of CO2 and Antarctic temperatures." Either that is a Monckton version of paraphrasing (i.e. not an actual paraphrase), or it is something that has been removed from the presentation.
  7. Pete Dunkelberg at 04:53 AM on 21 February 2012
    DenialGate - Infographic Illustrating the Heartland Denial Funding Machine
    Koch Brothers? not so much, in fact nothing for climate in at least ten years if ever according to this update at Desmogblog.
    [Update: Apparently even the Koch brothers think the Heartland Institute's climate denial program is too toxic to fund. On Wednesday, Koch confirmed that it did not cut a check for the $200K mentioned in the strategy memo after all. A statement released on KochFacts.com and the charleskochfoundationfacts.org states that "…the Charles Koch Foundation provided $25,000 to the Heartland Institute in 2011 for research in healthcare, not climate change, and this was the first and only donation the Foundation made to the institute in more than a decade. The Foundation has made no further commitments of funding to Heartland.”]
  8. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    Look on the bright side, when Monckton makes high profile erroneous statements, it gives an opportunity to give high profile correction. After all if you can’t see the fox who is eating your chickens you can’t catch him. In some ways it’s better to have wrong information out in open where it can be challenged.
  9. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    @33-muoncounter It's hard to say what influences people's beliefs about the world- most seem to reduce explanations to something that makes sense from their own experience- re the seasons -their everyday experience is that if you move closer to a heat source (the sun) you get warmer and if you move farther away you get colder. I have an engineer friend who thought the seasons were caused by the 'precession of the equinoxes" until I asked him to think about that. Living in the relatively far north, I associated warm temperatures with long days and short nights, and it took me some time to realize that this didn't work at the equator. It may be that this kind of approach plays into the denier meme-what's a few degrees between friends, 390ppm-that's hardly any, how can that affect climate, etc. In my opinion, that kind of 'common sense' inertia is one of the major things the scientists have to contend with.
  10. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    I don't think that's correct elsa. The climate isn't so complex at the level which is relevant to global warming (it's fundamentally about energy flow into and out of the earth system and its contribution, together with some understanding of how this is manifest at the earth's surface where we all reside). One does need to be careful switching back and forth between philosophy of science descriptions (e.g. in the (vi)-point schematic you reproduced in your post!) and the real world. However the fundamental theory of AGW arising from 19th century science (that increased atmospheric [CO2] results in a warming contribution) has been tested virtually to destruction. Simply put it's completely compatible with observations. We've gone through steps (i) to (iv), and everything is holding up - the essential theory hasn't needed to be refined very much, 'though it would be silly not to continue to incorporate new knowledge into our attribution of component contributors to surface temperature changes. A more general theory is that the actual surface warming is the result of all of the external and internal contributions to surface temperature change, and that at equilibrium, a persisitent temperature change must result from an enhanced external forcing. Again the observations are entirely compatible with that. I don't agree with your statement about "AGW for the period 1940-1970". The change in greenhouse forcing in the middle part of the last century was small. So [CO2] was 299 ppm in 1900, and hadn't even reached 320 ppm by 1960. It's the massive post-war industrialization that took off in the mid 1960's and has seen [CO2] levels race up towards 400 ppm that has resulted in the large late 20th century warming. So the lack of surface warming in the period 1940-1970 isn't surprising when one considers all of the contributions to warming including the (then) quite small greenhouse forcing. The theory of greenhouse warming is eminently testable and falsifiable. We can determine the earth surface temperature projected from quantitation of natural attributions to temperature change and see that these cannot result in warming from the mid 20th century til now. All of the sub-components of the theory are testable and falsifiable (the absorption characteristics of greenhouse gases; top of the atmosphere radiative changes; predictions of atmopsheric water vapour concentrations; tropopause height variations and stratospheric temperature changes and so on)...
  11. Medieval Warm Period was warmer
    Crowly 2010 is using old TSI reconstructions that have been updated. Refer to my post from Lief.org slide 7. Hence, this paper has little bearing on the reason that the MWP was a warm period. It is obvious that TSI was/is NOT a factor in the MWP temperatures. Volcanoes are short lived and unless we had had a super erruption, would not be detectable in the resolution of the proxy data presented for the temps of the MWP. Once again, based on the current science published, why were temperatures higher in the MWP?
  12. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    16 - Geologist It should be pointed out that most people here are now well aware that Katharine Hayhoe is female... ... you can tell because a number of the responses to her video where like "hay... hot..."! I guess you're right in your conclusion.
  13. Dikran Marsupial at 04:20 AM on 21 February 2012
    Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Elsa, the experiments/observations on which AGW theory are based are repeatable and could be run over and over again. As I pointed out the theory of AGW predates global observations. "This is what happens to the AGW theory for the period 1940 to 1970s. The facts do not fit the theory as the world cools in the face of rising CO2." This is simply incorrect, and is based on your ignorance of what the theory actually predicts and of the historical development of the theory. CO2 radiative forcing is only one of the forcings that govern long term climate, as it says, for instance in the IPCC WG1 report. Does AGW theory say that temperatures cannot fall while CO2 levels rise? No, it doesn't. "But such a theory is no longer testable, it will always be right. " That is also nonsense. AGW theory makes falsifiable projections.
  14. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    60, elsa, Sort of like having a theory of classical mechanics, except the speed of light doesn't fit, so someone devises some crazy Theory of Relativity just to make the obviously flawed, broken and useless model of classical mechanics fit the observations (rather than doing the smart thing, and just plain starting over)? And then other people develop more ideas, like quarks and string theory and everything else? You're right, it's all completely crazy. Why keep expanding on what you know and further refining your understanding of a complex system, when you can instead oversimplify things and throw out everything you do know because the details don't line up perfectly the first time? Why base a theory of climate on well-known, well-understand, and proven things like atmospheric chemistry and physics, and then try to understand the other factors that influence and complicate those physics, when you can instead simply invoke the powers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
  15. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    What I found most striking with the "Toon of the Week" was how well it demonstrated how most people think of climate scientists as white, heterosexual men. Sad...
  16. Global Extinction: Gradual Doom as Bad as Abrupt
    In the EPA's worst case scenario of co2 emissions, co2 levels by 2100 are projected to be about 1000ppm. .1% if my conversions are right. By the end of Permian extinction, co2 levels reached 12%, and due to desertification and ocean anoxification, o2 levels dropped to almost 15%.
  17. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Chris, you say that the way we should do things is: (i) perform experiments/observations (ii) formulate a theory (iii) devise and perform experiments/observations to test the theory (iv) compare results with predictions... (v) refine or abandon theory... (vi) repeat steps (iii-(vi) I would mostly agree with you if we were dealing with a simple situation, eg just the force of gravity, where we could run an experiment over and over again. Unfortunately with climate we are dealing with complex phenomena with the added difficulty that we cannot run the experiment over and over again. That is why we need a starting point which is given to us by something other than measurements we have already taken, otherwise we can "refine" our theory as you put it but all we are doing is making the numbers work so the theory cannot be wrong. This is what happens to the AGW theory for the period 1940 to 1970s. The facts do not fit the theory as the world cools in the face of rising CO2. So the AGW group has then to add other factors to make it work. But such a theory is no longer testable, it will always be right.
  18. Fritz Vahrenholt - Duped on Climate Change
    Tonydunc, my apologies that I have not had time to get back to you sooner. The question you ask is, I think, do I consider the alternative explanations of global warming to be as unscientific as the general view expressed here. The answer is yes. The models that apparently explain warming via sunspots etc are equally poor and are not scientific in any way.
  19. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    14 - Tom Baker as Dr. Who
  20. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    I suppose I have been accused of suffering from something akin to a "deplorable excess of personality", and certainly laughed at the Beaker picture. Judging by the hair, this might be something of a generational gap showing, but who is that in "How I like to see myself"?
  21. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    84 - JMurphy Thanks for the clarification. Only I had notice, in the deniosphere, that if any individual or organisation makes one statement that isn't 100% true for all eternity, they - and any statement they make or results they produce - can be considered, not only totally discredited, but eligible for prosecution for fraud... I am, of course, thinking of the IPCC, Mann etc. Such a situation couldn't be applied to TVMOB et al. of course. who can make as many errors as they like while still maintaining full credibility...
  22. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    les, you should be aware by now (if you have been listening carefully to the so-called skeptics, and Monckton) that Hansen and Gore are in on the big conspiracy, so that Hansen produces the 'goods' (the 'hansenised' data, as you will have read it from many of those in denial) which allow Gore to take advantage by buying properties virtually in the oceans (give or take a kilometre or two) and setting-up companies that can make a killing in the carbon-trading market - thereby increasing his wealth from billions to squiilions. (Just in case any Monckton fans are reading : I am joking)
  23. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    From the same document of 82-logicman "When Hansen’s political ally and financial beneficiary Al Gore..." Over and above Hansen being in receipt of government funding and, at some point, Al being in a completely different part of government... is there any evidence for that?
  24. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Ken Lambert - If the oceans are not warm enough for the TOA imbalance to be canceled, then there is disequilibrium, and future warming in the pipeline. As long as there is a TOA imbalance, and the thermal inertial of the climate has not caught up to it, there is still warming that will occur. I have to consider your post to be semantic gaming of this point.
  25. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    JMurphy #80 The "feet from the ocean" quote is from a document published by a little known organisation called the Heartland Institute. Perhaps some of our readers have heard of them? "In 2005, the year [Al Gore] said sea level would imminently rise by 20 feet, he bought a $4 million condo in the St. Regis tower, San Francisco--just feet from the ocean at Fisherman’s Wharf." Source: Great Is Truth, and Mighty Above All Things, Lord Christopher Monckton – March 12, 2009 Anyone who cares to look at a map will see for themselves that the building in question is at least half a kilometer from the ocean.
  26. Dikran Marsupial at 01:20 AM on 21 February 2012
    The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    Ken Lambert: "So ENSO is not the explanation for the last decade stasis in surface temperatures." This is rather silly pedandtry, ENSO is AN explanation for the "stasis", not necessarily THE explanation. I note you have performed the same pedantry in a response to scaddenup. Such behaviour does you no credit whatsoever, and I suggest you avoid it in future. Foster and Rahmsdorff's model uses ENSO, solar and aerosol forcings to explain the variations. If you want to show that ENSO is not responsible, you need to show that changes in solar and aerosol forcings that can explan the "stasis" of the last decade, whilst still being consistent with the observations since the start of the analysis? If you can demonstrate that, then your assertion might have some value, the ball is in your court. However, the major movement in the goalposts is that you said that "likely answer could be an unknown ocean cycle". I pointed out that this would be in contravention of Ocamm's razon becase ENSO already does a good job (as it happens in conjunction with solar and aerosol forcing if you want to be pedantic). Nothing you have written contradicts that.
  27. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    scaddenup #55 "Foster and Rahmsdorff however show quantitatively that combination of ENSO, Solar and aerosol are sufficient to explain the observations." Well that is 3 reasons not just ENSO.
  28. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    scaddenp #56 Do you mean El Nino or La Nina have dominated since 2005?
  29. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    PN #58 "You say that you are considering the warming imbalance from all effects. But is the modelled 0.9 to 1 W/m^2 that you mentioned based retrospectively on the true (estimated) forcings or was it produced by the models as an ensemble average?" A good question. Fig 2.4 of AR4 plus climate responses is the answer. Ref Trenberth 2009 - "Tracking the Earth's Energy...." Probably a bit of both your options.
  30. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    KR "As long as there is an energy imbalance at the TOA, as long as the oceans in particular are in thermal disequilibrium, there is "warming in the pipeline", or as I prefer to term it, unrealized warming." In thermal disequilibrium with what? The ocean heat content is a finite quantity at any point in time. Temperature might be in disequilibrium - but that is probably always the case.
  31. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    Having done this unrewarding job myself once, I value the work of moderators here. It's subjective, yes, but they do it very well. As someone said above, if people don't bite, there's no hijacking. If comments don't hurt other moderation rules, I think the proper think to do would be just warning people of the hijacking, so that they become aware of it. No extra rule needed, IMO.
  32. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    Adam @ 57 says: "I've had a look at Huang's 2008 paper, and I agree with you that their 1997 paper was not the best choice of study to include as evidence of a MWP. Although I do not believe that there was anything nefarious about Monckton including it in his talk. It was probably just an honest mistake. And might I once again point out that it is only one paper. Monckton showed graphs from eight other studies showing MWP temps were the same/higher than today. You can't just pick out one single study from his talk, and then just act like everything he said was wrong..." "Probably just an honest mistake". Really Adam? Do you consider Monckton's insinuation that Sir Richard Houghton supports telling lies and Monckton's made up false quotation he ascribes to Houghton are also "honest mistakes". You seem to have an elastic concept of "honest"! I can't see how Monckton's extreme misrepresentation of Huang's borehole data can be an "honest mistake" when he's gone to the trouble of preparing or hunting down a made-up graph that isn't Huang's at all. Monckton's (misrepresentation of) Huang's borehole data is just one of 9 examples in that slide. But as Abraham shows Monckton's misrepresentions on that slide is more widespread. We could choose another example: e.g. Monckton cites Keigwin (1996). This data set refers specifically to a location in the Sargasso sea. If one was to address this particular data set scientifically, one would likely conclude that it was consistent with a growing consensus that the temperature variations during MWP (and to a lesser extent) during the LIA, were significantly related to ocean current and wind transport regime changes that changed the distribution of global heat, with a large contribution involving “Gulf Stream” heat transport to the high Northern latitudes. It’s not surprising that temperatures in the Sargasso sea are sensitive to these. So Keigwin and Pickart (1999) have shown that if one samples historical temperatures from cored proxies in the Laurentian Fan area to the NW of the Bermuda Rise, Sargasso Sea data, that sea surface temperatures were apparently much colder during the MWP compared to the LIA, and the temperatures of the Bermuda Rise-Laurentian Fan vary in “antiphase” as current regimes change. In other words if Monckton were to have selected Keigwin and Pickart (1999) rather than Keigwin (1996) he would have come to the opposite conclusion. Monckton has "cherry picked" one piece of Keigwin's work that seems to support his agenda. Another "honest mistake" Adam? It's easy to show (simply by doing the reading of the scientific literature that any honest scientist does in putting his work in context) that in addition to misreresenting the work of Huang, on that slide, and Kiegwin, Monckton also misrepresents the work of (at least) Schonwiese, Esper and Schweingruber since the analyses of all of these scientists indicates that in their study context late 20th century and contemporary temperatures are warmer than during the MWP.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] The comments policy forbids accusations of dishonesty:

    No accusations of deception. Any accusations of deception, fraud, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted. This applies to both sides. Stick to the science. You may criticise a person's methods but not their motives.

    In order not to stray into dangerous waters, please everybody stick to the question of whether the science is correct or not, and avoid the issue of the motivation altogether.

  33. Dikran Marsupial at 23:28 PM on 20 February 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    Sadly these days, I look increasingly like "How my parents see me", I see myself more like "How my friends see me" and I actually am "How I actually am" :o(
  34. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    I endorse moderation along the lines suggested above. There will be grey areas, and I am happy for the mods to use their discretion. I must say though that I am attracted to AT's suggestion -- that those who post controversial claims should be invited to document or expressly retract/modify their claim, and be in moderation until such time as they do. In addition, they should be required to respond expressly to actual refutation material posted here. A failure to meet that standard would see the post deleted. A special thread could be created for the purpose. That would cut out the endless reiteration of long debunked talking points.
  35. Global Sea Level Rise: Pothole To Speed Bump?
    Enginerd at 13:28 PM on 15 February, 2012 Tom Curtis at 13:31 PM on 15 February, 2012 Here's the latest from the CU Sea Level Research Group CU Sea Level Research Group It was updated a week ago.
  36. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    It's obvious that Monckton's claim about the St Regis Tower in San Fancisco being "just feet from the ocean at Fisherman's wharf" is blatently false as far as any normal person (i.e. the majority of rational human beings) would understand it. However, judging by the rest of Monckton's attempted justifications highlighted here by others, he will undoubtedly believe he is correct (and his followers will accept his justifications implicitly) because he said "feet", which, in his mind, encapsulates every number from two to the largest number you can think of. He plays with words and uses them so that he can create his own reality and never have to admit being wrong. No wonder Adam likes Poptech too - he has the same modus operandi.
  37. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    Adam, I went through every one of Moncton's points when he came out with the rebuttal. I do remember three or four specific things that seemed to me to have been clearly valid points by Moncton. It was a long time ago, if you wants to pay me for my time, I would be happy to go through the while thing and find those places. the whole opening first pages of his response is rather self serving rubbish (meant in the English sense of the word).It is patently arrogant and obnoxious, and strangely silly, almost infantile in places. Of course that in itself is not reason to dismiss it. Can you tell me you actually read those first few pages and did not think it pretentious nonsense? Oh What the heck I will do it now for free. And I am no scientist, so it is pretty sad that someone with no rigorous background can so easily see through his supposedly brilliant rhetoric. the first 25 are meaningless snipping. 26. Moncton quotes Abraham as saying that " And if you listen to what he said, you would come to the conclusion that the following things are true" then he lists ice melt, world not warming,scientists are lying, etc. 27. The VERY NEXT point he CHANGES that "What evidence do you have for your assertion that I SAID, “The world’s not warming”. That is so obvious any intelligent person ( and certainly any judge would see are two different things. 28. He goes on to point out that he acknowledged warming in the 20th century. Abraham never claimed that Moncton denied that. 29. he then says that since 2001 has been a cooling trend. Which of course is a lie. 30-33 is the exact same thing only with sea level. Nowhere does Abraham state that Moncton said there has been no sea level rise since 1990 34-37 is exactly the same regarding sea ice melt. Of course Moncton does admit to talking about arctic recovery, for which he is of course absolutely wrong. 38-39 is similar about Polar bears being threatened. As far as I know Moncton is distorting when he says Polar bear populations have increased "very substantially" since the middle of the 20th century. I think there was some recovery due to lack of hunting. But recent studies show a decline, but this is a pretty sketchy issue on both sides of the argument in my view, and not really pertinent to determining ACC. SO another lie by Moncton. 40-42 is ocean acidification. And that one s a hoot, as he invents a series of fanciful myths about the changing nature of climate change by duplicitous climate extremists. But his argument, in my view totally supports Abrahams contention that one would get the impression that there is no such thing as ocean acidification. Is Moncton stupid or was he just pretty sure no one except an idiot (like me) would actually bother reading that far. 43-49. is about scientists lying. Now here I do not know enough to pass judgement on the ethics of statistical use. though I think it rather laughable that Moncton is schooling Abraham about it. Still as an entertainer with an interest in climate change it is celar that the IPCC was not :lying" when they conclude that global temp has been increasing faster in late 20th-eary 21st century than from the early and mid 20th century. He would have a point for the past 10-13 years, but even that is disputable if one factors in mitigating issues, such as solar radiation and aerosols, etc. 47-49 are one of the places where I thought he did have a point. Atlantic hurricane strength. But this is a case not of lying but of cherry picking. Again here is an issue that I do not think is germane to the question of climate change as there is no real consensus among experts on specific effects of storms at least not in the current time frame. 50. Moncton conflates "Where I said conspiracy" with "one would come to the conclusion" 51-61 is an amazing piece of rhetoric that is almost pure garbage 52. Gore never said there was an imminent threat of a 20 feet rise in sea levels because of ice sheet melting. Now having seen the movie, i was not thrilled that he did not say it would take many hundreds of years. and there were probably some that took it as being in the relatively near future 53-54. Moncton makes the nearly insane assertion that sea level rise from ice sheets in the coming century would be comparable to 20th century melting of the ice sheet. 55. Irrelevant nonsense. 56 Greenland ice sheet melting. flat out distortion of the science and a use of the word millennia, which, if we want to be picky means at LEAST 2 thousand years , and almost certainly flat out wrong. If Global temps go to a 3°C+ anomaly and stay there, I am pretty confident that any physicist would agree it will not take thousands of years for Greenland to have a nice luke-warm lake in it's center. 57 pretty much the same thing as 56 and untrue. 58 just blatantly untrue. IPCC is very clear that melting of ice sheets is a very difficult thing to determine with rising temps. 59. Distorting the legal ruling on Al Gore's movie. Judge Basically said that Gore's movie could be interpreted to be in the near future and that it should be pointed out to students that complete melting would take a very long time. Quite reasonable on the judge's part. So this is basically a lie. 60. Strawman argument about Gore's buying shorefront property. 61. argument about lack of sea level rise in spite of accelerating ice melting. Moncton has no explanation or rebuttal to the cited reference, just asks a seemingly devastating rhetorical question. Pointless. the issue is more complicated. 62. temperature of last interglacial. Minor point subject to interpretation. But at least this was not an outright lie or distortion. Big victory for Moncton here! 63. Whining about scientists making unsubstantiated64 assertions in referenced citations? Who knows maybe there is some validity, but still rather meaningless. 64-65. Something about IPCC projections and and doubling of CO2 and committment to future climate change. Need someone else to answer that one. 66-77. About polar bears. Again I don't see this as being of particular relevance to determining the reality of ACC. Mostly ridiculous gobbledy gook that is rather lawyerly trying to establish reasonable doubt about Moncton's distortion. The fact is that he cited a paper by an expert on polar bears and only used the information that made it appear that ACC has nothing to do with polar bear survival. He totally ignores accepted views on polar bear evolution assuming they were the same as they are now during the last interglacial, and ignoring that species can be at the brink of extinction and survive to spread rapidly. So a major change in the arctic could very well be disastrous for polar bears But he might have a point here, who knows. his point that this was four polar bears that died from a storm is not unreasonable just one sided. Waste of time basically. Ok. I am up way past my bedtime. If you, Adam, or others want me to continue, let me know and I may be able to do so tomorrow. So far I agree with my hazy memory and the contentions of numerous commenters that this is mostly a gish gallop of the ridiculous, the sometimes plain wrong, and occasionally blatant lies from Moncton.
  38. Book review of Michael Mann's The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars
    Well, having read it. First and foremost can I offer a health warning. If you've ever - and most people have - suffered from some level of bullying or victimisation at work; this'll bring back those memories, pumped up on steroids. By the end of the 2nd from last chapter I was feeling deeply angry. Indeed, although I appreciate the comments policy of SkS - I was feeling like there should be a site where one could sink to the same level towards deniers as they have towards climate science... My other, overall, impression was "wow! Did that really happen so long ago?!?" - there are so many 'arguments' which continue to float around the deniosphere, which are just so old, out of date and discredited. It really makes you wonder what they spend their Heartland Institute money on. Finally, I guess I agree with Liam23 that the PC story remains opaque. I though it was well explained but, as 63 Brandon so clearly shows, it's possible to miss-read. Mann actually says that the tree ring data could dominate the analysis if he hadn't actually done the PC analysis correctly... which he does, which he does explain but, clearly, it's still opaque to many people. And what a shame that people miss the point that the same analysis has been reviewed, repeated and supplemented with other data so often that, in full context, the original hockey-stick analysis was as solid as it could be. all in all, a good read.
  39. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    Again, IMHO, the hijack/troll issues seems to point to a "dungeon" thread for comments... except it doesn't seem easy to move comments between posts. I was on one BB somewhere where the admins had a hack so that selected posters could only post in the dungeon (for a period, anyway).
  40. Search For 'Missing Heat' Confirms More Global Warming 'In The Pipeline'
    skept.fr - here's a free copy of Loeb (2012).
  41. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    My wife LOLed at the beaker part of the cartoon, which I take to mean that's how she see me.
  42. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    Yes, when you engage Monckton you must understand you are engaging in a political agenda. He has made climate change the dominate part of his political platform so it’s extremely important to counter the destructive influence his bogus science and misinformation is having on the understanding of the scientific facts behind global warming and action to limit its effects.
  43. Search For 'Missing Heat' Confirms More Global Warming 'In The Pipeline'
    MA Rodger@ 16 The recent GRACE paper suggests a slightly lower contribution of land-based ice melt to sea level rise, which, if confirmed ,indicates greater thermal expansion than previously supposed. There's much work yet to be done on this, I wouldn't hang my hat on it.
  44. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    We in the UK felt the full benefit of Moncktons understanding of complex subjects when he and like minded colleagues were part of Thatchers government. As a nation we have never really recovered from that disastrous experiment in basing action on what a truth is believed to be, as opposed to what it actually is. The thought of the same political philosophies transferred to climate science fills me with horror.
  45. Video of Chuck Kutscher debunking climate skeptic arguments
    ChuckK @ 6, thanks for providing the link, I found it most entertaining. Apparently, 'debunking' consists of expressing factless opinions and ad homs. The comments are hilarious. Have no fear, your reputation is only enhanced by such 'debunking'.
  46. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    This might interest SkS as the subject of a Coming Soon article. It’s getting a lot of spin (undeservedly I think) by local climate skeptics that say it favors their side of the argument, though it seems unlikely that it would be so given the authors. Perhaps the skeptic spin is based on sloppy mainstream media reporting about it or misleading headlines. I don’t have access to the article or time now to fully assess it. ____________________________ The Alberta oil sands and climate Neil C. Swart & Andrew J. Weaver Nature Climate Change (2012) doi:10.1038/nclimate1421 Published online 19 February 2012 The claimed economic benefits of exploiting the vast Alberta oil-sand deposits need to be weighed against the need to limit global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The Alberta oil sands and climate Example of an MSM Article: Coal the true climate change bad guy, analysis shows
  47. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #7
    Sorry, I do see myself as Tom Baker but I would like women to see me that way as well, no disrepect to Jeff Goldblum, he did survive T-Rex and all. Someone exceptional, eccentric and maybe in need of some nurturing as well - 'Come to my arms my Beamish Boy. Oh Frabjious Day, Caloo Calley, he chortled in his Joy'. Lets be honest, once you get past John Pertwee, the Doctor was able to pull the chicks. /endsexism> And really I think the Denialists are thinking more of Mini-Me. Their ego doesn't let them see themselves as anything less than the big partner in the game.
  48. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    I've done a lot of responses to Monckton's various Gish Gallops, and in my experience, it's hard to find a single argument he's made that's not a gross distortion of reality. Any point he makes, if you actually take the time to research it for yourself, you find that he's misrepresented his sources and/or reality in general. In responding to Monckton's latest response to SkS, we had to break it into a three-part series because his post contained so many distortions. Tom's latest example is a good one. I remember doing the same check myself when reading that claim about Al Gore's new SF home. I checked the address for myself and saw that both it's nowhere near the shoreline and well above sea level. Doing this check took me about 30 seconds on Google Earth. That's the basic level of Monckton's errors - he doesn't even make the simplest effort to make accurate claims. He simply has no interest in reality, and anyone who takes him seriously is being duped.
  49. Global Extinction: Gradual Doom as Bad as Abrupt
    Owl905. I don't entirely agree with you there, for a fundamental reason. The technology we have today, if fully deployed could deal with the threat. But we aren't even remotely looking at deploying it fully at present. Past technology couldn't cope with it. Future technology certainly could. But there is a basic premise in your thinking that may not be obvious. That our societies will always be able to respond to these threats even though the threats are fundamentally likely to undermine the capacity of our societies. Since the nature of the threat is multi-generational and even multi-century, the assumption is that the capacity of our society to use the resources and knowledge we have will not be undermmined by the very threat we face over very long time scales. Consider things like, famine becomes pandemic in much of the world. What are the psychological impacts of this on each new generation growing up? How does it shape their emotional makeup. What does a world of perpetual violence do to peoples IQ, Emotional self-control, sense of civility. What happens when education levels for the mass of the population drop because the teachers can't work full time because they are growing food for their family, and protecting it from marauders? What happens when famines in China lead to its breakup and several key provinces eventually fall under the control of mafia like warlords. Provinces that are the major sources of Rare-Earth elements that drive much of our modern world - Indium, Hafnium, Niobium... What happens when starving countries actually turn completely pirate and disrupt world trade routes. What happens when refugee flows reach 100's of millions? How well do the target/host countries survive? Then ask the question, with so many assaults like these and more happening to the functioning of our societies, how long before that DVD disk that contains your family happy snaps, or course notes on the science of Protein-Folding, is unreadable because you DVD drive is dead and you can't replace it because the rare earths aren't available, the electricity supply is erratic anyway so you are re-learning candle making and the only real use for that disk is to sit your beer mug on because you are learning beer making as well. The best quote I have ever read about the fragility of societies wasn't intended as that at all. It was from a book about neuro-plasticity in the brain. 'Civilisation is only ever 1 generation deep'. Because all it takes is one generation that are not adequately trained, educated and developed into civilised people, and civilisation has ended. We may focus on what 'we' can do to fight these threats such as AGW. But we far too easily slip into thinking that AGW doesn't reciprocate the attention. The principle impact of AGW may well be the damage it causes to the psychological make up of our descendents. Some hold-outs and bastions of knowledge will remain of course. But that knowledge is useless without the capacities of a well functioning, civilised, intelligent, educated and ultimately capable society to deploy that knowledge. We in the West have no experience or conception of what a world without these things looks like. Ask the people of Afghanistan, Somalia, New Guinea. They could probably teach us a bit about the limits of what can be achieved.
  50. A mishmash of Monckton misrepresentation
    Lloyd "What I think happens with people like Monkton is that they read maliciously. They skim through a document looking for the bits that they can see as supporting their position. And they seize on them and do not try to understand the whole context." I think that also fits neatly with the salesman persona. They don't listen to what you are saying. They're only listening for clues and hooks for their next point and ignore the rest. Which means that very often their next statement can easily be directly contrary to the intent of yours. And their own, if they've been doing that nodding and agreeing thing.

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