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Bernard J. at 13:30 PM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
Sphærica at #8. WUWT is definitely frothing right over 'the top' these days. One can hope that it presages the end, just as it does with a two-stroke mower running out of fuel. Sadly, even if that end were to occur today, the Moncktons, the Watts, and the Bolts of the world have already wrought irreparable harm on the biosphere. Our choice is no longer "if" but "how much". -
Tom Curtis at 13:15 PM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
Phillippe Chantreau @10, is that what you call "athletic democracy"? -
Tom Curtis at 13:14 PM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
jimspy @27, there is no need for ostracizing (a social act). Morner should be welcome to attend whatever scientific conferences he wishes, to discuss issues with any colleagues who wish to, to publish anything he can get past peer review (and in Energy and Environment, anything he can't get past peer review). But if the quality of his science does not improve, even without ostracizing, his results will be ignored as demonstrably irrelevant and ill grounded. The problem is not the scientific community, but the political community, or at least sections of it, who find his brand of clap trap politically useful. Personally I believe newspapers who publish complete scientific nonsense as being the truth, as does the Spectator ought to be heavily fined for false advertising. They advertise themselves a presenters of fact, but instead present fictions in the guise of facts. Therefore they are fraudulently selling their wares, just as much as a publican who waters his beer, and should face the same range of penalties. But beyond that, Mörner's article is political speech, and should be protected accordingly. -
Philippe Chantreau at 13:12 PM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
There used to be a time when, in the US, people like this would be ran out of town on a rail, covered with tar and feathers... -
Philippe Chantreau at 13:05 PM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
This is precious. I had no idea Monckton could be that funny. I'm still laughing. Thank you Mr Hadfield. -
jimspy at 12:43 PM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Sphaerica #20, do you deny that Pons & Fleischmann will forever be followed around by a dark cloud over their reputations? That wherever they go, they will hear hisses of, "Oh, yeah, the cold fusion guys..."? That for all intents and purposes, their days of being taken seriously as scientists are over? And perhaps deservedly so, or perhaps its too harsh a judgement, but that's the way I see Science operating, for better or for worse (and I think generally for the better). Rob #22, I don't know what The Spectator is, but even if the article was in Mad Magazine, if it was presented as a serious analysis, he should be ostracized by the scientific community in general. If it was a political spoof, as Sphaerica indicates, then why does the caption to the graphic take itself so seriously? But if that is the case, if it was genuinely JUST a spoof, I hereby withdraw my condemnation. Bob Loblaw #24, granted, but I don't know what that has to do with the subject at hand. -
John Hartz at 12:33 PM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
mervhob: If you really want to know about the state-of-the art in climate modeling you could start by immersing yourself in the materials about the MIT Integrated Global System Model posted here. From the tenor of your posts, I suspect that you may just be trying to stir up a hornet's nest on this comment thread by slinging a lot of hash about climate models. -
Tom Curtis at 12:32 PM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
mervhob @11, you are making a number of unsupported claims. When you said you were, "... shocked by the statement that smoothing functions were in common use", I looked for that statement in the article above, and could not find it. Nor could I find it in either of the two FAQs linked by scaddenp. Further, you have provided no examples any models replacing a dynamic chaotic function with a smoothed approximation. Absent sources or examples to back up your claims, it is difficult to take them seriously. Please note that providing technical discussion on this point, while welcome, may be of topic for this post. I suggest you shift the discussion to this more relevant thread. You can always link back to that discussion in support of points directly relevant to this topic. -
mervhob at 12:24 PM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
Sphaerica, So the use of smoothing functions doesn't linearize the system? That assumption would not be accepted by a professional mathematician. It has been a tool of classical analysis for the last 200 years. However, it proved to be of little value in dynamics. I suggest you improve your own education, in particular take a look at the statements of mathematicians in the early 19th century, where it was widely stated that the French school had abandoned dynamics and replaced it with statics - the mathematics of the known solution. This is the mathematics commonly taught today. However, if you were fortunate enough to have a mathematical education in Russia, you would find that they teach non-linear principles, and linear methods are always treated as an approximation, with sound advice on their limitations. -
mervhob at 12:08 PM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
scaddenp Thanks for the links, but they don't answer any questions. There is an almost deadly silence on the mathematical background to climate modelling - I was shocked by the statement that smoothing functions were in common use, with seemingly little understanding of their effect on dynamics. This is hardly surprising as most graduates leave university with the delusion that they can solve any problem using linear algebra. Newton would not agree, and we have had to return to many of the tricks of the fluxional calculus, in order to solve non-linear problems. -
scaddenp at 11:59 AM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
Climate models have no skill at decadal or shorter predictions. No such claim is made and that limitation is readily accepted - the subject of many papers. Again it seems that you are making a raft of assumptions without actually studying how climate modelling is done first. -
tmac57 at 11:59 AM on 7 December 2011Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
I just got an email from Change.org that said :"But just hours after Claudia Abbott-Barish's Change.org petition hit 75,000 signatures, Discovery backed down, and agreed to air the final episode (all about climate change) in its entirety! " So I guess the public has spoken.High five! -
Bob Lacatena at 11:58 AM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
8, mervhob, It is a very poor carpenter who looks at a cement and steel skyscraper, and says that it cannot exist because he is a carpenter and he knows one could never fabricate such a structure using wood. Your presumption that models "linearize" things is flat out wrong. Again, you are speaking from a position of complete ignorance. Educate yourself properly about how the models are constructed before casting arrogant aspersions and speaking condescendingly about things that you misunderstand. -
mervhob at 11:48 AM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
It is a very poor mathematician that does not accept the limitations of the tools he uses, and their inapplicabilty to certain types of problems. I do not doubt your ability to model a simple outcome - a rise in temperature. What I question is the ability of such a model to quantify the the effects of such a temperature rise, except in equally simplistic terms. The empirical evidence has already started to diverge from the model - the model did not predict the dramatic increase in the rainfall around the Tropic of Cancer, and neither did it predict the very dry conditions in much of the Northern hemisphere in winter. I find the idea that a non-linear model can be 'linearised' and still represent long term behavior baroque - the methods of Lagrange and Laplace only work for small perturbations - hence the good correlation to temperature in the short term. But please don't consider such a model dynamic - it is not. -
scaddenp at 11:46 AM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
mervhob, you might also like to look at: FAQ on climate models and Part 2 from the modellers themselves. -
Bob Lacatena at 11:42 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
24, Bob Loblaw, I didn't intend to make it sound as if scientists have no such input (obviously, at all levels, scientists will be making recommendations, and many scientists eventually wind up in such positions in management, government or business). My statement was more along the lines that the mythical club-of-scientists could not get together and agree to completely deprive two scientists of all funding from all possible sources just because they were deemed to be "out of the club." -
Bob Lacatena at 11:33 AM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
5, mervhob, Your opinion is, unfortunately, founded on a large number of false assertions/assumptions. In fact, I'm not sure there is any foundation at all beneath your conclusions. Rather than address them point by point (which would be tedious), I would suggest that since the subject is of such interest to you, your best course would be to educate yourself on how climate models actually are designed and operate. There are a great number of resources available on the Internet, including a number of in-depth books on how to design and implement climate models, and several climate models that you can actually download and run yourself, as well as reading the actual source code (which I myself have done, although not to any great extent). But, as I've already said... most of your foundation statements are false. You do not appear to have an actual grasp of how climate models operate. Instead, you appear to be basing your opinion on the fanciful descriptions of such models that you might find in ignorant venues such as WUWT and others, or on false premises and assumptions inferred purely from your own experience and education in EE or signal theory. This site is a decent place to start to better understand the models at a very high level, but really, to learn what you need to know to be able to speak knowledgeably on the subject, you'll need to go much more deeply into it than this site offers. Google and time are your friends in this. Hasty assumptions and misinformation delivered by sites that specialize in misinformation are not. -
mervhob at 11:10 AM on 7 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
I am deeply worried, having looked at the mathematical background to the current climate models, by the insistence that there is no dynamic linkage between weather and climate. This is known to be false, from the science of non-linear systems, or dynamics. There is a belief that by the application of ‘smoothing functions’, these variations in systematic boundary conditions may be ignored. I would point out that in the field of oscillator theory, this was proven to be false in 1988, in the landmark PhD thesis of David M. Harrison at Leeds University. David conclusively proved that the lack of correlation between real noise performance, and the then ‘theoretical models’ was the introduction of smoothing functions to allow the generation of closed integral solutions. This investigation was sparked by my observation that the value of close to carrier noise terms in electronic oscillators was often 10 – 100 times worse than the open loop noise. This had led, by modellers, to the introduction of coefficients for these noise terms that could not be related to the physics of operation. David implemented a full, non-linear solution, and showed clearly how the noise terms were multiplicative, leading to a dramatic increase in noise amplitudes at low frequencies. Such as model applies to any dynamic system, and can lead to a system with more than one, potential stable amplitude, and the system jumping from one state to another in a very short timescale. In the case of climate, the noise variables are of very high energy, unlike the noise perturbations in an electronic oscillator. This is a true dynamic model, unlike the crude Laplacian ‘steady state’ model favoured by climate modellers. Laplace, because he was incapable of solving problems in dynamics, reduced all to statics, a system of closed integral curves which allowed the formulation of integrals schoolboys could handle. In this he followed Lagrange. I do not doubt that climate change is occurring, and that man has made some contribution, but I doubt our ability to accurately predict the outcome on the basis of the reasoning of some not very good French mathematicians of the 18th century. No Langrangian or, Laplacian model can be relied on for development as a time series solution, and crude attempts to introduce coupling terms will lead the analyst astray. It is now accepted that linear approximation reduces the potential behaviours in a physical system, and in the case of a simple non-linear system – an oscillator, led us up the garden path for decades. In the case of a system as complex and multivariate as climate, we should not be surprised if it springs a few surprises on us. We seem prepared to hang all on a few decades of data, and a very limited understanding of the dynamic behaviours involved. We cannot avoid jumps in a non-linear system by pretending they cannot occur – and the potential jumps could be in any direction!Moderator Response: Your personal skepticism of the ability of climate models to predict must take a back seat to the empirical evidence that climate models do predict easily well enough to feed decisions to act; in the Search field at the top left of this page, type "models are unreliable" without the quote marks. Also search for "chaos." -
muoncounter at 09:49 AM on 7 December 20112011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume
jimb#39: "I had no intention of suggesting that it was not a consequence of greenhouse warming." I didn't say that you had suggested it; I merely find it yet another piece in the mountain of evidence that all point in the same direction. Let's watch how those who claim the stratosphere isn't cooling spin this evidence that it is. -
Bob Lacatena at 09:06 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
8, pbjamm, Really, at this point it's beginning to be thanks to WUWT for being so far over the top, so demonstrably wrong, and so ridiculously one-sided that it wants to prop up someone as wrong as Monckton, and as a result they will all go together when they go. -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:58 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
As compelling as Monckton can manage to sound when in his element (a stage presentation), he's shown himself to be woefully incapable of defending himself after the fact. Almost to the point of being sad. -
Paul Magnus at 08:55 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Apparently most of that water went to land. As the world ice melts wet areas are going to get much wetter more of the time. ie swamplands. We are going to have a vastly eire landscape much different to anything we are accustom to now. Swamps and deserts with very little in between. -
jimb at 08:46 AM on 7 December 20112011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume
re #38- I was simply referencing the article in Nature where the title of the abstract was titled "Unprecedented Arctic Ozone loss in 2011". (don't have access to the full article) As a non-scientist, I try to keep up with the various issues, and find this site very helpful in sorting out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I should have been more clear with my question, I suppose, but I assume from your response that the 'unprecedented ozone loss' is not expected to have any effect on arctic temperatures. I'm not sure how to take your last rhetorical question, but I had no intention of suggesting that it was not a consequence of greenhouse warming.Response:[DB] "(don't have access to the full article)"
Try here: http://ozone.unep.org/Publications/nature10556.pdf
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Bob Loblaw at 08:34 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Tenney @17: The Wikipedia entry on the Mississippi River says that the retention time from the headwaters at Lake Itasca to the Gulf is typically about 90 days (last sentence in the Watershed section). That is along the Mississippi proper (starting in Minnesota), not along its longer tributary, the Missouri. The Amazon and Nile are longer yet, and any river system with a lot of lakes probably slows the length of time it takes to get water from the headwaters back to the ocean. Obviously, shorter rivers return water to the ocean a lot faster, but winter snowfall won't have a chance to start the journey until spring snowmelt season. Also, there are large areas of the globe that basically have no drainage to the ocean, so you have to wait for water to evaporate and fall somewhere else to get it back to sea, or feed it to groundwater. The US southwest Great Basin is one such example. Getting all that rain back to the ocean is not a quick and easy task. jimspy @19: You need to remember that a career in science is not the same thing as a career in academia. Yes, sometimes people do both, but there are skills that can give a person a great academic career in certain disciplines without ever being any good at science. And someone can accomplish enough science to start a career, and then move on to other ways of extending a career, without science. Sphaerica @20: Sometimes other scientists do get to determine funding. Many grant agencies have rigorous review panels, primarily made up of practising scientists. Participating on such panels is one of the things that academics are expected to do as part of a successful career. The participating scientists don't get to decide how big the pot of money is, but they do influence who gets it. -
pbjamm at 08:33 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
Wow, that series of videos from Peter Hadfield is devastating. My hat is off to him. 'Monckton answers a troll' (from WUWT) Thanks also to WUWT for its continued commitment to the highest quality scientific discourse. -
Rob Painting at 08:21 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Tenney Naumer @ 16 & 17 - It certainly is unusual. Carmen Boening from NASA JPL has a forthcoming paper on the subject. We'll post on it when it's published. -
Rob Painting at 08:14 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Jimpsy@19 -" how is it that someone like this Morner ..........can pull such an obviously deliberately misleading and quite laughable Three Stooges stunt like rotating a graph, and be allowed to remain anywhere near the vaunted halls of "Science?" I can assure you The Spectator is far, far, far from the vaunted halls of science. -
Brian Purdue at 08:05 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
Decimating exposures like this are surely sending indisputable wakeup signals to climate “skeptics” because Monckton is one of their most prominent distributers of politically motivated science. Vaudeville sideshows will not change the knowledge database of climate science. Other vocal denialist like Watts, Plimer and the rest (including fossil fuelers and media hacks), hang their hats on or lend support to Monckton’s utterances. Plimer’s books prove he is guilty of the same gross manipulation of the science. Excellent investigative journalism, like this from Peter Hadfield (Potholer54), will eventually marginalise these promoters of confusion and misinformation. Either that or the sheer weight of scientific evidence will. -
muoncounter at 07:54 AM on 7 December 20112011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume
jimb#37: The Arctic ozone hole has been kicking around for 15 years or so; apparently a consequence of a cooler-than normal stratosphere. The Arctic ozone hole first appeared in the mid-1990s, more than a decade after the Antarctic hole. Like its southern cousin, it forms as the Sun rises after the midwinter night. Solar radiation triggers reactions between ozone in the stratosphere and chemicals containing chlorine or bromine. These occur fastest on the surface of ice particles in clouds, which only form in the polar stratosphere at temperatures below 80 °C. And isn't that a consequence of greenhouse warming? -
muoncounter at 07:42 AM on 7 December 2011Newcomers, Start Here
NCSE is a fine group with a great track record on education outreach. -
Paul D at 07:17 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
A nice Christmas present from Peter. -
jimb at 07:04 AM on 7 December 20112011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume
What effect, if any, is expected now that there is an ozone hole over the Arctic? -
tmac57 at 06:38 AM on 7 December 2011Newcomers, Start Here
Skeptical Science just got a recommendation by Eugenie Scott,the executive director of The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) on the Rationally Speaking podcast interview #49. Her organization is expanding their educational outreach to include Climate Change education. -
william5331 at 06:35 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
In the end, sea level rise, at least for the Coral atolls, may be the least of their worries. The truly disastrous effects of our burning of fossil fuels may be the demise of corals due to warming of tropical oceans as the transfer of heat northward decreases and the acidification of their waters as more Carbon dioxide is absorbed into sea water. http://mtkass.blogspot.com/2011/09/by-by-coral-atolls.html The effect on coastal cities will be something else again. -
Bob Lacatena at 06:33 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
2, Daniel, I really am amazed that anyone could consider the man charming or beguiling in any way. Really, I don't know how people keep from bursting into laughter in his presence. To me, that's just one more sign of how badly denialists want to believe what they believe... that they'll not only accept but tout a spokesman like Monckton. If he were instead supporting the science, I think I'd be begging him to shut up and retire, due to the damage that he would do to the credibility of the (true, real) science. -
Bob Lacatena at 06:27 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
19, jimspy, Can you support your assertion that Pons & Fleischmann were "summarily drummed out of the ranks?" Both continued to work on their project until retirement, although they moved to France to do so (presumably to get funding -- I don't know -- but other scientists don't decide on funding, so it was hardly the scientific community that did that "drumming out"). Of course, part of the problem was that they stepped into the limelight by releasing their work first through a press release. As far as the graph rotation... everyone is making a big deal out of it, but it was very obviously a political statement, implying that it was equivalent to the sort of machinations that he claimed that "alarmist" scientists do -- he was poking fun at other scientists with whom he disagreed, not making an actual argument. It clearly was not a sideways attempt at "falsifying data," and other scientists have actually done worse (IMO) by truly misrepresenting the science before the U.S. Congress, but in an even and professional tone that adds credibility to their outright falsehoods. I think it was a silly and unprofessional thing to do, but hardly reason to "summarily drum him out of the certified-and-official scientist-club ranks." -
John Hartz at 05:59 AM on 7 December 2011Continued Lower Atmosphere Warming
Dana: Thumbs-up for spelling out that the acronym "TLT" means "Temperature of the Lower Troposphere" in the opening paragraph of your article. Thumbs down for not defining what the term "temperature of the lower troposphere" means. I, for one, do not know what the term actually means. Is TLT different from land and ocean temperature? Is it a combination of the two? If I do not understand what "temperature of the lower troposphere" really means, I suspect that many of the readers of this article and its comment thread are "also flying in the dark" so to be speak. If our mission is to explain the science to the average person, we need to avoid playing "inside baseball" with acronyms and scientific terms. -
jimspy at 05:55 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
As some of you know I'm a complete layman, but I've circulated in these heady parts of Cyberspace for some time now. In that time I've learned that science is a really "disciplined" discipline. It's kind of a "one strike and you're out" deal. I look at Pons & Fleischmann, for example, and I see two guys who devoted their lives to legitimate science, got one thing wrong (maybe - jury's still out IMHO), and got summarily drummed out of the ranks. No malevolence, no cheating, just incompetence. So my question to you science types is, how is it that someone like this Morner (forgive me, I don't know how to do the little dotty things over the o), can pull such an obviously deliberately misleading and quite laughable Three Stooges stunt like rotating a graph, and be allowed to remain anywhere near the vaunted halls of "Science"? Why does anyone even bother to mention his name, let alone invite him to scientific conclaves of any sort? Don't you people have, like, a drumming-out ceremony? Like the Klingons, when they each symbolically turn their back on you? -
Klaus Flemløse at 05:22 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Thanks to prof. Nils-Axel Mörner - never wrong Thank you to prof. Nils-Axel Mörner for an interesting paper. This paper represents an example of virtual fortress, which can’t be taken by any means. His fortress consists of the following claims: 1) He is a large capacity with regard to knowledge about the rising global sea level. In 12 out of 34 references he is the only author. 2) IPCC and their associated ideologues are unreliable. He is describing this by using the term "sea-level-gate". 3) He places great emphasis his own observations, where trees along the coast are reliable evidence. 4) The IPCC and others, who rely on satellite measurements and tidal measurements, are subjective interpretation and therefore they are unreliable. 5) Tidal measurements along the coasts are unreliable because of land subsidence From these assertions Nils-Axel Mörner may at any time reject any arguments not consistent with his own theories. It is a virtual fortress, that can’t be taken over. Therefore, Prof Niles-Axel Mörner will always be victorious in a debate and he will again and again be confirmed in his own opinions. He will never be wrong. Only few scientists will experience such a success. Therefore, I will again give many thanks to prof. Nils-Axel Mörner for his interesting paper. One can learn a lot in the future from this paper. -
Daniel J. Andrews at 05:19 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
Yes, but it will be a very charming British growl. -
Tenney Naumer at 04:44 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Let me rephrase that. The drop itself (Fig. 1) is not so significant, but the fact that it remained so low for so long is what is so odd -- due to it raining so much over land. -
Tenney Naumer at 04:41 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Has anyone looked at the statistical probability of such a huge drop in sea level in such a short time period. I find it staggering! -
Jeffrey Davis at 04:37 AM on 7 December 2011The Monckton Maneuver
Lovely stuff. Pretty soon Monckton will simply be reduced to growling. -
tmac57 at 02:02 AM on 7 December 2011Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
Treehugger blog had a piece on this a few weeks back,and they speculated that the global warming message would stay intact,despite the reediting that always occurs with these excellent programs.I hope they are right.They did however give a disclamer that their parent company is the Discover network,which is airing the program,so we will see. -
mspelto at 00:24 AM on 7 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Nils was always on the wrong side of this argument. I remember reviewing a paper of his back in the 1980's in grad school, where he had a particular idea on sea level rise and he was convinced that global warming would not have role. This did not fit with the other papers even at that time. The link is to this 1984 paper of his. Morner -
lord_sidcup at 20:51 PM on 6 December 2011Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
Lawson’s attack on Attenborough is deeply unpleasant and wholly unwarranted, but it does look like it is part of a sustained campaign. The last episode of Frozen Planet is due to be broadcast on the BBC tomorrow evening and the following day Lawson's "educational" "charity" the Global Warming Policy Foundation is releasing a report on alleged BBC bias on climate change. The report is penned by Christopher Booker (I'll repeat that case it didn't quite sink in - written by a Christopher Booker). I'm sure the timing of the release of Booker’s report for the day after the final episode of Frozen Planet is deliberate. Hopefully it will backfire on the GWPF. Attenborough is hugely admired in the UK. -
Stevo at 14:35 PM on 6 December 2011Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
Having seen the Frozen Planet episode in question I'm surprised that there are still people who take issue with the science. Glacier decline is shown by comparing photographs from 30 years ago with recent shots. Naval data relating to where and when submarines can surface through arctic ice demonstrate clearly the thinning trend in sea ice. A compelling is case4 is made in the program and the tone is foreboding but certainly not alarmist. It seems that myths and badly cooked statistics are all that the denial industry have to fall back on. -
scaddenp at 13:46 PM on 6 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
Climate models dont actually use past records for prediction. The value of proxies is for validation that you have the physics right. The models predict future temperature by looking at all forcings (all GHG, aerosols, solar etc) with scenarios used to look at different possible sets of emissions. For model validation, you can estimate past forcings, (eg proxies or measurements for solar, GHGS, aerosols) put them into the models, and compare output temperatures with proxies for temperatures. If the hindcast isnt within the range of uncertainties, then the physics in the model is wrong. -
lloyd at 13:33 PM on 6 December 2011Separating signal and noise in climate warming
Consistent temperature records are necessary for predicting future temperatures in a world with doubled or more CO2. The longer the record, the better. My question is, "How do you weight the results of different climate models?" "What changes are likely to happen as the speed of change exceeds past experience?" I know this is a current topic of much discussion for the upcoming IPCC report. Which proxies are they likely to use for supporting their findings? Will projected CO2 level alone be used or projected CO2 plus projected CO2 equivalents? -
Tom Curtis at 13:30 PM on 6 December 2011Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Steve Case @13, I have responded to your issues on a more relevant topic. Hopefully that will help you in understanding that the moderation policy here at SkS is not arbitrary, and for a small effort can be your friend.
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