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Comments 69151 to 69200:

  1. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    Do you think that only energy affects economical growth????
  2. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    Sorry, KR. Obviously I recognize that M&M 2004 had two authors, not just one. Despite my error, I still maintain that McIntyre is guilty of the same sort of dodgy dealing with facts as McKitrick is revealed to be in the quoted section.
  3. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    garythompson - and others - "Until you can prove that over a span of say 30 years that the OLR has decreased in the wavelengths that CO2 abosorbs (15um or 700 cm-1) then the AGW theory isn't proven." This is discussed (and shown to be the case - OLR changes just where expected for greenhouse gases) on the How do we know CO2 is causing warming thread. The "Search" function is your friend. Moderators - I also (searching on "OLR") found an unfinished SkS page discussing this skeptic argument.
    Response:

    [DB] KR, much of what Gary Thompson is putting up here is rebunkable material that was debunked over a year ago.  JC made an American Thinker article that Gary had written the object of this rebuttal.

  4. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    Tom Curtis - Sorry, but: you quote what McKitrick said, yet attribute it to McIntyre? They are separate people, although they have coauthored a number of poorly written papers. McIntyre has spent much of the last 8-9 years submitting papers and blogging against Mann et al and similar papers (without much justification or traction, and multiple debunkings, mind you) - that should be sufficient grounds regarding McIntyre to take what he writes with a large grain of salt.
  5. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    Wyrdways @4, the potential collectible solar energy on the Earth's surface is 11,000 times our current energy use. Clearly we cannot collect all of it without adverse repercussions, but we we were to collect a tenth of it, that 225 years economic growth at 3% per annum, even assuming no gain in energy efficiency. Beyond that we can easily garner more energy from the sun using orbital solar power. The potential energy harvest by this means is for practical purposes unlimited. It is true that we cannot sustain unlimited population growth. But economic growth? There may come a time when we have exploited most of the solar systems resources such that economic growth cannot be further sustained, but not on anytime scale at which it effects decision making now or in the next several centuries.
  6. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    WyrdWays @4, we had certainly not reached "... the point where we have material sufficiency, securely meeting the fundamental human needs ..." 100 years ago when there was no cure for Polio and it was just seven years before the outbreak of the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed 50 to 100 million people in 2 years. We are still well short of that level world wide with Malaria, Cholera, Aids and Typhus still being major killers. That is to leave aside the host of minor ailments that still plague us and for which we have no cure, such as cancer and dementia. The ability to pay for cures for these diseases, and the research that leads to them comes of the back of economic growth. So also will the ability to improve education standards, and as I certainly agree that "man does not live by bread alone", that is a fundamental good (not need, but good) in which we are capable of much improvement, but which improvement comes at a cost, and hence must in the end be paid for by economic growth. Furthermore, however much you are inclined to dismiss material goods as the "fluffing up human 'needs' ", the simple fact remains that even small improvements in material assets will, all else being equal, lead to a more enjoyable life. This is most easily seen with computing. You may think that there has been no material gain in benefits in the progress from commodore 64 to Intel Core i3-2100, but I disagree; and so ought everybody who enjoys or finds instructive discussion on this site. And that progress is driven by a combination of economic growth and technological research. For my part I hope that that growth and research continue for some time. In the meantime, it is important to recognize that though increase in happiness due to material well being declines rapidly after a point, it still increases after that point. And an increase in human happiness is good in itself. Hence, all else being equal, economic growth is a good thing.
  7. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    wyrdways " Rather than making ... and landfill fodder that some call economic growth. ... incremental, socially-useful and non-destructive innovation. Then you remove the ludricous -'creative-destructive' tail-swallowing of the current system. " My view on this is that we've distorted our labour and innovation processes. There seems to be a dominant notion that you're only doing something worthwhile if you're digging, cutting, killing, taking or otherwise extracting material from the natural world and processing and converting it into something "useful". Garbage, sewage systems and landfill sites are an unfortunate and ugly by-product of this attitude. We'd rather not look at them or talk about them. What we should be doing is managing the resources we have. Management means viewing every single thing as an assemblage of nutrients, minerals or just plain molecules. When it comes to nutrients, a sensible system would not allow an iota of possible fertility to be sidetracked into a landfill. What this means is that our organisation of labour and technology should be first directed to retaining and using materials that have already been extracted from natural sources. A bit like the sensible investor who only ever spends the interest and dividends earned on capital invested. Capital should not be exhausted on living expenses - extravagant or profligate living depletes financial capital in the same way as our current exploitation and destruction, rather than appropriate management, of our natural capital does. "Garbage, sewage and landfill sites" are the obvious signs that our so-called advanced societies are not much different in attitude and skill from less 'advanced' societies that use up their local water and land - and then move on. And only come back when the land has had time to recover. We don't move on. But we don't do much better with resources. It'd be very easy for labour and capital alike to move towards a more sensible organisation of economic activity centred around retaining the maximum amount of useful materials available for re-use or further use (or forestalling the need to extract more natural materials). Here I should cite the approaching shortage of phosphorus as a prime example. My own pessimistic view is that far too many people are excited by the idea of explosives and big, bigger, biggest machines. The notion that working with average sized machines to extract the same materials from something we call 'waste' is probably a bit infra dig for such people.
  8. Schmittner et al. (2011) on Climate Sensitivity - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    #35 DB, of course, but I suppose what I find hard to grasp is that the paper seems to support a climate in which you get more bang for your buck, or more "change" (however you quantify it) for every degree Celsius warming. We may not know exactly how many degrees Celsius we'll get for each doubling of atmospheric CO2, but we do know that the world was a helluva lot different at the LGM compared to now. Schmittner's paper hints that a comparable change will not take too many degrees Celsius, and will come about quicker than previously suggested. In that case, it's not about interpreting the nuances of 'imminent' or 'extreme', but saying that we should be more worried, not less worried based on these results.
  9. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    The Oil Drum article referenced by Yvan Dutil is well worth a look, as it reveals widely divergent trends of energy intensity among large consuming nations. Why does world energy intensity remain flat, while energy intensity for many individual countries has been decreasing? We are dealing with a large number of countries with very different energy intensities. The big issue would seem to be outsourcing of heavy manufacturing. This makes the energy intensity of the country losing the manufacturing look better. As China (and presumably other developing Asian economies) take over manufacturing, their energy intensities grow in sync with their economies. Developed countries appear to have already flattened or reduced their energy intensity. The other important and sobering observation is the apparent end of a multi-year decline in the ratio of CO2 emissions to GDP: -- source [The figure] indicates what we would expect ... : A declining ratio of CO2 emissions to real GDP until about 2000, then fairly flat thereafter. In fact, there is a distinct upturn in 2010. Thus new CO2 emissions from energy sources have been rising about as fast as real GDP since about 2000, and a little faster than real GDP in 2010. This is no doubt discouraging news to those who adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, thinking it would reduce CO2 emissions. This is no doubt linked to the rapid rise in emissions of developing nations (China and Malaysia come to mind). It would suggest that the biggest impact of future CO2 emissions reduction will be in those growing economies.
  10. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    Also relevant is this comment at Real Climate by Paul Briscoe:
    "Just to explain, I too am from the UK. I have a PhD, albeit in a very different field of science. I have a reasonable grounding in basic science, yet having followed this site and Skeptical Science for over 2 years and having read a lot of the relevant scientific literature, I am still painfully aware that I will NEVER know as much about climate science as the guys who research the field. It is extraordinarily complex science (this is not intended to be patronising, as I don’t pretend to understand it all myself!) and it is impossible to evaluate it correctly without taking into account ALL of the facts – this is the aspect that lets down most non-experts when trying to draw conclusions. Another thing I know as a scientist is that the only reliable way of evaluating science is to read the peer-reviewed literature – that is the way science works and for good reasons. Most bloggers shun the scientific literature, choosing instead to believe blogs which tell them what they want to hear. IMHO, if people are unwilling (or unable) to read what the scientific literature actually says, it is disingenuous of them to pretend that they have anything positive to contribute to the “debate”. I would imagine that this is why many of the regular posters here, who DO know their subject, show their irritation at the constant stream of myths and pseudo-science put about by fake skeptics. The bottom line for bloggers is this: if they can’t be bothered to read the scientific literature and base their arguments on that, it’s time to leave the debate to the people who do know what they’re talking about and TRUST THEIR EXPERT JUDGEMENT……… in just the same way as you would trust the surgeon who might one day save your life!"
    Indeed, I would go further than that. McIntyre and Watts also read the scientific literature, but that does not make their comments worthwhile. The simple fact is that their reading is not comprehensive and their understanding is limited for a variety of reasons. Therefore, (like me) they are not expert. An expert has been defined as a person who knows all the basic mistakes in a field, and how to avoid them. In a field as complex as climate science, that means to be an expert you require a genuine comprehensive knowledge of the whole field. A detailed and accurate knowledge of a particular area does not prevent you from making basic mistakes in others, as example after example of well educated non-climatologist deniers have demonstrated. Therefore, a blog comment is trustworthy only to the extent that: 1) The author reads the primary literature; 2) The author focuses on that area of the primary literature which intersects with their particular area of expertise (in Tamino's case statistics); 3) To the extent the author ventures outside their expertise, they primarily summarize and report on the primary literature - and are clear on the rare occasions when they venture beyond that their comments are speculative; 4) The author does not disagree with the scientific consensus in their blog posts. The last is simply a measure of appropriate humility - a recognition that they also can make mistakes, and as they are not expert, may make fundamental errors. That does not mean such people should not criticize the consensus. On the contrary, it means only that they should have the courage of their convictions and criticize the consensus in the peer reviewed literature, and only after that criticism stands the test of time should they present it in their blogs. There are a number of excellent blogs that meet all these criteria, and there is nothing wrong with drawing on the particular expertise of those authors when it exceeds that of a particular SkS author in writing an article.
  11. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    Hear anything from Hugo? The link is still dead.
    Moderator Response: [DB] I have not yet received a reply to my email. I will send another. Thanks for the reminder!
  12. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    What is wrong with sustainable living without growth once a certain standard of living has been achieved?
  13. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr @14, the following from DeepClimate (also quoted at Real Climate) is exactly why do not consider a comparison between Tamino and McIntyre is appropriate:
    "... it is very clear that a new round of out-of-context quote mining and error-filled “analysis” is already unfolding. And the leader out of the gate, so to speak, appears to be Ross McKitrick, whose recent National Post piece on the IPCC and the latest batch of stolen emails is now being spread far and wide. In one particularly outrageous and error-filled passage, McKitrick accuses IPCC AR4 co-ordinating lead authors Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth of selecting their team of contributing authors solely on the basis of whether they agree with the pair’s scientific views. He even goes so far as to accuse Jones of “dismissing” (i.e. rejecting as a contributing author) one qualified expert who, supposedly in Jones’s own words, “has done a lot, but I don’t trust him.” But the record clearly shows that it was Trenberth who made that last comment, and that he was expressing misgivings about the quality of the researcher’s work, not whether he was on the “right side” of scientific issues. And the expert in question, climatologist Joel Norris, was in fact selected by Trenberth as a contributing author. Even worse, McKitrick has reversed the order of the Jones quotes, taken them out of context, and then juxtaposed them to make it appear as if they were part of the same exchange. Meanwhile, an examination of the two separate email discussions show chapter co-ordinators trying to fill out their team with authors who will be able to contribute effectively, in complete contradiction to McKitrick’s central thesis."
    So, McIntyre has misattributed quotes, taken them out of context, and stitched them together out of chronological order to aid misinterpretation. Further, he ignores the fact that the person discussed was in fact accepted as a contributing author, thus invalidating his thesis. It has long been my firm belief that out of context quotations are simply a form of lying. So while Tamino gives us clear analysis of statistical issues relating to climate science, McIntyre gives use data (in this case quotations) deliberately out presented out of context with intent to deceive. That is why it is inappropriate to use McIntyre as a source, but appropriate to use Tamino.
  14. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr#18: "I've a limited trust in any argument based on a blog article, whatever the blog," So by your logic, we need to have limited trust in your arguments as well? The differences should be abundantly clear. On this blog (or tamino, neven, science of doom, etc), anything technical is solidly supported. If you show up with a pet theory that makes no sense (and there are plenty of those characters), you will be rebutted with the science that shows you make no sense. On the McIntyres, Goddards, Currys, Watts, etc, there is plenty of opinion, distraction, disinformation and hot air and very little in the way of solid scientific support. But I suppose you are free to buy your soap from the store of your choice. My observation is that someone like tamino knows a heck of a lot more about what he does than I do -- and I can learn from that.
  15. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    @Tom C: 3)I would dispute that economic growth is a 'good thing' in and of itself. It may have been good up to a point -- ie to raise the productivity of human endeavour to the point where we have material sufficiency, securely meeting the fundamental human needs with reasonably low labour inputs. That did require 'economic growth'. But industrialized countries passed that point decades, maybe even a century ago. Everything since then has been about capital fluffing up human 'needs' to provide the profit-making opportunities demanded by the capital-owners. We could just as easily have directed the surplus human labour freed up by those early productivity gains into any number of life-enhancing activities. Rather than making flat-screen TVs and Humvees and landfill fodder that some call economic growth. 4) We certainly could remove the fuel of relentless technological innovation, just for its own sake -- and direct it instead into incremental, socially-useful and non-destructive innovation. Then you remove the ludricous -'creative-destructive' tail-swallowing of the current system. Why do we need 100% employment? Why not be happy with 50% of our time working to meet our basic needs? And why keep the binary have-job/ don't-have-job labels that produce such misery. There's no need to hoard work as we do -- except in a system that needs fear of 'no job' to whip people into work. A large proportion of all current labour is simply to benefit abstract holders of land entitlement - through mortgages and rent. Remove that protection racket, and another tranche of labour enforced on us, falls away. I agree, zero-growth isn't desirable. Negative 'growth' is ultimately what is needed -- a managed and gradual descent away from the material excess and pumped-up hyperactivity we have been cursed with. And no, the destination isn't the Stone Age; instead a new age of technical simplicity and sufficiency. 5) A high standard of living is not measured by the shininess of a household's consumer toys. It is a fallacy which we have pulled nonOECD countries into believing. Those nations needed help to bring themselves up to a level of comfortable material sufficiency, absolutely. But we dodged that, and relied on our relative strength to direct their vast resources and labour to our own bloated material satisfaction. That has left nonOECD countries structured as distorted mirrors of our own ills. 6) Agreed, simply freezing OECD growth and letting nonOECD play catchup is unlikely to stop multiple ecological boundaries being surpassed -- including on the climate front. A reduce-and-converge growth strategy stands a better chance. Of course this is all pie-in-the-sky. I know that. few give up ill-gotten gains readily. The present system won't be upended without a severe fright. Until then we will likely continue on a ragged march towards growth -- ragged because those ecological and resource constraints will be pulling at the foundations of the 'economic consensus': Growth cannot be infinite on a finite planet. I just hope we can learn that lesson before the reverse becomes a messy and shambolic retreat forced upon us by our excess.
  16. Schmittner et al. (2011) on Climate Sensitivity - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    RealClimate has not posted an article on Schmittner et al. As always, it is well worth reading. I found particularly interesting the perspective given on Schmittner et al's result taken at face value in the last paragraph:
    "It bears noting that even if the SEA mean estimate were correct, it still lies well above the ever-more implausible estimates of those that wish the climate sensitivity were negligible. And that means that the implications for policy remain the same as they always were. Indeed, if one accepts a very liberal risk level of 50% for mean global warming of 2°C (the guiderail widely adopted) since the start of the industrial age, then under midrange IPCC climate sensitivity estimates, then we have around 30 years before the risk level is exceeded. Specifically, to reach that probability level, we can burn a total of about one trillion metric tonnes of carbon. That gives us about 24 years at current growth rates (about 3%/year). Since warming is proportional to cumulative carbon, if the climate sensitivity were really as low as Schmittner et al. estimate, then another 500 GT would take us to the same risk level, some 11 years later."
    Of course that extra 11 years would be extended if we started reducing CO2 emissions, and if the response to temperature change was not proportionate to the climate sensitivity (see The Ugly News above), would give as a welcome buffer in which to overcome the current political paralysis on global warming. Overall, the RC article makes a useful complement to Dana's article above, discussing as it does some issues not raised by Dana.
  17. Schmittner et al. (2011) on Climate Sensitivity - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    @ skywatcher I find the key words in that phrase to be "imminent" and "extreme". The skeptic community is fond of "soft" words of varying definitions, depending upon the Humpty-Dumpty-like usage they favor (not to imply the authors of the paper in question do that). Thus "imminent" and "extreme" can be defined by the viewpoint of the reader.
  18. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    A few comments: 1) The economic growth indicated by the chart is a factor of 2.4257 by 2035, or approximately equal to an annual growth rate of 3.2% (1.032^28 ~= 2.42). The total annual average growth rate for OECD nations from 1990 to 2006 was 2.7%. There is no reason to think that will significantly decline in the future, although the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis will reduce that growth in the short term. In the meantime, China (10%) and India (11%), between them representing 36% of the worlds population will probably have double digit, or close to double digit growth rates for some time. This suggests the growth represented on the chart is more likely to be conservative rather than optimistic. 2) Maintaining zero growth for OECD nations while spending 1% of GDP per annum on conversion to low emissions technology represents a declining income over time. That is a political impossibility to sell, and of dubious merit in any event. 3) Economic growth, all else being equal, is a good thing. Of course, all else is not equal, but you would need very substantive reasons to not pursue economic growth. 4) In a world with rapid technological innovation, and hence frequent adjustments to employment patterns, significant economic growth is needed to provide an underlying demand for labour to employ those people who are made redundant by new technologies. Therefore zero economic growth is neither desirable, nor achievable while we pursue and achieve rapid technological innovation. 5) Large scale global trade is a prerequisite for maintaining a high standard of living in OECD nations, and for increasing the standard of living to OECD levels in nonOECD nations. However, much of that trade is driven by (and drives) economic growth. The ripple effect of OECD nations pursuing zero economic growth will be to significantly slow the rate at which non-OECD nations grow their economies. With average luck, it would trigger a major recession. 6) Clearly I disagree with perseus' main conclusion. That is in large part (as indicated above) I believe the cure could be as bad in human terms as the disease. Global warming is not going to drive humans to extinction. It is going to significantly decrease our standard of living and (in the worst cases, population). However, freezing global growth carries exactly the same risks. Perseus is not actually advocating freezing global growth per se, but freezing OECD growth with other nations allowed to play cachup will be almost as bad as freezing global growth (if effective), and barely limit economic growth if ineffective. Rather than advocating the freezing of economic growth, we should welcome economic growth that helps better fund the conversion to low emissions technology. A 0.5% economic growth that helps fund a 1% reduction in emissions intensity is a net gain in terms of reducing emissions, and should be welcomed. On the other hand, economic gains which are not coupled with reductions in emissions intensity are counter-productive. The obvious answer is to use government levers to direct growth into channels that reduce emissions intensity, rather than to set zero growth as a policy.
  19. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    If McIntyre has valuable points to make, then why doesnt he publish them?
  20. Schmittner et al. (2011) on Climate Sensitivity - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    Dr Schmittner, very nice to see you commenting here. I don't suppose this will turn into a question-answer session, but if you have the time I would be very interested in your take on the last line of your abstract, and your grounds for it. Many in the mainstream media took it as cause for optimism, and I would be interested to know why:
    "[with caveat] ... these results imply lower probability of imminent extreme climatic change than previously thought."
    In relation to the "ugly" part of the post above, I'm not sure how this conclusion follows from your results? Your model uses a smaller temperature change from glacial-interglacial than other models that have generated higher climate sensitivities. This means that each degree of warming we experience now has a correspondingly larger impact and will, in your model, take us much closer to a massive climate change on the scale of a deglaciation, as Dana shows above. Regardless of whether ECS is 2C or 3C, if our warming of ~0.2C/decade gets us to the scale of a glacial-interglacial climate change sooner, then surely that will qualify as "imminent extreme climate change"? Essentially, on reading your paper, I feel I have less cause for optimism than I had before, as I would have put "higher" where you put "lower" in your abstract. Maybe I am missing something, and I'd love to be shown to be wrong!
  21. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Continue Climbing
    It took me a while to get my head around as a non-climatologist, but the NOAA page linked to in the release helped me to understand what's going on. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/ Yes, the answer is down to using pre-industrial levels as a reference. 350 to 390 ppm (about 10%) at first seemed too small to give a 39% increase (for CO2 alone), but it's from a pre-industrial 280 ppm, so it's more like a 57% increase. This is also sufficient to show that it is the radiative forcing that primarily contributes to the non-linearity as you were saying, OPatrick. Plug the numbers into the equations on the page and everything makes sense.
  22. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr: "... why not consider the McIntyre's obscure and technical considerations on proxy series as a legitimate argument in a discusion of paleoclimate?" Many have considered McIntyre's arguments, and found then to be wrong in nearly (granted, not quite all) every way. McIntyre's results were deliberately inflated by himself and even more by others, yet when you dig and understand exactly what he did, you don't see an accurate argument. That he still goes on about the hockey stick nearly a decade on, after it's been independently verified many times speaks strongly of his approach to science, and does not argue for his points being either relevant or accurate, or worthy of interest.
  23. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    Well I would agree that Tamino's blog is by means in the same class as peer-reviewed paper. However, Tamino does do a good job of explaining the technicalities in the data analysis in debunking a lot disinformation. If you can follow the technical detail, then it makes Tamino a valuable resource.
  24. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    As a matter of luck, The oil covert that issue recently. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8615#more In short, there is no gain in the world energy intensity since 2000.
  25. The Debunking Handbook Part 5: Filling the gap with an alternative explanation
    This series is very good. It lays out explanations about discussing that make explicit things I have sensed in discussions on various global warming threads. This site is very useful for the caulk that fills in those gaps. Often I can read a paragraph with a "mini" gish gallop, refute and fill in the gaps with a quick confirmation of my response back here. Many thanks to all involved...
  26. The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
    Steve L, on humiliation: I've never seen that work well, but I have seen "gentle teasing" work to some extent. Especially some folks who are way over the top conspiracy theorists - good hearted teasing may get you into an interesting conversation that would not occur with humiliation...
  27. What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
    victull - "That could be said of any averaged point on planet Earth's oceans, and is an essential piece of evidence for global warming." No, again you haven't been paying attention. See figure 2 - note the west coast of Madagascar and the Northern Territory & western coast of far north Queensland in Australia - sea level has fallen there. "Forgive me if I am a bit obtuse, but I don't see the point in focussing on Tuvalu as an example." No worries, let me explain. Tuvalu is a low-lying coral atoll that will be one of the first nations in the world to be submerged by rising sea level. It therefore is a poster-child of sea level rise, and consequently is attacked by "skeptics" who claim Tuvalu is not being affected. See this nasty little article from Pat Michaels for instance. "Local variations on tiny dots in the Pacific would be irrelevant I would think" How very Pat Michaels of you. That you care little for the suffering of others is simply an indictment of skewed moral values. When do we start caring? When Florida starts to be submerged? Just to be clear, I live in New Zealand, the Pacific Island capital of the world. Many of my friends and former work colleagues are Pacific Islanders. They are important, and what happens to them matters. "There is a danger that skeptics will take such emphasis on places like Tuvalu as alarmism by the global warming fraternity" It is alarming. That is simply a fact. The fantasists and wishful thinkers will no doubt resort to blimp-pointing in an attempt to distract readers. It will be a futile exercise on their part.
  28. The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect
    How do we get and maintain a world view.... New report exposes massive opinion industry in China. http://elgan.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=38b5dc26a4d87952a5ca1675f&id=515275ef09&e=3836c8cfe5
  29. Congressional Climate Briefing - The End of Climate Skepticism?
    Standout Republican Jon Huntsman -- who ranks lowest in the polls -- may have summed up the differences best when he tweeted earlier this year: "To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." Indeed, many have. Seeking to drum up conservative support, the other Republican candidates have championed their doubts about human-caused climate change in recent debates just as vigorously as they have called for the return of waterboarding for terror suspects. The entire nation is divided on the issue, according to the latest Gallup poll which shows 53 percent of Americans see global warming as a very or somewhat serious threat, down 10 percent from two years earlier. "We have got a big problem, domestically, in terms of climate reality," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. When lawmakers cannot agree that climate change is a problem for which solutions must be sought, gridlock ensues, according to Democratic lawmaker Henry Waxman. "During this Congress, the Republican-controlled House has voted 21 times to block actions to address climate change," he said at a hearing this month. "History will look back on this science denial with profound regret." Source: “Climate change denial still runs strong in US” AFP, Nov 28, 2011 Click here to access the entire article.
  30. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr in any case the Global Warming with the Schmittner preliminary outcome is still unacceptably too high. And really we still have to start addressing emissions reduction even it that were the sensitivity. And we also still have to address the risk factor of higher sensitivities. The this is an interesting perspective ... if the temp sensitivity is low then we are seeing a high climate change sensitivity to that small change. So it would mean things would be worse than expected. That is the risk aspect that we have to take in to account which deniers and avoiders ignore. A human trait and short coming. Media Misleads On Flawed Climate Sensitivity Study: Avoiding “Drastic Changes Over Land” Requires Emissions Cuts ASAP http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/27/376197/media-flawed-study-climate-sensitivity/
  31. Schmittner et al. (2011) on Climate Sensitivity - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    Suggested reading: “How Much Will the Earth Warm Up?”, New York Times Nov 24, 2011 The focus of this article is the Schmittner et al paper and includes comments by Gavin Schmidt, Richard Alley, and David Lee. To access the article, click here.
  32. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    #16, 17 : I think you will not convince me either by extreme counter-examples (Tom) or by assessment of blog quality without clear standard (muoncounter). In fact, this is a very personal judgement: I've a limited trust in any argument based on a blog article, whatever the blog, or on grey literature, and I conversely trust science because of its high standard of evaluation for publication and its openness for comments or responses with the same standards (even if this process is not infallible, it is the best we have). Same is true for IPCC WG1 rules of publications, notably if they include IAC recommendations as IPCC staff engaged to do. Your judgements on this point are different from mine: no problem. Trust is not something we can reduced to an absolutely objective foundation, at least we must be coherent for what we trust or not. Anyway the blog question was not the principal matter of my #4 point. You correctly explained me the editorial reasons for which Schmittner 2011 deserves a more attentive treatment than others publications about sensitivity. I agree with these explanations. You also show that the canonical 2-4,5 K range is the usueal reference for sensitivity on SkS. Idem. Case closed for me.
  33. What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
    victull, presumably Tuvalu is focused on because it has one of the lowest elevations above sea level on the planet and thus would be amongst the first locations to be impacted by rising sea levels. Would it somehow make sense to study the impact of sea level rise on Mount Everest instead?
  34. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
    One first technical point, on a detail : there is frequently a certain confusion around concentration in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) and carbon dioxide alone (CO2). The first includes all GHGs and integrates their relative global warming potential . The second deals with CO2 only considered as the main driver of warming on long term. But CO2eq is the good metric, because what is important is the total positive forcing, whatever its source. What is more complex, as Real Climate explained some years ago, is that me must also include the negative forcings when we adress the anthropogenic effect on climate. For example in RC article (2007, numbers slightly changed since this date), all GHGs forcings give approximatively 460 ppm CO2eq – already more that would be necessary for a 2K stabilization. But if you include aerosols and other negatives forcings, we’re at 375 ppm CO2 eq. The Cancun agreement supported ‘a view to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions so as to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C above preindustrial levels’, but I didn’t find in the document a clear reference to 450 ppm CO2eq limit. Any information about this fact ? In the Stern report, CO2eq includes of course all GHGs (see chapter 8).
  35. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Continue Climbing
    OPatrick @28. Indeed. Measurement is usually taken from pre-industrial times ie 1750. Forcing from the LLGHGs by that measure stood at 2.8 W/m^2 in 2010 which is a rise of 29% over the previous 20 years. The WMO bulletin linked in the first paragraph of this story is not long (4 pages inc pictures & info boxes) and quite readable.
  36. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr: #13: "an unbalanced 'over-criticizing' of some works they unduly exploit (Schmittner is not Spencer!). " I'm sorry, but I cannot determine what you mean by this phrase. #15: "Tamino is not a climate scientist. If you don't scotch to this editorial rule, why not consider the McIntyre's" Another false equivalence. If you are suggesting that 'all climate blogs are created equal,' you are severely mistaken. If you think that tamino = McIntyre, why not tamino = WUWT? Why not use authoritative sources whose work stands up to inspection? Why equate said sources with those whose work fails inspection?
  37. Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
    The description of the reference station method in this blog post is a little different than the original description by Hansen and Lebedeff. The blog post writes: "The average for each pair of stations (T1, T2), (T1, T3), etc. is calculated over the common reference period using the data series for each station T1(t), T2(t), etc., where "t" is the time of the temperature reading" Below figure 5 in the article (inserted in the blog post) the description is: The value dT is computed from the averages of Tl(t) and T2(t) over the common years of record" The wording in the blog post suggests (at least to me) that dT is estimated only over the reference period, which for GISTEMP is 1951-1980. While the article emphasizes that dT is estimated using all data in the overlapping periods.
  38. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr @15, although Tamino is a mathematician rather than a climate scientist, he has published in the peer reviewed literature on climate science. I believe he currently has another article soon to be published that arose from discussions on his blog. So your claim that "Furthermore, Tamino is not a climate scientist." while technically correct is not relevant. Further, comparison of Tamino's site to McIntyre's as an uncalled for insult to Tamino. McIntyre has been repeatedly shown to not be lead by evidence. His posts typically obscure relevant facts, rather than lay them bare (IMO). Further, your council in this case makes the perfect the enemy of the good. Like it or not, denier misrepresentations are often so fundamentally flawed that you will not find peer reviewed literature discussing the relevant facts, and or debunking argument. Claims by one prominent Australian denier that CO2 actually cools the Earth's surface relative to what it would be with no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere fall under this category. In other instances, flaws in denier papers are picked out and highlighted long before any peer reviewed literature will discuss them, simply because of the slow turn around time on peer reviewed literature. In both cases, clear and compelling discussion of the issues can be found on several blogs. The suggestion that SkS should either discuss the issues without reference to those other discussions (thereby pretending that while other blog discussions are suspect because they are blog discussions) or not discuss them at all because we do not have peer reviewed literature addressing the issue are both unwise. The simple fact is that Tamino, or RC, or Science of Doom will often have clear and accurate analysis on particular issues that are (in many instances) better than we can produce ourselves. In that instance, we serve our readers best by drawing attention to those discussions.
  39. SkS Weekly Digest #26
    3 - KR "the confusion between the homonyms ... is something of an inside joke for English." and even that can be take too far http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu9MptWyCB8.
  40. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Continue Climbing
    Ah yes, I see the IPCC definition of radiative forcing is relative to pre-industrial levels: "Radiative forcing is a measure of the influence a factor has in altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system and is an index of the importance of the factor as a potential climate change mechanism. In this report radiative forcing values are for changes relative to preindustrial conditions defined at 1750 and are expressed in watts per square meter (W/m2)." Is that the generally accepted usage?
  41. SkS Weekly Digest #26
    Alexandre - "To" is a function word, as in "Travel to the south", while "Too" refers to amounts, an excessive level, as in "Too much". The mispronunciation "stoopid", on the other hand, is a linguistic joke/accent indicating that the speaker is, indeed, not of peak intelligence. I would have to agree that this particular cartoon doesn't make too much sense to non-native speakers - the confusion between the homonyms "To, Too, Two" is something of an inside joke for English.
  42. SkS Weekly Digest #26
    1 - Alexander. I think 'to stupid' should be 'too stupid' but someone who says 'stoopid' sounds stupid.
  43. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Continue Climbing
    OPatrick it's 29% from pre-industrial not from an atmosphere witout greenhouse effect.
  44. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    #14 Tom : well, it's hard to re-discuss Schmittner here because it becomes... off-topic! For Tamino, it seems that a) Schmittner et al used UVic model, an EMIC, different from CCCMa models, full AOGCM (if it is true, the reference to Tamino's critic of CCCMa is simply unfounded in the discussion) ; b) would the model be CCCMa and not UVic, I consider it is legitimate to analyse Schmittner 2011 from peer-reviewed works on the same subject (either LGM temperature/forcing or the quality of their model assessed by other modellers), but not to refer blogs. That's a general rule for me, even the better blogs animated by climate scientists are just blogs, nothing more. And furthermore, Tamino is not a climate scientist. If you don't scotch to this editorial rule, why not consider the McIntyre's obscure and technical considerations on proxy series as a legitimate argument in a discusion of paleoclimate? In my sense, low criteria of rigor in the sources of our argument opens the door to confusion between real climate science and unchekced / approximative considerations – a confusion in which denialists are specialists! (In comments by laymen, as I am, it is unescapable to be imprecise and it may be useful to indicate blogs for animating the discussion, but I refer to main article from SkS, not their comments). Of course, I don't consider that SkS is in the same category that Joe Romm's website.
  45. What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
    Rob Painting "The long-term sea level trend at Tuvalu (over 1950-2009) is due to thermal expansion of the oceans, the addition of water volume to the global oceans by melting land ice....." That could be said of any averaged point on planet Earth's oceans, and is an essential piece of evidence for global warming. Forgive me if I am a bit obtuse, but I don't see the point in focussing on Tuvalu as an example. Local variations on tiny dots in the Pacific would be irrelevant I would think. There is a danger that skeptics will take such emphasis on places like Tuvalu as alarmism by the global warming fraternity, which diminishes the general point about evidence of global sea level rise.
  46. SkS Weekly Digest #26
    Could anyone explain the "two O's" line to a non-native English speaker, please?
  47. Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 1 - Factors Influencing CO2 Emissions
    #26, #44 Concerning demographic transition, there is a negative correlation of total fertility rate with human development index... up to a certain threshold after what it seems to reverse ( Myrskyla et al 2009 ). Female education / autonomy (part of the HDI) is considered as one the multiple factors for this transition. But more detailed analysis are certainly welcome. For example, this gender-based paper from Maria E. Cosio-Zavala examines some local trajectories to understand what kind of men-women relationships (and cultural representations of women's authority) could influence the fertility rate.
  48. SkS public talks in Canada and AGU, San Francisco
    So close, yet so far -- I hope to see an East-Coast trip at some point :-D
  49. Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Continue Climbing
    Riccardo, the 9C comes from 29% of the 33C of temperature ususally assigned to greenhouse gases. I know that we wouldn't be expecting 9c of warming, but at a superficial reading I that is what is implied by "there was a 29% increase in radiative forcing - the warming effect on our climate system - from greenhouse gases". I think I understand your explanation, though I'm not sure, but I definitely don't think it's clear from the WMO report.
  50. The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
    skept.fr @13, I believe you are being too harsh regarding actually thoughtfull's comment. If we are going to make a careful analysis of a paper, as dana did with Schmittner et al, we should not only identify potential problems identified by the author, but also other reasonable grounds for critique. We cannot rely on a scholarly response for that, for no published critique of Schmittner et al is available. Therefore it is quite appropriate to draw on rigorous critiques from the better blogs, of which Tamino's Open Mind is one of the best. With regard to your response to muoncounter, I do not think SkS is guilty of unbalanced "over-criticizing" of some works. It you want to see an unbalanced over-criticizing, compare Dana's post on Schmittner et al to that by Joe Romm, who calls Schmittner et al "a new deeply flawed study". That is, of course, a load of nonsense. I am not aware of any flaws in Schmittner et al. They applied a valid technique to the best proxy set of LGM temperatures they could find. To the extent that they are wrong about climate sensitivity, it will be because the best proxy set is neither accurate nor extensive enough, and because due to computational limitations they used only one mid-level climate model. Both limitations are not flaws but simply the constraints of real science, which must work with the data available, and within a budget.

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