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Comments 70601 to 70650:

  1. The Climate Show 21: Carbon, coal and BEST
    Well, there's my Friday evening entertainment all sorted... :-P
  2. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    Suggested reading: “Capitalism vs. the Climate”, The Nation (USA), Nov 28, 2011 print edition. Click here to access this in-depth and thought-provoking, cover story by Naomi Klein.
  3. Increase Of Extreme Events With Global Warming (Basic Version)
    **** correction "..., have experienced unusual or record warm/dry events within Y years..."
  4. Increase Of Extreme Events With Global Warming (Basic Version)
    I'm thinking that the work on the probability of the Moscow heat wave/drought could be extended to multiple locales. For instance, one might ask the question, "What are the odds that X regions of Australia, the US, China, Russia, and possibly others, have occurred within Y years of each other?" You could might have to look at the historical records to see how much concurrence, if any, has existed for droughts in the same regions. If the number of such events occurring in close proximity to each other is common in history, but not associated with global warm periods, then it means less. If they have been mostly uncorrelated in the past, and are becoming more correlated, or if common occurrences are associated with warm periods, then it means more. I'm going to throw out a guess that you would find an association between the frequency of these events and warm periods, and you might find the regions just poleward of Hadley cells were the most likely to be unusually warm and dry. Otherwise, yeah, at best you can attempt to keep the undecideds from being swayed by misinformation. If the undecideds really cared, they would not be undecided; there is plenty of information available. Maybe the trick is to catch them at the moment they start to care. Maybe attributions of crop damage, food prices, and social unrest will work better than appeals to preserve the habitat of what most people consider exotic species. On the other hand, appeals to preserve their own children do not work on those who have convinced themselves that nothing bad will happen to them.
    Response: [DB] Dr. James Hansen has a pertinent new article out on his website: Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice
  5. The Climate Show 21: Carbon, coal and BEST
    John, Dana, Hats off to you both.
  6. Extreme Events Increase With Global Warming
    Kudos on a very well-written article about rather complex analyses.
  7. The Climate Show 21: Carbon, coal and BEST
    I knew you'd come through for me in time, Dana :-)
  8. Increase Of Extreme Events With Global Warming (Basic Version)
    3 - Invicta You've hit the nail on the head there. Many climate hawks (ie those who want strong action on dealing with climate change; blame Joe Romm for that one..) spend a lot of time trying to argue to point with the denialist fringe. Pointless. Such people have invested emotionally in the denialist-narrative, that suits them very nicely, for various personal reasons; they won't be shifted - it's a faith. Of course plenty on the 'climate hawk' side are somewhat intractable and faith-based too.. But the others outside this schism - the great apathetic wedge in the middle - won't form an opinion on CC until CC intrudes rudely on them. It is already doing so, of course, but it's too nebulously attributed. Putting probability numbers such as "80% this extreme weather event that flooded your house/ dried your reservoir/ flattened your crops/.. was down to climate change" changes the picture dramatically. If the attribution is valid, and reported consistently, CC stops being a wishy-washy creep of the 'global average thermometer over a decade' (which that no-one directly experiences anyway) Much more of this sort of research/reporting please!
  9. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    "In Europe, a large part goes back to the fuel companies". Really, Ark, you got any evidence to back that up? Here in Australia, some of the money raised in the first 3 years will be going to an Independent Authority that will invest the money in Clean Energy Projects. Luckily, thanks to the efforts of The Greens & Independents-in both Houses-neither Coal Seam Gas nor Carbon Capture & Storage will be included for funding by said Authority.
  10. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Interesting Arkadiusz refers us to a paper that does not support his conclusions. In his subsection from Seki et al 2010 entitl;ed "Changes in the CO2 were also rapidly:", he highlights and describes a part of a figure 9, whose data do not come from Seki et al. In fact, they come from: Raymo et al, 1996. Mid-Pliocene warmth: stronger greenhouse and stronger conveyor. Mar. Micropaleontol. 27 (1–4), 313–326. Here, we see that not only are the errors in the ~370-470ppm pCO2 estimates for the mid-Pliocene given as +/-65ppm on the graph, and suggested +/-25ppm in the text, the most rapid variation is 29ppm over 3600 years, or 66ppm over 31,200 years, with undefined age errors referred to an earlier paper (Shackleton et al 1990), the rate of CO2 drop in the first instance is 0.008ppm/yr, and increase in the second instance is 0.002ppm/yr. Now ignoring the errors discussed in the papers and above, hands up who would like atmospheric CO2 to be increasing by as little as 0.005ppm per year? Not exactly rapid, compared to modern rises several orders of magnitude larger! Arkadiusz, be careful with your sources, and placing your own amateur interpretations of large variations put on a scale where the x-axis reads hundreds of thousands or millions of years...
  11. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    I'm with Marcus. Abbott's 'blood oath' to repeal will only come to define him as the purely negative anachronism he is. As the economy continues to fail to fall apart post CT what has 'Dr. No' got left? Turnbull then becomes the obvious leader of the Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Then neither major Australian party in denial - of AGW, anyway - woohoo! Although I agree with Bernard that some will attempt to sheet home the global impact of Berlusconi's egregious incompetence to the Great Big New Tax, I seriously doubt that people are that stupid.
  12. Increase Of Extreme Events With Global Warming (Basic Version)
    2-les Spending too long here or similar sites can make you (me) think that the lunatic brigade are what is important. In truth I think the important people are the great majority who couldn't care less either way. (in my experience) Until the message gets through that what's going to happen will or is affecting them (us) directly they will continue to care less and bother their politicians not at all. In which case we are all simply using all this electricity for our own amusement.
  13. Models are unreliable
    411, dhogaza, No, no, no. What if the cloud feedback is negative, as RW1 claims? Then climate sensitivity is 0.5C per doubling, or even 0.0C per doubling. Maybe even -1C per doubling! You darn science types are always making false assumptions and jumping to alarmist conclusions.
  14. Models are unreliable
    You've got to love the way uncertainties in parts of climate models get conflated with "models are unreliable", or "models do not have preditive ability". Say it's mid-August in Melbourne, the daytime temperature is a respectable (and close to average) 15C. Can I forecast the exact temperature two weeks from now? No. But I can say that it's likely that the average temperature during September will be a bit higher than 15C. Some days will be cooler, but it's very likely, but not certain that most will be warmer. As for October, I can forecast that nearly all days will have a max temperature higher than 15C, and for November and December, it's unlikely that any day will be below 15C. I know this because the underlying forcing, not visible in a short timeseries with large variability, shows up over a longer period of time. The underlying forcing beats the variability every time. I know that October will be warmer than August, although not every October day will beat every August day. In the same manner, I can be very confident that the 2010s and the 2020s will be warmer than the 1990s and 2000s, even though not every later year will beat every earlier year. The models forecast this very well, alongside a great deal of more complex factors. Some factors not so well, but claiming unreliability belies an inability to understand the usefulness of models. Is the model unreliable because it cannot pick out the exact variability due to noisy variations in the short term? If you're forecasting the weather two months ahead, yes, but if you're forecasting the climate, no.
  15. Increase Of Extreme Events With Global Warming (Basic Version)
    1 - invicta I guess this is off topic for this thread but thinking that accurate predictions will have any impact is deluded. Google words like "YU55, NASA, coverup" and see what turns up. AFAIK the presence of the comment was well known, none of the lunatic bridgade have any "evidence" beyond what scientists provide - yet NADA scientist are "liers"!! Don't over estimate the intelligence of those we're up against.
  16. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Thanks for an interesting article. Would Figure 6 with a log-linear Y-axis add to the discussion, or do the different sources/smoothing/whatever make this uninformative?
  17. Models are unreliable
    Sphaerica: "Let me see if I get this right: 1) Clouds are a factor that models do not handle as well as desired 2) Therefore clouds are not handled at all 3) Therefore models are unreliable and have no predictive skill 4) Therefore we don't know what climate sensitivity is" Typically #4 is "4) therefore climate sensitivity is about 1C per doubling, max", no ??? :) ITSM that's where they always end up. Even Curry does it ... her "uncertainty monster" argument is that poor treatment of uncertainty causes climate scientists to *overestimate* sensitivity. Not "underestimate error bars" ...
  18. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    NewYorkJ - I guess it's not only the USA in which political liberals are inept at messaging!
  19. Increase Of Extreme Events With Global Warming (Basic Version)
    I have just been reading this article communicating the science of climate change in physicstoday regarding the way scientists communicate with the public about climate science. When do you think scientists will be able to say accurately things like - there is a ...% chance that this event was due to climate change- on a regular basis rather, than the 'sceptic' friendly 'It is impossible to attribute any specific event to AGW'? Weather forecasters use similar phrases regularly and it would convey a more realistic scenario to the unenlightened. Wouldn't it?
  20. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Here's my favorite graph showing "no change". Haven't seen it elsewhere, don't know why.
  21. Models are unreliable
    In addition to their 'undercarriage,' models get better with time. People who run models learn from prior work. That seems to be a significant problem with the denials - they just keep repeating the same old generic 'models are unreliable.' For example, listed here are several publications from a NASA water cycle study group. These folks are addressing the very issues that Camburn is looking for: evaporation, clouds, soil moisture, etc. But really: is there something likely to come out of this detail work that will undo the warming to date? That will undo the fact that forcing from atmospheric CO2 keeps rising? That these nonsensical objections (Warming paused! You can't be sure! There's no basis!) are just distractions from the real questions? Sphaerica's assessment is quite correct. We are in this situation. Meanwhile there's a tropical storm in the Atlantic in mid November and the worst storm in 37 years in Alaska on the same day.
  22. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    re: 4-6 Ooops! It should in fact be concentration on the Y-axis. That will teach me to copy/paste code :( I'll fix it momentarily.
  23. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Re: JH @2 Sure! Top to bottom, Fig1: Taken from the written statement of Dr. John Everett before Senate EPW hearing on “EPA's Role in Protecting Ocean Health”, May 11, 2010. Fig2: Global CO2 rate data taken from Thomas Conway and Pieter Tans, Annual Mean Carbon Dioxide Growth Rates NOAA/ESRL (www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html) Fig3: MLO data from Pieter Tans and Ralph Keeling. Mauna Loa Annual Mean Data, NOAA/ESRL/Scripps (ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt). IS92a Scenario from IS92a CO2 concentrations (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/vemap/supplemental/IS92a.dat). Dr. Everett's projection (described in his remarks in part II) is based upon the assumption of a constant accumulation rate of 1.87 ppm/year; the extrapolations based on MLO (1959-present) and global (1980-present) rate data are calculated by integrating the least-squares linear fit with the 2009 CO2 concentration as an initial condition. Fig4: IPCC AR4 Working Group I, figure 6.1. (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-3.html) Fig5: MLO data as with Figure 3; all others from the Paleoclimatology archive of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Law Dome data were the 75-year smoothed series from Etheridge, D.M., et al., 2001, Law Dome Atmospheric CO2 Data, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2001-083. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA. (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2455.html) Taylor dome data were from Indermühle, A., B. Stauffer, T.F. Stocker and M. Wahlen, 1999,Taylor Dome Ice Core CO2 Holocene Data. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #1999- 021 NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA. (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa- icecore-2419.html) Vostok data were originally published in Barnola, J.-M., D. Raynaud, Y.S. Korotkevich, C. Lorius. 1987. Vostok ice core provides 160,000-year record of atmospheric CO2. Nature 329:408-414; the data were retrieved from the NCDC archives (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2442.html). Fig 6: Same data as Figure 5; rates have been calculated by dividing the difference between successive concentrations by the length of time between them, and assigning the resulting rate to the midpoint of the time interval (ie, given a time series [Ti, Xi], a new time series is constructed [ti, Yi] where ti = (Ti + Ti+1)/2 and Yi = (Xi+1 - Xi) / (Ti+1 - Ti))
    Moderator Response: [John Hartz] Thanks. The captions should now be inserted into tbe article.
  24. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Re: DM @1 Based simply on this data, you could argue that - the trend in the global ESRL data is significant only at ~93% confidence interval. However, MLO data which stretch back to the late 1950's and are in good agreement with the ESRL data in their overlap, show a significant increase (p~01^-7)
  25. The Climate Show 21: Carbon, coal and BEST
    Well who doesn't love an animated GIF, after all? http://sks.to/best is now live, by the way.
  26. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    "Carbon tax bill passes" "Carbon pricing scheme" Sheesh...they got it done in the end, but they've done a horrible job of selling it. They haven't managed to convince anyone to call it anything other than something that sounds purely negative - the big bad government taxing them more, although this is certainly on the media too. I mean, they could just as well call it the "Clean Energy Promotion and Income Tax Relief" bill, and it would be just as accurate. Instead, Australians come away with the false impression that it's simply a tax on them with nothing positive. Maybe someone can find a poll on this, but how many Australians know that there are income tax offsets that will put many of them ahead?
  27. Models are unreliable
    408, Camburn, Say something beyond the obvious, and make an actual point rather than a vague and wholly uncertain implication. And remember to support it with facts and references.
  28. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    I've read the entire report a couple of times and some chapters more. How you can misconstrue section 8 like that is beyond me, but sure, I would definitely encourage any skeptic to read the entire IPCC.
  29. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    RE the above in your post: "we commend the former Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull... David Cameron... John Key... Arnold Schwarzenegger..." There is another name to add: former Premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, who on July 1, 2008, brought in North America's first broad-spectrum carbon tax, a revenue-neutral (ie, income taxes have been lowered; BC now has the lowest personal income tax in Canada), slowly-rising (started at $10/t CO2 emitted in 2008, rising $5/y; now at $25/t CO2 emitted), and relatively comprehensive tax on combustion of fossil fuels. It generates ~$1B/y in revenue now, is having an impact (albeit still small, but growing) on fuel consumption and fuel switching, and is accepted (even applauded) by about 70% of BC's population. In short, it's a roaring success. Campbell is to be saluted, along with the other names you offer. Notably, Campbell is a politically conservative, but he never shied away from the word 'tax'!
  30. Models are unreliable
    dhogaza: The models do well with co2 because of the simple physics. However, there is a lot more to climate than just co2 levels. The hydro cycle is critical.
    Response:

    [DB] Please provide peer-reviewed evidence that models do not deal adequately with the hydrological cycle.  This is a climate science website; opinions are of no value without a scientific undercarriage to support them.

    Climate models have this scientific undercarriage; your opinions do not.

  31. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    HH#17: "the Younger Dryas?" It certainly appears to be. They show in supplemental information a detail of that anomaly. There's a big jump in methane (up to 800ppb), which settles to a plateau at a higher level (700) than prior to the jump (500). All from GRIP ice core, as are the data depicted here.
  32. Models are unreliable
    406, dhogaza, Let me see if I get this right: 1) Clouds are a factor that models do not handle as well as desired 2) Therefore clouds are not handled at all 3) Therefore models are unreliable and have no predictive skill 4) Therefore we don't know what climate sensitivity is 5) Therefore we don't even know global warming is happening (natural cycles!) 6) Therefore we can't be certain to what degree we should take action 7) Therefore we can't be sure if we should take action at all 8) Therefore we shouldn't take any action at all QED!
    Response:

    [DB] Moved to the appropriate thread.  My bad.

  33. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 05:13 AM on 11 November 2011
    CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Muon, Does the decline and then rise in N2O and CH4 between 13k and 11k have something to do with the Younger Dryas?
  34. Models are unreliable
    Camburn: "2. My impression of section 8 is that there is confidence in the output of the models concerning termperature because this is simple physics." This alone contradicts your claim that models don't have predicative ability. Of course you immediately contradict yourself to some degree: "As far as multiple model runs and picking the middle as a result. Being the models do not do well with clouds, hydro, etc which do affect not only weather, but clmate as well, the outputs of the models should be in question." Well, of course model outputs are in question - does the actual sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 lie a the low end or high end of the 2.5-4C range that's constrained by a bunch of scientific study, including but not limited to research involving GCMs? Just because modeling of clouds is identified as being an area where models don't do as well as one would like (because of restrictions on resolution, there are people who do very interesting work modeling clouds using high resolution models on small slices of the atmosphere) doesn't mean that there is no constraint on the magnitude of cloud feedbacks. Your - and the denialsphere in general - say "cloud feedbacks aren't as well constrained as the radiative properties of CO2" (for instance) and conclude "therefore, the magnitude of cloud feedbacks is not constrained at all" and furthermore argue that cloud feedbacks must be strongly negative to the point of counterbalancing CO2 and water vapor forcing. That's just crap.
    Response:

    [DB] Moved comment from the Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2 thread.

  35. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    Camburn#43: "a mistake of credibility on my part. " Isn't your bigger mistake the fact that you are basing your 'models are unreliable' case on this one section of some very long documents? Documents that contain, as both Sphaerica and Tom Curtis quoted, statements that models are indeed reliable? Some call that 'quote-mining;' others might call it 'cherrypicking.' BTW the models thread is 'Models are unreliable,' #6 on the thermometer at the upper left of every SkS page.
    Response:

    [DB] Agreed.  Any further discussion of models, as Camburn has persisted in, is OT here and should be taken to the Models are unreliable thread.

  36. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    Albatross: I agree, my opinion is my opinion. I use the outcomes of the models to try and make long term business decissions. In doing so, I evaluate what is credible and what is not, as presented in AR4 by looking at the shortcomings as well as the confidence levels. I do appologize for representing something my memory failed me on in quoteing AR3 rather than AR4. That was a mistake of credibility on my part.
  37. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    Sphaerica: I am not making stuff up and I can only encourage everyone to read Section 8. As far as 5 to 10 years, I am talking from present. Let's move this discussion to a models thread if there is one.
    Response:

    [DB] Take it to the Models are unreliable thread.

  38. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    Camburn, Your impressions and opinions do not count for much, neither do mine for that matter. What counts are facts and observations. You distorted and misrepresented the IPCC's assessment reports because of your confirmation bias. That is not how science is done. Now, the favourite crutch of the "skeptics" are the models, well, we can also learn a heck of a lot about the climate system from paleo data, and they show that the system is quite sensitive with a climate sensitivity for equivalent forcing to doubling of CO2 resulting in a warming of >2 C. And we will easily double CO2 on our current path, perhaps even trebling or quadrupling it. Your claim that "AS it is right now, it is a best guess. Kinda like flipping a coin" is simply ludicrous. But I can understand that if that is your personal belief how you are having reconciling it with the science and our current understanding of the climate system.
  39. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Look on the bright side: Admitting that there's a decline in the rate of atmospheric CO2 buildup is at least an admission that it actually is building up. That's a baby step on the road to reality. But seriously, from Joos and Spahni 2008: The 20th century increase in CO2 and its radiative forcing occurred more than an order of magnitude faster than any sustained change during the past 22,000 years. The average rate of increase in the radiative forcing not just from CO2 but from the combination of CO2, CH4, and N2O is larger during the Industrial Era than during any comparable period of at least the past 16,000 years. -- full size For recent years, the analysis by (7) shows that CO2 emission from fossil and industrial sources, the primary driver of anthropogenic climate forcing, have been accelerating over the past few years compared with the 1990s. Note (7) refers to Raupach 2007: CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating at a global scale, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1% y−1 for 1990–1999 to >3% y−1 for 2000–2004. No decline there. But looky here, a ray of hope: Global CO2 emissions actually decreased by 0.5 Gt CO2 between 2008 and 2009, which represented a decline of 1.5%. So on the basis of one year (a year of worldwide economic recession and reduced industrial activity), we did indeed have a decline! But one year later, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to [2010] estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data. Hiding the decline (in rate of increase) was never even a question. It vanished into thin, 394 ppm (the 5/2011 peak reported by Scripps) CO2 air.
  40. Dikran Marsupial at 03:05 AM on 11 November 2011
    CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    mdennison, fair enough! Many thanks for the clarification.
  41. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    13, JMurphy, Ick. I clicked it. Now I have to sanitize my mouse button. Really, how can people read such nonsense and (a) not be offended by the misinformation and (b) not be angered that such people (and so many of them) are putting so much effort into selling lies to the unwary but eager-to-believe?
  42. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    Yes, you have to give the plaudits to Julia Gillard. We often forget, not matter what the science says, a political coalition will have to carry through the necessary measures. Forming such a coalition is not easy - in the richest country in the world, it seems impossible. Gillard seems to be able to keenly judge "the art of the possible". I wish Barack Obama had the same skills, but (as someone pointed out) he has to deal with a broken political system.
  43. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    39, Camburn, You're making stuff up. Anyone who chooses to can go read it for themselves. Hopefully, they'll read it to understand it, rather than to try to find in it what they'd like to read. You have been demonstrated to have fabricated your position on what AR4 does and does not say about models. Your own opinion on this is of little value. As far as "within 5 to 10 years"... you do realize that the report was written, um, 5 years ago?
  44. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    J. Everett's website, in case anyone is interested.
  45. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    Arkadiusz Semczyszak, as usual your point is difficult to discern, beyond a typical 'If it is us, it won't be bad anyway'. You seem to prefer the tiny minority of cherry-picked experts, like J. Everett, whose own website, although providing lots of links to actual data, is lessened by use of the term "alarmists"; his indecision as to whether it is actually warming or cooling; his 'soothing' words about things not being too bad maybe; sources from the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, Lomborg, Morner, John Daly, CO2Science, IceCap, CO2Sceptics, ClimateAudit, SEPP, WarwickHughes and IceAgeNow - with a link to RealClimate as some sort of 'balance'; and his use of the St. Roch/Northwest Passage, 'recovery from the LIA', UHI, Consensus, 70s Cooling 'scare' and Climategate fallacies. The whole thing is a glorified Gish-Gallop, with some credible links thrown in to make it look credible. Even the quote you have from him is as a minority voice in a hearing before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES, AND COAST GUARD of the COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION APRIL 22, 2010 - a link you should have provided. Out of 33 references to the IPCC, his testimony has 32 of them, including his desire to change the make-up of the IPCC. Obsessed ? As for your link to the NIPCC - that is just laughable, I'm afraid.
  46. Australia Legislates an Emissions Trading Scheme
    James Hansen has long demonstrated that Cap-and-Trade is "less than worthless" and is a wrong turn in the path to emissions reductions. Fee-and-Dividend is the only effective and economical method to achieve marked emissions reductions. Why are so many governments and activists so convinced that Cap-and-Trade is the right path? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html
  47. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    1. I recommend that all read section 8 again. 2. My impression of section 8 is that there is confidence in the output of the models concerning termperature because this is simple physics. 3. The confidence of precip, soil moisture, clouds etc is not there because there is either not enough computation power, or it is not well enough understood to model at this time. 4. WG1-3 is quit plain in what models can do. WG-4 shows that the models have improved but still lack certainty in large areas that affect climate. As far as multiple model runs and picking the middle as a result. Being the models do not do well with clouds, hydro, etc which do affect not only weather, but clmate as well, the outputs of the models should be in question. AS it is right now, it is a best guess. Kinda like flipping a coin. So as far as predictive power? In my opinion, given the variables at present with present understanding, I will stand by my statement. As far as the future of models? I would hope that within 5 to 10 years that the items addressed in section 8 will be better understood which will result in more certainty of the results.
  48. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    On the other hand, with no computational effort at all (but using a very simple mental model), I was able to successfully predict that camburn was going to quote mine ...
  49. Is there a case against human caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 2
    Camburn: "...that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." In simple terms, they can't predict the weather far out in the future. Predicting the weather is much like, as Sphaerica says, trying to predict the exact sequence of heads vs. tails in a 1000 coin toss sequence. This says nothing about being able to predict how many heads vs, tails we expect, with error bounds, if the coin is fair (or, for that matter, if it's not, if we can figure out how to model the unfairness). Climate vs. weather. Camburn vs. reality.
  50. CO2 Problems: Parallel concerns breed parallel denial
    DM #1 The longer term trend is statistically significant. The trend is exponential at about 2% per year. Knorr does not suggest otherwise - his paper was about airborne fraction not the the rate of change in CO2 concentration. If you analyse the data by looking at the annual changes (rather than cumulative total, which is the measured data) then you appear to lose statistical significance and risk misleading results due to noise.which is masking the true exponential trend. So it is fair to say "And he’s doing it in the face of a clear upward trend at longer timescales!"

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