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Comments 71001 to 71050:

  1. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    composer99@4: The whole atmosphere has contracted because of the drop in the solar wind. Dana1981@5: Yes, I have looked. From this article, and others, it does not seem that ozone has recovered enough to warm the strat. NASA article concerning ozone
    Response:

    [DB] "The whole atmosphere has contracted because of the drop in the solar wind."

    Citation, please.  Or is this yet another assertion without evidence from you?

  2. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    Camburn @3, I see that when it comes to the stratosphere, fake "skeptics" like to go down the up elevator. As it happens, volcanic events warm the stratosphere. Mount Pinatubo is responsible for the sudden peak in temperatures (most obvious in the upper stratosphere). A sudden peak, is obviously a poor explanation of a supposed cooling step change.
  3. It's the sun
    jpenhall 46: What an incredibly poorly informed screed. It should be noted that the IPCC has examined potential additional effects from the sun such as the purported effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (modulated by the solar magnetic field). However, most of the items on your list have no known causal mechanism whereby they could effect climate. Why changes of the length of the day should cause warming or cooling is completely unexplained, but you are here to criticize climate scientists, not for ignoring your alternative theory, but for not inventing it for you as well. Further, some of the items are not even solar related. For example the Lunar Nodal Cycle is, surprise surprise, a Lunar, not a solar effect. More bizzare is the inclusion of Bond Cycles (conjectured climate cooling events) as being a solar cycle. They may be, but the evidence for that has not been presented, and simply naming a climate cycle as a solar cycle is not evidence. Tellingly you equate the Bond cycle to warming events, whereas it is a cycle of cooling events with a quasi-periodicity of 1470 years. Of course, given that Bond events are multi-century events and that the last one peeked 1400 years ago, if they theory of Bond Cycles is any good, we should be in the middle of a massive cooling event at the moment, not a warming one. Ignoring all theory, however, you simply take the name, invert the sign and suppose that it is coming centuries early (based on your incorrect suposition that the MWP being the last event) as an explanation of the modern warming because, evidently, for you straw is preferable to following the clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming.
  4. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    Canmburn @3 - you haven't found an explanation for the flattening of stratospheric temperature? Have you looked for one? I think it's pretty common knowledge that ozone recovery has a warming effect on the stratosphere, for example. We discussed the subject briefly here, for example. Composer @4 has identified another post in which we discussed the issue. It's important to note that overall, the stratospheric cooling has been very steep, even moreso that the surface and tropospheric warming.
  5. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    Camburn: See fingerprints 8, 9, and 10 in this post for links to scientific literature on stratospheric cooling.
  6. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    Thank you Tom: I would like to have noted the step change in temperature of the stratosphere when Mr. Pinatubo errupted. Since that erruption, the strat has not cooled nor warmed but remained flat. I have no explanation for this and have not found a credible source to explain why this is happening.
  7. Chinese translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    Resources such as this one show why Skeptical Science remains one of the best online resources about climate science and the pseudo-skepticism surrounding it.
  8. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    muon... Ah, I see you're an Iron Chef fan too. :-)
  9. It's the sun
    The mention of solar irradiance points to another major failing of climate models: that they totally ignore the sun, which is the source of all the energy in the world, except for minor contributions from the molten core of the planet and the decay of radioactive elements. The Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) varies in an 11 year sunspot cycle, during which the sun builds up from a small to a large number of sunspots, which then again decline in number. The importance of the Solar cycle for climate on earth is convincingly demonstrated by the Maunder Minimum, which saw the lowest temperatures of the Little Ice Age. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000-50,000 spots in modern times. The IPCC discounted the significance of the sun for increasing temperatures, because there has been only a 0.1% increase in TSI since the seventeenth century. But, as Carter (2010: 48-50) pointed out, this is to forget the other ways in which the sun can influence climate: • Variations in the intensity of the sun’s magnetic field with cycles including the Schwabe (eleven year), Hale (22 years) and Gleissberg (70-90 years). • Effect of the sun’s plasma and electromagnetic fields on rates of the earth’s rotation, and hence the length of the day. • Effect of the sun’s gravitational field through the 18.6 year Lunar Nodal Cycle, causing variation in atmospheric pressure, temperature, rainfall, sea-level and ocean temperatures, especially at high latitudes. • Known links between solar activity and monsoonal activity, or the phases of climate oscillations such as the Atlantic Multidimensional Oscillation, a 60-year long cycle during which sea surface temperatures vary about 0.2°C above and below the long-term average, with effects on northern hemisphere air temperature, rainfall and drought. • Magnetic fields associated with solar flares, which modulate galactic cosmic ray input into the Earth’s atmosphere. This in turn may cause variations in the formation of low-level clouds. This causes cooling: a one per cent variation in low cloud cover producing a similar change in forcing to the estimated increase caused by human green-house gases. • The 1500 year-long Bond Cycle, as a result of which the three most recent warm peaks of this cycle had a major effect on the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods As Robert Carpenter (2010) has stated: “That many of the mechanisms and possible mechanisms by which the sun influences Earth’s climate are poorly understood is no justification for ignoring them.” Of immediate relevance is the fact that solar cycles longer than the eleven year average are followed by later cycles of lesser intensity, and with it a cooler climate. According to Archibald (2010), Cycle 24 may produce cooling of up to 2.2°C for the mid-latitude grain-growing areas of the northern hemisphere. This may have already started. Dr. Vincent Courtillot, who is a professor of geophysics at the University Paris-Diderot and Chair of paleomagnetism and geodynamics of the Institut Universitaire de France, has pointed (2011) to the failure of climate models in relation to the sun. He notes that while the total solar irradiance (TSI) only varies by about 0.1% over a solar cycle, the solar UV varies by about 10% and that secondary effects on cloud formation may vary up to 30% over solar cycles. The IPCC computer models dismiss the role of the sun by only considering the small variations of the TSI and ignore the large changes in the most energetic and influential part of the solar spectrum – the ultraviolet. John Penhallurick
  10. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    No, I did not suggest that Wunderground was being critical of SkS. But you missed the best graphic in that post: And this quote: It should be noted that in the past the discrepancy between surface and satellite temperature trends was much larger. Correcting various errors in the processing of the satellite data has brought them into much closer agreement with the surface data. Imagine that: the satellite data had errors in processing and had to be brought into agreement with the surface data.
  11. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    Camburn, you may wish to examine the 6th (last) figure above. From the original source (link provided above), the caption reads:
    "Bottom three traces: STAR MSU/AMSU Version 2.0, monthly global mean anomaly time series and trends for the layer temperatures of mid-troposphere (TMT),upper-troposphere (TUT), and lower-stratosphere (TLS). The TMT, TUT, and TLS time series are updated every month. Each update adds the monthly-mean, inter-calibrated and well-merged AMSU-A observations from the last month to the dataset. The up-to-date, monthly gridded (2.5 latitude by 2.5 longitude resolution)and global mean MSU/ASMU v2.0 data can be downloaded from here. Top three traces: STAR SSU Version 1.0, 5-day averaged global mean anomaly time series and trends for layer temperatures of mid-stratosphere (TMS), upper-stratosphere (TUS), and top-stratosphere (TTS). The well-merged, gridded (2.5 latitude by 2.5 longitude resolution) global dataset for SSU v1.0 can be downloaded from here."
  12. Eschenbach and McIntyre - Seeing the BEST part of the Satellite Temperature Record?
    Glenn: You state that the stratosphere is cooling. Would you be so kind as to provide the data source for this? Thank you.
  13. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Sorry, forgot to note that the original article has links to the "amateur compilations" under the names of the people who did them. (I have not checked to make sure they are live links).
  14. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    muoncounter @102, I failed to notice some points in that SkS article, which goes to show that SkS is a better resource than I realize ;)
    "Similar results can be obtained using different software and methods Over the past year, there has been quite a flurry of "do-it-yourself" temperature reconstructions by independent analysts, using either land-only or combined land-ocean data. In addition to the previously-mentioned work by Ron Broberg and Clear Climate Code, these include the following: Nick Stokes Zeke Hausfather Joseph at Residual Analysis Chad Herman JeffId and RomanM Tamino (There are probably others as well that we're omitting!) Most recently, the Muir Russell investigation in the UK was able to write their own software for global temperature analysis in a couple of days. For all of these cases, the results are generally quite close to the "official" results from NASA GISS, CRU, and NOAA NCDC. Figure 3 shows a collection of seven land-only reconstructions, and Figure 4 shows five global (land-ocean) reconstructions."
    We also have the graphs of reconstructions of global and land only temperatures: I believe most of the listed names count as amateur climatologists (if not amateur computer programmers), so Climate Underground was referring to SkS for a list of "amateur compilations". As has been happening a lot lately, he found SkS the most useful resource for facts about climate change on the internet. He was certainly not denigrating SkS. I interpreted you as believing he had. Did I get that wrong?
  15. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Tom C, I inserted the link from the Wunderground text - its an SkS post from 2010.
  16. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    SkS Iron Chefs vs. the short-order cooks from the Denial Diner: "Allez cuisine!" Surely anyone with a year or two of high school science looking at Eschenbach's figure (figure 2 here) can see at least these two points: a. the differences between datasets within the first 20-25 years is much much less than the last ten years. b. the variation from peaks to troughs is much greater than any of the differences between data sets. Is Eschenbach suggesting that urbanization is only a factor during the last decade? Seems unlikely. Has Eschenbach ever even heard of signal to noise ratio? The quoted text below figure 2 is also puzzling. Dividing the trend by 1.4 based on models, when we are told the models are wrong? And the last paragraph: "it is highly legitimate" ... and "presume"? Dr. Curry, author of the 'Uncertainty Monster,' must object to the ambiguous nature of that language. Does this explanation not even rise to the level of a 'likely' or 'very likely'? In this battle, the Iron Chef's cuisine reigns supreme.
  17. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Muoncounter @100, I believe the reference to "amateur compilations" refers to a number of reanalyses of the GHCN or gisstemp data which have shown the various fake "skeptic" arguments to be fallacious. I believe this was first done by Tamino (no surprise), and has been done by a number of people since. The most comprehensive effort has been be Clear Climate Code.
  18. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    Okay as long as Kevin didn't mind. I hated to delete it after he put so much work into his estimate. Sorry Kevin! :-) You're still credited as a co-author on the post at least, and your efforts are very much appreciated.
  19. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    No objections from me (despite the hours spent getting it right).
  20. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    dana1981, I would get rid of the GISS CCC estimate. It might add confusion. The point is also to show how the agreement exists between the additional datasets (with the except of Hadley)
  21. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    BEST already has a paper examining the effect of the UHI, so Eschenbach and McIntyre should have tried to deal with that directly instead of by insinuation. McIntyre pretends he's dealt with the issue before but hasn't actually done anything with BEST's method other than attack the credibility of the person running the analysis of MODIS data. Eschenbach doesn't even acknowledge with the BEST UHI paper's method at all, let alone criticize it. It's as though they never said anything about it other than the one line he quotes, which makes it mighty convenient for him to then cherry pick warm cities as a lazy rebuttal to imply that UHI is really at play.
  22. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    Thanks for the heads-up, Robert @1. I updated the figures in the post to include the data GISS provided to BEST, which has a 0.28°C/decade trend, as Kevin noted @3.
  23. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    In my figure at #3 about I labelled GISS-land and BEST the wrong way round. Sorry.
  24. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    Worth the wait, I hadn't known about the other 3 analyses...How many times do you have to look at UHI before you start to wonder if it's not the culprit? A few more for some people I guess...
  25. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    Thanks Robert, that's what we were after! Here's a quick comparison with the clear climate code version. giss land Using that data the slope from 1979-01 to 2009-12 is 0.274C/decade (0.277C/decade to 2010-12), bringing it much closer to BEST. (It's still a mystery that we can't reproduce this result with CCC, but there's probably a simple answer).
  26. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    I'm sure we can look forward to them submitting a joint publication for peer review somewhere major, like Science or Nature.
  27. Eschenbach and McIntyre's BEST Shot at the Surface Temperature Record
    You can find the GISS land-masked stuff at the following URL: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/Tanom_land_monthly.txt Provided by Gavin Schmidt.
  28. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    A small SkS shoutout appears in this Weather Underground blog post, dated 11/3. The result was a new land surface temperature series to be added to the well-cited records of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, in addition to some truly independent, amateur compilations. Amateur? The author engages in a bit of wishful thinking: The addition of another (eventually) peer-reviewed temperature series is good, and more eyes looking at the data is good, but the result is not surprising. However, it might have changed the minds of some skeptics who have been wanting to see an analysis from scientists that they find trustworthy. -- emphasis added Yeah, it might have changed some minds, but not the folks that live by this motto.
  29. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this interesting discussion. It's good to see so much genuine critical thinking. Regarding comments about the infra red images: the camera 'sees' only significant sources and sinks of radiated heat. The air itself is not imaged, so the IR images can say nothing whatsoever about air temperatures. All they can show is whether or not radiated heat is being absorbed by the weather station screens. If a screen was so close to a radiant source as to be heated by it, then we could assume with some justification that the air inside could or would be heated. But the weather station would need to be very close indeed: almost in contact with the radiating object. Tom Curtis #44 I agree with the previous comments: you have the basis of an excellent article here.
  30. CO2 measurements are suspect
    Actually I can. Try Severinghaus & Battle 2006. You can find other interesting papers (eg look for MA Headly) by looking for papers that cite it in google scholar.
  31. Climate's changed before
    Lance @ 293 Over the past couple months I have been reading both here and at JoNova's blog trying to acquaint myself with the state of the debate. Even if I were absolutely scientifically, numerically and logically illiterate, one thing would stand out. One side is full of desperation, anger, ideology, rhetoric and ignores questions. The other side is a little testy at times, a little left-biased at times but generally patient, responsive and comprehensive. SkS makes it really easy to pick who to trust.
  32. CO2 measurements are suspect
    Cant lay my hands on the papers, but a lot of work went into finding out when bubbles stopped exchanging with the air. Look up one of the early papers on ice bubble composition and work through reference list.
  33. Climate's changed before
    Sphaerica, Thanks , I guess that writing that response was the equivalent of root canal work for you. I get the point!
  34. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Possible subject of a future post: At what point back in the surface record does multiproxy analysis become more reliable in determining a global or hemispheric mean analysis? The 1800-1850 period in BEST appears to be very imprecise.
  35. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Sphaerica @21, What a lovely post. I was under the mistaken impression that the global mean temperature warmed between 1917 and 1943. But as you clearly show, it didn't. So let us not here again from those in denial or from "skeptics" that it warmed "rapidly" early in the early 20th century ;) In fact, going by some people's horribly misguided and false logic, it can be shown to be never be warming (or cooling). I'm beginning to doubt the existence of glacial and interglacial periods;) This would be a "Wow" moment for Dr. Judith Curry. What I love most about this Sphaerica is when those in denial try to argue that they are not in denial or when those who cherry pick try to convince others they are not cherry picking by doing just that, cherry picking. So they just keep reinforcing Dana's point-- can they really be oblivious to that fact? This has all reminded me of this fantastic song.
  36. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Another billion dollar plus weather disaster, the 29Oct blizzard that struck northeast US caused more than 3billion dollars damage in Connecticut alone. A more complete report is at Dr. Masters' site. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
  37. Watts, Surface Stations and BEST
    @Tom Curtis #44 Thank you for that analysis and I second John Hartz's suggestion that you make an article out of it. The WUWT crowd are sure to play up Muller's supposed manipulation of the results through the use of faulty data and it would be good to have a thorough analysis of what matters and what doesn't in a main article.
  38. keithpickering at 04:59 AM on 6 November 2011
    Chinese translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    This may be the most important translation yet. Thanks to Peter Ma.
  39. Chinese translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    The link corresponding to the image for "Chinese (Traditional)", center top, is dead. I think the "_Trad" has to be removed from the filename.
    Response: [JC] Fixed, thanks.
  40. Richard Milne separates skepticism from denial
    Thank you for posting this and thanks to Dr. Milne for lecturing on true skepticism vs. denialism/deception. Sometimes, I get the impression I am surrounded by denialism in the U.S. and often are only hearing that side of the debate - which isn't really to say it's a scientific debate whatsoever. The politicians are the loudest and ironically perhaps, from those political figures and our media these views are "trickled down" to ordinary, non-scientific people and so many of them embrace it with (as Dr. Milner points out) a kind of compassion or conviction. Despite this, I feel at home with less emotional and more forward scientific thinking here at skepticalscience.com and Dr. Milner's lecture illustrates the differences perfectly and candidly.
  41. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    Why on earth did people allow Camburn to troll and derail the thread? Please, DNFTT folks!
  42. Extreme Melting on Greenland Ice Sheet, Reports CCNY Team
    It was not my intention to imply any conspiracy on the part of science in my comment above. I wrote specifically of 'steering' by political, not scientific interests. The lack of quantified trends of the six mega-feedbacks' acceleration to date being - a/ assembled and b/ translated into language and graphic form accessible to the public, is something I'd be delighted to find I was wrong on. Can anyone locate such information ? I wrote the comment here of SkS precisely because of its fine and consistent coverage of the feedback reports since its launch. But as far as I know, SkS has yet to publish those quantified trends-thus-far, as an assembly, in a form accessible to the layman. Thus I was hoping that there might be sufficient concern over the issue to consider a fresh suggestion. I still hope that I wasn't wrong on that. For those who choose to respond defensively and see no reason to raise the game, I suggest they try talking to ordinary people about the NOAA/NSIDC report on permafrost carbon emissions: "Permafrost melting will cause around 100 billion tonnes of carbon to be emitted by 2100, getting to about 500 million tonnes by 2020 and to 1,600 million tonnes in 2100, - but that doesn't account for the CO2-equivalent warming due to part of the carbon coming out as methane, which is 72 times as potent as a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide, - and it doesn't include extra melting due to the warming caused by the permafrost greenhouse gas emissions; - or that due to the several other interactive mega-feedbacks that are now accelerating; - or that due to the foreseeable loss of the cooling sulphate pollution that ending our fossil fuel emissions will curtail." An ordinary person hearing such a litany of unquantified hazards is more likely to be turned off than concerned. The need for the clearest quantified overview achievable is thus very real - not for the minority who are still duped by fossil interests, but for the far larger numbers who accept AGW and see the need of action, but are not remotely well-enough informed of the scale and urgency of threat to demand action with implacable determination. Those who want to carry on tussling with deniers to chip away at their minority support are in my view entirely laudable in their efforts, but addressing the majority with information that can generate the demand for action is evidently the necessary precursor to action being achieved at the earliest possible date. I would hope that we can at least agree that achieving commensurate action on climate is our common goal. Regards, Lewis
    Response:

    [DB] Lewis, it is with the greatest of regret that I intervene here.  Not becuase of what you write isn't of interest or not needing further exploration; both are.  But because it is off-topic to this thread.

    With that in mind, I invite you to write this up as a guest post for consideration for publication here at SkS.  If you are interested, just respond to this here and I will email you the details.

    Again, if others want to explore portions of this on some of the other, more pertinent threads, feel free to do so & leave a pointer stub here.  Thanks!

  43. Climate's changed before
    294, lancelot, I don't have any more time for appinsys... have to chauffeur the teen daughter around town. But if you have any particular section of appinsys you'd like me to rip up, just let me know. It can be a fun diversion.
  44. Climate's changed before
    294, lancelot, appinsys MWP This section goes to great length to try to claim that the MWP is global and had temperatures greater than we are seeing currently, when this is patently false. Part of their argument:
    This IPCC statement is at odds with the findings of other scientists. For example, research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics report on a recent paper using proxies, which verifies the occurrence of the MWP: [http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310.html]
    The linked paper by Willie Soon (an astrophysicist, not a climate scientist) is notorious for it's failings, and the resulting resignation of half of the publishing journal's editorial board in the ensuing controversy. They go on to say:
    Many studies can be found exhibiting the MWP. One example is shown in the following figure.
    This is a common skeptic trick, and a great example of presenting individual proxies that for that one location seemingly show similar warming, yet their graphs stop before more recent temperatures. Another common problem is that the MWP is very loosely defined as occurring from 950 to 1250 AD. The warming in any particular location might be a 50 year span peaking at 1000, 1100, or 1200 AD. They're all treated as contemporaneous. Can you imagine if current temperatures were computed by taking the highest temperature in a 300 year span from each separate location on the globe? In their example shown here the peak is just prior to 1000 AD. They also term this a "Northern Hemisphere" reconstruction even though 9 of the 14 proxy sites used lie above the 60˚ north, and 13 of the 14 above 45˚ north. It's more appropriately a sub-arctic reconstruction. And yet even their graph hows that current global temperatures exceed those around 1000 AD at that latitude. If you were to instead plot temperatures in the same band, you'd see this: [Source: GISTEMP... click on the image to view] Imagine the 1 to 3 degree increase added to the Cook graph, which are representative of the same sites used in his study and on his graph, instead of the temps appinsys added. The Cook paper is available here.
  45. Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
    fund me - something similar is coming in Part 2
  46. Baked Curry: The BEST Way to Hide the Incline
    Wheels#79: "there's no evidence to say it didn't happen." Curry's new discipline, the study of the lack of evidence of what hasn't happened, is the core principle of climastrology. As opposed to the cold, hard reality of science, this field prefers to embrace such traits as selective myopia ('it was over here the last time I looked') and an allergy to gestalt ('can't see the forest for the trees'). A tendency to believe that 2 + 2 = 5 is also helpful. A plausible conclusion is also that 'there isn't any evidence that we haven't been invaded by aliens.' Be afraid, be very afraid.
  47. Climate's changed before
    294, lancelot, I dont' want to waste too much time dissecting their nonsense, because just looking at it makes my skin crawl, but you should note that they are very, very good at taking actual scientific data that is accurate, but presenting only that data that fits the conclusions they wish to establish. I'll just do a couple. Their page trying to claim that warming is not global. This page goes to great lengths cherry picking plots to try to show that warming is merely a northern hemisphere problem. Their conclusion:
    Conclusion: The empirical data show that warming in recent decades is a northern hemisphere phenomenon – in particular an Arctic phenomenon –with no significant warming in the tropics or southern hemisphere.   It is not a global phenomenon.
    The fact is that because of the unequal distribution of land masses the warming in the two hemispheres is always dramatically different. This does not mean that the southern hemisphere is immune or not involved, merely that it responds differently in the short term. The conclusion that warming will be greater in the Arctic is, in fact, a tenet of the current science -- research "polar amplification." At the same time, much of their evidence relates to the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic ice and temperatures, but these are apples and oranges. One is a large sea virtually hemmed in by land, while the other is a large, mountainous area of land surrounded on all sides by ocean. The southern hemisphere is dominated by ocean, while the northern hemisphere is dominated by land. Of course they are responding differently!
  48. Climate's changed before
    lancelot#254: Replying here, a thread that deals in facts; a strong counterpoint to appinsys.
  49. Test your climate knowledge in free online course
    Continuing from here. lancelot: I put this reply on this thread, as it is educational and fact-based, as opposed to the shrill opinions and nonsense you see on appinsys. Scan their 'updates': IPCC ... lies, Arctic warming ... not CO2, Climate refugee claims debunked, US has no significant warming; and a host of others. Practically everything on that site is incorrect, biased, prejudicial, etc; it is a veritable encyclopedia of denial. Do you see any references to actual scientific literature or is it mostly just hand-waving? To be fair, I have used their climate data visuallizer for quick access to 5x5 lat long grids of temperature trends.
  50. Ferran P. Vilar at 02:36 AM on 6 November 2011
    Fred Singer Denies Global Warming
    The logic of the denialist movement is very different from the scientific logic. It's an economic logic, it's a power logic. Sometimes it's a religious (fundamentalist) logic. Anyway, it's a media dynamics logic. I suspect this move is just another successful attempt to put themselves on the focus once more, with the aim at reinforcing "the other side" facing the public at large, and so reinvigorating the 'debate'. In recognizing that the Earth is warming, they acquire a sense of 'fairness' that they were losing, and this allows them to be more credible with their next claim: it's not CO2 or, at least, it's not the fossil fuels (alternatively, the economic growth). They exhibit high scientific incompetence. But where they really excel is in the management of public opinion. I think it's no coincidence that this 'discovery' appears just one month before the talks in Durban. Be ready with what can happen before Rio next year.

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