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

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Comments 71851 to 71900:

  1. Test your climate knowledge in free online course
    Congratulations to the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and the collaborative universities for putting together this elegant, simple, clear yet thorough guide to AGW. Big pat on the back to Skeptical Science too for it's role as evidenced by the number of times articles on the site are used as important references in the resources section. It's a great tool to bypass deniers on blogs and just refer people to look to educate themselves if they still have an open mind. I especially liked the simple video demonstration in the 1st section showing how CO2 absorbs heat. Absolutely smashes the denialist myth that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist (of course we knew that anyway but what a great way to show it). Top marks to all concerned
  2. Clouds provide negative feedback
    Sphaerica (RE: 211), "The feedback is a response to any input, whether that input is part of constant change and chaos, or a new, steady input." Yes. It's interesting that you would mention this because it leads into my next point, and that is the physical processes and feedbacks that maintain the planet's energy balance cannot be separated from those that will act on additional 'forcings', such as GHGs.
  3. Clouds provide negative feedback
    Sphaerica (RE: 211), "The question, rephrased so that you can understand it, is: If you have a net negative feedback, why does the system succeed in fluctuating so greatly? Why does the negative feedback not keep the system stable and within very narrow confines?" Because the feedbacks take time and the system is largely chaotic. Over time, the net negative feedback does keep the system tightly constrained, which is why longer-term globally averaged there is generally very little change relative to the much larger more local and regional short-term change.
  4. Clouds provide negative feedback
    RW1, Your current question to me (#202) is effectively "How can 2 + (2 * 1.5) = 5?" In the context of your question, positive feedback is simple math.
  5. Clouds provide negative feedback
    The question, rephrased so that you can understand it, is: If you have a net negative feedback, why does the system succeed in fluctuating so greatly? Why does the negative feedback not keep the system stable and within very narrow confines? And separately there is no requirement that the inputs be the "constant change and chaos." Yes, I understand that it fits with what you are trying to arbitrarily impose on the system, but it is too narrow a definition. The feedback is a response to any input, whether that input is part of constant change and chaos, or a new, steady input. Any attempt to frame the definitions and system only within the narrow confines of a predetermined conclusion will confuse the issue. Please stick with proper, true definitions, rather than reframing things in order to score points or twist the argument in a certain direction.
  6. 9 Months After McLean
    I think wingding's second hypothesis is plausible:
    "Or he hadn't bothered looking at a global record at all but had just plugged numbers into some SOI->global temp equation he had incorrectly derived and hadn't bothered to even question the plausibility of the result."
  7. Bert from Eltham at 15:13 PM on 25 October 2011
    The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    As a retired physicist who was taught to look for internal consistency with ALL the evidence for any hypothesis. I find the posts on WUWT merely an exercise in partitioning the bits of evidence that fit their preconceived beliefs. I must admit my bias as I have read this (SkS) site in totality before posting and found it completely self consistent. I read as much as I could stomach at WUWT and concluded it was a waste of time. It is all over the place with no coherence scientifically. It seems to be trying to be the devil's advocate that pulls evidence out of thin air. They seem to be looking for counterfeit dollar bills to prove that all the other bills are counterfeit. Conversely I have learned a lot that I had not even considered from SkS that fills in all the missing bits as I am not a climatologist. Thank you to all here for clearing up quite a few of my misconceptions. When I get fully up to speed may be able to contribute more. Bert
  8. Clouds provide negative feedback
    RW1, I must have missed your answer to my question - how do you explain palaeoclimate variations (glacial-interglacial cycles and so on) with a net negative feedback? Maybe you can provide an answer where Pielke, Spencer and Lindzen have not (to my knowledge)?
  9. Michael Hauber at 15:05 PM on 25 October 2011
    9 Months After McLean
    Being picky I could argue that McLean's predictions being for 'coolest year since 1956 or even earlier' means he only has to be colder than 1964 to be correct. That makes him out by about 0.45 degrees so far instead of 0.5. I can't help wondering whether he knew his prediction was absurd, and was just trying for a sensational hook to get maximum media exposure for his claims that AGW was false.
  10. SkS Weekly Digest #21
    Yocta, nice one! Daniel, I had missed that post, thanks. Not that I was unaware of clathrate potential, but that post is succinct.
  11. Clouds provide negative feedback
    Sphaerica, Feedback is the response to changes in energy flux. I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, the constant change and chaos fits well with what I'm saying. That's largely my point.
  12. Clouds provide negative feedback
    204, RW1, 205, RW1, In case I'm being too subtle, what I mean by that is stop playing games and answer the question.
  13. 9 Months After McLean
    winding: If you remove the long-term (rising) trend from the data, then it is indeed possible that 2011 may be at or below 1956 levels. In that case, though, what you're plotting is the variation about the trend, rather than actual anomalies. But that's not what was predicted, as far as anyone can tell. Bob Loblaw: Scientists don't speculate, they hypothesise... :-D But seriously, yes, I agree, speculation is good, so long as it's followed up by investigation and analysis.
  14. Clouds provide negative feedback
    205, RW1, Yes, we all know that. It doesn't answer the question. Except for the "from all the chaos that results in the constant variation" part. You added that just to make it look like it fits well with your own hypothesis, but you just made it up. Feedback is the response to the inputs. Period.
  15. Clouds provide negative feedback
    204, RW1, Yes, we all know that. It doesn't answer the question.
  16. Clouds provide negative feedback
    Sphaerica (RE: 203), Feedback, by definition, is the response to the changes in energy flux from all the chaos that results in the constant variation.
  17. Clouds provide negative feedback
    Sphaerica (RE: 203), "Can you explain how such variability could exist with a net negative feedback damping the system?" It's a highly dynamic and chaotic system with large changes in incident energy flux. Changes from day to night, changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, etc., etc. It's constantly changing everywhere all the time.
  18. Clouds provide negative feedback
    202, RW1, Can you explain how such variability could exist with a net negative feedback damping the system?
  19. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Speaking of extreme weather, the sun's kickin' out some major whup-a** (for us NH aurora geeks): http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/pmap/gif/pmapN.gif
  20. Clouds provide negative feedback
    Bibliovermis (RE: 201), "No, net feedback in the climate system is not required to be negative." Then can you explain how the current energy balance is maintained despite such significant amount of shorter-term, local, regional, seasonal hemispheric and even sometimes globally averaged variability?
  21. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Nice headline over at Climate Progress today:
    Study Finds 80% Chance Russia’s 2010 July Heat Record Would Not Have Occurred Without Climate Warming "… the majority of monthly records like the Moscow heat wave must be considered due to the warming trend. In highly aggregated data with small variability compared to the trend, like the global-mean temperature, almost all recent records are due to climate warming"
    "For July temperature in Moscow, we estimate that the local warming trend has increased the number of records expected in the past decade fivefold, which implies an approximate 80% probability that the 2010 July heat record would not have occurred without climate warming."
    "Our statistical method does not consider the causes of climatic trends, but given the strong evidence that most of the warming of the past fifty years is anthropogenic, most of the recent extremes in monthly or annual temperature data would probably not have occurred without human influence on climate."
    Fun stuff, this global warming thingy. The study itself can be found here (H/T to Mark Harrigan).
  22. Climate Change Demands New Decision-Making Strategies by National Leaders.
    Whaddyaknow! here's one Increase of extreme events in a warming world or at least a statistical analysis. Anyone know of any hard global datasets?
  23. Climate Change Demands New Decision-Making Strategies by National Leaders.
    Is anyone aware of a validated statistcal compilation being published about the changes in frequency (if any - though I'm betting they are on the rise) and severity (if any - though again I suspect worse) of climate related disasters and their negative impacts? There's been quite a debate about the attribution of any individual event to AGW - rightly so as any evidence will be, at best, indirect and challengeable - but a statistical picture over time would be more convincing and useful in the armory against "skeptics" and in the political arena as these events have very real "here and now" immediately felt sconomic costs.
  24. Climate's changed before
    This paper in a recent edition of Climate Research by Svante Björck would appear to debunk the skeptics argument Current global warming appears anomalous in relation to the climate of the last 20000 years In fact it would seem global climate has NOT changed by as much as it has recently in 20,000 years. The abstract states To distinguish between natural and anthropogenic forcing, the supposedly ongoing global warming needs to be put in a longer, geological perspective. When the last ca. 20000 yr of climate development is reviewed, including the climatically dramatic period when the Last Ice Age ended, the Last Termination, it appears that the last centuries of globally rising temperatures should be regarded as an anomaly. Other, often synchronous climate events are not expressed in a globally consistent way, but rather are the expression of the complexities of the climate system. Due to the often poor precision in the dating of older proxy records, such a statement will obviously be met with some opposition. However, as long as no globally consistent climate event prior to today’s global warming has been clearly documented, and considering that climate trends during the last millennia in different parts of the world have, in the last century or so, changed direction into a globally warming trend, we ought to regard the ongoing changes as anomalies, triggered by anthropogenically forced alterations of the carbon cycle in the general global environment. and there's a pretty good explanation of it at Science Daily Would like to see skeptical science do a feature on this paper please?
    Moderator Response: [DB] I have invited Dr. Björck to participate via a guest blog on the paper.
  25. SkS Weekly Digest #21
    You were expecting maybe a Kraken???
  26. Arctic Ice Volume is diminishing even more rapidly than Area
    papers, week #42 Ari..... Assumed negative feedback, Arctic winter.... positive feedback. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1285.html
  27. SkS Weekly Digest #21
    RE#2 Chris G or perhaps somebody near by facing the other way having a tea party?
  28. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    89 Dana Thanks.
  29. SkS Weekly Digest #21
    In the cartoon, I wonder what would make a good three-heads metaphor. I suppose if someone wanted to, they could draw 7 heads, and note that CO2 absorbs/emits strongly at wavenumber 666. But, bringing in a biblical boogeyman would probably not play well, with anyone, science-based or religious. For some reason, a Greek mythological monster does not raise eyebrows in the same way.
  30. SkS Weekly Digest #21
    Great work everyone at SkS. Can't wait for the new ones in the pipeline!
  31. Climate's changed before
    lancelot - you should probably make a start with Ch6 of AR4, WG1 report. In it, there is diagram (Fig 6.13) showing various reconstructions of temperature with hindcast modelling in grey, giving you a good idea on the uncertainties too.
  32. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    les - see my comment #47. Yes, the BEST paper only looked at decadal variations in de-trended data, meaning that their analysis could not say anything about long-term global warming causes (same as the McLean and Carter ENSO paper). Basically they found a good correlation between AMO and land surface temp variations on decadal timescales and then said "hmm maybe this means AMO could be contributing to global warming", but they didn't actually investigate that supposition. Nor did they think about it very hard, since as I noted in comment #46, oceanic cycles like AMO and ENSO don't create heat or cause long-term warming trends. Though over a few decades it could be more positive than negative, and thus could marginally contribute to a warming trend over a few decades, so that's probably what Muller et al. were suggesting. But they didn't actually investigate that possibility in their paper. Frankly the line in question was kind of a throw-away that the "skeptics" have latched onto in desperation.
  33. 9 Months After McLean
    I cannot fathom how that 1956 prediction could emerge from any, even wildly incorrect, assumptions. I can only presume that he was looking at a regional (arctic, US?) record where 1956 is closer to present and was interpreting it as a global prediction. Or he hadn't bothered looking at a global record at all but had just plugged numbers into some SOI->global temp equation he had incorrectly derived and hadn't bothered to even question the plausibility of the result.
  34. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    84 - Dana 1981 Regarding AMO Tino says (edited bits):
    M2011 specifically examine variations on time scales from 2 to 15 years. ... Subtracting the low-order polynomial effectively acts as a high-pass filter, removing the very slow fluctuations. .... Eliminating slow fluctuations was motivated by a desire to remove the long-term trend due to global warming or other influences.
    So this is just about medium term fluctuations and not about the causes of global warming; is that right? Then the appeal to this work as BEST saying "it's not us" by the 'skeptics' is some other paper? I'm confused.
  35. 9 Months After McLean
    When I first read the post, it struck me that the largest annual change (a decrease) occuring between 1963 and 1964, just happened to coincide with the Mt. Agung eruption. Coincidence? (Granted, there are other large decreases that do not seem to correspond to volcanic eruptions, and large increases of simlar magnitude, too.) Re: speculation. Without speculation, scientists would never develop new research questions. Scientists speculate all the time. It's just that they should identify it as speculation, and follow it with data collection and analysis to show whether it is reasonable or not. The denial PR machine will take it out of context whenever they can, but speculation is part of life.
  36. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 05:57 AM on 25 October 2011
    9 Months After McLean
    michael sweet, I disagree scientist should not speculate. Yes I agree they can make predictions based on current knowledge and scientific evidence but speculation, especially by sceptics, just feeds the denial PR machine. I'm pretty sure Hansen's prediction wasn't speculative but based on the vast quantity of data being generated by models. Also we were overdue a strong El Nino.
  37. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Albatross - Mea culpa, I was looking at the wrong paper. That said, you are quite right about the Watts surface station data not being continuous even over the last 30 years, and the fact that he's offered nothing but unsupported assertions. He certainly could use the data made available by BEST to run his own analysis, but based on past history I consider it quite unlikely that he'll make that effort.
  38. 9 Months After McLean
    Hyperactive: On the contrary, real scientists make predictions about the future to show their predictive powers. Four years ago Dr. Hansen predicted that in the next three years one would set a new record high. He was proven correct in 2010 when it set a new record. That shows the his methods have skill. McLean has shown how much skill his methods have.
  39. 9 Months After McLean
    CBD - maybe, but Figure 1 shows there's virtually zero chance of even a single month falling anywhere near 1956 levels. But I guess climate 'skepticism' is a very hopeful and optimistic mindset in general.
  40. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 05:22 AM on 25 October 2011
    9 Months After McLean
    This is why scientist should not speculate.
  41. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Albatross@83 The only thing accurate in that cartoon is the Sour Grapes.
  42. 9 Months After McLean
    No surprise. 'Skeptics' never consider themselves to be wrong. It will be fun to ask him about his prediction on January, though. If he ever answers that, of course.
  43. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 05:02 AM on 25 October 2011
    The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    James Delingpole with his view on the BEST research. No pretty, usual collection of misinformation and not surprisingly the line; we knew the planet was warming. Interestingly he did a blog post last year referencing D'Aleo and Watts claiming the opposite. Global Warming: is it even happening?
  44. 9 Months After McLean
    He's probably hoping that one month this year will drop below the 1956 level so that he can say that he meant one point during 2011 will be colder than 1956, not that the entire year would be. Even there he is facing long odds, but it verges closer to rationality than any other explanation I can think of.
  45. 9 Months After McLean
    NewYorkJ - your speculation #1 is probably the most likely excuse. I can see McLean claiming that his prediction was wrong because La Nina wasn't as strong as he expected. It will be fascinating to see his explanation, because as the above blog post (particularly Figure 2) shows, his prediction was utterly ludicrous and completely indefensible. I don't know what he can possibly say to save face after getting a one-year prediction wrong by ~0.6°C.
  46. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Watts has built himself up a nice system of denial. Papers are worthless until they're peer-reviewed (unless he likes them), and once it's peer-reviwed, it's just "pal review", so he can still reject any paper he doesn't want to believe. Dale @52 - as Albatross has noted, the graph you link is only of the upper 700 meters of OHC. It also does show an increase over the past several years, albeit a small one, but graphs which include the upper 1500 meters or more show a much larger increase in OHC. As we told Dr. Pielke several times, the oceans are greater than 700 meters in depth. As for AMO, tamino has a very good post on the paper in question. He shows that AMO actually lags behind temp changes slightly, whereas ENSO leads, and concludes
    "it seems more likely to me that the correlation of AMO with land-only temperature reflects a common cause rather than causality from AMO to temperature."
  47. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Muoncounter @78, "I hadn't seen the attacks you mention in point #3. Weren't we told that AW had the highest ethical standards? " I can't repeat the language used by a Watts affiliate on here without breaking the house rules, well let me try, Eschenbach at WUWT stated that BEST team are "media wh#res." And then Anthony posted this defamatory cartoon of Muller. For more vitriol and ridicule, hyperbole and conspiracy theories read the threads at WUWT if you can stomach it. But, as Dr. Pielke Sr. assures us "First, I have worked with Anthony and he is devoted to the highest level of scientific robustness. Second, he does not have boxes with derogatory labels on them identifying individual scientists." No, Watts just regularly posts defamatory opinion pieces and cartoons of scientists who don't share his beliefs and ideology. Is a cartoon mocking Dr. Judith Curry next on his list I wonder?
  48. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    Dale @ 59 - "As for heat, the first graph implies that ocean heat content has risen steadily. It hasn't. Wrong. Note the following: And this from the SkS post: Ocean Cooling Corrected, Again
  49. The BEST Kind of Skepticism
    KR @79, Mr. Watts is upset about the findings in this paper titled "Earth Atmospheric Land Surface Temperature and Station Quality in the United States", not so much the UHI paper in which they used the MODIS data. There is also the problem with the classification by Watts that they have not, to my knowledge been independently verified (the self-professed "auditor" decided to give their analysis a free pass), and that they only strictly apply at the time the site survey's were recently made, so using Anthony's logic, their classification doesn't necessarily apply for the entire 1979-2008 period used in Fall et al. (2011) either. Regardless, Anthony's complaint is unsubstantiated and at this point mere assertion rather than anything based on data analysis or facts.
  50. 9 Months After McLean
    I offer up some speculation on how McLean will defend his indefensible prediction. 1. The la Nina wasn't as strong as we thought it would be and was subsided by mid-year. 2. The solar cycle really picked up. 3. A supposedly predicted volcanic eruption didn't happen. 4. Data was fudged and can't be trusted. 5. The prediction was for what the surface record would be without all the urban heat influences, siting issues, and land use changes that is responsible for much of the warming. 6. The prediction is meant to be validated against the most reliable UHA satellite record, using methodology from 1997 and before. 7. The prediction was only for parts of the tropical Pacific. 8. It was an imposter who wrote that prediction.

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