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Comments 73901 to 73950:

  1. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    Hi Norman - what I took from Stu Ostro's presentation was that there was the observation that quite often extreme events happened around these large pressure anomalies. I didn't see him indicate a causal mechanism, and so his idea is firmly in 'hypothesis' territory. I would have thought that ordinary blocking events provide the conditions under which dry weatehr has the opportunity to become extremely dry, and wetter weather has the chance to be extremely wet. In that case the blocking itself may not have changed much (though Ostro shows some very extreme values). The weather extremes are thus a result of higher average temperatures and a greater capacity to evaporate or hold more water vapour in the atmosphere - these are of course known consequences of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It remains an interesting possibility that blocking itself may have changed either in location or in strength, leading to greater extremes and/or extremes in places less used to them.
  2. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    skywatcher @ 44 I am going through the presentation by Stu Ostro. It is interesting but I am not completely following the connection to Global Warming. Ridges at the 500 mb level prevent troughs from moving and create extreme weather in these areas. I was not sure he made a clear explanation of how global warming is changing patterns. I will continue to digest and research the material as time permints. I thank you for reposting this. I remember looking at it earlier. Here is a few month's worth of 500 mb anomalies from December 2003 to February 2004. Animation of 500 mb anomalies. What I am trying to determine is if Stu Ostro's presentation of anomalies at 500 mb level is really that extreme. I am looking for more animations of this pressure level to determine height anomalies and get some form of what normally occurs. It is a way for me to verify this presentation.
  3. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Riccardo makes a good point. Also the fact that there is a greater effect with a smaller sampling size (less events as amplitude of FD increases) also worries me. I would have conducted a more robust null model, maybe a Monte Carlo simulation that generated sets of randomly placed events, just to see what the odds of getting an apparent significant effect by random chance, and how that changed with the threshold used.
  4. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    tblakeslee, I think we should ignore your arguments until you respond to David Lewis' comment at #99 regarding Richard Alley's presentation. If cosmic rays had little effect during this massive excursion 40kyr ago (cosmic ray flux doubled for a thousand years), why should the much smaller variations have any sizeable effect at all? This is quite apart from all the other reasons that we know cosmic rays are nothing more than a fine tuning knob.
  5. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    also Dana69 @28:
    "I am not sure what the specific difference is"
    Man-made CO2 is actually only about 3-5% of annual global CO2 emissions. However, the natural carbon cycle is in balance (nature absorbs slightly more carbon than it emits), so humans are responsible for 100% of the annual atmospheric CO2 increase. However, what Dr. Pielke was referring to was the global energy imbalance. Effects like an increased greenhouse effect or increased solar activity can throw off the Earth's energy balance, leading to more incoming than outgoing energy. Global warming is the result of this sort of energy imbalance. Dr. Pielke claimed that CO2 was responsible for 26% of the current energy imbalance (the rest is other greenhouse gases, black carbon, etc.). Based on the scientific literature, we believe it's twice that (about 50%).
  6. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Dana69 @28 - that CO2 is not the only factor was another of our agreements with Dr. Pielke, discussed in this post.
    "Although CO2 is one of the primary causes of the current climate change (more on the magnitude of its effects in a separate post), we agree with Dr. Pielke that other climate influences such as land-use change must also be addressed through climate policy."
    CO2 is, however, the largest single factor causing global warming (again, we'll discuss this further in the Disagreements post). As a side note, the Disagreements post will likely be delayed to give Dr. Pielke a chance to respond to this post, as he's currently traveling.
  7. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Here's the prior comment. The Dragic paper is quite good: with FDs that reduce the count rate by 7%, there's a detectable increase in DTR, but for FDs with only a 5% decrease, the effect disappears. Did someone say 'hardly a robust result'?
  8. Philippe Chantreau at 09:27 AM on 27 September 2011
    CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Re Tblakeslee at 100: Do you realize that this is the very same Dragic paper that Muouncounter linked to earlier to showq that events that may have an effect, as small as it might be, are rare and happen only a few times a year?
  9. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Dave123 @16 You ask me to validate Dr. Pielke Sr. data. He provides his supporting data in most of his posts. "First, the climate system is much more than just a globally averaged surface temperature. Even with respect to global annual averaged radiative imbalance, the retention of the scientifically inaccurate use of surface temperature trends (with its lags) is unnecessary. The changes in the ocean heat content over time, when accurately measured, provides a diagnostic of the radiative imbalance without the need for considering lags or a so-called “climate sensitivity”." ( -Snip- ) I am going to go outside the bounds for a second and tell you I have been following Dikran Marsupials responses, both here and other sites, and I have to say he has an impressive intellectual mind. I am not sure of his background, or credentials, but he is someone with a firm grasp of ideas and an impressive array of responses. Are peoples credentials published here, or is this more of a closed site for peoples backgrounds? Lastly, I was wrong when I stated: "He made the claim that man-made CO2 was responsible for about 26% of the yearly global emissions. I did not see any refutation of this claim. I was corrected when it was pointed out Dr. Pielke actual stated: "that CO2 is responsible for 26% of the net positive radiative forcing, which is very different than what you claim he said." I am not sure what the specific difference is, but it does seem to suggest that it is not the entire equation. It may be a factor, but not THE factor. The only implication of this conclusion is political, not scientific. Science talks about what is, politics talks about what ought. Respectfully,
    Response:

    [DB] Quote seemingly attributed to RPSr snipped due to language.

    "Are peoples credentials published here, or is this more of a closed site for peoples backgrounds?"

    What matters at SkS is the scientific strength of the argument, not any credentials.  Participants comments are thus judged and weighed on their own merits.  Nothing else need matter.  That being said, some members of SkS have a short bio located here (not a comprehensive list).

    "It may be a factor, but not THE factor."

    Based on what?  You give us nothing to work with here.

    "The only implication of this conclusion is political, not scientific."

    Actually the scientific implications dwarf the political ones.  If the laws of physics are any guide, a great deal of humanity stands to find out those selfsame implications.

    "A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be." ~ Albert Einstein

  10. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    Which suggests that lower troposphere air masses that are supersaturated with water perform condensation to form clouds without needing much assistance from cosmic rays. There seems to be no shortage of 'nucleators' available.
  11. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Even a cursory reality check makes the 0.5 °C DTR change for a 10% decrease in cosmic rays unlikely. The same 10% are aproximately the GCR intensity variation during half solar cycle; this means that we should see a 1 °C swing in DTR every 11 years. Anyone noticed it?
  12. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    tblakeslee: Interesting, but here are some other recent papers. See: Erlykin 2011“The contribution of CR to ‘climate change’ is quite negligible” Magee 2011 “the scientific rhubarb over cosmic/cloud connectivity can be made into a delicious pie” (!) Sloan 2011 “It is shown that, if such a link exists, the changing cosmic ray intensity contributes less than 8% to the increase in the mean global surface temperature observed since 1900”
  13. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    ENSO does not influence the deep ocean but involves an up and down movement of the thermocline. The "climastrological" interpretation of ENSO given by tblakeslee #30 is irrelevant here.
  14. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Here is a new paper that shows the sun-cloud connection in the real world by looking at diurnal temperature range (DTR) which is the difference between the high and the low of the day. You may remember that after 9/11, when the airplanes were grounded, the DTR increased due to the decreased cloud cover with no contrails. Plotting the DTR after 13 Forbush events (coronal mass ejections) that abruptly decreased cosmic rays by at least 10%. Figure 5 shows a DTR deviation curve that very cleanly peaks three days after the event at .5 degrees centigrade. http://www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/315/2011/astra-7-315-2011.pdf
  15. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC AR4 (update)
    Agreed skywatcher - there's not much to disagree with in the conclusions, which are pretty darn wishy-washy (as necessary due to the lack of data available), so the criticisms are necessarily nitpicky. Regarding the claim that starting in 2000 was a cherrypick - aside from the fact that the AR4 model run began in 2000, it wasn't a particularly cold year either. By 2000-2010 standards sure, but at the time, it was the 6th-hottest year on record, and hotter than the 1990-1999 average. The only reason it was relatively cold is that the past decade has been so hot! It's funny that the same people who are arguing there's been little to no warming over the past decade are also arguing that 2000, which at the time was exceptionally hot (6th-hottest year on record) now must be considered a cold year. As for ENSO, the end of 2010 saw a moderate La Nina which was reflected in the early 2011 temperatures, which I could have excluded by looking at just 2000-2010 or 2001-2010 observational data. But I didn't, I included all data through July 2011, including those months impacted by La Nina. In short, that particularl nitpick is just plain wrong.
  16. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    Rob @33 I just put in the references and quotes from Alley's presentation because I wasn't seeing his argument made in the post. I wrote it more for people who might be dropping in on the site as opposed to those creating it. I assumed the people involved with creating this site are well aware of Dr. Alley, his AGU presentation, and his body of work. I think Dr. Alley's point about cosmic rays and their influence on climate is very strong. Hansen often makes his points citing paleo data because as he says all possible feedbacks and factors are in there. Whatever the exact processes are, that may or may not affect clouds, that are influenced by variations in cosmic rays, the paleo data shows that a dramatic variation of the abundance of cosmic rays on a millenia time scale in the past had no climate effect. Its the kind of data that would really take the wind out of your sails if you were saying you felt like you were on the brink of discovering some new major factor to climate science. If you were at all rational that is.
  17. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    tblakeslee @37 ENSO is a result of non-linear coupling between the atmosphere and ocean, so you are asserting that a prediction that completely ignores the atmosphere and ocean is based on sound physics? Landscheidt's later predictions are in fact several times wrong. La Nina after APR04-APR05: Wrong. SOI indicates a warm phase El Nino from MAY05-APR06: Wrong. SOI indicates a cool phase Lastly, if ENSO is truly the result of sun cycles, then how do you explain ENSO cycles seen in climate models without those cycles built in?
  18. Extreme Flooding In 2010-2011 Lowers Global Sea Level
    Hi Rob, Just to add to the graphics above (figure 3). I think this is what is known as an interesting correlation.
  19. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    Hat tip to "AGW Observer". A paper is in press at J. Climate by Agee et al. (2011), they conclude: "An updated assessment has been made of the proposed hypothesis that “galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) are positively correlated with lower troposphere global cloudiness.” A brief review of the many conflicting studies that attempt to prove or disprove this hypothesis is also presented. It has been determined in this assessment that the recent extended quiet period (QP) between solar cycles 23–24 has led to a record high level of GCRs, which in turn has been accompanied by a record low level of lower troposphere global cloudiness. This represents a possible observational disconnect, and the update presented here continues to support the need for further research on the GCR-Cloud hypothesis and its possible role in the science of climate change." In other words, the increase in cosmic rays has not been associated with an increase in lower tropospheric cloud cover as predicted by the GCR hypothesis, in fact it has been associated with a record low level of lower troposphere global cloudiness. This finding also points to a positive feedback between warming and clouds.
  20. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    David... Believe me, I think that Alley lecture has made the rounds here. I've watched it several times myself. The moderators here use it quite frequently as a place where people can start learning more about climate science. Dr Alley is somewhat of a hero around these parts. My point was that I believe there was a lot of infighting over whether to fund the CLOUD research in the first place (though, admittedly I've done little research on this). Of course AGW deniers call this out to "prove" that the climate research community is against them but there are lots of people with lots of research projects and CERN has to pick and choose what research goes forward and what gets rejected. The CLOUD project, obviously, was approved. My point was, reinforcing what Alley was saying that "it's a small control knob at best." Based on previous research it's unlikely that the CLOUD project is going to turn up anything BIG with regard to cloud nucleation and climate effects.
  21. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    tbl @ 37. Did he also predict that 2010 would tie for warmest in the instrumental record despite the la nina?
  22. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    That's silly tblakeslee. Sea level data is obtained either from tide gauges or satellite ocean surface height measures. Tide gauge averages composite the individual sea level records from different tide gauges in different locations to provide an average sea level (and thus can be used to determine an average sea level change). The use of tide gauge records to composite local sea level measures doesn't involve averaging the tides! Any work of fundamental value to the scientific community is well cited. I suspect that the problems with the paper that I pointed out above are widely recognised, and therefore the work isn't that useful.
  23. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    Dhogaza and Dana, Thanks for clarifying Dana. Yes, of course Tamino was not part of the belittling and ridiculing of Dr. Nurse-- quite the opposite, and that would quickly become evident upon reading the Tamino post that I linked to. I directed people there for two reasons: 1) To see the offending cartoon, and 2) So they could at the same time see how misleading it is. But yes, that that cartoon was originally published at WUWT. Dana, re your side note. Watts et al. are probably doing that to make up for the fact that they cannot make a coherent, substantive and internally consistent scientific argument against the theory of AGW and against the overwhelming science. As I said before it is a game for them, a PR game, that and they have to keep feeding fodder to those in denial about AGW and its consequences...sadly doing so is frighteningly easy.
  24. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    Chris 34 The idea of averaging tides makes no sense as they all average to zero. Look at the tide charts and you will find that they are only for specific locations. The tide is a wave that moves as the planet and moon rotate. It would be useful to separately analyze other tide stations but averaging would just destroy the data. The tides are very predictable just as the tides on the sun are predictable. "This work has hardly been cited since it was published. That's usually an indication that it doesn't provide much insight into fundamental understanding..." Or that, like an elephant under the rug, it was simply ignored.
    Response:

    [DB] "Or that, like an elephant under the rug, it was simply ignored."

    In all things, the simplest explanation is usually the best.  In this case, the absence of supporting observations coupled with a already-formed understanding of the physics underlying what we do see explains the lack of citations.

    Thus, Shaviv's work (while interesting) is simply not relevant given the established science.  Beating this dead horse as you do is like calling a dog's tail a 5th leg: the dog still has but 4 legs, as calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so.

  25. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    I think Albatross meant that his second link (to tamino) discussed a second belittling (via cartooning) of Nurse, not that tamino was belittling Nurse. As a side note, what's with all the "skeptic" cartoons belittling prominent climate figures these days? First Nurse, then Dessler, then John Cook. None of them accurate or particularly funny, either.
  26. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    Dikran 31 Landsheidt based his predictions on sound physics based on the gravitational effects of the nearest planets on the sun and its angular momentum. The magnetic fields are generated by the sun acting as a dynamo. Here is a paper by Ian Wilson that explains it. http://climatestop.com/Ian_Wilson_Syzygy.pdf After 2002 the predictions continue to be correct including accurate prediction of last years la nina and its return next year. In fact it will be very obvious in the next two decades if he is right as he predicted mostly la ninas for a long time resulting in another little ice age.
  27. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    @30 - OK I posted it over there. @31 - Dr. Alley wasn't critical of anyone who wanted to look into this line of research. He was forceful when expressing what he thought would come of it - "a fine tuning knob, at best". What is incredible is how so many who observe the overall climate debate believe deniers making third rate arguments on issues like this should be taken as equally credible as types like Dr. Alley. Dr. Alley's previously mentioned AGU presentation is extremely entertaining. The AGU is the largest gathering of planetary scientists that occurs annually in the world, and the Bjerknes Lecture is one of its high points. Dr. Alley started his presentation by reading out an email sent to his superiors at Penn State which called on Penn State to fire him because he was misleading the world about the role CO2 plays in determining Earth's climate. This greatly amused those present at the lecture. He then proceeded in his inimitable way, with broad brushstrokes, to outline why climate scientists believe CO2 is the "biggest control knob" controlling climate. The video is worth watching and studying.
  28. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    Albatross: " They have also belittled Dr. Nurse here and here. " Your second "here" actually points to a post by Tamino at his Open Mind blog, and is hardly belittling of Dr. Nurse. Just the opposite, it's a takedown of Watts' favorite house cartoonist's attempt to belittle Dr. Nurse ...
  29. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Richard Alley discussed this line of research during his 2009 AGU Bjerknes Lecture, which was entitled "The Biggest Control Knob". A video of his entire lecture is available here. He discusses cosmic rays starting at the 42 minutes 5 seconds mark. He pointed out that the paleoclimate data show that a significant variation in the amount of cosmic rays did not cause climate change. "There's really good science to be done on this. But we have reason to believe its a fine tuning knob...." Dr. Alley "Its a really interesting hypothesis....": "People say the Sun doesn't change much but the Sun modulates the cosmic rays, the cosmic rays modulate the clouds, the clouds modulate the temperature, so the Sun is amplified hugely...." "Now the Sun modulates cosmic rays..." Dr. Alley "...but so does the magnetic field". "And 40,000 years ago the magnetic field basically zeroed out in what we call the LasChamp anomaly for a millenium or so. And when it did, cosmic rays came screaming into the Earth system and you see, in basically all sedimentary records, this peak of cosmic ray produced nuclides". [ He displayed this chart ] chart" "We had a BIG cosmic ray signal, and the climate ignores it. And its just about that simple. These cosmic rays didn't do enough that you can see it."
  30. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    Something that could be added to the Monckton Myth's link-list: The Clerk of the Parliaments finally wrote a letter to him, daclaring that he is not and has never been a member of the House of Lords: A letter to Viscount Monckton of Brenchley from the Clerk of the Parliaments Best part: "... I am publishing this letter on the parliamentary website so that anybody who wishes to check whether you are a Member of the House of Lords can view this official confirmation that you are not. ..."
  31. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    Rob Painting @ 25 "Heat (as in longwave radiation) doesn't warm the upper ocean." etc - I think Science of Doom had a detailed post on this, showing how heat gets into the water millimeter by millimeter. You might take a look.
  32. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    David... I've used that exact same point in Alley's lecture about a dozen times now on various discussion sites when skeptics have brought up the Kirby paper. I don't know for sure but I would speculate that some of the push back from the science community on whether the CLOUD experiments should be done is based on this research. Muscheler 2005 is a pretty clear indicator that GCRs don't have a strong affect on climate. It's interesting research looking into how cloud nucleation occurs but if GCRs had a significant effect I think it would have shown as much in the Muscheler paper.
  33. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    @30 tblakesee There's absolutely zero evidence that ENSO follows a similar cycle to the solar cycle. Anytime something is cyclic, the best way to determine the period is usally to take a Fourier Transform of the data. The 11-year solar cycle, for instance, shows up pretty blatantly. However, when you look at the ENSO data, you don't find a single strong period, and the strongest ones you can find are at 5 and 3 year intervals, not 11. Below is a Fourier transform of the relevant monthly data sets. I multiplied ENSO data by a factor of ten since the amplitude of the sunspot cycle is ~100 and ENSO is ~10. Plot is vs. frequency so to convert to period P(years)=1/frequency. See that the solar cycle peaks at ~0.09 cycles/year as it should, but ENSO shows very little periodicity over anything frequency less than 0.2 cycles/year (period greater than 5 years).
  34. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    David @29, Thanks for posting that. That was actually one of the examples that came to mind when was referring to the paleo record and GCRs in a post on another GCR thread. Would you mind reposting this on that thread too? Thanks.
  35. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    tblakeslee (@ 95) I find your comment that you have "...spent years writing columns about global warming and green energy for Renewable Energy World.." rather incompatible with the links that give us some insight from where you source your information (dubious websites sadly). Surely someone that has been writing on these subjects for years would have learned enough about these subjects to address the scientific literature in it's entirety and access the expertise of scientists that work in these areas...
  36. Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
    Richard Alley discussed this line of research during his 2009 AGU Bjerknes Lecture, which was entitled "The Biggest Control Knob". A video of his entire lecture is available here. He discusses cosmic rays starting at the 42 minutes 5 seconds mark. He pointed out that the paleoclimate data show that a significant variation in the amount of cosmic rays did not cause climate change. "There's really good science to be done on this. But we have reason to believe its a fine tuning knob...." Dr. Alley "Its a really interesting hypothesis....": "People say the Sun doesn't change much but the Sun modulates the cosmic rays, the cosmic rays modulate the clouds, the clouds modulate the temperature, so the Sun is amplified hugely...." "Now the Sun modulates cosmic rays..." Dr. Alley "...but so does the magnetic field". "And 40,000 years ago the magnetic field basically zeroed out in what we call the LasChamp anomaly for a millenium or so. And when it did, cosmic rays came screaming into the Earth system and you see, in basically all sedimentary records, this peak of cosmic ray produced nuclides. [ He displayed this chart ] chart" "We had a BIG cosmic ray signal, and the climate ignores it. And its just about that simple. These cosmic rays didn't do enough that you can see it."
  37. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Can I suggest that SkS seeks out other published scientists whose work the sceptic community holds dear to their hearts as supporting a contrarian viewpoint, and looks for areas of agreement -- just as has been done here with Dr Pielke? Being able to demonstrate, unequivocally, using the published words of those scientists, that they do support action to reduce GHGs, is a very powerful tool. Though I'm sure it will be difficult for some to admit, to some degree, agreeing the minutiae of the science is less important than action to stop the negative climate effects that we -- those on this side of the divide -- all fear. Let's face it; none of us are doing this because we like a good argument.
  38. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    tblakeslee (@ 27), Shaviv's paper and subsequent work doesn't give much coinfidence that there is an "elephant under the rug". Shaviv did indeed use three methods to assess correlations between the solar cycle and the ocean thermal response. The preferred method would obviously be direct measure of the ocean thermal response! However Shaviv notes that this doesn't correlate very well with the solar cycle and therefore turns to assessing the sea level and sea surface temperature response. So the sea level response provides a strong part of his analysis, and since this is likely incorrect for the reasons I pointed out [the subset of near land tide guage records shows a periodicity, the magnitude of which is not seen in the full ocean response), and for all the analyses Shaviv neglects to factor in the (negative) forcing from volcanic aerosols which (according to the Lean and Rind paper I linked to above) is in phase with the solar cycle for two of the cycles, and will lead to a false overestimation of the thermal response to the solar cycle]. Shaviv is quite explicit in describing the problem with the ocean thermal data. He says:
    “Given the relatively small correlation coefficient and modest significance, it is worthwhile to corroborate the existence of the large heat flux variations using an independent data set. We thus turn to analyze tide gauge data measuring sea-level variations.” and "“Note that the relatively low correlation coefficient between the OHC and solar signals may seem somewhat suspicious
    In my experience if an author expresses concerns about an aspect of his data, we'd be wise to share them. Note btw, that there undoubtedly must be an ocean thermal response to the solar cycle. It's quite likely that this may be somewhat larger than that expected purely on the basis of the periodicity of the solar irradiance. However there is evidence of a small positive cloud feedback to changes in surface warming (especially the work of Dessler and Clement, respectively), and this might account for some discrepancy between empirical and calculated ocean thermal response. I don't think your comment viz: "Averaging over the planet or even over nearby areas makes no sense as the shape of the ocean bottom varies." is relevant. Shaviv's claim is that the solar cycle produces a cyclic variation in the ocean heat content that is much larger than can be accounted for by the irradiance component of the solar cycle variability. If this assertion is to have validity then it must apply to the oceans en masses. Either the ocean thermal response to the solar cycle is larger than expected or it isn't. This work has hardly been cited since it was published. That's usually an indication that it doesn't provide much insight into fundamental understanding...
  39. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    It is really quite telling and troubling that some "skeptics" like Anthony Watts (who runs a blog called WUWT) continue to uncritically back Monckton and repeatedly provide him a podium from which to spout his diatribes, misinformation and threats. In stark contrast, the more reasonable and informed "skeptics" have long ago distanced themselves from Monckton. The only people now who openly support Monckton either are in deep denial about AGW, are in denial about the deadly and costly impacts as we continue with business as usual, or are ideologues and conspiracy theorists. This is not the first time that extreme 'skeptics' and those in denial about AGW have gone after Dr. Nurse, even bizarrely accusing him of being "anti-science", a nonsensical claim if there ever was one. They have also belittled Dr. Nurse here and here. And they are probably more instances of this kind of juvenile and disrespectful treatment of Dr. Nurse by WUWT and their apologists that I am not aware of. Monckton and Watts are intimidated by Dr. Nurse (and they probably should be) and and he seems to have struck a nerve. That they have to resort to defaming Dr. Nurse just underscores the vacuity of their understanding of climate science and arguments made against climate science. That they elect to play these sorts of games on such a serious issue is not only unscientific, but also quite pathetic. Further, doing so is also the very antithesis of civil, respectful and constructive dialogue.
  40. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    The thing with climate change is that it will be slow to start but will last a very very long time. Most people in the online debtate seem to struggle to assess impacts beyond a decade or so. The cost of lost productivity in low lying areas could run past hundreds and even thousands of years as sea levels rise. Even if climate change only had a moderate impact, the length of time of that impact would see the costs escalate way beyond the short term economic loss in the current decade or two. People in a decade or so who will have to make much faster cuts in emissions than if we had begun 20 years ago will not look kindly on those who sought to delay for a couple more years in the big cars.
  41. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Re #95, [snip] Good scientists are true skeptics and are genuinely interested (passionate) even in the pursuit of truth, and by good scientists I include Kirkby et al. and the scientists at RealClimate. [snip] And another comment is made by you about the models being "poor". OK, let us forget them, "garbage " as some believe. Now the paleo records tell us that the climate system is sensitive to external drivers, but one does not have to invoke the GCR hypothesis to explain glacial cycles or previous climate change. Occam's razor applies. And yet again, from the RealClimate post, "Finally, there has been no significant trend in the cosmic ray flux over the 50 years, so while we cannot rule out cosmic-ray/cloud mechanisms being relevant for historical climate changes, they certainly have not been an important factor in recent climate change." Please do not lose sight of that fact. In your closing sentence, you are proposing a false choice I think. Yes, let us continue to pursue research on GCRs (and that is happening), but that does not mean that we have to further delay taking action on addressing AGW.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Thanke for being so agreable about the snipping, makes like as a moderator much easer!
  42. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    #5 NealJKing, No disagreement; the iron will bend. However, I worry that the damages have to be pretty obvious before they are acknowledged. We've seen drought and fire in Australia, Russia, Mexico (drought only?), the southern US, the Amazon, China, and possibly others that I can't recall off the top of my head. All of these have occurred in a fairly short sequence of years, and I believe all are consistent with shifts in circulation patterns expected out of a warming world, and still there is reluctance to accepting that there might be a relationship. The agreement from Dr. Pielke that CO2 is a significant forcing is interesting, but I'm not sure that everyone understands the limitation on how he frames the statement, "We do not need to agree on the magnitude of its global average radiative forcing to see a need to limit this accumulation." He is probably making the statement in the context of a sensitivity to 2x CO2, and as far as that goes, he is correct, and estimates do vary. However, the sensitivity and the direct forcing are separate entities. And, as I recall, the band of values for direct forcing is pretty narrowly defined based on the physics of gas spectroscopy. The limitation in the statement, and the implications about how to direct mitigation efforts, is that there is no set magnitude for either. As CO2 levels increase, the magnitude of the effect increases; there is no upper bound. Looking forward to the post on the disagreements.
  43. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    Finding the truth is always the focus; horse racing is just a metaphor. Unfortunately Calder's dramatization of events leaves a lot to be desired in that department. a. What electric field shielded the experiment from all natural cosmic rays prior to 'turning off the field'? Muons arrive at the surface with an average of 3-4 GeV; you can't stop them without one heck of a field. With the field on, ions would be electrically removed from the chamber. So I question whether switching off the field really did anything more than allowing ions that were already there to start building up. b. Simulated 'stronger' cosmic rays means nothing in this context, as the pion beam in the experimental design is the same energy as the naturally occurring muon flux. So all we have is an experiment showing that charged particles ionize the atmosphere, allowing nano-size water droplets to accumulate. That result was well-known long prior to this experiment. However, bad news for the 'galactic' part of this theory: Because of the similarity between solar cosmic ray energy and the beam energy, these results require that solar cosmic rays have the same effect - and thus we must ask, why aren't there all clouds all the time?
  44. Dikran Marsupial at 02:37 AM on 27 September 2011
    Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    tblakeslee Demonstrating some actual skepticism, I downloaded the SOI data (looks very similar, but without the smoothing) and some sunspot number data and plotted them to see if there is actually a correllation between SSN and SOI and here is what I found: The blue is the (unsmoothed monthly SOI), the red is smoothed sunspot numbers. I would have smoothed the SOI if I had a smoother to hand, the SSN was already smoothed in the datafile. being charitable, the peaks match up in 1957, and a trough in 1975 but that is about it. Now ask yourself why didn't John Daly plot the two datasets, rather than just a few points that he claimed represented a selection of (cherry picked) sub-cycles?
  45. CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
    [questioning of motives deleted] I have spent years writing columns about global warming and green energy for Renewable Energy World so this new understanding is embarassing for me but I am forced to rethink. The CERN CLOUD experiment got my attention as it is well known that clouds are much more effective at altering the earth's temperature than CO2. If the sun cycles really do affect cloud cover it is a very significant finding. Buried deep in the online supplimentary material of the CERN but omitted from the printed paper in Nature is this graph: Here is an explanation from Calder: "starting at 03.45, ultraviolet light began making sulphuric acid molecules in the chamber, while a strong electric field cleansed the air of ions. It also tended to remove molecular clusters made in the neutral environment (n) but some of these accumulated at a low rate. As soon as the electric field was switched off at 04.33, natural cosmic rays (gcr) raining down through the roof of the experimental hall in Geneva helped to build clusters at a higher rate. How do we know they were contributing? Because when, at 04.58, CLOUD simulated stronger cosmic rays with a beam of charged pion particles (ch) from the accelerator" http://calderup.wordpress.com/ This looks pretty impressive to me and it is confirmed by Svensmark's SKY experiment. Certainly more work needs to be done but we should be excited at this breakthrough as the current predictions have shown that our present computer models are poor. Let's stop cheering horses and start focusing on finding the truth.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Please stick to discussion of the science and avoid discussion of motives, which is a violation of the comments policy here.
  46. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 02:22 AM on 27 September 2011
    Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    Thank you for your vigilance in seeking out the bunkum and promptly exposing it. You deserve a medal from the President of the Royal Society :D I can't think of a more apt demonstration of what WUWT is all about than their giving the space to 'Monckton's mishmash of myths and misinformation' - as well as their labelling anyone who writes factually a 'troll'. Since Monckton seems to rehash the same disinformation over and over, it's now easy to debunk - and kudos to you and Professor John Abraham for exposing the skulduggery.
  47. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    Re #30, "The current La Nina is responsible for virtually all of the worldwide weather disasters this year." An unsubstantiated statement. Please back this up with some evidence of attribution for "virtually all of the worldwide weather disasters this year". As for the rest of your post, interesting hypothesis from a web blog. Pray tell, which year will the next strong El Nino occur, and the La Nina following that? You continue to forget that internal climate modes such as ENSO do not explain the observed increase in SSTs and OHC the past 100 years or so. Oscillations (ENSO, solar cycle, etc.) simply cannot contribute to a long-term trend, they simply modulate the underlying long-term trend, in this case the warming from the radiative forcing from increased GHGs from human activities.
  48. Dikran Marsupial at 02:04 AM on 27 September 2011
    Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    tblakeslee You say that the true test of a theory is its ability to make accurate predictions, but the irony is that the method set out in your source makes no predictions. It is what is known as "climastrology", i.e. trying to find patterns of numbers that seem to correllate and then look for the physical explanation. In this case if an 11 year cycle is split into enough "sub cycles" then the peaks in any graph will line up with some of them, and you can make it look good simply by pointing out the hits and not the misses. So what predictions were made beyond 2002, for which they didn't have data? If predicting the SOI is so easy, why didn't they actually do so? Don't just accept science on a blog as correct (even this one), check it out, see if it has been peer reviewed, see if anyone has made any useful predictions with it, try downloading the data and see if there is any relationship between sunspots and SOI. That is what it means to be a skeptic.
  49. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Dana69 @6:
    "He made the claim that man-made CO2 was responsible for about 26% of the yearly global emissions. I did not see any refutation of this claim.
    You didn't see a refutation of this claim for two reasons. One, that's not what he said. What Dr. Pielke said was that CO2 is responsible for 26% of the net positive radiative forcing, which is very different than what you claim he said. Second, we haven't published our post on disagreements yet. This is one area where we disagree (Dr. Pielke is off by a factor of ~2), as we will discuss in the post scheduled to be published tomorrow.
  50. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    FundME, #21: That isn't the way that science is done. You have to put out the best that you have - warts and all.

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