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Comments 73951 to 74000:

  1. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    muoncounter, If you would be so kind to inform me how you so easily post a graphic on the thread. My second attempt made a link to the graphic but it did not appear in the post. It might make it easier for people to follow if I post a graphic in my post.
    Response:

    [DB] If you go to the Posting Tips section, use the html string there with the width 450 limiter in it.  Using that string, replace everything between the quote marks with your graphic's URL (in both places).

    Use the Preview function to verify the image will appear before posting the comment.

  2. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    Sorry for the mess, I will try once more to post an image.
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed image.

  3. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    Norman: See label: Warmest summer on record -- source July daytime/nightime record highs -- source No one is saying that 1980 Dallas wasn't very hot. But the hallmark of this heatwave is that its not just very hot in Dallas, its not just very hot in Texas, its widespread and its very hot.
  4. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    skywatcher @60 "Following the link on the NOAA page for Waco also shows the extremes. When average temperatures for a month are broken by >2F (Dallas) and 3F (Waco), and for the entire summer by >1F, you don't have to wonder if it is extreme. You do realise how hard it is to break a monthly average temperature record by that much?" I am not sure where you live but it is not as difficult to break monthly averages as you perceive. I have been logging daily temperature high and lows for Omaha Nebraska for a couple of years. I have the monthly anomalies for 21 months. Of those 21 months, 7 have anomalies above or below 3 F. Greatest high was around 7 above. in April 2010. Lowest was -6.58 in February 2010. Four more monthly anomalies were above or below 2 F. So 11 of the 21 were above or below 2 F. I cannot see how you conclude this is an extreme.
  5. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    Danno, I fear your prediction is more accurate than wacky.
  6. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    An apology from WUWT is out of the question since Monckton just doubles down.
  7. Sea level rise due to floating ice?
    agnostic, the volume of the ocean is 1.3billion cubic km. The maximum volume of Arctic sea ice 20-30 years ago was just over 30thousand cubic km. This year's minimum sea ice is a mere 4.3 thousand cubic km where the 'long-term average' minimum was ~13 thousand. In terms of affecting ocean wide salinity the figure to worry about is the minimum - or not. Seeing as we've already lost more of the old minimum, 9,000, than now remains at minimum, 4,300, any salinity impact should be showing up. My best guess would be that any further impact on oceans would be local and transient, as well as being totally swamped by other heating impacts.
  8. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    here's a wacky prediction: they'll still be denying once we hit an ice free arctic for the first time. just a natural cycle, scientists want more grant money, government wants to tax you.
  9. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    FWIW, my sea ice prediction from last March is here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2011/03/weather_image_of_the_day_arcti.html (I post as eric654 there). My predictions of early loss and a July-August recovery were not too bad but not radical. The bottom line though I was wrong about the minimum and expected more ice than we now have. La Nina should have helped the ice and negative NAO should have also helped hold the ice (e.g.. http://rkwok.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/Kwok.1999a.pdf)
  10. Sea level rise due to floating ice?
    If Arctic sea ice melts, it reduces ocean salinity. How does this affect ocean penetration by warmer currents such as the Gulf Stream?
  11. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    It’s nice to post to a website where the concentration is on genuine climate science – with the obviously needed rebuttal of climate skeptics. But this is a personal attack defence comment. (Lord) Monckton is the last person to be levelling the accusation of “troll” at anyone because trolling is his modus operandi (Monckton Latin speak for technique). Monckton finds an ideal home at WUWT because it invariably uses the word when anyone dares to challenge climate skeptic “orthodoxy”. They immediately get the troll label pinned on them, either by Watts or his willing outriders. A troll accusation was made against “The other Brian” by Monckton and Watts, so I suggest they both watch - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCyctTvuCo - and skip to 8 minute 25 seconds. The following proves that “The other Brian” had just transcribed, almost verbatim, (more Monckton Latin speak) the words used by Peter Hadfield (Potholer 54) in his forensic analysis of Monckton’s “Bunkum” science. Hardly trolling; but Monckton let fly with his well-worn brand of trolling - “The science is in, the truth is out, the game is up, and the scare is over. Get used to it, get real, get a job, and get a life”. What more needs to be said! PS I suppose an apology from WUWT would be out of the question?
  12. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    I wonder if Dr Pielke Sr still thinks Watts is devoted to the highest levels of scientific rigour, or whatever he said. Watts uncritically promotes Monckton's garbage (as well as that of D'Aleo and a load of others). You've got to love the hubris of the statement "With remarkably few changes, the present article comes to a legitimate conclusion opposite to that of Sir Paul." Gosh, I didn't realise you could totally alter a sentence with only a few changes. Gosh, I didn't realise you could totally alter an aardvark with only a few changes...
  13. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    SteveFunk: Since when did economics have anything to do with the physics of greenhouse gases? Don't confuse the science of Earth's climate with the economics/politics of solutions to the identified problems.
  14. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    Norman, other's have already debunked teh contrails part, but I'll add that you continue to cherry-pick your numbers. The only way you can consider your selected single city in Texas to not have record-breaking heat is to pick one particular measure of heat (highs above 105). Nearly all other measures of heat have 2011 out in front, and if I indulge in a bit of cherry-picking myself, Waco, <150km from Dallas (and easily linked on NOAA), had a lot more of those heat misery days this year than in 1980 (29 to 10). It is ahead on every heat index. How did the contrails affect Waco again? I'm going to leave it at that, you're obviously too desperate to avoid considering that this year might just be classified as 'extreme' by the state of Texas - please look at muoncounter's map again too.
  15. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    I mean Rob at #14 BTW!
  16. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    Rob, I think that is the most important point. If you look at the movement of the ice this year, and the lack of much ice export through the Fram Strait, or much circulation of teh Beaufort Gyre, you see unfavourable conditions for ice export. For a while there was very sunny conditions which aided ice melt, but with conditions quite unfavourable for compaction or export, but you can hardly call this a year where weather patterns helped the ice get to a low extent. Add to that the observations of a mean ice thickness of ~0.9m, compared to ~2m 10 years ago (Alfred Wegener Institute, Polarstern). Can anyone think of a reason or a mechanism that will see anything other than a record low level of ice next year? Weather patterns weren't 'great' for ice loss this year, and ice thickness is on a frightening trajectory.
  17. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    Norman, you may or may not read the papers others have referred you to, I don't know what you will make of them if you do. How about another approach. Thinking about whether something, anything, is bad or not. Smoking is the example I have in mind right now. We all know 'smoking is bad'. We know that ~50% of smokers will die from smoking related causes. A goodly proportion of those deaths will be premature rather than the thing that finally takes you out when you're 90+. Read that again. Our societies go to a lot of trouble to warn us against an activity - that brings early death to less than 50% of those who engage in it. Same thing, but different numbers, for driving over the speed limit or over the blood alcohol limit. And occupational health and safety, or building standards, or food safety. Can you apply the reasoning you use for climate change impacts to these issues? Or are smoking, speeding, drunk-driving, shaky bridges, rats in the kitchen OK? None of these is a particularly good analogy for climate change. On the other hand, thinking about how we regard all these risks and our personal and social response to them is useful for thinking about responding to the risks of climate change. Many people seem to raise the old smoking gambit. "My grandfather smoked a pack a day and he lived to be 94." That doesn't mean it's a good idea for everyone to smoke. Similarly, just because there will always be places that see little or no impact from climate change, it doesn't mean that it's OK.
  18. Philippe Chantreau at 08:59 AM on 28 September 2011
    Sea level rise due to floating ice?
    Wingding your teacher had a serious case of Dunning-Kruger.
  19. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    barry... Fair enough.
  20. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    dana, for other predictions on Arctic ice you could look at the SEARCH stuff. They're interesting because they all have the kind of detail that Albatross showed - for each prediction. That particular one went into one category, but there are several categories of method used for prediction.
  21. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    Rob@5 NSIDC have called the absolute minimum for 2011. The graph in the vid is of September monthly minimum. The 2011 value on that chart should reflect the monthly average, but September isn't even over. I remember posts at realclimate criticising 'skeptics' for giving annual values for global temperature before the year was even finished. Same thing.
  22. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    @Steve Funk #10: You state, "I just think the economic studies are a weak link in climate theory." What exactly did you mean by "climate theory"? On the one hand, we have the body of science about climate change. On the other hand, we have economic analyses of proposals to mitigate and adapt to climate change. A combination of the two does not constitute a "climate theory."
  23. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    What is actually most interesting about the sea ice minimum this year (this is something I read recently, I think over at Neven's page was that 2007's dramatic low had a lot to do with winds pushing the ice together. This year we reached almost the same point without the unusual winds. So, every time you see those guys plotting a trajectory for the next season off of 2007... they just don't know what they're looking at.
  24. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    That's funny, when I read the 50% response rate I was thinking how high that was. A 50% sample is generally an excellent one for sampling a population. Also, I don't think there is the hard and fast divide in the academic community that you see in public debates - a few individuals aside. The position that climate is changing is not considered controversial and is taken quite seriously, so one is unlikely to chuck a questionaire on the topic as if it were quackery. The few that would consider it quackery, while they are quite vocal in the debate in lay circles, would not have much of an effect on the quantitative results. Your comment about uncertainty of short and long-term costs is a good one, but you have to work with what you got. I also think the short term costs also can be wildly overstated - especially when it comes to cap and trade policies. The classic example is the Acid Rain Program where near terms costs were overestimated by 4 fold. If I rememebr rightly, industry estimates of near term costs were quite a bit wider off the mark.
  25. Monckton, the Anti-Nurse
    Economics is not an exact science to begin with, and the farther into the future that an economic forecast goes, the less reliable it is. (I have a bachelor's degree in the subject, and know just enough to be dangerous.) The problem with the Stern Report and similar studies is that the costs of taking action are relatively near term, but the benefits of taking action and costs of not taking action are very long term. The 50% non-response rate for the NYU law school study also raises issues. The skeptics are the ones most likely to toss the questionnaire into the waste basket. This is not an endorsement of Monckton. I just think the economic studies are a weak link in climate theory.
  26. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    "likely continue to delude themselves" Delusion indeed. See the comments at Peter Sinclair's Sea Ice Min video posting: "I’m (one of the ones) siding with Steven Goddard. He was right." It's funny because the video has the NSIDc's scientist saying "being the 2nd lowest vs the lowest is not really recovery."
  27. Sea level rise due to floating ice?
    Heh one of the few things I remember from school was one of my teachers telling the class that global warming was a load of bollocks because melting ice couldn't raise sea level because it just displaced it's own mass in water. I don't know why that stuck in my mind, I think I speak for the rest of the class that I was rather indifferent to the content of his claim at the time, but I think I remembered it simply for the sudden way he delivered such a passionate claim in a lesson that had nothing to do with melting ice let alone global warming. Looking back on it I've always regarded his mistake was threefold: not taking into account melting ice on land, not taking into account thermal expansion of sea water and not taking into account that global warming is more than sea level rise. Now from reading this article I can add a fourth mistake.
  28. Murry Salby - Confused About The Carbon Cycle
    I think you already dealt the killer blow. Salby states "CO2 after the turn of the (21st) century continued to increase, in fact if anything slightly faster, but global temperature didn't. If anything it decreased in the first decade of the 21st century. " He says what!!!! Salby's entire premise is that CO2 in the air is directly dependent upon temperature – if you increase temperature, you will increase CO2. Yet here he argues that CO2 can increase without being driven by an increase in temperature. Which contradicts his thesis.
  29. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    Dana @11, "Will they learn something from their poor Arctic sea ice prediction? " Very likely not. They will likely continue to delude themselves and others, or rationalize that it is not a big deal, or eventually concede that it is a big deal but argue that human emissions of GHGs are only a bit player. There are unfortunately, and sadly, far too many ways people can rationalize their denial of something, including AGW.
  30. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    WUWT readers are clearly a very optimistic group regarding Arctic sea ice and anything global warming related. You have to wonder how long it will take them to realize that their optimism is unwarranted. Will they learn something from their poor Arctic sea ice prediction?
  31. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    Dana @8, You are welcome. What is kinda interesting is that WUWT readers actually predicted the sea ice extent minimum in 2011 would be higher than that in 2005, and that is very similar to Bastardi's erroneous prediction. So I wonder how much he influenced their thinking? Is it an example of group think, or group denial about the plight of the Arctic sea ice? I mean the loss of Arctic ice is accelerating, yet they keep trying to tell themselves and that there it is going to recover soon, "No really, this time it will recover". I wonder when will they will be saying that, "Oh don't worry, the ice extent next year will be back to the 2007 extent next year". Dikran @9, Yes, strictly speaking, I would have to agree with you.
  32. Sea level rise due to floating ice?
    CharlieA... You're right. This is a small effect...and the future impacts are limited by the amount of sea ice available for melting. I think it's just kind of a neat wrinkle to an old truism that says something about chemisrty/physics of the ocean. I'd think the more important effects of salinity changes from sea icea melting are related to the the local bouyancy effects of melting sea ice on currents and associated heat transfer. To get changes in salinity related to the hydrologic cycle you need to either increase the salinity of the incoming water (by increasing weathering) or alter the balance between river inflow and evaporation from the ocean. There is some evidence for increasing alkalinity (HCO3- and Ca++) of some major rivers (e.g. the mississippi). I'm guessing that does not affect salinity too much because of the dominance of NaCl as a solute. Haven't done the calcs though. As Rob painting has pointed out, there are some net movements of water between the ocean and land on multiyear timescales that could influence salinity a little. That must imply evaporative concentration of salts in the ocean. My guess is that accounts for only a small proportion of the recent sea-level rise anomaly though, but it would be interesting to know.
  33. Dikran Marsupial at 03:04 AM on 28 September 2011
    2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    Albatross Given my own definition of "reasonably accurate", I'd say that Watts prediction is "reasonably accurate" in the sense it is as accurate as you could reasonably expect it to be given the method used! ;o) I think I may have a go at statistical prediction for next year, looks like fun.
  34. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    We'll be doing a 'Lessons from Past Predictions' post on Arctic sea ice predictions in the near future. I plan to highlight Bastardi, Watts, Goddard, perhaps WUWT readers (thanks Albatross), and tamino. Any other suggestions are welcome.
  35. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    In stark contrast, Tamino used some stats analysis in October 2010 to predict the JAXA minimum for September 2011. That analysis predicted a minimum of 4.63 million km^2 (+/- 0.9 km^2) for extent. The observed minimum for JAXA in 2011 was 4.53 million km^2. And also in contrast to Tamino, Anthony Watts submitted a forecast (based on a poll from his readers) to the SEARCH project on 31 May 2011 (so a 3.5 month forecast versus 11 months for Tamino). Here is the WUWT forecast: "PAN-ARCTIC OUTLOOK – WUWT (acronym for WattsUpWithThat.com) 1. Extent Projection: 5.5 million square kilometers 2. Methods/Techniques: web poll of readers 3. Rationale: Composite of projections by readers, projection bracket with the highest response is the one submitted. 4. Executive Summary: Website devoted to climate and weather polled its readers for the best estimate of 2011 sea ice extent minimum by choosing bracketed values from a web poll which can be seen at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/19/sea-ice-news-call-for-arctic-sea-ice-forecasts-plus-forecast-poll/15.64% chose 5.5 million km2 or greater, with 13.09% choosing 5.0 to 5.1 million sq km2 as the second highest vote. 5. Estimate of Forecast Skill: none" Pay attention to point number 5. On that we agree ;) Out by about one million km^2. Readers do not buy into this meme that the Arctic sea ice is recovering that is being perpetuated by 'skeptics' and those in denial about AGW.
  36. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    It's going to be interesting to see if Bastardi (and Goddard as well) continue to do this. It's going to make for more interesting videos and blog posts in the future when we can go through and show exactly how wrong they have been, year after year after year.
  37. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    dana1981 - According to the title of GISS figure 28a 1.5 W/m2 is the forcing difference only up to 2000. Your calculation is close to Skeie et al.'s 2010 CO2 forcing as quoted by Kevin above.
  38. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    barry @ 3... I believe the NSIDC called the minimum back on Sept 9th, so it's been pretty clear that we've already seen the min for at least a couple of weeks now.
  39. Sea level rise due to floating ice?
    So Shepherd et al calculate (49 ± 8 μm yr−1) rise in mean sea level due to melting sea ice decreasing the salinity of the ocean and thereby reducing the specific density of the oceans. As long as we are looking at miniscule adjustments to sea level projections, has anybody ever looked at the slight decrease in sea level caused by salts being emptied into the oceans by rivers? The adjustment of 1/20th of a millimeter per year for sea ice melt is small, even compared to the approximate 0.3mm/year rise caused by the mining of water from ground aquifers or the approximate 0.4mm/yr reduction in rise caused by reservoir impoundment. (Ref: Church et al 2010, Revisiting the Earth's sea-level and energy budgets from 1961 to 2008)
  40. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Hmm I wonder why GISS puts CO2 at 1.5 W/m2. The IPCC put it at 1.66 W/m2 in 2007, and I calculate it at 1.77 W/m2 now.
  41. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    Norman, I suggest you read Barnett (2008) and Hong et al. (2008) on contrails. Note also that IPCC AR4 has contrail warming at a tiny .01 Wm-2. I thought SkS had an article on "It's contrails."
    Response:

    [DB] See CO2 is not the only driver of climate (Intermediate tab).

  42. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 00:19 AM on 28 September 2011
    Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    Are there any deep water temperature measurement from the region of the NADW (North Atlantic Deep Water) near Labrador or off the east coast of Greenland? It would be interesting to see if some of the warming in the Arctic is being transferred to the deep oceans when the water sinks as part of the thermohaline circulation. It makes logical sense that this may be happening.
  43. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Kevin - One key point of difference is that the GISS net forcing graph b includes solar, whereas Skeie et al. only consider anthropogenic variables.
  44. Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
    I had a read of Rob Painting's reference to SKS thread "Ocean Cooling Corrected Again". Berényi Péter Post #70 of that thread (1AUG11) makes a detailed discussion with some interesting points about how heat is transported in the oceans - particularly the role of mechanical forces in deep mixing rather than thermal drivers. While Argo is the best temperature measurement of the ocean profile available, the error bars are wide compared with the very small temperature changes being measured to represent a vast amount of heat due to the huge mass and high specific heat of water involved. Would Rob care to comment on these points.
  45. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Thanks Paul. Skeie et al use GISS for their GHG data, so that much is identical. However it looks like their aerosol data is rather different. I'll try and get hold of the data. They give a figure for total anthropogenic RF of 1.4W/m2, of which CO2 contributes 1.8W/m2. That's even further from RPSr's figures. By eye, I'm guessing that their forcings will better reproduce the temperature peak of the 30s/40s, but fail to reproduce the 'hiatus' of the last decade. So their aerosol forcings are significantly different from those of Kaufman et al. But they only give decadal values. However, there is something odd going on: It seems to me that the decadal SO4 numbers in Table 3 don't match the plots in figure 2b. I'll post a comment on the article.
  46. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    adelady#65: Yes, the 2011 map makes the point: Extremes are more polarized, wets are wetter, drys are drier. The extreme wet conditions in the upper midwestern US are, of course, the result of heavy snowfall the past winter. Its amazing how many people simply refuse to connect those dots. By way of anecdote, all the locals in those areas say 'its never been like this before' and the number of records broken this year backs that up.
  47. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    67, Norman, You do know, I assume, that warmer nights are a predicted consequence of CO2 induced climate change?
  48. 2011 Sea Ice Minimum
    How much longer can the likes of Bastardi go on predicting that all the current trends will reverse next year for no apparant reason?
    I suspect indefinitely. The opening of the NW passage and the Northern sea route should have been a wakeup call. But it's already become the new normal. We have short memories.
  49. Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
    Kevin C - Skeie et al. (2011), published last month provides another set of forcing estimates up to 2010. Time series graphs on page 31 of the pdf.
  50. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    skywatcher @ 64 1980 had higher high temps and more days above 105 (misery index). 2011 had a higher overall temp (high and low) because the lows were warmer. It would be interesting to have the satellite data for 1980 vs 2011. I am making a hypothesis that the contrails in 2011 were much more extensive in Texas in 2011 as compared to 1980 and in some studies this could be the cause of the warmer nights. But if you go by misery index (human suffering) then 1980 would have been a worse year than 2011 for the citizens of DFW area. 28 days above 105 in 1980, 18 in 2011.

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