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Comments 74051 to 74100:

74051. David Lewis at 05:33 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74052. dhogaza at 05:31 AM on 27 September 2011
       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 ...
74053. David Lewis at 05:18 AM on 27 September 2011
       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...." "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..." "...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 ] "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."
74054. Michael.M at 05:11 AM on 27 September 2011
       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. ..."
74055. Pete Dunkelberg at 04:47 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74056. Rob Honeycutt at 04:41 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74057. Paul from VA at 04:23 AM on 27 September 2011
       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).
74058. Albatross at 03:43 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74059. chris at 03:39 AM on 27 September 2011
       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...
74060. David Lewis at 03:35 AM on 27 September 2011
       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...." "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..." "...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 ] "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."
74061. John Russell at 03:32 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74062. chris at 03:29 AM on 27 September 2011
       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...
74063. Albatross at 03:29 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74064. dorlomin at 02:51 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74065. Albatross at 02:47 AM on 27 September 2011
       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!
74066. Chris G at 02:47 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74067. muoncounter at 02:41 AM on 27 September 2011
       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?
74068. 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?
74069. tblakeslee at 02:26 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74070. 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.
74071. Albatross at 02:14 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74072. 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.
74073. dana1981 at 01:42 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74074. nealjking at 01:28 AM on 27 September 2011
       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.
74075. tblakeslee at 01:21 AM on 27 September 2011
       Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
       The current La Nina is responsible for virtually all of the worldwide weather disasters this year. As this graph shows, these cycles are predictable with amazing accuracy based on solar cycles. Cloud formation varies with the sun's magnetic field which varies with angular momentum. caption: "Yellow circles mark correlations of phases within the subcycles of the 11-year sunspot cycle with El Niños and blue circles with La Niñas. Bright green diamonds point to connections of SFC phases with El Niños and dark green diamonds with La Niñas. It is easy to see that all notable deviations from the zero line are explained with the exception of a single El Niño at the beginning of the curve. It should be noted that all of the respective Golden section phases that fall into the period 1951 - 1998 appear in the synopsis. There is not a single one that does not coincide with SOI extrema. Because of the phase reversal induced by BFS 1968 the same phases can be linked to El Niños as well as to La Niñas and can be used to predict both of these events depending on the phase of the dominating big finger cycle. There are no exceptions to this consistent pattern. Climatologists have been wondering why there were three consecutive El Niños without any interruption by La Niñas between 1991 and 1995. Figure 8 gives the answer. During the five years in question there were not any Golden section phases that indicate La Niñas, but four of them that point to El Niños." http://www.john-daly.com/sun-enso/sun-enso.htm A later 2002 followup article discusses the accurate predictions: http://www.john-daly.com/sun-enso/revisit.htm This is the real world, not a lab experiment. The true test of a theory is its ability to make accurate predictions.
74076. muoncounter at 01:14 AM on 27 September 2011
       Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
       He provides a nice mechanism for the failure of additional cosmic ray flux to produce additional cloud nuclei. That takes down the causality of the Svensmarkian argument. If more CRs don't make more clouds, the whole idea that solar magnetic modulation controls climate is not just the wrong horse, its a lame horse.
74077. Albatross at 01:08 AM on 27 September 2011
       Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
       I encourage readers to peruse the "ClimateCommunication" site, it has easily accessible discussions of the science, including a discussion about extremes. Input for the text has been provided by some of the leading experts int he world on the relevant issues. "Recent weather events such as deadly heat waves and devastating floods have sparked popular interest in understanding the role of global warming in driving extreme weather. These events are part of a new pattern of more extreme weather across the globe, shaped in part by human-induced climate change. As the climate has warmed, some types of extreme weather have become more frequent and severe in recent decades, with increases in extreme heat, intense precipitation, and drought. Heat waves are longer and hotter. Heavy rains and flooding are more frequent. In a wide swing between extremes, drought, too, is more intense and more widespread. All weather events are now influenced by climate change because all weather now develops in a different environment than before. While natural variability continues to play a key role in extreme weather, climate change has shifted the odds and changed the natural limits, making certain types of extreme weather more frequent and more intense. The kinds of extreme weather events that would be expected to occur more often in a warming world are indeed increasing. [Source] The highlighted text above drives home a very important point, a point that is very inconvenient for those in denial about AGW or those "skeptical" that the consequences of continuing with business as usual will be very deadly and costly.
74078. FundME at 01:02 AM on 27 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       KevinC I agree it would be a terrible waste of hard work and creative thinking to bin the GCMs but perhaps the output should be a little muted until they become more skillful. I mean this purely from a public perspective, we all decry the over hyping of results from published papers by the MSM and any tiny flaw is always thrown into sharp relief so eroding the general public's regard for Science.
74079. John Hartz at 00:53 AM on 27 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       @Albatross #19 I heartedly concur with your assessment. BTW, climate models will once again be dealt with in Dana's next post about where SkS disagrees with Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. Speaking of Dr. Pielke, it will be intersting to see whether or not he takes issue with anything stated in the above article.
74080. Albatross at 00:52 AM on 27 September 2011
       CERN - Saying Nothing About Cosmic Ray Effects on Climate
       Cross-posted from another GCR thread. RealClimate has just published a post written by Dr. Jeffrey Pierce (an aerosol scientist). Dr. Pierces was invited by Nature Geoscience to author an article prior to the publication of the aerosol nucleation results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN. The article is well worth the read, the final paragraph is especially noteworthy: "While reported observed correlations between cosmic rays and clouds are suggestive of effects of cosmic rays on clouds, cosmic rays rarely change without other inputs to the Earth system also changing (e.g. total solar irradiance or solar energetic particle events, both also driven by changes in the sun, but distinct from cosmic rays). Thus, we must understand the physical basis of how cosmic rays may affect clouds. However, it is clear that substantially more work needs to be done before we adequately understand these physical connections, and that no broad conclusions regarding the effect of cosmic rays on clouds and climate can (or should) be drawn from the first round of CLOUD results. 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." Backing the GCR hypothesis as a silver bullet for explaining the observed climate change the last 50 years is backing the wrong horse.
74081. Albatross at 00:51 AM on 27 September 2011
       Galactic cosmic rays: Backing the wrong horse
       RealClimate has just published a post written by Dr. Jeffrey Pierce (an aerosol scientist). Dr. Pierces was invited by Nature Geoscience to author an article prior to the publication of the aerosol nucleation results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN. The article is well worth the read, the final paragraph is especially noteworthy: "While reported observed correlations between cosmic rays and clouds are suggestive of effects of cosmic rays on clouds, cosmic rays rarely change without other inputs to the Earth system also changing (e.g. total solar irradiance or solar energetic particle events, both also driven by changes in the sun, but distinct from cosmic rays). Thus, we must understand the physical basis of how cosmic rays may affect clouds. However, it is clear that substantially more work needs to be done before we adequately understand these physical connections, and that no broad conclusions regarding the effect of cosmic rays on clouds and climate can (or should) be drawn from the first round of CLOUD results. 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." Backing the GCR hypothesis as a silver bullet for explaining the observed climate change the last 50 years is backing the wrong horse.
74082. Albatross at 00:40 AM on 27 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Why is this thread going off topic about models and such? I know, go back to the post made at #9. We have discussed that ad nauseum on another thread with Pielke. Please take arguments about models to the relevant threads. Thanks. This post is about what Pielke (a "skeptic")and SkS agree on. Specifically, that a) we humans are altering our climate by emitting GHGs and b) we agree that we need to reduce our GHG emissions-- it is all there in black and white. That we agree on something is a good thing. Unfortunately, some contrarians are not happy with that and now seem bent on fabricating debate on well, just about anything for the sake of being argumentative and to shift focus away from the fact that we are in agreement on two critical issues as noted above.
74083. Lloyd Flack at 00:34 AM on 27 September 2011
       The Climate Show #19: A Tale of Two Poles
       No, of course not. It is the lack of pirates that leads to global warming. Ramen.
74084. Jonathon at 00:19 AM on 27 September 2011
       Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
       Tom, You are half right. Not every La Nina will lead to a drought in Texas, as your graph details. However, every Texas drought has ccurred during a La Nina. Clearly, there is more to it than just ENSO events. By any standard, 2011 was hot and dry in Texas. Using the past decade to establish a "new normal" appears rather premature, as historically (as shown earlier) Texas has some rather extreme years, with few being "normal."
74085. Kevin C at 00:17 AM on 27 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       FundME: Yes, if we reach the point where CO2 and temperature have been tracking consistently over many decades, then that would be strong evidence (although correlation does not prove causation, and to even provide strongly suggestive evidence we'd need some serious bumps in the shape of the CO2 growth, which has been disappointingly smooth up till now). The problem is that this method is likely to not give a clear answer until long past the point where we have committed the planet to huge irreversible changes. And it is also demands that climate science work in a fundamentally different way to any other science. In no other field do we force scientists to abandon all the accumulated knowledge of physics from other fields, and rebuild from scratch on a purely statistical basis.
74086. FundME at 00:03 AM on 27 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       My understanding is that CO2 is all about heat and nothing but heat. It is my belief that Climate change as driven by accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere will be irrefutably proven when we can do away with either of the instruments used to detect heat and CO2 levels. We should be able to tell the temperature by using CO2 levels as an indicator and we should be able to tell the CO2 levels by reading a thermometer. A bit simplistic but that is the purpose. To cut away all of the extraneous contention. That is why Pielke.sr says that the EBMs can tell us all we need to know and as most of the heat resides in the Oceans that is where we should be focusing and using OHC as our chosen metric. We have weather prediction models to do the rest (modeling the atmosphere skillfully).
74087. Tom Curtis at 23:58 PM on 26 September 2011
       Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
       With regard to the Texas drought, I have been working on the following adaption of Tamino's graph: It is the same as Tamino's graph, showing post 2000 years circles red. What I have added is the six strongest La Nina events since 1949 colour coded to match this graph: The 2008/9 La Nina is coded grey for clarity. Data for the MEI index is here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/table.html Texas Summer climate data is here (Temp/Precipitation): http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=tmp&month=8&year=2011&filter=3&state=41&div=0 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/time-series/index.php?parameter=pcp&month=8&year=2011&filter=3&state=41&div=0 What's the point? I keep on hearing the refrain - "It's La Nina" or "It's El Nino" for every extreme climate event that happens. In the case of Texas droughts, the culprit is supposed to by La Nina. The graph shows that this explanation simply does not pass muster. Pre 2000, La Nina's are typically cooler than the average, and neither unusually wet or unusually dry. The '74, '75 La Nina, as strong as that of 2011 show values of 8.82", 80 degrees F, and 8.89", 79.4 degrees F respectively. In other words the last La Nina as strong as that of 2011 was cool, and wet in Texas. 2011 is clearly not just what happens in La Nina years in Texas. In contrast to ENSO, the grouping of all years since 2000 on or above the red line is highly suggestive. If we treated them as "the new normal", 2011 would still be unusually dry and hot, but not exceptionally so.
74088. Eric (skeptic) at 23:37 PM on 26 September 2011
       Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
       "An analysis of Texas statewide tree-ring records dating back to 1550 indicates that the summer 2011 drought in Texas is matched by only one summer (1789) in the 429-year tree-ring record, indicating that the summer 2011 drought appears to be unusual even in the context of the multi-century tree-ring record."
       http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/8 Claims of "not happened before" should be qualified with the period of record being used. There's no doubt that the drought is unusual in the largest context available.
74089. Jonathon at 23:30 PM on 26 September 2011
       Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
       Rob, There was not been an increase in frequency or intensity of El Ninos and La Ninas during the 20th century. See the following graph. We has seen some changes between predominant El Nino conditions and La Nina conditions, with El Nino states predominating until recently. The theorized increased heat into the deeper oceans could be achieved by the ENSO cycle, however it would be just that, cyclic. If the current La Nina is transporting heat deeper into the oceans, then the previous El Nino was involved in the upwelling of heat. These would tend to balance out over time as suggested by Paul. The upper ocean layer warms by solar radiation. Some of this heat is then lost to the atmosphere through radiation. Much of the heat is lost to the atmosphere through convection, particularly in the tropics. This were much of the influence of clouds is occurring, as mentioned on other threads. Less clouds results in less convection, while more clouds results in greater convection. As more heat is transported to the upper atmosphere through this process, more heat can be radiated to space. Since La Nina conditions tend to lead to increased cloudiness, the current ocean cooling can be tied to the recent La Nina conditions. Longterm, any heat tranferred to the deeper ocean will return to the surface through either a reversal of the heat transport process or directly through density changes caused by the heat transfer. Under either scenario, transfer of heat to the deeper ocean would be temporary.
74090. Dave123 at 23:03 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69 becoming very much an underdog- I'd like to respond with a slightly different approach- Dana69, you asked for a "refutation" of Dr. Pielke Sr. Could you please summarize how Dr. Pielke arrived at his contention that CO2 isn't the dominant climate driver? What is the observational and experimental data behind it? What is the total forcing that Dr. Pielke believes exists? How does that compare with the consensus forcing and CO2 participation? I wasn't able to find this in the discussion he presented, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect a refutation of something that's not there. I probably missed a thing or two that you can fill in, but overall, I don't think its there. What I observed was a fair degree of frustration from the SkS side trying to get at this so it could be discussed and Dr. Pielke rebuffing repeated requests to do so.
74091. Kevin C at 22:37 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       However I think the comparison between EBMs and GCMs gives us a very interesting piece of information: An EBM with the same response function as a GCM gives the same evolution of temperatures over time as an ensemble of runs of that GCM. (See for example Hansen's 2011 draft paper on energy balance, or Held's blog post linked by Riccardo). However the individual GCM runs give significant variation about this mean. That should tell us something about the physics. My interpretation is as follows: Despite the fact that the temperature can vary significantly in the short term due to internal variability (ENSO, cloud feedbacks etc), the system is fundamentally stable with respect to the equilibrium temperature for a given level of sustained forcing. Or equivalently, the system has a rather limited memory for what has happened in the past. Does that seem right?
74092. Dikran Marsupial at 22:19 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69 How are global energy balance models used to make regional projections? GCMs can do this, can EBM. One might equally ask Prof. Pielke why we should use energy balance models when they don't tell us anything we couldn't be achieved using simple statistical regression models. The obvious answer to that question is that EBMs are based on more physics than statistical model; the answer to Pielke's question is pretty much the same, the GCMs include more physics than EBMs. The really funny thing is that the most common complaint about GCMs is that the climate is too complex for them to model, but here Prof. Pielke says we should use even simpler models. So why doesn't the complexit argument apply to Prof. Pielkes energy balance models? ;o)
74093. Riccardo at 21:57 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69 reminds us of this claim by Dr. Pielke: "computationally expensive climate models, when used for multi-decadal predictions, have not told us anything of demonstrated added value beyond what can be achieved with just global energy balance models." As often happens, there's something untold behind this claim, i.e. that he's looking only at temperatures. This is resonable because this is the only thing that a simple energy balance model (EBM) can give. What surprises me, instead, is that it's him to consider temperature as the only important quantity. I'm sure Dr. Pielke knows very well that there's much more than global average surface temperature in the climate system. Apart from this, is it really surprising that a simple EBM is good enough to project the temperature over a multidecadal time scale? I don't think so, the physical foundations of the AGW theory are indeed as simple as a zero-dimensional EBM and it's exactly this that makes the AGW theory so strong. If anything, Dr. Pielke's claim supports the AGW theory. I'd suggest the reading of this interesting blog post by Dr. Isaac Held.
74094. Kevin C at 20:43 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69 #9:

       He also takes issue with climate models, which this site clearly relies heavily on.

       Nope. This is a Monckton/Delingpole myth. Read the skeptics guide - there are multiple sources of observational evidence for almost every single claim of climate science. Warming world? There are weather stations, ships, bouys, satellites, glaciers, lakes, ice caps, boreholes, plant and animal species migrations, corals, pollens, tree rings. Warming due to greenhouse effect? How about the diurnal temperature range, winter vs summer warming, stratospheric cooling, tropopause rise, increased DLR, decreased OLR. (D = downward, O=outgoing, LR=longwave radiation) CO2 role in greenhouse effect? How about Tyndal's experiments in 1859, repeated and updated hundreds of times, gas spectroscopy, predictions from QM (probably the most successful theory in the history of physical science), the DLR spectra, OLR spectra, and also energy balance calculations. Future impacts? How about the paleoclimate data from previous interglacials, from the deep past, simple projection based on equilibrium sensitivity, energy balance calculations based on 20thC climate. And that's all from one lay person's reading. In fact, I can't think of a single claim of climate science, apart from perhaps regional predictions of the impacts of climate change, which isn't supported from multiple observational sources. Can you?
74095. skywatcher at 18:52 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69 #9, just because you've found a single scientist who disagrees with the consensus that anthropogenic GHGs are the dominant current driver of climate change does not change the fact that virtually all relevant climate scientists concur with this observation (97-98%; e.g. Anderegg et al). They are supported by a wealth of physical observation, including but not limited to: the observation of the enhanced greenhouse effect (downward and outgoing longwave radiation), of a warming pattern consistent with GHGs rather than other drivers, and of palaeoclimate and geological observations consistent with a climate sensitivity of 3C/doubling CO2. You can claim the 'site relies heavily on models', unfortunately, the evidence is in a great deal of observation from a great variety of sources, not just the models (which are based on physics so not to be dismissed). Dr Pielke has not explained how to drive palaeoclimate with a low climate sensitivity to forcing. Can you?
74096. bartverheggen at 18:09 PM on 26 September 2011
       Ocean Heat Content And The Importance Of The Deep Ocean
       Theh Palmer paper is available here
       Moderator Response: fixed link
74097. Harald Korneliussen at 16:03 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       I think my friend the climate pirate says it best: We can’t deal with a problem without knowing its scope. That Pielke Sr. agrees CO2 causes some global warming is not something to shout hooray for. We need to know if the appropriate approach is to politely petition people to change their lightbulbs, or to ban air travel and coal power. The world is full of climate "realists" who want to call themselves environmentalists because they put their orange peel in the trash rather than throwing it on the ground (I'm serious. This was used as an example by a guy in earnest). I actually think this should be a Climate Myth with rebuttal on this site; "Why can't we all just get along? Don't we all want fresh air after all? Do we really have to bother with this controversial climate change stuff?"
74098. Dana69 at 15:01 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Rob Honeycutt, It appears you didn't read his response here SkS Responses to Pielke Sr. Questions @17 which states: "A focus on the radiative forcing of added CO2 as the dominate environmental threat is not supported by the scientific evidence. Policies that focus on that single issue which result in negative effects on other environmental and social concerns is not good policy, in my view." Or maybe you skipped this response @94: No; "I am not convinced that CO2 is the largest annual global averaged positive radiative forcing [and I am interpreting that you mean human climate forcings and the global annual average). Sott, and a variety of other aerosols have quite substantial positive radiative forcings in the atmosphere, and for soot,at the surface on snow and ice also. These other positive radiative forcings arr discussed in some depth in." This site continues to claim that Radiative Forcings caused by CO2 is the first order climate driver causing the current global warming trend, and this is considered settled science. Clearly another valid scientist disagrees. He also takes issue with climate models, which this site clearly relies heavily on when he states at @94: "I also have concluded that the computationally expensive climate models, when used for multi-decadal predictions, have not told us anything of demonstrated added value beyond what can be achieved with just global energy balance models. By so closely linking policy to these models, we are doing more harm than good in developing effective climate and energy policies."
       Response:

       [DB] "This site continues to claim that Radiative Forcings caused by CO2 is the first order climate driver causing the current global warming trend"

       You'll have to provide a link to support this assertion, for at this juncture it's simply unsupported.

       "and this is considered settled science."

       IBID

       "Clearly another valid scientist disagrees."

       And whom would that be?  Or do you refer obliquely to RPSr?

       "computationally expensive climate models"

       Since when does it really matter what the computational cost of a model is and what are RPSr's credentials in being an expert in that area?

       "when used for multi-decadal predictions"

       So using models for an area (multi-decadal vs centennial or millennial-scale) outside of their design core functionality makes them more expensive to run?

       "have not told us anything of demonstrated added value beyond what can be achieved with just global energy balance models"

       Insights, sir, insights galore.

       "By so closely linking policy to these models, we are doing more harm than good in developing effective climate and energy policies."

       At last, the underlying pea is revealed.  You object to policy changes from the status quo and set up straw men and houses of cards in a failed attempt to cloak policy objections with unsupportable science.

       Please note that SkS is about discussing the science of climate change and exposing the mythologies behind those that would seek to obfuscate it.

74099. Rob Honeycutt at 14:27 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69... "...and yet comes to different conclusions." I wouldn't be so sure about that. Can you give an example? It seems to me that Pielke was, to a certain extent, taking a different path to the same conclusions, that as a species we need to address our use of fossil fuels and quickly switch to clean sources of energy.
74100. skywatcher at 14:08 PM on 26 September 2011
       Pielke Sr. Agrees with SkS on Reducing Carbon Emissions
       Dana69, did you read this very recent article on ocean heat on SkS, or a number of older articles? SkS regularly deals with ocean heat content. Oceans are warming, as measured directly through OHC and indirectly through sea level rise. Cherry-picked short-term trends don't change that. Human emissions are not responsible for 26%, of yearly global emissions. Neither SkS nor Dr Pielke made your erroneous claim. Pielke claimed 26% of the positive radiative forcing was due to CO2 emissions. His claim does not seem too strong either, given the trend of natural forcing factors since the 1960s, and certainly natural factors cannot account for the trend in temperatures. Pielke also avoided answering what proportion of global warming (temperature) was due to CO2 emissions. "... many other factors affecting climate irrespective of CO2 alone". See if you can find anyone that disagrees with that statement! The only problem is that CO2/GHG forcing is the strongest of all the forcings currently in action. SkS did not need to "refute" it.

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