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

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Comments 74501 to 74550:

  1. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    We seem to be talking past each other so let me try one more time to illustrate the difficulty I'm having. Consider the following toy model of the climate. Forcing function F drives the input. It gets summed with the feedback signal and converted to temperature by Gain2. The feed back path encapsulates the functional relationship between Co2 and temperature. The transfer function models the time lag between a change in temperature and the corresponding change in CO2 concentration at node C. Gain1 handles the conversion from CO2 to radiant energy. The feedback is positive but low enough that the system is stable. The paleo temperature record corresponds to the signal at T, the CO2 record to the signal at C. We ask ourselves, what is the expected time relation between T and C under closed loop conditions? Answer: Same as under open loop conditions! I.e. feedback can not change the open-loop relationship between T and C. If the physical mechanism that produces CO2 when the temperature rises includes a lag (and it does), we expect to see that same lag under closed loop conditions. How can it be otherwise? The relationship between T and C is defined by the blocks between them. And note that relationship is completely independent of the complexity of the transfer function which could include other internal feedback loops, other gain paths etc. I can think of no system formulation that could possible convert a lagging signal to a leading signal. I hope this clears up my conundrum.
    Response:

    [DB] Since you are fond of analogies, let me share this one with you: 

    Your conundrum, distilled, is that you are treating climate science as some that learn a foreign language:  you are insisting upon translating the words you hear into English before assembling them into sentences.  However, to truly learn a foreign language, one must learn enough vocabulary, sentence structure and syntax to understand the foreign language in your head without the need for translation.  In essence, you need to be able to think in that foreign language before true understanding of it is then reached.

    That is what is retarding your understanding.  As it has retarded the understanding of electrical engineer-types like RW1 and co2isnotevil before you.

  2. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    I think this point has laready been made, but jpat, you seem to be desiring a single, simple function to explain palaeoclimate and feedbacks. Except... climate variations depend on a series of interrelated systems, each operating at different rates, with different magnitdes at different phases of the climate history. Stephen Baines describes some of that complexity. As climate is forced into a cooling, we get ice sheet expansion over North America and northern Europe, increasing the albedo effect, and having knock-on effects for temperature, water vapour, biomass, CO2, sea ice and a whole lot of other things, each operating at a different rate, with different lags, and feeding back to temperature and drawing down a little more CO2. The process is self-limiting, because eventually the ice can't grow enough for albedo to overcome mid-latitude insolation and the forcings don't remain permanently low, and so with the present continental configuration, high-latitude glaciation is easy, but global glaciation is not so easy. Once it's in place, you need a sufficient forcing to drive the system in the other direction. When the forcing operates in the other direction, the now kilometres-thick ice sheets over North America and N Europe begin to melt, and can do so quite rapidly due to dynamical processes, especially when the height of the ice sheet begins to drop. That aids all the other feedbacks operating in a warming direction, but there is an element of self-limiting as eventually the big ice sheets have shrunk and so the albedo component can't drop quite so fast, and the forcing is no longer at a maximum. In order to continue the melting into the next vulnerable ice sheets - Greenland and West antarctica - you need an extra forcing kick. CO2 can operate as a forcing or a feedback (the molecules have no memory of how they got into the atmosphere, they just trap heat), and by releasing lots of CO2, we've provided the extra kick in forcing, which means that Arctic sea ice, Greenland and West Antarctica are vulnerable. There's nothing magical about why most interglacials appear to have approximately similar magnitudes, as that is a function of continental configuration and the length of the forcing. During the last interglacial, it's likely that parts of Greenland and West Antarctica melted as well. That's a very long way of saying that you cannot easily represent the full interrelationships of forcings and feedbacks with a simple function. In fact, the best way to capture the relationship is to build a model of all the relationships (a simple function is merely a simple model after all), incorporating all the radiative physics as best we can. You'll get even better results if your model is a spatial one that can capture trickier concepts like continental configurations and ocean circulations. This has been done, they are called GCMs. You didn't seriously think that the experts in this field who have worked on this for their whole careers hadn't thought of all this? You can't come at climate science from an unrelated field and completely grasp all the complexities without a great deal of effort. You seemed to be suggesting that you can, if your misconceptions about the palaeo record & CO2 and how much it's all 'figured out' in #58 and elsewhere are anything to go by. I can only recommend you re-read Sphaerica's advice in #51.
  3. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    Oh, but the earth HAS been warmer than now. In Pliocene, there was no glacial cycle and much still in more distant past. Probably warmer in the HCO as well in much more recent history but that was due to sun.
  4. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    gavinabrown - unbelievable! Perhaps a short course on plate tectonics and fossil fuel generation is required... who made this comment?
  5. Oceans are cooling
    Thanks Rob. Willis' exclusion of faulty floats is a favourite point of attack from those on the other side. The line of reasoning is something like 'floats giving colder than expected temps will always be 'faulty''. More evidence of global conspiracy etc
  6. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    I'd like a response to this comment, "I'll believe in climate change if they can explain to me why there are fossil fuels under the Arctic". The theory of this person seems to be that the earth cannot possibly be at record high temperatures as there must have once been tropical rainforests in the Arctic.
  7. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    Phil, Thanks for the links! I was thinking about looking up papers like this for my class in the spring. I need to update the mock global C model we use in the lab. These should give me some ideas. jpat...some of the feedbacks are not easy to model realistically outside of an ESM (as they are called these days). For example, one paper scaddenp points to looks at vegetation feedbacks. These cannot spin out of control interminably as there is only so much land than can be converted to forest and back again. Soil carbon has similar constraints. Ocean chemisty, circulation and carbon sequestration is not nearly so straightforward a function of temp as you'd think. Martin hypothesized that dust delivery to the Southern Ocean can alter CO2 storage by stimulating Fe limited phytoplankton. That effect is constrained by availability of other nutrients, though, and would not scale proportionately with climate change. Basically there are any number of ways to get an eventual damping of the CO2 -temp feedback. We're still trying to figure out which were really important.
  8. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    I'm tempted to agree with Chemware. At this point, the argument that Pielke is acting hypocritically has been established, beaten to death, brought back to life by a red priest, and beaten to death again. The evidence for the hypocrisy could fill an SkS-sized website, and it's threatening to do so now. Pushing the argument to the point of ridicule serves only to freeze dialogue and limit the progress of both science and its communication. Pielke has his open invitation to engage both the science and the discussion of his continued hypocritical support of the uncritical posts and comment streams at WUWT. Roger, Roger?
  9. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    using which age model?
  10. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    "Speaking of math, did you verify that the time resolution of the Vostok core was sufficient to identify such a short period lag as your 'extracted astronomical signals' graph illustrates?" As you probably know, the Vostok data is not uniformly sampled. I resampled the data to a 5 year interval using standard interpolation and verified that the roll-off of the resampling was well above the signal band of interest. So yes, there's plenty of resolution.
  11. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Chemware, I don't see Monckton Myths as ridicule in the least. That is a pretty exact description of what the man offers. Even the lettering actually coheres with how the man presents himself. If that is ridicule, it is self-ridicule. Spencer slip-ups is pedestrian. The graphic is not provocative at all - referencing I guess his tendency to favor negative feedbacks. He might be upset if an overdeveloped sense of grandeur makes him sensitive to all questioning. But that would be his problem and not the problem of this site. Lindzen's illusions fairly describes what the man does as well: cherry-pick, dissemble, distract and appeal to authority to cast doubt on perfectly good science and disguise his own intellectual isolation on climate change matters. However, he does not cast himself as a magician, so it is a little impertinent. That graphic basically puts a pointy hat on his head and a wand in his hand. That said, the graphic is no different than that employed by Lessons from Predictions, which links to assessments by the SkS team. So it would seem the same level of levity is afforded to links of SkS products as it is to these personalized links. They too have pointy hats and wands. Welcome to the party! The one I can really see an issue with is crock, but that is because of an association I and many others were not aware of.
  12. Philippe Chantreau at 13:05 PM on 20 September 2011
    Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric, read my post again. I am not pointing to threats to justify calling stuff BS, only to expose double standards. The BS stands on its own. The BS is the stuff similar to what is covered in "Christy Crocks" and "Spencer Slip-Ups." The BS is pretty much everything that Monckton eructs in his presentations. The BS used to be all over the place going unchecked. The BS is Pielke accusing SkS of ad-hom, then trying to talk about something else. The BS is calling a pseudo journal with a self professed agenda a peer-reviewed science publication. Would skeptics consider legitimate a publication with a stated goal of providing a "platform" for papers favoring AGW, to the exclusion of other works? If not, then why give any credence to the opposite? That's BS. The BS is Wegman doing a half a$$ed plagiarized job of not really replicating anything and then calling Mann's work flawed. The BS is a fanatic like Cucinelli then arguing of that plagiarized report to justify a witch hunt. The BS is advising readers to send FOIA requests from countries where they have no residence only to multiply the number of requests for harassment purpose. The BS is so thick we could use it for natural gas production. Beck is relevant because the lack of scrutiny applied to his "work" by fake skeptics is an indication of how one-sided they are. If you think Beck is easily dismissed, go give a shot at that on WUWT and come back to tell us how it went. I can't wait. Tamino received threats of physical violence on several occasions from anonymous writers, although he has not made a whine fest out of it. That is not BS but an example of the kind of behavior we are up against. Sorry Eric, you certainly are one of the better skeptics, and as such, more the exception than the rule.
    Moderator Response: [John Hartz] It's time for you to rejoin the ranks of SkS authors.]
  13. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    In response to the Christies testimony to congress about global cooling in the 70's, Dr Pielke said "However, this issue is not particularly relevant (when raised by anyone) to the current important climate science questions." It is important when that comment is used to imply that climate scientists change their minds and don't know what they are talking about.
  14. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Philippe #87, you make some good points like the tone created by the Cuccinelli witch hunt. But Ernst Beck? His work is easily dismissed and doesn't seem relevant to this thread. Some of your other points are covered by other threads as well. Forum comments are broad, hard to measure and hard to compare forums. Certainly WUWT does not follow the same rules as here for comments (e.g. allowing ridiculous political comments). I don't think you can justify calling something by a term such as "BS" by pointing to threats (from who?), rudeness or insulting behavior. Most authors here do not do any such thing, they simply call things what they are based on the facts as they see them.
  15. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Chemware#89: "do we want Skeptical Science to be a site of ridicule" Really? You're the first to call it 'ridicule.' How can discussion of science flaws be considered ridicule? Just because some who have made those flaws don't like it? Compare 'Lindzen Illusions' etc to some of the nonsense pulled from the anti-science sites, as in NYJ's #90. That's ridicule.
  16. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Dr. Pielke does not like titles such "Spencer's Slip Ups". It's deeply offensive to him, as it suggests that Roy Spencer has "slipped up" or has made a mistake, which is impossible. "Christy's Crocks" is at least as offensive, as it suggests that Christy has made multiple statements are that are wrong - also impossible. But the "excellent" blog run by Anthony Watts is well above the fray, sticking to the science. Some other titles and quotes from WUWT: "The Worst "Cook"book Interview Ever?" Wow - a derogatory play directly on John's name. I demand Watts retract that. "Skeptical Science? John Cook - embarrassing himself Another fall from grace." "Speaking of Australia, John Cook of Skeptical Science works out as a cartoonist (and blogs “faux skepticism” in his spare time) , but he’d never be able to produce anything like this." (the above referring to a Roy Spencer book entitled "The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama's Global Warming Agenda")
  17. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    There is an important word that has not been said yet in this article or its comments: Ridicule. That's what "Christy's Crocks", "Monckton Myths", "Lindzen Illusions", etc are really doing. These people richly deserve the ridicule, as the associated articles make clear. They also deserve it because because they support and encourage people who ridicule (and worse) climate science and scientists ... and nothing feels better than a bit of "eye for an eye". And that's what is upsetting Pielke, and maybe others as well. But do we want Skeptical Science to be a site of ridicule, or an authoritative, dispassionate, science-based site ? Let's take a step out of the muck.
  18. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    I was wondering what studies there had been of glacial onset using ESMs. Some papers - many, many more around. Meissnet & Weaver Calov et al Matthews et al At least examples of how complex the "equations" are. I'd say a lot more work is going to be done in this area though.
  19. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Let's not ignore WUWT's demeaning of scientists via that tried and true method, Josh's cartoons. Clever, because they don't show up in text searches and Watt$ maintains deniability. I won't link to an example, but you might recall the 'Dessler gets schooled' beauty. Giving the impression that a published scientist doesn't know what he's doing without overtly saying so; very noble. By contrast, the 'toon of the week' on the Weekly Digests here doesn't name names - and hence is not ad hominem.
  20. Philippe Chantreau at 10:33 AM on 20 September 2011
    Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric, I repectfully disagree. The general tone and the intent at CA and WUWT are to discredit and intimidate. Anything goes in order to achieve that. They entertain and even encourage the most ridiculous accusations by contributors, of conspiracy and what not. That is also seen in the overwhelming majority of the "skeptic" landscape. In fact, a most common skeptic argument is that this is all a hoax to get tax money. McIntyre has organized and conducted a campaign of harassment by abusing the FOIA, then used a less-than-perfect-reaction by the victims of the campaign to try to further discredit them. Accusations of scientific misconduct are as common as sand grains on the beach in the skeptic blogs. How much of it has been substantiated? [Crickets chirping]. Even the so-called "climategate" led to nothing. However, when the scrutiny advocated by skeptics is applied to them, we get things like the glorious M&M/Wegman fiasco. Then when GMU starts investigating and takes 5 months for what is normally limited to 60 days, what is the reaction of the self-righteous, integrity enamored skeptics? [More crickets] Beck has truncated graphs to make them look like they were showing periodicity where there were none. Monckton goes to the most egregious length of distortion, as was repeatedly demonstrated here. Scientists just trying to do their work run into zealots like Cucinelli who have the power and the fervor, ideological and religious, to carry on with witch hunts. SkS is very accomodating to opposing views compared to the skeptic hornet nests. Mods tolerated BP laying blanket accusations of fraud against respectable scientists without a shred of evidence multiple times. How bad does it have to become before we can call bulls#@t by its proper name? If skeptics don't like to be subjected to close scrutiny, they should not proclaim themselves as practitioners of it. If they're hurt by a somewhat inflammatory tone, they should start toning down. Tamino has received multiple threats of physical violence. In the early days of SkS, I had to endure streams of prejudice driven insults. Language a little strong? Cry me a river, Roger. At least it is supported by a real analysis, unlike the idiotic conspiracy rants dripping all over the skeptic blogs.
  21. Oceans are cooling
    Tristan - the false cooling shown in Lyman (2006) were caused by faulty pressure sensors in a collection of the ARGO floats - in other words the floats were actually deeper than they "thought" they were. In some of the floats this grew steadily worse over time. There has since been a second pressure sensor fault (a leaking seal) that has caused problems too. This was identified last year - it's still being worked through. Generally speaking most of the floats are still operational (AFAIK) - they work out exactly how the faulty floats differ from the norm and allow for this in their analysis. The data is then made available for oceanographers such as Josh Willis and John Lyman. The oceans are still warming though. See my post: Ocean Cooling Corrected, Again. It happens to be that the top 700 metres of ocean aren't necessarily an accurate gauge for measuring global warming, for that you have to measure much deeper because the ocean circulations are able to efficiently push heat down to the deep ocean.
  22. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    Good point muoncounter - dating Antarctic core is not such a straightforward process and all of the date models have some assumptions built into them that making testing some hypotheses (eg delays between NH and SH responses) difficult.
  23. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Just to give people an idea of the asymmetry involved in this debate, as far as "tone" goes, let's inspect Climate Audit's latest thread. 1. Asserts Trenberth is a plagiarist 2. Asserts Trenberth was given special treatment 3. Says the "Team" (there's a name) are obstructionists on data and opposed to his ideas about openness A few threads earlier: 1. "climate capo Kevin Trenberth" 2. Refers to the analysis of Dessler as "Mannian" 3. Another assertion about the process that Dessler 2011 was published 4. Ends, "Perhaps the editor of Science will send a written apology to Kevin Trenberth." Do Watts and Pielke object to this treatment? And name-calling? Not that I've seen. The constant attacks on scientists from those now attempting to demean SkS for a few silly names on buttons can't be called anything less than preposterous from what I can see. If tone trolling is the best people can do to take down SkS than that should be more of a compliment. It's like in the middle of war zone and one side has stopped to criticize their enemy for grunting too loud. It was a nice try. But if the word 'Crocks' bothers the important crowd (ie not the blogging ideologues) we are trying to reach, I think changing it is correct.
  24. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat - but there are no simple equations in the model. Just mighty complex ones. As I said earlier, if you want the equations then stick you head inside one the Earth System Models. The question for feedback is that for a given delta-T, what are the changes in the feedback? For many the feedbacks, then this also depends on what current T is. Only water vapour is straightforward in this. Albedo depends on cloud response plus elevation versus freezing level.Methane is particularly complex, with multiple sources, some having temperature-triggered stores; and CO2 depends on your full carbon-cycle model.
  25. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat#84: "I just want to see the math for myself. " Speaking of math, did you verify that the time resolution of the Vostok core was sufficient to identify such a short period lag as your 'extracted astronomical signals' graph illustrates?
  26. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Sorry alb, not meaning to sound "inflammatory" so to speak, just relating a relatively simple behavioral example. That example is in fact directly lifted from my own experiences working with children in mental health, and depressingly enough I think an unfortunately large percentage of grown adults never outgrow that level of operation. The point is, it's not the appropriate time to defer leeway to someone's demands when they are being unreasonable in the first place. Doing so more often than not ends up encouraging more of the same inappropriate behavior. I would think after sufficient time-based consideration such changes could be deemed appropriate, but if so it should be for proper reasons.
  27. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric, #83: The "crack cocaine" remark is quite degrading as well.
  28. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Rob, I agree partly. I looked at the full context of the Jihadist remark and it is inappropriate. It was not used as an analogy but a description. I just commented on the "crack cocaine" remark in the hockey stick thread.
  29. Hockey stick is broken
    On the Briffa-Yamal series being "crack cocaine for paleoclimatologists" (the comment made by McIntyre), there were non-addictive alternatives available: e.g. http://18a.akadem.ru/Articles/02/naurzbaev_en_2.pdf and http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/Holocene_v12a.pdf versus Briffa: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/qsr1999/ Briffa's response to the impact of his series: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/cautious/cautious.htm McIntyre's response to Briffa's response: http://climateaudit.org/2009/10/28/response-to-briffa-on-yamal-impact/
  30. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    Sphaerica @81 - Thanks for that explanation. It's a good point and clearly cause for concern. KR and muoncounter - Thanks for the papers. Schwartz talks about some of the same taxonomical issues I tried to with my divider + VCVS analogy. I think incorporating something like this into the header on this topic would be helpful. In reading through the comments I see others have fallen into the same trap I did.
  31. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat@84 I think this has been pointed out several times, but there are more variables in the model.
  32. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric... McIntyre and Watts are fostering an atmosphere of hatred toward climate scientists that is completely undeserved. I don't see SkS as taking that approach at all toward Spencer or Christy or even Lindzen. SkS points to the inaccuracies. No one at SkS would ever even consider calling any of these scientists a "jihadist." If they did John Cook would immediately banish them.
  33. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    scaddenp @83 I'm saying if one of my engineers brought me this plot and said that his system model indicated the red curve was the cause and the blue curve the effect I'd ask to see his equations :>) That's all I'm after here. No agenda, not trying to upset anyone or advocate a position. I just want to see the math for myself.
  34. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    and given what we just learned about McKitrick in #69: surprisingly hateful.
  35. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat - are you saying that because CO2 is still rising, then temperature shouldnt be falling? But what is the strength of the forcing associated with delta-CO2 cf to strength of other forcings operating at the same time?
  36. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric, 78: "Colorful"? I would say: hostile, degrading.
  37. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric, you are now arguing semantics-- if that is the substance of your defense for McIntyre it is incredibly weak, and if that is what you consider "colourful" then we can agree to disagree. He used those terms to attack climate scientists, whether or not they appeared in a title is irrelevant. Thanks for showing us your very obvious bias.
  38. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    Sphaerica (at #78) et al. The plot below is what am using as a basis for my questions. It is a sum-of-sines best fit to the adjusted vostok data where the period and amplitude of the forcing components was extracted by fourier analysis (and match near perfectly to the known Milkanovitch periods.) Since we can not know how the phase of each component is affected by the climate we adjust the phase of each component for best fit (r^2=.6). Here's the Fourier analysis which was done with a technique called linear decomposition which avoids the spectral smearing one gets with windowing. The narrow line widths are strong indications that the forcings are astronomical as no natural terrestrial process could maintain this level of spectral purity over 500kYr. Finally here's the same temperature extraction plotted with the CO2 extraction and scaled to equal amplitude for easy comparison. In the first plot, note that the rapid decrease in temperature generally occurs near a dT/dt minima. In the last plot note that the CO2 is still rising at the temperature turn-around point.
    Moderator Response: [mc] Please restrict image width to 475
  39. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Albatross, titles please? You are correct that McIntyre uses colorful analogies, but I asked for titles.
  40. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Eric@71, Really? Regarding defending McIntyre, I do not think you wish to go down that road. But you did, so..... Do you not remember Mr. McIntyre saying this? "However, as CA readers know, the resulting Yamal chronology with its enormous HS blade was like crack cocaine for paleoclimatologists" Nice...not. And funny how McIntyre cherry-picked those pseudo-proxy series that showed hockey sticks, and which was dutifully and uncritically reproduced by Wegman in his plagiarised "Wegman report". But I think that I can better that. McIntyre, "James Hansen and his disciples have a more jihadist approach" I think just those two examples beat "Christy's Crocks" by a very long shot.
  41. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Dave123, I didn't know about McKitrick, but yeah Spencer is a typical example Cornwall thinking... that is science, politics, and economics are all synonymous with religion. For example; "We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception." Except, of course, we know for a fact that isn't true. There were these things called glaciations. Not exactly "admirably suited for human flourishing". Indeed, the last one nearly wiped us out. And before anyone accuses me of 'religion bashing' or somesuch... there are plenty of religious people whose beliefs conform to observed reality. Spencer isn't one of them.
    Moderator Response: [Albatross] OK, that is enough talk about Spencer's affiliations with the Cornwall Alliance. That subject is now off-topic. Future references to Spencer's religious views or his affiliation with Cornwall Alliance will be deleted.
  42. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Crocks is the only one that seems a little aggressive. Perhaps change it to Christy Confusion. The cartoony font used and the alliteration in other buttons puts it in context anyway.
  43. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Well, Dave123, that's definitely interesting. The language in that text definitely suggests a logical link between creationism and the anti AGW crowd. The worlds ecocystems cannot be "unstable and fragile products of chance" and so are immune from "miniscule variations in atmospheric chemistry." Not the kind of presupposition any scientist should sign onto. Is that site legit?
  44. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    How about "Christy's Incredulities"?
  45. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    How about... "Christy's Mysteries" In additon to rhyming words, you get a literary allusion.
  46. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    #68 Rob, IMO McIntyre's titles do not compare to Christy's Crocks. If you believe otherwise, please point to an example. The various thread titles should not distract from the message, so I would propose something like Christy's Crocs which are comfortable and colorful, but relatively cheaply constructed and which should not be worn on a serious hike.
  47. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    ooops...messed up the hypertext
  48. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    Shub, This may be ad homenimem, and the moderators may pull it. But I put the following proposition to you: If someone publicly states that as credo, as faith that some things are beyond science, then can we start to suspect that they aren't in fact scientists at all, but some sort of wolf in sheep's clothing? That they are not operating in good faith except towards their credo and their co-believers? Until a few minutes ago I had no idea that the Cornwall Alliance existed. Now I see that Spenser and McKitrick are members and signers of its credo. Cornwall Alliance Declaration on Global Warming You don't like the IPPC. How are you on other organizations with actual announced agendas? If you don't like Greenpeace having a say in what happens at IPPC, what about testimony under oath from Cornwall Alliance people? And y'know, I find your distinction between congressional testimony and publishing in the scientific literature most peculiar. I don't buy it in the least.
  49. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    77, jpat,
    if we haven't reached the point of diminishing returns at present, then neither had we back then.
    Refer to my previous post. Note that the point at which the natural system stabilizes is always around 270-275 ppm. That was the point of diminishing returns as far as the natural climate goes. It wasn't going to add any more CO2 on it's own. Enter man. Add 115 ppm in just a hundred years (where the natural climb from 180 to 270 took thousands). This is a 0.5 fold increase. If we go all the way up to 540 ppm, double where we started, that is again another whole unit of temperature of increase. Consider that the change from 180 to 270 is only a 0.5 fold increase in CO2. That's what pulls us out of a glacial period, over the course of thousands of years, and we have already today duplicated that forcing in a mere 100 years. You are right in that the natural climate system had reached the point of diminishing returns. It was never going to push CO2 levels and temperatures above where they were at. But that doesn't mean that CO2 will now somehow magically fail to have the same, predictable effect.
  50. Chasing Pielke's Goodyear Blimp
    funglestrumpet @ 64... I think Monckton got off light in terms of how the alliteration of his name worked out. He's been much more deserving of the "crocks" title. The whole point to the alliteration of titles is to make them a better tool. It makes them more memorable, more likely that people will click through. Anyone who does work on websites will tell you that is how you get more people to click through to the data you'd like them to see. I have to say, these simple alliterations of people's names pale, by far, to what is constantly put out by Watts, McIntyre, Spencer, Monckton, etc. on their blogs. By comparison SkS is being really really polite to these people.

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