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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 74801 to 74850:

  1. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat - I strongly suggest you take a look at the CO2 lags temperature thread in this regard.
  2. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat - The Milankovitch forcings last for millenia, which allows time for various feedbacks to take effect. Just the Milankovitch forcings alone should change the average temperature of the Earth by a total of 1-2.5C; the 6-8C swings seen over the ice age cycles are due to the amplification of the forcing change by water vapor, CO2, ice retreat/advancement, etc. The Wiki on this is actually fairly reasonable. I would suggest caution in reasoning from electronics - that would be an analogy, and while providing an analogy is a useful way to explain something, you cannot reason from an analogy back to the original system, as analogies only resemble the original complex system in part. You will inevitably get tripped up on the differences - there is no substitute for actually studying the real thing. And the real thing includes multiple time lags, chaotic/non-linear variations, and lots of different forcing inputs
  3. Underground temperatures control climate

    Clearly, the heat from inside the earth does not have any effect on the weather or the climate in the sense that this article explores. However, the heat from the earth may possibly have a contributory effect on ending a glacial and nudging us into an interglacial. In that sense, it would have a major effect on the climate. See: http://mtkass.blogspot.com/2011/09/continental-glacier-meltdown.html William

  4. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    IMHO - having followed thus discussion - despite what folks are won't to say; this thread proves beyond doubt that SkS accepts open discussion from people who disagree with things posted here, within the guidelines. Often (e.g. On FB) people don't pist here claiming their posts are deleted, they get abused etc. Clearly this demonstrates that that doesn't happen. What also often happens is that folks complain that when they post here people "refuse to answer" their questions. Clearly here you see that what infect gies on us that the questions are either red-herrings or generally off topic. All in all, this thread shows SkS in a ber good light compared to many sites. Well done.
  5. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    163, Shub, Yes. And what name was Christy called? Nothing. His statements were described as crocks, because the slang definition of "a crock" is nonsense or foolish talk. The article that you site then goes on to itemize statements Christy made that have been proven to be false or contradictory. That's exactly what a "crock" is. There is nothing ad hominem about it. He and others like him are being taken to task for making false statements in public. What exactly is wrong with this? Sorry if you don't like the use of a slang term to create a catchy title, but that's hardly grounds for your position. At the same time, I'm sure you give a free pass to the venomous and unfounded assaults perpetrated by sites like WUWT and others. So, again... can you find evidence of name calling? Or does it merely bother you that "skeptical" scientists have been caught making clear falsehoods before the U.S. Congress, so all you can do is bluster that "that's not fair?"
  6. CO2 lags temperature
    326, meghalnai,
    ...show me the area where CO2 is causing the temperature rise on the chart given in the discussion.
    If you are not willing to look in detail at the subject, no one in the world can make it easy for you.
    You have just long lectures and "climate models".
    Um, no, actually we have a detailed understanding of the intricacies of the system. That you want this watered down to a single graph that a child could interpret is your problem, not ours. I will give you a hint, however. CO2 rises with temperature increases, and temperature rises with CO2 increases. They are interlocked. So an initial orbital forcing sparks a small temperature rise, which in turn sparks a CO2 rise, which raises temperatures further, which raises CO2 levels further. This cycle results in an ongoing upswing in temperature, up to a point where CO2 levels reach about 280 ppm. At that point things stall because the relationship between CO2 and temperature is logarithmic. Unfortunately, mankind has found a way to pump well beyond 280 ppm of CO2 into the atmosphere for the first time in millions of years. But the main point is that a small temperature increase starts a feedback cycle involving CO2 that results in a large temperature increase. Without accompanying increases in CO2 you would not see the temperature rise much beyond -8 ˚C.
  7. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Stephen
    But Shub...what names were they called?
    Take a look at this thread: http://www.skepticalscience.com/santer-catch-christy-exaggerating.html skepticalscience characterizes Christy's views as 'crock'. The website may well be run by climate experts who are far advanced in their views that they may see John Christy's views as a 'crock'. But, the topic reads rather like a complex disagreement, with no definitive resolution of the question it considers. Hardly a 'crock'.
    Moderator Response: [Albatross] Providing a link with no supporting information is not constructive. By doing so you have demonstrated nothing. You can turn a blind eye to the games played by 'skeptics'and try and distract people from their misinformation, or you can stand up for what is right. Do you agree with Christy misleading Congress? It is a yes/no question.
  8. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    I have found a few references on the radioactive contribution to heat flow. This one, which describes how geoneutrinos are measured and how they may provide constraints on the quantity of radioactive heating in the solid Earth. That reference led to this recent paper on the same subject, which reports that "heat from radioactive decay contributes about half of Earth’s total heat flux". The original statement in the blog post "Most of the heat that flows to the surface comes from this source" therefore needs to be amended, which I will do. Lord Kelvin did some calculations in 1864 on the thermal age of the Earth that neglected entirely any contribution from radioactive decay, which had not been discovered at that time. The text of some of the paper and be seen here and images of the original article can be viewed here. Kelvin came up with an age of the Earth on the range of 20-400 million years, but he later leaned more to the low side of this range. These figures were disputed by contemporary geologists and by supporters of Charles Darwin, who believed that much more time was required to account for geological and biological evolution. Of course, the natural philosophers eventually won that particular dispute with the physicists.
  9. CO2 lags temperature
    @meghaljani "Show me. You have just long lectures and "climate models"." What is the point of showing you if you refuse to engage all reasonable attempts to show you? But this question reminded me that I often think people do not understand why the ice core CO2 temp relationship is such a compelling proof of the effect of CO2 on climate because they don't understand know the scientific story behind those ice core records. Sometimes, constructing a historical narrative, like Specncer Weart does, clarifies what can seem counterintuitive in hindsight. In the 70s we knew that glacial periods existed in the past, and we guessed that Milankovitch forcing provided the initial cue - the corrletaion was simply to amazing to be chance. But we could not explain the large deviations in global temp during glaciation cycles as a function of Milankovitch cycle forcing. Albedo effects helped related to northern hemisphere ice and snow cover helped, but were similarly too small to account for the change - even taking account of temp-water vapor feedbacks. - without using unreasonable assumptions about the physics. (Yes, we knew this based on models -although they were relatively simple at the time). It was a quandry for a decade or so. One solution posed to this quandry was that changes in temperature could alter the global carbon cycle, thereby causing changes in CO2. That change in CO2 could then result in enough forcing to cause the glacial cycles given a small initial input. The ice core data were collected partly to test this theory, and they indeed showed that CO2 increased with temp sufficiently to cause the forcing required. So the ice core records were a test of the idea that CO2 affects climate. But it was never part of anyones thinking that CO2 would lead the temperature change, quite the opposite in fact. Asking to see such a pattern just doesn't even make sense. It's also impossible to understand why it is so compelling unless you embrace the physics behind the greenhouse effects and global climate models - and the feedbacks being discussed now by KR and jpat. To understand that, you actually do need to roll up your sleeves and read lectures/textbooks and do calculations yourself. Luckily we do pay people to do what you seem too impatient to do. Good for you!
  10. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Shub, I took a look at your webblog. You might have as well titled it "random crank turnings". SkS and RealClimate are where I go, (certainly not WUWT) for scientific references and data extracts. Looked in vain for a skeptical equivalent on yours. On the other hand saw plenty of political rambling. Could you explain why anyone here (since I'm relatively new) sees you or your blog as having any standing whatsoever?
  11. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    But Shub...what names were they called? And the "views" that were "characterized with cheap catchphrases" were demonstrable mistatements of fact, mistakes of logic, mischaracterizations of others views, etc. Some of those flase statements were repeated before congress! In my book, you could come up with a lot worse that cheap catchphrases to describe those actions. Pielke said nothing that changes the basic facts of the matter.
  12. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Where's the rhetoric, Shub? If you follow the links, you'll see Spencer's and Christy's misrepresentations of the science shown for what they are, with clear reference to the best available evidence, and explanations of where they went wrong. IMHO, calling Spencer and Christy's misrepresentations of the science 'slip-ups' or 'crocks' is actually being pretty kind. SkS has documented in detail some of the places where these respected scientists have departed from logic and reason. Skeptics concentrating on the title of the links (certainly not ad-hominem BTW) are merely trying to divert attention away from the content of the failings of Spencer and Christy. In fact, it smacks of desparation.
  13. CO2 lags temperature
    Again, show me where in the chart do you see CO2 affecting temperature? Show me. You have just long lectures and "climate models". When it comes to past data, you have nothing. For sphaerica, I asked to show me the area where CO2 is causing the temperature rise on the chart given in the discussion.
  14. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Steve Case, How did you come up with the trend line in your graph? Why is it above the actual from 2006 to mid year 2007, and then below the actual from mid year 2007 on? You stop at 2008. Here is a current, full data set: Here is that same image/data, with your "trend line" overlaid where it belongs. Can you see the problem here? And can you see the problem with using too short of a dataset to try to infer a trend? Or with paying too much attention to the tail in what is clearly very noisy data?
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] In addition, per Willis and Leuiette (2011):

    "Because of both uncertainties in the observational systems and interannual variations, it has been estimated that a minimum of 10 years is necessary to meaningfully interpret global trends in sea level rise and its components (Nerem et al., 1999)."

    "Despite efforts to maintain them, there are still limitations to the current observing systems. Coverage of the ice-covered and marginal seas is not possible with the current generation of Argo floats, and there is no systematic network for measuring steric changes in the deep ocean. Challenges also remain for altimeter measurements poleward of the 66° turning latitude of the reference missions and in regions covered by sea ice."

    Also from Hamlington et al. (2011, J.Climate):

    "However, from the 12-yr and full time series, we can see that the SNR patterns begin to converge, and an increase of areas with SNR greater than one occurs from 12 to 16 years."

    [Emphasis added to each.]

    Santer et al, DelSole et al and Hamilton et al. (and probably others) all point toward a minimum sample period of 16 years or so increase the SNR.  Anything less than 10 years is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

    H/T to the mighty Albatross...

  15. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    People are more likely to get a better idea on what happened if they read this thread themselves.
    True.
    Dr. Pielke was merely referred to address the scientific concerns in the threads that dealt with his scientific questions.
    Really? Pielke Sr's main point was that, whatever you might feel about Spencer and Christy's views they were respected climate scientists. Calling people names, categorizing their views with cheap catchphrases - there are not "scientific matters" are they? I have seen the SkepticalScience website evolve over time. The current brand of rhetoric smacks of desperation.
    Moderator Response: Yes, really. He didn't address the concerns that were involved in the posts in question. No one here is arguing for, or against, anyone as a respected climate scientist. Your opinion of SkS is noted.
  16. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    #181: But volume is the measure that is relevant to sea level rise, not mass. Concentrating on very short time periods (such as 5 years) will very often lead you to the wrong conclusions.
  17. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Steve, I'm not interested. If I was, I'd doublecheck my own methodology and then carefully read the CU pages on processing and steric effects. Then I'd go through their bib carefully. If I still didn't find an answer to my question, I'd ask CU. What you're effectively doing here is backing into an argument for the difficulty of measuring sea level rise, but I can't figure out what you want to do with this argument. Scientists who study sea level rise know that it's difficult. Are you attempting to use sea level rise as a proxy for measuring the energy in the Earth system? If so, why not use something more direct and less subject to gravitational shift, currents, cycling, sedimentation, local uplift/subsiding, crustal movement, incomplete historical coverage, and instrumental error? Or do you think you've found the Golden Hoax?
  18. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Isn't 'one sided skepticism' also known as bias? Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of (possibly equally valid) alternatives.
  19. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    The blogs linked by grypo in #156 clearly share Pielke's one-sided "skepticism".
  20. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    [DB] I missed your comment on measuring mass instead of volume as the best way to determine how much water is in the ocean. Measuring how much water there is is more a function of mass than volume since temperature affects volume. I stated the obvious, and you tell me I'm on dangerous ground. ????????
    Response:

    [DB] "I stated the obvious, and you tell me I'm on dangerous ground."

    Re-read my response to you above.  If you are again implying that fraud & conspiracy are obvious then we are done.

  21. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Yes, we are at an impasse, I would think that you or some one would be curious to find out what the reasons for those increases from 2.8 mm/yr to 3.3 mm/yr over that period of time are when graphically it looks like it didn't happen.
  22. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Word is getting around about this thread to other blogs. Shub Niggurath is calling SkS - "Kafka-esque" and Bishop Hill is forwarding Shub's misrepresentations and said the SkS post is "horrible stuff" . Shub's "SS" illusions are also a nice touch to really drive home his bizarre post. People are more likely to get a better idea on what happened if they read this thread themselves. Dr. Pielke was merely referred to address the scientific concerns in the threads that dealt with his scientific questions. I'm unsure as to why this was not mentioned in Shub's post. Deleting off-topic comments happens on blogs from all points of view. That's just the process here and everywhere. Usually off-topic comments are deleted completely. Pielke was actually given better treatment than most of the other commenters -- those arguing off-topic against Dr. Pielke. Also, there is a process by which SkS reviews it's posts, so addressing his scientific questions isn't as easy, or quick as he'd, or we'd like. SkS attempts to answer based on it's collective knowledge of the known science, not any one particular person or point of view. There are schedules and people have other interests and responsibilities, so everyone just take a deep breath. Better? And let's not pretend that Dr. Pielke is beyond reproach here. He made accusations and was responded to. He was also asked to comment on specifics in regard to the Christy/Spencer comments and decided not to. So what? That just means the case is closed, as far as anyone is really interested in how Pielke is accused of one-sided skepticism. People will need to figure that out for themselves now. No one is a King in this situation.
  23. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Link in @149 doesn't work. Fix? Also on Pielkes blog he admits "Al Gore is an idiot" is derogatory, and Watts says he will change it to "Al Gore". No longer derogatory, but content still maybe deGoratory.
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed link.

  24. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    [DB] You know perfectly well what my point is, but I can't post it on this forum because it will be deleted. But I can put up data and graphs and I can state that I don't see any justification for changes that I see. If you or any other posters here know what that justification is and how it relates to the data and graphs, then by all means put it up.
    Response:

    [DB] Then we are at impasse.  Whether due to a lack of background in climate science and statistics (I give you more credit than that) or an ideology discordant with the science, you continually prosecute an agenda of conspiracy and fraud rather than discussing the science itself.

    I reiterate:  if you wish to have an open dialogue about the actual science of climate change, then you are welcome to participate here.  Your present course is unacceptable. 

    Your choice on how this plays out.

  25. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    I've been drawn off the topic of my original post which was to point out that over time, the estimates of the rate at which sea level rises have changed over time. I don't know what the justification for some of those changes are. In particular, the 2004 - 2008 time line. A plot of the current data that CU provides with their estimate for the period 2004 - 2008 doesn't show an increase in rate for that period.
    Response:

    [DB] Steve, we have all been through this before.  You focus on insignificant timescales (while ignoring the contextual greater picture) and fixate on minutiae without a good grounding and background.  Perhaps more time researching, reading and studying would bear more useful results than the current approach.

  26. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    #176 Stephen Baines Where do you want to measure sea level from? The shore line? Or the center of the Earth? If your answer is either one of those, adding in the 0.3 mm/yr GIA correction will give an erroneous answer. Besides all that, if the scientists are really interested in how much ocean water there is and run a time line to represent that, then plotting mass instead of volume would be the most accurate way to go. They're not doing that.
    Response:

    [DB] "if the scientists are really interested in how much ocean water there is"

    You tread dangerous ground here.  If you are going down the path you are implying (fraud/conspiracy) then take this whole conversation to a more appropriate venue (many dozens exist).  This forum is about the science of climate change.  No room exists for implications such as this.  FYI.

  27. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    #14: "there is still plenty of indirect evidence ... if the entire interior of the 4.6 billion year old Earth was filled with radioactive potassium this still would not produce enough heat" I'm not sure how this unsubstantiated hypothetical qualifies as 'evidence.' However, here is some actual evidence: Radioactive potassium may be major heat source in Earth's core "Our new findings indicate that the core may contain as much as 1,200 parts per million potassium - just over one tenth of one percent," Lee said. "This amount may seem small, and is comparable to the concentration of radioactive potassium naturally present in bananas. Combined over the entire mass of the Earth's core, however, it can be enough to provide one-fifth of the heat given off by the Earth." "the Earth has the highest density of all the planets in our solar system due to close proximity of the Moon producing a disproportionally large amount of tidal heating" The moon's proximity is the reason earth's density (5.52) is as high as it is? Then please explain the densities of Venus (5.2) and Mercury (5.6), all relative to water=1. Where are their close proximity moons? Why would more tidal heating result in higher density? And isn't 5.6 > 5.52? Funny thing about the real Galileo; he was right. I fear what we have here is an example of it's turtles all the way down.
  28. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    KR - The op-amp is only their to provide the unity forward gain and ideal summing node required to implement the transfer function you gave in #37. I went through the exercise because I am pretty sure that a passive (i.e. forward gain <=1), physical implementation cannot provide variance amplification. I think this is a general result, imposed by boundary conditions and conservation of energy. Think of a step up transformer. True the voltage measured at the secondary will be higher than that at the primary but the variance (power) remains unchanged. I do think that climatologists use the term feedback in a different way than I am used to thinking about it. In this review, they state "S is proportional to 1/(1 − f)" where S is the sensitivity and f is the "net feedbacks". A control systems guy would call f the open loop gain, as in CL(s) = G(s)/(1-G(s)H(s)) where G(s) is the forward transfer function and H(s) is the feedback transfer function and s is the Laplace operator. I deduce from the above that climatologists model the forward gain as unity (which I find odd - if there were no feedback would all of the energy go into heat flux? Would some get reflected back immediately?) which is why the op-amp is configured for unity gain in my analogy. In any case I'm still trying to formulate a transfer function model for the radiant balance equations so that I can understand how it is that the CO2 could lag the temperature through the entire glaciation cycle, be responsible for the rapid interglacial rise and yet allow the small Milankovitch forcing to turn things around. Seems implausible but I've been fooled by intuition before.
  29. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Pielke #131 "I raised the issue on my weblog that I view the SkS labeling as ad hominems because I have published with John Christy and have directly interacted with Roy Spencer. They do not deserve such labeling" So now all disinformers know that they can get away with any kind of serious and repeated misrepresentation and blatant cherry-picking of the science in whatever context like in front of the most important political people in the world. They simply just need to publish a paper with Pielke or speak to him and then they do not deserve that anyone explicitly shows their mistakes by scientific arguments... But climate change is an extremely serious issue, feeling sorry for those caught in public with pseudo-arguments is completely irrelevant.
  30. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Steve I'm not sure I understand your concern. How do you uncouple ocean volume from sealevel rise at time scales of a few decades, Steve? And why would we be interested in the component of sea level rise that is not due to eustatic changes in ocean volume? I would think the component of sea-level change that is most relevant to understanding linkages to climate are those realted to ocean volume.
  31. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Given Dr. Pielke's strong views about the science of climate change, is it appropriate to classify him as a "contraian"?
  32. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    Angliss @20: I sincerely doubt that Galileo #14 was merely satire. Only he can confirm or deny your interpretation.
  33. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    Maybe it's just me, but I felt that Galileo's comment was satire.... As for Cotton's stuff, apparently the Earth, like Venus (which is heating due to an internal source too, dontchaknow) has a blue supergiant star instead of a ball of solid nickel-iron for a core. Don't ask why we don't weigh a lot more, why the Sun doesn't orbit around the Earth, how the Earth's crust is solid, how life evolved in a barrage of radiation that doesn't exist, etc. I know - Romulan force field, augmented with Borg technology. Oh, wait, Romulans use captured miniature black holes for their warp drives, not blue supergiant stars. OH! Maybe that's it, then! Oh, Doug, I've got a new idea for you....
  34. Just Deserts: Winning the 2011 Eureka Prize
    Congrats as well from me. (Sorry about my late check-in.)
  35. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    I have always wondered whether average temperature is the best measure of what is happening. If the theory is correct then, with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere every year, the earth should retain more heat every year. Of course there are other factors--solar variation, dirt in the atmosphere, and I don't know what else. But there can't be that many of these. In addition, heat doesn't all go to raise the temperature. There is the heat of fusion and vaporization. Perhaps heat is used in some other ways in ocean acidification. But again there can't be that many other places for heat to go. Would it be possible to quantify all these effects? Surely there can't be that many really significant ones. If so, a new number might be generated that would reveal the increased retained heat.
  36. CO2 lags temperature
    323, meghaljani, I'd like to answer your question, but I can't puzzle out what you mean by it. Can you re-phrase it in a clearer, more meaningful way?
  37. Arctic sea ice low – what does it really mean?
    DB Many thanks for this link to online pre-print: Recent changes of arctic multiyear sea-ice coverage and the likely causes by Polyakov et al doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00070.1 Lots of data to ponder there.
  38. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    # 174 Papy Your source has this interesting statement: In essence, we would like our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes. In other words they aren't really measuring sea level anymore. They aren't measuring sea level relative to the center of the Earth, nor are they measuring sea level relative to the shore line. So, if I want to sea what sea level is relative to the center of the earth, I need to subtract the GIA from those last two data points. Indeed, that's what Colorado U said to do back in May when they announced that they were adding the GIA correction. They said: Simply subtract 0.3 mm/year if you prefer to not include the GIA correction. (Link) Why might you want to not include the GIA correction? If you wanted to know what sea level is and not ocean water volume.
  39. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    Some bizarre claims there #14 Galileo. You claim the radioactive heating hypothesis is preposterous, yet don't tell us why? Apart from Sphaerica's excellent point, I might ask you a more philosophical question. If lightning strikes can start forest fires, does that mean that arsonists are incapable of starting forest fires? This is akin to your suggestion that the same single explanation should fully describe the interior states of all the planets in the Solar System. You compare Earth to Io, yet one is a planet orbited by a large moon, and the other is a moon orbiting closely to the most massive object apart from the Sun in the Solar System. Io's mass is 1.5% of the Earth's. The objects driving the tides are vastly different - Jupiter's mass is something like 26,000 times that of the Moon, and that mass is driving tides on Io at a similar distance to the lunar tides. Why would the internal processes necessarily have the same origin? Sadly, it's another bizarre claim to add to the increasing list.
  40. One-Sided 'Skepticism'
    Marcus, could you document that please?
  41. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    "Including the GIA correction has the effect of increasing previous estimates of the global mean sea level rate by 0.3 mm/yr. (Source) Doesn't this mean that, to illustrate the 2011 new releases GIA correction, you should have done exactly the opposite : let the blue line after 2011, and substract 0.3 mm/yr before ? But I agree that the influence of this correction should be discussed to determine if the nino variations are the only driver of the recent global sea level drop.
  42. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    I was curious about the history of the Sea Level Estimates published on the web by Colorado University. Here's the current estimate, 2011 release #2, of 3.2 mm/yr: I used The Internet Wayback Machine and searched on: [http://sealevel.colorado.edu/] [take me back] I found the following series of CU Sea Level Estimate pages: YYYY MM DD; Rel #; rate mm/yr 2004 02 15; rel 1; 2.8 2004 12 23; rel 4; 2.9 2006 04 10; rel 5; 2.9 2007 09 08; rel 2; 3.0 2007 04 27; rel 3; 3.2 2008 02 10; rel 2; 3.2 2008 09 08; rel 3; 3.2 2009 01 24; rel 4; 3.3 2009 11 02; rel 2; 3.2 2010 04 13; rel 4; 3.1 2011 01 08; rel 5; 3.1 2011 07 18; rel 1; 3.1 2011 07 19; rel 2; 3.2 So I plotted them all out: I added in red what the time line would have been if GIA hadn't been added starting in May of 2011
    Response:

    [DB] If you have a point with this exercise please be more transparent and just state it.  As it stands right now, you don't.

  43. Dessler Demolishes Three Crucial 'Skeptic' Myths
    jpat - responded on more appropriate thread. Check the papers in the intermediate section as well.
  44. CO2 lags temperature
    jpat - I do not believe so because the carbon-cycle feedbacks are from multiple sources, act over different time scales, (including a negative feedback - enchanced vegatation growth), as well as coupling with an albedo feedback. It is not obvious to me that the feedbacks should even be symmetrical. (Some like methane release versus methane storage are clearly not).It appears to me that you are thinking about this by analogy to a forced oscillator whereas a much more complex physical model is involved. More light on this should emerge from Ar5 models. However, the corollary of your question seems to imply that you think either: 1/ GHG do not cause warming - or 2/ the CO2 increase in atmosphere is causing warming rather than other way round. Both of these can be discounted from other evidence.
  45. Observations of Climate Change from Indigenous Alaskans
    I suppose there is a noticeable difference between -25C and -40C to those who live with and depend on frigid winters. The only time I experienced such temperatures was in 1950's in Igurka on the Ob river in northern Siberia. Never again!
  46. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    Stu#16: "Bizarre claim ... Doug Cotton" I can't imagine how you could pick out just one bizarre claim, like identifying a single tree in that very large forest. For example, his geothermal gradient of 27 deg C/km puts the temperature at the outer core boundary at a mere 79700 C; why worry about an 1800% error? But sadly, that's not the most bizarre claim out we're hearing these days.
  47. Climate Communication: Making Science Heard and Understood
    Pirate, I think you need two things. First, the survey needs a purpose. Simply gathering information with no focus or objective is too open ended. Second, you talk about a before/after context, but this would require some intermediate step whose impact you are trying to evaluate. I would suggest settling on a specific purpose. Is it to find out how many blatant misconceptions most people have? To demonstrate to them how little they know, or how complex the science is, or how much scientists do know? How influenced they are by politics? What they learn from a new, surprising source of information? The second item -- the before/after effect -- is going to depend entirely on what it is that you expect to happen between the surveys, and as a result, that will define the content of your survey. I would actually suggest either writing a brief article (and submit it here for "peer review") or choosing a sampling of key articles from this site. Write a survey that can be given before and after reading the chosen articles, or one for before and a different one for after. Once that step is done, the content and phrasing of the survey will probably become obvious. Then you can execute it... give the survey, let the population do the reading, then repeat (or give the second) survey. I personally like the idea of a survey that highlights how much is known and certain in climate science, and what the sources of information are. I think most people would be surprised at how clever and accurate paleoclimate studies and observations are, and what we are able to infer accurately and unequivocally from them.
  48. Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
    14, Galileo, You make some interesting assertions, but the actual science weighs against you. You say:
    So there you have it, the radioactive heating claim is preposterous.
    The following paper pertains to actual measurements detecting such a source of heat: Earth's heat budget: Clairvoyant geoneutrinos (Jun Korenaga, 2011)
    The quantity of heat generated by radioactive decay in Earth’s interior is controversial. Measurements of geoneutrinos emitted from the mantle during this decay indicate that this source contributes only about half of Earth's total outgoing heat flux.
    You said:
    ...this is not good since if a hypothesis cannot be tested then it does not qualify as being a scientific hypothesis.
    And yet it has been tested. I'm not going to argue all of the details of a fairly theoretical aspect of science that doesn't entirely interest me, but it is one in which real scientists are now developing ways to actually observe and measure. I'm afraid your rather lordly and holy dismissal of the science was a bit premature.
  49. Climate Communication: Making Science Heard and Understood
    Yes, please, tell us what you want to measure, Pirate. Is it attitudes? Knowledge of theory? Fundamentals of physics? Mitigation?
  50. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    jpat - A strictly electronic analogy will not work well with respect to the climate system. To some extent a transistor or op amp would correspond, but transistors are too non-linear. An operational amplifier could be used to build a corresponding circuit, with the Stephan-Boltzmann law providing the negative feedback, but not a bare op-amp. The S-B law indicates that thermal radiation to space scales as T^4 (in Kelvin), and means that excess energy accumulation in the climate, simply by heating/cooling the Earth, will rebalance the input/output levels. That's your negative feedback. There are fast energy state response elements (water vapor, clouds), slow response elements (ocean CO2, albedo from ice coverage, vegetation), and over and above this the forcings that drive those feedback items. In the ice age cycles a small amount of insolation variation (orbital changes shifting land/ocean exposure and polar insolation/albedo changes) acted as a forcing, with the temperature sensitive elements responding at various delays. Currently we are introducing a direct forcing with GHG's, and should expect to see water vapor levels, albedo, vegetation, and in fact CO2 levels from ocean solubility respond to the initial forcing with their own changes. All of these - forcings and feedbacks - act as throttles on the flow of energy from the sun into the climate and back out again, with rates dependent on the various states, gas concentrations, albedo, etc.

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