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Comments 75901 to 75950:

75901. John Hartz at 14:09 PM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       @Pete Dunkelberg #34: Other SkS authors are crafting the Intermediate and Advanced versions of this rebuttal argument. I'm not certain when they will be posted. The person behind the screen of the Science of Doom's website delves into this matter in excrutiating detail. Some readers of this comment thread may find the information posted on it to be of interest. The comment thread exchanges are also very illuminating.
75902. scaddenp at 13:59 PM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       Heard of insulation? Plain ordinary convention physics with 100 of years of experimental evidence has no trouble calculating the temperature on the surface of venus without any mysterious energy source. By contrast, your misunderstanding has a problem. If you look at the energy diagram you see the breakdown, but most importantly, this energy flows are measured. In your understanding, you could not account for these measurements. Do you agree that the test of whether the science is right is measurement? By all means come up with alternative physics but your alternative theory in which the GHE is missing must be able to account for what we actually observe.
75903. Rosco at 13:21 PM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       There has never been any demonstrated mechanism of trapping heat - it is the engineer's dream to achieve this and increase efficency of machines. Even the stars have an energy input through gravity and if the assertions about Venus albedo being so reflective that almost no radiation reaches the surface there must be some source of heat that we don't know about. I think Earth's temperature would be about what it is plus or minus a degree or two. We would still have the sun's input and water.
       Response:

       [DB] "There has never been"

       Never?  In over 150 years of scientists researching the greenhouse effect?

       Honestly, you betray your extreme lack of knowledge with comments like this.  You are not doing well, here.

75904. Bob Lacatena at 13:20 PM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       28, DSL, Rosco, I agree. I just looked around and came up with the same thread. The Planetary Greenhouse Interestingly, there's nothing better. No one else in the history of creative denial ever seems to have tried to argue that the greenhouse effect isn't relevant because convection + conduction does it all. Rosco, if you post a clear and concise argument on that thread (leaving out all of your observations that prove that conduction and convection exist, which is a strawman -- that is to say, an argument against something which no one is really contesting, and so of no value in advancing the discussion) then I will post a clear and reasoned response.
75905. DSL at 13:03 PM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       Watch that word "trap" sky--it's a denialist deviation point. I prefer "lengthen the path" of OLR. Rosco, what power are you assigning to convection? And are you implying radiative transfer has nothing to do with the average temperature of the Venusian atmosphere? Let's see some specifics on Venus, or take your theory over to the Colose article I linked earlier . . . please.
75906. scaddenp at 11:52 AM on 2 September 2011
       GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
       Eric, firstly an apology. I actually regard you as the most honest skeptic here - you have an honourable record. I'll admit that my comment at the end was a dishonest goad aimed at getting a proper response from you. If I didnt value your opinion, then I wouldn't have been so interested in provoking it. You are also the only skeptic here to really address the political issues rather than just saying they support a technology without saying they would make the change. I was just hoping you might have different ideas based on the rights conflict. I would agree that reducing transportation full stop is a big way to improve efficiency (in my country 44% of GHG are from transport so bigger deal here), but if you can power that transport from non-FF source, then you arent under pressure to rearrange society. Unless world stays in really deep recession through 2012-13, watch the petrol price. "They have a long way to go however if they expect anything like a 200 to 60 drop in kWH/p/d". Cant be done on energy efficiency/reduction without really major social change. This is energy consumption at level of China, Chile, Latvia. Much easier to change source.
75907. skywatcher at 11:38 AM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       Rosco - you seem to disagree on the possibility that CO2 makes it more difficult for energy entering the climate system to leave that system. These energy forms are at different wavelengths and so CO2 affects one over the other. CO2 doesn't create energy on its own (nobody has ever suggested this), it just reduces the ability of the whole system to shed energy effectively. Since the only way the Earth's (or Venus') climate system can shed energy is by radiation, that is rather important. Please be courteous and read the links you were provided with earlier. Based on your postings I suspect you haven't. What temperature would Earth be, if the atmosphere was unable to trap any of the outgoing longwave radiation?
75908. scaddenp at 11:29 AM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       Rosco - try using the search button up top and posting on topic. But first read the articles - you need to learn some science to make sense. If what you post isnt relevant to venus, then I guess it will be deleted. If you want your articles read, then stick to the rules.
       Response:

       [DB] "But first read the articles"

       I can think of no better advice to give someone who is not yet doing so.  Thank you.

75909. scaddenp at 11:22 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       "Skeptics are less positive that we can predict the outcome." Do you think that is a reason for inaction? Uncertainty cuts both ways. It could be worse than the conservative predictions of IPCC.
75910. Rosco at 11:14 AM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       Radiation is the only mechanism for energy into earth's atmosphere and out of it - no argument. I simply disagree with the assertion that in an atmosphere radiation is a dominant form of energy transport. (Off-topic snipped). (Off-topic snipped). (Off-topic snipped). (Off-topic snipped). (Off-topic snipped). (Off-topic snipped). (Moderation Complaints snipped). So be it - I simply think the case for the importance of radiation as the major means of distributing energy in planetry atmospheres is overstated - I see we are never going to agree on this point.
       Response:

       [DB] Portions of your comment not pertaining to this post (Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect) were snipped, as were complaints about moderation.  If you use the Search function in the upper left corner of every page, you will find about 4,000+ other threads here, many of which will be on-topic for a portion of your snipped comment.  Please make an effort to observe the topic of the post you are commenting on & ensure your comment is germane to the post.

       Note that complaints about moderation are always off-topic and force yet more moderation.  FYI.

75911. Composer99 at 10:19 AM on 2 September 2011
       Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
       Badgersouth: Both your links in #61 & 62 are to the same location.
       Moderator Response: Corrected.
75912. John Hartz at 09:15 AM on 2 September 2011
       Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
       Suggested reading: “Pray that naysayers are right about climate change,” David Horsey Cartoons and Commentary, seattlepi.com, Sep 1, 2011 To access this cartoon/article, click hhttp://blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/2011/09/01/pray-that-naysayers-are-right-about-climate-change/ere.
75913. dana1981 at 09:11 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Dave123 - there is a difference between short-term sensitivity, long-term fast feedback sensitivity, long-term sensitivity including slow feedbacks, etc. Maybe that's what you mean? James Wight had an excellent post discussing the various measures of sensitivity which I linked at the end of this post (click the "fast feedbacks" link in the last sentence). Chris G - I know, and I very much agree that people disrespect models way too much. No model is perfect, but there's almost always something we can learn from a model. One of the main points of this series is to see what we can learn from them. Learning from past model flaws is why models keep getting better and better. Badger - I'm not sure what assumptions they made about ozone depletion. Ozone plays a relatively minor role in the greenhouse effect though. But if you're interested, they probably talked about it in Chapter 6. You can download the whole SAR WGI report by clicking the first link in the post.
75914. John Hartz at 08:59 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       What assumptions about the ozone hole in the atmosphere over Antarctica are embedded in the SAR model and forecasts?
75915. John Hartz at 08:56 AM on 2 September 2011
       Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
       Suggested reading: “Looking beyond TransCanada’s summer of discontent Why excluding opponents to resource development is unwise,” by Doug Mathews, Alberta Oil, Sep 1, 2001 To access this article, click here.
75916. Chris G at 08:36 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Oh, thanks Dana; I missed that. Looking... Really though, I wasn't targeting you, but rather the people who say things roughly like, your model is off by 0.2 C; therefore, all models are worthless.
75917. Dave123 at 08:34 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Dana- Then A can't be constant with time, because feedbacks will be changing with time...albedo for example. The more ice we lose, the more land/ocean exposed, the more heat absorbed. Maybe I'm just confused on what is partioned into A and what into dF. My naive interpretation of dF has been the difference between solar irradiance and IR leaving the earth.
75918. Pete Dunkelberg at 08:24 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       Ken, I don't understand the 95 percent figure but we do have an interesting greenhouse environment that depends on both CO2 and H2O. H2O by itself tends to turn from vapor to liquid to solid. When it does this it drops out of the atmosphere and provides no greenhouse warming at all. CO2 stays in the air and provides enough warming to keep H2O evaporating and precipitating out in a cycle. See CO2: The Thermostat that Controls Earth's Temperature. However, as long as water is kept warm enough to keep our familiar water cycle going, it is in the air in much greater quantity than CO2 and provides about half the total greenhouse warming. Since CO2 and H2O intercept some of the same wavelengths one must be careful in calculating how much greenhouse effect to attribute to each. See The attribution of the present-day total greenhouse effect.
75919. dana1981 at 08:13 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Chris G -

       "To be fair, you should compare the accuracy of models predicting warming as CO2 increases with models that don't."

       Actually we've done that. Click the button at the top of the post to see all our entries thus far in the 'Lessons from Past Climate Predictions' series. Easterbrook's cooling prediction is probably the most relevant. We also compared his prediction to Wallace Broecker's 1975 warming prediction in the Broecker post in the series. The purpose of this series is to fairly examine each warming or cooling prediction we can find and see where each went wrong and what we can learn from them. I'm also writing a book/booklet on the same subject.
75920. dana1981 at 08:09 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       My pleasure john. I also drafted up a post on the IPCC TAR which will be published in the near future. Matching the projections to observations yields a sensitivity of about 3.4°C for 2xCO2 there. Funny how we keep getting these same answers around 3°C, and yet the "skeptics" are certain sensitivity is somehow much lower than that. Either there's something very wrong with climate models, or something very wrong with Spencer and Lindzen et al.'s claims. Personally I'd put my money on the latter.
75921. Chris G at 08:08 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Regarding linearity, I don't know of anything that is linear in the climate system, but, as any student of calculus knows, you can approximate any curve with line segments, and the shorter the segments, the less the error term. So, sure, I'd be very surprised if there were a constant (linear) relationship between CO2 and temperature over the range from slushball to ice-free states of the earth. However, given current orbital parameters and the positions, sizes, and shapes of the continents, and the current state of ice masses, it is possible to quantify a linear relationship that is good enough for the near future. WRT, "models are inaccurate", I think it was Gavin at RealClimate who pointed out that all you had to do to prove any model wrong was demand more accuracy out of it than the authors were able to code into it. That's the nature of models; all models are approximations. To be fair, you should compare the accuracy of models predicting warming as CO2 increases with models that don't. Shall we take a wild guess which set yields a better approximation of reality? Model factors are wrong, whatever. It's like a teacher (which in this case is history, not any of us) giving partial credit if the student shows their work on a long problem and the teacher is able to determine their answer world have been correct if they hadn't made a mistake at point X. If there are only one or two points, that somewhat validates the rest of the work. It's a little frustrating to see so many attacks on models because, AFAIK, all models with a halfway decent hindcasting ability predict continued warming under BAU. It doesn't really matter if we reach 4 degrees by 2100 or 2075; at some point we will cross a threshold beyond which the population can not be supported. It is going to continue to get warmer until we either switch to alternatives as our primary energy sources or society collapses.
75922. MA Rodger at 07:53 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       Ken @ #35 "How about some complete science here! What happened to water vapor on Table 1? Water vapor does represent 95% of the greenhouse gases and..." For completeness, 95% of what? It isn't 95% of the natural greenhouse effect as CO2 provided 20% of that (7oC of 35oC). Are we then back again to the 'biggest volume matters most' argument? If so, it's ironic because that is the exact opposite of what is up for discussion here.
75923. john byatt at 06:35 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Thanks for this Dana, have been trying to work out how to put all this into an explanation of how comparing models with observations gives us more understanding of the 3DegC sensitivity, The model update 2010 at RC also shows 3.3DegC sensitivity. appreciated.
75924. dana1981 at 05:58 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Dave123 - not sure what you mean about the independent estimate of the climate sensitivity. To your second question though, feedbacks are built into that sensitivity parameter. That's what "a" tells you - for a given radiative forcing, how much the temperature will change, including feedbacks.
75925. Paul D at 05:45 AM on 2 September 2011
       Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
       This is quite a good article about Solyndras troubles: http://www.compoundsemiconductor.net/csc/news-details/id/19733965/name/No-surprise-with-CIGS-startup-Solyndra-shutdown.html It was an interesting idea and some other company may take the product on and develop it further. There will be a lot of companies created and disappearing in the solar PV business, because the technology is in its infancy (despite years of stagnation in innovation). There is so much research in this field now, that there will be a lot of changes over the years, making it difficult for companies to stay ahead for long.
75926. Paul D at 05:25 AM on 2 September 2011
       Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
       Badger@14 Solyndra produces a non-standard product. Their idea is/was to produce 'racks' of tubes with i think thin film solar sells stuck in the inside of the tubes. The tubes are open at the top and the idea was the sun could hit the cells inside at any angle. The racks didn't need to be fixed to the roof (primarily flat rooves) because the gaps between the tubes allowed air to pass through so that there was less resistance. The company web site is still up and running, so they aren't totally dead. But not all ideas and start ups succeed.
75927. Dave123 at 05:06 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Dana- For my own preparedness I'm not clear on two things- The independent estimate of "A" the climate sensitivity factor. and why is this a linear equation? Off hand, given feed backs from changes in albedo as ice melts etc, would be non-linear, and as ice disppears from a region you lose the heat of melting. Or is that all taken into account in the construction of the radiative forcing? All definitional stuff I know... but I think clarity on the origin of the radiative forcing factor in current models might hep Yvan.
75928. Composer99 at 04:39 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       Ken: With regards to your statement: I hope you do not think that analogies to poisons are scientific statements. I do not claim to speak for the author(s) of this article. However, I see the comparison to poisons as a rhetorical rebuttal to an unscientific, rhetorical attack on climate science: the argument from low CO2 concentration. Quite simply, the argument itself is a non sequitur, not an empirical argument. As such, all one is obliged to do to rebut it is to demonstrate that there exist in nature other cases where seemingly-insignificant (or even infinitesimally small) quantities can have effects entirely disproportionate to their concentrations (botulism toxin being a perfect example).
75929. Bob Lacatena at 04:35 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       37, DSL, "You're not looking." How often does that need to be said, especially when it comes to how models are constructed? A favorite denial meme seems to be to insist that the models have failed to account for something any layman is aware of, as if climate scientists are literally that blinded by their love of CO₂. Just amazing.
75930. eldorado2768 at 04:33 AM on 2 September 2011
       Climate Sensitivity: Feedbacks Anyone?
       Hello, I am not a trained scientist, so I hope you guys can bear with me. I came upon a yahoo article, "New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism." The article referenced a study published in Remote Sensing in July of this year. The title of the study was "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance". Here is the link to the PDF of the study. I would be curious to see some of your feedback on this study. Is there any validity to the arguments made? Look forward to your comments.
       Moderator Response: It is debunked in this Skeptical Science post.
75931. John Hartz at 04:09 AM on 2 September 2011
       Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
       Suggested reading: “Keystone XL Is Self-Destructive. Does the Obama Administration Need to Be Also?” Op-ed by Mark Bittman, NY Times, Aug 31, 2011 To access this thoughtful essay, click here.
75932. DSL at 04:07 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       Ken, what is the atmospheric residence time of water vapor? If you haven't seen it in any atmospheric model, you're not looking.
75933. Dikran Marsupial at 04:06 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       Ken Water vapour is not a long-lived GHG, it has a residence time of about a week (for water vapour the residence and adjustment times are the same), thus it is irrelevant to a discussion of greenhouse forcing as it only acts as a feedback. The complete science leaves out water vapour from the table for that reason. N, O2 Argon etc are not GHGs, which explains why they are not in the table. Both of these facts are well known to those who have taken the effort to read the litterature, so yes lets get the dialog back on track by leaving discussion of water vapour to a more appropriate thread.
       Moderator Response: Ken, use the Search field at the top left of this page to search for water vapor.
75934. Paul D at 04:01 AM on 2 September 2011
       Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
       Veritas, many electric bicycles have a range of 20 miles and could easily be charged at work for next to nothing. You could leave the car at home and just use it for errands after work.
75935. DSL at 04:01 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       Muon: "An overstatement of uncertainty gets to the same point via a longer, more torturous path. If Curry's conclusion is 'we can't be sure' because IPCC language is too fuzzy or climate systems are too chaotic or whatever the reason du jour, then others will come down on the side of doing nothing based on her words. End result is the same." And she knows that.
75936. Ken at 04:00 AM on 2 September 2011
       CO2 is just a trace gas
       How about some complete science here! What happened to water vapor on Table 1? Water vapor does represent 95% of the greenhouse gases and without it we would not be living here. Or am I missing something here and someone has determined that water vapor no longer transports energy around the globe through the heat of vaporization. I have yet to see this included in any atmospheric model or discussion. Also, what has happened to the percentages of N, O2, Argon and the other gases if CO2 has to be measured to the fifth decimal place. Atmospheric gases have never been shown to these accuracies in the CRC handbook as far back as my first copy in 1960. I hope you do not think that analogies to poisons are scientific statements. Newton and others warned about overstating your hypothesis before you have conclusive data. Lets get this dialog back on track.
75937. muoncounter at 02:33 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       trunk#57: "Nobody writing here is unconcerned" There are some who feel it's not happening or it's not bad or it's not our doing. Those each lead to lack of concern, apathy and eventually denial. An overstatement of uncertainty gets to the same point via a longer, more torturous path. If Curry's conclusion is 'we can't be sure' because IPCC language is too fuzzy or climate systems are too chaotic or whatever the reason du jour, then others will come down on the side of doing nothing based on her words. End result is the same.
75938. Dikran Marsupial at 02:29 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       trunkmonkey wrote: "Skeptics are less positive that we can predict the outcome.". If that is what skeptics do, what do you call those who try and make a fuss about the models not being able to do something that nobody would claim they are able to do (such as not foundering when making decadal predictions)? There are those who are genuinely interested in communicating the uncertainty resulting from our current limited state of knowledge about climate physics, and there are others who merely want to disrupt the discussion with red-herrings (or indeed red, white and green flag shaped herrings).
75939. John Hartz at 02:24 AM on 2 September 2011
       Republican Presidential Candidates vs. Climate Science
       Letters to the International Herald Tribune Politics and Science Paul Krugman’s “Republicans against science” (Views, Aug. 30) states that “odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively antiscience, indeed antiknowledge.” This line reminds me of the great H.L. Mencken’s words in the Baltimore Evening Sun in 1920: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people....On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” Woodrow Wilson was president at the time; to be followed by Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. We all know what happened next. Peter W. Gerrard, Kehlen, Luxembourg
75940. Stephen Baines at 02:10 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       trunkmoney The IPCC acknowledges uncertainty, too. Every scientist I know acknowledges uncertainty. That does not influence their opinion about whether humans are affecting climate. In fact, it generates even more concern, because we can constrain the upper bounds of possible change less than the lower bounds. As far as I can tell, skeptics are not arguing that there is uncertainty, they are arguing that there is bias. That is quite a distinct thing. As for Curry, taken to its logical conclusion her writing seems to suggest that 1) it is impossible to address complex multivariate phenomena without engaging in pattern-seeking "motivated reasoning" and 2) that scientists are somehow not aware of the pitfalls of confirmation bias in such cases. Those statements reflect both nihilism and naivete in turn. While her audience in accepting these arguments engages in their own form of confirmation bias or motivated reasoning, Curry conveniently fails to mention that there are well established ways to avoid the same problem - namely by making novel predictions that are open to test and by incoporating all relevent dependable information without prejudice. Climate scientists have, from I have seen, employed these methods repeatedly in their endeavors. I do not think the same can be said of Salby, Carter, Plimer etc...
75941. DSL at 02:09 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       Now I'm eating red beans and rice, so we'll see what that produces. The last bite is the one remembered: "We have seen the models founder at the decadal time scale . . ." Without anything else to go on, the comment appears to be a "hey, models fail" type of attack. More context necessary. I don't think Curry's response to the uncertainty is reasonable. Why? The little bits of evidence here and there suggest that she's not interested in forming a professional opinion. She's more interested in selling a position. The "Wow" comment is just the latest little bit. When was the last time Gavin Schmidt blogged that type of unstudied reaction to an ill-considered claim with no available methodology? The problem has always been uncertainty. Indeed, that is the only problem. Yet there is an attitude on Curry's blog--in the comment stream (a comment stream she is responsible for correcting from time to time)--that suggests that the ultimate goal is to prevent movement toward certainty. How many people in the comment streams on the denial blogs would like to see the climate scientists who support the theory of AGW fired? And what would then happen to climate science? That second question is never considered, and it leads me to believe that the main goal of those people is not progress toward certainty but the silencing of scientific progress. As far as I am concerned, the entire universe in all its dimensions is the irreducable phenomenon. Any part must be read within the context of the whole. Sounds daunting, but there are patterns and regulations that work with regularity in most conditions.
75942. Composer99 at 02:08 AM on 2 September 2011
       Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
       Rosco, my admittedly rather snarky post #16 was in response to the following statement(s) of yours in post #11: Nothing else in the Universe accumulates heat without an energy input. Everything is perpetually cooling down and the hotter it is the faster the rate of cooling - at least I think that is what Newton said. I don't dispute that CO2 absorbs infrared energy and increases in temperature. But an equilibrium point is reached where input equals output and no further heating can take place without further energy input. So with no other energy source the maximum "blackbody" temperature of Venus with 2644 W/sq m input is about 465 K. If you are not putting the reply together in context with these statements, then I must wholeheartedly agree with Sphaerica & DSL and suggest that you get down to reading texts, papers & other posts on this site.
75943. trunkmonkey at 01:29 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       DSL You are correct that emergence was originally post structural. My comments were neither an attack nor advocating post modernism, which i agree quickly degenerates into a nihilistic ennui. I am interested in the possibility that some complex phenomena may be irreducable and that others might require models built at a size approaching the scale of the phenomena, ie clouds. This is not to argue that we throw up our hands and go home. We have non mathematical tools of inquiry far more valuable than collecting postage stamps. The issue is uncertainty. Nobody writing here is unconcerned. Judith Curry is concerned. Skeptics are less positive that we can predict the outcome.
75944. Rob Painting at 01:20 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       critical mass - "The stasis in surface temperatures is more difficult to explain in terms of standard AGW theory which posits an increasing warming imbalance" Not at all. The mid 20th century saw cooling caused by man-made aerosols - following the rapid industrialization and growth after the 2nd World War. And it looks like the rapid growth in East Asia (especially China) may have caused the same during the 'noughties'. See these Sks Posts: Why Wasn't The Hottest Decade Hotter? & Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols We'll have further posts on the subject, but the relevant papers are still awaiting publication in the scientific literature.
75945. John Hartz at 00:45 AM on 2 September 2011
       Republican Presidential Candidates vs. Climate Science
       Suggested reading: “God’s Response to Rick Perry” PlanetSave, Aug 31, 2011 It’s a hoot!
75946. dana1981 at 00:31 AM on 2 September 2011
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
       Yvan, see comment #6 and the conclusion of the post. Once again, I'm not saying the original model worked. I'm saying the original model would have worked with an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C for 2xCO2. The SAR also ran models with sensitivities of 1.5°C and 4.5°C for 2xCO2 (though technically the sensitivities were 1.3°C and 3.8°C, for the reason discussed above). The former was much too low, and the latter was too high. Had they run a 3°C sensitivity model, it would have projected the correct amount of warming.
75947. Stephen Baines at 00:30 AM on 2 September 2011
       It's not bad
       EtR. There is certainly a lot under debate in climate science, but the basics (Temp is increasing, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CO2 is increasing, humans are responsible) are in fact "settled science." By that I mean that no one in the scientific community thinks these are interesting problems anymore. The evidence behind those propositions is just too compelling. It has been for decades now. Also, let's be honest. This forum does not constitute a true debate on the scientific matters. To be part of the real scientific debate, we would actually have to be doing original research and actively publishing that research in peer reviewed journals, not just posting to blogs on the web. To be part of the scientific debate requires that we be informed and capable enough to convince other well informed and capable people that we have something substantial to contribute. People feel annoyed by this state of affairs, I guess because they feel like decisions are being made that affect them without their having a say. Of course, they might feel more annoyed if they were actually forced to go through the training needed to allow them to participate in the scientific debate! More pertinently though, this resentment is misguided. The only decisions that are being within the scientific community are with respect to what the evidence says about how the world works and our place in it. What we actually do as a society will have to be a much more public decision because that involves taking values into account. Without scientfic evidence, you can't have rational decision making -- it becomes impossible to determine whether any action actually serves the values it is intended to serve.
75948. critical mass at 00:28 AM on 2 September 2011
       Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
       muoncounter #49 "There may be differences in the numbers, but there is minimal uncertainty as to the mechanism and the cause. As Denning says, physics doesn't care what you believe. Arguing over the last decimal place is silly; it's real, it's happening. Stop denying that and do something about it." As a bit of a lukewarmer myself, I think that the differences between Drs Trenberth and Hansen are more than the odd decimal place. The stasis in surface temperatures is more difficult to explain in terms of standard AGW theory which posits an increasing warming imbalance. Dr Curry is certainly opaque in expression, but I see her position as an attempt to show that the uncertainties are more important than previously thought and 'motivated reasoning' is a nice term for exaggeration.
75949. John Hartz at 00:25 AM on 2 September 2011
       Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
       Suggested reading: “What You Need To Know About The Canadian Tar Sands,” TreeHugger, Aug 30, 2011 To access this informative article, click here.
75950. Tom Curtis at 00:13 AM on 2 September 2011
       It's not bad
       Eric the Red @160, the only debate which matters for the science is that which occurs in the peer reviewed literature. You, just as much as any other denier, are quite welcome to put your arguments into publishable form. That you are unwilling or unable to do so is a clear indication that your view point is not worthy of consideration by working scientists, and therefore not worthy of attention on a website whose stated purpose is to expound the published science of climate change. That you choose to 'debate' on the web when you clearly disagree with much published science, IMO, shows that you are not trying to learn the truth. If you where you would be trying to become involved in the debate that matters. Rather you are trying to persuade those who are ill informed on the topic in the full knowledge that you will be unable to persuade those who are well informed.

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