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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 76051 to 76100:

  1. Stephen Baines at 11:45 AM on 31 August 2011
    Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
    DM...A skeptic could always argue that we simply don't know all the terms well enough to do a proper mass balance. It's a variant of the common "Nature is incrutable and beyond the ken of mortal men - you are arrogant for trying" kind of argument. You see it in climate change and evolution debates all the time. My solution would be to make explicit what Salby's interpretation implies, given the other things we know to be true, so as to lay bare (in yet another way) the absurdity of his argument. It's an interesting and very challenging game. Beyond that, it is also powerful because it changes his argument from a simple negation to a concrete testable alternative proposition, something that the self-professed skeptics should be happy about! Basically he implies the existence of a massive, previously unidentified terrestrial flux of CO2 into the atmosphere (not to mention a nearly matching flux out of the atmosphere) with isotopic characteristics so specific that you'd think it would be impossible not to find it were you to look for it. You may even be able to suggest it's location more precisely geographically based on latitudinal and longitudinal patterns in the seasonality of CO2. Even more weirdly and coincidentally, Salby's implicit fluxes would have to be operating now, but not prior to the recent build up of CO2. Otherwise we would have seen wild fluctuations in CO2 over the last 10,000 years given the sensitivity implied instead of the relative stability. (Of course, given the magical thinking sometimes in evidence, this may not pose such a barrier.) It would be fun to see people at Curry's or WUWT scrambling about while trying to solve this puzzle. They should be motivated -- a hero's reputation is at stake. Plus find something like that and you'd have yourself a whole suite of Nature/Science papers, immediate admittance to the National Academy and grant money up the wazoo. Makes you wonder why someone don't try to find it, no? As you note, failure of mass balance assumptions is the other way around the mass balance argument. But how could mass balance fail? Either you'd be talking about loss of CO2 to space, in which case we wouldn't have CO2 or any atmosphere at all, or nuclear fission/fusion at ambient temp and pressure, which I think we would have noticed occuring!
  2. CO2 is just a trace gas
    In looking at the significance of a "trace gas," I find it illuminating to look at each individual's contribution to the total. For instance, here in the U.S. the average person drives a car about 12,000 miles with an average fuel economy of about 20 miles per gallon. The CO2 emissions from burning a gallon of gasoline weigh about 19.4 pounds (8.79 kg). So the average person driving a car in the U.S. produces 11,640 pounds (5,279.8 kg or 5.82 tons) of CO2 per year. It is, I think, more difficult to think of one's contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere as insignificant if it amounts to almost 6 tons per year.
  3. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    Thanks Dana1981 for some surprising data on US investment in renewable energy, particularly PVC’s and wind. It gives some balance to a widely held view that the USA is the world’s second highest GHG emitter and doing nothing to reduce its emissions. Where road transport is concerned, Michaels is right and wrong. He is right that given the present state of technology, electric cars are, in terms of price and range, not the solution needed for mass reduction of fossil fuel consumption and its polluting effects. However, Michaels ignores two salient facts that: 1. Electric car constraints centre on battery capacity and cost and 2. Battery technology is fast evolving and will overcome both problems. Research by MIT (Cambridge Sludge), Sumitomo (Aluminum Cement) and others strongly suggests that within 5 years technology will produce batteries which are cheap, compact, lightweight and able to hold a charge enabling an electric car to travel over 600 km before re-charge. The prize to be won by the most efficient, cost-effective batteries is so immense that it will ensure high investment and competition among innovators and developers. Comparatively cheap, long range electric cars are only one of the innovations to flow from availability of such batteries. Existing battery driven appliances (eg cell phones, laptops and other devices) may require re-charge weekly or monthly. Households using PVC’s could generate and store sufficient electricity to meet all their needs – even during an eclipse. Michaels would have us believe this is a pipe-dream. I thinks it is the coming reality and that we do not have long to wait for it,
  4. Sea level rise is decelerating
    #15: you suggest bias when you haven't even read the paper that contains the methodology? Of course it's a 'black box' if you don't bother to read the literature... so is nearly all of science. It took me less than a minute to locate the data, extract it and put it on a spreadsheet. OTOH, we don't know what data you used for your trend, as you do not say. Given the large variations present, I suspect it's a small sample.
  5. It's not bad
    #139: "There is a rather large disconnect between the current trends and future predictions." There is sometimes a disconnect. Some trends are progressing faster than predicted.
  6. Climate Sensitivity: Feedbacks Anyone?
    To go right back to Sphaerica's post at #3: I think you may have misinterpreted what Kooiti Masuda was saying. If I've interpreted posts 1 & 2 correctly, the argument isn't that CO2 can't act as either a forcing or a feedback, but that we should really consider it as both. This is particularly concerning if we look at the Sff+sf sensitivity parameter - while a value isn't given above, it seems apparent that it's higher than any of the others. While anthropogenic CO2 may currently be the primary forcing, the paleo record seems clear that CO2 acts as a very strong positive feedback on millennial timescales. The implication, of course, is that if we don't get our emissions under control, and soon, we might see some very large positive feedbacks coming out of the natural carbon cycle. However, I also think RW1 at #6 has a point (although I disagree with much of that post) - the state of the planet now is very different to the glacial maxima, so the degree of feedback (especially albedo feedback, but probably also GHG feedback from thawing permafrost) available will be different. Has anyone had a go at quantifying that difference? Is it enough to significantly change the climate sensitivity?
  7. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    My son worked at Evergreen at one time and we had a tour. They had an interesting technology for drawing wide ribbons of polycrystalline silicon from a melt, something that was an advance over wafers cut from silicon boules. But even then there was speculation was that a lower cost technology could come along and displace them. They thought they had one when they filed for bankruptcy. According to Bloombergs they were undercut by the Chinese- I'm sure that Mr. Michaels wouldn't lose sleep over the other reason, lack of a domestic green energy program- although he probably never blinks twice about massive government subsidies to the US nuclear industry.
  8. Republican Presidential Candidates vs. Climate Science
    Andrew Dessler takes on Guvna Perry: I've got to wonder how any resident of Texas - and particularly the governor who not so long ago was asking us to pray for rain - can be so cavalier about climate change. As a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, I can also tell you from the data that the current heat wave and drought in Texas is so bad that calling it "extreme weather" does not do it justice. ... I know that climate change does not cause any specific weather event. But I also know that humans have warmed the climate over the last century, and that this warming has almost certainly made the heat wave and drought more extreme than it would have otherwise been. I am not alone in these views. There are dozens of atmospheric scientists at Texas institutions like Rice, the University of Texas, and Texas A&M, and none of them dispute the mainstream scientific view of climate change. This is not surprising, since there are only a handful of atmospheric scientists in the entire world who dispute the essential facts - and their ranks are not increasing, as Gov. Perry claimed. Guvna P graduated from Texas A&M in 1972 with a 2.5 GPA (out of 4) and a BS in Animal Science; here's to a more enlightened generation of Aggies!
  9. It's not bad
    Joseph... What you have to remember is, some of the most prosperous times in the US have been periods of high taxation. That didn't harm the free market in any way. I would hold that very low taxation is actually more harmful to the free market because it acts to consolidate wealth into the fewest hands. The taxation of carbon is more likely to generate a positive net economic outcome. I don't think that would have been the case 30 years ago. Today is different. Technologies are ready and advancing further. These new industries merely need a level playing field on which to compete with the highly entrenched legacy energy industries.
  10. CO2 is just a trace gas
    Social blunder@12 Did no one read our post 11?
    Calculations by Trenberth give 5.148 x1018 kg, which we will round to 5.1 x1018 kg. (You can roughly check this by taking sea level air pressure and multiplying by the area of the Earth). 1 part per million (ppm) of this atmospheric mass is 5.1 x1012 kg (5.1 billion tons), but this does not take into account the fact that CO2 molecules are heavier than other molecules in the atmosphere. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). Nitrogen (N2) has an atomic mass of 28 and oxygen (O2) has a mass of 32. Thus, we can say the 'average' molecule in air has a relative mass of about 29. CO2 however has a mass of 44. So, 1 ppm of CO2 thus has a mass of (44/29) x (5.1 x1012) kg = 7.7 x1012 kg = 7.7 billion tons. If the calculation is done more carefully then the answer is 7.8 billion tons of CO2. (The FAQ at the US government Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center says 1 ppm CO2 = 2.13 Gt C, but we recall from post 5 that we can convert that to Gt CO2 by multiplying by 3.67: 2.13 x 3.67 = 7.8)
    So MA Rodger is (almost) right.
  11. Sea level rise is decelerating
    It seems to me that this question is ambiguous. Without a uniform starting line, either could be shown to be true. While no is arguing that sea level has not accelerated since the end of the little ice age (where sea levels actually dropped), the tidal gauge data since 1880 has shown an overall acceleration. The cubic fit to the residual linear curve shows that acceleration and deceleration of sea level rise followed the temperature during the 20th century. Clearly the sea level has accelerating since 1980. However, in the even shorter term, sea level rise as decelerated since 2000.
    Response:

    [DB] In your ongoing desire to prosecute your agenda, you continue to cherry-pick by focusing on a small, statistically insignificant, portion of the data available.

  12. adelaideclimatenews at 07:53 AM on 31 August 2011
    CO2 is just a trace gas
    Here's a short youtube I made on just the "Only 0.038 percent" meme. Real skeptics wouldn't use it, but people wanting to create (fear) uncertainty and doubt would. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwWxkgrMDk
  13. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    New YorkJ, There is no movement of goal posts, that is just a tactic used by those who like to cherry-pick data. Some posts specifically state 50 years (19), others 150 years (20), and others are open-ended. Oftentimes, one needs to compare the recent timeframe to an earlier time to determine how recent events have changed. Solar activity was higher in the latter half of the 20th century and the ENSO oscillation resulted in stronger and more frequent El Ninos. You could argue that these forces are lower than CO2, but to claim that they resulted in negative forcings, contradicts the data.
    Response:

    [DB] "that is just a tactic used by those who like to cherry-pick data"

    Let's not let this degenerate into name-calling.  Otherwise some will call you Pot for your Kettle.

  14. It's not bad
    Joseph. If you want any further economic evidence about the value (and/or the cost to taxpayers) of mitigation activity, follow the links given in these 2 items. Green jobs, American exports. The thing that struck me most forcibly was the much cheaper cost of creating green jobs versus creating jobs in the fossils sector.
  15. CO2 is just a trace gas
    Actually how many skeptics that understand the importance of CO2 as being more than a trace gas, tackle the errors of other skeptics that keep quoting this trace gas meme? Letting them get away with it does not seem to be morally acceptable.
  16. CO2 is just a trace gas
    @Stevo, #7: More to the point: If the elite people of the richest part of the world are not willing to undertake a little economic pain to save the planet, how can we convince the bulk of the people in the poorer parts of the world to do so? Europe is trying; Australia is trying to try; but if the US doesn't act, it's hard to see how we can apply any moral pressure on China and India.
  17. Climate Ethics: What Can Science Tell Us?
    Speaking of ethics... “In the video below from Mediaite, former Vice President Al Gore suggests that people today need to “win the conversation” against skeptics of climate change in the same way people stood up to racist comments during the civil rights movement.” Source: “Al Gore On Climate Change Deniers: It's Crucial To 'Win The Conversation',“ Huffington Post, Aug 30, 2011 To access this article/video, click here.
  18. It's not bad
    Joseph... No one is talking about "government imposed" anything. In fact, all the proposed taxation IS market based. There is nothing anti-free market about taxation. In fact, when I listen to renewable energy people speak they all say the only thing they want is a level playing field on which to openly compete with their emerging energy technologies. The anti-free market people are the folks who want to stifle their march into the market place. Believe me, big business can be the amazingly anathema to competition.
  19. It's not bad
    Joseph#143: "the economical point becomes an issue only in light if the uncertainty of the positives and negatives" All sciences always have uncertainties. By your logic, the economic point is thus always an issue. So that's a non-starter. If you want to reference points made on another thread (as you did here) in a discussion here, include a link to that other thread or do a limited cut and paste. Your point about large negative impacts to GDP did not hold up to scrutiny. Do you have other information of a purely economic nature to offer? If so, make your point with references that can be examined and discussed. That's what we all expect of scientific discussion; why expect any less for economic discussion?
  20. Republican Presidential Candidates vs. Climate Science
    Only in America… “Government planning and preparation helped keep Irene's damage from being even worse than it was. No wonder right-wingers are going nuts.” Source: “The 5 Dumbest Right-Wing Reactions to Hurricane Irene” by Sarah Seltzer, Alternet, Aug 29, 2011 To access this article, click here
  21. CO2 is just a trace gas
    Botulinum toxin: Intravenous 1ng/kg is fatal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin 1 ng/kg = 0.000001 ppm
  22. It's not bad
    Rob #140 "We have the potential - the technology, the know-how and the time - to eventually be producing more abundant energy to more people while not destroying the climate. It's something that isn't just desirable, it's imperative. And it is something that FFs can not possibly accomplish." Agreed completely, but I suspect you are asking that the solution be government imposed or led, where I would advocate a free market solution.
  23. It's not bad
    Muoncounter #142 "Please take further discussion of purely economic issues to that thread." I would agree with that if my discussion is purely economical. But it isn't. It is interconnected with the topic of this thread. My point is that the economical point becomes an issue only in light if the uncertainty of the positives and negatives discussed above, and vice versa. As a matter of fact if I took my discussion to the thread you refer to, I might get get a similar reply saying, "please take this topic to the positive and negative thread"!
  24. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    "rdr95, postmodernity did not develop historically of its own accord. What we understand as 'postmodern' are a set of responses to a set of shared conditions..." I think the main 'shared conditions' were the desires by some to get the prized tenured faculty positions. That was achieved; unfortunately the postmodern virus then spread throughout the university system. The result was a descent into semantic woo and a rejection of virtually all contradictory data on the basis of bias. Even a number of scientists, e.g. Dr Curry, have been infected.
  25. It's not bad
    Joseph#141: "economic impacts of carbon pricing" You are referring to this thread. The figures in that thread's Table 1 are mostly less than 1% (only Lieberman-Warner has a high side of 2.15%). Immediately below that is the google.org study showing an increase in GDP. Surely a clever tax structure could offset the cost to individuals. No such structure exists to offset the costs of BAU. Please take further discussion of purely economic issues to that thread.
  26. CO2 is just a trace gas
    actually thoughtful: I think your post #10 crosses the line by personalizing it with regards to apiratelooksat50. Any science teacher, whatever their personal views on AGW, would find a discussion of trace components and how they are often disproportionately important, useful in class.
  27. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    Eric the Red (#36), One wonders why you posted a solar activity graph starting around 1900, when from #19, #20, and #23, one can clearly see that we were clearly referring to the last 50 years and the related underconfident IPCC statement. A standard "skeptic" tactic is to move the goalposts when refuted.
  28. Sea level rise is decelerating
    In an earlier post I said I was having trouble downloading the data from the link provided by "Here’s some sea level data" in the "What the Science Says" lead at the top of this page. If you follow that link you will come to a page with a table at the bottom. The links in that table aren't accessable to the average user. My son is an IT professional and he told me it was very difficult and stopped before he got any useful information. The links that do download on that page are buried and barely recognizable as links in the text near the top. Well anyway I've got the data now (-: So I ran the obvious comparison against the analysis I had done of the PSMSL data and got the following result: And indeed, the Church and White data obviously shows an increase in the rate in sea level rise over the last century. I don't need an analysis from Tamino to tell me that. The difference in the two timelines has to come from the decisions Church and White made as to what data to include, and what data to omit. All of the data used is available at the PSMSL site, it's just a matter of figuring out what Church and White omitted. ( -Snip- ) We are told in the paper that "Careful selection and editing criteria, as given by Church et al. (2004) were used." And the 2004 opus, a pay per view link, provides an abstract that doesn't touch on editing criteria. So as far as I'm concerned, it's essentially a "Black Box" that decided what data to omit. I will probably do some sort of sampling as the downloaded data tells us what years were included and I will have to determine what the omitted data is and what that does to the slope. For example, at random I chose the first station I found where the available data was truncated: Station ID 1234 Station Name SIROS Data available 1969 - 2009 Data used 1974.042 - 2009.958 Omissions 1969; 1971; 1972 Change in slope +1.8 mm/yr. A random sample of 30 would give me a good idea, but as I say, I know what I'm going to find, it's a question of what was the criteria for data selection? And why does that criteria tend to skew the results one way?
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Speculations into motive snipped. Either formulate a comment that doesn't cast aspersions into other's integrity or don't post here.

    Future comments containing such speculations and aspersion will be deleted outright.

  29. apiratelooksat50 at 03:04 AM on 31 August 2011
    CO2 is just a trace gas
    AT @ 10 I appreciate the support you have for my teaching career. Would you be willing to write a lesson plan for me that I can present to my classes? We have 90 minute block classes, but the lesson plan would not have to be that long.
  30. It's not bad
    That is correct Eric #139, and I apologize for using words like "tipping point" and "catastrophic". I didn't realize they were so inflammatory. Muoncounter #131,"no job creation? Etc..." the studies for the economic cost outlined in this website's article "economic impact of carbon pricing" which I was referring to, already takes into account all the benefits you mention and they still came out with a *net cost* of anywhere from 0.2% of GDP up to an outlier of 3.5% of GDP. And I don't appreciate being stereotyped, FYI, I have never read the national review. Scadenpp #132 I agree that killing subsidies for all FF would be a good thing. Rob #133 taxation IS bad economically speaking, and DOES "suck value out of the economy" no matter how you look at it. Outside forces should not as a general rule be used to "promote more desired market behavior" every time government wants to accomplish a political goal, as implied in your post. Having said that I do agree that there is a role for government for regulating market behavior, and that role should be used sparingly. But we are going off topic now. Rob #134. "The real question is, are you willing to bet your children and grand children's well being on the chance that nearly every scientist who does research in this field is somehow getting it wrong?". Again I am not saying that scientists are getting it wrong. I just see that the predictions they are making have a wide range of positives like "Improved agriculture in some high latitude regions (Mendelsohn 2006)" as well as negatives. So the way I would phrase the question is "would I be willing to bet my children's well being (because of the GDP cost to remediation) to *maybe* saving my grand children's well being? The GDP cost is a tangible to my kids' well being, if it causes me to be out of work, I can't send them to college. My kids will win this argument over my unborn grand-children any day of the week. The point that I am trying to make is that the cost associated with the proposed solutions for global warming, when compared to an uncertain benefit (as Eric said there is "a disconnect between the current trends and the predictions") makes global warming solutions a tough sell. Wouldn't be better to wait 1-2 decades to have free market forces drive the solutions at no cost to taxpayers instead of forcing a 1-2% GDP cost on the economy, especially at a time when the economy is growing at about....the same rate?! Again, I am not saying that I don't believe that GHG (whether it is amount or rate) aren't causing global warming, so Mr. Moderator please don't refer me to more CO2 studies, this website has already won me over as a convert in that regard.
  31. It's not bad
    Eric... There is actually a strong likelihood that the market force of actually mitigating the impacts of CO2 will be an economic boom! There is virtually no correlation for the notion that carbon taxes would encumber the economy. It would certainly encumber fossil fuel producers, and I think that is the rub that has this issue at the fever pitch that it's at. But the notion that shifting to sustainable sources of energy would be a drain on economic resources (over the cost of doing nothing) is just not justified in any way. We have the potential - the technology, the know-how and the time - to eventually be producing more abundant energy to more people while not destroying the climate. It's something that isn't just desirable, it's imperative. And it is something that FFs can not possibly accomplish.
  32. CO2 is just a trace gas
    15, MA Rodger, A good point, and a good argument... just watch out for the denial point of view that they'll use to twist your logic to fit with their belief system, which is to say that the human race is too insignificant to possibly affect the climate of the earth.
  33. CO2 is just a trace gas
    We might think up a few "removal" analogies as well. What happens when 300 ppm of X is removed from system Y? We know what would happen in the case of the Earth atmosphere. Unpleasant.
  34. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    criticalm#38: "far from the efforts of a fringe scientist." No one suggested Dr. Curry is a fringer. "Climategate and Copehnhagen were gamechangers for the interested members of the lay public." We're not talking about the lay public; we're discussing a myth created by someone qualified to know better. Climategate did not change the underlying science; for someone like Dr. Curry, any 'crisis of confidence' would be with the messengers, not the message. "differences between Drs Trenberth and Hansen about the measured energy imbalances in recent years adds further uncertainty" Nonsense. They do not differ on the extent and causes of warming. How the energy balance is resolved does not add uncertainty to either of those questions. "weaken the case for an overwhelming concensus which is required for effective action on climate change. " This is an entirely artificial standard, created by the denial industry. Did we have 'overwhelming consensus' on the technologies needed to go to the moon? To build an atomic bomb? No, we saw an imperative and acted in the best way we could at the time. The fact that we have been lulled into inaction by the combination of this 'need for consensus' and disinformation specialists should outrage those who understand the magnitude of the problem. If that outrage manifests as participation in a demonstration, so be it.
  35. It's the sun
    EtR#900: "does that negate the fact that an increase has occurred?" The recent divergence between solar activity (decreasing, as measured by ssn) and rising temperature anomaly in this graph is obvious. That ssn 'increase' is over - and yet we're still warming. That's what the data show - what you 'believe' cannot negate that fact. That observation alone should cause you to question those beliefs; to cling to beliefs that so utterly conflict with data is a sign of one who is in denial. EtR#901: "too early to tell if the recent flattening will be a top" What recent flattening? Not seeing it here: Not seeing any flattening here either. Overall, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2011 was the seventh warmest July since records began in 1880, with an anomaly of 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average. I suppose if you buy into the 'global warming stopped in ___' meme, you should see one of those threads.
  36. CO2 is just a trace gas
    @MA Rodger #15: Excellent post! Would you be interested in fleshing it out into a guest-post article for SkS?
  37. CO2 is just a trace gas
    (Rats! As I tap this comment in, SocialBlunder @ 12 steals my idea - although I make it 2.2Gt Carbon per 1ppm. That's times 3.67 for Gt CO2, or 8Gt Co2 per 1 ppm.) At 390 parts per million by volume, there is still a lot more CO2 floating about than there is of other significant stuff. There is about 3,000 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. We complaint of this poor old planet being over-crowded by today's human population yet the total mass of all us humans is way less than a single billion tons. It's probably still less than 1 billion tons if you count everybody who ever lived since we first evolved as homo sapiens 200,000 years ago. Still, that billion ton's worth of humans has proved enough to convert a third of the planet's land area (indeed the majority of the fertile bits)into monocultures of pasture & arable crop. And just for good measure we've kick off the sixth mass extinction event in the planet's entire 4.6 billion year history. So no one should be dismissing us as some insignificant trace substance!
  38. CO2 is just a trace gas
    Many readers of articles like the one above would benefit from the addition of two tabs: 1. "Related SkS Articles" 2. "Further Reading" The first tab would be the titles/links for stuff posted on SkS. The second for stuff posted and/or published elsewhere, especially chapters of currently used climate science textbooks.
  39. CO2 is just a trace gas
    If you want to delve into the nitty-gritty details of this topic, check out: "CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas?" an 8-part series posted on the Science of Doom website. To access part 1, click here.
  40. Dikran Marsupial at 00:51 AM on 31 August 2011
    Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    critical mass - you are essentially saying that scientists should not involve themselves in politics - which would a breach of their human rights (in most countries anyway). Science SHOULD affect your political views, it is only politcal views influencing the science that is a problem. It is not correct thats science should be apolitical, it is just you neeed to keep the causal arrow in the correct direction. Prof. Hansen getting arrested for protesting is evidence of science affecting his politics more than the other way around. Of course if the likes of Hansen did not lobby politicians you would get the denialists questioning his commitment to the science. E.g. "If climate change is such a big problem, why aren't you protesting outside the whitehouse and getting arrested?". Complete BS of course, but that is what you will be faced with as soon as you step out of the scientific domain. You can't win in a PR battle between science and politics, whatevery you do is a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Having read Dr Curry's paper it looks to me very much like an attempt at obfuscation, there is very little in her paper that could actually be put into practice, and there are obvious errors, such as saying that scenario uncertainty has an effect on estimates of climate sensitivity (which are based on hindcasts not forecasts so there is no scenario uncertainty).
  41. CO2 is just a trace gas
    A little bit of the atmosphere is quite a lot! Using Hydrogen NOW! Journal's method of calculating the weight of the atmosphere, it is 4,410,000,000,000 tons. 1 CO2 ppm of that is 4,410,000 tons.
    LevelPPMTons
     14,410,000
    Pre-Industrial2801,230,000,000
    Safe3501,540,000,000
    Current3921,730,000,000
    20204081,800,000,000
  42. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    muoncounter #various Not being familiar with Dr Curry, I had a look at her publications. They seem far from the efforts of a fringe scientist. To say that her conversion from warmist to 'luke warmer' - to chronicler of the crisis of confidence in the 'standard theory of AGW' is somehow invalid is to miss the point. Climategate and Copehnhagen were gamechangers for the interested members of the lay public. Recent differences between Drs Trenberth and Hansen about the measured energy imbalances in recent years adds further uncertainty to the debate. "Motivated reasoning" is another term for 'advocacy science'. Cool rational apolitical thought and expression is the ideal to which a scientist should aspire - but such sights as Dr Hansen being arrested in a demo outside the White House would moreso read 'advocacy scientist' in the public mind and weaken the case for an overwhelming concensus which is required for effective action on climate change.
  43. Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
    Skeptical Wombat, Apologies. Re-reading your words, I realized that I misinterpreted them, and you were stating that an additional source (beyond anthropogenic) was not possible. I was, I think, confused by your later use of the term "negative feedback" "soaking up" vast amounts of anthropogenic CO2. Again, apologies. I must have been in cranky-old-man mode.
  44. Climate Sensitivity: Feedbacks Anyone?
    Despite the agendas evident, the climate obviously responds to forcings, of which that due to the CO2 bolus mankind has injected into the atmosphere over the past 40 years is paramount. As the planet's climate changes towards a new equilibria with the new CO2 levels, the floating ice cap that is the Arctic Sea Ice has been responding as if the proverbial "canary in the coal mine". Since 2001 alone, median ice thicknesses in the Central Arctic Basin, including the ice at the North Pole, have dwindled from approximately 2.0 meters thickness to about 0.9 meters thickness currently (from the Polarstern press release, also well-discussed here). For a good visual of what that looks like, here's a graphical depiction of ice melt and regrowth from 7 mass-balance buoys monitoring sea ice conditions in the Arctic over a recent 2-year period: [Source] So don't be taken in by our resident merchants of doubt and the hand-waving "There's no problem! The climates changed before!" routine that they do. The Northern Hemisphere's refrigeration system is failing in response to the forcing initiated by mankind. Despite the obvious dissembling of some.
  45. CO2 is just a trace gas
    There is approximately 1 kilogram per square centimeter of atmosphere sitting above us. In comparison to that, a minuscule smear of sunburn cream is remarkably effective at stopping the UV light that was not stopped by all that gas.
  46. It's the sun
    The 0.2 - 0.3C drop that occurred from 1880 - 1910. Sorry if I should have said late 19th / early 20th century, but I thought it would have been evident to anyone reading. See Tom's post of 899.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] The point is that you need to show the data that demonstrates your point, in this case how solar forcing affects temperature. At the moment your comments are too vague to convince or to refute effectively. The comment about decadal scale trends also applies to the present time, can you demonstrate that the current levelling off is forced or just the result of internal climate variability. If not you shouldn't be making arguments about what it means.
  47. It's the sun
    Yes Tom, If solar activity has a sginificant impact, then if sunspot numbers remain low, we should expect to see a temperature decrease similar to that observed during the early 20th century. It is too early to tell if the recent flattening will be a top similar to the previous two.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] What temperature decrease in the early 20th century?

    You do understand that decadal trends are not robust and signify very little?
  48. It's the sun
    Muon, Yes, solar cycle 19 was definitely the highest of the 20th century. However, cycles 21 and 22, in the 1980s and 1990s, were the next two highest, significantly surpassing anything during the early 20th century. The point is that sunspot activity was still high during the last portion of the 20th century. To expect temperatures to decrease based on the drop from a very high to just a high value would be comparable to expecting temperatures to drop because we added less CO2 to the atmosphere this year than last. A straight line fit does not capture the temperature profile of the 20th century, but does that negate the fact that an increase has occurred?
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Re your second paragraph, it is well know that there are multiple forcings that affect climate, hence nobody would expect a straight line fit. Please be less opaque in your posts as such obfuscation gives the impression of trolling.
  49. It's the sun
    To illustrate Muoncounter's point @898:
  50. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    EtR#36: Eric, Nice to see you replying with at least some form of sourced information rather than pure opinion. But you'll have to try much harder. Reply to 'those who feel that solar activity declined.' Small point: whether one feels that solar activity has declined is irrelevant; this is about measurement, not feelings.

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