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Comments 76101 to 76150:

  1. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    @ 28 muoncounter "Why not? If I need to run an economic model, telling me that an event has a 65% chance of occurrence is an input to an expected value calculation." This is an example of a situation where specifying the number does remove the ambiguity. You can't run an economic model off of "pretty sure." You need 65%. The number really means something. If you thought it was actually a 63% chance you'd use that number. Contrast to the IPCC. If they were to define "very likely" as 88% instead of 90% nothing really changes. The intent isn't to say there is actually a 90% or 88% chance that something is right. You're not adding information by citing a number the way you are in the example you gave.
  2. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    critical#45: Trenberth: Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have led to a post-2000 imbalance at the TOA of 0.9±0.5 W/ m^2 Hansen: ... that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 ± 0.15 W/m^2 during the 6-year period 2005-2010, confirms the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change. 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. That we do nothing but wait until we 'can get more data' is ultimately the harm done by those who trumpet 'uncertainty' as if it is a red light.
  3. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
    Figures 5 and 6 use the GISTEMP baseline. The GISTEMP smoothing was done with the Excel "smooth" function. The Figure 5 caption explains what it's comparing.
  4. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
    What are the baselines for the lines in Fig 5 and 6? Figure 4, from the SAR starts with a reference point of 0 C in 1990. In Figure 5 and 6 you start at about 0.25C in 1990. What did you use for the offset baseline for the GISS data; and was the smooth a particular function or just a hand drawn approximation? Figures 4 and 5 are nice comparison graphs but what they are actually comparing is unclear.
  5. It's not bad
    Joseph#150: Nice cherrypick! From the same (hardly scientific) article: “Since 2000, we’ve lost about 30 percent of the ice area as of 2009, but the thickness of at least the main glacier, the northern ice field, hasn’t changed a great deal. It was 50 meters thick then and now it’s on the order of 45 meters thick,” he said. Lack of long-term data concerning the thickness of the glaciers is what undermined their forecast, Hardy said. “Before 2000, we had no reference for how to treat the thinning other than by looking at historical photographs.”
  6. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    Well, what do you mean when you say "positivism"? That's only half a joke. I would say that what you call "postmodernism" is actually post-structuralism being used as a defense against moral demands resulting from the dialectic between the current mode of production and human interests: you can't prove my responsibility because proof requires an absolute structure, and all structured theories ultimately fail (sooner rather than later in the case of any theory that involves a human factor). In other words, you attack by pointing out the apparent failure in the approach, and that, I'll assume your opinion, releases you from the knowledge-based responsibility produced by the approach. Yet you offer no alternative, defensible structure. I'll follow Jameson and point out that the term 'postmodern' is typically used to describe the cultural production that results from a historically-specific set of cultural conditions (collectively called 'postmodernity'). Your willingness to use a post-structuralist attack but not offer an alternative is a postmodern response. Models reflect the current-best effort of humans to predict the future of a system that is beyond their ability (individually or collectively) to comprehend. Models may "founder" at the decadal time scale, but if one says they "fail completely," then one implies that one is holding them to a standard that one is incapable of matching (and forever will be). Even models that predict the complete opposite of observed reality end up helping us produce subsequent models that are more accurate. Everyone's a positivist. You yourself continually act based on models with far greater uncertainties than the IPCC, and action is the representation of one's current understanding of "authentic knowledge," an understanding that is in constant flux--again, especially for individuals, but for the social construction of knowledge as well. Any other epistemology is a form of desperate response to the results of the positivist method (a method, by the way, that works increasingly better as the knowledge base is built and as we learn more and more about our weaknesses as humans). There is tremendous hubris in assuming that quantum randomness is either truly random or not random. So whatchu gonna do?
  7. It's not bad
    #149 skywatcher Example of predictions vs current trends disconnect: below is a quote by the scientists who predicted the disappearance of the snows of Kilimanjaro by 2015 “The glaciers are still shrinking, and in the next decades they will almost certainly disappear, but it will probably be on the order of three or four decades, maybe five,” Hardy said recently. “But we don’t know for sure. It might be in only two.” Here is the full article
    Moderator Response: [RH] Hot linked article.
  8. Climate Sensitivity: Feedbacks Anyone?
    I mean that, very unfortunately, it is difficult to quantitatively define the "Earth system sensitivity" to CO2 concentration, since CO2 concentration is an essential internal component of the system and not an external forcing. It is similar to this case: We cannot meaningfully discuss (fast-feedback) sensitivity of the climate system to specific humidity (=water vapor concentration).
  9. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    trunkmonk#46 "chemistry and eventually everything would be reducable to physics." All science is either physics or stamp collecting. --Ernest Rutherford
  10. Sea level rise is decelerating
    22, Steve Case,
    That you want to complain about it is isn't anything I can do much about.
    No, I'm not "complaining," I am simply pointing out that the period which you selected, whatever your reasons, is hampered by a large number of factors which make it useless to use for an argument one way or the other. You cannot draw any conclusions about sea level rise acceleration using the period and data you have selected. That it shows what you want it to show, and so you are willing to easily overlook these issues, apparently isn't anything I can do much about. Other readers, however, can easily recognize what is being discussed and decide for themselves what the science says, and what can easily be done to promote false conclusions by creating scientific looking but invalid presentations, graphs and whatnot.
  11. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    I'm not a big fan of electric cars because the sweet spot for their use overlaps public transport. But I suppose Michaels doesn't like that either.
  12. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Steve - we've got a few posts on sea level rise coming up. I agree with you sea level rise in the 'noughties' has tapered off somewhat. But we, no doubt, disagree on what that really means. I'm awaiting on news on publication of a couple of papers on aerosols and subsequent global dimming over the last decade. Both papers shed light on why we have seen a 'slow-down' in global warming in the last decade.
  13. CO2 is just a trace gas
    I was just thinking that Bowdawg @ #26 was using numbers that were a bit too low for my liking. Then it occurred to me to look up how big US gallons are (or should I say, how small they are). British gallons are about 20% bigger than their US cousins (4,546 litres against 3.785 litres) and contain about 3kg of carbon (petrol slightly less, diesel slightly more) & burning one creates 11kg CO2.
  14. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    Been enjoying the foray into post-modern philosophy on this positivist website. Positivism got a lot of traction in the early twentieth century when quantum mechanics made it seem that chemistry and eventually everything would be reducable to physics.Postmodernism reacted that emergent phenomena in complicated systems made them irreducable, at least in their behavior. We have seen the models founder at the decadal time scale...
  15. Republican Presidential Candidates vs. Climate Science
    EtR, if you're implying that Gore represents a Left position, you're simply wrong. Gore is in no way against capitalism. At best, he's Right-liberal.
  16. Sea level rise is decelerating
    #21 Sphærica La Niña and El Niño occur all the time. Here's a link to a NOAA page that lays it all out since 1950 Here's a graphic and trend of that data since 1993 The trend is down over that period of time. Pretty much as you say. Volcanos come and go. Sea level is what it is over that same period of time. The satellite record date happened to start in 1993. That's the way it is. That you want to complain about it is isn't anything I can do much about.
    Response:

    [DB] "The satellite record date happened to start in 1993.  That's the way it is.  That you want to complain about it is isn't anything I can do much about."

    You continue to cherry-pick by only using a small portion of the data available.  Satellites only represent a portion of the data available to us.  The consiliance of these datasets paints a different picture:

    C&W 2011 SLR

    Your laser-focus on the most recent period of data while ignoring that which came before it blinds you to the larger trend while magnifying the natural variability inherent in the system.

    In a nutshell, you can't see the forest because you have a tree in the way.  That's the way it is.

  17. Republican Presidential Candidates vs. Climate Science
    Other authors are following Dana’s suit. As they say, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Suggested reading: "GOP Presidential Candidates on Clean Energy and Climate Change" by Donnie Folwer, Huffington Post, Aug 30, 2011 To access this article, click here.
  18. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    3, Rosco, Your thought experiment glosses over the fact that when you use the energy after heating your collected gases, the pressure and/or temperature of the system must drop. Obviously, the laws of thermodynamics require that additional energy be added to the system to compensate, and there cannot be more energy removed than is being added by sunlight. The fact that you are able to use the greenhouse effect (or any other mechanism, such as a parabolic mirror or some other form of insulation) to raise the temperature does not automatically translate into an endless source of power. The energy in and out is the same, but simply with your system at a higher stable temperature. The implication that system can produce more power simply because it achieves a higher temperature is false and misleading. The ability to increase the temperature of the vessel beyond what one might normally expect does not automatically translate into a perpetual motion machine. So what's your point? It would, however, be possible to keep adding sunlight to a system (however one might reasonably construct it), if that system emitted less sunlight than it received, and so increase the temperature until it finally does emit as much sunlight as it was receiving, and so maintains that higher internal temperature. This is, in fact, the heart of GHG theory, and it clearly works and can be demonstrated. Your argument has absolutely no bearing on what does or does not happen on Venus. It is merely a demonstration of how easily one can think vaguely about concepts, and misapply them, to arrive at a wrong conclusion.
  19. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    muoncounter #40 ctitical mass: "differences between Drs Trenberth and Hansen about the measured energy imbalances in recent years adds further uncertainty" Muoncounter: "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." Dr Hansen believes that sharply increased Asian (mainly Chinese) aerosols is largely responsible for the reduced warming imbalance and Dr Trenberth says that he does not believe that for a moment. Here is Dr Trenberth's quotation from this site in "Trenberth on Tracking Earth's energy post #68: "There is discussion in the comments of the supposed finding that increasing aerosol (pollution) from China may be the explanation for the stasis in surface temperatures and I do not believe this for a moment. Similarly, Jim Hansen has discussed the role of aerosol as a source of discrepancy. However, the radiation measurements at the top of the atmosphere from satellites (CERES) include all of the aerosol effects, and so they are not extra. They may well be an important ingredient regionally, and I have no doubt they are, but globally they are not the explanation"
  20. SkS Weekly Digest #13
    @Paul D Help me understand why this might be an issue? I can copy them now from the image above - just as I could from any of the other pages on which they exist. I do not understand how having a single page that looks like the graphics page with a thumbnail to all the comics is any different to being able to right click on them as now - I very much doubt having such comics embedded comprises "unlicensed distribution" - or if it does then the comic above is also in breach? Unless I'm missing something?
  21. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    It seems to me that Rosco has hit-and-run at SkS before. If so, it's worthless to respond. If not, and if Rosco is genuinely curious, Rosco will engage the argument and either convince many of the people here, or Rosco will learn something new. Either way, Rosco benefits (in different ways, of course).
  22. Sea level rise is decelerating
    19, Steve Case, I'd say that you're taking far, far too short a time period to draw such a conclusion, and completely missed the point about Pinatubo and the ENSO events. There is no way to "subtract" them as you have, and even then... you left in the La Nina events that Tom was referring to, i.e. those from 2007 to the present. Because Pinatubo occurred at the beginning of your series it artificially depressed temperatures. Once that effect tapered off, the system rebounded, gaining the energy it had temporarily shunned. The end result is a more rapid increase in temperature in that time span (i.e. the beginning of your selected period), and in turn a more rapid sea level rise. The end of your series, conversely, includes an unusual series of La Nina events from 2007 to the present. This very brief period of apparent cooling will naturally retard sea level rise in the short term at the end of your curve. So you have selected a period where there is an artificially exaggerated increase at the beginning (a steep slope) and an artificial leveling at the end (a shallow slope). It is no surprise to anyone that you are able to "fit" the curve that you have, but that fit is meaningless. You need to use longer time frames. You need to be careful about using a biased selection of end points.
  23. Sea level rise is decelerating
    [DB] Thank you for the link to Church (2004)
    Response:

    [DB] You're welcome; anytime.

  24. Sea level rise is decelerating
    #11 Tom Curtis You complained that this posting of the complete satellite record included the effects of volcanoes, El Niño and La Niña so I took them out to see what it would look like: I'd say that it didn't have any effect. I'd say that according to the satellite record, the rate of sea level rise is not accelerating.
  25. Sea level rise is decelerating
    #17 Sky Watcher, The methodology we are told involves "Careful selection and editing criteria, as given by Church et al. (2004) And as I pointed out in my post, Church et al (2004) is a pay per view opus with no reference to criteria in the abstract. You extracted the raw PSMSL data in less than a minute? I'm impressed. Yes, the Church & White data, once you find the nearly hidden link downloads into Excel in about a minute. I used the raw PSMSL data that you get from the PSMSL website http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/ Here’s the link to data for Station #1, Brest France: http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.data/1.rlrdata It's not a small sample, there are over 1200 tide gages listed in the PSMSL I used them all. Church and White only used about 500 and then selected only portions of the data according to their criteria in Church et al. (2004) that I don't have access to without paying money. What this graphic shows is the difference between my straight forward analysis by grouping raw data by coastline as opposed to using an editing criteria on the raw data first. Church and White then took that edited data and further applied it to a gridded map using the latitude and longitude coordinates given in the PSMSL. But the raw data was edited first. I think it's the editing criteria that produces the difference in the time lines above. I doubt that the application of gridded data has much to do with it. I agree that some of the data is out of whack, if you look up Cyprus in the PSMSL for example, you will find that it's way off. But I have no idea why Church and White edited station #1234:
      Station ID 1234 Station Name SIROS Data available 1969 - 2009 Data used 1974.042 - 2009.958 Data not used 1969; 1971; 1972 Change in slope +1.8 mm/yr.

    Maybe some one who has plunked down the cash for Church et al. (2004) can summarize what the editing criteria is.

    Response:

    [DB] If you were perchance to take the attitude of genuinely trying to research this instead of ascribing untowards motives to those publishing research and if you perchance were to genuinely ask for help when stuck instead of just airing complaints about paywalls, then perhaps someone might help you.

    Like pointing out that Church et al 2004 was available for free opus download from the publisher, Journal of Climate:

    http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%282004%29017%3C2609%3AEOTRDO%3E2.0.CO%3B2

    Or that the data for Church et al 2004 appears to be available for free opus download at:

    ftp://ftp.marine.csiro.au/pub/white/recons_1950_2001_ib_gia_remseas.nc.gz

    Briefly, this data set is

    • near-global (65°S to 65°N) from January 1950 to December 2001
      on a 1° × 1° × 1 month grid
    • seasonal signal removed
    • inverse barometer correction made
    • GIA (Mitrovica) correction made to tide gauge data

    I'm certain you have been doing the above per established standards in your analysis.

    Total time to research this:  6 minutes

    Total time to write this up:   7 minutes

  26. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    Something is wrong when the same, small number of practicing climate scientists--who disbelieve AGW--also spend considerable time attempting to discredit emerging (infant) technology. It alerts me to the possibility they have an agenda.
  27. Eric (skeptic) at 19:33 PM on 31 August 2011
    Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    Re #4, According to http://www.cleantechinvestor.com/portal/wind-energy/5374-building-brazils-wind-business.html wind was bid at $93 per MWh. The quoted price includes profit for the generators. Subsidies appear to be one-time and limited (transmission lines provided by the govt)
  28. CO2 is just a trace gas
    30 Joe Lalonde: That's where doing the physics comes in. You have to run through the numbers... They show that waste heat is not a major global contributor, but CO2 absorption is. Avoiding the physics wherever requierd is a great talent of the 'skeptics'.
  29. CO2 is just a trace gas
    And yet the heat produced to create CO2 is of no consequence. It is a contributer. In many areas and forms from absorbed in the day time or form stored in liquids such as car fluids vasts amounts are released in heat(BTU's).
    Moderator Response: [mc] Refer such discussion to waste heat thread; we're talking ~1% waste heat, 99% greenhouse warming here.
  30. Solar cycles cause global warming
    "The other significant finding is that solar forcing will add another 0.18°C warming on top of greenhouse warming between 2007 (we're currently at solar minimum) to the solar maximum around 2012. In other words, solar forcing will double the amount of global warming over the next five to six years." 2011 is already the costliest year for natural disasters Well, I feel really cheerful now! ;)
  31. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    BTW in Brazil wind energy electricity prices have dropped BELOW the cost of electricity generated by gas fired power stations in. It's the first time this has happened.
  32. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    It's difficult to know where Judith Curry is coming from. On the one hand she has cultivated, via her blog Climate Etc , her own gang of, largely, climate rejectionists who seem to like her enough to call her St Judith. On the other, she is of the opinion ( or at least she was in Feb of this year) that there is a 16% chance of 2xCO2 sensitivity being as high as 6 degC and presumably at least 50% that it will be high enough to warrant concerted international action to mitigate the problem of rising CO2 levels. I don't have any rational explanation for her behaviour other than to speculate that she may be torn between what she knows scientifically and what she thinks politically.
  33. Stephen Baines at 16:53 PM on 31 August 2011
    Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Roscoe You're criticism doesn't make much sense...You seem to raise the very conundrum that the greenhouse effect is intended to solve. Namely, if most of the solar radiation coming to venus is being reflected back to space, why do you think the planet is so hot? Answer? CO2. Lots of it. As for your hypothesized infinite energy runaway greenhouse turbine system, that really does have no resemblance to Venus at all. The key thing you are missing is a carbon cycle (and a water cycle)! You can't just pump CO2 into a container and expect the amount of CO2 to increase over time, like you would in a runaway greenhouse. If that's the way you think the runaway greenhouse works, no wonder you're confused. I'd read the post a little closer. BTW. Your machine actually sounds like a solar energy device.
  34. CO2 is just a trace gas
    About 200ppm of Potassium in the blood stream is about normal. 400ppm is fatal. Patient: "Doctor, my heart arrhythmia, bradycardia and ventricular fibrillation can't possibly be due to a trace electrolyte."
  35. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Venus is nothing like the earth - it is (-snip-) to claim it is. I have seen claims that the "greenhouse" effect on Venus is responsible for heating the planet by ~500 k. This is clearly impossible given the albedo of Venus reflects most incoming solar radiation. If such an effect were possible it could easily solve Earth's energy problems - simply collect all the hot exhaust gases from a coal fired power station and force it into a chamber under 92 bar pressure, add sunlight and the runaway greenhouse would raise the temperature to over 700 K - and we could use this heat to drive turbines and eventually shut down the coal fired power station. Yeah right - the whole idea is "beyond absurd".
    Response:

    [DB] It is "beyond absurd" to expect skeptics to actually read a post before commenting on it and to also refrain from accusations of deception.

    Next time, entire comment goes bye-bye.  Just sayin'.

  36. CO2 is just a trace gas
    nealjking @22 I agree wholeheartedly. The arguments based around the "its not enough to make any difference" meme are many and dangerous. The two blood alcohol (800ppm and you cannot safely drive, and if you kill someone due to drunk driving it'll hardly affect the overall road toll) analogies bring us back to fact based argument for the first and a moral position for the second.
  37. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    I commute to work most days on an electric moped, so I can say from personal experience that EVs are already a viable option, and the battery technology is advancing rapidly. Michaels just wants to keep us stuck in the stone age, addicted to fossil fuels indefinitely. His arguments don't hold water.
  38. CO2 is just a trace gas
    @apiratelooksat50 #19 You will want to check out the lessons embedded in: Module 1: Climate Science Basics produced by the Pacific Institute of Climate Solutions.
  39. 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!
  40. 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.
  41. 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,
  42. 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.
  43. 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.
  44. 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?
  45. 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.
  46. 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!
  47. 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.
  48. 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.
  49. 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.

  50. 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

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