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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 77751 to 77800:

  1. Just Put the Model Down, Roy
    This thread jogged my memory and I found this at Arthur Smith's site: "Roy Spencer's six trillion degree warming" It builds on Barry Btickmore's early debunking. Key takeway from Dr. Smith: "It turns out you need to set the starting temperature to negative six trillion degrees in 993, in order to match Spencer's model for the 20th century. 6 trillion degrees. Wow. Now that's global warming!" url: http://arthur.shumwaysmith.com/life/content/roy_spencers_six_trillion_degree_warming
  2. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    @54 Moderator (DB) Tamino described the missing factor as the Atlanti Multidecadal Lebrechaun Oscillation (ALMO)
    Response:

    [DB] Do you mean like this one:

    Leprechauns

    Or this one:

    Leprechauns

  3. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    pirate#55: "the lag must be considered. " It was. Note the key comment: Does temperature rise cause CO2 rise or the other way around? A common misconception is that you can only have one or the other. In actuality, the answer is both. Note the other key comment: Also, gotta love this quote from Deltoid in answer to the CO2 lag argument: See also my forthcoming paper: "Chickens do not lay eggs, because they have been observed to hatch from them".
  4. apiratelooksat50 at 09:16 AM on 6 August 2011
    Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Honeycutt and DB @ 52 I never made a comment about the current CO2 levels other than to say that they are historical highs. And, yes there is a relationship between CO2 and temperature, but since CO2 lags the temperature changes it is likely that another factor is influencing both. That is not to say that CO2 does not have an effect on temperature, but the lag must be considered.
    Response:

    [DB] "it is likely that another factor is influencing both"

    And what, prey tell, is this semi-mythical "another factor"?  Physics, after all, must explain it, just as physics explains the feedback/forcing effects of CO2.

    CO2 lags temps in the historical/paleo record for known, quantifiable reasons.  None of which explain the recent rise in CO2 nor the recent rise in temps in the notable absence of other forcings.

    The only thing you have going for you in your mission is wish-fulfillment.

  5. Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
    I fail to see the relevance of this. The natural forcing causing that past climate change is well known. The milankovitch forcings are entirely predictable, very slow compared to anthropogenic forcings, and from the published paper, not about to produce any changes, any time soon. Looking at past ice-ages cycles we can indeed see that the periods when an ice age ends is subject to wild variation in climate (YD, Heinrich events etc), but these appear to be related to ice sheet collapse and we lack evidence of such wild extremes in interglacials (like now). Furthermore, the milankovich cycles were still going on in pre-Pleistocene climates but didnt cause ice-ages. Best guess as to why? CO2 level too high to produce glaciation.
  6. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Nice new graphic from NOAA, comparing daytime temp records to nighttime temp records. Of course, its only one month. Almost 9,000 daily records were broken or tied last month, including 2,755 highest maximum temperatures and 6,171 highest minimum temperatures (i.e., nighttime records). ... The statistics reported here only include weather stations with real-time electronic reporting, which accounts for about two-thirds of the locations. Final numbers should be available later in August. The ever insightful Michael Tobis has an interesting perspective: As I saw somewhere today "100 is the new 90".
  7. Glenn Tamblyn at 08:25 AM on 6 August 2011
    OA not OK part 13: Polymorphs - the son of Poseidon
    Andy Naming rights: William Lawrence Bragg 1890-1971 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lawrence_Bragg. He and his father were pioneers in X-Ray Diffraction and X-Ray Crystallography, he was the youngest ever Nobel prize winner at 25 What he might have thought of Billy Bragg and his music, dunno? Doug's reference to Billy is certainly cryptic.
  8. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Dale#73: Defend your ideas; on this thread, the topic is CO2 causing warming. Other topics = other threads.
  9. OA not OK part 13: Polymorphs - the son of Poseidon
    Sorry.
  10. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Mods, I can't defend myself now?
    Response:

    There are threads to discuss denialism vs skepticism, but this thread is not one.  If that is your wish, then please use the Search function to find one & place those comments there.

  11. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    It's kind of astonishing that anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of basic climate science - let alone a climate scientist like Curry - wouldn't immediately see the many obvious flaws in Salby's argument (let alone advertising his talk as some sort of major revelation).
  12. OA not OK part 13: Polymorphs - the son of Poseidon
    Patrick, you are not adding anything. Please keep on topic. I will not have this thread derailed.
  13. OA not OK part 13: Polymorphs - the son of Poseidon
    lattice vs crystal - yes, but if if all these spheres are identical then the fig 8 top will form (if the third square layer is aligned with the first) an FCC structure with all spheres at lattice points (the lattice cell top and bottom faces are at 45 degrees to the box; the rest of the faces stand 'vertical' (assuming a downward view); if the third layer added in the bottom of fig 8 is aligned with neither the first nor second but the fourth layer is aligned with the first, you get the same FCC structure, but rotated so that it is a cube standing on a corner. Both FCC and HCC have coordination number of 12 and have the same density (because HCC would just have the third layer added to the bottom of fig 8 be aligned with the first - it would be at the same height above the first layer; all the hexagonal layers in either FCC (which I think has hexagonal layers in four different directions, each being a diagonal running between opposite corners of the FCC cube) and in HCC have the same packing density within themselves and the same spacing between layers); the number of spheres per layer shown in the figure doesn't indicate the density because they don't fully fill the box. I think the coordination number (for spheres of equal size centered on lattice points) in BCC is 8, and none of the spheres in a layer touch each other (if we're looking at layers parallel to the faces of the cubes); they only contact spheres in the layers above and below.
    Moderator Response: Patrick, please stay on topic. Future posts by you that are off-topic or irrelevant will be deleted. Thanks for your cooperation.
  14. Daniel Bailey at 05:17 AM on 6 August 2011
    Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    John N-G just posted this over at RC on Salby:
    "I was lucky enough to attend Murray Salby’s talk at the IUGG conference in Melbourne. The thesis is not quite so simple as a correlation between CO2 rise and short-term temperature variations, because he found corroborating evidence in the change of CO2 slope over time. This made the argument not so easy to dismiss out of hand, although Salby was extremely careful not to draw any conclusions in his public presentation. It was quite good sport to play “spot the flaw” in real time. Fortunately, the talk was the last of the session, and both Alan Plumb and myself chatted with him right afterwards. Aside from whether a statistical argument makes physical sense, it also must hold water statistically by being applicable beyond the time frame of model development. In discussing what his model would mean for past variations of temperature and CO2, it eventually became clear that he believed all paleoclimate data that supported his statistical analysis and disregarded all paleoclimate data that countered his statistical analysis, even though the latter collection was much larger than the former. Eventually I realized that if 0.8 C of warming is sufficient to produce an increase of 120ppb CO2, as Salby asserted, then the converse would also have to be true. During the last glacial maximum, when global temperatures were indisputably several degrees cooler than today, the atmospheric CO2 concentration must have been negative. That was enough for me."
    [Emphasis added] Good enough for me, too.
  15. Robert Murphy at 04:51 AM on 6 August 2011
    Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    "Spells? Sounds a bit like witchcraft to me." Or a touch of the vapors.
  16. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Muoncounter @67 and EtR @68, You know, Judith should really just step away form her keyboard-- she is continuing to make an utter fool of herself. These "huge increases in CO2 concentrations" that Curry is so excited about are a) transient and b> < 2 ppmv.
  17. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Stephen, It is not an issue of conservation of mass. Atmospheric CO2 is part of a complex equilibrium system. The CO2 that we are emitting does not remain in the atmosphere, but reacts according to the many natural chemical equations on this planet. If the amount we were adding was insignificant, then the environmental equations involving CO2 would use up the excess CO2 and form more products, keeping the atmospheric concentration relatively constant. Salby's own numbers indicate that nature is only using 45% of the excess CO2, with 55% remaining in the atmosphere. His assertion that CO2 is simply reacting to increasing temperatures would be more believable if it followed the recent temperature profile. However, temperatures have oscillated significantly during the past 130 years, while CO2 emissions have consistently increased.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Atmospheric CO2 is part of a complex equilibrium system, however it is a closed system and so must obey conservation of mass. Becuase of conservation of mass, the fact that annual rise in atmospheric CO2 being always smaller than anthropogenic emissions establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the natural environment is a net carbon sink and hence is opposing the rise in atmospheric concentrations, not causing it. Unless Salby et al can refute that argument, the paper shouldn't pass review.
  18. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    from jcurry's commentary: "huge increases in carbon dioxide concentrations caused by such things as spells of warming and El Ninos, which cause concentration levels to increase independently of human emissions." I wonder how these 'spells of warming' manage to both increase and decrease CO2 in sync with human economic activity, even down to as fine a scale as the day/night differences associated with weekday traffic (also here). And I can only marvel at how these 'warming spells' know to take the weekends off. Spells? Sounds a bit like witchcraft to me.
  19. Climate Denial Video #2: Failed at Science? Attack the Scientists
    I highly recommend that everyone read Dr. Mashey's essay (here it is) which just appeared in "The Chronicle for Higher Education", it is relevant to this post. Some pertinent quotes from Mashey's piece: "People should be free to express their opinions, but not all opinions are equal, especially about science. Is it acceptable in CHE to state as fact that cigarettes cause no disease? Can one claim that the chemistry behind ozone depletion is a fraud? Can one state that the moon is made of green cheese? Can one say that astronauts lied about landing there and should be put in prison? Might Rush Limbaugh comment here, repeating his opinion that scientists should be “named and fired, drawn and quartered”? “Public flogging” was enough for Marc Morano of CFACT..." "Is there a dividing line between legitimate academic controversy and libel? If so, where is that line and who draws it? Academic controversy is not characterized by use of Nazi labels or exhortations that scientists be physically harmed. It is not characterized by baseless, wacky conspiracy theories about worldwide plots by mainstream science. Academic discussions involve data, facts, and justifiable, soundly crafted theories." "Some climate scientists have faced this politically based assault for years. Anti-science echo-chamber blogs amplify anger, yielding nothing like legitimate scientific discussion, and as a likely result scientists get death threats and dead rats left on doorsteps." We'll be very fortunate to get through this "debate" without losing a legitimate climate scientist to an untimely and unnecessary death at the hands of someone "inspired" by the rhetoric of Limbaugh, Monckton, Morano etc.
  20. OA not OK part 13: Polymorphs - the son of Poseidon
    This is a great series, thanks, Doug. I'm learning lots. PS: If anyone figures out the significance of the last link in your post, can they claim bragging rights?
  21. Climate Denial Video #2: Failed at Science? Attack the Scientists
    I cannot hear portions of the voiceover - the music is entirely too loud.
  22. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    "If you are really interested in two competing sites, read realclimate and Roger Pielke, they often present opposite sides to the same story" Yes, it's imperative that one support ones denialism by giving equal credibility to a site run by professional climate scientists, and one run by a *political scientist* whose grasp of climate science, to be polite, appears to fall so short of the mark that one might, if one were the suspicious type, suspect that he's not entirely honest.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] He may have meant Pielke snr (who is a professional climate scientist)
  23. Climate Denial Video #2: Failed at Science? Attack the Scientists
    @#3 +1
  24. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    How about we listen to what an expert, a real climate scientist, has to say: Comment from Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate: This has nothing whatsoever to do with attribution of the temperature rise. The response of the CC to temperature is a specific thing - and it doesn't matter if it is originally driven by Milankovitch and ice sheets (over the ice age cycle), solar and volcanic activity over the pre-industrial, or by human activity/martian fairies/the PDO or whatever today. ENSO is an internal source of temperature changes on short time scales, and Pinatubo is an external source of temperature change over a short time period - both are included in any modern period regression such as Salby must have used. And the sensitivity of the carbon cycle to such changes is noticeable, but small and nothing like enough to explain the 20th C change. But even without thinking about this that deeply at all, it is obvious that Salby is wrong - we have put more than twice as much CO2 into the air as has actually accumulated over the last 100 years. To posit that the rise is not anthropogenic implies finding sinks that have totally taken up the anthropogenic CO2 *and* new sources that have put half of it back again. Meanwhile, all the actual reservoirs have more carbon than they had previously. Furthermore, the 13C and 14C data (up until the bomb peak) support a predominantly fossil fuel source. And the O2/N2 levels are dropping at the rate expected (given that we are burning C, and taking O2 from the air). The idea that a poorly performed regression undermines all this is ludicrous. - gavin"
  25. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    I do not know what is worse, Salby trying to sell this ridiculous notion, or people like Curry uncritically egging him on. It is clear from the Climate Etc. thread that Curry does not know what is going on. And Salby has not published a single paper on the carbon cycle that I am aware of. Really this is just smoke and mirrors and people like Dale lap it up to reinforce their denial. For example, one of the commentators to that advertisement for his talk (50% of which was about him, not the subject he is trying to speaking to) states: "But I thought the science was settled??" Now there is a true "skeptic, not. His mission has been accomplished before the paper has even made it though peer review. This is very, very likely just another Trojan paper to make people think "the science isn't settled so we don;t have to do anything". PS: "Skeptics" claim that temperatures have not warmed since November 1996, if Salby's hypothesis is correct then why have CO2 levels continue to rise, perhaps even accelerate since then?
  26. Rob Honeycutt at 01:53 AM on 6 August 2011
    Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Pirate@44... I realize that is an EPA chart but it's not a very good one. For one, the CO2 scale is a bit funked out. It suggests CO2 levels have fluctuated between about 130-250ppm and I don't think that's accurate. 190-290 is more likely correct (IIRC). The second thing that is funky with that chart is the relative scales of temp and CO2. My suggestion would be to be more skeptical and see if you can find other sources that either support or disprove the accuracy of the chart. I find it ironical that you're using this chart to try to suggest that climate change is natural and CO2 is not having a strong effect. It's quite literally the relationship between temp and CO2 in the ice core records that help us understand the climate's sensitivity to CO2 forcing. But to understand that you're going to have to dig in and read a few actual research papers. The long and short here is, you're not being skeptical. You're looking for ways to deny what you don't want to believe.
    Response:

    [DB] Over the past 800,000 years, CO2 concentrations have never been above 298.7 PPM...until now:

    CO2

  27. Climate Denial Video #2: Failed at Science? Attack the Scientists
    The soundtrack is sometimes a bit too loud for John's voice. I would tone it down a bit.
  28. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    EtR, Thanks. We agree on something at last. But Einstein was referring to experiments: No amount of experimentation can prove him correct, a single experiment can prove him wrong. Deeply philosophical; 'prove correct' is not well-defined in terms of scientific theory. We've all seen examples that a single scientist can be innocently wrong; or worse, can be bought, sold or otherwise persuaded to come up with questionable results. The existence of these 'outliers' proves little; it is their work that must stand scrutiny. Or as I frequently remind my students: If you really believe that your results are correct and everyone else is wrong, double check before you buy a ticket to Stockholm.
  29. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Hi John, Very nice video. It's really pleasant to see and listen to. Congratulations to you, particularly. I remember the time when you said that you were not confortable with hearing your own recorded voice (or something to that effect). Talk about overcoming one's own self-imposed limitations!
    Response: Thanks Alexandre but I confess, I still find it cringeworthy listening to myself. But sometimes you just have to man up and do what you gotta do.
  30. Climate Denial Video #2: Failed at Science? Attack the Scientists
    Yeah, this problem apparently is with the TreeHugger video system, there's no way to shut off autoplay. Removing the video itself from the home page preview was one attempt to mitigate the problem (imagine several going at once), but unfortunately it still plays automatically once you click forward.
  31. Climate Denial Video #2: Failed at Science? Attack the Scientists
    I didn't think it worthy to mention on the first thread, but I personally find it a bit annoying that the embedded video begins play immediately upon loading the page. Especially after one has watched it 2-3 times already.
  32. Stephen Baines at 01:17 AM on 6 August 2011
    Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Dale, for Salby to be correct, conservation of mass has to be wrong. Now if he can come up with an theory that explains why the conservation of mass should not hold, he might have something that really would make him famous. Otherwise, he should be asking, "what could I be doing wrong here?" That's what a true skeptic does when he evaluates all the evidence. Instead, Salby simply ignores one of the most fundamental and easily understood tenets of physics as we experience it here on earth. What is depressing is that Judith Curry apparently didn't see through this immediately and shepherd her flock away fromthe road. It's also depressing (and telling) that this topic still has any legs at all among the larger community of so called "skeptics."
  33. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Muon, I have a very difficult believing anyone who claims that the red spike is not due to us. Also, since concentrations have not been at the current level during the past 400k years, the past history may not be the best indicator of the current (or future) situation. Expanding on your final point: we as scientists should examing all the evidence, especially if it is contrary to our beliefs, before coming to conclusions. Paraphrasing Einstein, a hundred scientists will not prove me right, but one scientist can prove me wrong.
  34. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    DSL@62 So often those Skeptic Silver Bullets turn out to be chrome plated brass. Yet they keep firing them and the AGW monster keeps coming.
  35. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    pirate#44: "you can understand my skepticism. " The graph you posted shows exactly why there is nothing natural about the current situation: the red spike at the far right (present) never happened in the 400k yrs shown until now. Yet you cling to 'it's not us' or whatever variant that suits the current topic. The point made by this video - and multiple comments on this thread (and many other threads on SkS) - is that clinging to a preconceived notion in spite of all evidence to the contrary is not skepticism.
  36. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    apiratelooksat50 @44 "Pertaining to natural cycles. Looking at the figure from the USEPA website, temperature rises - followed by CO2 and temperature falls - followed by CO2." Yes, historically CO2 levels have risen as a result of increased temperature caused by some other forcing. It was a feedback that made things even warmer. That was then. Now CO2 is rising ahead of the temperature and acting as the forcing as well as a feedback. The previous peaks were not anthropogenic, and no one denies that. This CO2 peak does not follow the previous pattern. That is what makes today different from years (eons) past. That is my understanding of the science anyhow. YMMV
  37. Animals and plants can adapt
    Continuing from here. "the 10k bp mark" From Wikipedia:
    Identifying the exact origin of agriculture remains problematic... ... grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BC) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication. ... By 7000 BC, sowing and harvesting reached Mesopotamia, and there, in the fertile soil just north of the Persian Gulf, Sumerians systematized it and scaled it up. By 8000 BC farming was entrenched on the banks of the Nile River.

    So, yes, the last glacial retreat was a good thing for the development of agriculture. But your contention that this development took place during a time of rapidly rising temperatures and sea levels is not well supported -- and really makes no difference. However, there is a clear difference in conditions described by Bettinger et al 2009:

    Ice age climates varied at very short timescales (Richerson, Boyd, and Bettinger 2001). Ice core data show that last glacial climate was highly variable on timescales of centuries to millenia ... In comparison, the Holocene after 11,600 BP has been a period of comparatively very stable climate.

    So it appears to have been stability that gave birth to civilization. What we have provoked is rapid change and instability: deeper droughts, worse flooding, wilder extremes from winter to summer. Anecdotally, from a recent trip west: it is clear that the only people who will get a crop this year are those who can afford to buy lots of water. Poor farmers have abandoned their fields; buildings and other infrastructure are in decay. Everywhere you go, creekbeds and streams are dry and people are saying 'it's never been this bad.'

  38. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    I think muoncounter said it best, "Anything that supports your position is by definition free from all flaws; anything said by the opposite side is total bunk." This appears to be more true than we would like to believe. A true "skeptic" would be critical of either, and look for the proof in the pudding. Dale, If you are really interested in two competing sites, read realclimate and Roger Pielke, they often present opposite sides to the same story, with references to each other on occasion. Judith Curry's Climate etc. would be better than WUWT.
  39. Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
    pirate#83: You are basing an awful lot on 'the 10k bp mark' as the exact origin of agriculture. But this is a thread about sea level rise. Continuing here.
  40. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Pirate, just out of curiosity, do you know precisely why CO2 is called the climate "control knob"? I think what you mean is "fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 have not historically driven major changes in climate." Why is the temp "hanging around" when it has sharply dropped at each of the last four peaks? Do you have a physical mechanism that explains this?
  41. apiratelooksat50 at 00:13 AM on 6 August 2011
    Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Pertaining to natural cycles. Looking at the figure from the USEPA website, temperature rises - followed by CO2 and temperature falls - followed by CO2. CO2 is not driving climate change. Does it have a significant affect - maybe. But, it is not the driver. The 4 peaks prior to the current one had to be caused by natural cycles, not anthropogenic because we weren't here! Moving to the current interglacial and the human population boom in a geologically short time, and the resulting rise in CO2 that is partially caused by our FF use and land use practices - you can see why I state that my buying in to the AGW hypothesis depends on statement that says "we may be influencing natural phenomena". And, even though CO2 levels have skyrocketed, the temperature is not following it. At best it is sort of hanging around before it begins it's next drop. I hope you can understand my skepticism.
    Moderator Response: [mc] Please remember to restrict image width to 450.

    [Dikran Marsupial] Please also see CO2 lags temperature. The natural carbon cycle provides positive feedback to temperature peturbations, however our fossil fuel/land use emissions over-ride the natural carbon cycle, so CO2 can now be a driver of climate rather than a feedback. While CO2 has acted as a feedback in recent geological time, it has also acted as a driver of climate, for instance the emergence from the Ordovician snowball Earth is hard to explain without accumulated CO2 from volcanic sources. The response of the climate to anthropogenic emissions has been pretty much what was predicted, so the comment about temperatures "hanging around" is misguided.
  42. apiratelooksat50 at 23:47 PM on 5 August 2011
    Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Stephen at 17 Not a bad way to phrase it, but if you are not implying that CO2 is the driver of the climate.
  43. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    What do you think of Salby's work, Dale? Do you accept it, and can you defend it? Remember, you're asking people here to defend AGW. If you're curious about Salby's work and want to know more--arguments for and against--then you shouldn't present the work as if it's the Holy Sword of Scientific Truth. If you do, you'll be expected to use that Sword. Perhaps instead you should say something like, "What about this _____ chap who claims ____? He seems legit--he's got lots of titles and such."
  44. apiratelooksat50 at 23:42 PM on 5 August 2011
    Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
    DB @ 90 From Oregon State University World Food Crops: Origins of Agriculture. So, if we go back to the 10K BP mark you see from your post that it is at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. A period of relatively rapid temperature rise and sea level rise. Those were the seeds (pun intended) of the development of civilization. It is hard to tell on that quasi-log scale where exactly that point is. And, yes we did flourish in that sweet spot. There are no historical indicators that say we stay there. "About 10,000 years ago, in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (today Iraq), people began to grow crops and to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle." "Why did the revolution occur? The shift to food production is related to the end of the Pleistocene era and beginning of the Holocene era. The ice age retreated, and the world became warmer and generally wetter beginning about 14,000 BC. Parts of the Fertile Crescent became drier, making it possible to farm. By 10,000 BC, climates were essentially modern. While the Pleistocene had strong climate fluctuations over periods of 1,000 years or less, these fluctuations have been much smaller in magnitude in recent times. It has been suggested that the past 10,000 years have been a "lucky break" in terms of climatic extremes and volcanic activity."
  45. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Dale - the paper is yet to be published, but I've listened to a talk which Salby gave at the Sydney Institute earlier this week - it doesn't look good for him. He seems to have it in his head that annual CO2 emissions (that is the natural flux of CO2 in and out of biological reservoirs like forests and the oceans, plus human emissions, should follow human CO2 emission trends on a year-to-year basis. He doesn't explain why he thinks that, but he's wrong anyway - El Nino/La Nina and droughts in the Amazon for instance, can drive large swings in the flux of CO2 in and out of natural systems. Human CO2 simply adds to the pool size which natural systems can draw from. The rest of his argument stems from that basic misunderstanding of the carbon cycle. Maybe he should have stuck with atmospheric physics?
  46. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    Oh you're all going to love this...... already in the presses ready to publish, peer reviewed and from a respected climate scientist too! http://catallaxyfiles.com/2011/08/03/stop-press-climate-talk-on-cable-today/
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Salby is essentially speaking gibberish.  In the past, temps tended to lead CO2 increases, with the notable exceptions of methane peturbations.  How things are different today is that we have injected immense quantities of previously sequestered CO2 back into the carbon cycle, turning CO2 from it's normal feedback into a forcing.

    Salby has been discussed to some degree already on RC, Open Mind and internally here at SkS. 

    There are no credible physics to support his assertions.  As a further note, his reputation within the community is less than you make it out to be.

  47. OA not OK part 13: Polymorphs - the son of Poseidon
    Thanks Patrick. It is important to distinguish between a lattice and a crystal. The balls in the top row of figures are not close packed and form a body centred cubic (bcc), this has a packing efficiency (for identical spheres) of 68%. For the bottom row of figures if we place the 3rd layer directly above the bottom layer we get face centred cubic (fcc), or if we place the third layer in the hollows we get hexagonal close packed (hcp). Fcc and hcp have the same packing efficiency for identical spheres of 74%. Thus, for the given box frame 3 layers of the top boxes would contain 16 + 9 + 16 = 41 spheres, while 3 layers of the bottom set (as fcp or hcp) would contain 14 + 14 + 14 = 42 spheres.
  48. Eric (skeptic) at 19:39 PM on 5 August 2011
    The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    This study http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/28612/57559869.pdf?sequence=1 shows that the UHIE in Phoenix manifested mostly as an increase in minimums (0.19F/year) rather than maximums (0.042F/year). I can also say that the record high minimums noted at Washington National in my area are only partly matched at other locations. National has had increases in paved areas in that location over a recent period (since 1942). Please note that this does not mean that higher lows are not real, they are real independent of UHIE and are best explained by AGW. But I have pointed out before that records are not corrected for site effects or UHIE. Quoting raw numbers like in this post #59575 above needs to have that caveat.
  49. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    "But since it was asked, explain the recent temp flat line in the face of exponentially rising CO2, NASA satellite data showing no increase in aerosols, and CERES satellite data showing increased IR leaving the system." Perhaps you check a/ that temp is "flat line". b/ the NASA satellite show no increase in aerosol c/ what the solar forcing is currently then ask why does CERES show increased IR? (Hint, temperature). And finally, what actually do the model predicts? (eg look at Keenlyside et al 2008 and surrounding controversy and maybe the actual model outputs, eg as shown here ) Now if global temperatures did stay static or decline over a 20+ year period, while total forcings increased, then I would be asking for an explanation from modellers.
  50. Climate Denial Video #1: The Difference between Skepticism and Denial
    Moderator, thanks for the direction. --off topic content deleted-- Sometimes, the message contradicts the observation. That leads to questioning.
    Moderator Response: Please take your thoughts on aerosols to the relevant thread as requested earlier. Thank you.

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