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Comments 82901 to 82950:

82901. Eric the Red at 05:04 AM on 12 June 2011
       There's no room for a climate of denial
       With regards to the countries that set records, many of these countries have temperature records going back less than half a century. That is not saying that it was not a hot year, but most of the state temperature records in the U.S. were set in the 1930s. We simply do not know how many of those countries may have experienced warmer temperatures in the first half of the 20th century. On the flip side, very few record cold temperatures have been recorded anywhere in recent times.
82902. chris at 04:34 AM on 12 June 2011
       Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
       Thanks michael. Imagine the furore if that level of faulty analysis had been perpetrated by pukka climate scientists. And yet Drs. Christy and Spencer are considered something akin to heroes in some quarters. Christy, in particular, seems to have no qualms about making particulalry unpleasant attacks on the science that informs our undertanding. Can't find a link to Gary and Keihm (1991), but the abstracts of the other papers on corrections to faulty satellite tropospheric temerature measures cited just above are worth a perusal... Hurrell and Trenberth (1997)) Wentz and Schabel (1998) Fu et al. (2004) Mears and Wentz (2005)
82903. KR at 04:32 AM on 12 June 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Eric (skeptic) - I don't often comment on politics here (I prefer to stick to the science), but I cannot let that last howler go by without a reply. Please see my post on the far more appropriate The economic impacts of carbon pricing thread. Now, can we kindly get back to the "skepticism versus denial" topic? Or move on to other discussions? Side tracks into extreme political arrangements such as pure libertarianism are really off topic...
82904. KR at 04:32 AM on 12 June 2011
       CO2 limits will harm the economy
       From this thread: Eric (skeptic) - I don't often comment on politics here (I prefer to stick to the science), but I cannot let that last howler go by without a reply. "If I lived in Haiti I would be stripped of my land by the authoritarian government who would then pretend to mitigate climate change using proceeds from a carbon tax that would actually just be squirreled away in Swiss bank accounts." Haiti has less than 1% of it's forest cover remaining, because there has been no regulation of forestry use whatsoever. Individuals (who do not directly get assessed the full costs of their actions) cut down the trees for charcoal and land clearing. That's the "libertarian free market" in action. By contrast, consider the neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has rated the DR forestry programs as exemplary, with the government run conservation resulting in some of the best woodlands in the region. Libertarianism is an interesting extreme societal model, like a pure dictatorship, direct democracy, anarchy, true communism, etc. All of these have some benefits, and overcome some social issues - and all of them as pure systems have been failures. I believe a realistic view requires a mix of approaches, not extreme social experiments.
82905. michael sweet at 04:23 AM on 12 June 2011
       Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
       It is worth adding to Chris's excellent summary that for 15 years while Spencer and Christy's analysis was wrong they insisted very loudly that they were right and everyone else was wrong. They allowed deniers to use their data set to claim the globe was not warming. they did not find any of their errors, others had to do the hard work. Spencer is making more of the same noise today.
82906. chris at 03:52 AM on 12 June 2011
       Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
       There is an elephant in the room in considering the demonstrably incorrect arguments of Drs. Spencer and Christy. Although we should of course focus on the specific scientific elements of their “arguments”, it's important to recognise that these two have spent a large part of their careers getting the tropospheric temperature measurements hopelessly wrong, and therefore coming to an incorrect conclusion about the troposphere warming response to enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations (see below [+++]). This is bound to have influenced their outlook on this subject - it must be very difficult to throw away a favoured interpretation from 15 or more years of study, and not hope that one’s conclusions might yet be vindicated. While it’s important to address deficient arguments with logic and evidence, it’s also useful (and may become increasingly so) to try to fathom the psychology that underlies specific examples of scientific misrepresentation. Each of Spencer and Christy and Lindzen is objectively wrong in their essential representations of the science. I think we can at least partly understand some of the reasons for this in the case of the first two. [+++] Christy and Spencer's erroneous interpretation of tropospheric cooling was only revised after a long series of corrections identified by other scientists. It was pointed out as early as 1991 that (a) their analysis was not sufficiently constrained to distinguish cooling from a warming that would be consistent with physical expectations [*], (b) the method of averaging different satellite records introduce a spurious cooling trend [**], and (c) their failure to properly account for orbital decay introduced another spurious cooling trend [***]. A little later it was shown (d) that MSU-2 showed a spurious cooling trend due to spillover of stratospheric cooling into the tropospheric temperature signal [****], and later still it was pointed out that (e) the diurnal correction applied by Christy and Spencer (a sad litany of error) was of the wrong sign and gave yet another spurious cooling trend [*****]. [*] B.J. Gary and S. J. Keihm (1991) Microwave Sounding Units and Global Warming Science 251, 316 (1991) [**] J. W. Hurrell & .K E. Trenberth (1997) Spurious trends in satellite MSU temperatures from merging different satellite record. Nature 386, 164 – 167. [***] F. J. Wentz and M. Schabel (1998) Effects of orbital decay on satellite-derived lower-tropospheric temperature trends. Nature 394, 661-664 [****] Q. Fu et al. (2004) Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends Nature 429, 55-58. [*****] C. A. Mears and F. J. Wentz (2005) The Effect of Diurnal Correction on Satellite-Derived Lower Tropospheric Temperature Science 1548-1551.
82907. JMurphy at 03:38 AM on 12 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       Indeed, Sphaerica, and to drag out the avian analogy further, the Goddards and Watts' of this world will then be just like the pet-shop owner in the classic Monty Python 'Dead Parrot' sketch.
82908. Bob Lacatena at 03:21 AM on 12 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       46, skywatcher,

       But we can't blithely blame interannual variations for a downward trend in extent and thickness that is over 30 years old and accelerating.

       Sure we can. But not forever, and not even for long. I really think the denial crew stuck their heads on the chopping block with this one... like Goddard last year. The Arctic truly is the canary in the coal mine, in that no one is going to be able to hold the pretty little bird up, in the end, and say, "No, it's alive, see? See that? Its chest moved. It's still breathing! Trust me! He's fine..." The inter-annual variability just isn't as great as with the temperature records, the arguments about observation correctness don't really exist, and the trend is undeniable. Really, there's little the deniers can do except say "Look, it went back up (this year)" or "Well, but it's because of wind, it's not really melting". They will even some day say "Look, the trend is totally flat" (because it's all gone, and there's no more ice left to melt). But I love the Arctic, because the Arctic is and will be undeniable. It is, I think, the barometer that will ultimately turn public opinion before anything else. Then they'll look at the glaciers, and the droughts, and the extreme weather events, and the ecosystem changes... and people will finally start to seriously listen, or rather, they'll finally start to look askance at the "don't worry, it's nothing" crowd. So they can make bizarre predictions and dismiss it as much as they like. In fact, I encourage them to, because it will make it look that much more comical, and also demonstrate that they are that much less trustworthy, when the canary is clearly lying at the bottom of its cage, with its feet sticking straight up in the air, and they are still trying to claim that they can see it breathing.
82909. Eric (skeptic) at 02:50 AM on 12 June 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Scaddenp, you asked "I need to know the answer to question about why you would consider it acceptable that say fishing/tourist to pay cost of reef protection rather than creators of the problem?" After I thought about my answer to okatiniko /news.php?n=785#54211 I acknowledge that the libertarian free market is part of the problem of your hypothetical harms (but "let's not talk about the airport"). That market satisfies the whimsical desires of consumerism but also the needs of billions of people. In comparison a relatively small number of people will be harmed by climate change, and when I ask for specifics I get "estimates" of meters of rapid sea level rise (rate since 2003: 1 inch per decade). When I propose specific solutions I get blown off as too complicated or not workable or your answer which is we should simply do nothing and ask the culprits to pay. I am simply frustrated by your apparent lack of willingness to adapt. OTOH, I agree the free market is far from perfect. The essential problem is that short term profits don't account for long term costs. A good example is a company that buys up a forest to clear cut and uses the proceeds to buy a bigger forest to repeat the process. The answer is that a wealthy society does not require the products of clear cutting but can instead demand the products of mixed use resources. Case in point, Haiti has no forests, all were cut down for cooking fuel. Where I live in Virginia we have lots of new forests that were once completely clear cut for charcoal for smelting and lime kilns and then for farming and ranching. The demand for nature from tourists is somewhat offset by the horses which require pasture and hay production. But the result is a large amount of robustness to climate change such as it is here (perhaps a few more floods) without an oversized contribution to CO2. My own transitional forest of red cedar is being replaced (by nature and my help) by hardwoods and native understory. My steep slopes to a major river now have water retention and Prairie Moon seedlings. I am not wealthy but have enough spare resources to take really good care of 5 acres (although I ought to have and do more). I can easily handle any climate contingencies having unlimited water supplies and the ability and resources to easily deal with floods. If I lived in Haiti I would be stripped of my land by the authoritarian government who would then pretend to mitigate climate change using proceeds from a carbon tax that would actually just be squirreled away in Swiss bank accounts. My example is hardly far fetched. You may consider it a red herring or false dichotomy but it is not. The way people gain the wealth and independence to mitigate the effects of any environmental disasters is by the free market. So I have to ask you, since your wealth came from the market, why won't you use your wealth to adapt? Second, why won't you promote the economic freedom needed to create that wealth in countries like Bangladesh. If you don't think that is feasible, why won't you give a small portion of your wealth to private relief organizations?
82910. Dikran Marsupial at 02:48 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       trunkmonkey The answer to that question ought to be obvious. To get the degree of variability seens since the proterozoic you need major changes in the configuration of the continents. The configuration of the continents has changed very little during the pleistocene, so one ought to expect much less variability than witnessed since the proterozoic. AGW has occurred only during the pleistocene, so it is the variability of the pleistocene that is relevant to the discussion of AGW.
82911. trunkmonkey at 02:37 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       The continents are more widely dispersed today than they have ever been in the last 600 million years. There have been a couple phases if amalgamation and disintegration, but over the vast perponderence of this time there has been some sort of panthalassic ocean and a cluster of continets. The Pacific is in some sense a relict panthalassic. There has almost always been a continent at the south pole. There has never been one at the north pole. Glacial periods have occurred in many different configurations. To a geologist focussing on the pleistocene or even the tertiary is cherry picking. Why is the range of internal variability constrained by anything less that the range of variablity since the proterozoic?
82912. Dawei at 01:55 AM on 12 June 2011
       Climate Consensus on a T-shirt
       I'd imagine people who wear this shirt will get themselves involved in some interesting confrontations. The fact that it's a statistic, rather than just a picture of a swimming polar bear or something, should make it more inviting for debate. In a few months, it would be cool to post another blog article asking for those who purchased this shirt to comment on their experiences. I'm sure there will be some good stories to come from wearing this.
82913. Geologist at 01:52 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       I have to agree with Mike Palin (#61) that this is a quite tiring meme which I thought would be beneath SkS. Yes, there are some geologists that deny AGW but as was pointed out in the original article most of us don't. Also, lumping together hard rock geologists who work and study things that have very little to do with climate with Quaternary geologists and palaeoclimatologists who provide vital data for our understanding of AGW (most of our knowledge about the normal variability of the climate, data to validate the computer models and the possibility to use previous climatic events for comparison with the present depend on the work of geologists) is highly problematic. Many geologists do have a good understanding of math and those who don't mostly work in field where it is less important. It is true that advanced math skills are needed for many types of climate science, but palaeoreconstructions often only requires fairly simple statistical approaches. On the other hand many modellers can't identify a climatic or environmental change in a sediment succession or distinguish between an arctic or boreal fauna in a sample. That's the whole reason why we need collaborations and multi-disciplinary research. I believe that these kinds of discussions are detrimental for such work. #33, MajorKoko, besides the link from DSL showing that a positive feedback is not necessarily a runaway feedback it is worth noting that there is at least one major negative feedback effect which is important for earths climate, the weathering of bedrock. On very long timescales (millions of years) a warmer climate will lead to more weathering and thereby a decrease in CO2 in the atmosphere (since CO2 is used in the process). Unfortunately this effect is extremely slow so it won't have any significant effect on the timescales we are worried about (hundreds to thousands of years).
82914. skywatcher at 01:45 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       #82: You'll find a lot of useful information at skeptic argument #51, CO2 was higher in the past. If you were a good geologist you would understand about timescales. Milankovitch operates effectively at timescales of less than about a million years or so, and require a global configuration of continents that is sensitive in such a way that the small Milankovitch variation can trigger ice ages. On longer timescales, the movements of continents (e.g. closure of Panama, uplift of Himalaya, isolation of Antarctica), drive the likelihood of the globe being sensitive to a flickering switch of glaciation. The cooler Sun in distant geological past also allowed for deeper glaciations than at present, but the individual flickers of glacial periods analogous to the Devensian, Anglian or other phases are generally not clearly resolved in the existing geological record, and of course we can't define the orbital variations hundreds of millions of years ago that might have been in operation to pace the glaciations. Milankovitch, of course, was just a mere twinkle in the eye of a small furry creature in the Mesozoic... The small furry creature was enjoying a geological and CO2 configuration that favoured high global temperatures and little ice cover.
82915. Lloyd Flack at 01:42 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       trunkmonkey #82 The Milankovitch Cycles drive the alternation of glacial and interglacial periods within an ice age. Whether we have an ice age or not is determined by other things. The most important of these is continental configuration.
82916. Dikran Marsupial at 01:35 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       trunkmonkey I don't think the proterozoic/ordovician/permian glaciations have been attributed to Milankovic cycles. Milankovich cycles are not the only thing that peturbs the carbon cycle. For example, the position of land masses affects the weathering thermostat. If the landmasses are concentrated at the equator, weathering increases because the equator is warmer than the extra-tropics and CO2 tends to fall. If you are genuinely interested, see the excellent book by David Archer, reviewed here.
82917. RickG at 01:31 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       @ trunkmonkey #82 Your comparison is not even as close as apples and oranges; more like bananas and elephants. Take all data and facts into consideration, especially continental drift. What was the continental configuration during those times? How did that affect ocean currents? How about shallow seas and mountain systems that existed then that do not exist now.
82918. skywatcher at 01:29 AM on 12 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       While soome of this discussion is indeed interesting, there has been a subtle shift in this thread away from the focus on ice loss. In particular, garethman's successful avoidance of accepting that there is a very clear downward trend, which has not in the least bit slowed in recent years. Dikran's point in #37 about the variability around the trend is worth noting again. It's also disingenuous for garethman to get a helpful answer on another thread pointing to additional factors affecting ice loss, and then post here pretending that wind and ocean temperatures are the only story. They are not, and if he has read the two threads in question, he would know this. Wind in particular causes much of the variability about the accelerating downward trend, with poor wind conditions in 2007, and favourable winds for ice retention in 2010 (still the 3rd lowest on record). But we can't blithely blame interannual variations for a downward trend in extent and thickness that is over 30 years old and accelerating.
82919. trunkmonkey at 01:18 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       scaddenp@119 Can We Trust... Sorry about the wild leap in good fun. Moved over here to be more on topic. The point is that once we reach the limit of certainty bestowed by the wonderful equasions we are blessed to have in fluid dynamics and are forced to describe apparently chaotic features with perameters, we become far more like the poor geologist out in the hot sun of uncertainty, picking at rocks that seem to indicate a wildly chaotic history for our planet. To the reasons geologists tend to be skeptical already well descried in this thread I would like to add Milankovitch. Before Shackleton and the fan club of foraminifera Milakovitch had been carefully studied by gologists for many years and found wanting because his orbital variations had little explanatory power in earth history. How do you get a proterozoic glaciation, an ordivician glaciaton, a permian glaciation, and our current glaciation, all separated by roughly 200 million year interludes of much higher temperatures and CO2 levels from Milankovitch? If Milakovitch explains why CO2 is the slave to temperature in the ice cores, where was he during the mesozoic?
82920. KR at 01:11 AM on 12 June 2011
       Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
       For completeness on the Lindzen and Choi papers: LC11 PNAS rejected submission here. LC11 APJAS (in print) here. Some small differences, an additional 3 pages in the APJAS version (it apparently hit the PNAS size limitations). IMO - Lacking in sensitivity analysis for start/end dates of their temperature changes (cf. Trenberth 2010), extratropical heat exchange armwaved and asserted to be unity, etc. It's essentially LC09 with some added (and IMO fairly weak) explanatory text, no accounting for how the critiques pointed out contradictions with actual observations.
82921. dana1981 at 01:03 AM on 12 June 2011
       Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
       Badger - yes, we'll add the Christy Crocks button to the other Christy Crocks posts. In fact I'll do that now.
82922. John Hartz at 01:00 AM on 12 June 2011
       Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
       @Dana or John Cook: Will the "Christy Crock" button be inserted into all of the other articles in this series? How about adding a Note similar to the above to all of the other articles in the series?
82923. Bob Lacatena at 00:37 AM on 12 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       44, Dikran, Yes, I probably should have added that I believe that my observation almost always applies to skeptics (not meaning all skeptics, but rather, it rarely applies to people who do already understand the science, and far more often applies to skeptics, especially vocal skeptics who are so confident in their position that they feel they can openly and confidently recant a scientific position). Skeptics are the ones who tend to try to mold climate science to fit into their own boxes, and this is often what leads them astray. Because they are only seeing things from a very limited (and inaccurate) perspective, but it is also a perspective that they have spent years fine tuning, and through which have achieved a lifetime of personal success and achievement, it is very easy for a skeptic to Dunning-Kruger himself, and to believe that of all people, he has the tools to unravel the great climate mystery, and if not to find the solutions that have eluded the professionals, to at least understand it as well as he needs to make a final, authoritative (Dunning-Kruger) judgment. So, while my observation and advice was and is directed at everyone, it's particularly applicable to those who have already made up their minds that climate change is not an issue, and that look at every single aspect of climate change -- be it melting ice, drought, temperature records, climate sensitivity, the physics whatever -- but in every aspect, they feel they have achieved understanding but always through their own best avenues, tools, and limited perspective -- with their own, best hammer-- and so have convinced themselves that their position is valid. I think for many of these people, the simple recognition that they are one of the blind men describing an elephant is the starting point to getting out of the box which they have constructed that defines their skepticism, and prevents them from learning the science and finding the truth.
82924. Eric (skeptic) at 00:27 AM on 12 June 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 3: Implications for Emissions Reductions
       okatiniko #3, that is a worthwhile thought exercise. The simple answer comes from the history of the oil industry (wikipedia). Oil and gas were exploited relatively extensively in the far east 1000 or more years ago. That spread to Asia, particularly Russia. The U.S. took over in the 20th century but various countries that we once dominated have now nationalized their industries. We still have varying degrees of geopolitical influence in oil and energy although that is increasing challenged by China and other countries. The question you raise is not technological. You imply that we should not invent new techniques, but it is impossible to not invent or uninvent when the market demands the product. You also point out the great expense involved, but even with the government "subsidies" (which are mostly just a temporary alleviation of high taxes), the market has no problem providing the financing. I would point out that China has oodles of money, strong science and technology, and a large manufacturing sector to feed the energy to. The answer is therefore, geopolitical, but also very much dependent on the economic policies of various countries independent of the environmental considerations. My suggestion is to start here http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/envir_e/climate_challenge_e.htm because it is in the context of trade agreements where your suggestions have the best chance of being implemented.
82925. Dikran Marsupial at 00:20 AM on 12 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       Sphaerica There is a difference between garethmans brand of behavioural science and the way an electrical engineer or a chemist or a statistican would approach climate change, which is that the latter are constrained by the truth. Rhetoric isn't. There is plenty of scope for discussion of behavioural science in climate change (although perhaps not on this thread). There is no place for rhetoric in the scientific discussion of climate change. As a statistician/electronic engineer, I find the physics far more convincing, but my comments tend to be about statistics as that is my primary expertise. I generally read the discussions about physics and chemistry rather than participate. I suspect I am not alone in this, so on-line appearances can be deceptive. I have also pitched manure and written a sonnet ;o)
82926. J. Bob at 00:10 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       Dirkran Marsupial @ 78, it's been a couple years since I last looked at the ABC, and have not looked at it from a drought perspective. My interest then, was looking at the thermal radiation & convective effects of the particulates. However, some time ago I noted the use of solar ovens instead of wood fires, for cooking, and their effect on saving trees, and reduced erosion. This report (Machine Design, if I recall) was about the high elevations of Northern India, Nepal, etc. It's simplicity and resultant effects was an engineer's delight.
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] No problem, I was just wondering if there was a genuine contradiction there, it seems perhaps not.
82927. Phil at 00:08 AM on 12 June 2011
       Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995
       An update from Phil Jones
82928. Tom Curtis at 00:02 AM on 12 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       Denier @77: Brief bio of professor V Ramathan:

       " V. Ramanathan Title: Professor/ Director Department: Scripps Institution of Oceanography Organization: California Space Institute La Jolla, CA United States Website: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/. Bio Dr. V. Ramanathan is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. In the mid 1970s he discovered the greenhouse effect of CFCs and numerous other man-made trace gases. He correctly forecasted in 1980, along with R. Madden, that the global warming due to carbon dioxide would be detectable by the year 2000. He and his students also used satellite radiometers to detect the atmospheric greenhouse effect directly from observations and demonstrated using satellite and ground based observations that the coupling between atmospheric warming and water vapor greenhouse effect exerted a strong positive feedback effect, thus confirming earlier model predictions. Teaming up with NASA colleagues, he showed that clouds had a large natural cooling effect on the planet using direct measurements of the atmospheric greenhouse effect. He, along with Dr. Paul Crutzen, led the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) that first discovered the widespread South Asian Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs). Using INDOEX, Dr. Ramanathan showed that the South Asian brown clouds led to large scale dimming of the ocean slowed down the monsoon circulation and decreased monsoon rainfall. He followed this with a path-breaking study with agricultural economists to show that ABCs and greenhouse gases were responsible for a 14% decrease in rice harvest in India. In 2006, he used miniaturized instruments on light weight unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, to show that black carbon in ABCs are causing a large heating of the atmosphere over Asia, linking ABCs to the melting of Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers. During the summer of 2008, he used these UAVs to track pollution from Beijing during the Olympics. His most recent publication suggests that human activities have likely committed the planet to exceed the threshold for several climate tipping points during the twenty first century. Dr. Ramanathan currently chairs the UNEP-sponsored ABC Project with science team members from the USA, Europe, India, China, Japan, Korea and other Asian countries. He is the recipient of many national and international awards such as: the American Meteorological Society's Rossby medal, the Buys Ballot medal by the Dutch Academy of Sciences, the Volvo environment prize in 1997 and the Zayed International prize for environment in 2008. He has been elected to the American Philosophical Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope John Paul II, the Academia Europea, the Third World Academy of Sciences and most recently to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He chairs the National Academy of Sciences panel that provides strategic advice to the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), a $2 billion/year inter-agency research program. He is part of the Nobel Peace prize (2007) winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception, and for the 2007 report served as one of the lead editors in IPCC-AR4 (2007), WG-I. A more complete resume and bibliography can be seen at: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/."

       OK, he discovered the global warming effect of several trace gasses, predicted the GH warming of the atmosphere in the 1980's, has been a participant in the IPCC since 1990, and a lead author in AR4. But he is obviously not an "AGW scientist" because he is leading the effort to find out about the Indian Ocean Brown Clouds, which you tell us the AGW scientists are ignoring. A brief quote from Professor Paul Crutzen (and others):

       "Far more profound are the chemical and biological effects of global human activity. It may seem remarkable that changes to mere trace components of the Earth’s atmosphere—CO2, methane (CH4), and so on—can so fundamentally impact the Earth. Nevertheless, the concept of control of surface temperature by levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs), as originally worked out by Arrhenius (10) and Chamberlain (11), has been vindicated by subsequent work. Today, the rise in CO2 to over a third above preindustrial levels has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt: by systematic measurement since the 1950s (12); and by the record of atmospheric composition, now nearly a million years long, preserved in Antarctic ice (13). The rise in temperatures, that, at high latitudes, already exceed modeled predictions, has important consequences. The fringes of the great polar ice-sheets, once thought to react sluggishly to temperature rises, are now seen to respond quickly and dynamically (14). The ensuing sea level rise, scarcely begun, may ultimately be of the order of several meters (15) if temperatures rise by some 2−5 °C, as predicted (16). Global temperature rises will have far-reaching consequences for the biosphere. Species will migrate (if they are able to) to track their optimum climate belt, a phenomenon more pronounced in the oceans than on land (17): changes in, say, larval hatching times can cause cascade-like changes in entire ecosystems, when these larvae act as food for other animals."

       But again, he can't be one of those "AGW scientists" because he, like Ramathan is a Co-chief scientist of the INDOEX program, and as you inform us, this is an issue being ignored by AGW scientists.
82929. Bob Lacatena at 23:58 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       garethman, and everyone, You said this, and things like it a number of times in the past:

       ...in my behavioural science you...

       I see this sort of thing a lot. Electrical engineers analyze climate using electrical engineering concepts and terms. Statisticians make everything revolve around statistics. Chemists look at the chemistry. I certainly flavor my own thoughts with systems thinking (being a software developer and systems analyst), but I think I have a slight advantage because the real key to success in my job is breaking that mold, and getting in tune with the real world and the real problem, from many angles, not just my own, narrow, computer-specialist perspective. In fact, a lot of computer systems fail because of this habit of people to look only from their own perspective, and so computer systems too often reflect the computer considerations, and not the realities of the problems they are trying to solve. Hammer/nail syndrome ("if all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail") is human nature. But I think climate is a particularly broad, varied, and complex problem. It includes systems, and feedback loops, and behavioral components, and statistics, and chemistry, physics, biology, politics, economics, everything. Everyone needs to make every effort they can to break the hammer-nail syndrome and expand their thinking in uncomfortable but necessary ways. If you ever find yourself falling into your comfort zone, realize that you are falling away from the answers and solutions, not closer to them. You feel more comfortable with your understanding, because it is familiar and fits into a complex box that you have spent a lifetime and a career constructing, but in fact that box is a prison, not a prism. It keeps you from seeing the whole picture and the truth, rather than helping you to do so (which is how it feels, but not how it is). This isn't a criticism of garethman, or anyone. It's just an observation. Avoid hammer-nail syndrome. The climate problem is far too complex to be handled by a single specialist, or even a team of specialists. To repeat a favorite quote of mine from Robert Heinlein:

       "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

82930. DSL at 23:54 PM on 11 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       By the way, Denier, I'd like to see the logic and evidence that differentiates your proposed hypothesis of "an identified physical cause of change totally destroys the greenhouse gas hypothesis" from "this means a significant change in the number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in Argentina." In other words, why do you propose your final hypothesis? What does this alleged cloud of pollution have to do with the physics of radiative transfer? And AGW is not an hypothesis. It's a theory based on a broad range of already well-tested hypotheses.
82931. J. Bob at 23:39 PM on 11 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       Here are a couple of references to the Asian Brown Cloud (ABC)& Ramanathan. A Google search on the "Asian Brown Cloud" will get a lot more. ABC-1 ABC-2
       Moderator Response:

       [Dikran Marsupial] I was wondering if there was a verifiable reference to ABC causing drought in Australia, rather than Asia (which would provide some support for Denier's speculation).

82932. garethman at 22:35 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       Hi Skywatcher. Sadly I cannot give you any cause for hope, like you, I would like to see some good news. You will also note all my posts state I fully agree with the fact the ice is declining rapidly. My apparent sin was to ask why the ice declined at varying rates, and to show charts which demonstrated a temporary slowdown in melting rates. Obviously a very sensitive area which I was unaware of and which has upset many people. I’m still unsure why, but in my behavioural science you don’t ask why people behave in some ways, you just have to accept. So there we are, I will try and carefully avoid posting any material which is likely to offend or cause upset in the future.
       Response:

       [DB] This is a forum wherein like-minded people discuss the science of climate change from the perspective of what the science actually says, not what the media represents it as.  Participants took exception to some unscientific statements you made and attempted to make you aware of a more appropriate context and methodology to examine those situations.

82933. Denier at 22:33 PM on 11 June 2011
       Geologists and climate change denial
       The following was posted on ABC Environment. To ensure it is not lost and unanswered it is posted here, being mindful of your words - " Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge and improve their understanding." The information provided below suggests AGW scientists have seriously failed your test. There is evidence of a dimming event, capable of affecting global hydrology from INDOEX; a very comprehensive field study conducted in equatorial Indian Ocean during 1999. Briefly, the 250 scientists of INDOEX discovered a massive atmospheric cloud of mostly man-made pollution from fossil burning, covering an area the size of Australia extending upwards 3 to 4 kms, was reducing the sun’s ability to create evaporation. Subsequent monitoring by Prof. V. Ramanathan of USC, determined this cloud remains stationary for 3 to 4 months yearly due to an inversion, with one of its adverse effects being regional drought. Those supporting the global warming case have long argued these clouds of pollution have aided in arresting temperature increases. INDOEX distinguishes the effect over this body of water has catastrophic consequences. The question is – why have Australian climate scientists pushing the CO2 warming barrow failed to acknowledge such a momentous climatic happening? Could the answer be - an identified physical cause of change totally destroys the greenhouse gas hypothesis?
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Fixed URL (hopefully that is the one you intended). Can you supply a verifiable reference to the findings of Prof. Ramanathan?
82934. Dikran Marsupial at 22:33 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       garethman I am not interested in a rhetorical debate with you. I have clearly stated why. If you want your posts to be better received, just drop the rhetoric as I advised, you will find you get your questions answered in a measured tone. I suspect the last few posts will be deleted as off-topic (I would do so myself were I not a participant), but hopefully you will get the message that your rhetorical tone is doing you no favours here. Note that my first response to one of your questions was perfectly reasonable. Note I said a denier would want to look only at a 3000 year trend, not a skeptic (there is a difference). A denier would want to use data that could not possibly reveal any anthropogenic influence on climate, whether it was there or not. That was not implying that you were a denier, just pointing out how useless a 3000 year trend would be for the discussion at hand (albeit obliquely).
82935. Dikran Marsupial at 21:56 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       garethman It is rather arrogant of you to assume that I am in some way lacking in my understanding of human nature (a rhetorical trick I have seen before, a subtle ad-hominem). One of the purposes of scientific method and practice is to overcome some of the less helpful aspects of human nature, in doing so, it is helpful to have a good knowledge of those human failings actually are. Rhetoric on the other hand tends to appeal to them (especially our natural confirmation bias). I would avoid rhetoric if I were you, if you want to engage in scientific discussion; science looks for the truth, rhetoric looks for a victory in a debate, and truth or logical consistency are generally only secondary considerations (if that). I doesn't work as well in written communication as there is time to check for cherry picking and logical consistency etc. There was a good essay by Schopenhauer lampooning rhetoric ("the art of always being right" or something like that), well worth reading so you know the tricks to look out for in others and avoid using yourself. Rhetoric is a hallmark of denialism, it really isn't something to be proud of. If you think it is a good way of arriving at information, you are profoundly mistaken.
82936. skywatcher at 21:32 PM on 11 June 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 3: Implications for Emissions Reductions
       #3: Being a scientist and not a politician, I can't answer your last question, but I like the proposal otherwise! I suspect that there are savoury and unsavoury political reasons why this happens, as well as insufficient political pressure to move away from fossil fuels (see Obama's flip-flopping on it). As we move into the first significant decade of climate consequences, maybe those pressures will change. We're already seeing some renewables prices lower towards some FF prices, so maybe part of the solution is undeway.
82937. skywatcher at 21:26 PM on 11 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Garethman - the observation about favourable winds is in the literature, particularly for 2007's melt. But the winds are overprinted on the declining trend, such that, although winds in the latter half of the melting season last year (2010) were extremely unfavourable to ice export, the ice was so thin that it melted to the 3rd lowest extent on record. Heaven knows what'll happen to the remains of the Arctic ice when we get a repeat of 2007-like wind conditions (IIRC, it was about a 10-year return period for that wind pattern).
82938. garethman at 21:16 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       Thanks for the extra info Dikran it makes sense of what I am looking at, If I understand you correctly, the highs and lows even out into a trend, and this temporary slowing of decrease will be evened out by an increase at some point? Thats useful to know. However, that was not my question, my question was related to why it happened, what were the factors involved which caused the variations. Helpfully it has now been answered on another thread. Apparently it is variations in sea temps and wind direction. Warmers waters accelerate melt, winds break up and distribute ice, and these factors either enhance the rate of melting or slow it down. I know it may be pretty obvious to most of you, but it took a lot of queries to arrive at the info. By the way it’s a fair cop, I love rhetoric. It has great tradition dating from classical Greece. It’s a good way of arriving at information, especially when any question is met with a barrage of aggression or odd allegations. To me, coming from a qualitative or even phenomenological background, what I post is a scientific discussion. It just does not seem like that to many Scientists on this site who are schooled in the more quantitative philosophy of objectively measurable phenomenon. Sometimes your deductions are as perplexing to me as mine must be to yourselves. Nevertheless I appreciate your responses which wonderfully illustrate the variation in human responses to such critic issues and hope that maybe you are learning something about human nature in the same way as I am learning the details of anthropogenic effects on climate.
82939. skywatcher at 21:16 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       Clearly you're not here for rational discussion garethman, but by all means use ther Uni of Bremen chart - though it only shows the past eight years of data, it shows 2011 at the 'bottom of the pack' as it were, and also shows (which IJIS does not) the long-term mean, and how far below that, every single year in the Bremen graphs. It's not a graph for establishing trends, however, as it is not easy to see the pattern of how the extent on this year on this date compares to the ordered sequence of extents on previous years of the same date. But that is of course exactly the data you want to hide. Equally, the Cryosphere Today anomaly graph technically shows pretty much exactly the same data as in Tamino's graphs, the NSIDC graph or the IJIS/Bremen graphs, but in that one it is even harder to see the trends as you cannot visually pick, say which point represents 11th June 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and so on. If you could, you would of course see very clearly the declining trend. What is interesting is that although the rapid and accelerating decline is clearly going on, as shown by the relevant charts from NSIDC or Tamino's linked above (or you can generate them yourself from IJIS data), the CT chart shows the emergence of something like an annual cycle in the anomalies, as the September anomalies decline more rapidly than the March anomalies. But there's nothing much subjective about any of these graphs, you just need to understand clearly what it is you are looking at on the graph, and do the relevant analysis. If you have any proper data that gives us sound cause for hope in the Arctic, which the extent charts cerainly do not, I would like to see it. I'd like to see some good news about the Arctic.
82940. michael sweet at 20:27 PM on 11 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Garethman at 50: Does WUWT have a graphs page comparable to Nevin's daily graphs page(linked in the main article and also in the comments)? Can you provide a link to the WUWT page so we can check it out? When you say "unusually cold" do you mean compared to the past 20 years or compared to say 1900-1930?
82941. garethman at 19:25 PM on 11 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Dorlomin FWIW there are two trends that have strongly influenced the rate of sea ice melting in the NH, there is additional warm water moving into the area and the winds have been more in favour of exporting ice out of the arctic. A change in either of these may see the rate of decline slow or even briefly reverse the trend. Garethman Much appreciated, I’ve been looking for the reasons for these blips for a while .Thats the first sensible answer I’ve seen. Incidentally one of the things I have noticed ( entirely subjective of course) is that when it is unusually cold here in the North East Atlantic, it tends to be unusually warm in the Arctic. I suspect the influence of a melting Arctic is being felt in Europe in counterintuitive ways. These synoptic charts could be useful in looking at this process. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/surface_pressure.html
82942. garethman at 19:14 PM on 11 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Great sets of data. Many thanks. This also a useful one. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png Any chance you could do the same as WUWT and put all the links and graphs in one place for easy reference?
       Response:

       [DB] I have been considering the feasability of such a thing for a while now.  Right now it comes down to time/manpower.

82943. Dikran Marsupial at 19:12 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       garethman O.K., so you aren't here for rational discussion of the science, just rhetoric (as your first sentence clearly demonstrates). I have explained why a 30 year timescale is relevant (any shorter it is dominated by weather noise and tells you nothing about forcings, much longer and it no longer has sufficient resolution to detect the effects of anthropogenic changes in forcing) and all you can manage is an inflamatory attack accusing those with a mainstream scientific view of scientific dishonesty (concentrating on only those datasets that suit their position). Not very persuiasive I'm afraid. Look further back in the data, you will find that after each record high or low, there will be a "recovery" towards more average conditions over the next year or two. This is called "regression to the mean", and is a well known statistical phenomenon. It doesn't mean anything now, just like it didn't signal a signficant recovery following any of the previous record minima.
82944. garethman at 18:59 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       Thanks Dikran, that’s useful.I suppose reactionaries and the AGW community will always tend to focus on data that supports their side of the argument. So reactionaries or skeptics would tend to use the following: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_n.png which show exactly the same thing, but against a different background giving a different feel. Again, it’s the subjective interpretation of objective observations. However, it just so happens that the vast majority of data supports the AGW side of things. Interestingly this data regarding ocean heat shows this similar blip in the relevant timescale. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png . I guess we could ignore the data as being far too short to be of any real significance, but both sets of data show something standing out against the general trend and any ideas as to why it is occurring would be great.
82945. Dikran Marsupial at 18:36 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       garethman It is not correct to define a trend by drawing a line between two points, it would be a recipe for cherry picking. That is why climatologists use least squares trends. It is a logical fallacy to think that looking at a thirty year trend rather than a 3000 year trend means that looking at a three year trend rather than a thirty year trend is justifiable. Over short timespans, the data are dominated by chaotic variability, and thus tell you virtually nothing about climate. There is very little information about the effects of forcing in three years of data compared to a thirty year trend. Over timescales of 30+years, you are looking mostly at forced climate change, and that is true for 30 years ot 3000 years. Of course if you look at 3000 years the trend won't be sensitive to anthropogenic forcing as it has only been significant for the last 150 years or so of that 3000 years, so it has little effect on a least-squares trend. I can see why a denialist would want to concentrate on a 3000 year trend rather than a 30 year one.
82946. adelady at 18:02 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       The chart you linked to is pretty noisy - because it's a lot of readings over that period. For something to clearly show a trend try the daily graph at NSIDC. Most importantly, it shows the 2 sigma range as well as the simple trend line. When you look at this one, you see clearly that any apparent 'flattening' is much less important than the fact that the ice extent can't get itself anywhere near the outermost limit of the steeply declining trend.
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] linked in pitcure (click to go to source)
82947. John Russell at 17:52 PM on 11 June 2011
       It's cooling
       Following Phil Jones' update yesterday (10th June 2011), this subject has become a hot potato in the comments over at Carbon Brief. Anyone fancy offering expert support?
82948. garethman at 17:46 PM on 11 June 2011
       Impacts of a melting cryosphere – ice loss around the world
       It’s all downhill, I agree. But sometimes it’s steeper, sometimes less so. We could draw a straight graph from one point to one point showing a consistent slope which excluded say summer melt and winter freeze, It would be correct, it would show a decline. But it would miss out variations in the rate of decrease which I believe are important in an understanding of why those variations occur. You are right in that we can gloss over the detail of 3 years worth of data in a background of 31 years, but is that not what reactionaries and dissidents do when they place the last 30 years of data against 3000 years? Does the chart I linked to show a flattening? Is it wrong? If so we must not trust info from that source. If it is correct, but shows a timescale to short to be of significance I fully accept that, but then it begs the question, what is a reasonable timescale for significant data to be accumulated? The last 30 years has shown a drastic reduction in ice cover. What does data over the last 300 years, 3000 or even 30,000 years suggest? It may be felt that anything outside the 30 year period is irrelevant due to the advent of satellite technology etc, but could that also not be seen to be Cherry picking? If 3 years is irrelevant, saying 30 is OK, but not 300 is odd. Note I am not saying the ice has not melted, it obviously has, I am just suggesting that from the data it looks like there is variation in the melting rate, which appears to have slowed over the last 3 years, but not recovered. I’m sure you have a reasonable answer for non experts like myself. Here is the link again to save time searching. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
82949. Liam23 at 17:26 PM on 11 June 2011
       Ocean acidification: Some Winners, Many Losers
       Pardon my ignorance, but I don't understand this: "The higher quality data available since 1950 has allowed the team to calculate that since that time, the world has seen a phytoplankton decline of about 40%." If phytoplankton generate 50% of the oxygen, then a 40% decline would appear to imply a 20% decline in oxygen generation. Surely we would notice if the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere were falling? Is there a lag time before atmospheric concentration falls? How would reduced generation be reflected in overall concentration? How low would it go? Thanks in advance for any replies.
       Response:

       [DB]  IIRC, any reduction in seawater oxygen content due to the phytoplankton decline will be interspersed thoughout the various layers of the worlds oceans.  That's a lot of volume.  Given the volume of the atmosphere, any reductions in oxygen content due to that loss may have been offset by oxygen coming from melting ice sheets (Canadian Archipelago, Greenland, Antarctica as well as the global decline in alpince glaciation).  Speaking off-the-cuff, as I haven't studied that particular aspect.  Don't lose any sleep over it.

82950. okatiniko at 16:40 PM on 11 June 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 3: Implications for Emissions Reductions
       There is an extremely simple way of reaching the goals of a budget policy : it is to forbid the exploitation of all non-conventional resources, deep off-shore, tar sands , shale oils and gas, methane hydrates, liquefied coal, and so forth...., and even the search and exploitation of new conventional resources. There is absolutely nothing to do : just forbid companies to go there. No drilling, no administrative permits - just - forbidden, like in Antarctica. Don't go there . It is absolutely impossible to extract them without extremely sophisticated techniques , mastered only by western companies, and many of these resources are located in democratic, industrialized countries : US, Canada, Japan, Europe ... no real political difficulty in applying these interdictions. and there are only very weak economic consequences, since most of these resources have hardly begun to be exploited - and for most of them not at all. Only Athabasca tar sands are really extracted, with a modest rate (less than 2 Mbl/j) that does not really contribute to GHG emissions - not a problem to lower gradually their extraction and close them in some decades. Forbidding the extraction would avoid to do ANY effort to persuade people to lower their consumption. It is much more, infinitely more simple to control a handful of companies than billions of people. The law of supply and demand would assure a growing price of fossil fuels and a natural switch to other alternatives - quite naturally. There is no need for sequestration, carbon market, and other awful sophisticated things. And contrary to demand policies, the result is 100 % certain. The only question is : why does nobody claim for such a simple measure ?

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