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Comments 83401 to 83450:

83401. RW1 at 13:28 PM on 8 June 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       KR (1062), I'm not saying the Trenberth diagram is entirely 'wrong' per say - it's just very misleading and has been largely misinterpreted by virtually everyone here. Let me ask you this, where in the diagram is the return path of latent heat in the form of precipitation? Surely, you agree evaporative latent heat of water and precipitation is a major surface -> atmosphere -> surface circulation current, right?
83402. scaddenp at 12:51 PM on 8 June 2011
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       J Bob, you have to use proxy data because you dont have any other reliable set. Your situation is 19 is ideal but that's not the real world. All variables are varying at the same time so you need multivariate tools. tobyth2 - see CO2 is not the only driver of climate. You only expect the correlation when CO2 is the primary forcing. The better question to ask is, since climate theory predicts temperature change to be a function of all forcings in operation, how well is temperature (on climatic scales of 30 year average) predicted by those forcing. Answer. very well indeed.
83403. KR at 12:29 PM on 8 June 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       RW1 - I believe that Sphaerica is attempting to determine if you have actually understood the Trenberth diagrams. So far, it is not evident that you have. And hence (so far) your disagreements have not been particularly relevant, insofar as they have been understandable.
83404. J. Bob at 12:02 PM on 8 June 2011
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       Tom Curtis, I don't know how many systems you had to identify, with multiple inputs, output (MIMO) & parameters, when many of the inner workings were not well defined, and non-linear. One of the first things you do, is vary a single input, and then note the output response. You continue to do this with all the inputs, in order to gain an understanding of what is going on within. As you gain experience, one starts to look at multiple input changes, and subsequent responses. This is not an experiment, this is real life.
83405. tonyth2 at 11:50 AM on 8 June 2011
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       In item 6 above, charts of CO2 and Temperature are displayed for the last 11,000 years. Despite imperfections that have been pointed out for those charts, it is reasonable to ask the question "Where is the correlation between CO2 and Temperature ?" The same question applies for similar charts drawn for 1850 to 2011. From 1910 to 1940 temperature increased at a rate similar to the rate of temperature increase between 1975 and 2000. The rate of change of CO2 concentration was lower between 1910 and 1940 than it was between 1975 and 2000. From 1940 to 1975 temperature decreased while CO2 increased. From 2000 to 2011 CO2 has continued to increase but the rate of temperature increase has declined. For the 12 months of any year CO2 varies by much less than the un-correlated, larger variation in temperature. The data shows no correlation between Temperature and CO2. Charts of the measured data show that temperature is affected by other factors more than it is affected by CO2.
83406. J. Bob at 11:49 AM on 8 June 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       apiratelooksat50 @ 436, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "how far past 1850 can you take the graphs?". Are you talking about: 1- Projecting past the end points (based on the 1850-2010 set) 2- Looking at data sets which began prior to 1850, as presented at J. Bob @ 52 & 391.
83407. Tom Curtis at 11:40 AM on 8 June 2011
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       J Bob @16, Translated: You want to treat the experiment as containing a single variable when you know they contain multiple variables. Right, got it.
83408. Marcus at 11:28 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       ....and of course Abbott's plans *assume* that the power industry won't just take the money, add it to their yearly profit results, & merrily go about their business. Have the Opposition given *any* indication of how they plan to ensure the Coal industry do the right thing with the money? Not that it will change the obscene cost of the scheme. Also, Tom, lets not forget that just a couple of years before this clip, he was wholeheartedly supporting Howard's Emissions Trading Scheme. Seems Abbott wants to have a bet each way.
83409. RW1 at 11:24 AM on 8 June 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       Sphaerica (RE: 1060), Even if I or anyone else could actually determine all these numbers (virtually impossible), what would be the point of any such exercise? To discover some new physical law? To discover that Conservation of Energy does not hold at the boundary between the surface and the TOA? If you're trying imply that all of these specific quantities need to be known in order to understand the contraints COE puts on the system, then I suggest you take some time to think about this a bit more. It's not that complicated.
83410. J. Bob at 11:20 AM on 8 June 2011
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       scaddenp @ 15, yes, from 1959. Principles of Heat Transfer by Frank Kreith, p.211, section on Radiation from Gases, Vapors & Flames. Tom Curtis @ 14, you quote a lot of estimated data based on math models. It would be better if you used actual data. I'm not thrilled about proxy data from ice cores, but it gives a sense of assurance if corresponds to actual measured data. I don't think I'd bet the farm on estimated model data.Those charts I presented above, can be traced to actual data sets, as well as some of the CO2 data. Somehow I feel more comfortable with some actual test data. I've seen what can happen when models go wrong, due to limited evaluation.
83411. Tom Curtis at 10:36 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       mandas @14, I am an Australian. As Tony Abbott is just one vote away from being Prime Minister, for me his demonstrated economic incompetence is, therefore, also an issue. As, however, to his comments, Robert Murphy @5 is perfectly correct. Abbot does not advocate a Carbon Tax on the clip. He does, however, claim that a Carbon Tax is the best method of "put[ting] a price on Carbon". That, given a Carbon Tax on the table, he will not even negotiate on the features of that tax does show that his earlier comments where a smoke screen, as IMO is his current policy (see my 15). But regardless of the intended take home message of John Cook, I believe the shallow analysis shown by Abbott in his suggested Carbon tax is a genuine issue. It shows that he is not only incompetent on the science, but incompetent on the policy as well, even where he to accept the science.
83412. Tom Curtis at 10:25 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       Michael Hauber @12, Tony Abbot is now advocating that existing power plants be modified or replaced, or carbon abatement paid for at tax payer expense. As former Liberal Party leader, Malcolm Turnbull has calculated, even using very conservative assumptions about the costs involved, that would represent a cost of Billions of dollars a year to the budget. If the method is used to seriously mitigate CO2 emissions, the cost to the taxpayer will quickly rise to tens of billions annually. As also noted by Turnbull, the chief (indeed the only) advantage of such a system is that it is easy to stop. As it stands, Abbott refuses to identify how the billions required for his scheme will be raised. When a Cap and Trade scheme was on the political agenda, Abbott argued the virtues of a carbon tax. Now that a carbon tax is on the agenda, he argues the virtue of direct government action. Given that the policy is unfunded, my belief is that should Abbott gain power, a "budgetary crisis" will be found that necessitates shelving his policy for the forseeable future.
83413. mandas at 10:24 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       Tom Curtis I am not sure if you are an Australian, but you completely missed the whole point of this thread with your comments at #3. This is all about Tony Abbott's gross hypocrisy on the issue of a carbon tax. He is clearly advocating a carbon tax in 2009, for the sole reason that it was government policy (at the time) to adopt a cap and trade system. He was just saying no to anything and everything the government proposed. Now that the government is proposing a carbon tax, Abbott is acting like the hypocrite he is and opposing it, despite his earlier advocation for such a scheme. He is, once again, just automatically opposing everything the government says or does. He has zero credibility on this issue, and I cringe when I think that there is the very real possibility that he could become Prime Minister in just over two years.
83414. Tom Curtis at 10:11 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       Martin @6, you may find the following graph of CO2 measurements by aircraft in the high troposphere (red circles) and the stratosphere (red dots): There is a slight reduction in CO2 levels in the stratosphere with respect to the troposphere which is due to CO2's greater mass than N2 or O2. You will also notice a higher CO2 measurement for the lowest of the ground stations (KZD at 412 meters). On the other hand, both the high troposphere and high stratosphere have a higher annual mean than do the higher altitude ground stations, primarily because they are minimally affected by the seasonal uptake of CO2 by Northern Hemisphere deciduous forests in the summer, and the release of that CO2 back to the atmosphere. (For a map showing the surface station locations and flight paths, click on the graph). Also of interest is this graph of CO2 concentrations at different altitudes at four different times of year: Again the CO2 concentration is near constant with altitude, with slight variations at each altitude depending on the pattern of winds, updrafts and downdrafts at each level. One pattern is particularly clear, however. In Spring and Summer it is clear that there is less CO2 at lower altitudes, while in Winter there is obviously more. This seasonal pattern is again because of uptake of CO2 by decidous forests in Spring and Summer, and release of CO2 by rotting leaves in those forests in Winter. It may help your colleague to see these graphs. Sometimes it helps people to move towards truth if their points are not just denied, (CO2 is relatively heavy, and that does affect its distribution) but put into perspective (that effect only makes a 2.5% difference in CO2 concentrations over the altitude of the atmosphere, and is easily swamped by the much larger seasonal variation due to deciduos forests). You might also ask why the organisation he relies on has not done their own experiments on CO2 and altitude, seeing as how it is not that hard an experiment. For the record, the Mauna Loa observatory is located at 3397 meters, and is well away from deciduous forests, though not free of their influence.
83415. Michael Hauber at 09:43 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       When he makes claims like 'it is nearly impossible to connect today's melting with global warming', then perhaps his real name is Dr Inferno.
83416. apiratelooksat50 at 09:32 AM on 8 June 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       J. Bob @ 431 How far back past 1850 can you take the graphs? Do you have the source site?
83417. SouthWing at 09:30 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       

       @dhogaza at 08:22 AM on 8 June, 2011 I think Dr. PhD is a most successful troll ...

       Indeed. It is past time for the mod's magic plonker to strike.
       Response:

       [DB] Let's just say the bullpen is ready should the starter falter...back to the good stuff:  watching ice cubes melt.

83418. Michael Hauber at 09:25 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       I would agree with Mr Abbott that it would be better to respond intelligently in 2012 than foolishly in 2010. He said that in 2008. What intelligent response is he advocating for 2012? Or is it now 'better to act intelligently in 2014 than foolishly in 2012'....
83419. Stevo at 09:07 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       Two of Abbott's best quotes are missing from this article. "Climate change is crap", and, "I'm not across the science". I'm still not sure why so many people accept the verdict of a man who admits he does not know what he is talking about.
       Response: Find me a source and I'll add these to the quotes database.
83420. Bob Lacatena at 08:52 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       9, Doug, I can't believe you bothered! Well, now I can't sleep tonight, because if the deniers are right and we're wrong, then all of the CO₂ is going to sink down to the surface, and anyone who is less than 10 feet tall is going to suffocate. [Lucky for me I sleep on the second floor, but I'll still be afraid to go downstairs for a drink of water.]
83421. scaddenp at 08:50 AM on 8 June 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Eric (sk), I agree that nuclear might be cheaper under your scenario, but that's not the point. We both agree that only way to get rid of coal without my arbitrary government imposed methods is for an alternative to be cheaper than coal. "Cap and trade" and "Fee and dividend" approaches are attempts at "market solutions" to the problem, both unacceptable to libertarians because of the role in government. But I am really interested in the question of what happens when a market fails (eg no way to make an alternative cheaper unless a way is found for coal pay for environmental damage which is difficult because of unknown and future nature). To me, libertarian ideals derive from a value system. It proposes a model of state in accordance with those values. The issue is what gives when model doesnt fit well with reality. Libertarians readily concede a role for government in protection from agression and upholding of the legal system. What is conformal with the values from which libertarism springs for dealing with market failures? eg costing of coal, or urban air quality. We make fun of the argument "AGW leads to ergo AGW doesnt exist" but noone actually makes that calculus at a conscious level. Its more a question of an assault on values and no amount of argument will change a person's values. Ergo, we need solutions talked about that dont conflict a person's values. On cost - probably belongs in the "Its not bad" thread but... I dont deny a technological solution is possible - just that it is beyond the economic means of our small city and external help unlikely when you consider implications for rest of country. Do we have legal redress on CO2 emitters to help build a replacement? There are estimates of climate change cost - eg Stern. Sure they are criticised but only alternatives I have seen assume smaller effects that the science does not support. From this I would assume the compiler knows that WG2 scenario costs are too expensive. And on that note, clathrate release, while a risk, is not supported by the science, definitely not part of AR4 WG2. I asked earlier what you meant by "C"AGW - ie what parts of WG2 did you have scientific support to disbelieve, but you answered that effectively you believe sensitivity is lower than estimated but havent provided science to support that position.
83422. Stevo at 08:45 AM on 8 June 2011
       Poleward motion of storm tracks
       Ari #16. Thankyou Ari, for the links. The case certainly looks firmer than I first thought.
83423. Doug Mackie at 08:39 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       The layering calculation is straight forward. Here is a quick and dirty version. You need to know the mass of the atmosphere and the number of moles in the atmosphere. The mass is easy: Take sea level pressure (about 1 g per cm2) and the area of the Earth (510x10^6 km2) to get 5.1x10^18 kg. (This compares with more formal calculations by Trenberth giving 5.148 x10^18 kg). Then assume an average molecular mass for the gases of 29 (about right for 78% N2, 21% O2 and 1% Ar). This gives total moles = 1.8 x10^20 moles. 390 ppm of CO2 (or any other gas) is then 7.0 x10^16 moles. Ideal gas laws tell us that at 10 deg C and sea level pressure 1 mole gas has a volume of 23.2 L Total volume of the gas = 1.6 x10^15 m3 For a surface area of 510 x10^6 km2 = 510 x10^12 m2 the thickness is thus 3.1 m. (For Ar it is 75 m, O2 = 1.7 km, N2 = 6.3 km. Adding these up we see that the whole atmosphere is equivalent to about 8 km at sea level pressure).
83424. les at 08:23 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       The post is missing one important site, particularly given that it is now clear that 2008 was a short upward 'blip' in line with the overall trend of decline. For being right in the money, I recommend this post from 2008.
83425. dhogaza at 08:22 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       I think Dr. PhD is a most successful troll ...
83426. The Skeptical Chymist at 08:11 AM on 8 June 2011
       Database of peer-reviewed papers: classification problematics
       Ari Again in the 2010 skeptic articles: "Accessing environmental information relating to climate change: a case study under UK freedom of information legislation" - is a SPPI report and does not appear to be a peer review paper and should be removed.
83427. scaddenp at 08:07 AM on 8 June 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       truckmonkey - parameterizations will vary from model to model. But note that things like relationship of evaporation to windspeed are tuned from observations of windspeed and evaporation, not fiddling a value to fit a temperature. You can get detail from model documentation (see here for list), eg AOM GISS. If it was possible to tune a climate model so that we could ignore GHG, then I think that would have been a much cheaper proposition for opponents than funding disinformation and a lot more convincing.
83428. dana1981 at 08:00 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       Martin - I like the idea. The problem is that it would require quite a bit of work. But for example, none of the scientist "skeptics" (your Lindzens and Christys and such) dispute that the planet is warming, humans are causing atmospheric CO2 to increase, and this is contributing to the warming at least somewhat. So these most serious 'skeptics' would not support most of the climate myths in our database. They're mostly 'climate sensitivity is low' and 'it's internal variability' and that sort of thing.
83429. scaddenp at 07:50 AM on 8 June 2011
       There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature
       J Bob, you do realise that particulates are included in aerosols?
83430. GFW at 07:41 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Of course, to the extent that we can measure them by independent proxies, temperature and CO2 track well for millions of years back. The warmth of the Jurassic was enabled by CO2 concentrations around 4-5 times those currently prevailing. So dumping as much CO2 as we want into the atmosphere is fine, so long as we don't mind mass extinctions of current life, in favor of the re-development of life forms suited for the climate of the Jurassic. BTW Dr. Jay, you don't have to just think the Earth is in a cool period. It is - specifically the Quaternary Ice Age. Within the QIA, we are in the Holocene Interglacial, so it's not as cool as it would be in a glacial period, but nonetheless cool compared with much of the Earth's distant past. The trouble is that all of human civilization developed in, and is rather dependent upon, the climate of the Holocene. The CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere is highly likely to take us well outside that narrow range of "good for humans". Not a problem for life itself, over geological time periods, but a serious problem for humans.
83431. Bob Lacatena at 07:36 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       For anyone who is reading the latest Cadbury, please note: 1) The reason we have had ice ages and ice at the poles in the recent past (as opposed to "much of the history of the earth") has to do with a number of interwoven factors, the primary of which is the location and orientation of the continents (which, as any educated person knows, have been moving over time, on the order of tens/hundreds of millions of years). This affects both the globe's ability to accumulate snow on land, and more importantly the flow of ocean currents and heat transport to the poles. While we argue feverishly about climate factors that affect the earth on the order of centuries or millenia, in reality, the real driver is the earth's continents, but they operate on the time scale of millions of years. 2) The fact that the poles have been frozen for thousands of years, and are now melting in summer, is a clear sign that while the earth has been in a "cool period" for the past X thousands of years, today we are clearly moving into a warm period. Thank you, to Cadbury, for so eloquently pointing this out. 3) When the ice caps have melted in the past, it is known to have been caused by specific conditions. This is not random guesswork. Cadbury creates a strawman by saying "because...before... this time it is different somehow." No one is saying that. What we are saying is "we know what caused it before, and that doesn't apply now, and we know what would cause it today, and we expected it, and look, our logic and expectations are validated, because it is happening as expected and as was predicted by climate theory." So once again, thank you to Cadbury for so eloquently pointing out, in his ignorance and refutation, that the current melting of summer ice in the Arctic (and elsewhere) is supporting evidence of current climate theory, rather than an argument to ignore it.
83432. Robert Murphy at 07:34 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       "I think the mere existence of sea ice and the ice caps demonstrates the globe is in a cool period." Compared to the entire history of the Earth, perhaps. Compared to the history of human civilization, not so much. "Furthermore, the ice caps are an anomaly and have not existed for much of the history of the earth." We've been around for a lot less time. "Because they have completely melted before, it is nearly impossible to connect today's melting with global warming." It's impossible not to. What besides warming would melt the ice? "To do so would be arguing that "Even though the ice caps have melted before, this time it is different somehow."" No, it's still caused by warming, as always. Your argument makes absolutely no sense.
83433. Albatross at 07:20 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       @18, You are going to have to do much, much better than that, especially as someone who allegedly has a PhD. Yours is an empty comment really, and to be frank, given the swaths of information out there, and the fact that you have been frequenting this site for months now, you ought to know better-- so in short your post amounts to nothing more than trolling and a fine example of logorrhea. Yes, this time is different, we are increasing atmospheric CO2 up to 10 times faster than during the PETM, you know run of the mill stuff ;) Apparently you also are of the belief that because there were wild fires before humans roamed the planet, that there is no way that we can be responsible for causing fires now. Anyways, I'm done feeding the troll.
83434. dhogaza at 07:18 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       #18 ... we need a "best of skeptical science" irony award or the like ... that is a comment that deserves not only preservation, but highlighting. Are we sure Dr. PhD isn't a poe?
83435. mclamb6 at 07:07 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Dr. Cadbury--can you offer any coherent argument as to why the melting ice caps now and in the past must be from a common cause? Can you provide an alternative explanation, with supporting data, that suggests the current melting is not a result of the current warming trend?
83436. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 07:02 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       I think the mere existence of sea ice and the ice caps demonstrates the globe is in a cool period. Also, we can verify this by checking the historic GAT versus today's average GAT. We find that earth is below average temperatures. Furthermore, the ice caps are an anomaly and have not existed for much of the history of the earth. Because they have completely melted before, it is nearly impossible to connect today's melting with global warming. To do so would be arguing that "Even though the ice caps have melted before, this time it is different somehow."
       Response:

       [DB] Jay, you're going to have to support your assertions with links to reputable sources if you want your comments here at SkS to remain.  If you continue to make baseless assertions about topics you obviously know little about, then those comments will be simply deleted.

       This is a forum in which the participants discuss the science of climate change.  Opinions are welcome, but they need to be backed up with supportive links to peer-reviewed publications.  Otherwise your comments will be construed as trolling and will be treated as such.

83437. Riccardo at 06:41 AM on 8 June 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       Dikran no doubt that physics based models are better for long extrapolations because they are constrained. In case of short term extrapolations, though, this advantage ceases to be significant while what is left of the chaotic behaviour (internal variability if you wish) cannot be dealt with. There's a chance that internal variability can be better accounted for statistically. I think that we are not used to this time frame and we have some difficulties to think in the proper way. This problem is often common between specialists in any field. As an example not related to GCM, think about the ocean heat content and the missing heat (if any) that Trenberth and others are pursuing or ENSO related variability. GCMs may even simulate this variability, but no way to have it at the right time, i.e. no way to forecast it. Assimilation may help to predict it and maybe even understand its origin. Probably I just like the idea behind F&K paper while the paper itself doesn't give much insights. Though, I wouldn't simply dismiss it as a skeptic paper.
83438. Bob Lacatena at 06:27 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       6, Martin, I don't think that's a bad idea. I've recently done the same with the people who think that greenhouse gas theory violates the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics. Every paid denial climate scientist (Lindzen, Choi, Pielke Sr., Spencer, Curry, etc.) would strongly refute that idea. They'd lose their jobs and any semblance of respect that they have otherwise. As a side note, on the heavier than air thing, the physics argument is pretty straightforward and undeniable. The key to their problem is that the velocities of the molecules involved are ridiculously high. See this site, for example. This is very straightforward physics and math, but at room temperature, the average velocity of nitrogen (the most abundant molecule in the atmosphere) is computed to be 3,790 miles per hour! For Argon, a trace gas with an atomic weight of 40 (CO₂, by contrast, has an atomic weight of 44), the speed is 850 mph. And that's average. Some are going much, much faster, some slower. In addition to this, the density of the atmosphere means that each molecule is undergoing thousands of collisions per second with other molecules moving just as fast. Add wind (macro scale transport effects) from thermal heating, Coriolis effects, and such, and... The upshot of this is that the gases mix very, very well. They have no chance in the universe of separating by density like a bottle of salad dressing, and to think that they would is childishly simplistic thinking. As a side note, you should point out that Argon is the third most common gas in the atmosphere (0.93%) after oxygen and nitrogen, and this has been measured by scientists. So if CO₂ has to fall out, so must Argon. As a last resort, he should realize the implications of what he is saying. If all CO₂ had to drop down to the surface, there is still enough of it to create a fairly thick layer (I haven't done the calculations to determine how thick). This would in fact suffocate every breathing creature on the face of the earth in minutes. So it's not possible: 1) The speed of individual molecules prevents it. 2) The large scale actions of weather in the atmosphere prevent it. 3) There are other molecules, as large or larger, that are clearly present and well mixed in the atmosphere. 4) If CO₂ did fall to the bottom, we'd all be dead, or rather would have evolved into CO₂ breathing creatures (intelligent plants) and would now instead be arguing about how to stop our own O₂ production from destroying our highly evolved plant-based civilization.
83439. DSL at 05:46 AM on 8 June 2011
       There is no consensus
       Aye, Chuck, what Rob said, and if you think that claims about Seitz's integrity are not well-founded, do some research. Here's a good starting place. Ad hominem is the technique of attacking the individual as a substitute for attacking the individual's ideas. If I say that Seitz lacked moral integrity at times when he was working for the tobacco industry, I am attacking Seitz the man--but it's not an ad hominem attack, because I'm not substituting this argument to avoid confronting Seitz's ideas. Seitz at the very least consistently allowed himself to be strongly associated with people who did lack moral integrity at various times in their lives (unless you subscribe to Randian morality). Consensus is a political subject more than it is scientific. Science provides the evidence, but most people don't have the time to review the science. They still need to engage in the democratic process, though, and so they look for experts to tell them what to think. Consensus works as a strong form of expert testimony. Mass media agents also act as expert testimony in the same way. These agents are opinion makers, and not all mass media agents push the same opinion. There are hundreds of analyses of Fox News that reveal a right-wing (both economic and social, paradoxically at times) agenda. There are perhaps thousands of reports and studies that reveal the same right-wing political stance to be strongly associated with a position that global warming is either not happening, not our fault, or not bad. The first two positions are not consistent with observation and physics (if you have a contrary claim, bring forth the evidence on the appropriate thread). The third position is an ongoing wait-and-see kind of deal, and so far things aren't looking good. The science also supports a high probability that things will get bad. Now, given that, how is making reference to economic conservatives, the self-identified "right," in any way propaganda? Their positions are one of the reasons why a site like this exists. If you looked around a little on any of the threads, you'd see a clear pattern emerging: self-proclaimed libertarians tend to disbelieve that AGW is happening or is bad. Propaganda is a systematic institutional effort to bring about a specific change in beliefs (and it was once an acceptable term). Look at what the Koch brothers (unabashedly economic right-wingers) are doing and tell me that this is not propaganda. Are posters on this site--a site devoted to testing the BS against the science--not allowed to attack the instruments (living and artifactual) of such propaganda when the connection is quite clear? When propaganda bots attack, it is acceptable to attack the human, because the human has ceased to be human and is simply a robot or a paid (sometimes) repeating machine. It is acceptable to attack anyone who willfully ignores evidence and engagement.
83440. Martin at 05:43 AM on 8 June 2011
       Tony Abbott denies climate change and advocates carbon tax in the same breath
       Hi, This is off-topic. But I hope you will be lenient and not delete this post. I have a suggestion. You have an extensive list, several actually, of climate myths and counter arguments. Possibly you could start a new list. This would contain facts about climate change which are supported by various, well known denialists. After all, not every denialist denies every single climate change fact. And I think that a denialist would be much more likely to believe something that Anthony Watts or Lord Monckton had said. The reason I'm making this suggestion is that I had a heated discussion with a colleague today after he mentioned the word "CO2 lie". Apparently, because C02 is heavier than air, it drops to the bottom and lies in a very thin layer just on top of the earth's crust and can therefore not contribute to global warming. Nothing I said convinced him. Then I asked him whose (counter) arguments he could trust. I didn't get a straight answer. But he did say that he would not trust any scientists paid by the state. Chancellor Angela Merkel (I'm from Germany) has corrupted them all. He is a fan of EIKE, a denialist research institute that has never published a peer reviewed paper. Sorry, for not keeping to your comments policy. I do hope you can help me. Wouldn't it be fun to trash an article at wattsupwiththat explaining why according to Lord Mockton they have completely lost it?
83441. Bob Lacatena at 05:21 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       rpauli, *snerk* Not only that... I love the magical thinking that takes place, where your team was winning before you turned the game on, and then things go down hill after you start watching... and somehow it's your fault, and you feel you have to stop watching so they will play better. Maybe if we all just don't notice the ice, and we're very, very quiet and just pretend we're not even here, it will stop melting... [Oh, wait, the best way to be quiet and pretend we're not here is to stop pumping CO₂ into the atmosphere, and by coincidence, that would in fact (eventually) stop the melting. So maybe I should turn the TV off when my team starts to lose...]
83442. r.pauli at 04:58 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Gosh what synced meme timing: http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=2500 "There’s something compelling about declaring allegiance to one of the weighted random number generators (sports teams, stock picks, etc), selecting which of the narratives to believe based on that allegiance, and then hoping for (and perhaps betting on) which numbers it will produce. Sometimes the numbers turn out the way you’d hoped, and sometimes they don’t, but either way people prefer to believe in the narratives, rather than acknowledge the randomness. There’s a thrill to the process, but at the same time, a strong sense that everyone else’s narratives are delusional."
83443. Dikran Marsupial at 04:52 AM on 8 June 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       BTW, while I was looking up the URL for trunkmonkey, I found a paper that might be of interest, "Climate Predictability on Interannual to Decadal Time Scales: The Initial Value Problem" which is next on my reading list.
83444. Dikran Marsupial at 04:46 AM on 8 June 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       Riccardo it is as it should be, "familiarity breeds contempt" as they say, and I am familiar with statistics and you with physics! ;o) The reason I would prefer the physics based model is that extrapolation is safer from a physics based model than a statistical one. If you have a causal model, it is constrained to behave in unfamiliar conditions according to the nature of the causal relationship built into the model. With a statistical model, there is essentially very little to constrain how it will extrapolate. An even better reason to prefer the physics based model is that if you perform enough model runs, the error bars on the projection will be very broad, so the model openly tells you that it doesn't really know. For a statistically based model on the other hand, if you over-fit it (which is essentially what I suspect they have done in combining the GCM and statistical models tuned on the test set), the error bars on the predictions will be unduly narrow, and make the model look more confident of its prediction than it really ought to be. I don't think it really tells us anything about where the limit lies as the GCM they used was not actually the full DePrSys procedure, but only part of it (that they admit doesn't work as well as the full version). It is a traversty that the paper got published without a fair comparison with the full version of DePrSys. As it stands it is essentially a straw-man comparison. There is no reliable evidence that the combination approach is an improvement because they tuned on the test set (again I would not have given the paper my bessing as a reviewer while it still contained tuning on the test set, even with a caveat, as the biases that sort of thing can introduce can be very substantial). One thing they could have done would be to re-run the experiment multiple times using one model run as the observations and a subset of the others as the ensemble. Each time they could perform the analysis again and see how often the combination approach was better. That would give an indication of the "false positive" rate as the GCM would be the true model, so you coulnd't genuinely improve it by adding a statistical component. I suspect this owuld be quite high because of the multiple hypothesis testing and the tuning on the test data.
83445. Riccardo at 04:30 AM on 8 June 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       Dikran ironically, we're seeing a statistician (you) against a paper based on statistical models and a physicist (me) defending it. Or maybe it's not so ironic. Perhaps it's just because I am a physicist that I see the limitations of the current approach and I appreciate insights coming from different fields that could help overcome those limitations. The shorter the time span of interest the more the chaotic behaviour of the climate system is apparent; deterministic models can't go in this realm. It is clearly shown in this paper, DePrSys performs poorly below one decade. This paper at least tells us something about this limit, which is a usefull information to have, and one of the (maybe) many possible way to go beyond it.
83446. Rob Honeycutt at 04:15 AM on 8 June 2011
       There is no consensus
       Chuck PRIVATE... You need to realize, first, that the video you're commenting on is not a product of the Skeptical Science site. It is a product of Peter Sinclair. I also seem to continually see people inaccurately using the term "ad hom" to anything they believe is insulting. Peter points out in the video that the tactics used by Seitz and others are the same being used against the science of climate change. That makes it, to my understanding, NOT an ad hom attack.
83447. Chuck PRIVATE at 03:57 AM on 8 June 2011
       There is no consensus
       I'm very new to this site. Credit where due: you lay out your arguments fairly well and quite clearly. HOWEVER, I watched your "Crock of the Week" video "32000 Scientists". What are the odds that the only video I've yet clicked would be a statistical outlier that doesn't apply to all your other "Crock of the Week" videos? The surely-typical video in question is an almost completely contentless ad-hominem attack on AGW skeptic Dr. Frederick Seitz, on Fox News, and at one point on "right wing causes", accompanied by lurid video of smokers smoking through their tracheal holes, and movie clips of the retards from "Deliverance". The ending statement is "...or you can die from lung cancer". It is incongruously opposite of the on-topic and content-heavy article it accompanies. It is propaganda at its most obvious and blatant. You have no right to expect your commenters to stick to the science if the material your administrators post does not do the same. Hence this comment of mine is not science because some of your own subject matter is not. And judging from your Comments Policy and several of your moderators' posts, I wonder if I am permitted to point out ANY of this. Your Policy says, "Any accusations of deception, fraud, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted." Propaganda is in fact all of those things, and I have no honest choice but to accuse you of posting propaganda, because you did. Will my comment deleted for telling the verifiable truth? Your Policy also says, "No ad hominem attacks", and in #336, "muoncounter" responds to a commenter by saying: "Criticism of scientific processes is not quickly deleted; criticism of the scientists is." Since your video criticizes Dr. Seitz and his associations but does not deal with his actual ideas, it is ad hominem by the standards of your Policy and should be deleted by the standards of muoncounter. Will your commenters have to continue obeying a prohibition that you yourselves ignore? Do I even dare even mention your Policy in the first place? In #345, "DB" responds to a commenter by saying, "Adherence to the Comments Policy is also not optional. Complaining about having to comply with it is a surefire ticket to forcing the moderators to act. Maybe you might want to perhaps consider other venues with less restrictive policies?" Your policy is fine. Let's see if I need to opt for a "venue" where EVERYONE is held to it. As said: You have no right to expect your commenters to stick to the "science only" if the material your administrators post does not do the same. As I see it, your choices are to 1) loosen up the Comments Policy so that it may devolve to the very low standards set by the "32000 Scientists" video, 2) apply the Comments Policy TO that video and promptly remove it, or 3) delete my comment so that you don't have to face your own contradiction. You should be aware - and I'm sure you are - that one of the skeptics' complaints about AGW believers is that your alleged "consensus" in the IPCC and elsewhere isn't built on science, but on double standards and suppression of dissent. I wonder if THAT is one of your 150+ topics on here...?
       Moderator Response:

       [Dikran Marsupial] The "crock of the week" video is not "our" video, it comes from climatecrocks.com. IMHO the video is not an ad-hominem as it does address the substance of the issue, namely that the "32000 list" is meaningless as the vast majority of the signatories have no relevant expertise. Personally the style is perhaps not my cup of tea, or yours, but as they say "chacun à son goût". It would clearly be unreasonable to require every link to another site posted on SkS to conform to SkS's comments policy. Sadly not all of the useful information out there is conveyed in the generally very restrained manner you find here.

        

       N.B. Moderator trolling comments such as "Will my comment deleted for telling the verifiable truth?" and "delete my comment so that you don't have to face your own contradiction." do you no favours. If you sincerely want to change things, setting out (happily unsuccessfully) to annoy is rarely a good way to achieve your aims.

       ---

       [DB] Additionall, please refrain from the use of all-caps (that Comments Policy thing-y).

83448. trunkmonkey at 03:24 AM on 8 June 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       Kevin C @79. "To what extent is the response of a GCM constrained by the physics, and to what extent is it constrained by training?" This is exactly the question lurking (even subliminally)in the back of every moderately skeptical mind. I have played with the EDGCM model a bit and it is frustrating to not know what is going on in there. One approach might be to get a list of all the tuned or trained parameters and the values assigned to them (I have never seen such a list)and vary each by an even increment one at a time. Something like this must have been done as the parameters were developed, but with a different objective. To know the answer to your question would be a huge benefit to climate science.
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] This sort of sensitivity analysis has been done using a variety of models, for example, see the experiments at climateprediction.net.
83449. dhogaza at 03:19 AM on 8 June 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       "I would lastly make a purely personal and unscientific observation... I've said it before, that predicting ice is a worthless and tricky game" Scientifically worthless but ... it's an entertaining game, and from the point of view, not worthless at all.
83450. Eric the Red at 03:07 AM on 8 June 2011
       Christy Crock #6: Climate Sensitivity
       Agreed Dana. That is why I refrain from nailing down the sensitivity at 3°C, and do not rule out lower values (I do nto rule out higher values either, but seldom get an arguement on that side).

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