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Comments 84401 to 84450:

84401. RW1 at 01:43 AM on 31 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Albatross (RE: 17), "Science site, please be more specific. Also, going by the huge volume of comments made you elsewhere on this site, you actually do appear to contest that doubling CO2 will cause about 1.1 C of warming." This is a hypothetical amount that assumes neutral or no feedback. Also, the direct warming from 3.7 W/m^2 is only 0.7 C - not 1.1 C. The 0.4 C comes from adding on the net transmittance to space of about 0.6 or 60%. The problem is this amount already accounts for the lion's share of the feedbacks in the system from decades, centuries and even millenia of solar forcing.
84402. Albatross at 01:43 AM on 31 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       Everyone, @57"since there is an expressed wish that I "be quiet" here. " Conspiracy, conspiracy!! (/sarc). I warned you guys. Person in question will twist, distort and misrepresent your position and the thread could go on for days (think Poptech). And as noted by Les, any moderation will be framed as censorship or something along those lines. So you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Beware, they may also be here to incite people so that they can quote mine...."those mean and intolerant SkS people, and they call themselves a 'science' site". Yes silly, but believe it or not folks do this sort of thing, so we can't ignore it. Are we debating denial still or Haydn and Cook's book, or are we entertaining the musings of a D-K? I would urge strict moderation to keep this thread on topic. People who disagree with what Haydn and Cook have written need to write clear and concise arguments, and state their position clearly. Feel free to snip potentially offensive and/or off-topic bits.
84403. newcrusader at 01:30 AM on 31 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       #16 it makes you a skeptic- earth has warmed far more in the past- the PETM and the Eocene Optimum. 5-7 degrees C by the same carbon forces- light carbon and methane- the natural geologic forces where much slower- but the end result was that the same GHG back then (and today) pushed up temperatures. Today we are bringing carbon into the atmosphere at a magnitude (rate) unknown in the past something on an order 10,000 times as fast. Your failure to understand this concept is perplexing.
84404. Albatross at 01:24 AM on 31 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       @16, "man is adding it to the atmosphere and this will likely lead to some warming" Science site, please be more specific. Also, going by the huge volume of comments made you elsewhere on this site, you actually do appear to contest that doubling CO2 will cause about 1.1 C of warming. You need to read Dana's post @15, your "profile" perfectly fits that described by Dana.
84405. Albatross at 01:21 AM on 31 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       Now given that contrarians like to focus on regional trends. Some new science that is not exactly reassuring. From ScienceDaily on a new paper by Howat et al. (2011) [in press], "In the last decade, two of the largest three glaciers draining that frozen landscape have lost enough ice that, if melted, could have filled Lake Erie. The three glaciers -- Helheim, Kangerdlugssuaq and Jakobshavn Isbrae -- are responsible for as much as one-fifth of the ice flowing out from Greenland into the ocean. "Jakobshavn alone drains somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of all the ice flowing outward from inland to the sea," explained Ian Howat, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. His study appears in the current issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters." And talking of Howat, more "cheering" news, "A dramatic thinning, retreat, and speedup began in 1998 and continues today. The timing of the change is coincident with a 1.1°C warming of deep ocean waters entering the fjord after 1997. Assuming a linear relationship between thermal forcing and submarine melt rate, average melt rates should have increased by ∼25% (∼57 m yr−1), sufficient to destabilize the ice tongue and initiate the ice thinning and the retreat that followed." And yet more "cheering" news from the Arctic and Antarctica in another paper by Thomas et al. (2011), "Ice discharge from the fastest glaciers draining the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets – Jakobshavn Isbrae (JI) and Pine Island Glacier (PIG)– continues to increase, and is now more than double that needed to balance snowfall in their catchment basins. Velocity increase probably resulted from decreased buttressing from thinning (and, for JI, breakup) of their floating ice tongues, and from reduced basal drag as grounding lines on both glaciers retreat. JI flows directly into the ocean as it becomes afloat, and here creep rates are proportional to the cube of bed depth. Rapid thinning of the PIG ice shelf increases the likelihood of its breakup, and subsequent rapid increase in discharge velocity. Results from a simple model indicate that JI velocities should almost double to >20 km a−1 by 2015, with velocities on PIG increasing to >10 km a−1 after breakup of its ice shelf. These high velocities would probably be sustained over many decades as the glaciers retreat within their long, very deep troughs. Resulting sea-level rise would average about 1.5 mm a−1." The contrarians and 'skeptics' posting here are in deep, deep denial. Fascinating and scary at the same time.
84406. RW1 at 01:13 AM on 31 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       I believe that CO2 is a GHG, that man is adding it to the atmosphere and this will likely lead to some warming. However, I think the 'enhanced' warming of 3 C cannot be supported. What does that make me?
84407. ptbrown31 at 01:07 AM on 31 May 2011
       10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change
       I too feel that Skeptical Science is overselling DTR changes as a greenhouse signature (it is probably an ANTHROPOGENIC signature - not the same thing). I have never seen a paper about observed changes in DTR that attributes it to an enhanced greenhouse effect. Instead every paper that I have seen (including the ones listed on skeptical science) attribute the DTR changes to a suppression of daytime solar radiation - probably from anthropogenic aerosols. I think that the problem with CBDunkerson's argument above is that nighttime minimum temperature is not independent from daytime maximum temperature. If radiative cooling to space is suppressed, and the nighttime minimum temperature increases, then as soon as the sun comes up the daytime warming starts from this new warmer temperature. If this is the case then the daily max should increase as well. One other thing. In the IPCC AR4 summary for policy makers, it says this: "A decrease in diurnal temperature range (DTR) was reported in the TAR, but the data available then extended only from 1950 to 1993. Updated observations reveal that DTR has not changed from 1979 to 2004 as both day- and night-time temperature have risen at about the same rate. The trends are highly variable from one region to another." If Skeptical Science wants to claim that DTR changes are due to an enhanced greenhouse effect then they are cornering themselves by making it necessary to come up with an explanation for why DTR hasn't changed in recent decades.
84408. Albatross at 01:01 AM on 31 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       Dear Contrarians, Look at the graph from Chruch and White (2011), I mean actually look at it, now absorb. Or will your preconceived ideas not permit that image to be processed and absorbed by your brains? Also, remember how those in denial about AGW cherry picked 1998 in the global temperatures (some still do) to delude themselves that AGW had stopped....well they are now doing the same using sort of cherry picking the global Sea-level data. And you know what folks, we can continue playing this game come 2100, "Ooh GSL rise slowed the last 5-10 yrs", meanwhile global sea levels will have in all likelihood risen by more than 1 m from current levels. In fact estimates, keep getting revised upwards, not downwards. You are in denial contrarians. Further, your tricks of deception are growing very old. They might work to continue deluding yourself, but don't expect others to be fooled. Moderators, the contrarians , despite being shown the correct data and warned do look at the big picture on Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice mass and now GSL. My suggestion is that future posts which continue to cherry-pick, ignore the science and the facts be snipped.
84409. tallbloke at 00:56 AM on 31 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       Skywatcher@63 "Uncertainties about climate change do not, from a scientific perspective, include a range of climate change where there will not be serious consequences for modern human society from coastal swamping, extreme weather and poor food security." The range of uncertainty on measurement of the top of atmosphere energy balance is around three times the size of the claimed theoretical signal from co2 plus alleged positive feedbacks. Kevin Trenberth knows this, which is why he worries about the location of the theoretical 'missing heat'. Sensitivity may therefore be well below the range you state.
84410. dana1981 at 00:50 AM on 31 May 2011
       Shaping Tomorrow's World After One Month
       I may be biased, but I think Shaping Tomorrow is a very interesting site. More discussion about climate solutions is very important at this point.
       Response: [JC] It is a great site. Good looking authors too! :-)
84411. dana1981 at 00:47 AM on 31 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       dorlomin - I think all deniers accept some evidence, but deny other bits. I suppose the reasonbleness of the denier depends on where they draw the line. Like HR's example of Spencer accepting a fair amount of the evidence, but he denies other bits (not just limited to sensitivity). Perhaps denial is a spectrum where what they all have in common is denying some aspect of the evidence so they can oppose taking action to solve the problem (which Spencer certainly does).
84412. skywatcher at 00:40 AM on 31 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       Some serious fudging of the (non)issues here by damorbel. For comparison between the Sun's output and planetary temperature, there's a handy page on this site called It's the Sun. If you don't think that there's a relationship between temperatures of stations within 500km or 1000km, or stations of different elevations, clearly you haven't ever done any temperature reconstructions, understood lapse rates, or looked at the data. There's a handy temperature reconstruction that does not extrapolate to cover regions of missing data, it's done by those friendly folks at CRU and is the HADCRUT3 dataset. It shows just the same pattern of warming as GISS. Satellite data, done by those friendly folks at UAH, also shows just the same pattern of warming. Though it may "seem to you to be tenuous in the extreme", fortunately there are some clever people out there (including Hansen et al), both professionals and bloggers, who have done the maths and determined that your assertion of limited correlation between stations, supported by nothing more than handwaving, does not stand up to scrutiny. See many articles elsewhere on this site for why the 40% extra CO2 is the most important driver of present climate, concentrate on things like the fingerprints of CO2.
84413. MarkR at 00:35 AM on 31 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       #12 damorbel: relationships between the effect of the Sun and temperature response are a different subject. Hansen and Lebedeff used pairs of stations, i.e. actual observations, to test the strength of spatial correlation and they found from their data that at 1200 km separation the temperature change correlation coefficient dropped below 0.5, so used 1200 km as their cut off for weighting. This doesn't sound unreasonable to me. There is a real temperature field, and for a large enough number of point observations you get a statistically good idea of spatial & temporal variability. I trust Hansen, Lebedeff and their reviewers did a reasonable job with the statistics until someone shows me otherwise. Can you demonstrate using the data that this isn't true, or pick out a mistake that invalidates the results of HL87?
84414. Camburn at 00:32 AM on 31 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       KL: The rate of rise of sea levels has slowed. This is not in question. The current rate is under the 1915-1950 rate, and under the 1970-2000 rate. That is not questioned as it is very well documented. The question is, will the rate continue at its present level or accelerate. I have no clue.
       Response:

       [DB] "The rate of rise of sea levels has slowed.  This is not in question."

       Incorrect.  This is well-documented and not in scientific question, as you say.  See my response to okatiniko at 58 above (specifically the Church & White 2011 reference).

       I suggest learning more about the science before making such unreferenced and authoritative statements.

84415. Camburn at 00:28 AM on 31 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       DB@64: When we are talking Greenland, I am thinking that the temp metrics affecting Greenland would be the source. We all know that temps in and around Greenland in the 1940's are very similiar to temps today. It may be hot or cold in Australia, that will not affect the Greenland area. The temps in and around the Greenland area will affect Greenland.
       Response:

       [DB] My point was that you are cherry-picking when comparing the current global warming period (largely caused by man) to the earlier warming period in which Greenland warmed disproportionatley more than elsewhere.

       Glaciologists are well aware that current ice and ice discharge conditions experienced in Greenland have no contemporary equivalent in the past several thousand years.  Consider Mittivakkat Glacier in Southern Greenland:

       

       Note the clear progression of ice termination lines, showing the recessionary behaviour of the glacier over the past hundred years.

       The consensus of indicators and information available show that, for Greenland, the current warming period is longer and of greater intensity than that of the mid-20th Century, and that warming still in Greenland's pipeline (relative to that already experienced globally) will bring it to, or exceed, the levels of the HCO.

       And that is without any compounding warming effects from the ongoing albedo flip underway in the high Arctic.

84416. damorbel at 23:57 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       Re #12 for autocorrelation read cross-correlation
84417. DSL at 23:54 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       Tallbloke: "a lot of valid scientific evidence has been either ignored, downplayed, or dismissed on inadequate or incorrect grounds by the IPCC's scientists and policy makers." For example? (on the appropriate thread - and I must say, you haven't done well so far here or at SoD. You suggested SoD work on Miskolczi. SoD did.) Given the sheer amount of idiocy spewed forth in claims that "it's not happening," "it's not us," or "it's not bad," and given the fact that very powerful/wealthy individuals have given out a great deal of money to "inspire" people to argue those three ideas, you--being the true skeptic you claim to be--should be appalled not at the possibility, no matter how small, that the scientific community has "overlooked" or "dismissed" too quickly a few articles or that Gavin or writers at SkS have examined the motivations of others; you should be appalled at the unscientific garbage being cheerfully posted at sites like WUWT (and the intensely uncritical cheerleader reactions in the comments streams) and repeated by lawmakers. If you're concerned enough about the public "debate," why not help clean up the unscientific madness first--as SkS is trying to do--in order to get the public to where actual scientific debate is occurring (clouds, methane, extreme weather)? Where. has. the. scientific. method. not. been. adhered. to?
84418. damorbel at 23:53 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       Re #11 MarkR et al You cannot learn anything from correlation processes unless you have a clear idea what you are looking for. Autocorrelation is frequently used for detecting (crudely) delay in a signal path; changing the delay enables the full impulse response of the signal path to be determined. Such a process could be used to measure how the temperatures on a planet such as Earth respond to variations tin the Sun's output. It is known that the sun's output varies in a cyclical way (basically 11 years but really rather more complex). It would be of interest to try to extract the dependence of any given temperature, global or local, by finding the correlation (at various delays) between the Sun's output and any temperature. As yet I have seen no attempt to do this. What Hansen is doing is looking to see if he can reconstruct temperature records where there aren't any which is creative, not scientific. There will always be a limited correlation between temperatures, the effects of variations in the Sun's output will see to that; trying to use this to support the argument that man, through generating in a surplus of CO2, is changing the climate of the Earth seems to me to be tenous in the extreme.
84419. Ken Lambert at 23:37 PM on 30 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       Riccardo #50 DB and others Whether you want to quibble about the Jason 1 & 2 SLR records being 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 or 2.3mm/year for the last 8-9 years, it is surely significantly less than the 3.1mm year average for the UCAR 1993-2011 chart, and the oft quoted figure from the likes of the Australian Climate Commission. This cannot mean anything else than SLR slowing or decelerating - not accelerating. While ice melt is hard to measure, Dr Trenberth suggests in his Aug09 paper that approx 1mm/year is from glaciers and another 1mm/year from major ice sheets. A total of approx 2mm/year from ice melt. This 2mm/year for ice melt estimate leaves nothing much when subtracted from the 1.6-2.3mm/year for the component of steric rise - ie. the thermal expansion of all that heat sequestered in the oceans from global warming imbalance. Hence steric rise estimates like 0.5+/-0.5mm/year and 0.8+/-0.8mm/year pop up in the literature. If I expresed my height as 1.8m +/-1.8m you would not know if I were a giant or a grease spot. This is the state of play in SLR measurement. If the steric rise has almost stopped, then warming imbalance gap is rapidly closing. This is further confirmed by the energy balance budget. If the SLR components are mostly ice melt, the energy needed to melt ice is very small compared with thermally expanding seawater, and the warming imbalance is small for the budget to close. okatiniko is trying to understand DB's 'correction' point for SLR at #58. Please explain to us all DB??
84420. les at 23:14 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       #62 "These are scientific issues, not ones of "pre-defined policy positions". "I want to see the scientific method adhered to, and proper standards and procedures put in place and adhered to for data gathering and the validation and assessment of the outputs of scientific work done by climate scientists." See now, this is what makes me wonder. The practice of climatology and related disciplines has, as far as anyone can tell, been normal, high standard, above board, best practice adhering, science; working it's way thorough available data and models, with their limitations and insights; and proposing new studies. No evidence to the contrary, no evidence of systemic bad practice or distortion. There are, clearly, high quality standards and procedures in place. There really is no good reason why anyone outside the disciplines would want to go round re-analysing every little detail except for for political reasons. That really isn't believable. Fact is there is a conflict for reasons outside the science. That is why somewhere like SkS reviews the science for public consumption. That is why talshop tries to show "it's the sun" - even though that website isn't part of a solar-research unit or such like.
84421. MarkR at 23:09 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       #5 damorbel; "It is all too easy to 'assume' correlations instead of establishing them; the latter is of course the scientific thing to do." Exactly, that's why they were determined from observations. And why shouldn't there be any hope of correlation if elevation is involved? Higher elevations would expect to be cooler than lower ones, but it's believable that their temperature changes might correlate: they might both warm and cool at the same time which is what is being calculated. Here are some New Zealand stations, with Kelburn being near to the airport, but at a higher elevation. A quick eyeball Mk.I suggests very strong correlation, despite the altitude difference. So it seems that it isn't impossible.
84422. skywatcher at 23:02 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       #62 You're still not putting up the 'important science that has been downplayed'. Remember that this important science has to have not already been refuted by rational argument in the peer-reviewed litereature. There is plenty to challenge climate scientists and plenty of room for scientific argument, but it does not matter from a policy perspective whether warming will be 2C / CO2 doubling, or 4.5C / CO2 doubling, or if sea level will be 1m higher by 2100, or 4m higher by 2100. It matters from the perspective of determining how much action we take and how quickly, but the answer does not change the fact that we must take action as soon as possible. Uncertainties about climate change do not, from a scientific perspective, include a range of climate change where there will not be serious consequences for modern human society from coastal swamping, extreme weather and poor food security.
84423. dhogaza at 23:00 PM on 30 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       okatiniko: "I understand it is a real effect producing a real negative component, so why correct it ?" Because they're trying to measure sea level rise, not the rate at which the land is rising in such regions.
84424. Kevin C at 22:47 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Eric #12: Did you look? All the data is on Prall's website, which is in turn referenced in the supplemental material of the Anderegg 2010 paper. The supplemental material is referenced (and hyperlinked in the PDF) version from the article text (at least twice that I could see). He provides all the data you need to repeat the calculations with your own criteria of number of papers or number of cites.
84425. dorlomin at 22:37 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       What about the luke warmers, those who believe we are warming but it does not require drastic action?
84426. Eric (skeptic) at 22:29 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Dikran and John, there are a few problems with Anderegg et al such as: "To examine only researchers with demonstrated climate expertise, we imposed a 20 climate-publications minimum to be considered a climate researcher, bringing the list to 908 researchers" and "We conducted the above analyses with a climate researcher cutoff of a minimum of 10 and 40 publications, which yielded very little change in the qualitative or strong statistically significant differences between CE and UE groups." But they didn't publish those numbers. I am interested in the CE/UE breakdown of climate scientists who only published a few papers, but those statistics were not released in Anderegg.
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] The definition of "climate expert" is still not "self-selected" as a perfectly reasonable objective criterion is given. Whether or not the statistics from a test of the robustness of the findings to the threshold used are published makes no difference to that fact.
84427. John Cook at 22:28 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       I gave a talk at the University of Qld last Friday night and part of the talk featured the "97 out of 100 climate experts..." infographic. During question time, my old dean of physics (now retired) grilled me with your very question, Eric - what do I mean by a "climate expert"? Was a bit weird, took me back 2 decades, getting grilled by my old dean. I answered much the same as Dikran Marsupial - according to the two surveys in Doran et al 2009 and Anderegg et al 2010, a climate expert is a climate scientist who is actively publishing climate research in the peer-reviewed literature. That answer seemed to satisfy the crusty old dean :-)
84428. tallbloke at 21:57 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       JMurphy@62, "How many times does that have to be repeated before you accept it," I understand the tactic, but nonetheless, repetition doesn't make things true, or necessarily acceptable. Gavin made an assumption that I have been "picking through the scientific evidence for cherries they can pick to support a pre-defined policy position". As I pointed out to him in personal email, I am myself leading a life of low consumption - solar hot water panel, electric bicycle for local errands, re-engineered 80mpg motorcycle to commute to my job (supporting people who train teachers how to teach science), woodburner for domestic heating and cooking, grow my own vegetables, rainwater collection system for irrigation and domestic supply, working on permaculture principles to recycle materials and integrate with natural environment, and so on. My objection (and that of a lot of other people) to the IPCC climate scientist's position on the matters put up for discussion by the European Centre for Research is that a lot of valid scientific evidence has been either ignored, downplayed, or dismissed on inadequate or incorrect grounds by the IPCC's scientists and policy makers. These are scientific issues, not ones of "pre-defined policy positions". Gavin is, like yourselves, guilty of presuming to know what the motivations are in the minds of others, and refusing to engage on the strength of those unfounded assumptions. It looks like a cop-out to me, and to the majority of the public. I want to see the scientific method adhered to, and proper standards and procedures put in place and adhered to for data gathering and the validation and assessment of the outputs of scientific work done by climate scientists.
84429. Eric (skeptic) at 21:34 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       From the article: "we have a consensus of scientists with 97 out of 100 climate experts" Please define climate expert. It seems to me that "climate experts" are self-selected just as surely as Tom Curtis seems to think that those in the "denial movement" are.
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Please follow the link provided in the article in question, which contains the the following quote "97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded yes". Thus the only self-selection involved is in the decision of the individuals concerned to pursue a research career in climatology.
84430. Camburn at 21:11 PM on 30 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       skywatcher@68: Wrong. I was pointing out an observation about Greenlands glaciers.
84431. JMurphy at 21:00 PM on 30 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       Thanks for the image fix at #54, DB. They looked alright when I did a Preview but I suppose I should always include that img width="450" bit, just in case.
84432. JMurphy at 20:54 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       tallbloke, instead of seeing conspiracies where there are none (e.g. your bringing in of DeepClimate to suggest that, somehow, Curry's clearly visible and audible actions and words have been misinterpreted), and trying to make yourself some sort of unbiased, neutral observer willing to discuss what you believe are the 'beliefs' of others (i.e. the majority who accept the science), why don't you yet again (or properly) read what Gavin Schmidt had to say about the previous attempt at pseudo-reconciliation : None of the seemingly important ‘conflicts’ that are *perceived* in the science are ‘conflicts’ in any real sense within the scientific community, rather they are proxy arguments for political positions. No ‘conflict resolution’ is possible between the science community who are focussed on increasing understanding, and people who are picking through the scientific evidence for cherries they can pick to support a pre-defined policy position. You would be much better off trying to find common ground on policy ideas via co-benefits (on air pollution, energy security, public health water resources etc), than trying to get involved in irrelevant scientific ‘controversies’. How many times does that have to be repeated before you accept it, rather than proclaim you would rather consider "new physics" - whatever world that exists in !
84433. Alexandre at 20:50 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       damorbel #5 What's the temperature trend if you used, say, a correlation to a distance as short as 250Km?
84434. Alexandre at 20:46 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       Tim Curtin #7 If it's so easy to get whatever desired outcome, how come no research institute, or even blogger, managed to produce a time series with the "real" decline in temperature you imply to be the case? How much evidence one can deny before admitting to himself he's in denial?
84435. Rob Painting at 20:32 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Tom Curtis @ 7 - hear, hear!
84436. tallbloke at 20:19 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       On second thoughts I'll leave you and John Cook to your psychologising. It's hard work trying to dialogue with people who reassure themselves of the superiority of their beliefs by making up stories about the mental states of others, and there is some exciting new physics to consider.
84437. skywatcher at 19:45 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       #7 Tim Curtin. I'll see your cherries (Eskdalemuir and Oxford) and raise them with the UK's April temperature according to CET. That graph looks almost like a hockey stick, with 2007 beating the previous record by 0.6C, and 2011 beating 2007 by 0.6C. In Scotland, where I live, global warming is manifesting itself in weird winter weather (either no snow or deluges of it), and by smashed temperature records any time the wind is persistently in the south, which has been relatively rare due to weird weather patterns. Flooding is also not uncommon. Extremes haven't been reached in the UK like Russia or Pakistan (though Cumbria and Gloucester might argue differently), but arguing on the basis of a few cherries that global temperature isn't rising is a lame duck argument. Why do satellites show the same warming, why are the seasons changing, and why are the glaciers retreating at a rate of knots? Did you go round and tell the glaciers that GISTEMP has been fudged and they should retreat so as to keep in with the conspiracy?
84438. Kevin C at 19:44 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       HR and Tom: I guess what is stake here is the consequences of taking a strong line. I'm reminded of Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" line. So I'm guessing the effect will be to polarise the debate, pushing people out of the middle to one extreme or the other. Questions: - Is that is a good thing? - Does making the middle ground uninhabitable make it harder to change your mind? - In which direction are people more likely to change their mind? I suspect in the light of recent insights on why people are deniers (e.g. default position based on political/economic ideology), and the increasingly in-your-face evidence of drought and extreme rainfall, that we are moving to a situation where people are more likely to be moving toward the scientific consensus. But I'm not a sociologist. I don't trust my instincts on this one, you shouldn't either.
84439. JMurphy at 19:27 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1A. A Primer on how to measure surface temperature change
       Very informative - Thanks. Shame about the typical (unconnected) so-called skeptical misrepresentation above !
84440. les at 19:21 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       58 mods - As I thought. Not that I'll be wasting my time on talkshop (or what ever); but I suppose that that sentence sets him up for "SkS... they just censor people who don't agree with them" type triumphalism.
84441. skywatcher at 19:20 PM on 30 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       Well said Albatross (#65). It's worth comparing Camburn's comments about Greenland glaciers with John Cook's points made in his article at the Drum. Camburn hopes that by identifying a single, growing glacier in Greenland, we'll ignore the prepondernace of evidence showing accelerating greenland mass loss and global glacier retreat. #66: clearly you don't get what I was alluding to - that the past decade is warmer than expected based on the rate of warming over the previous two or three decades (or more). When you consider temperature change over climatically significant time periods (decades), you find absolutely no evidence that warming slowed at all.
84442. les at 19:10 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       57 - tallbloke "there is an expressed wish that I "be quiet" here." Did someone email you that? I can't see anything in responses to your posts to suggest it.
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] I requested we steered away from yet another discussion of falsificationism (which would be off-topic for this thread); however that is very far away from expressing a wish that anyone be quiet here.
84443. Tom Curtis at 19:06 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       HumanityRules, climate change denial is a political fact. This is very evident in the choice of allies of the various adaptors, luke warmers, solarists, cosmic rayers, conspiracy theorists and what have you that make up the denial movement. Although many of these groups are closer to the mainstream scientists than they are to each other, still they self select the most absurd theorists as their allies. Obviously the sole criterion to be welcomed into the alliance is that you must oppose mitigating climate change. If you are firm on that point, any epistemological sin will be overlooked by your new found allies. Having self selected on this basis, turning around and blaming those who will not distort the science for political convenience for trying to impose two camps is a bit rich.
84444. Tim Curtin at 19:03 PM on 30 May 2011
       Of Averages and Anomalies - Part 1B. How the Surface Temperature records are built
       That is an excellent account of how James Hansen's Gistemp is an artefact very easily manipulated to give the desired outcome, because of the ample opportunity for subjective selection. For example, the latest Gistemp shows an anomaly for both Oxford and Heathrow UK over the period 1959-2010 relative to 1951-80 of 0.41 oC. However the UK Met Office shows the LS linear trend in Tmax for Heathrow of over 0.034 p.a. from 1959-2010, or 3.4 oC if projected forward to 2110, while Oxford, about 30 miles away has a down trend over 1959-2010 of 0.07 oC p.a., or MINUS 7 oC to 2110. Guess which is chosen by Gistemp using its 1200 km rule, which also enables GISS to use Heathrow to represent temperature trends in Scotland, even though like Oxford, Eskdalemuir up there (home to the main Scottish observatory)shows NEGATIVE trends of 0.051 for Tmax and 0.037 oC p.a. for Tmin from 1959-2010. Scotland's mean annual temperature is already less than 10 oC, and if these 50 year trends persist it is going to be really cold by the end of this century! Climate scientists are expert at linear projections when it suits them, but they don't want to know about Oxford with its temperature records going back to 1660, or Scotland, and Heathrow will do very nicely.
84445. HumanityRules at 18:57 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       (pressed submit early) Take an example of Roy Spencer. He believes CO2 is a GHG, that the planet has warmed recently (his satellite temperature record shows this) but he also believes (and has published) that climate sensitivity is low. Climate sensitivity is an unsettled issue, his is part of a spectrum of opinion on the subject. John seems to want to impose some sort of cut off point by which Spenser is to be considered in some way different to the other scientists that are putting forward their own estimates of climate sensitivity. I struggle to understand how you set the cut off point that labels one scientist a denier (and all that entails) and others reasonable. (BTW congratulation John on getting on the Drum, it's one of my favorite shows on ABC News24)
84446. tallbloke at 18:49 PM on 30 May 2011
       Climate Change Denial book now available!
       There are some pretty serious issues raised in the foregoing comments from Tom Curtis and Albartross, amongst others. I'll put up a new post on my blog to address these, since there is an expressed wish that I "be quiet" here. My parting observation is that respectful dialogue increases understanding of conflicting viewpoints, and reduces misunderstanding of motive, so I hope some of you will join in over at the talkshop when the post goes up in a few days time.
84447. HumanityRules at 18:43 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       "So which camp do you fall in?" (quote from article) Do you not think this is problematic? Take a large scientific subject like climate science. There are endless questions you could ask about the subject why should evrybody agree on every issue?. Throw in the fact the incomplete nature of this science as well and it seems only right that people who agree on one subject can (and should be) vermently disagreeing on others. And as we have seen many of the so-called deniers and sceptics agree on much of the science. For example I think all serious individuals agree that the past 100 years or so have seen the planet warm and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. So the real question should be what two camps are you trying to impose on climate science
84448. Bern at 18:37 PM on 30 May 2011
       The Critical Decade - Part 1: The Science
       okatiniko: GIA is a local effect. It has to be corrected for when trying to assess changes in global sea level.
84449. les at 18:37 PM on 30 May 2011
       Are you a genuine skeptic or a climate denier?
       Interesting place, the Australasian media... From the BBC: Actress Cate Blanchett sparks Australia climate debate
84450. Leland Palmer at 18:17 PM on 30 May 2011
       Wakening the Kraken
       It's been traditional since the time of Svante Arrhenius to fit a logarithmic curve to radiative forcing versus greenhouse gas concentration. But because this is a complicated atmospheric chemistry feedback system that the authors are talking about in the Isaksen paper, it's not clear to me that the forcing will be strictly logarithmic. It seems possible that a series of logarithmic increases could sum together into something close to a linear curve. A logarithmic curve fit with the data points generated by the above paper produces forcing of up to about 18 W/m2 and so temperature increases on the order of 14 degrees C. This paper does not count forcing due to CO2 or water vapor not generated as a result of indirect atmospheric chemistry effects of methane, though. By the time we get to 14 degrees C increase in temperature, likely a lot of the CO2 dissolved in the oceans will be forced out- and that is a huge, huge amount of CO2. At what point will the tropical oceans start to boil, adding potentially huge amounts of water vapor to the atmosphere? It seems possible that we might see a series of additive logarithmic increases, starting with the logarithmic increase due to CO2. Next, and stacked on top of that curve, could be a logarithmic curve due to methane and its indirect atmospheric chemistry effects. Stacked on top of that could be a logarithmic curve due to huge increases in water vapor from boiling lakes and oceans.

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