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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 86701 to 86750:

  1. Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
    All of the fingerprints you listed would be true no matter what the ultimate cause for an increase in GHGs, so they really can't be used as specific evidence for an anthropogenic cause. Something that would be true only in the case of anthropogenic causes is needed, like the carbon isotope ratios. If the question is evidence for warming, then those signatures are sufficient.
    Response:

    [dana1981] Let's not pick nits here.  We're taking it as a given that the CO2 increase is anthropogenic.

  2. Oceans are cooling
    The data source for the graphics above is the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/data_distribution.shtml The animated GIF is a combination of multiple images from the website, combined and resized, but otherwise unaltered. ---------------------------- The significance of OHC is that the average global net radiative imbalance over any period, no matter how short, can be estimated by taking the difference of the OHC between the start and end of that period. That has always been theoretically true. Over the last 6 to 8 years we have finally gotten the spatial and temporal density of sampling of ocean temperatures that is needed to put that into practice. The relatively slow addition of heat to the ocean, in the absence of significant volcanic activity creates a discrepancy between the expected heat content and the observed heat content. There are several possibilities ... the two main ones being that the 1) OHC measurements being in error, and 2) that we have erroneous values for forcings such as CO2, solar, and aerosols. Another possibility, but unlikely is that there is a large amount of heat being gained in other parts of the earth system, such as the land or atmosphere or into melting of ice. People that have looked at the numbers for global heat content find that ice melt and changes in atmospheric heat content are insignificant compared to the OHC. It is an interesting puzzle that will most certainly become a major area of study in the future.
  3. Oceans are cooling
    @ Tom Curtis -- I provided the link for you to look at any other combination of depth and ocean basin. Here are a couple of plots of total number of temp profiles globally. They show the same very rapid rise of observations in 2003/2004. I only mentioned the South Pacific because that is the area that had the lowest level of sampling prior to Argo. The animated GIF is color coded. The blue is Argo, Red is XBT. The green is TAO, which has lots of observations but at only a few sites. I'll repeat that graph so others can see. On the plots of number of profiles, green is XBT and red is the fixed TAO buoys. Black is the total number of observations.
  4. Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
    "So you tell me how the heat is getting from the surface down to 2000m and below that." I'm certainly not an expert in this field, but this recent paper (Eddies Found to Be Deep, Powerful Modes of Ocean Transport Connecting Atmospheric Events and Deep Ocean) looked interesting as a possible method for transporting heat from the surface. That's not what they were looking at, so more study would be needed, but it shows that there is interaction between the ocean surface and the ocean floor.
  5. Daniel Bailey at 10:24 AM on 19 May 2011
    Oceans are cooling
    Speaking of cherry-less OHC data, here is some from Domingues 2008 (observations in black): [Source]
  6. Oceans are cooling
    Charlie A (from elsewhere), the South Pacific below 30 South represents approximately 11% of the worlds total ocean surface. Therefore. if the gain in ocean heat content to a depth of 700 meters in the period 1980-2002 was essentially flat or declining, then the South Pacific must have been loosing heat at a rate almost ten times as fast as the rest of the worlds Oceans where gaining heat. Checking SST data, I notice that that the surface of the South Pacific was gaining heat at about the same rate as the rest of the world's oceans. Checking Schukman et al 2009 I see that the South Pacific has been gaining heat over the period 2003 to 2008, and if anything has been doing so faster the then rest of the world's oceans. In other words, based on readily available data there is no reason to think the South Pacific has behaved significantly different from the rest of the worlds oceans in terms of heat gain. Furthermore, although there have not been many probes into the South Pacific, there have certainly been some; and certainly sufficient to show it has been behaving in a very unusual manner compared to the rest of the world's oceans. Apparently what data there is from the South Pacific does not show any such unusual behaviour. So, I will take it that the South Pacific has not been cooling at a rate ten times greater than the rest of the oceans have been warming. Given that, the sampling of the other 90% of the worlds oceans which has been quite extensive represents a fair sample of the global heat content of the ocean. Therefore, excluding pre 2003 data is cherry picking, pure and simple.
  7. Stephen Baines at 09:39 AM on 19 May 2011
    Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
    Charlie A You're seriously off topic on thos thread, which is about the number of databases related to warming. I would post your discussion to a more relevant thread. I have a short response to you there.
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed link.

  8. Stephen Baines at 09:38 AM on 19 May 2011
    Oceans are cooling
    This is a response to Charlie A in another thread. There are three points. 1) Just because there is more data with better coverage does not mean there was no information prior to full deployment of Argos. It just takes more work to make those comparisons properly. That's what Lyman 2009 did. It's pointless to throw out data... 2) Your start date at 2003 is still arbitrary. By what standard are you claiming "global coverage" of Argos floats? Why not pick 2005 when the coverage was even better? Why not try several start and stop points and get a sense of the variability in your results? 3) As has been pointed out, the top 700m is not (by a long shot) the entire ocean. Even small and hard to measure leakages of heat into deeper waters could have a large impact on the budget. That was the point of Trenberth's comment...to argue for a better assessment such reservoirs of heat, because clearly, due to conservation of energy, they must be there. A lot of research has been finding exactly that (thank chris!!), though the mechanisms are unclear.
  9. Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
    Ken Lambert at 23:50 PM on 18 May, 2011 That's silly Ken. There is one bit of evidence that shows that there may have been rather little heat gain in a very short period of 0-700m Argo data. The fact that that's been pointed out in non-science journals and house magazines (and crappy journals) doesn't constitute "5 or 6 other analyses". It's a single analysis covering a very short period that might or might not be completely correct. It is worth highlighting the Douglass/Knox farragos. After all they seem to be the source for you information on this subject. There's a huge wealth of science that bears on this subject (e.g. see below) and yet you bring a truly dismal flawed analysis in support of your viewpoint. If you're not going to be skeptical, then we may as well point out the flaws in your sources. "So you tell me how the heat is getting from the surface down to 2000m and below that" Why not find out yourself? We know that the deep oceans are absorbing heat. There is simply too much evidence to discount that empirical observation (see also Purkey and Johnson (2010) and Song and Colberg (2011), who indicate that a substantial proportion of recent sea level rise may be due to deep ocean heating). I'm not an oceanographer, and so I don't have priviliged insight into the mechanisms of deep ocean heat transfer. In the meantime you could try, for example, Masuda et al (2010) who have identified pathways for deep ocean heat transfer in the North Pacific using simulations, or Kao et al (2010), who have shown that major tropical ocean storms, especially tropical cyclones can transfer surface warmth to the deep oceans. There's a large scientific literature on this. If you're interested you only have to look. Your style of "debate" is boring, since you plump for truly dismal analyses, and argue from there. What's the point? We know that the Earth is warming under the effect of a radiative imbalance (2005 and 2010 had record warmth in the GISS analysis during a period of an extended solar minimum, the largest cosmic ray flux directly recorded etc.), analysis of sea level rise indicates that the oceans continue to absorb heat, evidence supports significant deep sea thermal heat absorption... ..but there are uncertainties. The scientists that are expert in these arenas haven't fully accounted either for the recent short term sea level budget nor the budget in the radiative imbalance. It's very difficult to do so over very short periods of time. So what's the point of "debating"? What are you expecting to discover by "debate" that the scientists haven't already?
  10. Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
    In comment #10, Bern asks "why pick 2003 as the start date for your comparison?". To which I replied in #11: "2003 is the first year that we had truly global coverage of ocean heat content measurement. Moderator DB jumped in and added into my comment, "[DB] Tamino shows clearly the nature of the "Cherry-pick" that is 2003:" Let's see what NOAA says about this. The Climate Prediction Center has a useful page on Data distribution of OHC measurements. Below I've abstracted a couple of representative plots. If you think I'm cherry picking, click on the link above and compare. It is particularly informative to look at monthly plots. Plot of 500m-1000m temp profiles in the South Pacific vs. year. Animated GIF showing temp profile coverage over an entire year. The plot starts with 2010, then backwards 2003/2003/2001, then for comparison, 1995. Note that the coverage in the South Pacific before 2003 is virtually non-existent. Go to the NOAA website if you want to look at other depths, or other years, but the evolution of sampling density is very similar. Note that a reasonable argument could be made that truly global coverage started in 2004, rather than 2003. But there is a qualitative change in both the type of system used to gather OHC content and in the spatial coverage, in the 2003/2004 timeframe.
    Response:

    [DB] Please see Stephen Baines' response to you on the Oceans Are Cooling thread.  Keep your responses there, which is a much more appropriate thread than here.  Thanks!

  11. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    e - I was discussing that in the light of Jay's claim that industrial energy was 1/10 that involved in the last peak interglacial sea levels, and that AGW provides energy 10x greater than that - 100x overall. Jay - Robert Laughlin's take on climate appears to be a mix of Climate's changed before and It's not bad. Both arguments are discussed here, and shown to be wrong, and Laughlin himself has been roundly criticized for his illogical stand on these matters. Personally, I would not rely on him as a climate expert.
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed text.

  12. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    KR>Hence the greenhouse forcing is 10x what you describe in your post, more than sufficient to be an issue. Actually it's 100x more, sufficient indeed.
  13. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    @Dr. Jay, Sea level rise is caused by increasing global temperatures and ice melt (which itself is caused by increasing global temperatures), so my comment is transitively relevant to global sea levels.
  14. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Jay - That's what 'e' said. Note, however, that human energy use is 1% of the energy trapped by anthropogenic greenhouse gases - it's 2 orders of magnitude smaller. See the interminable waste heat thread for details. Hence the greenhouse forcing is 10x what you describe in your post, more than sufficient to be an issue. Nobody is predicting complete melt of the Antarctic ice caps, mind you. More appropriate comparisons are with peak Holocene or Eemian conditions: global temperatures ~2°C warmer, 4-6 meter higher sea levels, which would take quite some time to occur. And it looks like we're committing to an even higher temperature with AGW.
  15. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 04:35 AM on 19 May 2011
    Sea level rise is exaggerated
    @e Did you mean the waste heat is too small to have an impact on "global sea level"?
  16. Philippe Chantreau at 03:35 AM on 19 May 2011
    Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
    "you can have nothing of consequence above ground unless supported by solid root structures" What in the world is this supposed to mean and what is the relevance? The soils in tropical forests are thin and severely limit how deep the roots can go. Tropical trees have horizontally spread root structures and extensive butresses to account for that.
  17. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Dr. Jay >So we can conclude that our energy consumption is far too low to significantly impact sea levels. Your conclusion is invalid. The heat energy that drives global warming comes from the sun, not from human energy consumption. Humans emit CO2 which increases the amount of solar energy retained by the earth. The "waste heat" produced by humanity is indeed too small to have a significant effect on global temperatures, a topic that is covered in the waste heat post.
  18. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 03:06 AM on 19 May 2011
    Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Okay so that would be a 2% rise in average sea level, that is reasonable. I think Robert Laughlin's take on sea level is the most accurate, however. "the amount of water on the earth hasn’t changed significantly over geologic time, and that the rise and fall of the oceans is adequately accounted for by the waxing and waning of the polar ice sheets and slow changes in ocean basin volumes. The sea level has had a complex and interesting history, but it has never deviated more than 200 meters from its present value." Also "The last glacial melting, cross-dated at 15,000 years ago by the radiocarbon age of wood debris left by the glaciers as they retreated, occurred rapidly. The sea rose more than one centimeter per year for 10,000 years, then stopped. The extra heat required for this melting was 10 times the present energy consumption of civilization. The total melt­­water flow was the equivalent of two Amazons, or half the discharge of all the rivers in all the world." So we can conclude that our energy consumption is far too low to significantly impact sea levels.
  19. Stephen Baines at 02:38 AM on 19 May 2011
    Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
    Nando is now taking us down the Models are unreliable path. I don't see how a discussion of the difference between curve fitting and hindcasting as validation is relevant here.
    Moderator Response: Concur. Further discussion of that topic must be on that other, relevant, thread.
  20. arch stanton at 02:18 AM on 19 May 2011
    Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
    Some folks like to pretend that the majority of NASA’s budget is devoted to “proving” some aspect of climate change.
  21. Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
    Arkadiusz @36, "Furthermore, please do not ignore the most important sentences - with my commentary: “... no big differences in the greenness level [!] of these forests between drought and non-drought years ...” I will address this confusion when I have some time. You are ignoring the die back issue....more later. Feeley was a field study, real world data-- so I have no idea what you are trying to say.
  22. Stephen Baines at 02:07 AM on 19 May 2011
    Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Jay, NSIDC says at least 70 meters. As others have pointed out, it was very easy to find. If you don't trust authority to do the calculation properly...a simplistic way to calculate it is to multiply the average depth of the ocean (3790m) by the ratio of the fraction of earths water crrently in land ice (0.02) vs seawater (0.97). You get about 70-80 m. It's a rounded estimate and doesn't account for thermal expansion, salinity effects on density, changes to shorelines etc, but it gets you in the ball park. It also says nothing about time scales of melting.
  23. arch stanton at 01:52 AM on 19 May 2011
    Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    Doctor, I don’t see how the depth of the sea is relevant to your question unless of course you were going to include the effect of thermal expansion of sea water. A more relevant question would be the total volume of global land based ice (km^3) / (the total sea surface area (km^2) + whatever new sea surface area would be incorporated by the rising sea level)….I hated calculus.
  24. Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
    Michael Hauber at 09:41 AM on 18 May, 2011 My apologies. This is what i wrote: The graph you have shown was published in 2005. It uses data up until 2003. all the graph before 2003 is is not a forecast by any model. They were the data used in coming up with model(s) in that Hansen paper. This what I meant: The graph you have shown was published in 2005. It uses data up until 2003. all the graph before 2003 is is not a forecast by any model in that graph. They were the data used in coming up with model(s) in that Hansen paper. Remember a model includes not just the concepts and terms. but also the parameter values generated using the data that was incorporated in that study.
    Response:

    [DB] Please, no more all-caps.

  25. Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    Jay - I have replied on the far more appropriate How much is sea level rising thread.
  26. Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
    dana1981 at 04:51 AM on 18 May, 2011 dana, Hindcasting is the way you develop/perfect/tailor a model. the R**2 value and deviation events ( eg. when the model is hopelessly off for a period indicates a large influence is not included in the model ) tells you how good the model is in fitting the past. but, because you do not ever know if all independent variables have been included in the model and you never know if the domain covered in the past is similar to the domain that is going to follow, you have no idea what you are going to see in the future. you have to be a bit humble when you are modeling. George E. Box is purported to have said "All models are wrong. Some are Useful". When I met the man, It was a breath of fresh air to see his humility. When pointed out of a small error, he said he will look into it. A few months later, my advisor got a letter thanking us!!! ( -Snip- ).
    Response:

    [DB] Inflammatory snipped.  Please keep it clean.  And no all-caps.

  27. Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
    You didn't mention the isotope signature of the carbon in man-made CO2 vs naturally occurring CO2. I believe it is the main signature of anthropogenic climate change.
    Response:

    [dana1981] Only if you accept that CO2 is causing warming to start with

  28. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Jay - Googling "average ocean depth", as I noted earlier, provides the average depth of 3790 meters in the summary of the first link.
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed link.

  29. Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
    Carter is a polemical idealogue first and foremost, and a scientist (just about) last. He should be ashamed of himself but is probably proud of his disseminations.
  30. Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
    $100 billion sounds like a fantasy figure plucked from the ether. Does Carter believe that nothing should be spent on climate research? Or does he believe that the results should be neutral and effectively show nothing, as if a god were magically balancing things?
  31. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 01:25 AM on 19 May 2011
    Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    Okay Arch, somebody earlier said "Fully melted Antarctic and Greenland ice caps would raise sea levels by 80 meters, according to the USGS. " That number seems to be way too high to me so I want to know the global average sea level depth and calculate what percentage average sea level would rise. Somebody also said this number is easy to come by, I've been googling and don't see it. There is also no hard numbers for total number of glaciers, globally.
    Response:

    [DB] KR earlier gave you the link to the USGS site, which itself detailed the sources for the 80 meters quoted.  You are welcome to reinvent the wheel all you like, but not on this thread.  This is now off-topic and further comments on this will be deleted.

  32. Stephen Baines at 01:24 AM on 19 May 2011
    Temp record is unreliable
    Joe RG Those changes, besides being very small, do not increase the appearance of global warming in the data set. You have to pay attention to the timing. The diffs in temp anomalies are similar for the most important part of the record from 1950 and on, and the increase in late data is matched by an increase in very early data. If you want to do a proper comparison that prvides the correct context, you should compare the NCDC records on the same graph before and after the corrections. You should also calculate the temp change since the 70s in the two data sets - that's the period when we think GHG forcing has become dominant. When I do the latter in excel, very quickly. I get a 0.164C/decade in the first and 0.166/decade in the second. Those are within 1% of each other and certainly within the error in the data. It would take not just 10, but 100 such revisions (all in the same direction) to produce anything near the temp trend apparent in the record. Your doubts are unfounded, and the insinuation unnecessary.
  33. Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
    Arkadiusz @36, "Furthermore, please do not ignore the most important sentences - with my commentary: “... no big differences in the greenness level [!] of these forests between drought and non-drought years ...” I will address this confusion when I have some time. You are ignoring the die back issue....more later. Feeley was a field study, real world data-- so I have no idea what you are trying to say.
    Moderator Response: Fixed unclosed HTML tag
  34. Temp record is unreliable
    JoeRG wrote: "It is not apparent why the first half of the last century should have been overestimated while the rest until now should have been underestimated." You do realize that the 'change' in the trendline is 0.0002 C per year, right? If you find that to "really create doubts" it doesn't seem like this has anything to do with logic or reality. The variation between the old and new results is a tiny fraction of the stated margin of error and leaves these anomalies still in close agreement with the GISS, NASA, UAH, RSS, and other data sets.
  35. arch stanton at 01:12 AM on 19 May 2011
    Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    I missed a response… Doctor - what would be the usefulness of calculating the sea level rise as a percentage of average sea depth?
  36. Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
    Ken @112, Stop misrepresenting me re Dyson....the way you quoted those phrases (first one yours, second one mine) makes it look like am am of the opinion that Dyson is "dishonest and disingenuous", which is not true. I was, of course, referring to a "skeptic" who was misrepresenting his stance on the theory of AGW, you. And you doing that latest trick just supports my claim. The fact remains the slope of the line increases (compare to that for 0-700 m) when one includes OHC down to 2000 m. You asked, you got an answer, yet you will not accept it. That is not 'skepticism', that is ideology Ken. And Josh said "most", not "all"-- Trenberth's figure is consistent with that. Now please go and argue strawmen somewhere else. And again, please provide some context--what the does this all have to do with Lindzen's illusion about the warming arising from internal variability? Re your question to Chris: "So you tell me how the heat is getting from the surface down to 2000m and below that." I am emailing a colleague (an oceanographer) to ask him about that today.
  37. Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    Warming Indicators: The Motion Picture Yes please. That would be excellent.
  38. arch stanton at 01:05 AM on 19 May 2011
    Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    Adelady (13), I like suspense too, but the question was ambiguous, and no matter how I interpret it, the answer is irrelevant when judging the (human) impact of sea level rise. The doctor has dug himself into a hole (average depth = deep).
  39. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Climate Scientist Fears His "Wedges" Made It Seem Too Easy is a recent article in National Geographic in which Robert Socolow, one of the two authors of the "wedge" paper, discusses how his work has been received and used. ""The job went from impossible to easy" in part because of the wedges theory. "I was part of that.""
    Response:

    [dana1981] Socolow clarifies his comments

  40. Temp record is unreliable
    What I did is just to download the data of version 2 and of version 3, copy them in an Excel sheet (sorry for misspelling above), compared them and made a graphical output. As scientific as a simple comparison can be. I had used the original (NCDC) data to show that there is an odd behaviour when making the recent update of data and methods. OK, I should have linked these data in the comments before. Sorry for that. The summary of the changes that you mentioned does not explain the behavior of the corrections at all. It is not apparent why the first half of the last century should have been overestimated while the rest until now should have been underestimated. Even if one would follow the statements, the behavior in general or the reason are quite unclear. This, of course, is odd and it really creates doubts. It is nearly impossible for an outstanding to follow these procedures, even if there are summaries. But this would be an off-topic question about scientific transparency. If you look on top and read the question of this topic, my answer would be (and i've tried to show it with actual data) "there are doubts, indeed". But I wonder how you can accuse me to make "insinuations" although the data speak a very clear tongue.
    Moderator Response: [e] Please review the advanced version of this post. The raw data has been analyzed and plotted several different ways by several different organizations and citizen scientists. The result is always the same. Implying wrongdoing simply because you do not understand one of these reconstructions is not a valid scientific argument and is a violation of this site's comment policy.
  41. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 00:23 AM on 19 May 2011
    Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    I've just checked some of these links people have posted and it appears somebody else is using my same name. I have never heard of a Dr. Shooshmon. The reason I was asking about average global sea level in meters is because I wanted to compare estimated sea level rise rates based on average global sea level and also based on percentage of water glaciers in question of melting hold.
    Response:

    [DB] This is off-topic for this thread.

  42. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:56 PM on 18 May 2011
    Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
    @Albatros Recent research has found that the ITCZ can migrate up to 5 degrees - were doing it, and past from natural causes . One of the most recent works says: “Specifically, our data indicate that the ITCZ was 500 km closer to the equator during the LIA than it is today and that it was south of its present position (7 degN) for the last 1,000 years.” You ignored the results from field studies by Feeley ... Ppaper by Feeley, it is typical of Chery Picking - typical, because it is "not reproducible." Paper Smith, 2011. - an analysis recently published a large number of papers - on the impact of extreme climatic phenomena on productivity and 37 other parameters of the ecosystems - in the world. It is “off topic”? All you have demonstrated is that large variations in the degree of biomass burning ... - No. I just wanted to say that biomass burning - SH - is definitely - a record - the lowest in 650 years ... ... of the poor in the reference - the paper Lewis et al., 2011., does not speak. Furthermore, please do not ignore the most important sentences - with my commentary: “... no big differences in the greenness level [!] of these forests between drought and non-drought years ...”
  43. Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
    chris #108 Trying to batter me with Douglass/Knox and their alleged faults elsewhere is a distraction from the numbers which you will not debate. "D/K are obviously having great fun with their very late second careers as climate contrarians; but your reliance on them for info on climate-related matters is misplaced…" I mentioned their paper and its quotation of Argo analyses from data by Willis and others. There are 5 or 6 other analyses which show no or little heat gain in the 0-700m layers. We have as far as I know only one Argo analysis 0-2000m from VS. BP #107 has suggested "Thermohaline downwelling itself does not transfer any heat into the abyss, it removes heat from there." So you tell me how the heat is getting from the surface down to 2000m and below that.
  44. Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
    Albatross #109 You are trying hard for a small win Albatross - how about - "Dyson does not subscribe to alarmist AGW." "That is, IMO, dishonest and disingenuous." BTW, allegations of dishonesty are banned under the comments policy. Are you immune from moderation Albatross? Trenberth 2010: "However, independent analysis8 of the full-depth Argo floats for 2003 to 2008 suggests that the 6-year heat-content increase is 0.77 ± 0.11 W m−2 for the global ocean or 0.54 W m−2 for the entire Earth, indicating that substantial warming may be taking place below the upper 700 m." I think you will find that Dr Trenberth is quoting the von Schukmann analysis from September 2009, which is the only 0-2000m Argo analysis published as far as I know. BP raised serious questions about the bumps in the VS global chart and the impossible rates of heat transfer involved. I asked Dr Trenberth about some aspects of the VS paper on 10FEB2010, and at that date he had not read it. Later he started quoting it in correspondence with Dr Pielke, published on his blog.
  45. Stephen Baines at 23:37 PM on 18 May 2011
    Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
    @Camburn 32 "you can have nothing of consequence above ground unless supported by solid root structures. " Of course the same could be said in reverse as well, no roots without shoots. Moreover, under a given set of conditions, a plant which apportions a larger fraction of their biomass to root structures must, by necessity, grow slower because their metabolic costs increase relative to their photosynthetic rates. Because of this tradeoff, the root to shoot ratio is pretty constrained for a given biome. In the Amazon (and most wet tropical forests), belowground typically is 25% of above ground, roughly speaking. And there isn't a lot of dead soil carbon as it is quickly decomposed, except in consistently saturated soils. Of course if it gets drier, the root to shoot ratio will increase as plants try to access more water, but that will only happen because root biomass will decrease a little less than above ground biomass. IOW, the below ground biomass will not compensate for the loss of above ground biomass as climate dries in the Amazon.
  46. Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
    BP #107 A useful contribution BP. I was listening to a radio interview with Josh Willis, and he made the point that most of the heat transfer action was in the top 10-20% of the oceans. With an average depth of 3700m - that puts it in the 0-700m layers. Maybe Albatross and Chris could also benefit from your contribution.
  47. Temp record is unreliable
    Yes, I agree with you regarding the need of progress. But if the progress looks like this, it is a bit odd. I made it by myself with a simple Excess table which compares the GHCN-M version 2 with the version 3 regarding the yearly anomalies. And it looks ... strange.
    Response:

    [DB] This is a science-based website.  Merely attaching an "odd" or "strange" appellation/connotation to something adds nothing positive to the dialogue.  If you have constructive criticism of the changes you reference you will need to perform a more robust analysis to back up your "insinuations" (which veer into Comment Policy violation status...).

  48. National Academy of Sciences on Climate Risk Management
    Sailrick @ 12 "If I'm not mistaken, it is mostly limited to the... England... " I'm not sure I agree with England as in the UK being in that category. The UK is not in general terms in denial about climate change. With 83% of the UK public apparently viewing climate change as a current or imminent threat http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/31/public-belief-climate-change Add to that the fact that yesterday 17/05/2011 "Britain pledged to cut carbon pollution in half by 2025 (from 1990 levels)" OK so the devil is in the detail, but that is as the NY Times put it "...A striking example of a government committing to big environmental initiatives while also pursuing austerity measures.” http://climateprogress.org/2011/05/17/britain-pledges-to-cut-carbon-pollution-in-half-by-2025/ As for Scotland the first minister Alex Salmond does not give a hoot about what people say is possible or not and simply ignores the nay sayers and is now now comitting the Scottish to "generating the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scotland’s own electricity demand from renewable resources by 2020" http://www.newenergyworldnetwork.com/renewable-energy-news/by-technology/water/scotland-reinforces-100-renewables-by-2020.html The UK is not in any way either in or on the US GOP / Tea party style "road to doom" denial train, despite what the disinformers would have you believe.
    Response:

    [DB] Hot-linked URLs.

  49. Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
    Southwing wrote : "Dear folks, Dr. Jay is rather obviously a "seeker after truth" troll. Back to the topic, please." I'm not convinced, especially after this comment from a Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd over on the DeepClimate thread about Wegman's current difficulties : Whatever at least this Wegman guy didn’t try to make a fake graph...
  50. Temp record is unreliable
    With May 2 the NCDC changed the dataset and calculation. This change has a very strange effect. The NCDC uses the period of 1901-2000 as reference. With the "correction" (if one really will call it this way) the anomalies from beginning of the reference (1901) until the mid 50th are lowered while all other following values rised. Of course, not in significant ranges. But having this three or four times happened we will see differences to previous calculations in a significant range of approx. 0.1K. So the question arises again: are the data reliable?
    Response:

    [DB] Hey, progress happens.  You're not against improvements to increase accuracy, right?  After all, insinuations of something nefarious are beneath us...especially when the details of the change are made transparent, as you note.

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