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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 87201 to 87250:

  1. Stephen Baines at 09:09 AM on 30 April 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    "In order to claim that the Hansen Scenario B is the closest to reality is to accept that each of the above has come to pass, otherwise any similarity of the prediction to reality is more due to accident rather than design." No johnd. As has been discussed in other posts, it doesn't matter what leads to the forcing. As long as the forcing in scenario B and the realized forcing are approximately the same, scenario B and reality are comparable.
  2. Climate Change Denial book now available!
    Kindle version please! Ta, thanks very much :)
  3. Medieval project gone wrong
    Well investigated Hoskibul. My only quibble is with the title. This isn't a "Medieval project gone wrong", but a "Medieval project gone right". Does anyone seriously believe you could cherry pick and misrepresent the data like this by accident? And it serves its purpose, to obfuscate, confuse, give deniers easy ammunition for use in threads and on talk back radio, delay and delay and delay. And it's all working beautifully.
  4. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    Interesting comment about the 'it's the Sun' argument - is it the contribution of this site, or are people realising that the divergence of solar activity and climate indicators in the past couple of years = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Its Johns illustration of that that has been the most powerful tool I have on the Guardian website to rebut the 'its the sun' argument. There are most likely other versions of the image around but where ever I am on the net, a link to that one jpeg hands the initiative to the argument my way. A few come back with variations of Svennsmark or Lockwood 2010 (I mean seriously), but it normally sends them off down the road of broken hockey sticks and hidden declines, the sun rarely rises aften that jpeg.
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed text.

  5. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    Hansen set the following interrelated parameters in his 1988 paper. "In scenario B the growth of the annual increment of CO2 is reduced from 1.5%/yr today to 1%/yr in 1990, 0.5%/yr in 2000 and 0 in 2010; thus after 2010 the annual increment in CO2 is constant, 1.9 ppmv/yr. The annual growth of CCI3F and CCI2F2 emissions is reduced from 3%/ yr today to 2%/year in 2000 and 0 in 2010. The methane annual growth rate decreases from 1.5% today to1% in 1990 and 0.5%/yr in 2000. N2O increases are based on the formual of Weiss (1981), but the parameter specifying annual growth in anthropogenic emission decreases from 3.5% today to 2.5% in 1990, 1.5% in 200, and 0.5% in 2010. No increases are included for other chlorofluorocarbons, O3, stratospheric H2O, or any other greenhouse gases." In order to claim that the Hansen Scenario B is the closest to reality is to accept that each of the above has come to pass, otherwise any similarity of the prediction to reality is more due to accident rather than design. Of course there is one more condition that it all relied on, that is the conditions in the oceans, “Our procedure is to use simple assumptions about ocean heat transport. Specifically we assume that during the next few decades the rate and pattern of horizontal ocean heat transport will remain unchanged and the rate of heat uptake by the ocean beneath the mixed layer can be approximated by the diffusive mixing of heat perturbations”
  6. Philippe Chantreau at 08:29 AM on 30 April 2011
    Medieval project gone wrong
    I have to join Sphaerica. The "skeptic" blogs are the one factor that seriously tipped me. I was not initially under the impression that there was significant scientific debate about GW. Then I ran across those sites, which at first glance suggested that there was. When I started reading, I could hardly believe my eyes. There have been only a few things that truly shocked me since I moved to the States. One was the Jerry Springer show (I still have a hard time to believe that there are people who actually watch this stuff). Another was the tandem Climate-Audit/WUWT and other so-called skeptic blogs. There was all the stuff that I learned about in high school, when we analyzed marketing, advertisement, mind manipulating methods, the Eastern block state run media, etc, etc. It was so blatant, I could hardly believe that anyone would fall for it. Yet, it is quite successful, even with people who should know better. For me, it removed any doubt as to where the sincere pursuit of understanding is to be found. Even if the fundamental tenets of climate science turn out to be wrong, it won't be because of anything discovered by these fools. They don't discover anything anyway, just spread lies and misinformation.
  7. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    Remarkable attempts to derail the comments here! I headed into this area by way of hearing Ray Bradley Speak in Colorado about RealClimate and dealings witha certain Sen Inhofe, and that opened my eyes to just how poisonous the atmosphere was, even in 2004. Skeptical Science is still, to me, the best source of clear information to support rebuttals of a great variety of skeptic argiments. Other sites may provide greater detail about particular topics (RealClimate being one, of course), but it is fantastic to be able to go to a site and identify some key papers and eloquent arguments pertinent to a particular topic. Even if those papers have been superseded in intervening years, they are usually a good enough reference point, or starting point to identify other, more recent contributions. So all hail your 'inner-computer geek', John, as it has surely helped a great many people out there by providing a tremendously valuable resource! Interesting comment about the 'it's the Sun' argument - is it the contribution of this site, or are people realising that the divergence of solar activity and climate indicators in the past couple of years (record solar min, near-record high temps) becoming something closer to 'undeniable'? Scratch that, someone, somewhere will be denying it...
  8. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP @ 405: If "heat transfer" means warmer places cool and vice versa and that, under this proposition, the heating of the Arctic is a fingerprint of waste heat, where is the concomitant cooling of warm places? Why, as I sit in Phoenix, AZ, am I not experiencing any type of cooling trend? Also, from where do you get the idea that a "GHG effect should affect the entire planet equally"?
  9. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP#405: "warming of cooler places like the Artic and glaciers is waste heat's fingerprint." How do you know that? Do you have any research to back it up or is it just another unsubstantiated assertion? Where are the waste heat sources in the Arctic? "A GHG effect should affect the entire planet equally." How do you know that? Do you have any research to back it up or is it just another unsubstantiated assertion? Do you know what Arctic amplification is and why the GHG should not warm the planet equally?
  10. Same Ordinary Fool at 06:52 AM on 30 April 2011
    Medieval project gone wrong
    Soon & Baliunas(2003) used these deceptions, and one more. They compared MWP temperatures to the average temperature for the 20th century, rather than recent temperatures. Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (of the CO2 Science website) were co-authors when Soon and Baliunas published (three months later) a longer version of this paper in E&E. See Wikipedia: Soon and Baliunas controversy
  11. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    Heat transfer is always from hot to cold. The article states... "This heat doesn't just disappear - it dissipates into our environment." A better word for "dissipation" is heat transfer, which means that warmer places loose their heat (i.e., cool), and cooler places warm up. The warming of cooler places like the Artic and glaciers is waste heat's fingerprint. A GHG effect should affect the entire planet equally. This is not what is happening.
  12. Medieval project gone wrong
    Oh dear - that site is a bad one. I thought I'd follow up a paper from a region whose research and climate I know well (Iceland, coincidentally), and looked up what they said about Sicre et al (2008). Of course the website suggested that the MWP was 1C warmer than the 'modern warm period' according to Sicre et al. An interesting conclusion to reach, given that the Sicre record is truncated at 1950AD and so does not show the 'modern warm period'... It really is classic misinformation, and well done Hoskibui for the debunk.
  13. Medieval project gone wrong
    NewYorkJ #9 Oh, now see it. Thank you.
  14. Cosmic ray contribution to global warming negligible
    Philipe #48, Thanks for the links. Indeed the process is convoluted. and size is important.
  15. Medieval project gone wrong
    Alexandre, You're missing the 1997-2007 mean annual line. See figure 6a. Note that the blue line ends around 1980 (this is hard to tell from figure 6b, which is on a much larger timescale), therefore missing the sharp recent warming and the recent decade average. This is one of the common visual ploys sites like co2science rely on. One might assume from figure 6b that the end of the line represents modern temperatures.
  16. Medieval project gone wrong
    None of the graph links seem to work for me.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Sorry, JMurphy; should be fixed now.
  17. Medieval project gone wrong
    Thanks for the post, Hoskibui. I have already come across this website, and indeed many of the studies they cite as "proof of MWP" are either not about temperatures, or not about the same period. I did not spot that on top of that they misrepresented others as well. I'm pretty confident that if they put this all together in a comprehensive global climate reconstruction study, going through all the statistic and geographical distribution issues, they'd get pretty much the same results the other reconstructions show. I did not get the conclusion about Figure 6b, though: it does look like it shows higher temperatures at the MWP than today. What am I missing?
  18. Medieval project gone wrong
    Nicely done. There appears to be a grammatical issue with this sentence: "They conclude that current warming is not unprecedented since there was a lot of warming during in the past at various places."
    Response:

    [dana1981] Thanks, I revised that sentence.  Hoskibui is from Iceland, I believe, so we tried to help him with the translation to English, but may have missed a few of these.  But he gets the point across!

  19. Medieval project gone wrong
    Sphaerica wrote : "Really, the effort was/is shockingly disingenuous." Agreed, but to what end, I wonder ? What do the Idsos get out of all this ? Actually, the CO2Science Medieval Project's list of so-called proof of a MWP, reminds me of another little list that some have used to vainly try and 'prove' peer-reviewed skepticism of AGW Alarm...
  20. Medieval project gone wrong
    I love CO2 Science and Science Skeptical. Those were the two sites that really sold me on how far the denial camp would go in misrepresenting facts. I got there shortly after I'd begun to realize that "skepticism" was all smoke and mirrors, all the time. The sites pretty firmly opened my eyes to the difference between science and snake-oil sales. I went through every citation on both sites at the time (looking directly at the real source study, whenever available) and was shocked at what I saw. My very favorite was when they quote Thomspon et al (2003). That paper presents a wide overview of ice cores around the globe... I count a dozen. Our skeptical friends picked the one graph of twelve (one of three from the SA Andes) that barely showed warming around 1100. No mention of the other 11 that directly contradict that single entry, even though two of them are in close physical proximity to theirs, demonstrating that not only wasn't their choice a good global proxy, but it wasn't even a very good local proxy. Other favorites included a paper whose data only went from about 1600 to the present, one hand drawn graph with no units of measure on either axis, one paper repeated twice, and a paper that explicitly said that its data should not be used in any way as a global or even regional temperature proxy. The single biggest flaw that recurred over and over was the fact that any warming peak in a 1,000 year span was labeled as MWP, even if it only appeared to last 50 years, and differed from other studies by hundreds and hundreds of years. Really, the effort was/is shockingly disingenuous.
  21. Medieval project gone wrong
    HR:
    Just as a side point when a scientist publishes that doesn't give them exclusive rights to describing the implications of their data.
    Fair enough, but even if your interpretation is right, their point is that their data implies solar variation appears to be responsible during the MWP detected by their reconstruction. I'm sure HR read that part and understand it, so won't bother reproducing it here. We know from observations that this is not true today, so any suggestion that this study points to a low sensitivity to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is just bull pucky.
  22. Climate Change Denial book now available!
    Apologies, I found that these comments would fit under an existing topic: Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
  23. Climate Change Denial book now available!
    OK, there is something about someone helping those who help themselves, or is it ask and you shall receive? Anyway, to close off my derailment of this thread, I think I found what I was looking for. I skimmed titles and abstracts until I found this "Slowing down as an early warning signal for abrupt climate change which looked promising, but I wanted to see if it was a reputable work. So, I followed the link to citations, and found: Copenhagen Diagnosis which I am sure is familiar, and contains: "Is there any prospect for early warning of an approaching tipping point? Recent progress has been made in identifying and testing generic potential early warning indicators of an approaching tipping point (Lenton et al. 2008; Livina and Lenton 2007; Dakos et al. 2008; Lenton et al. 2009; Scheffer et al. 2009)..." On the first skim read, it does not support those who say there is nothing to worry about because things are not changing as fast in the most recent decade.
    Moderator Response: [DB] You may want to try this one: Regime shifts in ecological systems can occur with no warning, Hastings and Wysham, 2010.
  24. HumanityRules at 02:46 AM on 30 April 2011
    Medieval project gone wrong
    With regard to the Mangini paper do you think the CO2 Science people are taking their lead from this part of the paper? "We observe the lowest values in the section formed during the Little Ice Age (AD 1400–1850), and maximum values in the section corresponding to the MWP (approx. AD 800–1300). These latter values are even slightly higher than those of the top section of the stalagmite (1950 AD) and higher than the present-day temperature of 1.8oC." It just seems the CO2 Science people have quantified 'slightly'. Fig3 suggests they have done that correctly. Just as a side point when a scientist publishes that doesn't give them exclusive rights to describing the implications of their data. Falsehoods about the data is obviously unacceptable but reappraisal of conclusions and interpretations seems OK. I don't see how what the CO2 Science people did with the Mangini paper constitutes a 'trick'
  25. Climate Change Denial book now available!
    errm, Google Scholar on "bifurcation theory climate change" indicates I have some reading ahead of me. If there is a summary article someone knows of...
  26. Climate Change Denial book now available!
    I know this is off topic, but may I request a topic for future discussion? I've been thinking off and on for some time about signs or indications that a system is on the verge of a regime change, in particular with respect to climate. My gut feel assessment has been that unusual levels of variance from the mean would increase for some time before reaching the tipping point after which the status would not return to the previous conditions. So, it was with interest that I read this story about an ecological system regime change. Apparently, my thoughts are nothing new; there exist models which are used to examine state changes within a variety of system types and predict when a tipping point is about to be reached. I can understand that predicting a tipping point using the multitude of physics processes involved in climate is extremely difficult. I was wondering if serious work has been done along an alternate line of looking at not the physical processes, but just the amount of variation from pre-existing conditions. Snippet: "Brock used a branch of applied mathematics known as bifurcation theory to show that the odd behavior was in fact an early warning of catastrophic change. In short, he devised a way to sense the transformation of an ecosystem by detecting subtle changes in the system's natural patterns of variability."
  27. Medieval project gone wrong
    Howard Duff's marvellous little classic, "How to Lie with Statistics" also had a brilliant expose/exposition of these "common graphical tricks". I wish I could cut and paste them here, but mine is a paper copy, and I am no good with computer drawing:( But his illustration of the 'trick's is persuasive, memorable, and concise. It boggles the mind to think how timely his little book still is. The deceivers have not even had to bother to think up new techniques since the 50s when he wrote his book!
  28. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    tonydunc @23: 1) "he says that ONLY scenario A is reasonable to compare to Hansen's predictions." In the original paper Hansen says that scenario A is . He also says (page 9361) that in scenario B the rate at which CO2 growth increases will decline so that by 2010 (and after) the increase will be a constant 1.9 ppm per year. The following is the increase in CO2 content in ppm per year as plotted by Tamino: Turns out that in 2010, CO2 growth was under 1.9 ppm, although the trend was probably very close to it. Hansen also said the annual growth of the increase in CO2 concentration in scenario A is 1.5%, or a 1.015^30=~= 1.56 increase in the annual growth rate over the 30 years from 1980 to 2010. With a start value of 1.4 ppm growth in CO2 concentration in 1980, that predicts around 3 ppm growth rate for 2010, or 50% greater than the trend or nearly double the actual value. Clearly scenario B is much closer to what occurred. 2) "He used Hansen’s temperature data to verify Hansen’s predictions. That is like trusting Al Gore’s lawyers to count ballots in Florida." For this argument to make any sense, it would be necessary that using a different temperature series would make the data fit Lindzen's "prediction" better than Hansen's. Well, take your pick: No matter which temperature series you use, the data still supports Hansen's prediction. Indeed, John Cook explicitly pointed that out in the article when he said, "GISTEMP is consistent with all the other surface and satellite temperature data sets." 3) "You "offset Lindzen’s start point downwards by half a degree. Obviously the data needs to be normalized before comparing."" Lindzen's comment quoted in the article indicates that temperatures have increase by from 0.1 to 0.2 degrees from their start point around 1880/89. That makes 1880/89 the start point of his prediction (and retrodiction) and hence the point from which his prediction should be plotted. As the graph only plots from 1958, that creates an apparent offset. At least, that is how I understood the graph. 4) "He drew scenario B below Hansen’s actual scenario B. Note the red line above is too low." 5) He drew Hansen’s measured data too high. The thick red line below and horizontal bars are from the GISS web site. The black line above it is what Cook drew. Hansen reported 0.63 for 2010, Cook placed it above 0.7" I cannot respond to these points as I do not know the details of the plot. However, given the purpose of the graph, ie, to compare Hansen's and Lindzen's "predictions", would it make Lindzen's "prediction" look any better if the graph was adjusted as Goddard suggests? It strikes me that Goddard is quibbling to distract the punters from how wrong Lindzen got it. "Finally a commenter on the site says this is a straw man argument since Lindzen has never made any actual predictions." From the first paragraph of the article, "Although to our knowledge Lindzen has never made any specific global temperature projections, he did make some statements in this talk which we can use to extrapolate what his temperature predictions might have looked like." It would be hard to be more up front than that. The suggestion that Cook's article is a strawman argument is a form of special pleading. It is an insistence that the logical consequences of critics of climate science should not be examined. If you want, however, an example of a real strawman, it is Chilli's claim that, " Cook made the bogus graph by simply removing CO2 from Hansen’s temperature model." Cook, of course, used to methods to arrive at a hypothetical prediction for Lindzen, both of which he clearly described in the article. Apparently Cook's methods were to reasonable for Chilli (afterall, he surely wouldn't be so dishonest as to criticize an article he hasn't actually read?) so he invented a suitably bogus method to attribute to Cook.
  29. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    tonydunc - this is my post, not John's. Goddard's comments are a bunch of baloney, to put it nicely, but since you asked I will respond specifically.
    "Cook picked scenario “B”...He should be comparing against scenario A"
    Actually the plot in question shows Scenario B adjusted to reflect the actual radiative forcing based on measured GHG changes, as I explained in the post. Scenario A is nowhere near reality, nor is Goddard's comment #1.
    "He used Hansen’s temperature data to verify Hansen’s predictions."
    As I noted in the post (and linked to supporting evidence), GISTEMP ("Hansen's temperature data") is not statistically different from any other temperature data set. I'm already seeing a pattern in these comments, that Goddard needs to work on his reading comprehension.
    "Cook offset Lindzen’s start point downwards by half a degree."
    Again, I explained that my "offset" was based on Lindzen's own comments. This is all discussed in the post.
    "He drew scenario B below Hansen’s actual scenario B"
    Again, as explained in the post, I adjusted Scenario B to reflect actual GHG changes.
    "He drew Hansen’s measured data too high."
    Shockingly, this is also explained in the post. I took the average of the GISS land-only and land-ocean data because it is most comparable to Hansen's 1988 study. In short, Goddard might want to try actually reading the posts he's going to comment on before criticizing them. Every single one of his criticisms was wrong and was explained in the post. This is pretty sad even by Goddard standards.
    "Finally a commenter on the site says this is a straw man argument since Lindzen has never made any actual predictions. It seems rather odd to me that that would be used as a defense of Lindzen"
    Yes, it's a pretty sad defense that Lindzen has never been willing to make a specific prediction of his own. It's easier to criticize than to produce. Nevertheless, Goddard and co. don't seem to dispute the accuracy of my reconstruction.
  30. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    Re: [DB]'s reply to #8..... Thanks DB, but credit for POE humor, if any, goes to my debate opponent. That guy is a committed denialist, and argued forcefully for a lot of debunked theories. Sadly, I think they were serious. (Or if it was Poe, it was there way of telling me to shut up!) BTW.... As long as we're doing regionalisms for the Arctic Ocean, how about Lac Lackice? Or "Font Carbon"
  31. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    tonydunc @23 With regard to point 1. Hansen forecast levels of CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxides and other trace gases for his three scenarios. Whilst CO2 levels are approximately at Hansen's scenario A, all other trace greenhouse gases are below his scenario C predictions. That means none of the emission scenarios Hansen envisaged actually reflects what has happened. To determine the best emissions scenario you need to consider the nett forcing from all the GHG's he considered. When you do that scenario B emerges as the closest match.
  32. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    To John Cook By the way, in the orignal article where it points to the IPCC reference: "2.9 W/m2 (IPCC AR4 Section 2.1). " it explains positive radiative forcing and negative radiative forcing, where negative would be something that would have a net cooling effect. Considering the symmetry between positive and negative, how exactly can something have a net cooling effect when it comes to thermal radiation? It could only mean less heat relative to some nominal value, while the 2.9 W/m2 is likewise more heat relative to some nominal value. When talking about less heat, we could only refer to less heat getting in during the day. If the terms positive and negative are symetrical, the 2.9 W/m2 only refers to more heat getting in during the day. Between day and night, this 100x reduces to 2.9 (day) - 2.9 (night) = 0. On the other hand, there is no waste heat day/night since this energy is being expended 24 hrs a day on the average. So the real comparision is 0.028 to 0.
  33. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    Tonydunc @23, I would really not concern myself about what someone so throughly discredited as Goddard thinks. Goddard has a very long reputation for mangling and misrepresenting the science and for being inept in scientific matters. Note too how Goddard chooses to misinform from the safety of his blog rather than come here and try to pass of his misinformation. I could say more, but this is Dana'sa post, so I'll let him reply if he feels so inclined. PS: Philippe, Goddard no longer "works" for Watts, apparently Goddard's standards are event too low for Watts. And let us not forget that Steve Goddard is a pseudonym, yet Watts allowed him to frequently post on his blog even though he allegedly has a rule about not allowing people to post under pseudonyms.
  34. Anne-Marie Blackburn at 01:25 AM on 30 April 2011
    Climate Change Denial book now available!
    Received my copy six days ago and slowly reading through it (still got two assignments to hand in, otherwise would've finished it by now). Very good read :)
  35. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    Goddard: "ONLY scenario A is reasonable to compare to Hansen's predictions" Reality: The total increase in greenhouse gas forcings projected by Hansen's scenario B was slightly higher than actual readings as shown here. Ergo, scenario A is much higher than what actually happened and scenario C much lower. Leaving scenario B (slightly higher than actual) as the only reasonable comparison. Goddard: "He used Hansen’s temperature data to verify Hansen’s predictions." Reality: Irrelevant. The variation between the various temperature anomaly datasets are negligible. Swap in any of the others, even the outlier UAH results, and it would not change any of the conclusions. Goddard: "He drew scenario B below Hansen’s actual scenario B. Note the red line above is too low." Reality: The red line is not scenario B... the yellow line is. The red was created by adjusting scenario B downwards slightly to reflect the fact that it assumed higher greenhouse gas accumulations than have actually taken place. All of which is clearly explained in the chart legend and article above. I'm still looking at the other comments, but you get the gist. Goddard's objections vary between unfounded and false.
  36. Philippe Chantreau at 00:52 AM on 30 April 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    "Mr. Goddard did not show an adjusted graph where Lindzen's parameters would show a better fit than Hansen's using any standard source of temp data." Well, duh. Goddard is the guy inept enough to maintain that CO2 could deposit as carbonic snow in Antarctica even after being presented with the phase diagram. What do you expect? Stop wasting your time at WUWT if you're really interested in learning stuff. There is such a thing as objective reality in these matters. The comment about alarmist ignoring skeptics trying to correct their mistakes is rather amusing. See this for what is done by Watts when someone tries to correct his. Seriously, there is not one minute spent on WUWT that is not wasted time.
  37. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    Ken Lambert : "If you don't think that you could conduct a conversation with the authors of the scientific papers cited on SKS, then you probably should not be commenting on them at all." I don't need to "conduct a conversation" with any author to feel that I can comment on, refer to or agree/disagree with their work. Scientists have no compulsion to attend to or "conduct a conversation" with anyone on any website, unless they feel the need to. To think that they should respond to or "conduct a conversation" with you or anyone else, is simplistic, arrogant and overbearing. Similarly, I don't feel the need to "conduct a conversation" with a literary author, or feel that said author has to be at my beck and call to discuss any issues or questions I might have with their work. But maybe that's just me. Ken Lambert : "Understanding of a scientific paper is not the exclusive domain of paid full time scientists in the field." No-one said it was. Alternately, it doesn't need the personal intervention of any author to respond to every misunderstanding, misuse or abuse of their work. And I don't need to feel that I am as good as (or as intelligent as) any scientist - paid, full-time or otherwise. Nor do I feel they are elitist, lucky or condescending. Ken Lambert : "I have conducted an email correspondence with Dr Trenberth myself - he is very approachable and generous with his responses." Knowing your opinion of him and his work (you seem to view him as an "advocate of AGW", rather than a unbiased scientist seeking the facts), that is over-generous of him. Makes me wonder, though, why you haven't asked him to appear here yourself, to discuss these matters to your satisfaction. Ken Lambert : "I could ask what we are all doing here if not to get an understanding of the science concerning 'the greatest moral challenge of our age'." Without you acknowledging the source of that quote, I will have to assume that it is from an Australian politician. If so, what does politics have to do with science - except in as much as it seems to be very important to so-called skeptics ? And, I don't know about anyone else, but Skeptical Science, to me, helps the understanding of the science, so that is why I am here. I'm not sure why you are here, though, because all I see from you is repetition, a disinclination to respond fully to the criticisms of your claims (as evidenced from your lack of detailed response to Tom Curtis or Alec Cowan, among others, on the Flanner thread) and complaints about moderation - as well as a need to fire-off personal emails to complain further. If you stick to the science, respond to criticisms without recourse to snark and/or over-weening self-confidence in your own abilities, and leave out the subjective descriptions about "advocates" or "AGW enthusiasts", you might get somewhere - as opposed to going round and round in circles, moaning as you do so. But you, of course, must do as you see fit.
  38. Lindzen Illusion #2: Lindzen vs. Hansen - the Sleek Veneer of the 1980s
    Mr. Cook, I have just read a critique of this post from Steve Goddard. He says you are wrong about almost everything related to this comparison. http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/skeptical-science-cheating-4x/ 1. "he says that ONLY scenario A is reasonable to compare to Hansen's predictions."Hansen made three forecasts, Cook picked scenario “B” which Hansen described as “a reduced linear linear growth of trace gases.” Obviously that has not happened and is not the correct one. He should be comparing against scenario A. Joe Romm says that greenhouse gases have been “accelerating super-exponentially.” 2 "He used Hansen’s temperature data to verify Hansen’s predictions. That is like trusting Al Gore’s lawyers to count ballots in Florida." I assume by this he means that Hansen himself decides what the figures are after manipulating the the numbers from the satellites, and there is no confirmation of the accuracy from other sources. 3. You "offset Lindzen’s start point downwards by half a degree. Obviously the data needs to be normalized before comparing." "4. He drew scenario B below Hansen’s actual scenario B. Note the red line above is too low." "5. He drew Hansen’s measured data too high. The thick red line below and horizontal bars are from the GISS web site. The black line above it is what Cook drew. Hansen reported 0.63 for 2010, Cook placed it above 0.7" "In summary, he used the wrong projection, he let Hansen officiate, he didn’t normalize Lindzen’s data, and he misplaced both the projection and the results on the graph." Mr. Goddard has repeatedly said you are dishonest and that global warming alarmists websites ignore comments from skeptics who try to correct their mistakes. I commented that I would be willing to post his objections since I like to hear both sides of a disagreement. I have pointed out to Mr. Gorddard that he repeatedly misrepresents Hansen's original graph, by ignoring that Hansen acknowledges the 4.2° CO2 doubling to have been wrong, so I am glad to see that he did not question that. Finally a commenter on the site says this is a straw man argument since Lindzen has never made any actual predictions. It seems rather odd to me that that would be used as a defense of Lindzen, since being the most cited ACC skeptic, it would give him much credibility to have done so and therefore have show the greenhouse effect to be as inconsequential as he maintain. Mr. Goddard did not show an adjusted graph where Lindzen's parameters would show a better fit than Hansen's using any standard source of temp data.
    Response:

    [dana1981] I wrote the post, not John.  Goddard's comments reveal that he either didn't read or didn't understand the post, as it addresses all his points.  My response is in Comment #28 below.

  39. Philippe Chantreau at 00:35 AM on 30 April 2011
    How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    All the whining by KL and chriscanaris is rather funny. Have a look here here for a glipmse of how Anthony Watts treats those who challenge him. He bans them and then asks them not to say anything about it. That's integrity, fairness and open debate, "skeptic" style. What a friggin' joke. You guys should be thankful for the excellent quality of moderation on this site. SkS has a long way to go before it gets anywhere close to the skeptic blog standards. We even continue tolerating Berenyi Peter repeated innuendos and accusations every time he misunderstands a paper. But where do skeptics protest about junk like M&M or the Wegman report? Double standards, whining about nothing. I'm unimpressed.
  40. Daniel Bailey at 00:26 AM on 30 April 2011
    Wakening the Kraken
    @ CBDunkerson In days of Oelde, it was once called Dûr Helcaraxë, the Grinding Ice. One might now refer to it as Aear Forodgalad, the Sea of Northern Lights. In Tengwar Quenya:
  41. Climate Change Denial book now available!
    I hope to get a copy today or after the weekend - amazon.co.uk sent my copy a week ago - or so they told :)
  42. A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
    KL#139: "nub of this thread is the size of the extra heat gain compared with other parts of the planet." No, the nub of this thread is the change in the northern hemisphere; in particular, the northern part of the northern hemisphere - what may someday no longer be called the cryosphere. See the Flanner paper, whose title states "Radiative forcing and albedo feedback from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere ..." So by voicing agreement with Petrovich, you must also agree with Flanner as well as the author of this post.
  43. A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
    138 Muomcounter I have no argument with your quotation. viz: "As the multi-year ice pack declines and more of the Arctic has a seasonal ice cover, more solar heat will be input to the ice–ocean system, resulting in an enhanced ice-albedo feedback" The nub of this thread is the size of the extra heat gain compared with other parts of the planet.
  44. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    JMurphy #22 "I cannot understand how anyone commenting on a website (even one as interesting and important as this one) can assume that what they have to say can be important enough to need the attention of someone like Dr Trenberth; or that the owner of said website should be spending all his hours trying to make such an interaction happen. I find that astounding. Perhaps if someone on here feels they have shaken the foundations of some of the science, they should publish in the appropriate peer-reviewed manner ?" If you don't think that you could conduct a conversation with the authors of the scientific papers cited on SKS, then you probably should not be commenting on them at all. Understanding of a scientific paper is not the exclusive domain of paid full time scientists in the field. I have conducted an email correspondence with Dr Trenberth myself - he is very approachable and generous with his responses. I could ask what we are all doing here if not to get an understanding of the science concerning 'the greatest moral challenge of our age'.
  45. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    KL: "Cries of foul always come more readily from those who see their viewpoint being demolished." "Most of it was tolerated by Moderators who were clearly on the side of my opponents" In the same post no less! Is this a new record in the self-defeating arguments category?
  46. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    chriscanaris #15 You have put my concerns perfectly. Cries of foul always come more readily from those who see their viewpoint being demolished. I am not made of sugar candy - and will slug it out with the best of them if I think the point is important enough -but the "Flanner" thread is an extreme example of crying foul everytime my opponents made another correction and bizarre attempts to impugn my motives and claim error on my part. Most of it was tolerated by Moderators who were clearly on the side of my opponents even though same were continually shown wrong in their numbers.
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] Everyone:

    It accomplishes nothing to speak of 'sides' here; if you have a point to make, state your case. If others refute your point, take their objections into consideration and, if necessary, rebut. Do not merely keep repeating 'you made a mistake' or 'I'm right and you're not.' That is schoolyard behavior. If you cannot live within rules of civilized discourse, you probably don't have much of a point to make in the first place.

    Enough carping about who said what. And most certainly, enough carping about moderation.

  47. Clouds provide negative feedback
    157, RW1,
    I do not see where the issues I've raised has been addressed or answered.
    That's because you ignore the statements that do address them. 1. Your theory is inconsistent with all of the lines of evidence which point to a climate sensitivity of 3˚C or greater. You have seen this presented to you now at least 6 times, and you keep dodging it. How does your theory account for this? Until you answer that question, your theory fails. 2. Your theory is inconsistent with the observational evidence (Dessler 2010) that demonstrates a positive, not negative, feedback in response to short-term warming. While this cannot necessarily directly support a long-term positive effect, it directly refutes your "was negative before, so must be negative in the future" theory. 3. Your argument that models "assume" and require a positive cloud feedback is wrong. While clouds do represent a large area of uncertainty in the models, it is incorrect to think that the scientists who have done the modeling have not thought things through a little more carefully, and in more detail, than you have. You cast aspersions by generalizing their work into the word "assume," and yet provide no direct evidence (other than the general positive/negative thing) that their work is not well considered. 4. Your argument that current warming "depends" on the positive cloud feedback is exaggerated, as has been demonstrated. It reduces potential warming from 3˚C to 2.5˚C or 2˚C, which while helpful is not an inconsequential amount of warming. Like many deniers, you exaggerate one point to try to make it the single, decisive, "AGW killing" argument. 5. Your argument that cloud effect is negative and would not "switch" to positive is at its root flawed and too simplistic. It's rather like saying that May was warmer than April, and June was warmer than May, so every month from now on will get warmer and warmer forever. It takes a too simple premise, and draws an invalid conclusion, because it avoids the complexities of the system. Instead of Occam' razor, your theory uses Occam's guillotine. It is based on a very broad, general, simplistic approach to the problem. It does not consider any details in the issue, such as why the current effect would be negative, or how clouds might or will change. It assumes that all effects are linear and additive. It simply takes the childishly simple view that if current net effect is negative, then a warmer climate must mean more clouds, which must mean more negative. You may feel that this logic is persuasive, and for simple minded people who like to stop thinking as soon as they see an argument that supports their predetermined beliefs, this might well be persuasive. But it doesn't persuade me in the slightest. It matters very, very much where additional clouds form in a warming world (high latitudes, or near the equator), when they exist (during daylight, summer hours, or nighttime or winter hours), and what kind of clouds form (i.e. low, reflective clouds or high, heat trapping clouds).
  48. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    JMurphy, Well said!!!!
  49. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    Chriscanaris @23 Can you please explain how the quote you gave was "reinforced" by my response ? I merely suggested a possible alternative explanation to your observation.
  50. How climate change deniers led me to set up Skeptical Science website
    les @ 17, Phil @ 21 & JMurphy @ 22: ...some people will always excuse anything from anyone...as long as they feel they are on the same side. My sentiments exactly and reinforced by your responses. Over and out.

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