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Bern at 17:46 PM on 16 April 2011Last day to vote for Climate Change Communicator of the Year
adelady - no, no, it's not 'several', it's 'many'! :-) -
villabolo at 17:33 PM on 16 April 2011David Evans' Understanding of the Climate Goes Cold
@20 Lou Grinzo: "I've talked to groups of young people from about age 12 through college about climate change, and trying to get them to understand the urgency of the situation is very hard. A small percentage of them get it before you open your mouth and nearly all of the rest smile, nod, and then go about life as if the presentation never happened." Lou; is the comprehension of the subject, by these students, due to intelligence or curiosity? -
protestant at 16:52 PM on 16 April 2011Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
"When you look at the possibility of natural unforced variability, you see that can cause excursions that we've seen recently" And here you keep citing several studies which conclude that natural variability cannot account for the LONG term trend. Christy used the word "recently". He most likely ment the satellite era which is the last 30 years. But of course you like to misinterpret and then fight against strawmen, again. And last 30 years is claimed 100% anthropogenic by the IPCC by using the GCM:s. That is false, even your own references conclude (DelSole) that internal patterns explain 0.08K/decade for the 30 year trend. Of course you failed to cite this important phrase from the paper. And only this finding alone, makes the IPCC house of cards to collapse. AND because there were similar warm periods like MWP and RWP in the past, which yet remain completely unexplained, it might mean the ocean circulation patterns and internal variability could operate in not just multidecadal but also multicentennial timescales. And we do not have the sufficient OHC data to verify anything about this.Moderator Response: [DB] "And last 30 years is claimed 100% anthropogenic by the IPCC by using the GCM:s." Strawman. Please support this statement with a link to the specific IPCC chapter where this quote is supposedly taken. Otherwise, your house of cards strawman comment invalidates itself and will be deleted as a trolling comment. -
Gilles at 16:50 PM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
scaddenp #8 Two questions : a) what is the warming rate which mankind is supposed to be unable to adapt ? b) why is it supposed to be unable to adapt to a change of temperature and able to adapt to giving up 80 % of its energy sources in some decades ? which can of rate does it give compared to historical ones ? -
Gilles at 16:47 PM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
Sphaerica : so what was the cause of initial CO2 variation ? -
Gilles at 16:42 PM on 16 April 2011Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
DM#78 : So I will help you a little bit to answer. May be you know that GCM models are commonly prone to systematic drifts that can reach 1°C/century, and have been carefully worked out throughout the history of computation to avoid these drifts , and to use "plausible" initial conditions that match just as closely as possible the steady state ? because of course we can't know what 1880 initial conditions can be ! and to conclude after that there wasn't any possibility of long term natural variations in the models ?- the main reason being that they have been carefully excluded ?Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] I didn't say I couldn't answer, but that I wouldn't, on the ground that you are trolling. You still are. If you think you have a point, download some GCM code, do some experiments, publish a paper. That would be constructive, trolling here pretending you know what you are talking about (but not providing any verifiable references of course), following multiple posts where you have repeatedly demonstrated your ignorance, just to get a bit of attention isn't.DNFTT
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Gilles at 16:36 PM on 16 April 2011How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
Dan, I was referring to developing countries, that have no infrastructures to replace because they're just currently building them, and for most of them, don't rely on private companies but on their own national ones - which interest do they have to build now useless thermal plants (one per week in China) that they should close in less than 20 years ? the only relevant argument would be "Also there is the fact that we haven't yet figured out exactly how switch off FFs just yet. This means betting on a specific low/no carbon tech brings with it a fair amount of risk with it " maybe they just don't want to take this risk ? -
villabolo at 16:19 PM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
"...we may eventually face the potentially catastrophic conditions of the Pliocene once more." @7 jyyh: "What's catastrophic is a magnitude/location/effect on people issue." Jyyh; I agree with your point. However, the last sentence in the post states "once more". It doesn't sound good since back then there was no civilization that would suffer a catastrophe and the situation was not 'catastrophic' to our ancestral Australopithecines back then. The people issue in my opinion is related to the fragility of civilization. Hence, that sentence would better read: "...we may eventually face conditions that our fragile civilization cannot adapt to, in the short time given." This brings us to a secondary but important issue that was brought out by Scaddenp @8. When comparing globally warm situations in the past with the present, mention should be made of the fact that AGW is progressing faster than natural warming events. Then one should emphasize how civilization cannot adapt to such rapid changes. -
dana1981 at 15:56 PM on 16 April 2011Debunking Economic Myths from the Climate Hearing
That's The Australian for you. At least you don't have to deal with Fox News. -
Marcus at 15:16 PM on 16 April 2011Debunking Economic Myths from the Climate Hearing
@Dana1981. Well you should have seen the clap-trap The Weekend Australian came up with last week. An article by Geoff Lehmann, Peter Farrell & Dick Warburton that was a veritable buffet & climate denier myths. Things like "Despite predictions a decade ago that severe winters would become a thing of the past, on JAnuary 7, 2010, NASA photographed Britain entirely blanketed in snow. Claims that wind power operates only at 25% capacity (when most operate at 30% to 40% capacity nowadays) & *have* to be backed up by fossil fuel power stations (when, in truth, you could use a combination of storage & non-fossil fueled base-load power to meet demand), erroneous comparisons of *generation* costs (not transmission & distribution-one of the biggest costs of large, centralized power stations) &, most amazingly of all, claims that "An emissions trading scheme, or any other action to increase the price of carbon enough to change behaviour, is bound to fail in a democracy". I mean, that last claim would *definitely* come as a shock to the people of Germany, British Columbia or the almost dozen North Eastern US states that have such measures in place-just to name the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Still, given the extent to which the fossil fuel industry is going to propagate misinformation, via their puppets in the mainstream media, they must be getting pretty nervous. -
scaddenp at 14:48 PM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
How many times do we have to say its not the future temperature that is the main worry but speed of getting there. It all about rate. Adaption is easy if you have a million years to do it - hell if its only 100 years. The Pliocene is a window on what world could look like. Some parts of the view could happen quickly, others slowly (there is limit to how fast you can melt ice). -
dana1981 at 14:30 PM on 16 April 2011Debunking Economic Myths from the Climate Hearing
The tragedy of the commons argument is really big in Australia. Understandable when you're only 1.5% of global emissions and much smaller population than the US (although just as bad in per capita emissions). Evans made the argument, so did Monckton in The Australian, so did Lindzen in an Australian interview. And Armstrong and Christy made it in the USA. It's the "in" argument for "skeptics" right now, I guess. -
jyyh at 14:27 PM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
"The Wikipedia article on Pliocene Climate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate, does not make it sound like there were any "potentially catastrophic conditions of the Pliocene"." What's catastrophic is a magnitude/location/effect on people issue. Humanity has experienced the end of the last ice age, with a rise of sea level of over 100 meters, a quarter of which is projected for this partial pressure of CO2 in the long run. It's just there are not anymore many places to run to, if/when a local catastrophe aggravated by rising seas hits some coastal city. Pliocene climate itself doesn't sound too bad, though likely there were tropical areas too hot for humans (who weren't present yet). Humidity was likely high and grassfields/savannas fewer than currently (might this have had something to do with molds and other plant pathogens, can't say). Forests possibly grew ever higher and partly induced their own diminishement at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary set by the first larger glaciation at Greenland/Arctic, Panama strait closure being the main reason, cutting the Atlantic off the tropical ocean currents and beginning the current mode of thermohaline circulation with the amount of Arctic ice, Bering Strait closure/opening, and Milankovich cycles, as the main moderators of the NH glaciations/deglaciations. (The overall warming signal should be less noisy in the SH than in the NH.) Now this is starting to drift off topic so I'll stop.Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed text. -
Marcus at 14:18 PM on 16 April 2011Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
@ Arkadiusz "Nothing could be further from the truth." Sorry, but given your tendency to believe complete rubbish, in complete contradiction of scientific fact-not just in relation to global warming, but into the cancer causing effects of dioxins & DDT-based simply on the *opinion* of a single individual, you'll excuse me if I take your claims regarding "truth" with a fairly substantial amount of salt. -
dana1981 at 14:16 PM on 16 April 2011David Evans' Understanding of the Climate Goes Cold
Thanks Lou, that's nice of you to say. Agreed, people have a very hard time understanding long-term dangers. They won't do anything until the consequences are smacking them in the face. -
Marcus at 14:13 PM on 16 April 2011Debunking Economic Myths from the Climate Hearing
Its very interesting to see this from an Australian perspective, where we have much the same kind of disinformation at play. Just yesterday I listened to Tony Abbott (leader of the Australian Tory party-aka the Liberals) siding with the Manufacturing Union (I know, I almost died of shock too) regarding "concerns" about potential job losses that could be caused to the manufacturing sector if a Carbon Tax gets implemented. Well, I could barely stifle my laughter at this, given that Abbott was a senior minister of a Government that *unilaterally* cut tariffs across the entire Australian Manufacturing & Textile sector-a move that led to the loss of *tens of thousands* of jobs. 15 years later, & I'm still waiting to see or hear of any positive developments for our economy that arose from those policies. All it really did was make our economy far more dependent on the commodity sector-thus harming our balance of trade & making our economy much more energy/CO2 intensive, than if we still had a better mix of primary, secondary & tertiary industries. I often wonder how politicians like him can internalize such obvious contradictions in behaviour & beliefs! -
Marcus at 13:59 PM on 16 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
"I think sea level rises of 20-40cms per century - which seems to be the scientific consensus - are completely manageable for 99% of humanity." Oh, well if that's what Daniel thinks-without a shred of evidence to back his opinion-then we can *all* stop worrying ourselves about the myriad dangers of Climate Change. Phew, that's a relief [/end sarcasm]. Of course, even if Daniel Maris were correct in his *beliefs*, I wonder what the cost of managing sea-level rises would be compared to....oh, I don't know, significantly cutting down on our wasteful consumption of fossil fuels? .....and still he fails to tell us, in plain simple language, his position on the Telegraph Article. Still, I've never known denialists to big on admitting the many errors of their fellow denialists. -
MattJ at 13:36 PM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
The Wikipedia article on Pliocene Climate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate, does not make it sound like there were any "potentially catastrophic conditions of the Pliocene". So this could use more explaining in the article -- unless SkS is successful in adding a description of those conditions to Wikipedia. -
Lou Grinzo at 13:12 PM on 16 April 2011David Evans' Understanding of the Climate Goes Cold
If someone wanted to know if this site was worth his or her time, I would point to this post (and the comments) and say, "If you care about the havoc we're unleashing on ourselves with carbon pollution, this is THE site for debunking those who would sell your future for their current profits." I've talked to groups of young people from about age 12 through college about climate change, and trying to get them to understand the urgency of the situation is very hard. A small percentage of them get it before you open your mouth and nearly all of the rest smile, nod, and then go about life as if the presentation never happened. It's about as depressing as anything I've experienced. -
alan_marshall at 12:51 PM on 16 April 2011Last day to vote for Climate Change Communicator of the Year
My vote is already in. -
Ken Lambert at 12:41 PM on 16 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Rob #120 Quite right Rob, your quote is in context. Dr Trenberth is lamenting the fact that "Our observing system is inadequate" to support and explain the AGW theory and that this state of affairs is a 'Travesty'. This is the classic 'its there but we can't measure it' argument, which Gillies and I would probably agree turns the scientific method on its head. Theory follows observation - is confirmed or modified by more observation - and made robust by successful prediction confirmed by more observation. Which of our AGW scientisis predicted a flattening or zeroing of OHC increase with broader and more accurate observation by Argo analysis? And which scientist came up with the idea that you can 'correct' a raw observation of 6.4W/sq.m by a reduction factor of 5.5W/sq.m and still call it evidence of a warming imbalance?? -
scaddenp at 12:28 PM on 16 April 2011CO2 limits will harm the economy
cloa513 - good points. But please suggest a better way to reduce carbon emissions that is compatible with your political philosophy. "Skepticism" about climate science because you don't like proposed solutions is illogical. -
Ken Lambert at 12:15 PM on 16 April 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
Ton Curtis #69 Sorry to hear of your mother's illness. I travelled the same path 5 years ago. Your item #3 above is incorrect too. Using your areas and depths, the heat absorbed in warming 3.8E12 m2 of Seawater 100m deep by 2 degC in 30 years is: 3.8E12 (area m2) x 100 (depth m) x 1025 (density in kG/m3)x 3.85E3 (specific heat in J/kG-degC)) x 2 (degrees C) = 2.999E21 Joules. But this is over 30 years - so divide by 30 to get the per annum number. 2.999E21 / 30 = 0.999E20 Joules/year. Close enough to 1.0E20 Joules/year. Your number is 4.3E20 Joules/year - only 4.3 times the actual number. -
Dan Moutal at 12:09 PM on 16 April 2011How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
Without going back and looking at the details, I can't be sure, but I can think of a few reasons right off the top of my head. Most importantly think of the amount of our energy infrastructure than needs to be replaced. It is one thing to make solar (or wind or whatever) cheaper than coal, but it is quite another to convince energy producers to shut down their coal fired power plants. Same thing goes for cars airplanes, ships, and pretty much anything that emits GHGs. And while some forms of FF have alternatives that are almost ready to go, some forms (or uses) of FF don't. Not yet anyways. Also there is the fact that we haven't yet figured out exactly how switch off FFs just yet. This means betting on a specific low/no carbon tech brings with it a fair amount of risk with it (which is why I would like the free market to figure it out and not the government), so any price advantage of low/no carbon tech has to be large enough to justify taking the risk. Otherwise it would make sense for companies to just go with the slightly more expensive sure bet. And there is also the massive inertia of FF interests, which brings with it a large resistance to change (this is somewhat related to the above notion, but exasperated by the immense power of FF interests) And finally there is the fact that economic models tent to overestimate the costs of environmental policy, because the underestimate the creativity of the free market. -
cloa513 at 12:07 PM on 16 April 2011CO2 limits will harm the economy
Everyone of those taxes produced a massive bucreacracy- Government would have to assess every single carbon dioxide emitter- Your IRS will need employ new people to assess a whole group of tax payers in a totally different way than they have ever done before. Every tax written is a mess of exceptions, special rules. Put in a transfer tax (involves only few extra line of code on financial institions' computing) and abolish all your other taxes. Either fire the IRS or set them to analyse the mass of new information to catch terrorists, organised crime, and general fraud. -
Daniel Bailey at 12:06 PM on 16 April 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
@ Tom Best wishes for your mother's speedy recovery; my prayers are with you both. -
scaddenp at 11:52 AM on 16 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
By way of informing other readers. The "consensus value" of 20-40cm is no. from IPCC AR4. Hard to believe that there are people who dont know the caveats associated with those no.s but to quote IPCC: " Models used to date do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedback nor do they include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in published literature is lacking. The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future. For example, if this contribution were to grow linearly with global average temperature change, the upper ranges of sea level rise for SRES scenarios shown in Table SPM-3 would increase by 0.1 m to 0.2 m. Larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise. {10.6}" In short, the no.s only include what could be estimated reliably at time of AR4 deadline. Things havent improved that markedly since then in terms of understanding non-linear ice sheet response but the no.s are clearly lower bound. The Vermeer and Rahmsdorf sem-empirical estimate (80-190cm per 100y) is the best no. published since then and would represent current consensus. -
Tom Curtis at 11:49 AM on 16 April 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
Ken Lambert @68, over the last few days I have been busy taking my mother to medical appointments and the emergency ward of a hospital (amongst other things). Forgive me if I did not respond immediately to your request to reiterate what I have already clearly stated in 54 and 56 above. -
Ken Lambert at 11:43 AM on 16 April 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
Tom Curtis, You are quick to reply to my full and clear calculation Tom, but you have so far failed to show how you calculated the 2.2E21 Joules as I have requested in #64 and #65. I was showing the heat attributable to "Arctic ice loss" and comparing with Dr Trenberth's 1E20 Joules/year number. My quick number only considered ice loss as clearly shown in the calculation and is within 20% of Dr Trenberth's number showing that the ball park is right. Don't try to make it something else. Show me how you got to 2.2E21 Joules in your original calculation at #54. Why can't you show that? -
Tom Curtis at 11:30 AM on 16 April 2011Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
climatewolf: 1) Skeptical Science did not draw the debate into, what I agree are, irrelevant minutia - Muller did. And before that McIntyre did, and Watts did, and so on. Your suggestion is a suggestion that no response be made to Muller's slanders, but not responding will not make the slander cease to exist. It will just continue to exist, but in a vacuum in which the truth is not available for the general public. 2) Although Skeptical Science has responded to Muller's slanders with this post, that does not in anyway obviate the fact that they have discussed the substantive issues in great detail with other posts. And it is those other posts that get highlighted in the side bar under the "Most used skeptic arguments". 3) A noted biologist (I forget who) once said that he got into debating creationists to see if their arguments could highlight genuine flaws with the logic of evolutionary theory. After 30 years of debate, he expressed his complete disappointment, for not one substantive issue had been raised. Something very similar can be said about the "skeptics". Most of their objections are based on either a complete misunderstanding of basic physics, or of climate science, or of basic empirical facts and nothing else. Others of their objections amount to magical thinking. There are a few people amongst the "skeptics" who are on the fringe of science in that their "scientific" work, while sparse and of low quality, does actually discuss real issues - but even they are prone to publishing shere nonsense in popular forums (including in testimony to congressional inquiries). 4) This means that rebutting "skeptic arguments" may be very informative to the lay public in that the arguments play on common misunderstandings, and the rebuttals, therefore, clear up those misunderstandings. But rebutting those arguments contributes almost nothing to the advance of knowledge about our climate. -
climatewolf at 11:13 AM on 16 April 2011Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
Hi again, Apologies, I just realised I did not respond to one of your points. I do not believe all sides have equal weight, I believe the sceptics should have their chance to challenge, and should be responded too. As this site says, it is important to challenge and question everything to ensure that the science is the best we can make it. So, I believe the sceptics have their place, as do the their challengers. Regards Wolf -
Daniel Bailey at 11:10 AM on 16 April 2011Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
@ Rovinpiper For more background on past predictions of models and which have come to pass as expected, see http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html. HTH, The Yooper -
climatewolf at 11:03 AM on 16 April 2011Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
Hi Daniel, Thanks for the reply, I agree with all that you say and as a layman, I am trying to get to grips with as much of the science as I can. I thought I made it clear I completely agree that Muller is wrong. My point was more about whether the argument should be drawn down to this level. Without the scientific background I find myself more able to comment on the debating logic. To clarify the 50/50 skeptic statement. I am fully convinced that the burning of fossil fuels by man has increased the Co2 content of the atmosphere and hence has had a warming effect on the climate. My scepticism is related more to the political rather than the science side. So 50/50 means agree with the science, disagree with the politics. Regards WolfModerator Response: [DB] Understood. Just remember that politicians have but one goal: getting re-elected. When it comes down to science vs politics, the science has far more to trust. Have the courage to believe what the science you've learned tells you. And then learn some more. And ask questions here if you need help. -
Bob Lacatena at 10:58 AM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
4, Gilles,...but I really don't understand
The first accurate thing I've seen you post all week. Seriously, though, in this case you are confusing yourself, and making things far more complicated than they need to be. Why do you say "if the variation is not due to an external cause and not the injection of CO2?" That statement makes no sense to me, because I don't see where it came from. You go on to say:...what is really measured is the sensitivity of CO2 with respect to...
What is measured is not CO2 with respect to temperature or sensitivity of temperature to CO2. What is measured is sensitivity of temperature to temperature. That is, any forcing that drives the temperature up (or down) by X will actually drive it up (or down), after all feedbacks have come into play, by a total of 3X to 4X. It doesn't matter if the initial forcing is from CO2 or something else, or if part of the positive feedback is from CO2. The takeaway from this is that if we drive CO2 to a point where we expect it to raise temperatures by 1˚C, climate sensitivity will further drive temperatures farther up by a total of 3˚C to 4˚C. -
Daniel Bailey at 10:50 AM on 16 April 2011Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
@ climatewolf "as a 50/50 skeptic" and "I look to the deniers/skeptics to ask questions" With all due respect, CW, taking the position that (in climate science) both "sides" have equal weight (which you imply by your looking to the denialists for questions to ask) shows how far you truly have to go to become informed. There is no shame in being uninformed in regards to things climate. Getting an interdisciplinary background in enough depth to gain even a rudimentary understanding of the field is hard work. To be honest, it's a pain in the ass, taking dedication, sweat and perseverance beyond measure. In reality, there are 3 "sides": 1. Those who've spent a LONG time studying the field and are trying, as best as they know how, to share that hard-won knowledge. 2. The uninformed masses who are understandably preoccupied with the struggle to stay alive long enough to see another morning dawn 3. Everyone else. This includes the disinformationists, like at CA or WUWT, the Kochites, the Idso's, Moncktonites, the Heartlanders, etc. They are well-funded and they are legion. They simply do not have the facts or the science on their side. We do the best job we can to provide the most fair-balanced and objective science-based and sourced articles that we can. Period. Truth is truth. Right is right, wrong is wrong. Muller is wrong WRT the topic of this thread. Period. So, whenever possible, get to the source. Read the studies themselves, the peer-reviewed journals where possible. Exercise your skepticism of the disinformationist side: demand from them fair balanced pieces based on the science. Check their sources for proper quotation & interpretation. And check ours as well. /Rant The Yooper -
Tom Curtis at 10:43 AM on 16 April 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
Ken Lambert @66: 1) You forgot to compensate for the lower density of ice, which is 917 kg/m^3 which reduces your figure to 1.07*10^20 Joules per year. 2) You forgot to include loss of ice from the Greenland ice shelf, which is around 250 gigatonnes per year, which requires 0.835*10^20 Joules per year to melt. 3) You forgot the annual average increase in arctic (>80 degrees North) temperatures of 2 degrees over 30 odd years. The area of the increase is 3.8*10^12 m^2, and assuming an average depth of 100 meters warmed, with a specific heat of 3.93 KJ/Kg, represents 4.3*10^20 J per annum. 4) You forgot to include melted permafrost (which I can't quantify). 5) You forgot to include increased heat taken to the ocean depths by the thermo-haline conveyor (which again I can't quantify). 6) You forgot to include reduced seasonal snow cover (which again I can't quantify). 7) You forgot to included any reduction in heat transport from the tropics due to the reduced temperature gradient between tropics and arctic (which again I can't quantify). Once you have factored in all these factors, perhaps then you can make a sensible comparison to Flanner's estimated increase in forcing due to loss of sea ice. -
Alec Cowan at 10:41 AM on 16 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
@Gilles #119 You are just repeating the technique with some variations. You simply repeat the quote of phase 1 in shortened version ("The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming") but preceded by your "Trenberth was talking of the lack of warming of oceans and curiously, he said " what is quite a fabrication. Why don't you quote the whole e-mail? You are just playing with language: you play with "oceans" trying to suggest it was the whole oceans, you play with "the observations" trying to suggest "all observations". What tops it all is your "problematic observations" and "we need to find another explanation". The first one suggest there are observed values that are "problematic" because the observer doesn't like what she observes. That's the way you work, not the observer. The second one, instead of looking for the missed values, it suggests a theoretical substitution is needed. You simply carve each word and try to get the most of your disinformation techniques. When you start quoting the original e-mail we'll be able to start analyzing what he said. -
climatewolf at 10:29 AM on 16 April 2011Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
Hi All, I totally agree, if Muller is referring to the Mann 1998 reconstruction then he has his facts totally and utterly wrong as the "climategate" affair is to my mind entirely proven as relating to the Briffa not Mann reconstruction and its inclusion in the WMO article. I assume therefore that from Mullers POV, ANY reconstruction that follows the Mann 1998 basic shape is fair game as being a hockey stick graph. My concern is whether by getting into this level of detail you are getting drawn into the debate over the minutia rather than the keeping the discussion where it belongs on the overall big picture. I completely get that this site is here provide good scientific evidence to refute deniers. You do an excellent job of that, but as a 50/50 skeptic I look to you to provide me with a balanced logical aproach so that I can make informed judgements and decisions. I look to the deniers/skeptics to ask questions, many of which should be asked I look to the sites such as this to provide answers. Getting drawn in on these minor issues to my mind dilutes the argument until we end up with a witch hunt on who said what when and how. Anyway, just my thoughts. Regards Wolf -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:28 AM on 16 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Gilles... You really need to look no further than the two sentences that follow in the actual email in order to understand what Trenberth was talking about: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate." [My emphasis.] -
adelady at 10:25 AM on 16 April 2011Last day to vote for Climate Change Communicator of the Year
logicman - I think we're now into the territory best described as 'several'. -
Gilles at 10:12 AM on 16 April 2011How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
sorry but why does he estimates that the tax must reach so a high value if alternatives are much cheaper ? i don't understand - as soon as the tax makes FF more expensive than alternatives, people should switch to them - so why go so high ? -
Gilles at 10:02 AM on 16 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
"1st)Your interpretation coincides with that of the "climategate mysticism", that is, phase 1: some words out of context are taken away and presented as a conspiratorial theory" sorry, but the words seem perfectly in the context - Trenberth was talking of the lack of warming of oceans and curiously, he said "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming" - I don't see out of which context it could be ? "; phase 2: the person behind the words make clear he/she didn't mean it that way; " he didn't say that IMHO. He said that it didn"t think that it meant that global warming has stopped - but nevertheless, he really said that there was a lack of warming in the observations - that required an explanation. I really don't see what worries you : there are obvious problematic observations (the lack of warming of the known heat sinks), and we need to find another explanation. That's a very current situation in science, so I don't see why you are so reluctant to understand thatResponse:[DB] Still oh-so-wrong. Cue Dr. Trenberth himself:
In my case, one cherry-picked email quote has gone viral and at last check it was featured in over 107,000 items (in Google). Here is the quote: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability.
The paper on this is available here:
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001.
This paper tracks the effects of the changing Sun, how much heat went into the land, ocean, melting Arctic sea ice, melting Greenland and Antarctica, and changes in clouds, along with changes in greenhouse gases. We can track this well for 1993 to 2003, but not for 2004 to 2008. It does NOT mean that global warming is not happening, on the contrary, it suggests that we simply can't fully explain why 2008 was as cool as it was, but with an implication that warming will come back, as it has. A major La Niña was underway in 2008, since June 2009 we have gone into an El Niño and the highest sea surface temperatures on record have been recorded in July 2009. -
Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
Riccardo - So true, so true; in RSVP's universe that hot ball of gas doesn't emit thermal radiation... Reductio ad truly absurdum - (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") -
Gilles at 09:46 AM on 16 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
but I really don't understand : if the variation is not due to an external cause and not the injection of CO2, what is really measured is the sensitivity of CO2 with respect to temperature , not the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 - in other term, it is the other factor of a retroaction loop B=dCO2/dT and not A = dT/dCO2 (actually the dT/dCO2 is B^-1) what is true is that the product A.B = f , the retroaction factor, giving eventually a 1/(1-f) amplification factor. But f must be <1 to avoid a catastrophic runaway, meaning B^-1 > A , so the dT/dCO2 measured is an upper bound of the sensitivity - NOT the sensitivity. Of course a large amplification factor means f close to 1, so B^-1 is close to A , giving an approximate equal value. However this assumes that f is really close to 1 ... -
logicman at 09:42 AM on 16 April 2011Last day to vote for Climate Change Communicator of the Year
Moderator Response: [DB] "I'm not the smartest kid on the block" That makes... (counts on fingers)... two of us. :) Make that - er - well, one more than two. :) -
dana1981 at 09:19 AM on 16 April 2011Video on why record-breaking snow doesn't mean global warming has stopped
Very nice job John and Matthew! -
Chris Colose at 09:09 AM on 16 April 2011David Evans' Understanding of the Climate Goes Cold
Jay Cadbury, Richard Lindzen was correct to point out that C-C only tells us the upper bound on the amount of water vapor that can build up in the atmosphere (i.e., for any given temperature, C-C tells you how high you can make the partial pressure of water vapor before the vapor starts to condense into liquid or ice). C-C doesn't actually say anything about whether that upper bound is reached, and in fact in a global sense, the atmosphere is not at saturation. Even more to the point, there is no simple theory for how the free troposphere humidity should change in a warming world, as this involves an interplay between dynamics and fluid dynamics and cannot be reduced to the C-C relation. What's important for the water vapor feedback however is that the water vapor "concentration" goes up with temperature, and if *relative humidity* is nearly invariant over a small range of temperature changes, then that means the vapor pressure at least scales with the percent increase you'd expect from C-C, so both the saturation and specific humidities must rise proportionally. Even if relative humidity goes down by some unknown drying mechanism, it would take quite a bit for this to overwhelm the C-C equation and force the feedback to be negative, and this is not seen in any observations or models, and is completely inconsistent with the magnitude of climate changes in the past. There are conceivable ways in principle to make a negative water vapor feedback without violating any first-principle physics, and Lindzen proposed one idea for doing so back in the '90s but observations didn't support his hypothesis...that's when he gave that idea up and jumped onto a cloud thermostat instead, the so-called "IRIS hypothesis." A large number of papers by the likes of Brian Soden, Andrew Dessler and others who work at the interface of modeling, observations, and theory have shown that the water vapor feedback is unequivocally positive. -
logicman at 09:08 AM on 16 April 2011Arctic Ice March 2011
I have been a bit slow with my writing due to illness. Today, I finally managed to finish my April ice report. In it I show how the way that the Nares ice bridge formed led me to predict a too early breakup. http://www.science20.com/chatter_box/arctic_ice_april_2011-78127 -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:06 AM on 16 April 2011It warmed just as fast in 1860-1880 and 1910-1940
I'm pretty convinced this is Poptech based on a Mises rant that I dragged out of him one day. -
pbjamm at 08:29 AM on 16 April 2011It warmed just as fast in 1860-1880 and 1910-1940
KR@99 While it is technically possible to change your IP, and Poptech has admitted to being a computer system administrator (or something similar)I do not think that Adam is the same person. They employ alot of the same arguments and technique but the tone is different. I have encountered these same arguments and methods from people I know are not Poptech. Adam != Poptech in my opinion, but they are are equally wrong.
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