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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 88451 to 88500:

  1. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    muoncounter 378 "Can't argue with you there. Summers are hotter than winters; late-afternoon is the hottest part of the day. Is this news? Was this in need of an explanation?" Depends. Someone might want to believe that a day temperature high was higher (in late Spring for instance) due solely to the extra minutes that the Sun had radiated that day, when in fact it is in the main due to heat that was progressively accumulating throughout the season. As long as the pulse is ON, the energy is building, and idea that is perfectly consistent with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.
  2. How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
    per tonne of CO2 equivalent emissions, I think... hmmm, might have to do some digging, but for now lets assume my memory isn't completely bonkers.
  3. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Umm, the amount of carbon is greater and sealevel is higher. The RATE of change is another story. The closest thing you can get to prediction of rate from climate response that I know of is Vermeer and Rahmstorf. Nothing unexpected here. Your use of 'catastrophic' has no meaning without definition. Perhaps a better way to approach the problem is to ask what predictions from WG2 do think is not going happen with respect to sea level rise?
  4. Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
    77 - but weren't 2010 conditions "implausible" in 1880, since conditions of 2010 were never met 100 years ago ? "Who cares about the "characteristic relaxation timescale for an "implausible" initialization to reach quasi-steady state?"?" I care, and I think you should. This is not trolling : its give an indication of the maximum period of variability that the model is able to simulate. 76 - Albatross : if the relevant citation is ""When you look at the possibility of natural unforced variability, you see that can cause excursions that we've seen recently", I think it's perfectly true in computer simulations since some runs show sometimes variations of 0.6 °C in three decades - but anyway as I said it not really a proof of anything.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Sorry I am not going to respond to your trolling anymore. If you think there is a problem with the initialisation of the models, download some code and see if you can demonstrate it. Report back here when you are done. I suggest others do likewise and DNFTT.
  5. How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
    sorry is your $200 per t CO2 or per t C ?
  6. CO2 is plant food
    Did the title change on the twin post,"Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Increasing Carbon Dioxide, as 'plant food', is not good for plants."
  7. CO2 is plant food
    Correction on the above post. Should read: 1. CO2 is plant food. 2. CO2 is good for agriculture. They're the same idea but the layman might search for one phrase versus the other. Hence the possible title change to incorporate both phrases.
  8. CO2 is plant food
    John (JC); I really don't see the need for redundant posts. It's somewhat like the multiple "planets warming" posts that can and have been incorporated into one rebuttal. The general public may have heard of both statements (titles): 1. CO2 is plant food 2. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Increasing Carbon Dioxide is not good for plants. Nonetheless, for the sake of streamlining, there should be one rebuttal. Perhaps the title could be changed, in order to capture the attention of the layman whose mind might be more focused on one phrase rather than the other. If you think that re-titling, for the sake of removing redundant posts, is recommended please let me know and I will think of something.
  9. Daniel Bailey at 14:20 PM on 15 April 2011
    Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
    Found it. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985. That makes 313 consecutive months with temperatures above the 20th Century average. Not that anyone expected that... Betcha that streak continues for some time. The Yooper
  10. Daniel Bailey at 13:54 PM on 15 April 2011
    Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
    Thanks for that. That Chevelle pic brought back memories (we had a '71, retrofitted as an emergency response vehicle: 375 engine, glass packs, skid plate, everything...hit the gas & watch the oil companies profits spike on the tach).
  11. Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
    Looks like some time in the late '70s: [source] But everything was cooler in the '70s.
  12. Daniel Bailey at 13:31 PM on 15 April 2011
    Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
    Hey, muoncounter, do you remember offhand the last month that was cooler than normal? IIRC, it was sometime in 1985, but I can't remember exactly (and am too tired to look it up). Been toying with writing a post on that subject. Like the odds on throwing "heads" with a coin 300+ consecutive times... Thanks, The Yooper
  13. Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
    Rovinpiper#3: "failing to explain the relatively low amount of warming that we've seen?" Apparently you missed the point of this post? Its in the large blue letters at the top of the last paragraph: Warming is Consistent with What We Expect As if that wasn't enough, there are half a dozen other threads on climate sensitivity, which all say the same thing. And a few on predictions made as far back as 1988 which pretty much called it. If you've been paying attention, this isn't news.
  14. Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
    Thanks for the reply, Dikran. So are these AOGCMs that incorporate aerosols also failing to explain the relatively low amount of warming that we've seen? If not, why don't mainstream climate scientists simply respond to the claim that, "Earth hasn't warmed nearly as much as the models predicted..." with "That's not true, the model of lead author et al. (year) accurately portrays the warming of the past 35 years." ?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Given that we've just exited the warmest decade on record, which was warmer than the 90s, which was warmer than the 80s, etc, what "relatively low amount of warming" do you refer to?
  15. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Marcus - Sorry - that was a quote from the Church and White Paper (2011) cited by Scaddenp. It doesn't seem to accord with the impression given by various posters here of an inexorable increase in the rate of sea level rise ending in catastrophic inundations. However, I think you've been instructed by DB not to engage with me on this, so be careful.
    Response:

    [DB] Church and White 2011 make no attempt to project future SLR trends; you'd know this if you'd have read it.  A look at their trends:

    C&W 2011 Trends

    And the overall trends in global MSL:

    C&W SLR 1860-2009

    The overall trend is greater than linear; in order to hit the expected rise of 0.8 to 1.2 (or more) meters rise by 2100, the trend will also have to continue to increase in greater-than-linear fashion.  This will have great implications for various countries around the world, something the "various posters" here have tried to convey.  Why? A non-linear increase in trend won't stop on a dime...

  16. Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
    Steve McIntyre's "documentation" leaves a lot to be desired. After arguing strenuously that the data was not available until after September 08, he admits in an update that evidence clearly shows it was available on Sept 12th, 08. From that he concludes that it was updated on Sept 9th, on no other evidence than that that date post dates his FOI inquiry; and despite information from the website administrator (Osborne) that it was updated in August 08. Curiously, the NCDC cache of data for Briffa 98 was last updated on "Wednesday, 20-Aug-2008 11:23:45 EDT", which is consistent with a decision to publicly release the data in August of 08. Thus McIntyre is shown to follow his consistent pattern of promulgating the most negative possible view of the "hockey crews" actions which are not actually contradicted by the facts. Muller, in the meantime, misinterprets the facts presented by McIntyre to create an even more negative fantasy.
  17. Daniel Bailey at 11:48 AM on 15 April 2011
    Solar Hockey Stick
    Re-reading Trenberth's rede, I think he actually used the word "tapestry"... Anyway, I'm sure Spencer & Christy can figure it out, given a decade or two to parse it.
  18. Solar Hockey Stick
    Yooper#68: "observed tendencies in S at a global scale were much smaller" I don't understand this: using satellites to estimate surface solar flux and the estimate (S) doesn't match the actual surface data? Sounds like a travesty to me.
  19. Daniel Bailey at 11:39 AM on 15 April 2011
    Solar Hockey Stick
    From Pinker et al 2005: "The satellite-based record of surface solar fluxes from 1983 until 1992 does suggest some dimming, followed by an increase after 1992, as seen in numerous ground observations." And "The magnitudes of the observed tendencies in S at a global scale were much smaller in magnitude than those reported from ground observations." The Yooper
  20. Ian Forrester at 11:33 AM on 15 April 2011
    Solar Hockey Stick
    Eric said:
    Sensitivity is not a constant, it varies as a function of weather. It is likely that sensitivity was higher in the 1990's and enhanced the CO2 warming. It lowered in 2000's to amplify less.
    Where on earth did you find that nonsense? Sensitivity is dependent on physics and the laws of physics do not change on decadal time frames.
  21. A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
    Tom Curtis #62 Moderator: This is from #54 "The average change in sea ice area since 1978 during the summer is a reduction of 2 million square kilometers, or 2*10^12 square meters. That means the average additional energy received in the arctic summer due to global warming induce melt back is 2.2*10^21 Joules, or about a third of my rough estimate." I need to see how Tom Curtis calculated the original 2.2E21 Joules. I see how he got from 2.2 down to 1.7 in #56.
  22. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    "the most recent rate of rise over these short 16 year windows is at the upper end of a histogram of trends but is not statistically higher than the peaks during the 1940s and 1970s." Care to cite your source Mr Maris, or is that too much to ask of you?
  23. How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
    @ Giles Depends on the specific resource. As I recall the tar sands became viable when oil was roughly 30-40 dollars a barrel. But lets do a back of the envelope calculation: According to wikipedia tar sands are estimated to emit about 67 megatonnes by 2015. So a $200/tonne tax would increase the oil sands extraction costs by almost 13.5 billion. And that is only half the story, because energy consumers will emit more GHGs when they burn the oil, so they will also have to pay the carbon tax. All of a sudden low/no carbon technologies begin to look really attractive.
  24. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Scaddenp, If sea level rise is supposed to track carbon, how do you explain the following: "the most recent rate of rise over these short 16 year windows is at the upper end of a histogram of trends but is not statistically higher than the peaks during the 1940s and 1970s." Surely the amount of carbon is far higher now in the post 2000s with China and other countries' industrial expansion than was the case in the 40s and 70s but we seem to have the same sort of pattern of rises. Why?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Let us all observe Dikran's sage advice and refrain from enabling daniel's apparent trolling until he states an unequivocal position on the Telegraph article in question. Daniel's comment above, without any context to the topic of this thread, is off-topic.
  25. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Michael, update to Church and White (2011), at Church & White 2011. Data for paper here.
  26. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Daniel, you do realise that sealevel rise is just one of the negatives from rapid warming that concern us? (see global warming, positives and negatives for more). Disruption to water cycle is probably the worst but also the hardest to forecast accurately at regional level. Population growth is a problem for the future too but rapid warming will compound it.
  27. Solar Hockey Stick
    "Pinker (2005) finds that from 1992-2001 TSI at the earths surface increased" Sounds like this Pinker et al 2005: Sustained decreases in [solar radiation at the earth's surface] S have been widely reported from about the year 1960 to 1990. Here we present an estimate of global temporal variations in S by using the longest available satellite record. ... We observed an overall increase in S from 1983 to 2001 at a rate of 0.16 watts per square meter (0.10%) per year; this change is a combination of a decrease until about 1990, followed by a sustained increase. Using satellites to estimate surface; yet somehow the estimate differs from the actual surface data?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Scooped by the muoncounter, a fried keyboard (long story) and the need to re-register with Science online...full copy here (requires free registration with AAAS).
  28. Solar Hockey Stick
    Agnostic at 09:52 AM on 15 April, 2011 Do you have a link or more complete reference to that paper? It is at odds with the known TSI time series... unless he means the rising side of the Schwabe cycle. Source: NASA
  29. michael sweet at 10:34 AM on 15 April 2011
    Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Daniel, Please cite scientific papers when posting on this site. A denier eyeballing the data with no numerical analysis does not add up to anything believable. This real scientific paper was cited earlier in the thread, obviously you missed it. Recent satalite data shows greater sea level rise.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed URL (missing equals sign).
  30. Solar Hockey Stick
    The article notes that Vieira et al report that TSI has not increased over the past 50+ years. However Pinker (2005) finds that from 1992-2001 TSI at the earths surface increased at a rate of 0.16W/m2/y. Are Pinkers findings relevant?
  31. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Fred >As to the “higher is colder” mechanism, 978,it has nothing to do with back-radiation ... If increasing CO2 concentration elevates the emission point (for the sake of the argument) outgoing radiation will be reduced. Since the temperature of the surface and troposphere isn't reduced with this mechanism, the total amount of energy radiated must be the same (per Stefan-Boltzmann). If the total energy radiated stays the same, but the amount radiating upwards from the atmosphere into space is reduced, what do you think happens to the energy that used to radiate upwards? If it's no longer radiating upwards, in what other directions do you suppose it's going?
  32. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    JMurphy, Thanks. Point taken :)
  33. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    This is amusing, in a rather painful fashion. RSVP - Does your "accumulation" not warm the Earth? Does that temperature rise not radiate more IR, acting as a limiting feedback? If the climate response takes (for the sake of argument) about 40 years to fully respond to a forcing, you're only looking at the unrealized warming of the last 40 years, perhaps half the energy output of the last 150 years. That means that half of the warming (0.005C) has been realized, and that half (0.005C) is yet to be realized. And when it is, well, the Earth will radiate a teeny bit more IR. You're still claiming that energy use is somehow qualitatively different from greenhouse gas entrapment, that the heat from energy use doesn't radiate IR like the heat from the sun and take part in the Stefan-Boltzmann negative feedback and boundary conditions. That, to put it mildly, is ridiculous!
  34. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Albatross wrote : "Now you are seriously referring us to a web page by McLean? Sorry, yet another source with dubious credibility. He is not much better than the much discredited Monckton in fact. if you are going to try and make compelling arguments please use citations from reputable scientific journals. And please do not try and advertise yourself as speaking for the majority of lay people or tax payers or the masses, you clearly do not-- that is another 'skeptic' meme that is doing the rounds" daniel maris is clearly following a favoured scatter-gun tactic of the so-called skeptics and shouldn't be fed. As well as the McLean link and claim to represent the masses that you mention, previous comments have included suppositions about the (desperate) possible effect of silting of rivers; dismissal of the accuracy of tidal guages (presumably because they don't give the results required); claims about the IPCC giving out misinformation, because of Pachauri's involvement over the Himalayan glaciers mistake; links to WUWT and Christopher Booker - those paragons of scientific rigour (ahem); claims about not being convinced about things that he doesn't want to be convinced about; and (also in the posting you referred to) reference to the possible overthrow of democracy and the (very sad, of course) inability of those pesky scientists to get out of their elitist ivory towers and explain themselves properly to the ordinary man and woman in the street - thereby leaving them at the mercy of the denialists (which is, of course, to be regretted...probably). No more feeding needed, I believe.
  35. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP#376: "an overall accumuation which would basically explain how termperatures generally peak somewhere past noon and in summer months." Can't argue with you there. Summers are hotter than winters; late-afternoon is the hottest part of the day. Is this news? Was this in need of an explanation? "with waste heat we have a relatively low level but very long energy pulse " Do you have any empirical evidence for the accumulation of waste heat? Do you have any response to the evidence which shows that waste heat accumulation is invisible on IR, despite the fact that solar heat accumulation is quite visible?
  36. Dikran Marsupial at 08:43 AM on 15 April 2011
    Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
    Gilles@76 The method I have already suggested (using the observations for a randomly chosen day) is guaranteed to give plausible initial conditions. We know they are plausible because the actually happened. You only need to know what "implausible" means for the meaning of an implausible initial condition to be obvious - a set of initial conditions that are impossible or extremely unlikely. Who cares about the "characteristic relaxation timescale for an "implausible" initialization to reach quasi-steady state?"? There is no reason a climate modeller would want to initialise a model in an implausible state. The question is nonsense and frankly just blatant trolling, you know it, I know it and everybody else knows it.
  37. The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
    Alec Cowan #112 Happy to engage you on any of the numbers rather than the bullsphere Alec. Trenberth was highlighting the fact that in Aug09 when his now famous paper was published - he could not account for more than about 60% of the warming imbalance which was postulated by Hansen in 2005 (0.9W/sq.m) Since then; Knox and Douglas published a paper in Aug10 which showed that 2003-08 data for OHC content was flat or slightly negative (cooling)for the top 700m and *deep ocean* of approx +0.09W/sq.m (Purkey & Johnson). The paper cites five Argo studies for 0-700m OHC by Willis, Loehle, Pielke, Knox & Douglas show **negative** OHC change, while von Schukmann (0-2000m) is the outlier showing +0.77W/sq.m. I would like know if the Knox & Douglas paper has been contradicted or its findings overturned by more recent studies. If not, then Trenberth's lack of warming is still with us, and in fact has gone from finding 60% of Hansen's 0.9W/sq.m to finding almost **none** of it.
  38. How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
    "Jaccard's calculations indicate upwards $200 per tonne of emissions is ultimately needed. " and what is the "natural" price per tC above which you can produce profitably the amount of unconventional resources , that the tax is supposed to avoid, by comparison ?
  39. How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
    "You are also making the typical mistake of assuming there's an immediate bump in production as a result of new exploration; even in the best of times, it can take years. " Ok, let's admit it takes years to develop fields. So can you explain this kind of plot , showing how EIA's forecasts have been wrong these last years : there are actually two weirds things to explain : first, how they can have been so wrong in the short term scale, since fields need years to be develop, they should have known fairly well the rise of production in the years after 2005 - where no rise at all occured actually. And second, where have the more-than-15 Mbl/d disappeared in 2030 (more than the Saudi arabia or Russia production), in only 3 years ? if it the a matter of years, we should have plenty of time to find and exploit them , even after a rather limited plateau around now (which shouldn't last if you believe them...) But do you believe them ?
  40. A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
    Tim Curtis #62 Are you going to reply with your calculation?
  41. Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
    Gilles, stop arguing strawmen and quote mining stolen emails and trolling and making sweeping generalizations. Feel free to believe that all climate modellers are inept. That is just pure folly, but you are of entitled to you beliefs, no matter how misguided or incorrect. i'm sure those 'skeptical' scientists who do modelling are perfectly credible in Gilles' eyes, oh wait...and oh dear, and oh my. Now you still have not answered my question @62, electing instead to float red herrings ;) Why do 'skeptics' have such an awful time of it staying on topic?
  42. Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
    OK, I believe you know GCM computations :) . So explain me how you find that "the initializations are plausible...." ? (and what is a "implausible" initialization ?) a related question is : what is the characteristic relaxation timescale for an "implausible" initialization to reach quasi-steady state ?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Feel free to respond if you wish, Dikran, but it is obvious that you are being trolled here. [Dikran Marsupial] No problem I spotted it, as noted in my reply.
  43. Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
    Dikran @74, Re the book Ann Henderson-Sellers knows her stuff. I have not read the book, but the authors have an excellent track record, so you probably will not be disappointed.
  44. Rob Honeycutt at 07:48 AM on 15 April 2011
    Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
    This is all pretty basic and well documented stuff. I'm really curious what Muller is up to. Either he's just blatantly avoiding this information, or he's circling in a sphere where these things don't get discusses,... or there is something more deliberate in what he's doing.
  45. Dikran Marsupial at 07:44 AM on 15 April 2011
    Christy Crock #3: Internal Variability
    Gilles@71 Yes, you do have to start from an initial condition, however, as I pointed out they don't affect the output if left to "burn in". If you doubt the truth of that, download the source code for, say GISS Model E, and try it for yourself. Reproducing Easterling and Wehner would be a good experiment, see if the initialisation makes a significant difference to the result. As long as the initialisations are plausible, I predict that it won't. There you are, a Popperian falsifiable prediction, go for it, prove me wrong. The comment about me not knowing about GCM computations gave me a good laugh. Lets leave it at that shall we? ;o) Albatross, I have had a look though this book on climate modelling in my local bookshop, looks nice, I have been tempted to buy it on more than one occasion, but have not done so yet.
  46. Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    "It seems to me perfectly reasonable for the public to want to see some good evidence that things are changing for the worse and that carbon reduction will address the issue. " That would be IPCC WG1 and WG2. However, what we find is that taxpayer would rather believe in fairies than accept unwelcome news. If you get bad medical news, then getting a second opinion is a good idea. Going to a witch-doctor because he will tell you that's actually okay is not.
  47. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP@376 "Remember that on the average this energy is being liberated day and night all over the planet non stop...no breaks, no nights no winters." How much energy are we talking about here?
  48. Muller Misinformation #2: 'leaked' tree-ring data
    Another hallmark of scientific training is, when you get something demonstrably wrong, you acknowledge the evidence and the error and move forward. There's no shame in this -- it's how science progresses. So let's see if Prof. Muller can simply say "You know, on the 'hide the decline' thing, I just got it wrong. Turns out ... " I'm not holding my breath.
  49. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    skywatcher 374 "You have some bizarre ideas" Not sure if you believe that that energy accumulates for a given location as it moves from sunrise to noon, yet I do think this happens. I also consider this diurnal radiant forcing as a pulse with a a duty cycle that goes from nil to 100% depending on the latitude and season etc. Similarly, you have a longer energy pulse superimposing this one with a 50% duty cycle spanning six months for each hemisphere. Superposition would therefore result in an overall accumuation which would basically explain how termperatures generally peak somewhere past noon and in summer months. Energy that carries over through the mins is therefore accumulating. In the same way, with waste heat we have a relatively low level but very long energy pulse that started with the Industrial Revolution, wherein the peak has not yet been reached. Remember that on the average this energy is being liberated day and night all over the planet non stop...no breaks, no nights no winters. Given that this pulse has been on the increase for around 200 years, it should take that long just to discharge this same energy. If as you say, waste heat is just another forcing, the same rules should apply to it for the way heat accumulates in the upswing phases of diurnal and annual solar cycles. But if you find this bizzare, please let me know in what way. Thanks.
  50. Dikran Marsupial at 07:04 AM on 15 April 2011
    Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
    Can I suggest we ignore Daniel, he has demonstrated he isn't remotely interested in the evidence, and is just another troll. Another argument debunked, no acknowledgement, just move on to the next item on the list... I pointed out earlier in the thread that is the behaviour of a denialist, well it was your choice Daniel.

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