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Bruce Frykman at 03:00 AM on 14 April 2011There is no consensus
RE: Bob Carter's claim is that no evidence exists for an anthropogenic source for recent warming. He made no such claim. I believe you have inadvertently created a straw-man. Bob Carter clearly has stated that carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas and that we are releasing more carbon into the fluid surface of the earth. Of course he also points out the fact that agriculture (wheat fields etc) represents another facet of anthropogenic climate change. It's the fact that growing crops and burning fossil fuels appears to redound to well understood benefits for mankind that recommends these activities to us. Computer modeling of various input scenarios might be interesting, but none of these models are predictive in nature and have established no such understanding towards making some reasoned fact based decision that curtailing either is in fact beneficial. These are thrusts of his claims. -
Dikran Marsupial at 02:56 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
@pohjois Yes, I expect many of the others on the list are also sea level specialists, but I stopped looking when I found one that wasn't excluded by Morners apparent objection to modelling rather than observation. Doesn't say much for Christopher Booker as a journalist; the main fault is his for publishing Morner's accusations without checking. -
Gilles at 02:48 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
concerning this post, I have changed a little bit my mind after reading carefully what Trenberth said . Let's listen to him : "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." So : Trenberth actually said there wasn't any measurable , or much too few compared with theory, warming after 2004. So the "lack of warming" actually means what it means : no measurable warming. What he stresses is that he doesn't think this means there is no warming - he thinks that warming will "come back" - but this must be taken as the opinion of a respected scientist, not a fact, nor a truth of course.Moderator Response: [muoncounter] The Trenberth diagram has been pored over in great depth on a number of prior threads. This usually results in the following suggestion: If you disagree with Dr. Trenberth, why not take your objections to his published work directly to him? We'd love to hear the results of that conversation. -
Gilles at 02:41 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Albatross : then why are you posting unclear statements that require further explanation? I can't see what was wrong with #83 after your remarks ? 88 Sphaerica ; it is unclear because your statements are too vague : what warming? do you speak of temperatures? energy? on which timescale ? 100 years? 10 years ? answers are not the same ! FF are bad : I can't see why a class of hydrocarboned molecules would be bad or good. If you mean that burning FF brings more problems than they solve - I don't share this point of view, at least up to now. There may be a point where it starts being true, but I don't know where it is, nobody has clearly told me , and I'm not sure we will reach this point anyway. Anything else unclear ? -
Berényi Péter at 02:32 AM on 14 April 2011More wind, bigger waves, changing marine ecosystems
Interesting. It can explain recent Arctic warming. As you know, the thermohaline circulation is not a heat engine. It does not generate mechanical energy, it is a net consumer. Also, it does not warm the deep ocean, it cools it, because dense saline water in the North Atlantic can only sink to the bottom if it gets as cold as possible without freezing. And it can do that only if some cold dense water is removed from the abyss by another process operating elsewhere, otherwise it would get saturated. This other process is turbulent vertical mixing. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics Vol. 36: 281-314 (Volume publication date January 2004) DOI: 10.1146/annurev.fluid.36.050802.122121 VERTICAL MIXING, ENERGY, AND THE GENERAL CIRCULATION OF THE OCEANS Carl Wunsch and Raffaele Ferrari Now, turbulent vertical mixing is driven by breaking internal waves at ocean boundaries or at prominent bottom features like mid ocean ridges. There are two equally important energy sources for feeding these internal waves, tidal excitation and winds. Most of internal wave generation by wind (80%) occurs in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. If winds (and surface waves) were getting more intense there during the 23 years at the end of the last century indeed, that means more mechanical energy was fed into the conveyor belt which brought in more relatively warm surface water to the North Atlantic. However, winds are driven by pressure differences in the atmosphere which in turn are generated by temperature differences. On the other hand according to GCM calculations GHGs are supposed to make atmospheric heat distribution more even. Of course that's not what has happed above the Southern Ocean where the continent in the middle (Antarctica) is cooling while its surroundings (including the Peninsula) are warming slightly. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:32 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Adam said... "Once again, that is evidence of warming, not human-caused warming." And once again, you are missing the forest for the trees. Warming, whatever the mechanism, must have a source. It doesn't just get warmer for no reason. Climate scientists have been looking at this intensively for decades now. We know current warming is not the sun. We know it's not part of the orbital pattern. We are clear that it's very unlikely to be cosmic rays. We know it's more than just internal variability (PDO, AMO, etc.). We know the radiative properties of CO2, the rising concentration rate in the atmosphere, and the role of GHG's in regulating the climate system. Literally, there is only one very unequivocal answer.Moderator Response: [DB] Everyone, please take the various components of Adam's misunderstandings to more appropriate threads. He has been advised that this post is indeed about the uniform response of Greenland's varied glacier types to the warming of the Arctic. Please confine your discussions on this thread to that topic. Your enthusiasm, admirable as it is, needs to be focused and measured. Please set a good example for our current (and future) guests and participants here. Thanks! -
Adam at 02:27 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Albatross, “People, including me, have explained to you why those statements are wrong...and you simply ignore them or dismiss them.” “Wrong, and please do not patronize me. Your dismissive attitude and ignorance on the science are offensive to me as a scientist.” Why don't you actually provide examples of what you are saying, instead of just repeating 'faith claims'. I am skeptical of AGW, which should have been clear from my posts. Mspelto, once again, like I said,I agree with what you are saying in your article. I don't deny that there have been dramatic melting of glaciers. I just disagree, with the causes of it. ( -Snip-).Moderator Response: [DB] Off-topic digression into causation snipped. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:14 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Adam... (Sorry moderator if this is going OT.) Just as a simple example of climate please watch this video. This is just a video of water vapor circulation on the planet. What it illustrates, though, is how varied and dynamic the climate system is. You are approaching the climate system as if it were some kind of homogenous unit where a given forcing is going to raise all ships in the harbor equally. This is just not the case. You have to look at what is happening in a very wide variety of locations over a longer span of time in order to see what effect a forcing is having on the broader climate system. Quite literally, what you are doing is looking at one segment of one data series for one location on the planet and trying to extrapolate what it "should" be doing in response to a global forcing mechanism. What we are doing here at SkS, and with Daniel's article, is looking at Greenland as one data point that is broadly consistent with the collective global data on temperature and physical responses (e.g., ice loss). You need to step back from the data a bit, Adam. You're missing the forest for the trees.Moderator Response: [DB] "Mauri & Daniel's article" -
Adam at 02:11 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
"For example, Polyak et al. (2010) conclude that the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice in unprecedented in the past 200 years and cannot be explained by known natural variability." Albatross, 200 years ago the planet was in the midst of the little ice age, therefore you would expect the ice to higher then. A 200 year period is two short a time span, when comparing changes in Arctic sea ice. You have to look back several thousand years and see what it was like. Read Mckay et al (2008)Moderator Response: [DB] The LIA is off-topic here. -
Bob Lacatena at 02:09 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Gilles has 23 of the 88 posts on this thread, and yet I'm still not clear on where he stands. Last thread he seemed to admit that there was global warming and that FF were bad, but insisted that they could never, ever be eliminated, so we shouldn't even try. Here he seems to be insisting that the globe hasn't warmed and isn't warming. Once again, just so that all casual readers can be clear, I'd like to challenge Gilles to (in a single, brief post, without digressing into all of his supporting evidence and irrelevant tangents) express exactly where he stands on the topic of this post (i.e. how a statement by an important and respected climate scientist was clearly and manipulatively taken out of context by people who simply don't like what the facts and science have to say). -
Albatross at 02:08 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
"Albatross, I have not insulted you or anyone else on this blog, so I can't see why you are insulting me." Wrong, and please do not patronize me. Your dismissive attitude and ignorance on the science are offensive to me as a scientist. Let us start with basics. Do you accept the theory of AGW? -
mspelto at 02:06 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Adam we do not really care what you believe. Dan and I did not state what we believe in the post. It is what has been observed, there is not a singular glacier type that responds in the same way to climate. And yet the climate signal unlike anything we have seen before in Greenland is yielding a synchronous response in basically all Greenland glaciers. These large glaciers are generally slow to respond to climate fluctuations. However, the current climate deviation is large enough to have generated the widespread and ubiquitous response of glaciers.Moderator Response: [DB] Thank you, Mauri. -
Albatross at 02:06 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
People, including me, have explained to you why those statements are wrong...and you simply ignore them or dismiss them. -
dana1981 at 02:04 AM on 14 April 2011Solar Hockey Stick
I actually just wrote this post because I found the Vieira study interesting and wanted to see how their TSI reconstruction would influence global temps in the present and past. I didn't have any pre-conceived notions, and in fact I was surprised how small the TSI contribution to previous climate changes was. I think a key result here is that the blade of the solar hockey stick corresponds to a TSI radiative forcing 10 times smaller than the blade of the CO2 hockey stick. Invoke all the indirect effects you want, you're pretty darn unlikely to overcome that factor of 10. -
Adam at 02:02 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Albatross, "This statement is just plain wrong: "The simple facts about Greenland's temperature variaitons, simply contradict AGW" And so is this one, "mspelto, there is no anthropogenic signal in Greenland's climate. " Could you please explain how those statements are wrong. "Surely you reallize the folly of suing a point location to disprove a theory which dictates that the planet's mean temperature will increase as GHG concentrations increase? " Albatross, polar regions are especially sensitive, much more than the rest of the world. I think you'll agree that patterns in the Arctic and Greenland are very important for the whole theory of anthropogenic global warming. ( -Snip- ) "Any thoughts on that and the fact that glacier mass around the world is in decline? And please don't trot out something from Monckton et al., or some select examples of glaciers that are not losing mass. The point is that global glacier and ice sheet ice volume is decreasing as the planet warms. " ( -Snip- ) "Folks here are infinitely better informed than those at disinformer blogs like WUWT. Why, because we actually follow the science without distorting and cheery-picking and misrepresenting it :) " Albatross, I have not insulted you or anyone else on this blog, so I can't see why you are insulting me.Moderator Response: [DB] Digressions into warming causation snipped. -
There is no consensus
Bruce, The specific topic of this thread is "is there a scientific consensus". Displaying the opinion of a single scientist does not refute this claim. Nobody is arguing that dissenting opinion does not exist, only that it is a small minority when considering those with the most expertise on the subject. Bob Carter's claim is that no evidence exists for an anthropogenic source for recent warming. That claim is addressed here and here. Please review those posts and place any relevant arguments within the appropriate thread. Thus far you have not provided any specifics about why you doubt AGW (and this thread would not be the appropriate place to do so). -
Albatross at 02:01 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Gilles, sorry, but I'm trying very hard not to feed the troll-- they have insatiable appetites :) -
dana1981 at 01:59 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
I think we can combine Dikran #1 and pohjois #5 with CompFedUp #4 - apparently Morner thinks he's the only real sea level expert in the world. As I said, even "experts" need data to support their claims. Morner has none. -
Dan Moutal at 01:58 AM on 14 April 2011How I lived through a carbon tax and survived to tell the tale
@Gilles " the economic rules seem to be very flexible following what we want to demonstrate !" Please go back and read my previous comments, then go listen to the interviews I posted. The reason why high extractions costs wont reduce emissions has already been answered. (hint tar sands) @ Harry Seaward "How was more than 100% returned? Where did the "extra" come from?" Mostly from personal and corporate income taxes. The act which introduced the carbon tax also introduced tax reductions elsewhere. It turns out that these these tax reductions were larger than the amount collected by the tax. Hence more than 100% reduced. -
Albatross at 01:57 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Adam, " All I have done is state my opinion on the matter, and provided evidence for it." Actually no. Also, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. I am willing to entertain the notion that the recent acceleration in loss of ice from Greenland is partly attributable to regional affects and natural variability. The inconvenient fact for those in denial about AGW remains though that Box and others have considered natural variability, and it alone does not explain recent events in the region, or the planet as a whole. For example, Polyak et al. (2010) conclude that the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice in unprecedented in the past 200 years and cannot be explained by known natural variability. You are ignoring the elephant in the room Adam. And to be frank, you also appear to be trolling.... -
Albatross at 01:48 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Adam, This statement is just plain wrong: "The simple facts about Greenland's temperature variaitons, simply contradict AGW" And so is this one, "mspelto, there is no anthropogenic signal in Greenland's climate. " Surely you reallize the folly of suing a point location to disprove a theory which dictates that the planet's mean temperature will increase as GHG concentrations increase? Also, as shown to you @26, Dr. Box, the person who generated the graph that you showed, does not agree with your assessment. Anyways, I thought this thread was about the rich variety of glaciers? Any thoughts on that and the fact that glacier mass around the world is in decline? And please don't trot out something from Monckton et al., or some select examples of glaciers that are not losing mass. The point is that global glacier and ice sheet ice volume is decreasing as the planet warms. And please don't try and tell us that the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining ice, it is not. Folks here are infinitely better informed than those at disinformer blogs like WUWT. Why, because we actually follow the science without distorting and cheery-picking and misrepresenting it :) -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:41 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
The sad part is that the popular press gives these people credibility. They are the "controversy" and controversy sells news. -
Adam at 01:36 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
"Dismissing an expert with a handwave on the experts turf does not make a convincing argument. Try to find some better data. " Michael Sweet, I have provided peer reviewed studies to support my argument, all of which were published within the last five years. I am sure that would indeed mean that they were reliable data sources. I am not 'dismissing an expert'. I do not know anything about mspelto or his work, but I am sure that he is probably a respectable scientist. I have not treated him badly. All I have done is state my opinion on the matter, and provided evidence for it. I have just tried to have simple debate, and explained why I have disagreed with him on some points. Could you please explain how I have treated him badly?Moderator Response: [DB] You reveal your ignorance by dismissing Mauri's comments & insights. Mauri is a published, working glaciologist. Even the most abbreviated Googling of his name would have shown you that, had you bothered to acquaint yourself properly about glaciology and Greenland. You lack the background to make the sweeping statements you have been making on this thread. That, sir, is the embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect. -
Bruce Frykman at 01:36 AM on 14 April 2011There is no consensus
This following interview with Bob Carter might be useful to this debate. Bob Carter, to me, seems to be a mild and reasonable fellow who also speaks with a soft and pleasing accent regarding the heat of climate change that is indeed man-made; the heat of the debate seen here and all over the world as well. He is in fact a paleoclimatologist. I subscribe entirely to his comments here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfMB1BpPqsU&feature=watch_response_rev http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbASZUXbDME&NR=1 Would this place either himself or me, as one endorsing his comments, as "a denier" in the vernacular of the partisans here who either speak-for the editorial process of this website or are indeed directly involved with it. Your comments are welcome. -
Albatross at 01:32 AM on 14 April 2011Solar Hockey Stick
Shawn @47, "I agree that recent history has been predominantly driven by anthro forcings. This does not rule out a substantially larger potential influence for solar and solar related phenomena IMO." Onr the first point we can all agree. So can you please stop entertaining hypotheticals and what ifs, and making unsubstantiated assertions? Occam's razor applies here-- as Dana patiently explains again @46, the science shows that one quite simply does not need to invoke GCRs, or some hitherto unknown and mythical solar-related forcing to explain the observed warming in the SAT record. Period. That is the point of the thread. But you seem to be trying to inflate uncertainty and fabricate doubt. Now where have I seen that trick before ;) -
michael sweet at 01:26 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Adam, Do you realize that mspelto has devoted hs life to studing glaciers and has spent a considerable amount of time measuring ice melt in Greenland? Please do not treat this expert so badly, we are lucky to have him here to tell us what informed people think about the Greenland ice. Dismissing an expert with a handwave on the experts turf does not make a convincing argument. Try to find some better data. -
pohjois at 01:21 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
@Dikran Few minutes of googling reveals that Jonathan M. Gregory, C. K. Shum are also experts in sea level. -
Gilles at 01:19 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
albatross, does it mean that you contend that Trenberth's estimate does rely on a precise value of the TSI ? -
CompFedUp at 01:16 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
I was at EGU2006 and a group of us were "enjoying" Mörner's poster on sea level rise, with his famous tilted graph, much like in this post. We all noticed that all his references were to his own work. As we were all amusing ourselves, the man himself walked up to defend his "work". Basically he ranted that he was the #1 world expert on sea level, and that none of us knew anything. We pretty much just wandered off at that point. -
chrisd3 at 01:15 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
Gotta love this comment from page 12:Sea level (anomaly in millimetres) is rising at just 1 ft/century: The average rise in sea level over the past 10,000 years was 4 feet/century.
Of course, "the past 10,000 years" includes a good bit of the post-glacial sea level rise--which was essentially finished by 7,000-odd years ago. So, taking the average over the last 10,000 years very nicely obscures the fact that almost all of that rise occurred in the first ~3,000 years. It's certainly more to Lawd M's liking that this more accurate caption:Sea level (anomaly in millimetres) is rising at just 1 ft/century: The average rise in sea level over the past 7,000 years was, well, practically nil.
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shawnhet at 01:14 AM on 14 April 2011Solar Hockey Stick
muoncounter #44, you are not understanding the context of what I was discussing with dana. We were essentially discussing whether it was appropriate to equate indirect solar effects with direct solar effects times a constant factor. For the graph in question, part of the time TSI and inverted GCR lie on top of one another which is consistent with such a formulation. However, this relationship does not hold all the time. And, as I'm sure you know a constant can also be a negative number. Cheers, :) -
Albatross at 01:13 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Alec, "Alec, I try to imagine what you think Trenberth has actually done to get his 0.9 W/m2 value imbalance - he certainly did NOT use any accurate value of TSI. He doesn't care about the precise value of TSI." Pay no attention to the confusionists. As you see from the quoted text, the trolling, slandering and misrepresentation of climate scientists by contrarians and "skepticsa"continues.....what a travesty, and a perfect illustration of the very problem highlighted in this essay by Villabolo above. -
dana1981 at 01:09 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
I think this post contains all you need to know about Morner. He is claiming that sea level hasn't risen (in fact that it's dropped) since 1950, which directly contradicts the observational sea level record, and yet Morner and Monckton provide not one shred of evidence that they're right and the observational data is wrong. Unless you count comically rotating the sea level graph, that is! -
Adam at 01:08 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Daniel Bailey, I do not believe that my comments were off topic. I'm sure you'll agree that the actual cause of glacial melt, is pretty important for the whole theory of AGW. Now do you believe that post 1980 Greenland warming, and all the glacial melt described in your article is due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases? ( -Snip- )Moderator Response: [DB] Off-topic discussions of causation snipped. My opinions of causation of the observed warming are not on-topic for this thread. You are trolling. -
dana1981 at 01:04 AM on 14 April 2011Has sea level rise accelerated since 1880?
daniel #104 - indeed, funny timing mentioning Morner, since I just published a post (linked by Dikran) which discusses his claims. The short answer is that opinions are like a-holes, everybody's got one. What Morner doesn't have is any data whatsoever to back up his claims. Calling him an "eminent expert" is also not warranted. -
pbjamm at 01:04 AM on 14 April 2011Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
This is deja vu all over again... As DM@737 points out, until RSVP provides some evidence (the kind with measurements and numbers and math)there is nothing here but supposition. -
shawnhet at 01:02 AM on 14 April 2011Solar Hockey Stick
CBDunkerson:"How do you square that opinion with the dis-correlation cited in the article? That is, "...TSI has not increased over the past 50+ years. During this time the surface temperature has increased approximately 0.6°C." I agree that recent history has been predominantly driven by anthro forcings. This does not rule out a substantially larger potential influence for solar and solar related phenomena IMO. Cheers, :) -
Dikran Marsupial at 01:02 AM on 14 April 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
Daniel Maris has enquired about an interview with Prof. Morner, that appeared in the Telegraph. This is quite a good test of skepticism, as it contains an easily verfied, but clearly false, claim. The article says: 'When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one".' The relevant chapter is available here, and the second name in the list of contributing authors is Anny Cazenave, who is very obviously a sea level specialist (judging by her CV). She is leading expert in sea level measurements by satellite altimetry, and obviously has a solid background in geophysics. The fact that the Telegraph article is brought up so often just goes to show that some are happy to accept wild claims that suit their position without bothering to check the facts first, even when they are easily verified by a couple of minutes Googling. Morners claims about the IPCC fudging the satelite data are also without foundation, I'll return to them later. -
Adam at 01:01 AM on 14 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
mspelto, short term trends are not statistically significant, and therefore cannot be used to come to a conclusion on different issues. Once again, I agree that the years 2003 and 2010 were unusually warm in Greenland, but you have to look at the long term and decadal trends, you can't just focus on little bits. Look, all of the dramatic glacial melting you describe in your article may seem unusual, but as shown by the papers I provided, and Dana's own graph, the warming is not anomalous when compared to previous periods of warming. If you take out the 2003 and 2010 spikes of Dana's graph you will see that there is nothing unusual with Greenland's current temperature. mspelto, Greenland has heat waves about every 60 years, and in between those, there are cooling trends, which is what the data shows. mspelto the last decade is not the 'key'. You need to look back and compare it. You need to look at all the facts about Greenland's past climate, and use it to find about how unique Greenland's current climate is. And as the data shows, the current Greenland temperature is not unprecedented in it's history. -
daniel maris at 00:38 AM on 14 April 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Vladimer K - Each country has to look to its own energy solutions. For huge swathes of the globe solar energy is an obvious and good solution. In the UK we are blessed (if that's the right word) with a lot of wind. We should certainly maximise that. But that's not the end of the story. We already have 16% hydro generation of electricity. That can certaily be increased with use of mini-hydro. Exploitation of tidal and ocean current with turbines could probably add another 20%. Energy from waste can deliver huge amounts of energy. Biofuels are another option. Geothermal as well. And wave will increasingly become important. In my view we've only see the beginning of exploitation of wind. There is lots of scope for urban wind generation with a new generation of wind turbines that are multi directional and operate at low velocities. Germany is also investing a lot in carbon capture. I don't know for sure but I think some or all of those new coal power stations may come in with carbon capture. Nuclear power is an inherently dangerous technology. If safeguards fail you are faced with a crisis that can remove huge numbers of people from their homes on a semi-permanent basis and take out huge swathes of productive land. It is also now very expensive. About twice as expensive as gas. You could have gas with carbon capture for the same price. We may have cold fusion before too long, if Rossi's claims are shown to be accurate (we shall see, I'm not saying I accept them). Hot fusion is a long way off. Cheap onshore wind power (costing less than nuclear) is here and now. -
dana1981 at 00:35 AM on 14 April 2011Solar Hockey Stick
Eric, it's not just the stratosphere cooling, it's also the higher layers of the atmosphere. You're also ignoring many other 'fingerprints' of anthropogenic warming. The biggest thing the "skeptics" are missing here is that as Icarus noted in #41, we know the CO2 forcing to a high degree of accuracy, and it's very large (nearly 1.8 W/m2). If you want to argue that this forcing isn't driving global warming, you need both a low climate sensitivity and a larger "natural" forcing. The TSI forcing alone is an order of magnitude smaller than the CO2 forcing alone. I'm sorry, but indirect solar effects like GCRs aren't going to make up that extra 1.6+ W/m2. -
skywatcher at 00:29 AM on 14 April 2011More wind, bigger waves, changing marine ecosystems
#2, why not check out the How much is sea level rising? on this very site. Neither Morner or Booker have a good track record for verifiable information on sea level or climate. -
skywatcher at 00:25 AM on 14 April 2011More wind, bigger waves, changing marine ecosystems
Excellent article indeed, a mine of information, and most interesting for one who lives in Scotland and occasionally experiences the wind and waves of the North Atlantic! The most noticeable element of your windspeed plot is the large increase in the western equatorial Pacific - is there a particular reason for that? -
daniel maris at 00:23 AM on 14 April 2011Has sea level rise accelerated since 1880?
I am not, in any case, entirely convinced there has been any increase in seal level. What about this article featuring the views of an eminent expert. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html Why don't Dr Morner's views count for anything?Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Funny you should mention that. I'd be happy to discuss Morner if you like, but first I suggest you look into it in a bit more detail, starting with using Google scholar to look up his papers on this topic and then the responses which completely refute his accusations. Then ask yourself why Morner doesn't mention this in his Telegraph artcle. -
Gilles at 00:21 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
"About your "my guess;none", well, guess again and read carefully the same paper you quoted. You can play with words but the only "stupid"(I'm quoting you) thing here is your insistence in not providing the real A to criticize and argue departing from a bunch of imaginary As." Alec, I try to imagine what you think Trenberth has actually done to get his 0.9 W/m2 value imbalance - he certainly did NOT use any accurate value of TSI. He doesn't care about the precise value of TSI. Do you understand why ? -
Gilles at 00:15 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
"If the energy budget were well constrained by the data Trenberth would not have made the comment that is the subject of the article." Yes but sorry, the OP was about two kinds of interpretations : interpretation a) : the global value of 0.9 W/m2 imbalance has been validated by measurements (note that this COULD have been true if the TSI and TOA outgoing flux would have been measured with a good enough precision), but we have still some problems in the repartition of this energy on the ground/ocean/ice etc.... interpretation b) : we don't have any validation of this value from global incoming/outgoing fluxes, and besides, some problems in the repartition of this energy on the ground/ocean/ice etc.... the simple facts is that as I understand the OP, one could think that the right interpretation is a) (and I'm afraid that a number of readers/writers on this thread think or have thought that), whereas , actually, all the scientific literature is saying it's b). I think it is worth being stressed - that's why I do it. Alec : thanks to give this example to your students - for me, this is a good piece of real scientific dispute, with the sake of accuracy and rigor. Concerning the "flaw" in the theory, I would simply say that it is too imprecise yet to be fully tested against data - that's far from being exceptional in science, I can give you a dozen of similar examples. I'm not saying it's bad science , I'm saying it's normal scientific research on still unresolved issues - and as it, full of uncertainties. Give that to your students, please.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] The usual misinterpretation of Trenberth's comment is different from both your (a) and (b) in that it is more along the lines of "we don't even know if the Earth is gaining energy". We can know that the Earth is gaining energy from indirect evidence, even if that is not "validated" by direct observations, so there is no inherent contradiction there AFACIS. -
RSVP at 00:14 AM on 14 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Alec Cowan 80 "If there were a flaw in the theory..." If? The study of nature has now become the study of how man is unable to adapt to it, or is destroying his environment. Believing this helps fund the promotion of flawless theories. What we can actually learn from studying nature at this point is just an added bonus, so I do believe some good is actually derived from all this. -
skywatcher at 00:12 AM on 14 April 2011Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
RSVP #362: You have some bizarre ideas. "the idea that if you tuck away a small amount over time, after many years there will be a significant pile left over." "It is my understanding that AGW assumes "all things being equal" in terms of the natural average trend, so if all things are equal, the added heat can only be accumulating." Wrong. The added heat is a forcing (and a trivially small one at that), and the energy will only accumulate so long as the energy lost from Earth is less than the energy coming into the system. A forcing that introduces a warming does not lead to an endless runaway heating, thank goodness(!!!), but to a slight warming that soon results in the warmer Earth radiating away slightly more energy to balance the heat entering the system. The larger the forcing, the longer Earth takes to come to equilibrium, at which point heat no longer accumulates in the system. The GHG forcing is much larger, resulting in a longer time for Earth to come to equilibrium, and a much greater knock-on effect in the form of feedbacks which exaggerate the warming. Eventually, Earth will come to equilibrium, with excess heat being radiated away balancing higher temperatures, a new lower albedo, and higher GHG concentration. Where that equilibrium is, and the size of the changes that it has effected on the Earth's surface, are non-trivial questions for humanity. The waste heat forcing is tiny, and so the Earth system can relatively easily reach equilibrium with this small extra forcing, which results in a total warming that is virtually undetectable in temperature records. #366 - your comment makes little sense, but I'd be interested to know where you think the greatest temperature difference should be, at the source of waste heat, or in the Arctic, far from the sources, given that as you say, the heat spreads out through diffusion? -
Dikran Marsupial at 00:08 AM on 14 April 2011Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
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RSVP at 00:02 AM on 14 April 2011Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
muoncounter 370 It's not music we have to face, but waste heat.
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