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Comments 90751 to 90800:

90751. garythompson at 00:50 AM on 30 March 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       At the suggestion of the moderator I will take an OT discussion from another post to here. referencing a comment in another thread I have a question related to the number of weather stations related to a given area. Why is it ok to have 8 data points (i.e. temperature stations) to represent a global region composed of a circle with a 1,500 km radius (which is what the GISS data does for the north pole area)? If you look at the dark red area on the picture below and then click on the center of that dark red region on the GISS site you'll only find 8 sites that have continuous measurements over the past several decades (continuous through 2011). and here is a link to a screen capture showing the list of stations that are less than 1,500 km from the point I clicked.
90752. Bob Lacatena at 00:29 AM on 30 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       Pertaining to the moderator response to #12:

       ...replacing 1 with the left arrow tag and 2 with the right arrow tag...

       As an FYI, you can (or should be able to) include a < or > in a post by replacing them with < (meaning "less than") or > ("greater than"). For example, here is your HTML example as you would type it:

       <a href=""><img width="450" src=""></a>

       And here is how it would come out:
       (There's a small chance this won't work, that your post-processor is going to convert everything before showing it... if so just delete this post and ignore it. Also note that you can't exactly use the preview function, because that converts stuff... the preview will look fine, but it will undo your post so your subsequent submit is wrong. To use preview, copy your text before hitting preview, look at the result, but then paste your copied text back in and change that).
       Moderator Response: [DB] Thanks; good to know that. When I get the chance, I'll add more tips & hints to the posting tip section here.
90753. Ken Lambert at 00:28 AM on 30 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       No matter how 'hide the decline' is rationalized by the details of the 'trick', the issue here is **intent**. And the intent is clear - to 'hide'. To hide what?? 'The decline' - a piece of proxy temperature data which did not fit with instrumental temperatures which were rising - not declining. Overheard private conversations (or emails) have a strong ring of truth. The players here wanted to 'hide' a bit of data (whatever its quality) which did not fit the script. When this is accepted as the only logical explanation for using the term 'hide' - then one has to ask why leaders in their field of science would need to do that. One explanation is that they really believed that their case was already weaker than they would like and any contradictory data needed to be 'hidden'. Another is the judgement that the public must be shown a consistent story and hiding the dubious data is justified on that basis. Either way, the intent to 'hide' anything in a scientific publication is a perversion of the scientific method.
90754. SNRatio at 00:22 AM on 30 March 2011
       Dana's 50th: Why I Blog
       #48 Gilles: Think of my example of estimating domestic energy consumption from individual house recordings/estimates - without having any net result readings - think of it like everyone being off-grid wrt utilities. You can pick a huge variety of estimators, using parameters like area, temperature, construction type and building standards, types of heating, appliances etc. If you construct estimators from disjoint sets of such parameters, you may be on the way to producing independent estimates, and the choices may represent different methodologies. If, then, different methodologies end up generating very similar estimates for the distribution of consumption, this will normally be considered significant, because with real independence of parameters (their "readout", that is), you would not expect that to happen by chance. In the climate setting, temperatures and their distribution throughout the atmosphere, integrated radiation balance and sea level could be examples of independent indicators. The parameters themselves are of course not independent, but our measurements of them are. The same could also apply for modeling: When different sets of assumptions and approaches produce similar results. And when we are basically searching for a probability distribution, large variance does not have to mean low precision - we may have a precise estimate of this huge variance, and we may even get localization measures like expectation right. But with large variance, it may be important to try to identify covariates in order to estimate better - think of latitude and land/sea neigborhood area ratio in the case of domestic energy consumption. In climate sensitivity, there is much uncertainty about possible covariates - and what is a good way of modeling. Covariates are typically intensively used in regression approaches, but with complex feedback mechanisms, less simplistic approaches may be necessary. Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen both argue that sensitivity is very low, and as long as their hypotheses are not physically impossible, their estimates have some positive probability. Because water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, and its lifetime may be just a few days, instant feedbacks may depend on a lot of hard to sort out factors. Some of them give higher, some lower CO2 sensitivity, and it may be possible to cherry-pick conditions to support quite different sensitivity estimates. What counts in the long run, is the long-time average of the sensitivity, but this may in fact be impossible to predict in advance with high precision. #46 actually thoughtful: Defining standards, either by regulation or by customer expectations, may help. As consumers, we are inclined to behave opportunistically rather than long-time rationally. And this is perfectly natural - estimating long-term results may be very difficult. When I built my house about 30 years ago, I knew that some decisions were completely irrational according to the standards and assumptions made then. But I have never regretted them, and now, most are integrated into Norwegian building code (without me talking publicly about it at all).
90755. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 00:22 AM on 30 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       One note. According to the latest research does not exist - however - something like: "divergence problem". A critical evaluation of multi-proxy dendroclimatology in northern Finland, McCarroll et al., 2011.: “Of the individual proxies, δ13C performs best, followed by maximum density. Combining δ13C and maximum density strengthens the climate signal but adding ring widths leads to little improvement. Blue intensity, an inexpensive alternative to X-ray densitometry, is shown to perform similarly. Multi-proxy reconstruction of summer temperatures from a single site produces strong correlations with gridded climate data over most of northern Fennoscandia.” Spatial and temporal stability of the climatic signal in northern Fennoscandian pine tree-ring width and maximum density, Tuovinen et al., 2009.: “At all four sites, the correlation between maximum density and June to August mean temperature is lowest in the latter half of the 20th century, but split sample tests with strong verification statistics (RE and CE) show that this represents a quantitative change in the strength of the correlation with climate, rather than a qualitative change in the nature of that relationship, and thus does not invalidate climate reconstructions.” In many regions, the high-latitude NH the “modern warming” - it is just very small ... However, tree-rings in some high-latitude locations diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. - so: this sentence, that is - quite simply - wrong. P.S. By the way tree rings (the stable carbon isotope ratios of pine treerings) talks a lot about the reasons for the old warming: Cloud response to summer temperatures in Fennoscandia over the last thousand years, Gagen et al., 2011.: “A negative shortwave cloud feedback is indicated at high latitude. A millennial climate simulation suggests that regionally low temperatures during the LIA were mostly maintained by a weaker greenhouse effect due to lower humidity.” Not a word about CO2 ... So the question arises: who "sows" disinformation more ...
90756. John Brookes at 00:03 AM on 30 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       wingding, do you have a link to where David Archibald predicted that?
       Moderator Response: [DB] I believe a version can be found here.
90757. Ken Lambert at 00:03 AM on 30 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
       Bern #50 "When you include carbon pricing at $150/tCO2, then solar PV is cheaper than coal right now. Given that it's projected to be cheaper than coal *without* carbon pricing by 2020, you'd have to be a mug to think a coal-fired plant is a good investment. Either that, or have a lot of friends in government who can keep up a supply of tax breaks, subsidies, and barriers to entry to keep other players out of 'your' market." A few comments needed here Bern. With PM Gillard and Prof Garnaut offering a carbon price of $25/tonne, and you suggesting $150/tonne to get Solar PV competitive, then one can see how tokenism works. With Australia contributing 1.5% or less of all CO2 emissions and the USA and China doing over 40% - the idea of saddling ourselves with a tax which has negligible impact on world temperatures (if one believes all of the CO2 effect is real), is patently adsurd. Your points about wholesale prices for coal fired generation remaining static and the 8 cent/kWhr increase paying for the distribution network are instructive. The distribution network can be hooked up to any generation source including feed-ins from anyone with a Windmill, Solar PV or Fumarole with an inverter. How incompetently the formerly Taxpayer owned utilities were privatized and split the generators from the distributors, is a whole other story. It is a tale of politicians setting up retailers to 'compete' against each other to supply you with power form the same pooled source. A nonsense of semi-regulation and lucrative $400K jobs for the mates retiring from State Parliaments and a trail of finance spivs and 'consultants' who conned the gullible into this brave new world of deregulation.
90758. Mighty Drunken at 23:57 PM on 29 March 2011
       Dana's 50th: Why I Blog
       Giles, I think SNRatio's point is that there are many different estimates for the climate sensitivity due to a doubling of CO2. For instance it may be based on a simple radiation model where the sea is modelled as a slab or a complex model which accounts for ocean currents, aerosols and other GHGs. You could look at the history of the Earth to determine its response to CO2 or look at modern data and estimate the climate sensitivity. If these methods come up with a similar figure than you would be more certain that those figures are reasonable? Even though the range is quite large 3C is considered far more likely than 1.5C.Here is a list of calculated climate sensitivities.
90759. Alexandre at 22:43 PM on 29 March 2011
       Weather vs Climate
       johnd #116 Yes, Rahmstorf compares those 16 years of observations with the early IPCC projections, and finds they were pretty good. And yes, he also acknoledges the short period - although that's not cherry picking, since he used all the available period. Your paper has not been tested against such a long period, so I'm not sure why you're so prompt to dismiss the mainstream (successful) science. Besides, the japanese paper does not deny the GHE long term importance. Again: the obstruction of IR radiation by GHG is well established, well known and observed. The better modelling of ocean circulations is an important work that will improve interannual and decadal predictions - it does not contradict the GHE. I stress you avoided to answer any question regarding the evidence supporting the consensus (lack of time).
90760. Gilles at 22:25 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       22 : the problem is not in the use of the word "trick", it is in the fact that data have been deleted when they could have shed some doubt about the validity of the method. I assume that everybody who supports faithfully the use of dendro data knows perfectly the answer to question #20 - but i don't, may I have this answer ?
       Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] If there is good reason to believe data is unreliable, it is standard statistical operating procedure to exclude it from the analysis (c.f. outliers). The problem with the data is openly discussed in the litterature, and whether you mention it or not depends on the level of detail appropriate for the particular discussion - those who want to look into it in more detail can find out about the divergence problem by following the references given in the report. That is what the references are for. The divergence problem doesn't cast doubt on the method, only on the reliability of the method for the recent period covered by the "divergence problem".
90761. wingding at 21:18 PM on 29 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       Anyone remember David Archibald's prediction for May 2009? Similarly absurd.
90762. Glenn Tamblyn at 19:14 PM on 29 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       Susanne @33 The terminolgy used for the temperature products is rather abritrary and historical. I have a discussion of Satellite Temperatures here http://www.skepticalscience.com/Primer-Tropospheric-temperature-measurement-Satellite.html
90763. Glenn Tamblyn at 19:11 PM on 29 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       Alexandre @10 "To boldly predict what no man has predicted before... " Ahhh...I Love the Smell of Split-Infinitives ine the morning!
90764. shoyemore at 18:38 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       J. Bowers #22, I read your post just as I was putting Christopher M. Bishop's tome Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Springer, 2006) into my briefcase. In the index under "k" is kernel trick, 292. The page elaborates "The concept of a kernel formulated as an inner product in a feature space allows us to build extensions of many well known algorithms by making use of the kernel trick, also known as kernel substitution." Bishop is an employee of Microsoft, and I am sure no one is going to accuse him (or anyone who uses the kernel trick) of scientific skulduggery.
90765. shoyemore at 18:28 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       adelady, #6, Different strokes, I guess. I just refer people to Skeptical Science whenever this comes up!!
90766. J Bowers at 18:28 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       There are other examples of the term "trick" being used in the emails, which denialists oh so conveniently ignore even when, as they themselves say, they have read the emails in their entirety. This one explains quite clearly what a trick is... #1200162026 “I would note that the distribution of rejection rates is like the distribution of precipitation in that it is bounded by zero. A quick-and-dirty way to explore this possibility using a “trick” used with precipitation data is to apply a square root transformation to the rejection rates, average these, then reverse transform the average. The square root transformation should yield data that is more nearly Gaussian than the untransformed data.” Perhaps Dr Muller would like to accuse the sender of that email of something ansty.
90767. damorbel at 17:50 PM on 29 March 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       Re #874Tom Curtis you wrote:- "1) Surely you mean that Heat is what is measured by temperature multiplied by heat capacity" That would be energy - Joules. Heat capacity is 'C' (Cp; Cv) which is in Joules/Kelvin (J/K) The 2nd law requires for equilibrium, that T is uniform, i.e. no temperature diffences, no teperature gradients. Further you wrote:- "I think the revisionist physicists who want to outlaw the use of "heat" to describe internal energy are merely sowing confusion for themselves and their students." I have noticed this too but it isn't consistent. Since heat is only a function of temperature, it is only a function of molecular motion, the harder they vibrate the hotter things are! The devil in the matter seems to be latent heat which really is a misnomer. Let us take ice; when ice is formed the operative change is the loss of vibrational energy as the molecules line up to form crystals. Crystals have energy stored in the the lattice bonds. This is of course is 'energy in Joules' but it does not affect the temperature as ice forms/melts so it is not really heat but it is part of the internal energy of a water/ice thermal system. I suspect you knew all of this before reading it here. But there seem to be a number of contributors who need reminding! You wrote:- " Any back radiation that is reflected from the surface is simply part of the Surface Radiation." In kinetic theory molecules exchange energy by collision, thus on any (imaginary) surface introduced in a volume of gas the molecules on either side of this imaginary surface exchange energy (momentum, really), (T>0) all the time; so, if you were being pedantic, you could describe this energy exchange as 'forward' energy and 'back' energy and it is going on all the time, at every imaginable 'surface' in the volume. Energy exchange by radiation is not much different, but in this case the collisions are replaced by the emission and absorption of photons. Just like kinetic theory where the 'collisions' are between adjacent molecules. This is where the concept of 'back radiation' fails because it relies on radiation acting over large distances whereas it is actually very local, just the same as kinetic energy exchange. I have referred to this in previous posts, at the time I mentioned Einstein's paper 'Strahlungs-Emission und Absorption nach der Quantentheorie (german 1916) It is available on line in english and it is fairly easy to read and it firmly disposes of the idea that radiating gases can make any difference to the distribution of energy in a gas.
90768. shoyemore at 17:30 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Dana1981, #3 I have watched Muller in action twice on video, and both times found myself fuming at his misinformation and calumnies against other scientists. I also noted his obvious ego-driven presentation and love of the spotlight. Here is someone who not only wants to undermine Jim Hansen, he wants to BE Jim Hansen or be the new Hansen figure. On the credit side, Muller correctly identifies anthropogenic climate change as a major threat. But the way he uses his scientific disagreements as cloaks for personal attacks is unacceptable. He certainly deserves refutation on his many "errors" (deliberate or otherwise), more so than Monckton. I would just not have started with this point! I think the Mann-Jones issue has been thrashed to death and few people will be swayed either way by coverage of old ground.
90769. Gilles at 17:13 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       sorry but (again), something is still unclear for me : what is the calibration period and what is the validation period of Briffa's dendro series ?
90770. Gilles at 16:59 PM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
       scaddendp : what's your guess for the average slope of the temperature increase in the 4 next decades? I you predict an acceleration, It would be interesting to see how soon it will be measurable. Mucounter 118 : what is classic is your continuous misreading of what I'm saying. First I didn't care about the website hosting this graph, I know it perfectly well and I already commented it a number of times since it appeared in fall 2010 in WEO 2010. I just was too lazy to find if it were published on line on the IEA site on a html page instead of the pdf I gave you in link - so I just googled "iea oil production WEO 2010" and I took the first occurence I found (the fact that guys like you are not aware of this kind of predictions is for me totally indicative of the total unawareness of the real problems of the coming decades, BTW). You say it is only a "very limited attempt to reduce CO2 emissions". Thank you, I can read numbers. I know that. It wasn't my question. My question was : why does the IEA think oil is "needed", even the poor 20 Mb/d "yet to be found" if it is so easy to suppress it ? I hope you don't think this graph has been obtained simply by adding commitments of all countries US+SFU+China+france+ Etc... No country can know exactly what its growth and energy consumption will be in 2030, and if you consider all the oil excluding NGL and unconventional, you can notice it is strictly flat. I hope you will agree that the likelihood that the sum of all commitments of all countries in the world is strictly flat for 30 years is extremely tiny. So is the likelihood that we would find exactly this amount. Obviously IEA has no way to know exactly how much oil will be found in yet unknown fields. So think a little bit more about all this : on which basis can IEA produce such a graph ? any idea? may be les, who understands perfectly "how the world works" , could help you ?
90771. Glenn Tamblyn at 16:40 PM on 29 March 2011
       Of Satellites and Air – A Primer on Tropospheric temperature measurement by Satellite
       BP Although the lower Stratosphere hasn't colled much lately, the fact remains that it has cooled since start of the satellite record. ince each reading from a satellite is based on the current temperature profile through the air column. Since the temps are all anomalies relative to a baseline period, the stratosphere doesn't have to keep cooling to impact what the tropospheric reading from T2 appears to be. Earlier in the history it will have had a growing bias. If its cooling has stabilised, the bias it contributes isn't growing, but there is still a fixed bias from the amount of cooling that has occurred. The important point about how the various compensation schemes for Stratospheric cool bias compensation work is that they are applied at the individual sample level, not at the high order trend level. Each reading has the compensation applied then trends are calculated from it. If the bias isn't changing at present then new samples will still have the same bias removed. Interesting from the records - Eruptions don't show up much at all in the lower trop' series but hugely in the strat'. El Nino is the opposite, largely lower trop' based.
90772. robert way at 16:23 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       For you Charlie A, More support for my interpretation from Briffa 2001 “Bias might be introduced in cases where the spatial coverage is not uniform (e.g., of the 24 original chronologies with data back to 1500, half are concentrated in eastern Siberia) but this can be reduced by prior averaging of the chronologies into regional series (as was done in the previous section)… Eight different methods have been used… They produce very similar results for the post-1700 period… They exhibit fairly dramatic differences, however, in the magnitude of multidecadal variability prior to 1700… highlighting the sensitivity of the reconstruction to the methodology used, once the number of regions with data, and the reliability of each regional reconstruction, begin to decrease. The selection of a single reconstruction of the ALL temperature series is clearly somewhat arbitrary… The method that produces the best fit in the calibration period is principal component regression… “…we note that the 1450s were much cooler in all of the other (i.e., not PCA regression) methods of producing this curve…”
90773. dana1981 at 16:04 PM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
       Sean A #48 - we try to refrain from calling people "deniers" on this site, especially when they aren't denying anything. I've merely discussed a study (two now, actually) which puts forth a plan to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy without using nuclear. Now, you may have your doubts about these plans, and that's fine. But there's no need to be rude about it. I specifically outlined 7 ways in which the intermittency of some renewables can be addressed. Solar thermal can easily store energy, geothermal and hydroelectric can be used to fill in the gaps when wind or solar production are low. It seems like a perfectly plausible plan to me. I often find that people who are pro-nuclear are often unwilling to consider other alternatives, and that really puzzles me. There are a lot of good reasons not to want to rely on nuclear power, so if we don't have to, I don't see why we wouldn't explore other options.
90774. dana1981 at 15:57 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Charlie A #16 - please take a look at the site Comments Policy, particularly the very first policy - no accusations of deception. This is actually my biggest beef with McIntyre and co. If you want to know why Briffa made a certain decision, why not try, hmm, I dunno, asking Briffa? Instead of immediately leaping to the conclusion that he's "hiding" something, or only showing data when it comes out "as desired". Personally I find that when people assume others are dishonest, they're projecting their own behavior.
90775. robert way at 15:53 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       garythompson at 14:52 PM on 29 March, 2011 This is the spatial distribution of proxies from the CA stuff pre-1500 http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Sites.png If you call that an adequate spatial distribution then you are fooling yourself. 87% of pre-1500s data comes from 2/5 regions from the study. It is obvious to those who pay attention that this is a good reason to consider that the reconstruction pre-1500 does not accurately represent the entire region. Furthermore, show me the 8 station to which you refer? I can count more than 8 on greenland alone so tell me where you get these numbers? Actually you're also wrong on the 1500 km part, it is 1200 km not 1500 so get your facts straight. Also consider that stations at high latitudes are highly correlated (0.5) at 1200 km as presented by Hansen and Lebedeff (1987). Finally, the assessment presented by GISS is supported by NCEP Reanalysis, and ECMWF reanalysis datasets which include satellite, weather balloon and station data. NCEP in fact shows greater warming than GISS (supplemented by Environment Canada stations) as shown in my previous post. http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/ArcticTC1880-2010NCEP.png Your argument is just wrong. Sorry.
90776. Bern at 15:47 PM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
       johnd: regarding your comments on variability of supply & demand - note that there has been decades of effort put in to "levelling" the demand curve. This is due to the increased efficiency of running coal-fired plants at constant load, not because of any insurmountable difficulty in matching supply & demand. One of the biggest impacts of that we see locally (at least in Queensland), is that it is illegal to connect electric water heaters to normal supply - they *must* be connected to a different, controlled supply, where the electricity network managers can turn them on & off remotely to shape the demand curve. This mostly results in them running at night, to boost minimum demand. It has the side effect that they also draw power when prices are lowest, so a lower tariff is charged. Even with efforts like this, however, there is still a 40% drop in demand for electricity at night. Take the demand-levelling out of the equation, and you'd find that the demand curve would peak higher during the day, and plummet much lower at night. Hmm, that sounds like a ripe candidate for solar generation with storage... Ken Lambert: If you read the Part II paper linked in the article, you'll find a lot of information on costs. Basically, most renewables are expected to be competitive with coal (and cheaper than gas) within ~10 years or so. Some are competitive now. If you factor in the costs of destabilising the world's climate, then fossil fuels are more expensive now than nearly every alternative out there. The number quoted in the paper (about 14c/kWh, although it might be double that or more) equates to a carbon price of at least $150/tCO2, I think (not 100% certain how the numbers convert). To put that in perspective, electricity prices here have increased ~8c/kWh over the past 8 years, when there has been no carbon pricing whatsoever. That's all to pay for transmission network upgrades, and the cost is borne entirely by the consumers, while the wholesale price of generation has remained fairly static. When you include carbon pricing at $150/tCO2, then solar PV is cheaper than coal right now. Given that it's projected to be cheaper than coal *without* carbon pricing by 2020, you'd have to be a mug to think a coal-fired plant is a good investment. Either that, or have a lot of friends in government who can keep up a supply of tax breaks, subsidies, and barriers to entry to keep other players out of 'your' market. Oddly enough, we have just those kinds of barriers here in Australia. Transmission network improvements required to bring online a new generator (e.g. a windfarm or solar plant) must be 100% paid for by the wholesale price of electricity from that generator, despite all the existing generators (nearly all coal-fired) having been permitted to spread their network costs across the entire network (when it was all government owned - the privatised generators now don't have to pay for the network costs at all).
90777. Charlie A at 15:43 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       #14 Robert Way says @13:48 29 March "What they don't tell you is that going back to 1400 there are only 8 proxies so they do not include the data past 1550 because of the substantial reduction in the number of proxies" So why two years later in 2001 does Briffa choose to show a similar reconstruction extending back to 1400, with only 2 (TWO!) sites in 1402, 8 sites in 1500 and 19 sites in 1550? Perhaps because this reconstruction came out as desired? Figure 2. From Briffa et al 2001 (JGR) Plate 3, also showing the pre-deletion data used in Briffa-Osborn 1999 (magenta). The Briffa 2001 version ends in 1960 and has been extended using data from Climategate emails (showing the decline). ref: HIde the Decline, the Other Deletion
90778. Bern at 14:57 PM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
       Sean A: if you think that nuclear is going to stand up & be counted in the current political environment in most western countries, then you're sadly mistaken. If I recall correctly, the major reason that Hansen & Lovelock thought nuclear should be part of the mix is that there were no other sources of large-scale baseload power that they could see in the short term, both of them being convinced that we need to stop burning fossil fuels yesterday. Personally, I think that Gen IV reactors (like the IFR - Integral Fast Reactor, the LFTR - Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, and others) have the potential to supply enormous amounts of carbon-free electricity with very low risk (and certainly lower environmental & health impacts than coal!). But you need to convince a few hundred million others of that, and, as the latest election results from Germany show, the emotive anti-nuclear argument is winning the day right now, by a clear majority. Unless & until more dispassionate analysis by the voting public of the events at Fukushima Daiichi occurs, it's extremely unlikely that new nuclear plants will even be on the table for discussion, let alone actually built. Given the propensity of the mass media for hyping the doomsday scenarios that might eventuate, then dropping the story altogether when things get "boring" (i.e. not at all apocalyptic), I'm not holding my breath for that. So, given the #1 priority is to get rid of fossil fuels, then we need to put serious effort into other renewables for a while. The progress I've seen over the past 5 years or so is pretty encouraging, I have to say, and with a bit more effort, we'll see where things go. Given the combination of high technological capability & large "Greens" political influence, I'm expecting some exciting developments to come out of Germany over the next few years (fingers crossed!).
90779. garythompson at 14:52 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       If the proxy data didn't correlate with temperature data after 1960, then why did Briffa make the claim that the tree proxy data was in error without looking at a possible error in the instrument data? From the paper here there were many theories floated as to why the tree ring data diverges after 1960 but many of them point to a drought condition. Other suggestions include global dimming, polution, strataspheric ozone levels, insect infestation, etc. While all of these might be real, that is a fairly complex set of conditions that must come together to cause this error and surely another obvious answer could come from the temperature measurements. Maybe this was thouroughly investigated and shown not to be a cause in a paper and if someone has a link to that I'd appreciate you sharing it. This graph from that paper also highlights the divergence over the last couple of decades. And correct me if I'm wrong but over the past couple of decades we've seen a large drop out of the number of weather stations, especially in the northern latitudes where the tree ring data diverges. Could this be another possible explanation? How close were the temperature stations to the tree ring samples? Were they at similar elevations and does that matter? #14 Robert Way - If 8 data points aren't sufficient to justify a large enough sample size why is it ok to have 8 data points (i.e. temperature stations) to represent a global region composed of a circle with a 1,500 km radius (which is what the GISS data does for the north pole area)? If you look at the dark red area on the picture below and then go click on the center of that region on the GISS site you'll only find 8 sites that have continuous measurements over the past several decades.
       Moderator Response: If you want to discuss the reliability of the temperature record, please take your discussion to the temperature record thread.
90780. Tom Curtis at 14:08 PM on 29 March 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       damorbel @872: 1) Surely you mean that Heat is what is measured by temperature multiplied by heat capacity. "Heat capacity"? How about that. It appears to be implicit to the language of physics (as it has always been to natural languages) that heat is something that can be stored. I think the revisionist physicists who want to outlaw the use of "heat" to describe internal energy are merely sowing confusion for themselves and their students. 2) Any back radiation that is reflected from the surface is simply part of the Surface Radiation. This is because, fairly obviously, IR detectors cannot distinguish between IR radiation emitted and reflected at the same frequency. The amount reflected is, of course, very small, and probably not large enough to include even if you designed instruments that could reliably distinguish it. Therefore there is no problem in treating emitted surface radiation plus reflected back radiation as a single bulk quantity. In this case you are scoffing at ant hills while swallowing mountains of denier nonsense.
90781. Sean A at 14:02 PM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
       Who's in denial now? Ignoring a major source of sustainable energy would be inadvisable. Any plan for 100% carbon-free energy that excludes nuclear is hopelessly unrealistic. 50% of our energy from wind? You gotta be pulling my leg. Biofuels? There's no future for biofuels, we need arable land to grow food. There's going to be 10 billion people on the planet soon. Go ahead and get all of the nuclear angst out of your systems now. But make it quick, because we're running out of time. Forward-looking thinkers have already come to the conclusion that we have no choice but to develop nuclear (and renewables) if we want to stop burning coal. Lovelock and Hansen, among others. If you look at the numbers, for renewables only, the numbers don't add up. withouthotair.com Generation IV - Use stockpiles of nuclear waste for fuel. No further mining needed. - Passively safe. - Proliferation resistant. - Some designs, such as the IFR, are not new technology. We can start building these plants now. Renewables and nuclear = climate and energy problems solved. Renewables without nuclear = we have to build more coal plants. Bad outcome.
90782. robert way at 13:48 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Charlie A at 10:26 AM on 29 March, 2011 "3. Deleting the pre-1550 data in Briffa and Osborne 1999 article in Science and other peer reviewed articles." I don't think going to climate audit will give you the best opinion on this subject. They seem to believe that not showing data where the sample density is too low and the spatial distribution is low equates to a "trick". What they don't tell you is that going back to 1400 there are only 8 proxies so they do not include the data past 1550 because of the substantial reduction in the number of proxies. An example I can point to is here: http://treesfortheforest.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/ghcn_global_temp_area_1961-1990_5x51.png Are scientists "hiding the decline" by not using data going past 1880s in global temperature records? Of course not, the distribution is not accurate. Using less data=noisier data and the authors chose to show when they had confidence in their datasets. No story here.
90783. arch stanton at 13:28 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Dana (10) I hope he does also. Keep up the good work.
90784. Bern at 13:17 PM on 29 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       That link johnd provided above for JAMSTEC was interesting, particularly this part of their forecast: "Southeastern China, southwestern Japan, US and Europe would have warm and dry condition during boreal spring-summer seasons." Following on from the very heavy snowstorms during late winter, warm conditions means there is likely to be significant flooding in the US this spring/summer as the snowpack melts (as per the NOAA assessment). The other question is: how warm is warm? Are we talking heatwave warm? It would be somewhat ironic if the continental US experienced record-setting warm temperatures during one of the cooler years of the last decade, given the focus by some on cooler CONUS temps during one of the hottest years ever recorded last year.
90785. getricks at 13:00 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       This is exactly the kind of information a non scientific person like myself needs to see to de-jigsaw puzzle the stuff that makes me so suspicious. Thank-you. Why was muller [--snip--] things.? To increase potency of his skeptical argument it would seem. That is the ongoing problem for us average Joes. Too many [--snip--] written in scientific language.(thinking non scientific folk are too stupid perhaps) And I hope Muller knows he is being held accountable for what he says as should all in this debate. I hope you realize just how important your site is.Thanks again.
90786. muoncounter at 12:48 PM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
       Gilles#116: "I just wanted to notice that they consider that oil is needed - notwithstanding the well known fact that we could so easily replace it," Classic. You posted a graph (which you didn't cite until 9 comments later - perhaps because you clipped the graph from 'Republicans for Environmental Protection,' whatever that is), without explanatory reference to the report to which the graph belongs. You interpret the graph's 'oil to be found' to suit your biased needs. And reach a completely incorrect conclusion. Here's the actual source document for the graph, which is indeed part of the IEA World Energy Outlook for 2010. Let's do what you conspicuously did not: Define the 'New Policy Scenario,' which you see as a statement that these 'clowns' consider that 'oil is needed.' From the factsheet: In the New Policies Scenario ... world primary energy demand increases by 36% between 2008 and 2035, or 1.2% per year on average. This compares with 2% per year over the previous 27-year period. The scenario assumes cautious implementation of the policy commitments and plans announced by countries around the world, including the national pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and plans to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies. So this is really a very limited attempt to reduce CO2 emissions; it is, by design, not a radical shift away from oil consumption. Later in the document, the New Policy Scenario is compared to the commitments of Copenhagen: Were those commitments to be implemented in a cautious manner, as assumed in the New Policies Scenario, rising demand for fossil fuels would continue to drive up energy‑related CO2 emissions, making it all but impossible to achieve the 2°C goal. ... Emissions jump to over 35 Gigatonne (Gt) in 2035 — 21% up on the 2008 level of 29Gt. Non‑OECD countries account for all of the increase; OECD emissions peak before 2015 and then begin to fall. These trends are in line with stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) at over 650 parts per million (ppm) of CO2‑equivalent, resulting in a likely temperature rise of more than 3.5°C in the long term. --emphasis added So: The IEA doesn't consider that oil is needed, as you claim. They show a scenario of baby steps, in which oil use increases and we arrive at 650ppm and the high side of +3.5C. That's not a good outcome. Really, Gilles, you've got to try harder. You've not yet shown that you have any inclination to do that; but at the very least, find out what you're talking about before forming an opinion.
90787. e at 12:27 PM on 29 March 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       Fred, The back-radiation in Trenberth's original diagram illustrates the gross flow of energy from atmosphere to surface. If you want to see the net energy flow (heat transfer), just subtract it from the gross flow of energy from surface to atmosphere: 356 - 333 = 23 W/m^2 net radiative energy transfer from surface to atmosphere. Where exactly do you see a violation of the 2nd law? Oh and the "correct" version you cited is derived by doing this exact type of math on Trenberth's results. It is the same information, not a corrected version. All they did was sum the gross inputs/outputs into the atmosphere. Also don't forget that Trenberth's diagram documents measured values, it is not a theoretical whimsy. If you doubt that back-radiation exists, go buy an infrared thermometer, point it at space on a clear night, and prove your point.
90788. dhogaza at 12:14 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Charlie A:

       An example of item #3 is the annotated version of Briffa and Osborne Figure 1 from Science 1999 article.

       Let me see if if I get this right: they discard proxy data that doesn't calibrate with the modern temperature record and proxy data that doesn't calibrate with proxy data pre-1550. This seems like the right thing to do, indeed. D'oh.
90789. dana1981 at 12:06 PM on 29 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       Susanne - it is temperature of the lower troposphere
90790. dana1981 at 12:04 PM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Arch - thanks, but we'd prefer if Muller began examining the facts more carefully, particularly when speaking to Congress. This is meant as motivation for Muller to start being more careful and accurate with his statements.
90791. arch stanton at 11:48 AM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       John, Dana, Thank you very much for your hard work in the area of separating the truth from….other. It would appear to me that this (Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline) is an ongoing series concerning Muller’s upcoming anticipated presentation before congress. I humbly suggest that you hold off on critiquing him until after he has exposed himself to congress. Don’t help him polish his presentation or find new ways to deceitfully misrepresent the science. Suggestion for the next person who watches the Berkeley video: Count the times Muller says he thinks climate change is a problem (I don’t want to watch it again). Thanks again, arch
90792. Berényi Péter at 11:37 AM on 29 March 2011
       Of Satellites and Air – A Primer on Tropospheric temperature measurement by Satellite
       
       Re: Moderator Response:

       [DB] Nice cherry-pick & ignoring the rest of the picture for the TLS

       Nice omission, ignoring the effect of two major volcanic eruptions. If lower stratospheric temperature anomaly is put against atmospheric CO₂ concentration, regime changes due to eruptions can even more clearly be seen. And of course, that carbon dioxide itself has no effect on it at all. There is apparently a strong short time warming effect in the stratosphere from volcanic eruptions followed by a mild cooling with a much longer relaxation time, possibly due to nanoparticles, which have extended stratospheric lifetime (because there's no rain there to wash them out).
       Moderator Response:

       [DB] Perhaps you missed reading the entire unadulterated graphic straight from RSS, so here's the unvarnished piece in question, again:

       

       FYI: The spiky bits were the eruptions in question. For those not in full possession of the straight information, volcanoes exert their transient cooling effects in the lower troposphere in opposite fashion in the stratosphere: temporarily warming it.

       Due to the paucity (love that word) of water vapor in the stratosphere, the radiative imbalance of the Earth allows CO₂ to freely exert it's GHG effects by cooling the stratosphere. As the clear RSS graphic I have shown twice now starkly delineates, the long-term stratospheric temperature trend is down, while the level of CO₂ in our atmosphere is up, driving up the temperature of the lower troposphere and our oceans with it. A change in conditions for which mankind is responsible. No matter the dissembling of some.

90793. arch stanton at 11:13 AM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Besides playing fast and loose with the facts, Muller’s presentation utilizes the Wattsoid technique of carefully crafting straw men from the worst of the MSM.
90794. chrisd3 at 11:02 AM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Unfortunately for the [--snip--], even Muller's own BEST study appears poised to confirm everyone else's temperature reconstructions:

       Their preliminary results sit right within the results of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, confirming that prior analyses were correct in every way that matters. Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.

       Kind of moots the whole hide the decline non-issue. http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/20/berkeley-temperature-study-results-global-warming/
90795. adelady at 10:49 AM on 29 March 2011
       Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
       KeninOz@113. You must have a fly on the wall reporting to you from my household. We recently had a discussion about aluminium. If I had a smelter in Oz I'd be drawing lines on a map to see how easy it would be to connect to the geothermal projects. Getting in first with some investment tied to a guaranteed future supply with some price guarantees sounds like a very good idea. A bit of extra cash flow from claiming a share of the income from the power delivered to others from the lines installed to connect to the plant would be pretty tasty, too. But that's just me.
90796. Susanne at 10:41 AM on 29 March 2011
       The Day After McLean
       Apologies if this is answered somewhere, but what is TLT (response to comment #5)? Lower Troposphere Temperature seems most likely on the face of it, but why isn't that LTT? Thanks
       Moderator Response: [muoncounter] See UAH satellite temperatures at wikipedia for additional explanation of these terms.
90797. scaddenp at 10:31 AM on 29 March 2011
       A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
       Cant help noticing Gilles claims that SRES scenarios make no account of resource restriction, seem somewhat at odds with SRES itself. However, leaving that aside, suppose we drop all oil use now, dont replace oil with coal-created electric, so we only use half the coal by 2100, what the guess on CO2 ppm by 2050? Gilles doesnt believe in models so I doubt he cares, but frankly I still dont want to go there in less than 40 years.
90798. adelady at 10:28 AM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       Shoyemore#1 I think it's important for non-scientists like me to be Absolutely Clear In Our Minds about matters that are likely to be thrown at us in conversations and on-line. We can't fall back on something like a denialist mantra - just reciting and repeating a form of words. As it happens, we're all different. Some things turn on the lightbulb for me that leave others bemused or confused. Many people need, as any teacher knows, several exposures and different explanations before all the elements fall into place for everyone. At =that= point, further details or work or discussion are needed to get the student or interested person to understand well enough to be able to describe or discuss the issue or the phenomenon in their own words. It's not enough to get it. You have to 'own' it in a form suitable to share. So I'd disagree. It might be old hat or boring to someone who's been involved for a long time. For novices or those who've only just begun to grasp why there's a fuss about a particular matter, a new reference or an explanation in a new form of words might be just the ticket.
90799. Charlie A at 10:26 AM on 29 March 2011
       Muller Misinformation #1: confusing Mike's trick with hide the decline
       For those trying to keep the various issues separate, there seems to be at least three. 1. Splicing instrumental data onto the end of tree ring based temperature reconstructions for the WMO cover. 2. Deleting post 1960 data, both WMO cover and peer reviewed papers. 3. Deleting the pre-1550 data in Briffa and Osborne 1999 article in Science and other peer reviewed articles. There may be others, but those seem to be the main ones. An example of item #3 is the annotated version of Briffa and Osborne Figure 1 from Science 1999 article. For more discussion, see Hide the Decline, Science magazine version
90800. Gilles at 10:24 AM on 29 March 2011
       Dana's 50th: Why I Blog
       SNRratio : could you please be more precise of what you're referring to as "different data or methodologies ending up with the same probability distribution " - because I don't see what you mean. Marcus#29 : "even though you admit you're not a scientists" at least a definite piece of evidence that you don't listen to what I'm saying or don't understand it - I never admitted that I wasn't a scientist, for the very good reason that I am one, and I'd have no interest in saying the opposite. Is my english really that poor ?

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