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Comments 91851 to 91900:

  1. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    siglerj - maybe none, maybe it will release rather than absorb CO2. Exposed soil allows the carbon content of that soil to be oxidised and become CO2 in the atmosphere. The reason why bad farming practices release CO2. If the ice/snow had been covering bare rock, it depends on what kinds of minerals the rocks are made of. If olivine or serpentine, then natural gradual weathering will make absolutely no difference on the decadal time scale, but will contribute a little to sequestration over millennia. The only real chance for absorbing carbon is if trees will grow. Grasses just become part of the carbon cycle. Trees, especially their roots, can accumulate carbon over time if growing conditions are favourable.
  2. HumanityRules at 09:44 AM on 22 March 2011
    Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
    12 Marcus The point is the peer-reviewed work (GRL I think) not that it shows up on WUWT, deal with it on that basis. 13 IanC The point would be that changes in TSI do seem to be too small to account for climate variability in the way we seem to understand it. What can I say, I'm trying to look at the science. There has been a constant revision of our understanding of TSI variation. Somebody can correct this if inaccurate, estimates of changes in TSI from MM to present have undergone constant revision. 3-6 W/M2 in the late 1990's. 1-2 W/M2 more recently. And now this paper is suggesting it's ~1/3 of that amount (0.33-0.66 W/M2). I think if your going to use the word speculative then you should put it into context. The short history of this science is one of constant revision as I've outlined, I don't see that this is any more speculative than the other. I think the unique approach is to say magnetitic variation is the sourse of other solar variations, I guess we have to wait and see whether that is accepted. "Now I am curious to see where you are going with this. Are you arguing that neither CO2 nor the sun drives our climate?" It does seem curious. I don't think one has to jump all the way to the idea that CO2 or the sun don't drive our climate but I think it's worth considering that of our understanding of the subject is missing something important. Ian if that work is accurate how would you interpret it?
  3. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    I'm sorry if I am off-topic, but the use given to the term "libertarian" causes my stomach to turn awfully bad. The term "libertarian" was hijacked by the far-right to mean an ideology based on an unregulated, totally free-market economy/society. But the original meaning was politically quite the opposite. It originated from the anarchism, particularly from the COMMUNIST variant, "libertarian communism", or "anarchocommunism/anarchosindicalism". The term was particularly popular in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) by anarchists, where the libertarian communism of the CNT/FAI (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo/Federación Anarquista Ibérica) and the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) was opposed to the authoritharian Stalinists of the PCE (Spain Communist Party) that finally took over the Republic in 1937-1938. How a term so identified with the far-Left, totally hostile to capitalism, popped up in the free-market capitalism Right, is a mistery to me.
  4. The True Cost of Coal Power
    Again, Gilles, you haven't proven their extrapolations are *undue*-& they certainly provide a much more iron-clad case for their extrapolations than you provide to "prove" your false correlation between Fossil Fuel Consumption & Wealth.
  5. Rob Honeycutt at 09:38 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    HuggyPopsBear... Not a contraction in terms at all. Government is not the same as elected officials.
  6. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Maybe someone can help me with this......when more ground is available after more ice and snow pack deteriorates, how much CO2 will the new land/plant area absorb? Is there an estimate of how much CO2 an acre or square mile of prarie absorbs?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Evidence tells us that the thawing Arctic is emitting methane and CO2 right now & increasing those emissions. By 2100, a thawing Arctic permafrost threatens to add about as much GHG to the atmosphere as mankind has. So don't count on that newly uncovered surface to be a carbon sink anytime soon.
  7. HuggyPopsBear at 09:27 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Rob Honeycutt #3 Markets are fantastic and dealing with solutions, today. But it's the government that must set up the proper incentives that drive the solutions today to solve the problems of tomorrow. This is a contradiction in terms, first you state governments are limited by office and then make the statement above. One of the biggest problems with climate change is man himself, science and the many bantered ideologies. When I say man himself, I do not mean by his contribution to the atmosphere. Increase population without controls on ANY pollution is going to cause a variance in some structures. It will not undo the full process of mother nature and mans natural evolution within himself and technology will make new changes and advances and probably create another scenario further down the track. CO2 is cyclic as is precipitation, mankind has been on this planet for 10 million years or more, the last 150 years is but a mere second in time in comparison and will not reveal through scientific modelling what this planet has seen and whats more what has happened and is to come again. You don't have to be a scientist with degrees and phd's. Open your eyes and take a good hard natural look at nature There is nothing new under the sun my son.
    Moderator Response: [DB] You were doing so well, too, up until your last paragraph. You really need to read the Newcomers, Start Here thread and the Big Picture thread. We know much more than models can tell us. Such as you're wrong about CO2 being cyclical in its upward driving of temperatures in this interglacial. Mankind, in your 10 million existence ascribed to them, has never been a factor in the carbon cycle before. Until now. So that IS something new under the sun (yes, Ecclesiastes is a fav of mine), my son.
  8. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Where did the carbon in the ground come from?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Carbon is naturally present in the Earth's biosphere (land+air+water), existing in many forms. There is a natural flux of carbon into and out of the atmosphere (see here, both versions). Mankind has upset that natural carbon balance by adding a huge bolus of long-sequestered carbon back into it (like adding more players to one team while keeping the other team's numbers the same), unbalancing the cycle. The net result is that the system is seeking to get back to that balance, which involves the biosphere retaining energy in the form of heat.
  9. Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
    Ah Ken, good to see you preaching from the same hymn-book as Gilles. It might not have made headline news (you know, what with all the property damage, deaths & evacuations), but news of load shedding & black-outs during the Queensland floods can be found in the print media *if* you're prepared to go digging. The closure of many of Queensland's coal mine during the crisis was, however, considered worthy of front-page news. Of course my whole point was to illustrate that, in such extreme weather events as these, loss of power is going to be the *last* thing on victim's minds-so represents nothing but a straw-man argument. It is worth noting, though, that the large, centralized nature of coal power station, as well as their reliance on a constant fuel supply that needs to be mined, does make it especially vulnerable to extreme events like these. Even in the absence of such events, coal power stations are horribly inflexible in their power output & lose significant amounts of generated electricity over the distances they're required to transmit over (between 10%-15% of electricity generated gets lost during Transmission & Distribution). Your claims re: Wind Turbines also sounds horribly out of date. My reading of current technology is that most modern wind turbines are designed to operate effectively under a wide range of wind conditions-something which has allowed improvements in Capacity from barely 20% to more than 30% in the last decade. Of course, with good siting & decent storage, many of the remaining issues with wind power can be largely iron out-and eliminated completely if you also have a good source of landfill gas.
  10. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    @ grypo You make it sound like an organized conspiracy. Corporations are everywhere and in everything, including the green movement. Identifying CATO as being the face of corporations is an underhanded method to rally the fools who think all corporations are like ENRON and Skank of America. Yes some corporations believe in capitalism, but if a handout, bailout, subsidy or tax credit exists they'll gladly take the welfare or uncompetitive advantage, just like anybody else.
  11. Rob Honeycutt at 09:18 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    siglerj said... "Personally, I think Geo Engineering is the best solution until efficient green energy can become a reality." Great! Then we are there. Remove all subsidies from fossil fuel industries. Pull in the external costs of carbon on human health and the environment. At that point wind and solar beat oil, gas and coal hands down. And renewables are in the process of getting even cheaper. If Libertarians would agree to this then we have solved the world's problems.
  12. Preventing Misinformation
    Climate Watcher, your claims are demonstrably *false*. I've got the GISSTemp data right in front of me, & the warming rates I get are as follows: 1910-1945=+0.125 degrees per decade; 1975-2010=+0.176 per decade. So the current warming is already unprecedented compared to the warming of the first half of the 20th century. Of course, it's even *more* unprecedented when you consider the fact that 1910-1945 was against the backdrop of rising Sunspot numbers, whereas 1975-2011 has been against a backdrop of *falling* sunspot numbers. Epic *fail* there Climate Watcher.
  13. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    @siglerj This article should help you understand why the carbon in the ground is the important carbon, not the carbon already in the cycle
  14. Rob Honeycutt at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    siglerj... Virtually every pollutant occurs naturally as well as being man-made. Are you suggesting that we can't regulate ANY forms of pollution because they also occur naturally?
  15. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Personally, I think Geo Engineering is the best solution until efficient green energy can become a reality.
  16. Preventing Misinformation
    ClimateWatcher at 03:17 AM on 22 March, 2011 "2. Global warming is 'unprecedented' The period from 1910 to 1945 ( thirty five years ) had the same surface temperature trends ( CRU and GISS ) as the period since 1979." Prove it. Do note that I am the author of the following post which disproves your argument. Unless you can show me where I calculated the differences in warming rates wrong then your argument is null. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html
  17. Preventing Misinformation
    Good point Tom. That was very northern hemisphere-centric of me!
  18. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    @siglerj "Corporations are in favor of capitalism, only in the competitors dreams." Corporations fund CATO and CATO does not want a tax on carbon emissions using utilitarian arguments under the auspice of libertarian principles. Perhaps you are discussing nanny-state conservatism? Crony capitalism? What does this have to do what I wrote?
  19. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    If CO2 is considered a pollutant you can't discriminate what creates it as being bad or good. If an owner is responsible for some CO2, how can they not be responsible for all their owned emissions?
  20. Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
    "If our CO2 emissions dropped to zero the carbon sinks would continue sequestering about 17 gigatons per year (17/7.81 = 2.18 ppm decrease per year)... there is no logical reason that this would change radically right away" CBD66 These acute excess sinks don't continue to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, they take ~50% of the extra excess CO2 added to the atmosphere be that from volcanoes, land use change or human burning of fossil fuels, but that is it, they soak up the excess, they don't actively remove carbon atmosphere if no excess is added. Basically with no emissions at all the rate of CO2 change in the atmopshere reverts back to the underlying balance between volcanic source and geological removal which is very slow. Then as this very slow (no where near 2ppm at year) causes atmospheric CO2 concentration to fall the sinks re-release the 50% of the excess they took up and why Cao et al (from previous post), found that to get CO2 concentrations to actually fall it is necessary to take all the extra CO2 that was actually added to the atmosphere and the CO2 that has been temporarily stored in the acute excess sinks. Also all the excess sinks capacity are now shrinking as per the papers in the previous post. Therefore 450ppm peak does mean ~450ppm for a long time unless active measures can be deployed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Also as mentioned when the earth warms CO2 always rises at about 7-40ppm per 1C, depending on different estimates although 7-14ppm most likely, but still rises and there is already another 0.6C to come due to lags in the system. Also the Pliocene was still 3-5C hotter at 350ppm or 1.8C-2.4C by 2100, 450ppm means more! Also all the pollution over China and India is causing a large haze cloud that is cooling those regions surface, therefore stopping burning fossil fuels in Asia will be another accelerant to global warming. "Stopping emissions will yield positive results / we are not yet 'locked in' to devastating climate change." Yes stopping all emissions from fossil fuels is essential and a strong positive first step, but the world is already locked into a significant period of global warming that needs urgent adaptation (including removing large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere) measures so that despite the coming climatic changes human actions can bring about a fullfilling sustainable eco-system enhancing carbon sequestering future and a general increase in human well being through mutual co-operation, at governmental, institutional and individual levels or the clear and obvious is ignored, CO2 emissions continue to be spent chasing excessive energy demand dreams and humankind lets climate change be an event that is devastating to human well being for no other reason than keeping far too many lights on.
  21. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #615 Tom Curtis you wrote:- "Do you also agree with me that this simple model does not violate any laws of thermodynamics? " Perhaps not. But what it doesn't do is model the atmosphere or RW1's model in #613 In #619 L.J. Ryan shows the flaw in your model - adding the same energy twice! It doesn't model the atmosphere because GHGs do not reflect light, they absorb and, to a certain extent, re-radiate it. When a photon is reflected its energy remains the same e.g. mirrors do not change the colour of light. When photons are absorbed they may cause re-radiation but this is not necessarily so, e.g. if a chemical change is induced by the absorption of a photon. If the absorbing material does re-radiate photons this may well occur at a much longer i.e. 'without limit' longer wavelength. What cannot happen (2nd Law again) is for a photon to be emitted at a shorter wavelength. More exactly, in a single photon process, a photon more energetic than the incoming photon cannot be emitted. But there are two (or more) photon events that result in the emission of single photons of higher energy than either of the input photons, but the total energy is still conserved. There is no law of conservation for photons, they start with an emission and end with an absorption, even if they travel light years between the two events. Re #616, les your box is just fine, it is what J J Fourier described - it just doesn't describe the atmosphere - as Fourier himself noticed 'the air is not held still in the atmosphere' Re #677 Tom Curtis your box has a major flaw; the energy source is outside the box but once inside it is reflected 100% this doesn't happen, the walls that reflect inside the box must also reflect 100% light coming from outside, there are no one-way mirrors in physics. Further, if you put a lamp inside with N Watts power and the walls were 100% reflecting (thus 100% insulating) the temperature would rise until something was destroyed! But consider, how would you get the N Watts power in? Heat conduction in metals in largely a function of electrons in the conduction band thus the wires would carry much of the heat inside back out to the generator (or battery) where the energy came from in the first place. The wires may get hot in the process but have you ever dealt with high power lights enclosed in a projector? Everything gets terrifyingly hot!
  22. Rob Honeycutt at 08:42 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    siglerj... "... you have to measure all carbon emissions then if that is the pollutant you are targeting, even the emissions exhaled by humans and the animals they own." How do you come about this assumption? It would seem to me that natural processes in the carbon cycle are not the problem. It's the excess introductions to the atmosphere by industry.
  23. Preventing Misinformation

    Dana, is it possible to get a graph whih resolves the NH winter temperatures and the SH winter temperatures. The one you show only resolves temperatures by months, and of course the NH winter is the SH summer.

    Response:

    [DB] Tom, you may find some of what you're looking for here and here.

    The Archives may have more, I just linked the one I remembered.

  24. Rob Honeycutt at 08:35 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
    ClimateWatcher... I would add that what you seem to be overlooking in the diagrams that you provided is the very clear fingerprint of AGW which is stratospheric cooling.
  25. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    I thought this was supposed to be non political? "...less to policy handbooks from corporate funded Washington DC think tanks..." This statement is completely laughable. Corporations are in favor of capitalism, only in the competitors dreams. Libertarians agree if you damage some other person's property you owe them for the damages. The problem is, you have to measure all carbon emissions then if that is the pollutant you are targeting, even the emissions exhaled by humans and the animals they own. Out of curiosity has anyone ever measured how much CO2 each country puts out based on human population and the livestock and pet population? Only the countries that have water on the border would benefit from this, what about the storms, floods, droughts?.........It appears the litigation process would be impossible to determine the real cause and the real solution meaning, the problem has to be tackled from a market perspective of lowering emissions through the best technology......government can't pick the best, they only pick GE windmills in the states ...cough fascism...
    Moderator Response:

    DB] Actually, human CO2 exhalations add up to 10 times that produced by volcanoes yearly, and about 10% of fossil fuel emissions. But since exhalations are part of the natural carbon cycle they have no net impact on atmospheric concentrations (yup, people actually look into this: people called scientists). Who's responsible for how much CO2 emissions is also tracked:

  26. Rob Honeycutt at 08:24 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
    ClimateWatcher... So, your claim is now that there is no warming since 1970? Is that your position?
  27. Henry justice at 07:49 AM on 22 March 2011
    Latest GRACE data: record ice loss in 2010

    I wonder if the hydrostatic sinking of Greenland has been factored into the calculations. This will offset some of the sea level rise from Greenland's sea destined meltwater.

    Response:

    [DB] Henry, I think you mean isostatic rebound.  The edges of Greenland are actually rebounding upward slightly as the overburden of ice dwindles, lightening its downward load on the basement rock.  Think cork bobbing up in the water (buoyant).  But it's not much.  And yes, it's been factored into the calculations.

  28. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    MattJ "'grypo' got SO close to identifying the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Libertarianism -- and then shied away from exposing it!" I'm assuming the goal of this article was to show Libertarians that acting on climate change actually falls within the confines of their ideology, not that their ideology is "broken". I think you'll convince a lot fewer with the latter approach. I fear continual references to the Koch's funding will not help either, no matter how true it may be.
  29. ClimateWatcher at 07:23 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots

    #8 Rob, Look at the graphic above. That is from the RAOB, UAH and RSS measurements. That is not the absence of evidence. It is evidence of no hot spot. The models pre-dict it. The observations contr-dict it. That is all.

    Response:

    [DB] Rob was kind enough to point you in the right direction:

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/Dispelling-two-myths-about-the-tropospheric-hot-spot.html

    Please demonstrate good faith and do so.  Thanks!

  30. Daniel Bailey at 07:21 AM on 22 March 2011
    Preventing Misinformation
    CW also needs to read this and this for edification purposes. The Yooper
  31. Rob Honeycutt at 07:15 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
    ClimateWatcher... I have to address this statement though... "So either there is no warming (since there is no hot spot) or there is warming, but the models are seriously in error" Think about what you just said there. The models actually DO show the hotspot. The hotspot happens to be really difficult to measure. But again, go read the relevant sections in SkS. It's a popular topic. You'll probably learn quite a lot.
  32. ClimateWatcher at 07:13 AM on 22 March 2011
    Preventing Misinformation

    #3. Hmmm.... my follow up post was evidently dropped, so I'll repost... <snip>

    Response:

    [dama1981]Your comment is off-topic.  If you wish to continue this argument, please do so in "IPCC overestimates temperature rise".

  33. Rob Honeycutt at 07:11 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
    ClimateWatcher... Have you read the relevant sections here at SkS? The science is quite clear on the tropospheric hotspot. So... 1) Every measure of the atmosphere shows warming. Surely you agree with that. Even the BEST study is apparently coming out with the exact same results. For the rest, I suggest you check out Dispelling two myths about the tropospheric hot spot. All your questions are answered there. Remember: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Time to get skeptical and look at the science.
  34. Rob Honeycutt at 07:01 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    between the lines... I think there are people here who want to reinterpret what the founding fathers meant my separation of church and state as a rhetorical tool used on the general population. But the rhetoric is little more than that (IMO). When you get into the legal precedence of separation and original intent (which ironically is more of a "constructionist" - i.e., conservative - position) it's very clear what they meant with the first amendment. The challenges we have today, in the US, are relative to monied interests having tremendous influence in politics. But even then I think it's unlikely they'd be able to over turn established laws, even Roe v. Wade, much less alter the first amendment in any serious manner. What they (means the Koch's) is delay any kind of vote on a carbon tax by influencing enough votes in Congress to kill it. We'll see if Obama can pull off a major upset in 2012 and pull along a long list of progressives into office with him. THAT is what will be needed in order to get any kind of movement on carbon limits.
  35. ClimateWatcher at 06:58 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
    #6 Rob, 1) The hotspot is NOT a fingerprint of AGW. Right. It is a finger print of ANY warming ( the models indicate a hot spot from CO2 increase, solar increase, and albedo change). So either there is no warming ( since there is no hot spot ) or there is warming, but the models are seriously in error. 2) The hotspot is difficult to pin down. If no hot spot was occurring, it would certainly be difficult to pin down. 3) It has been indirectly measured. Were this indirect measurement accurate, one would have to ask why it was so contradictory to RAOB -and- MSU (both UAH and RSS), which agree fairly closely.
  36. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    725 Tom Curtis 720 partial re-post What if we removed the pot of water and simply inverted a larger empty pot over the red hot burner, i.e. no conduction. By your supposition, the burner should get hotter...correct? What is the temperature of the top (actual bottom) of the pot? Would the burner get hotter then 500C? What if we directed the burner toward your magic box. Would the outside of the box, insulation pulled back for sampling, be hotter then 500C
  37. luminous beauty at 06:33 AM on 22 March 2011
    Preventing Misinformation
    MattJ
    Or Einstein's denial of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?
    OT but a pet peeve of mine. Einstein was not in denial over the Copenhagen Interpretation. He was skeptical in the best scientific tradition. His skepticism led to the formulation of the EPR paradox, which, although it hasn't led to any widely accepted global interpretation of QD providing an algebraic, as opposed to probabilistic, solution to quantum wave function collapse as Einstein had hoped, did demonstrate the incompleteness of the Copenhagen Interpretation, and has led to profound discovery and ongoing research in QD.
  38. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Tom Curtis 720 You said: "In this situation, the heating element will be glowing slightly red, showing a temperature of about 500 degrees C." Do you really think the water boils because of "lid" forcing. If you made the lid transparent to IR from 100C to 500C, would the water still boil? I say yes. But before I endeavor to explain this scientifically sound principle, I'll let you reconsider your latest GHG analogy. hint...pressure cooker. What if we removed the pot of water and simply inverted a larger empty pot over the red hot burner, i.e. no conduction. By your supposition, the burner should get hotter...correct? What is the temperature of the top (actual bottom) of the pot? What if we directed the burner toward your magic box. Would the burner get hotter then 500C?
  39. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Tom Curtis 718 You said: " the photon does not increase its energy. Rather, if you feed in one photon per time interval, at equilibrium there will be four photons in the box, each with the same energy, and hence the total radiant energy in the box will be four times that which is fed in in each time interval." I did not specify a rate, you did. A single photon will transverse the box and/or absorbed and re-radiated countless times within a second...so why no increase in energy? Is there a minimum energy for your box?
  40. Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
    NYJ #22 - well said. CW #23 - The planet is made up of both land and oceans. Please stop cherrypicking whichever is most convenient for you to make your incorrect argument.
  41. Don Gisselbeck at 05:32 AM on 22 March 2011
    Preventing Misinformation
    Mr Thompson forgot "Al Gore is fat". But seriously, I really hope he and the other "climate skeptics" are right. I would love to still be skiing the Salamander and Stanton Glaciers in late summer ten years from now. I have even allowed myself some hope as I have seen them gain snow the last few years. Nothing exposes this hope as vain and deluded like the arguments used by the various "skeptics" reported and posted here. The endless repetition of long ago destroyed arguments, the repeated proof of the D-K effect, the inability to find facts a bicycle mechanic (me) can find in seconds scares me as much as any projection made by "warmists".
  42. ClimateWatcher at 05:16 AM on 22 March 2011
    Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
    #21 Dana, We are using different periods, but certainly for SST data you can compare the greater warming rate of 1910-1945 (0.41C), with the slightly lesser warming rate from 1975-2010 (0.39C) GISS land/sst of course does indicate a lesser Early Twentieth Century warming than contemporary, but the CRU, missing from your chart, does not.
  43. between the lines at 05:16 AM on 22 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Rob, and MattJ, I can't speak about the USA, as I'm not in that country, but in one whose polity is considerably older. Yes, the general framework of laws moves quite slowly - far too slowly to keep up with accelerating technological, social and economic change, in sad fact. Seen from this angle, the slowness of change can be a problem. The interpretation of the laws is another issue superimposed on that, and I gather that in the US some are now trying to overturn the formerly deep-rooted separation of church and state, for example. Quite small alterations can have huge ramifications, rendering the polity vulnerable to organised lobbies. So I do not share your sanguine view of the stability of long-established laws. In the uk our politicians continually demonstrate that their main concern is for their own short term interests, and the voters, in the main, are no better. And so the ship of state is steered onto the rocks while the crew and passengers are busy partying.
  44. Preventing Misinformation
    Thompson in his first answer writes "the vast bulk of the population have very little knowledge of science so they find it impossible to make judgements about even basic scientific issues let alone ones as complex as climate. This makes it easy for those with agendas to deceive us by using emotive statements rather than facts" So he got something right
  45. Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
    Solar and "ocean cycle" hypotheses can't explain the majority of the warming over the 20th century, and can explain very little of recent warming. The two hypotheses tend to contradict each other. If one maximizes the solar effect, this leaves little room for PDO/AMO warming in the early 20th century, thus little room for such an influence in the recent period - and we know the solar influence has been flat or negative (given the last decade) in the recent period. If one minimizes the solar effect, this allows for some other forcing to explain the early century warming. Assuming anthropogenic attribution is precise, let's arbitrarily assign the rest to PDO/AMO. But then one has to explain why cooling in mid-century was very modest. If solar variation has little influence, and PDO/AMO "forcing" is significant, what kept temperatures up? If most of the early century warming was PDO/AMO, where was the same magnitude of cooling? And why hasn't it cooled in the last decade? Why has global mean temperature shot up over the last 100+ years through complete ocean cycles? The magnitude of solar forcing does indeed have a fair amount of uncertainty. It's interesting to see contrarians start to move away from solar variation, which presumably has something to do with a very deep recent solar minimum, which has failed to reduce global mean temperature as hypothesized. But then they're back to trying to explain MWP/LIA. Fred Singer would not approve. The PDO/AMO indexes correspond with ENSO variation. In the late 70's, we had a transition from more la Ninas to more el Ninos. Much of the short-term trend over that period can be explained by that transition (similar to the early 1940's activity), but nothing more, and we've had a transition back since then, but strong warming over the entire period.
  46. ClimateWatcher at 04:47 AM on 22 March 2011
    Preventing Misinformation

    #6 - Gary "our investigations...show a human fingerprint." What finger print(s) do you refer to? There should be warming due to increased CO2. I'm on board with that. But the only 'fingerprint' of the models that I know of is stratospheric cooling. And stratospheric cooling HAS occurred. But there's some nuance. Most of the stratospheric cooling since the MSU era began can be accounted for by the two 'step function' temperature drops associated with the Volcanic eruptions ( El Chichon and Pinatubo ). The years preceding the eruptions and the trend in the lower stratosphere since Pinatubo resolved ( say 1995 ) are warming or flat. Still, the trend is consistent with CO2 forcing, but is there another finger print you are thinking of?

    Response:

    [dana1981]There are many anthropogenic global warming fingerprints

  47. Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
    Gilles - I am sorry yo have introduced data and to have confused you. I picked a point they where the same to get a benchmark. It's what scientists do. I thought you'd enjoy the point as it's just hand waving and broad brush strokes - your style. It it doesn't work for you, please feel free to present sone facts - of the level if rigger you require from others - to back up your assertions.
  48. Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
    Gilles #19 -
    "I don't see any significant anthropic temperature change before 1970 in your figure 1, so can you clarify this point ? where is the 0.64 °C anthropic warming in models ?"
    The anthropogenic (this is the correct term by the way, not "anthropic") warming prior to 1970 is close to 0.2°C. The equilibrium figure I cited (0.64°C) does not take the ocean lag or non-CO2 forcings like aerosols into account. Regardless, Figure 1 shows that the vast majority of the 20th century warming was anthropogenic, so I still fail to see your point. The figures in the article answer your question. Pre-1970, the roughly 0.3°C warming is approximately half natural and half anthropogenic. ClimateWatcher:
  49. Sea level rise is exaggerated
    Well, no defence of your numbers. I think we can take them as false and without credibility.
  50. Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
    New battery cathode technology, promises very short charging times for current battery technologies (NiMH and Li-ion): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110320164225.htm

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