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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 94051 to 94100:

  1. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    Phil #7 - it costs either country $3 to take action, plus the $4 cost from the damages of climate change if only one country took action. Thus if only USA takes action, it loses $3 and $4 (hence $3 remaining), while Australia only loses $4 (hence $6 remaining). That's why it's seemingly in each country's best interest not to reduce emissions. Shoyemore #9 - yes, those are also good analogies. Same concept.
  2. Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
    We just experienced the warmest decade in terms of global temperature, the largest ice loss from Greenland since observations began in the 1950's, and the largest decade of glacier mass balance loss, no flat lines in sight.
  3. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    Dana, I think you have over estimated Australia's emissions when an 80% cut is implemented. At present CO2 increases by about 2ppm/year. An 80% cut would reduce this to 0.4 ppm/yr. That is approximately a total of another 50ppm by 2050 assuming a linear decrease in emissions. Of this Australia accounts for 1.5% or 0.75ppm. This is a reduction of 1.65 ppm not 1 ppm.
  4. Climate sensitivity is low
    Tom, When I use the term "atmospheric window" I mean the total transmittance - the specific amount of emitted surface power that passes through the atmosphere unabsorbed and goes straight out to space. If that is not the technical definition, then I stand corrected, but that's what I mean when I use the term.
  5. Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
    So one is not allowed to say global temperatures are flatlining after over 10 years of flatlining. But when 8 years of greenland ice mass data shows decreasing, you instantly declare "it's accelerating". You do not have the context for that, so you do not know whether it is accelerating (or even melting long term) at all. That is absolutely too short period of time. Where's the coherence on what can you say on what intervals, and what you can't? And shortly calculated, if we pick like 170Gt/a, it makes 0,006% a year, the Greenland is ice free in only 15 000 years. I think that's a rather good reason to sound the alarm. And BTW, Greenland temps are just as high as they were in the mid 1900's during the last peak of AMO. Nothing unprecedented on the temps of Greenland either.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] "So one is not allowed to say global temperatures are flatlining after over 10 years of flatlining." You can say it all you want, doesn't make it true:
    GISS, no exogenous factors
  6. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    Alexandre #3, Good interview here. Interview with Elinor Ostrom She takes a more benign view of "the commons" than Garrett Hardin. "If you are in a fishery or have a pasture and you know your family’s long-term benefit is that you don’t destroy it, and if you can talk with the other people who use that resource, then you may well figure out rules that fit that local setting and organize to enforce them. But if the community doesn’t have a good way of communicating with each other or the costs of self-organization are too high, then they won’t organize, and there will be failures." What happens when the "the community" is the whole world?
  7. Preference for Mild Curry
    @ Tom Curtis #20. I heartily agree. Remember that the people who hacked the CRU computers got their hands on *all* the raw temperature data that East Anglia University had at their disposal, which means so did the Climate Change Deniers whose websites hosted the hacked material. Yet more than a year after "Climate-gate", have they chosen to publish their own versions of the climate data? No. Probably because, after painstaking analysis, they were left with the fact that the data was completely accurate-not that they would tell the public that. Instead they chose to release a bunch of e-mails-out of context-to paint the CRU guys in the worst light possible.
  8. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    #418, Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy. Trying to dance around words does not help your argument. Here's my point. We agree that all bodies emit and absorb radiation. If a source of a specific temperature emits radiation, what is there to prevent another source of higher temperature to absorb that radiation?
  9. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    Isn't this the classic Prisoner's Dilemma in another form? Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act? The position of co-operation and defection is equivalent to the reduce or not reduce position. I have heard it also posed as the co-operation go two retreating soldiers under fire, where one must provide covering fire while the other runs. If they co-operate, their survival chances are maximum, but for an individual the selfish solution is to keep running and let his partner engage the enemy. Matt Ridley, who has turned into a climate change denier, has a good book on the Prisoner's Dilemma called The Origin of Virtue.
  10. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    damorbel - The vast majority of solar energy (shortwave) passes right through the atmosphere and warms the Earth. As Dikran Marsupial and I have both said, the atmosphere is warmed by the Earth, and hence the heater/block/wood/ice analogy holds, not your warming of a room through a blanket. The atmosphere is basically transparent to SW radiation, emitted by the sun based on it's temperature. The IR radiation emitted by the Earth, on the other hand, is almost completely blocked by the atmosphere. The atmosphere does not block sunlight from the surface, and for the purpose of discussion the sunlight could be coming from underground to warm the surface. To take it back to the analogy - the heater wires could run though the piece of wood, but they don't interact with it. Energy flows from Sun/surface/atmosphere/space, in that order.
  11. rustneversleeps at 09:11 AM on 1 March 2011
    Visualizing a History of CO2
    Nicely done! And, oh, what the heck... Here is another creative use of Mind Heist/Inception as the score to a video. :-p
  12. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #416 KR you wrote:- "And the atmosphere is a radiative insulator between the Earth and space." Yes KR that is true. But the atmosphere is also between the Sun and the Earth, just like a blanket with a corpse underneath it is between the (ambient or Sun) heat source. If the Earth was itself a heat source then putting a (partially) reflecting layer round it would, like for a living body, keep the heat in and the temperature would rise. But the same (partially) reflecting layer would keep some of the Sun's radiation out. The temperature of the Earth is thus not changed by the albedo, just the rate of heating and cooling.
  13. Rob Honeycutt at 09:05 AM on 1 March 2011
    Preference for Mild Curry
    Sphaerica.... I have to say, I think you are exactly right. I get the sense that Curry is just not quite clear on what she's gotten herself into. It's a little like she's gone into the den of the lion saying, "Aw, you just have to make friends with the poor beast." Her whole current series of posts on "Hide the decline" is a perfect example. Given the broad spectrum of research on climate change, I can't think of a more NON-issue than that. I also can't think of one other issue that climate deniers more quickly glob onto (execpt maybe Al Gore). But there she spent the better part of a week hashing that out on her blog to the chorus of a couple thousand comments. You'll have to pardon my non-scientist perspective here but Peter Hadfield has a really great, simple video titled The Scientific Method Made Easy where he points out that, it doesn't matter if someone gets it wrong, bad science will always be supplanted by better science. (I realize that's probably overly idealized, but for the sake of argument...) So, even if Mann and others had completely cooked the data, ultimately it wouldn't even matter. If they are wrong their work will disappear into obscurity. And it's not like this is the cornerstone of the entire TAR and AR4. It's one piece of information out of thousands upon thousands. So, here Curry is hammering away on how "she" was deceived blah, blah, blah. I just want to tell her to get over it. Either publish a real response to the work or do some better science of your own. The only thing she accomplishes building this "bridge" to the deniers is to fuel the fire they've built and isolate herself from the scientific community. As far as I can see, she's done nothing at all to improve the situation, in fact I think she's made it worse. And I think you're right, a decade or so down the road she is going to very much regret having made the decisions she has.
  14. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    Michael, we're not as big as Spain but SA produces 15% of its current power supply from wind. It would be more if we hadn't had to abandon a really big wind project because of grid deficiencies in that area. I see no reason why other states couldn't do the same. We have abundant coal and gas supplies so we're not using wind because we lack other resources. We've just made a better choice.
  15. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    There is something odd about the chart, but I don't agree with paulgrace @5. The chart details funds remaining. So the on-diagonals (the Yes/Yes and No/No) look correct. What doesn't look right is that countries that unilaterally do reduce emissions cost them $7 (the blue 3 in the top row and red 3 in the bottom). The preceding text suggests it should cost them $4 or possibly $3.
  16. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #413 you wrote:- "1) Does an object have to be at a specific temperature in order to emit energy?" I am not being pedantic here! Objects do not emit energy, they emit radiation. The radiation they emit depends on the temperature of the body. Energy may or may not be transferred to other bodies even deep space; dependent on their temperature; energy may be transferred to the body in the paragraph above, again dependent on the temperature of bodies in range (deep space included) it all depends on relative temperature. You wrote:- "2)Is an object receiving energy selective to receiving energy only from objects warmer than them?" Does the first answer work here also? To sumarise: all bodies above 0K emit radiation; all bodies absorb radiation regardless of temperature; energy transfer takes place in the direction high temperature to low temperature - always!
  17. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    The chart is correct.
  18. Daniel Bailey at 08:51 AM on 1 March 2011
    Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
    As discussed here, Greenland’s glaciers double in speed: The Yooper
  19. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    damorbel - The sun is directly analogous to the 1KW heater - as I posted here the solar spectra passes through the atmosphere to the Earth, affected primarily by Raleigh scattering (not GHG's), and warms the surface. The analogy is completely correct, the energy flow is from the Sun to the surface and out to space through the atmosphere. A small amount of sunlight heats the atmosphere directly (your block heater touches part of the piece of wood in the analogy); that changes only in detail, not in essentials. And the atmosphere is a radiative insulator between the Earth and space. The surface of the Earth has an emissivity of ~.97 to .98 in IR, while the effective emissivity of the Earth and atmosphere to space is ~0.612; the insulation. And that insulation makes the planet warmer than it would be without the greenhouse gas atmosphere.
  20. Dikran Marsupial at 08:33 AM on 1 March 2011
    2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    damorbel@415 wrote: "The Sun/Earth arrangement has the heat source (the Sun) outside the Earth/atmosphere system." what you don't appear to realise is that the atmosphere is largely transparent to the suns visible and ultraviolet radiation, which directly warms the Earths surface not the atmosphere. The atmosphere is warm not because it absorbs a lot of IR radiation from the sun, but from the IR radiated by the surface that has been heated by absorbing SW radiation from the sun and by conduction/convection. Thus the atmosphere is acting as an insulator, insulating the warm surface from the cold of space. This has been pointed out to you at least twice on this thread.
  21. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    @ #1 Matt J is right, the chart is backwards. Yes and No should be reversed in both cases.
  22. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #411 you wrote:- "Take instead a block of metal, heated on one side with 1KW of power, sitting on the other side on a huge block of ice. It will reach some dynamic equilibrium temperature, say 100 degrees." But your system has a 1kW heat source on one side (of a block) and you add some insulator (the wood) to the other side. Of course the temperature will rise. The Sun/Earth arrangement has the heat source (the Sun) outside the Earth/atmosphere system. Although your model is set up with the Earth as a heat source this is not the case. My best model is the blanket. A blanket keeps you warm because it stops your body heat escaping, as a result you are warmer than the bedroom. If you die, your body heat stops and your body (now a corpse) cools down to room temperature. If the room temperature increases (because the Sun is making the room hot) the corpse under the blanket will get warmer too because it follows the room temperature. There will be a little delay in the change of the corpse's temperature because of the insulating effect of the blanket and the thermal inertia of the corpse but after a while thermal equilibrium will be restored. It is the same with the Sun/Earth system. The Sun streams out photons with a mean temperature of 5780K. But, because of the inverse square law, the density of (5780K) photons drops with distance (photons do not lose energy with distance - just the number/m^2 changes with distance), so the (average) temperature at a planet is dependent only on the distance from the Sun. Even if the planet reflects most of the Sun's photons (i.e. it has a very high albedo) that will only slow down the rate of heating by the Sun, the planet will just get to its final temperature more slowly (than a black body planet). PS the high albedo slows down the rate of cooling also. PPS the albedo works like a blanket, and just like MFI (Multilayer Foil Insulation).
  23. Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
    Is it me or melt started around 1995? A consequence of the impredictable non-linear behaviour of climate?
  24. michael sweet at 07:47 AM on 1 March 2011
    Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    I posted a similar response here. In order to control CO2 all countries have to cooperate. That is only possible if developed countries with the largest past emissions lead the way so the developing countries can follow. Spain generated 16% of their electricity from wind last year!! If all developed countries did that it would really start to make a difference.
  25. CO2 was higher in the past
    alecpiper. You trust Easterbrook? Have a look at: here and particularly here. Of course, dont take a warmist blog word for it. Pull the data, check the references (especially the metadata) and see for yourself.
  26. Bob Lacatena at 07:33 AM on 1 March 2011
    Preference for Mild Curry
    Curry is going to be reviled 20 years from now as the scientist who abandoned her profession, her beliefs, and her integrity in order to become a professional concern troll for denialism. Variations on this story line wait for Watts, Inhofe, Monckton, and any number of others. It's going to make for fun reading, and they all have it in their destiny. They can lie and distort all they want now, but the truth, when it arrives, will be "undeniable." End of story. When we reach a point where the public begins to panic, because in spite of all of their clever arguments, temperatures continue to unequivocally rise and extreme events become more and more common and alarming, then I expect Curry to try to salvage her reputation in the eyes of history (along with any number of other high profile deniers) by back pedaling, insisting that she was just being open minded, and that she really was trying to build bridges, and that she's sadly misunderstood and being unfairly victimized. I'd love to be at a major climate science meeting come that time, and to hear the intense silence that falls when she enters the room.
  27. Climate sensitivity is low
    > total atmospheric window is simply the quantity No, it's not a quantity. It's a term defined in various ways in papers published in science journals. It's never defined as a quantity.
  28. Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
    Jeff T, Rignot et al (2011) is in press at Geophysical Research Letters
  29. Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
    "Vast riche$ await anyone who can scientifically break the chain of evidence & show the AGW is a non-worry" Lets to heart of what you are taking issue with in above statement and also the question of whether AGW is result of biased evaluation of data. I think DB is right in his statement and here is why. The motivation to find that AGW is non-worry is immense for a scientist (not a technologist though as you point out). 1/ Its hard to make your name with me-too science 2/ A Nobel prize awaits your successful effort 3/ Given the half-baked stuff funded by fossil fuel fronts, its got to be easier to get money there than from cut-throat world of conventional funders. Furthermore, since mainstream scientist employers are not accessing this money on whole, you can have the money yourself instead of salary. 4/ At a personal level, who wants AGW to be true? (Yes, there are luddites and atavistic dreamers but these arent the scientists I know). Its also important to understand the difference between "lobby science" and conventional funding sources. There isnt conventional funding for "pro-AGW" science nor should there be for "anti-AGW" science. There is funding for finding out what we dont know. The funding provider is indifferent as to whether the result is supportive or not of a given theory. On the other hand, can you imagine Cato or SPPI being pleased with results that support conventional climate theory? I also know that FF has very considerable internal research capacity. However, it is choosing to fund lobbying and disinformation rather than pursue an alternative theory. My take on climate science from an outsider is that an alternative theory is going to be tough. To get that Nobel prize will require a theory that accounts for all current observations and yet lets us off the hook. For my 2c, the unknowns that are worth pursuing are: 1/ A hidden negative feedback that will reduce ECS. Clouds and aerosols are favourite but face the problem that you need a mechanism that is working now or in future but didnt work in the past as low sensitivities make paleoclimate and 20th Century climate extremely difficult. 2/ A hidden natural energy flow that somehow mimics the signature of GHG. Any others? You can hope on those, but it isnt the way to bet or vote.
  30. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    This is a fascinating subject, and that's where the real challange lies. I recommend again the work of Elinor Ostrom, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on this subject. I've read two of her books, and I recommend both, being the first more math, and the second more descriptive of the institutions: - Rules, Games and Common-pool resources - Governing the Commons
  31. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    The tragedy of the commons is the core concept facing civilization. And it leads one to observe the greater tragedy as the human failure of understanding and implementing change.
  32. Monckton Myth #15: Tragedy of the Commons
    I don't know what readers Dana had in mind that would recognize the term "Nash equilibrium". And the table he gave in that context made even less sense: he said "Either side can only tie or win if they don't reduce emissions, and they can only tie or lose if they do reduce emissions." BTW: the notation of the payoff matrix also needs to be explained. For many readers, "7,7" looks like 7 and 7/10, NOT 7 for the US, 7 for Australia. For that matter, where is the equilibrium? The post should point it out explicitly and explain WHY it is an equilibrium. Finally, since, as the Wikipedia article on it points out, the Nash equilibrium DOES often lead to strategies no one would actually implement, since they are both counter-intuitive and on Pareto-optimal. Under such circumstances, the entire discussion of Nash equilibrium does not contribute much in the first place.
  33. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    "I am most interested in what you write but two lines is just a bit too little to give me a proper grasp of your point." An experiment is proposed. You use your understanding of thermodynamics to calculate a result. Result is also calculated by textbook thermodynamics. Results are compared to what actually is observed. If your method fails, then do you concede that your understanding is flawed?
  34. Stephen Leahy at 06:05 AM on 1 March 2011
    Preference for Mild Curry
    @16 Tom, I fear the entire Berkeley effort, even if well-intentioned, will be used as another excuse to delay action until we resolve 'the uncertainty'. Hence funding from Koch who are all about deny & delay.
  35. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    damorbel, Two questions. 1) Does an object have to be at a specific temperature in order to emit energy? 2) Is an object receiving energy selective to receiving energy only from objects warmer than them?
  36. Various estimates of Greenland ice loss
    Jeff T here's the refereed paper, published February 12th.
  37. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    To expand on that - the final temperature the block reaches will be that temperature where 1KW of heat is passing through the wood to the ice. That's when the incoming/outgoing energies balance. The wood (by conduction) will pass some heat to the block, the block (by conduction) will pass a great deal more to the wood, 2nd law duly observed. The final substitution in my example is radiation for conduction.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Added a "be"
  38. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    damorbel - Dynamic equilibrium, with energy flowing through the system, not static equilibrium; you have the wrong system in your example. Take instead a block of metal, heated on one side with 1KW of power, sitting on the other side on a huge block of ice. It will reach some dynamic equilibrium temperature, say 100 degrees. Now put a piece of wood between the block and the ice. The wood will reach a temperature between that of the block and the ice (and in fact will have an internal gradient), but the block (because of the slowed energy loss to the ice) will reach a temperature considerably above 100 degrees. A cooler object (wood) has warmed the warmer object (block) by reducing the energy lost, as that loss is only via the energy difference at the block/wood interface - much smaller than a direct block/ice interface. It has reduced energy loss by its presence, and hence warmed the block. Now substitute sun->1KW heater, Earth surface->metal block, GHG atmosphere->piece of wood, and space at 3K->huge chunk of ice.
  39. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #404 KR you wrote:- "Your claim that 'cooler objects cannot warm warmer objects' ignores that energy contribution, and hence breaks the 1st law - the energy from the cooler object doesn't just vanish. That means your claim is incorrect." So are you saying that, if two equal blocks of metal, No1 at 300K and No2 at 320K were put in thermal contact, No2 would be >320K ?
  40. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Dikran - I attempted to address that particular misconception here with spectra, but was ignored.
  41. Dikran Marsupial at 05:31 AM on 1 March 2011
    2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    KR@406 The "he's wrong" post also shows damorbel doesn't understand that the surface is heated directly by the sun, so the "insulation" explanation is perfectly reasonable.
  42. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    My apologies, I first directed damorbel that article in November, if not earlier.
  43. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    MichaelM - I pointed damorbel to that article here, several months ago. His reply? "He's wrong." Hence my comments about intransigence.
  44. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Dr Roy Spencer, contrarian and topic of this recent thread, posted an item on his blog last summer titled "Yes, Virginia, Cooler Objects Can Make Warmer Objects Even Warmer Still" and I thought it might be useful for both damorbel and KR et al. For damorbel it shows a contrarian showing "well, I’m going to go ahead and say it: THE PRESENCE OF COOLER OBJECTS CAN, AND DO, CAUSE WARMER OBJECTS TO GET EVEN HOTTER (sic)". For KR, and the rest, I thought it might be fun to read, in the comments, Dr Spencer trying to do your 'job' but without any reinforcements.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Please refrain from using all-caps. Thanks!
  45. Rob Honeycutt at 04:44 AM on 1 March 2011
    Meet The Denominator
    Les... Obviously, all I can offer you is anecdotal evidence. I have heard from many pro-AGW folks that they also get heavily moderated. And I read comments from skeptics here all day long. Most of us are fairly accustomed to posting on unmoderated sites and have a habit of aggressive commenting. The heavy moderation here requires that we all think before we post. Stick to the science, stick to the topic and keep it civil. If we do that, regardless of our position, our comments won't get deleted.
  46. Preference for Mild Curry
    I would like someone to ask Curry about that 90%/0-10C sensitivity statement, in an arena where she can't dodge the question
    We need to hang on to this, and to trot it out whenever she's quoted as believing we should do nothing. 10C globally implies what? 15C over North America and Eurasia? 20C in the Arctic?
  47. Visualizing a History of CO2
    How about the theme from Benny Hill? It would help point out the craziness of what we are doing to the climate.
  48. Climate sensitivity is low
    Tom, RW1 185 quotes himself. No other source for it. http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bdecrease+%2Btransmittance+"outgoing+surface+power"+"emitted+spectrum"+"absorbed+by+the+atmosphere"
  49. Visualizing a History of CO2
    Hey all, Thank you for the kind words. I agree with the ending being slightly anti-climatic and I was trying to fix that. I'm only learning how to do some of these things so hopefully as I progress I will be able to fix some of these issues. O Fortuna would be interesting certainly :P
  50. A Swift Kick in the Ice
    For S. Dobbs: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=arctic+amplification

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