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Rob Honeycutt at 11:34 AM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"Can a moderator explain why this post was deleted as I do not understand what policy was violated" Don't worry Pop. I've had a number of posts deleted as well. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:32 AM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech.... You have such incredible confidence in your list, why not validate it by writing up a paper and getting it published? If a top journal published your paper then you would shut all of us up forever and validate all of your points. And no, we won't shut up if it gets published in E&E. A top journal. Nature or Science or equivalent. Anything less and you're just blowing smoke. -
Tom Curtis at 11:31 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
David Horton @9, I strongly suspect that what you say is true about the hard core deniers. What will change when yachts can regularly sail to the north pole in summer is that the hard core deniers will no longer have any credence with the general public. They will be viewed, and rightly so, with the same mental condescension that is reserved for flat earthers and geocentrists. -
Tom Curtis at 11:28 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
An excellent article, and very clear. It may be of interest that Arrhenius first calculated the increased warming at higher latitudes in 1898. He wrote: "... I have calculated the mean alteration of temperature that would follow if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] varied from its present mean value (K=1) to another, viz. to K=0.67, 1.5, 2, 2.5, and 3 respectively. This calculation is made for every 10th parallel and seperately for the four seasons of the year. The variation is given in Table VII. A glance at this Table shows that the influence is nearly the same over the whole Earth. The influence has a minimum at the equator and rises to a flat maximum that lies further from the equator the higher the quantity of carbonic acid in the air. For K=0.67, the maximum effect lies about the 40th parallel, for K=1.5 on the 50th, for K=2 on the 60th, and for higher values above the 70th parallel. The influence is generally greater in winter than in summer, except in the part that lies between the maximum and the pole. The influence will also be greater the higher the value of [absorptivity], that is in general somewhat greater for land than for ocean. On account of the nebulosity [cloudiness] of the Southern hemisphere, the effect will be less than in the Northern hemisphere. An increase in the quantity of carbonic acid will of course diminish the diference in temperature between day and night. A very important secondary elevation of the effect will be produced in those areas that alter their albedo by the extension and regression of snow-covering, and this secondary effect will probably remove the maximum from lower parallels to the poles." So, the current polar amplification was predicted over 110 years ago on the presumption of the greenhouse effect, while it so confounds denialist theories that they have to assert, against the evidence, that it is not hapening. Arrhenius' prediction was made without considering the effects of changes in water vapour levels due to change in temperature. I do not think that those changes suggest a stronger heating at the equator. It is true that the greatest greenhouse effect due to water vapour is found in the very humid tropics, but the change in humidity is due to the change in temperature, and that is not automatically stronger at the equator. In fact, the change in temperature is weakest at the equator, though because of the high temperatures, the change in humidity may be slightly higher there. -
Jue1234 at 11:27 AM on 19 February 2011Models are unreliable
This may be a naïve criticism- but how do you avoid the problem of circularity in using hind-casting to establish the accuracy of climate models? The assumptions for the models can only be based on observations of what has happened in the past, so to create a model based on these assumptions means that it is inevitable that it will accurately predict what has happened in the past. The more established patterns are encoded into the model, the more accurately it will predict the past. It would be ironic if some of the most powerful computers in the world were generating tautologies. This is not a problem for climate science alone. It is a problem for any time-based models. I have been involved in environmental predictions based on using multivariate regression analysis of GIS data correlated with soil types. This falls into the same problem, but it can be amended by later sampling of soils at predicted locations, and correlating the observed soil type with the predicted soil type and running a t-test to establish the reliability of the prediction. It would be useless to sample the same site that the model was based on. The only way that the same calibration could be carried out in time-based climate models is by comparing forecasts with what happens in the future and not the past. Are the models therefore proper science. Without reference to the future they are unfalsifiable. The absence of controls is another issue. I understand the practical problem of testing the accuracy of long-term models in this way. The damage may have been done before the data is in. Can you post a link to papers which articulate the assumptions behind these models? -
muoncounter at 11:26 AM on 19 February 2011It's not bad
First comes snow, then comes the floods of snowmelt. But this year may be worse due to the already saturated ground. NOAA Hydrologic Center: North Central U.S. Spring Flood Risk Heavy late summer and autumn precipitation (twice the normal amount since October in parts of North Dakota and Minnesota) have soils saturated and streams running high before the winter freeze-up. Another winter of above average snowfall has added water to the snow pack on top of the frozen saturated soils in the North Central US. NWS models show this snowpack containing a water content ranked in the 90 to 100 percentile when compared to a 60 year average. These factors have combined to create some of the highest soil moisture contents of the last century. NWS one-month climate forecasts show chances favor a colder than normal last month of winter across the entire North Central U.S., while precipitation patterns appear to be near normal. -
Albatross at 11:13 AM on 19 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
Fantastic post Ari and very interesting! This answer is a little surprising, and somewhat distressing too. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:36 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
David... There are many for which I think what you say is exactly true. But I also think there are different extremes of denial. Ice is a pretty clear, visible signal. It's there or it's not. There's no quibbling about degree or missing heat or other issues. Ice has this way of drawing a line in the sand (or sea). As more and more ice disappears incrementally more and more people are going to sit up and take notice. The ice is going away, that's clear. With thermal inertia we have several more decades of warming no matter what. Arctic summer ice is going to be gone before that. Hopefully the far extreme deniers will become more and more marginalized during the process. -
CO2 limits will harm the economy
Berényi - As an example of climate change costs: the Central Valley (around Sacramento) in California, USA, is a major 'bread-basket' region, producing 8% of the USA agricultural output. That agriculture is fed by year-round Sierra mountain snowcap runoff, which is shrinking due to global warming and reduced snow accumulation. Rice crops will be among the first to suffer, but all agriculture needs water - 20-50% less over the next century. Walnuts, cherries, prunes and peaches, on the other hand, require lower winter temperatures to produce, and are declining as well; by 2100 about half the $9B annual fruit and nut crop will not be able to survive there. Minimizing these sorts of changes is the economically wise thing to do; I fail to see how you think otherwise. -
David Horton at 10:11 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
"fairly certain that all of it will need to be gone before they say "maybe."" - dunno Rob, I think you will find that when it is all gone they will be more firmly insisting that the Chinese sailed over the north pole in 1423, and that of course there wasn't any ice there 100 million (choose figure at random) years ago, and that polar bears have only just evolved. I have long concluded that there is absolutely no point at which the deniers will recognise the error of their ways. No point at all. Every step along the road to the year 2100, every shift in climate, every catastrophic event, every species extinction, every loss of coral reefs, will be explained away, rationalised, dismissed as having been seen some time on the past, or as too expensive to fix (except, if you insist, by a combination of nuclear power and DDT). -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:59 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Badgersouth... You know, I find the ice issue really interesting exactly for that reason. It's quite clear that the planet is losing ice at an accelerated rate by any number of measurements. But it's an issue that climate deniers tenaciously hang on to for dear life. Many of the arguments are listed here on SkS, of course. But when I'm on other sites arguing I'm amazed at how they hang on to these ideas. These people are utterly convinced that the ice is now starting to come back. They're as sure as they are that the sun will come up tomorrow. I'm really curious how much summer ice needs to disappear before finally acknowledge that it's disappearing. I fairly certain that all of it will need to be gone before they say "maybe." It's like a parallel reality. I like to point out that, after 2007, Arctic sea ice only "rebounded" to the accelerating declining trend. I suggest that, maybe if we were seeing a few years popping up past the 2 standard deviation trend on the positive side... then they might have something. But such comments seem to go unnoticed. -
CO2 limits will harm the economy
Berényi - I looked at a number of the analyses. Cost estimates per US household were estimated at $80-160/year, or ~$20-50/person/year, not too much, with lower prices for lower income families. Economic benefits include deficit reduction, $$ for investment in renewables/energy efficiency/lower polluting tech, and a reduction in greenhouse gas accumulation, hence a reduction in warming speed and mitigation of global warming consequences and their associated costs. And that's completely without considering the "Other Side of the Coin" paper, which uses a range of societal carbon costs estimates established by fairly detailed Department of Energy estimates. If you don't like that paper, take the estimates and do the calculations yourself. Sounds like an good economic trade to me. Avoiding some of those considerable upcoming costs is income, if you can look at and plan for the future - rather than being short-sighted about immediate rewards. -
Berényi Péter at 09:29 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
#24 David Horton at 08:48 AM on 19 February, 2011 as you are suggesting, we don't have to worry about CO2 levels increasing because plant growth will increase and therefore all the extra CO2 will be removed from the air - how did we get such extreme climate change in the past? Am I suggesting such a thing? I don't think so. Where have you read it? As for extreme climate changes of the past like glacial-interglacial transitions, they were not caused by CO2. The science is settled, there is robust consensus over this particular issue.Moderator Response: [DB] BP, that is certainly the interpretation any objective reader would have to draw based on your comment at #20 above. Please continue your disinformation campaign elsewhere. -
pbjamm at 09:23 AM on 19 February 2011Empirical evidence for positive feedback
co2isnotevil@78 Please provide some evidence to back up your assertions. Being dismissive and condescending does not add anything constructive to the discussion. -
RickG at 08:55 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
#20 BP, Are you familiar with the Keeling Curve? Not just that it shows annual increasing of atmospheric CO2, but the peaks and valleys of the annual curve?
The valleys occur in the summer when vegetation is taking in CO2. The peaks occur in winter when the decaying vegetation is releasing the CO2 they previously took in. The reason the curve is rising overall is due to the anthropogenic contribution. Yes CO2 is plant food, but plants also release that CO2 it in the winter. Plants can only take up so much CO2.
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David Horton at 08:48 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Berenyi I know this is a futile question to someone not wanting to worry about global warming because a volcano might erupt some time, but if, as you are suggesting, we don't have to worry about CO2 levels increasing because plant growth will increase and therefore all the extra CO2 will be removed from the air - how did we get such extreme climate change in the past? -
Berényi Péter at 08:44 AM on 19 February 2011CO2 limits will harm the economy
#6 KR at 06:14 AM on 19 February, 2011 Berényi - Benefits look to outweigh costs by a factor of 2 to 8, neglecting benefits such as decreased air pollution, ocean acidification, and overall climate change. Your cost argument does not hold up. Come on. Have you actually read Policy Brief No. 4 from Institute for Policy Integrity (which is not a peer reviewed paper so I wonder how is it allowed at this site at all)? Anyway, it all depends on discount rate, about which the authors say The interagency review process acknowledged that "[t]he choice of a discount rate, especially over long periods of time, raises highly contested and exceedingly difficult questions of science, economics, philosophy, and law." The benefits Holland & Schwartz are talking about are clearly not economic benefits, as they depend on such things as science, philosophy and law, but never on supply and demand, so they do not constitute a true income. Therefore they are not comparable to costs. End of story. -
muoncounter at 08:44 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
BP: "a major volcanic eruption in the Tropics can cause multi-year cooling & drought conditions, hence widespread crop failures. This kind of event can happen any time and we have absolutely no control over its occurrence." Sounds like something a major Alarmist might say. However, while major eruptions are certain to occur over geologic time scales, that's a gross mischaracterization of the probability of a major volcano on a human time scale. Ample work on volcano occurrence probability exists, all the way down to a quantitative assessment of the risk of death by volcanic eruption. For example, from Newhall and Hoblitt 2000, an individual is 5x more likely to die as a result of a hurricane, 20x in flooding and 2500x employed in mining and quarrying than from volcanic eruption. The occurrence of explosive eruptions (those that could potentially produce global scale cooling) is a logarithmic function, decreasing with volcanic explosivity index (VEI): VEI 5 (Mt. St. Helens) is <100 per 1000 years, VEI 6 (Krakatoa-class) is ~10 per 1000 years, VEI 7 (Tambora) 3-4 per 1000 years. A catastrophic Yellowstone event (VEI 8) is <0.05 per 1000 years. So it is remarkable that one can be more concerned with the negative effects of low probability explosive volcanoes than the negative effects of high probability climate change. -
John Hartz at 08:19 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Does any of what you describe occur in the parallel world of the climate deniers? -
Albatross at 07:29 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
BP, Please read the links that I gave you. The "myth" I am referring to is the claim that we essentially do have to worry about drought in the future because higher CO2 is beneficial to "plant life". The images that you posted are also a strawman, a red herring too-- but I am glad that you did, because it demonstrates yet more issues with your argument. But first, I did not contest that C3 plants do not benefit from enhanced CO2, at least under ideal conditions. you made the generalization about all "plant life", the literature suggests otherwise. Now to your pictures. First, we are a long ways off from a CO2 of 700 micromol mol-1 CO2. Second, you do not provide a link for the photos you produced, was it Rogers (1992). If so they say in their abstract "Results from this controlled environment investigation demonstrate....". So where were those plants grown? Were they exposed to elevated temperatures as well? Were they well watered, what about nutrient supply? Again, while there may be some benefits to doubling CO2 for C3 plants, but on the whole these are very likely going to be far outweighed by the cons. Have you looked up permanent wilting point yet? Those extra roots on the RHS image would be no help to a plant should the root-zone soil moisture drop below the permanent wilting point as often occurs during drought. In fact, even when the plant-available water content drops below 30% plants start to experience significant decreases in above -ground biomass growth and photosynthetic activity (e.g., Mitchell et al. 2001). And you know what else plants do not like? Too much water, and note that research has found that extreme precipitation events in many areas are on the increase. But I digress.Moderator Response: This conversation about the specific claim that CO2 will enhance growth, probably at this point should be moved to the thread "CO2 is not a pollutant," where the comments already started addressing that topic quite a while ago. -
Dikran Marsupial at 07:24 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
DP@20 CO2 is not the factor limiting growth of all plants in all environments. Yes, in an atmosphere richer in CO2 a soya bean plant grown in experimental conditions with unlimited water may grow larger than a plant grown in a low CO2 atmospher. But that doesn't mean the same is true of plants grown in the natural environment where water is scarce. A better developed root system will only help a plant in drought conditions if water were plentiful enough before the drought for them to grow that large in the first place. So your argument is only valid if additional unstated assumptions are valid, which is unlikely to be univeraslly true. Like many issues in science, it is not a straightforward issue, and simplistic arguments like "CO2 is plantfood" are generally misleading. -
actually thoughtful at 07:23 AM on 19 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
The expansion of the deep ocean should suggest a temperature rise of the deep ocean, and that should relate to the (currently) mysterious Trenberth's travesty of the global heat budget. Can someone with more maths than I confirm or deny (or more likely, shed grey where needed) that this deep ocean expansion does plug that hole in the equation? -
muoncounter at 07:15 AM on 19 February 2011Empirical evidence for positive feedback
co2 "I know that the Sierra alpine glaciers are growing" Odd that there is no empirical scientific evidence to support this anecdotal evidence. In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary: See this photo comparison from the Univ. of Portland: Comparisons of the repeat photography reveal that all ten of the glaciers have experienced a reduction in ice volume and surface extent over the past century. See also the 2009 report of the World Glacier Monitoring Service: all records for US glaciers in 2009 show mass loss. Are you perhaps confusing glacial movement with glacial growth? "Look at the work of Spencer, Lindzen and others for more details," I seem to recall that we are still waiting for Spencer's 'magic clouds' to bring negative feedback to the rescue. Dessler and Sherwood 2009 have quite a different view on that feedback. See also Vavrus 2004: Compared with this fixed-cloud experiment, the simulated cloud changes enhance greenhouse warming at all latitudes, accounting for one-third of the global warming signal. This positive feedback is most pronounced in the Arctic, where approximately 40% of the warming is due to cloud changes. The strong cloud feedback in the Arctic is caused not only by local processes but also by cloud changes in lower latitudes, where positive top-of-the-atmosphere cloud radiative forcing anomalies are larger. Any further comments regarding cloud feedbacks, if any are still necessary, should go to the appropriate thread. -
actually thoughtful at 07:14 AM on 19 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
I think Peter's comments point out the weakness of human nature when confronted with a multi-decade problem. (And I mean no disparagement of Peter). As a species we are not good at the 30 year+ type planning. Very few (perhaps more posters here than the world-at-large) begin their retirement savings in their 20s. Sometimes you can get away with it. (My parents started saving for retirement in their 50s and are not retired - not well-off, not even really comfortable, but retired...). The stunning preponderance of evidence is that we CANNOT get away with it in regards to climate change. That when the evidence the deniers (or even well meaning, accepting of reality folks like Peter, looking for the inevitably improved estimates) arrives - the outcomes that are painful and probably not possible to manage will be baked into the pie. We basically need nature to cooperate and throw in some natural-variation-on-the-warm-side or else we can expect more status quo/BAU. If however, fossil fuel prices increase and we have a hot couple of years (El Nino we miss you!) - that might suffice to move people into the take the necessary preventative steps column. This feels like a negative comment, but I am at a loss to justify/explain what people are doing in another way. -
Rob Painting at 07:04 AM on 19 February 2011PMEL Carbon Program: a new resource
Guinganbresil - Rob Painting - I will go out on a limb and say you are way off base saying that upwelling can't cause surface pH drops because the deep water is not showing a pH (or DIC) change. How do you propose this can happen?. If you take carbon from deep water on a global scale and shuffle it up to the surface, then carbon down deep (DIC) will change. There's no getting around this, hence my swimming pool analogy. we are talking about mixing pH 7.6 deep water with pH 8.1 water at the surface - that is a 0.5 pH unit difference... Compare that to the 0.1 pH difference from the whole industrical revolution You still don't appear to be grasping this concept of ocean acidification. Re-arranging the placement of dissolved carbon in the oceans doesn't change to total amount of carbon.
Note that the addition of carbon dioxide dissolving into surface waters is what is causing the increase in total carbon in the ocean (DIC). pH is a reflection of the chemical reactions which dissociates more hydrogen ions from water molecules. I think your confusion stems from failing to understand this point.
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Berényi Péter at 06:50 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
#16 Albatross at 04:49 AM on 19 February, 2011 debunking the CO2 is "plant food" myth This is how the myth looks like. Pretty, eh?
Of course soybean is a C3 plant (uses less efficient ribulosodiphosphatcarboxylase enzyme instead of phosphoenolpyruvatcarboxylase to collect CO2 from air). Still, a rather important crop.
In case of drought which plant could collect more water? The one with shorter (a) or longer (b) roots? Place your bets. And then the stomata thing was not even mentioned. OK, it was.
Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Please, no more spamming of this thread. This thread is about drought in a warming world. You have already been directed to more appropriate threads for the topics you've raised here. Future off-topic comments here will be deleted. Thanks! -
The Dai After Tomorrow
Berényi - I have replied on the economic impacts of carbon pricing thread.Moderator Response: [DB] Thank you! -
CO2 limits will harm the economy
Berényi - Benefits look to outweigh costs by a factor of 2 to 8, neglecting benefits such as decreased air pollution, ocean acidification, and overall climate change. Your cost argument does not hold up. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:11 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Thank you Peter... That's a really valuable point! -
doggenome at 05:43 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Another reason is the warm Atlantic Water entering the Arctic Ocean from the Gulf Stream. There is a recent article in Science on this subject. Speilhagen, et al. "Enhanced Modern Heat Transfer to the Arctic by Warm Atlantic Water" by Spielhagen et al. Science (2011) vol 331, pp 450-452 -
Berényi Péter at 05:39 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
#15 KR at 04:34 AM on 19 February, 2011 Prevention will always be less expensive than after-the-fact adaptation. You're advocating the most expensive path with that statement. That's obviously not the case. Using the precautionary principle one could easily prevent accidents by banning traffic once and for all instead of the meticulous adaptation process involving crash tests, seat belts, airbags, speed limits and the like, any of which costs money. However, if you compare this cost to that of the mindless prevention scheme mentioned above, it is negligible. -
Peter Offenhartz at 05:38 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
You ask "Why would the poles warm faster if there is so little water vapor in the air?" The answer is in part the changing albedo, as you note, but there is another part to the answer: Rising CO2 matters most when water vapor is lowest. This is because the absorption bands of H2O and CO2 overlap to some extent. The effects of CO2 tend to get swamped out when water vapor concentration is high, but in cold, dry places, CO2 accounts for most of the greenhouse effect. The change in water vapor concentration with temperature is exponential: At 15C and 50% humidity, water vapor is 0.84% of the atmosphere at sea level (by volume or by molar fraction); at -15C water vapor is only 0.08%. And at -40C, 0.006%. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:07 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Thanks, The Ville. Fixeded...ed it. :-) -
Albatross at 04:56 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
BP, a small but important point, a windmill and a wind turbine are different things which serve different purposes. And we know the game of mixing them up to demean the importance of wind turbines. And the ideological rant at the end of you last post @15, only acts to betray your bias and undermine your credibility. Please save that nonsense should you happen to post at WUWT (or other anti-science sites). -
Albatross at 04:49 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Regarding BP's posts on this thread, The anti-science meme by contrarians and "skeptics" continues. Yes, it appears that the eastern portion of the Mediterranean very likely experienced more frequent pluvial conditions 5.5 to 9.5 thousand years ago which led to sapropel formation. That regional response, has nothing whatsoever to do with the current anthropogenic forcing of global temperatures. Is BP honestly trying to suggest that the the entire Mediterranean region will now (and in the future) respond in the same way it did 5-9 K years ago to even warmer conditions? Ludicrous. First, as Dai et al.(2004) have found using observations, most of the Mediterranean has experienced a drying trend under the current observed warming (see their Fig. 7b). It is already experiencing an increase in drought conditions, and there are othewrs papers which show the same. Example, Xoplaki et al. (2004): "The second half of the twentieth century shows a general downward trend of 2.2 mm month–1 decade–1. In particular the end of the 1980s-early 1990s are well known for general drought conditions over large parts of the Mediterranean. The first canonical mode has been found to be responsible for the decadal and long term variations in precipitation. These decadal and long- term trends follow those of the Gibraltar-Iceland NAO, thus results suggest that long-term changes in Atlantic variability govern Mediterranean precipitation." Second, the contrarians are assuming that the N. Atlantic SSTs are now and in the future going to be similar to what they were during 5.5 to 9.5 K ago, and as shown above, they do play a role. Recent data indicate that the current warmth in portions of the N. Atlantic, are unprecedented in the last 2000 years (Spielhagen et al. 2011). Third, right now global temperatures are equivalent to the warmest conditions observed during the Holocene. We will shortly almost certainly be warmer than the warmest conditions experienced in the last 10 K years. Fourth, even in the highly unlikely event that portions of the Mediterranean do experience increased rainfall, what about the increase dimpacts of evoporation from higher temperatures, and what about the the rest of the globe? Fifth, BP need to familiarize himself with the permanent wilting point, and the many studies which show that elevated CO2 does not benefit all plants equally (with those using the C4 pathway, which tend to be found in hot and drier regions, benefiting the least, if at all). Not to mention the impacts of heat stress on plants. More information debunking the CO2 is "plant food" myth can be found here, and here, and here. And let us not forget the impact of fire on vegetation-- although I concede that is a tough one to weed out because of humans initing more fires, but in regions experiencing drying, controlling those fires will be more difficult. If BP claims to know better than Dai et al., and claims to know what the projections should be, then I challenge him to publish a paper making his case. His posts are nothing more than an elaborate attempt to obfuscate and mislead (e.g., his comments about CO2 enrichment). -
DSL at 04:42 AM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
In the mountains of Colorado, when I was a child, I once found a tiny nugget of pyrite. I thought I was the richest boy in the world. Poptech, the intensity with which you defend and assign meaning to these 850 studies . . . what happens to that intensity when you think about the hundreds of thousands of published studies, experiments, observations, and instrumental records that support the theory of AGW? Do you say, "Yes, those are all very nice, and they do seem to have a point, but I'm just saying that this handful here is worth looking at"? Or do you say, "Yes, well these 850 clearly destroy the credibility of those many thousands"? Or is it that you have a possibly explicable but certainly overwhelming urge to side with the minority? I'm still not sure, after your hundreds of posts on SkS, of what you, yourself (unless you are a program, as les suggests), find to be demonstrably unsupportable about the theory of AGW. You seem to be more of an empty vessel or messenger than an actual critical voice. You might point to studies, but you don't seem to be able to defend those studies when criticisms of them are shown or linked. You either ignore or don't believe possible that an industry could bankroll a journal to serve a number of purposes, including the creation of doubt about AGW within the democracy--not doubt for the sake of science, but doubt for the sake of democratic immobility. E&E is the obvious example here. I suspect that if this matter were of a more personal nature--say regarding evidence that a large rock was about to fall on your head--you would take the majority opinion. If it is your ultimate purpose to cause confusion and doubt in new SkS readers, you're probably your own worst enemy. As many have said, though, your efforts are appreciated. You are typical of the "it's not happening/it's not us/it's not bad" crowd, and your willingness to keep plunging allows a number of political sideshows to be examined more thoroughly. -
The Dai After Tomorrow
Berényi - I am greatly puzzled by your strongly worded comment "We should not spend any money on forced CO2 emission reduction programs..." Prevention will always be less expensive than after-the-fact adaptation. You're advocating the most expensive path with that statement. Secondly - "Of course we should encourage flow of venture capital into R+D programs targeted on development of new energy sources and their introduction to the market as soon as their pricing becomes competitive with no subsidies whatsoever, but never before." Current energy sources are strongly subsidized. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to state that new technologies should enjoy no higher subsidies than existing ones? Or to be even more fair, subsidies no higher than those technologies (like nuclear) enjoyed during their development phases, as an investment in the future? Otherwise you really aren't competing on a level field. Finally - a massive volcanic eruption could indeed cause widespread chaos and damage. So could an asteroid strike, a new plague, virulent crop pests, tsunamis, zombie uprisings, alien invasions, etc. But none of those low probability disaster events justify hiding our heads in the sand and not acting on high probability climate change effects. -
muoncounter at 04:31 AM on 19 February 2011Deep ocean warming solves the sea level puzzle
Andrea: "exploding methane hydrates which bring up heat from the deep earth to the ocean floor." Methane hydrates (or clathrates) form when gas is frozen within ice crystals in the deep ocean. This is quite cold and would not carry 'heat from the deep earth.' Here is a phase diagram:
See this thread for additional discussion.
"methane has risen 140% at the same time carbon dioxide has risen 26% "
Atmospheric methane concentrations are typically measured in parts per billion; CO2 in ppm.
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citizenschallenge at 04:18 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Nice clear explanation. [:thumbs up smilie:] -
Paul D at 04:16 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Grammatical mistake in the first sentence: understand Spulling mistake in the second paragraph: warm faster 'that' the rest... -
soo doh nim at 04:04 AM on 19 February 2011Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
@fydijkstra: Care to go to Vegas with that? -
Berényi Péter at 03:37 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
#11 Bern at 15:39 PM on 18 February, 2011 I think BP is saying that because there have always been terrible droughts, we don't have to worry about global warming causing droughts. I am saying we have to worry about droughts regardless any climate projections because we know for sure from paleoclimate records that a major volcanic eruption in the Tropics can cause multi-year cooling & drought conditions, hence widespread crop failures. This kind of event can happen any time and we have absolutely no control over its occurrence. Current global food management system is based on the (false) assumption that crop failure in a region is always compensated by good harvest elsewhere, so free trade can solve the problem even without considerable reserves. Of course, that argument ignores the fact that global warming is predicted to increase the *frequency* of such droughts, or the probability that terrible droughts will occur, which, IMHO, is quite an adverse impact. No, it is not predicted, it is projected, which is something entirely different. If it were predicted indeed, one could try to falsify it, but projections, being heavily laden with mays and mights, are essentially unfalsifiable. Consider for example Dai's projection for the Mediterranean.
You can see according to Dai's projection severe drought conditions may develop over the Mediterranean by the end of this century.
However, there is research based on actual fossil evidence that indicates otherwise.
Geologie en Mijnbouw 70: 253-264, 1991.
The eastern Mediterranean climate at times of sapropel formation: a review
E.J. Rohling & F.J. Hilgen
"We argue that increased (summer) precipitation along the northern borderlands of the eastern Mediterranean, at times of sapropel formation, was probably due to increased activity of Mediterranean (summer) depressions. Forming predominantly in the western Mediterranean and tracking eastwards, such depressions tend to lower the excess of evaporation from the eastern Mediterranean relative to that from the western basin. Picking up additional moisture along their eastward path, such depressions also redistribute freshwater within the complex eastern Mediterranean water balance."
They say (based on analysis of sea floor sediments) that between 9000 and 6000 BP (during the Holocene climatic optimum) precipitation over NBEM (Northern Borderlands
of the Eastern Mediterranean, where Dai expects extreme drought) was considerably higher than it is today.
At that time NH temperatures were also higher due to increased NH summer insolation, as perihelion of Earth fell into NH summer. Global average might have been somewhat lower because of SH cooling at the same time, but there is very little interaction between weather events of the two hemispheres.
The positive precipitation anomaly is attributed to enhanced land-sea temperature difference, which is also projected to occur under AGW scenarios. From this one can surmise there might be some problem with computational climate models. Indeed, even if they were perfect in in all other respects, their spatial resolution is insufficient to represent local features like cyclone generation over the Mediterranean.
#12 Riccardo at 19:59 PM on 18 February, 2011
You're talking a-scientific here and a bit insulting. I'm sure you know very well that hardly any absolute certainty can be found in cutting edge science. Your accusation of cowardice is really a shame and inappropiate here.
No, the a-scientific statement is found in the article above. To see this clearly, consider the negation of the phrase "most of the Western Hemisphere (along with large parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia) may be at threat of extreme drought this century", please.
It looks like "most of the Western Hemisphere (along with large parts of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia) can't possibly be at threat of extreme drought this century", which is obviously false under any reasonable assumption about climate. Therefore the original statement is a truism which has no place in science whatsoever.
It belongs to rhetoric or the language of marketing as it is currently known and is very much like propositions often heard in ads such as "just massage a few drops of this stuff into your hair and it may get up to 63.12% more vibrant".
It has nothing to do with lack of absolute certainty in cutting edge science.
As for shamefulness and inappropriateness the preposterous statement expressed in comment #7 "Population reduction will probably happen in the least affluent countries first and therefore have a minimal ipmact on emissions." surely has these qualities.
It is also insulting because it dares to imply population reduction by mass starvation would be a solution to a problem, if only it happened to the most affluent countries. As soon as people are dying by the hundreds of millions, no sensible person cares for emissions, one cares for people. We are not here to Save the Planet, but to save human souls. It is of course not a scientific stance but a political (or rather ethical) one, but so is speculation about saving the planet by letting people die en masse. It is just a re-dressing of the old Lebensraum theory, nothing else.
To prevent apocalypse, we obviously have to establish massive food reserves, what has to be done anyway, regardless of scary climate scenarios. We also have to spend a lot of money on improving education level of girls in the least affluent countries.
We should not spend any money on forced CO2 emission reduction programs, because that would cripple economic development of less affluent countries (and affluent ones as well), robbing them of the only chance to accommodate to any possible change that may come in the future. Of course we should encourage flow of venture capital into R+D programs targeted on development of new energy sources and their introduction to the market as soon as their pricing becomes competitive with no subsidies whatsoever, but never before.
Agriculture based on current technology, if given a few years leeway by a large distributed food reserve buffer, can adapt to any changes that may be in store for us. But in order to empower people to do that we should help backward nations to improve their conditions by good education, by building infrastructure and embracing cutting edge technology, while forgetting overhyped waste policies like biofuels or windmills ASAP.
No rocket science is needed to accomplish this plan, just some conscience and common sense. Also, it costs much less than the many trillion dollars needed to control a trace gas which has demonstrably no direct harmful effect on human health at all, while it is beneficial to plant life, especially under drought stress.
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:36 AM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... "ncorrect, nothing has been demonstrated outside of the less than 1% margin of error that the list has maintained since it came out over a year ago." How can you possibly assign a margin of error to your own subjective opinion? -
michael sweet at 03:04 AM on 19 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Peter, You cannot have it both ways. Either you think the sea level rise will continue at its present rate or you think it will increase rapidly in the future. In your first paragraph you claim the first and in your second you claim the second. You need to decide what you think the data support. Hand waving optimism is nice, but not very convincing or productive. Current scientific estimates of sea level rise by 2100 range from one to five meters. Do you have any data to suggest these estimates are incorrect? Since we agree that over 1 meter of sea level rise is terrible and current best estimates are for more rise than that, we need to propose what can be done now to change BAU so that these terible things do not occur. Hoping that people at some undefined future date will be smarter than we are, and will have the technology to save themselves is not much of a plan. -
RickG at 02:18 AM on 19 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
#23 XPLAIN: Thanks, but none of that explains why a schematic of 'central England temps' was published as 'global temps'. It's just sloppy. The diagram didn't represent what it claimed to, and like the Himalayan glacier error, undermines public confidence in the IPCC. The 1990 report noted that it was not clear whether all the fluctuations indicated were truly global (p 202). How is that sloppy? -
Dikran Marsupial at 02:06 AM on 19 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
XPLAIN@23 A schematic is only intended as a qualitative rather than a quantitative description - if at the time the MWP was considered likely to be a global phenomenon, then the schematic for global temperatures and for CET would be the same. This seems to me to be making a mountain out of a molehill. -
Empirical evidence for positive feedback
co2isnotevil - Regarding cloud feedback, I suggest you look at (and comment upon) What is the net feedback from clouds, and in particular Clement et al. (2009). The data indicates that low level clouds are decreasing with warming, producing a positive feedback. Glaciers - 95% of the worlds glaciers are retreating. Perhaps you are skiing on one of the 5% that isn't? Projecting local conditions to global ones without supporting data is a common error. I'm not going to go into the water vapor and CO2 feedback claims you make, aside from noting that everyone in the field disagrees with you. This was more than sufficiently covered in overly long discussions here and here. -
XPLAlN at 01:39 AM on 19 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
#22 Sphaerica Thanks, but none of that explains why a schematic of 'central England temps' was published as 'global temps'. It's just sloppy. The diagram didn't represent what it claimed to, and like the Himalayan glacier error, undermines public confidence in the IPCC. "who knew that the Managerial Wall Period was going to become a rallying cry for an ignorance driven contrarian machine?" Sure this was pre-denialosphere but I don't think that's any excuse. Take contrarians out the equation: the accuracy of the information published by the IPCC should be to the highest possible standard regardless. It's what we fund them for. -
AnotherBee at 01:30 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
Berényi Péter #8 It sounds as though you are arguing against the language rather than the content. We are all guilty of occasional sloppy language like "may be at threat". What I think the author means is "our models show that there is an increased risk". This would make it clear that the null hypothesis is the current (or past) level of risk (the current frequency of extreme precipitation events and the current frequency of extreme drought events). The authors argument is that these events are becoming more frequent and therefore there is a deviation from the null hypothesis. Additional commentary: The combination of drought and extreme precipitation events is a poor prospect for agriculture. In many areas where the water supply is already under stress, aquifers are depleted. Extreme precipitation events tend not to replenish aquifers as the water is lost in sudden run-off, rather than soaking into the lower strata. -
guinganbresil at 01:22 AM on 19 February 2011PMEL Carbon Program: a new resource
Rob Painting, muoncounter, and michael sweet - thanks for the spirited debate - I have learned a lot. michael sweet - you have a good point about the Feely et al 2008 paper. I am not so sure about the linearity of the simple subtraction of the 31 umol/kg anthropogenic CO2 component. I expect that removing the signal is not the same as having not produced the anthropogenic CO2 in the first place. "One woman can bear one child in nine months, therefore nine women can bear one child in one month..." muoncounter - I agree 'insidious' might be strong. I understand the actual meaning of the graph and agree that it as I would expect it qualitatively. I have no reason to suspect that the researchers have 'gamed' it in any way. The 'insidious' part is that it is so easily misinterpreted - I suspect that the general public actually believes that the oceans are more 'acidic' (you know why I put it in quotes...) near the surface because of the CO2 dissolving from the atmosphere. Rob Painting - I will go out on a limb and say you are way off base saying that upwelling can't cause surface pH drops because the deep water is not showing a pH (or DIC) change. I don't think you understand the magnitude of the numbers here. we are talking about mixing pH 7.6 deep water with pH 8.1 water at the surface - that is a 0.5 pH unit difference... Compare that to the 0.1 pH difference from the whole industrical revolution... You could use the percent increase trick (nobody I know measures pH like this-and I won't) to figure out the % difference in pH between the shallow and deep water. Keep in mind that I am not saying that upwelling is causing all of the changes observed - just some of the drastic effects reported (sad shellfish etc.) A good example is that the 'hot spot' on the graph above between 45N-55N - if you look at the data behind these measurements you will see that the ocean surface temperature was 3C cooler oin the first trip than the second over this region...
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