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Rob Honeycutt at 15:11 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Moderator... Feel free to delete my response as well. -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:10 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... I sampled a year that had fewer than 1000 results. I very much took this into account. The sampling is clearly robust. You can't poke holes all you want, Poptech, statistically the results are no different. -
RW1 at 15:10 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Rob Honeycutt (RE: 29), "Rather that beating around the bush I suggest you just give us the point you're wanting to make." My point is this: +16.6 W/m^2 is needed at the surface for a 3 C rise. 2xCO2 only gives you about +6 W/m^2 (assuming all the additional absorbed energy affects the surface). What percentage of the additional 10 W/m^2 will come from 'polar amplification' from ice melting? -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:03 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
**Case in point** Not point in case... It's getting late and I have the flu. blah. -
RW1 at 15:02 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
muoncounter, From Flanner thread article: "i.e. for each degree of global warming, the loss of snow and ice means that another 0.25 W of sunlight is absorbed per square metre of the Northern Hemisphere. Globally, and in the long run it’s expected to be 0.2 because there’s less snow in the south and you eventually run out of summer snow to melt." So about 0.2-0.25 W/m^2 per 1 degree of global warming? -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:01 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... I do not know the actual W/m2 without doing some research. But what I would suggest is that we know very clearly that there will be an increase in the Arctic when there is less ice. Correct? What I challenge you to do is not conflate the global change in albedo to the change of albedo in the Arctic. That would be an act of searching for a way to falsely downplay the effect. Be sure to also read Peter Offenhartz post at #4 so you understand that albedo is not the only mechanism behind polar amplification. Rather that beating around the bush I suggest you just give us the point you're wanting to make. Everyone here is open to hearing all perspectives. Point in case, Peter Offenhartz taught me something new I didn't know. -
muoncounter at 14:58 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Yooper, Nah, there are 53136 authors at the front of the line. -
Daniel Bailey at 14:54 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Game, set & match to the muoncounter. All hail! The Yooper -
muoncounter at 14:48 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I keep trying to walk away from this thread, but it keeps going round and round with the same inevitable result as this NASCAR event. But until the crash occurs, here are some interesting numbers: Over at Ari Jokimaki's agwobserver, there is a list of 103 global warming topics. Each topic links to a list of papers (and they're all from real journals). Pulling 5 topics at random, they average 20 papers per topic, so Ari has indexed easily over 2000 papers -- an enormous achievement. As if this wasn't enough, he also has a list of 48 skeptic papers that have been thoroughly debunked -- some, multiple times. But the one that will put this NASCAR into the pits for good is the Thomson-Reuters sciencewatch.com November 2009 Climate Change database: The baseline time span for this database is (publication years) 1999-June 30, 2009 from the third bimonthly update (a 10-year + 6-month period). The resulting database contained 27,989 (10 years) and 11,428 (2 years) papers; 53,136 authors; 176 nations; 2,494 journals; and 10,801 institutions. I believe that was 27989 papers by 53136 authors (and that is a year old). The database allows sorting by author. The top 10 on the leaderboard are: Penuelas J 66, Chapin FS 57, Tol RSJ 57, Thuiller W 48, Allen MR 48, Chowin SL 47, Stott PA 46, Peterson AT 45, Giorgi F 44, Smith P 44. A cursory check of these names show these are mainly supporters of the A in AGW (which doesn't stand for 'alarm'). Seitz, Singer, Svensmark, Shaviv, McIntyre, Idso, Lindzen, Spencer et al. need not apply. It is also sortable by institution. The 10 most prolific are: Chinese Acad Sci 867, NOAA 420, Univ Colorado 414, Columbia Univ 412, USGS 387, USDA 368, UCBerkeley 363, NCAR 362, NASA 332, Max Planck Society 356. Surprised to see the CAS at the top of the pack, I found they are signatories to the Joint Science Academies Statement on Climate Change, which leaves little doubt about their position. The others are all recognizable names with well-known positions. The Marshall Institute does not make the list of top 20 institutions. Names that do not appear among the top 20 journals: E & E, Cato Institute, Iron & Steel, Waste Management, etc; nor do there seem to be any loosely defined 'policy' journals. See the thread on Compendium Maps for a prior reference to this database and some additional information. -
kiwichick at 14:48 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
thankyou moderator ok how about oh bugger!! the quote i heard in a interview on abc radio was that the greenhouse gas from the expected permafrost release will be the equivalent of the GHG releases from the USA at their current level for the next 80 yearsModerator Response: [Daniel Bailey] One other thing about the permafrost release paper is that the authors used the most conservative estimates based upon the IPCC medium emissions scenario. Note that actual emissions are following the high-emissions scenario, so the outlook taint as optimistic as portrayed in the linked paper you kindly provide. -
RW1 at 14:39 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
That's what I'm trying to quantify - potential polar amplification. Without knowing the actual quantification of the polar albedo, how do you know it's of any real significance? How many W/m^2 of additional post albedo solar power are we going to get into the system from Artic melting? Without knowing how many W/m^2 are currently being reflected away, how can you know?Moderator Response: [muoncounter] See the Flanner thread linked above. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:30 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... Again, we're talking about polar amplification, not the entire planet. Do you have a comment relative to the article? -
RW1 at 14:16 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
That's what I'm trying to quantify. How many W/m^2 of the roughly 102 W/m^2 total albedo comes from the Artic? -
muoncounter at 14:09 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1: Surely you know the issue is not Arctic albedo as a percentage of the whole, the issue is added forcing due to the decreased Arctic albedo. See the Flanner thread for that discussion. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:09 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
RW1... I don't believe that is relevant to the article. I'm talking about polar amplification, not global temperature. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:06 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
HumanityRules @ 16... I believe there is still considerable debate on that very point. See this lecture by Dr Barber. -
malamuddy at 14:03 PM on 19 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
I know this is slightly OT, but if you would like an excellent discussion of Monckton's Myths (with more to come), go right now to Potholer54 on Youtube (also currently available on Crock of the Week). The guy who prepares these little gems (Peter Hatfield) is a retired(?) journalist who was a regular correspondent for New Scientist. His material deserves a much wider audience. -
Rob Honeycutt at 14:02 PM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... "Whether a paper was peer-reviewed is not subjective..." The issue is less about whether the papers are peer reviewed and more about whether they challenge AGW. The question of peer review comes from your extensive use of E&E which most working scientists consider to be the backwater of science. Kind of the last place you go when you can't get your paper published. "I have no intentions of publishing a paper on the list. " Where is that confidence you exude? Does it disappear when you believe that people will actually put your list under scrutiny? "If you were giving me the benefit of the doubt then you would not have linked to Greenfyre's nonsense" It's perfectly reasonable to point people to the challenges to you work, whether you agree with them or not. "But I am not just here for your comments but also to correct those from other posters." You realize, though, the more you post the more people respond. Right? -
RW1 at 13:53 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Rob Honeycutt, What percentage of the average global albedo is the Artic? -
kiwichick at 13:52 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
hi guys, first post http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/17/nsidc-thawing-permafrost-will-turn-from-carbon-sink-to-source-in mid-2020s-releasing-100-billion-tons-of-carbon-by-2100/Moderator Response: Welcome! In future please provide context for links, or your comment will be deleted. For this one, please post an additional comment with context such as a question. -
Tom Curtis at 13:38 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
@17 HGP: 1) Grapes are not a tropical fruit, they are a temperate climate fruit. They were grown as far north as Yorkshire in the Medieval Warm Period, and in Southern England in roman times, but never in Scotland. They are now grown in Yorkshire once more, and indeed are now grown in Sweden commercially outside of greenhouses, which has never happened before. One essential difference between now and the past is the relative cost of transport. High costs of transport during Roman and medieval times made it sensible to grow grapes to the limit of their cultivation. That is why grape growing survived in Southern England right through the LIA, but died early in the 20th century. However, even though transport is now cheap, growing grapes is sufficiently easy to make local commercial grape growing even in Yorkshire. 2) During the summer months, the Earth receives more energy from the sun at the poles than at the equator. This is because the poles have 24 hour sunlight, even though the sunlight is much weaker because of the high latitude. The essential difference between ice and water in this context is that ice reflects approximately 90% of incoming sunlight, while water absorbs approximately 90% of incoming sunlight. In the summer months, that vast change in albedo, which coupled with the high summer insolation will make a significant change to overall global temperatures. That is quite apart from any ecological concerns about several species of seal and fish which are entirely dependent on sea ice for birthing (seals) or food (fish), or an even larger number of species including polar bears that are primarily dependent on sea ice. 3) Sea levels are currently rising faster than is predicted by the models. This does not make sea levels a matter of significant concern for the next 50 odd years, but after that sea levels will have risen high enough to impose significant adaption costs. You obviously draw your information primarily from denier sites (either directly or indirectly). You should avoid that. They lie to you. They lie frequently, and with breath taking bravado. It is impossible to form a rational opinion based on deliberate falsehoods, so if you want to learn about global warming, avoid denier sites like the plague. At the very least, never believe anything you read on one of those sites until you have confirmed it on at least to genuine science sites like Skeptical Science and Real Climate. -
Tom Curtis at 13:21 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
HR @16: 1) There may have been ice free summers in the Holocene Climactic Optimum, but there certainly have been none since then. In view of the very large difference in Milankovitch forcing between now and then, that is no reason to suppose the current decline in arctic summer sea ice is natural. 2) Arctic sea ice will melt for any warming, but warmings due to increased insolation or reduced cloud cover will have a strongest primary effect at the tropics. The net effect should be that the primary warming at the tropics and the secondary warming in the arctic should be of similar magnitude. In contrast, warming due to a strengthened greenhouse effect has a stronger effect at high latitudes than at the equator, which are then reinforced by the arctic amplification, resulting in much higher arctic warming than that seen in the tropics. It is the later we in fact observe, not the former. Changes due to orbital mechanics have a different pattern, with net incoming energy remaining essentially unchanged, but with large variations of insolation at high latitudes. Consequently polar amplification can reinforce an effect which preferentially warms NH summers. However, we know from astronomical observation that we are currently approaching a minimum in NH summer insolation. Hence, if that were the only influence, we would expect the arctic amplification to be increasing a reduction in summer temperatures, not an increase. Pretending that because High summer insolation coupled with polar amplification has lead to an ice free arctic summers in the past, that therefore our rapid approach to ice free arctic when we have low summer insolation is because of natural causes is disenginuous at best. -
HuggyPopsBear at 13:05 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
I am seriously trying to follow you guys without physics a subject I always wanted to learn but could not grasp, I am left with basic logic and observation. Can someone please explain the importance of why losing ice is and seems (to me) to be a bit of scaremongering. From what I can see and knowledge of history, like everything else on this planet it goes in cycles. One minute we are hot another cold. One minute theres ice and the next there is not. I can remember as a child rivers (salt) freezing over in southern England that you could walk on. We also know that the arctic regions were once fertile and that Mammoths were frozen in situ as they grazed these areas. In Roman times grapes tropically grown fruit was being farmed in Scotland and CO2 level were supposedly higher then than now as well as temperatures higher than now. Also why are sea levels not rising as high and as fast as some models predict with the big melt? Now I have tried to find out how true this is but supposedly oil companies as they pump the oil out of the ground is floated up by injecting sea water. If true how many millions of gallons of sea water is used, which is lost forever if the case is provable? -
HumanityRules at 12:41 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Rob, "If the Arctic Sea is covered with ice in the summer - as it has been dating back perhaps thousands, to millions of years - the incoming sunlight is mostly reflected back to space without adding any heat to the Earth. But, as ice melts back, as is happening today, the summer sun is absorbed by the darker open sea exposed by the disappearing ice." This couplet of sentances seems to allow for mis-interpretation. The wording seems to suggest that todays conditions represent a departure from conditions that have persisted for thousands or millions of years. This of course is not true. Evidence exists for possible ice free summers on thousands of years time scale. 11 Tom Curtis Just for completedness, amplification isn't a feature specific to the greenhouse effect. It occurs in the history of the arctic during warming phases attributed to other forcings. For general interest there are two extensive science reviews here and here from a long list of eminent authors. My guess this would be the concensus view heading for AR5. -
Chemware at 12:30 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
... and very few people realise an important fact about Antarctica: it has an avergage elevation of 2,286 m. As a consequence, it is naturally colder than the Arctic, by about 20°C (calculated from the lapse rate), and so most Antarctic ice will be very slow to melt to a significant extent. Glaciers sliding into the ocean faster because of melting near the coast is another matter. -
Tom Dayton at 12:21 PM on 19 February 2011Models are unreliable
Jue1234, see in the RealClimate post "FAQ on Climate Models," the "Questions" section, "What is the difference between a physics-based model and a statistical model?", "Are climate models just a fit to the trend in global temperature data?", and "What is tuning?" A relevant quote from those: "Thus statistical fits to the observed data are included in the climate model formulation, but these are only used for process-level parameterisations, not for trends in time." Part II of that post then provides more details on parameterizations, including specifics on clouds. -
Tom Curtis at 12:02 PM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Albatross, there was a model in sight. It was just simple enough to be implemented by pen and paper. This is one of the biggest confusions about models, which are in fact just mathematical equations which are worked through to find out what they actually predict. As some deniers rightly claim, models are not evidence. But they are the predictions of physical theory. As it happens, no plausible physical theory using only natural forcings predicts the warming in the late 20th century, nor the greater warming in the arctic, nor the decrease in the difference between day and night temperatures, nor the cooling stratosphere combined with a warming troposphere. All plausible physical theories including natural and anthropogenic forcings predict these. In this circumstance, rational people prefer the theories that actually predict what is actually happening. Deniers just obfusticate. -
nigelj at 11:57 AM on 19 February 2011The Dai After Tomorrow
I like this site. I have read these posts hoping to see if there is valid evidence to support an incresing frequency of droughts. Instead some character called Berenyi Peter highjacks the entire thread, trying to nitpick an article title that is simply in effect a summary and suffers what all summaries inevitably do it generalises, because its a summary or title! He then waffles on about preparing for natual disasters, well off topic, gives me a headache with his constant itallics, and make claims about cost mitigation and precautionary principles without a shred of proof, but plenty of straw man arguments. I give up I cant be bothered Im off elswhere..Moderator Response: [DB] As Marcus points out immediately below, thread hijacking, as attempted by BP on this thread, will not be allowed to succeed. Debate and even disagreement is encouraged, as long as they comply with the Comments Policy. If needed, more extreme methods exist to deal with repeated violations of the Comments Policy. For a more in-depth discussion of the science of droughts in a warming world, I encourage you, and everyone, to read the paper which is the subject of this blog post. Bring any questions about it here and someone will attempt to answer them for you. Thanks for caring enough to make a comment of your own. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:45 AM on 19 February 2011Meet The Denominator
"I am here in this post to correct misinformation about the list." Interesting because the whole premise of the article was not to challenge the list at all. I said repeatedly that I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. I merely was attempting to put the number into a broader context relative to the full body of science on climate change. -
Models are unreliable
Jue1234 - You might find the Hansen's 1988 prediction page a useful answer. His predictions are holding fairly well through now. His initial climate sensitivity number was a bit too high - but adjusting for the better sensitivity estimates and actual emissions shows the model (simple as it was) still holds up. Models are not just based on hindcasting - that's a required check, but the assumptions going into the models are based on physics, not just mathematical modeling of previous behavior. -
Albatross at 11:36 AM on 19 February 2011A Swift Kick in the Ice
Tom @12, But Tom, the models, those hopeless models!! I jest, that was a very interesting post, and not a model in sight, probably not even in his wildest imagination...just hard physics. Very cool. And despite what Lindzen thinks, as shown by Ari's recent post on ocean levels (which I highly recommend) and the two recent seminal nature papers on extreme events, models can be incredibly useful tools. -
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?
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