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Albatross at 05:09 AM on 17 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
Oh right, sorry Dana..I guess "looks wonky" is what I should have said. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:05 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... "Incorrect, I have applied a much more stringent criteria to my list as I evaluate and filter every paper before it is put on the list." You have only applied an extreme form of confirmation bias to your list. You surely realize that repeatability is an important tenet of the scientific method. There is no way for anyone to qualitatively reproduce your results because they are all merely a function of your opinion. -
Dikran Marsupial at 05:03 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech@457 wrote "Incorrect, I already addressed that." no you didn't (I checked). Give the number of the post where you addressed it "It supports skepticism of CO2 being a primary climate driver by supporting solar as being the primary climate driver. Thus it supports skepticism of AGW Alarm." Nonsense, just because solar forcing has been the dominant driver of paleoclimate does not mean that the current warming is non-anthropogenic. "A criticism of a paper does not mean it is refuted." Not necessarily, no, but often it does. If you don't have the scientific background to judge the difference then you ought not to compile a list and should leave it to someone who does, for the reasons I gave. "What is "irrelevant" is subjective and no peer-reviewed paper is going to be removed unless it is retracted from the journal" That is a non-sensical requirement. Journals generally only retract papers becuase of plagiarism or scientific fraud etc. I don't recall ever seeing a paper retracted simply because it was wrong. If that was general practice it would be very common. "when you would consider all the papers on my list to be "dud ammunition" You often complain you are being misrepresented, but you appear quite happy to engage in misrepresentation yourself. Not all the papers on your list are dud, as should be obvious by the fact that I said you ought to weed out the ones that are incorrect or irrelevant (the implication being that there are some on your list that are not duds). I shan't hold my breath waiting for the apology though. "Your intentions are rather obvious - do anything you can to get me to reduce the size of the list." Apparently, size isn't everything, it is what you can do with it that matters ;o) The IPCC has a bigger list of peer reviewed papers that support its position. I do want you to reduce the size of the list, but only so that you can increase its quality. I am against alarmist claims that are not backed up by mainstream science just as I am against "denialist" claims that are not backed up by mainstream science. That is because I am interested in the science. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:02 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech, for the record I had no intent to get you to reduce the size of your list. I have provided links on this forum to papers that are not on your list but should be. There are some threads like "it's not bad" where some papers from your list would be useful. But obviously I can't go to that thread and post "here's 850 papers saying it's not bad", it would not help my case. -
Albatross at 05:02 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
PT, "I have stated multiple times that I am religiously agnostic and fully support evolution theory." My last post. Your position on creationism is irrelevant and not the point I was trying to make. However, I'll rehash for the sake of clarity-- regardless of your religious leanings, that does not mean that you cannot use or adopt the same techniques used by the young-earth creationist debating Dawkins in my example to further your ideology. Cheers -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:01 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... "Incorrect, I got 24,000 results for 2010 using the search phrase "climate change"." Break it down into journals. Or authors. There's more than one way to skin a cat. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:58 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... "Incorrect all the counted papers are peer-reviewed." Prove it. How could you possibly know unless you were on the actual review board or contacted a member of the reviewing board for confirmation? -
Meet The Denominator
From the IJMPB Aims and Scope, where G&T 2009 was published as a 'review article': "To ensure top quality, review articles are by invitation only and all research papers undergo stringent refereeing." This was not a peer-reviewed paper. -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:55 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Dennis, there is little point in doing what you propose. The "list" is a meaningless piece of nonsense. It is of no interest whatsoever to anyone sincerely trying to understand the science involved. It does not matter that the papers listed are technically peer-reviewed, per some database listing. E&E is not a real science publication, it has an agenda and even claimed it. They may have a different tune now, in their quest for being taken seriously, but what they do is clear. The quality of the stuff coming from it has shown to be dismal (they even published that pathetic Beck piece), and quality in this case is not a subjective notion. It pertains to how thorough the work is, how it makes sense with the existing body of knowledge, how much it advances the field, how useful it is to other reserachers. Even the CATO journal is part of the goofy list. A political organization trying to influence policy in the direction of its preferred ideology. Advocacy from CATO is and always will be only that, regardless how their "journal" is listed in databases. All this junk has no bearing on reality, whether it's called peer-reviewed or not. The total amount of papers that support AGW and concern about AGW is way higher than 850, even if one sticks to only science papers from real science publications. That the number is difficult to estimate does not change this fact. PT is just playing on technicalities with the Google Scholar thing. When numbers are as large as Rob found, you know that even after you cull out all the unrelated stuff you will still be left with a very large number, so what does it matter exactly how large it is? Whomever can be swayed by that kind of nonsense deserves to be taken on PT's wild fantasy ride. This ridiculous list thing is the map to get there. -
mclamb6 at 04:55 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Please provide support for the contention that all papers are peer-reviewed. Specifically, please verify that the paper referenced in this thread in the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law (if I recall the title of the journal correctly) was peer reviewed. Please provide your definition of peer reviewed. As an attorney, I can tell you that a law review article, while scholarly, is not typically subject to any type of peer review, at least as that term is generally understood in hard science disciplines. "Peer review" in that context is not much beyond editing for grammar and ensuring that the footnotes are in proper Blue Book form. Indeed a law review article is nothing more (in nearly all instances) than an extended, well-researched opinion piece that is incapable of "proving" anything one way or another. -
Meet The Denominator
Poptech - "Incorrect all the counted papers are peer-reviewed." Counterexample: G&T 2009, which is on your list, was not peer-reviewed. It was an editor invited "review" paper; subsequently (and repeatedly) debunked by actual peer-reviewed works. No reviewers were involved in the G&T article itself. The only lists it belongs on are those showing how bad some science can get. It doesn't belong on a peer-reviewed article list. -
Lou Grinzo at 04:54 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
A few comments on some or all of the above: Heidi Cullen talks about Bangladesh in her book "The Weather of the Future", and points out that that country has about half the population of the US in an area the size of the state of Iowa. And a disturbingly high percentage of it is very low-lying coastal land. Daniel makes an excellent point about the relative threat from Greenland vs. that of the Arctic ice or the WAIS. As Arctic ice dwindles every summer, the Arctic amplification, a.k.a. the "albedo flip" will become a very big deal. The change in albedo from ice to open ocean is very large, and it will happen over million of sq. km. And as for the WAIS, I can barely think about the implications of it doing anything even remotely "interesting". Daniel also pointed out something that I think a lot of people (including me) have been negligent in stressing: The wildly non-linear nature of human impacts from sea level rise. A small amount of SLR results in occasional problems from storm surges and high tides in a few places. A little more SLR and the problems happen more often and in more places, but can still be treated as anomalies. But as you approach a SLR of meters it suddenly becomes a challenge of moving large coastal cities like Miami to higher ground, permanently, or dealing with the NY City sewer system that can't operate during sufficiently high sea levels. (Cullen also talks about the NYC issue in her book.) There's also a freshwater connection here: In some places in the southeast US they've already had to stop using some municipal wells for groundwater because of saltwater incursion. Despite its costs, desalination is going to be a very important technology around the world, much more so than it is already. -
Peter Offenhartz at 04:54 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
@michael sweet(27): @MuonCounter(20): The volume of ice is much more important than the extent. Approximately 3% of all water is locked up in the form of ice. (I'm talking about land ice, i.e., Greenland and Antarctica, not sea ice.) Given the heat of melting/fusion of ice, this is a huge amount of heat storage. To understand the rate of global warming, it is necessary to understand the RATIO of the annual ice melting to the total ice mass. I ask michael sweet to think again about the relative heat capacities of ocean and ice; I don't think I am wrong. -
dana1981 at 04:51 AM on 17 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
The text isn't obscured but it does look a little wonky. I'll try to fix it, thanks. -
Albatross at 04:46 AM on 17 February 2011Monckton Myth #13: The Magical IPCC
Dana, The MM logo is obscuring some of the text. Good post by the way. -
Meet The Denominator
Poptech - As I have noted on this thread you can Google complete results to 2009 using single year and single field searches. Even past that (2010, 2011), none of the searches I bothered to run gave more than 1400 results. But since many of the papers you list go back to the 1980's, we can certainly look pretty exhaustively at pre-2010 works and numbers. Using sampling it's not necessary to peruse more than a hundred or two, reading their citations and summaries, in order to establish a decent estimate of the percentage of papers that agree with the subset you have listed. More papers will simply reduce the +/- of the estimate. My initial estimate is <4%, although I haven't done this (haven't bothered, really) in depth. So - Your protestations that sampling and estimate are invalid, that one must completely and exhaustively read all papers in all fields in depth to get an order of magnitude estimate? Bzzzt - incorrect. You are demanding a more stringent criteria of people looking at the 'denominator' than you have used on your own list. If we sample and assume that you have found all of the papers meeting your criteria (I do not), that percentage will give a lower bound on the number of articles that do not agree with you. You are the person claiming that 850 is a 'significant number'; it's up to you to prove your case. Demonstrate that they represent a significant opinion, a significant percentage of work in the field - rather than incorrect fringe elements present in every discipline. The burden of proof is on you. -
mclamb6 at 04:30 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech @ 449: Please correct your erroneous statement that all the papers are peer-reviewed. They are all in peer reviewed journals, which is quite different altogether. -
RickG at 04:29 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Rob Honeycutt: Poptech... You are the gift that just keeps giving. Thank you. I think that's why John let's all this ridiculous repetition continue. No one destroys the credibility of Poptech's 850 list than Poptech himself. -
Dikran Marsupial at 04:29 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech@449 wrote "No one has pointed out anything valid that has affected the numerical total of the list. The list is accurate as all the papers are peer-reviewed and support skepticism of AGW Alarm." Not true, I pointed out one such example here (peer reviewed - but does not support skepticism) The trouble is while the list of 850 papers may support your skepticism, that is not the same thing as supporting rational skepticism. It would be a more useful resource if you were to do a bit of curation and weed out all the papers that are incorrect or irrelevant. However, it is your choice, if you want to make skeptics who use your list look silly by feeding them dud amunition, it is up to you. -
mclamb6 at 04:28 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
You are correct in that the content of the paper is more relevant than the age. But the older the paper is, the more chances there are for a second paper to alter or modify the results. Your relavistic position that nothing can be objective and we are required to give credence to the most marginal/minority of view points (i.e. a 99.8% relationship is not a "strong" correlation, because someone believes that 99.9% is strong or only 100% will suffice) is absolutely laughable. It renders all science meaningless. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:16 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech... You are the gift that just keeps giving. Thank you. -
michael sweet at 04:14 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Peter, You are completely wrong when you say that the heat capacity of the ice is greater than the heat capacity of the ocean. The ocean absorbs enough energy to melt ice equal to several meters of sea level rise every 10 years. Currently most of the heat goes into expansion of the water, which only raises sea level a little. If the energy starts to go into melting ice the sea level rise will very rapidly increase. -
Daniel Bailey at 04:00 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Re; actually thoughtfull (24) Greenland is and has been the primary focus of the blogosphere for a long time as the source of sea level rise. Why? People live there. Now and in the past (Vikings). It's part of the denier mythos that "Greenland was warmer in the past" (see here and here, among others). Crap, all of it. Yeah, I know, it IS farther from the pole and thus receives more energy from the Sun than does Antarctica (and is in the NH so will be affected more by polar amplification). What they fail to take into account, when it comes to dynamic, nonlinear destabilization of ice sheets, is the underlying geomorphology of Greenland:You have a central, bowl-shaped, depression ringed by coastal mountains. Marine-terminating outlet glaciers vent the ice mass through gaps in the coastal mountains. Chance of "catastrophic" ice sheet demise in this century? Zilch. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has no such free publicity or underlying protections. The sheet itself terminates in the Southern Ocean, which has undercut the ice edge sufficiently enough already that the edge has retreated back of its terminal moraine grounding points into deeper waters, particularly in the area of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG) and the Thwaites Glacier. Ice sheet flows have risen dramatically in the PIG. Once it goes, you have a 10,000 foot high ice mass basically ready to slide downhill into the sea. Oh, yeah, the base of the WAIS is below sea level, so warmer waters will always be lapping at its edges. The recent warming of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current raises the spectre of nonlinear ice sheet losses in the PIG and the WAIS significantly. Hansen 2011 (linked in an earlier comment here) covers this as well.
Others may have different opinions, of course. Apologies to James & the mod's if I've derailed this thread any. The Yooper
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JMurphy at 03:59 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Maybe we should move on to Poptech's site ? Oh wait, hypocritically and cowardly, he doesn't allow that but he does love to claim that he is censored. And you should see how he uses the same tactics of spamming, accusations, strawmen and self-congratulating with regard to the Firefox browser - that is seriously weird. Oh well, might as continue here for a while - it is quite good fun, after all, watching a dog chase its tail. Yes Dr. Idso is a credentialed scientist who is well published and his papers peer-reviewed. So ? Strawman followed by Appeal to Authority. Try again. These include credentialed scientists, So ? Another strawman followed by another Appeal to Authority. Boy, you do like pasting lists of your favourite scientists, don't you ? Try again. ect So you gave up pasting the lists (I presume that is what the "ect" means ?) when you ran out of Appeals to Authority to post en masse, eh ? Never mind. No papers were "waved through" E&E Unsubstantiated claim. Prove it. All the papers listed support skeptics arguments against AGW Alarm. Wrong again. The papers (even those that the original authors have told you that they don't) support YOUR version of skeptical arguments against 'AGW Alarm' - whatever that means. Will we ever know ? Do you even know ? Good you admit they are not identical papers. Still waiting for you to tell us as to who said they were - apart from the strawman you created, of course. Try again. Figure out how to read page counts. What will that prove ? It is not a strawman argument, It is and you still haven't answered my question. Try again. I have had these discussions with you before here Discussions ? I have seen your ranting and self-congratulatory outpourings, but I certainly haven't gotten into any discussions about such. What 'discussions' are you on about ? How can anyone discuss anything with anyone whose stock responses are 'No, I'm not', 'Yes, I am', 'You're wrong/lying', 'I'm right' ? I have no idea what is wrong with your computer or Internet connection. Regardless I updated it again anyway. Who asked you to diagnose any problems ? So the link was OK but you updated it anyway, for some unknown reason ? Right you are. Easy, you never sent me an email on the link not working but instead posted it here so you can use it to falsely attack the list. Prove it. Release your Inbox, otherwise you are just blustering as usual. Falseness is subjective and therefore unproven. Fail again. I stated broken links are still irrelevant Irrelevant in your world but not the real world. Try and work out why. Wrong again, I'm afraid. So what was your point about the link not working? Do you understand hyperlinks? You still don't understand ? Never mind. Go back and have another look. As for hyperlinks, what do you imagine that I might not understand about them ? How do I prove I am not their web admin? That's up to you to prove. Fail again. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:54 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
What I believe Poptech misses here (amongst many other things) is that the denominator exercise is an allegory to point out a truth about his list. Of course the actual number that I got is not perfect. It's not a detailed study by any means. That does not make it wrong. It is not a perfectly accurate number but it is still correct. Likewise, Poptech's list is far from accurate, as many have pointed out here. So, in essence, we are attaching an inaccurate numerator to an inaccurate denominator. Does that make the exercise invalid? That would depend on the requirements of how the results are to be used. Being that we are not going use the results to build a rocket or a car or perform medical research, the accuracy of the actual number is not so important. The lesson of the allegory is. That lesson being: You can't just take a big number at face value. You have to step back and put numbers in context. Every number has a denominator. Putting Poptech's 850 papers into the context of all the research that has been done on climate change makes his list very very small. -
Dennis at 03:46 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
I've been following this exchange closely, as I had my own run in with PopTech's list some time ago, asked similar questions and, like this exchange, got nowhere and just kept running in circles. Mt recommendation: Just as Rob as done with the missing denominator, I'd like Skeptical Science to write a detailed analysis of the flaws in PopTech's list (e.g., lack of peer review, fatally flawed papers) and allow the exchange to continue. -
PT_Goodman at 03:37 AM on 17 February 2011CO2 has a short residence time
@Daniel Bailey (32) My first response to the NASA article ( link in my comment 22) was that NASA had either worded things awkwardly or I had missed something. It says what it says. I can't find anything out there that states that total CO2 emissions are increasing by 1%/year. The paper "A Tutorial on the Basic Physics of Climate Change" (Hafemeister and Schwartz) calculates emissions resulting in a CO2 concentration growth of about 3.3 ppmv (about 1%) and then states that this is about twice what is observed, stating that about half (my 57%) goes into sinks in oceans and on land and ends up with 1.4 ppmv/year increase. The numbers all work except for the 1%. The skeptic acquaintance attributes the 1% to NASA's lying. Yes--LYING. No big deal. But credibility is lost when can't defend an apparent inaccuracy that supports your case or you make a mistake you don't admit. If the science of AGW is to strong, then it should be easy to defend it. -
Daniel Bailey at 03:36 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Re: Arjen (23) Then try this one, couresy of Robert A. Rohde's Global Warming Art: Or this one, courtesy of Alex Tingle @ firetree.net: Better? The Yooper -
actually thoughtful at 03:35 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Daniel Bailey - could you give a brief rational for why Greenland is the red herring? I am assuming because of the potential positive feedback from the lack of arctic summer ice? thanks -
Albatross at 03:35 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
This thread reminds me of an exchange between Dr. Richard Dawkins and a young-earth creationist about evolution on Channel 4 some years ago. Dawkins presented facts and science, and while the creationist always had something to say or some sort of answer (no matter how hard he tried to pin her down), and the young-earth creationist never made a scientific point or a statement of any substance. Needless to say, no matter how much science and facts Dawkins presented the creationist was unswayed. The exchange went nowhere. Here Rob et al. represent Dawkins, standing up for science and a theory (i.e., the theory of AGW), while the self-appointed curator of a meaningless (and much flawed) list is the equivalent of the young-earth ideological creationist. This discussion could go on ad infinitum, and that is just what the list's curator wants folks. On the upside, the very soft underbellies of the list and that of its curator have been exposed more times on this thread than I can keep track of.......mission accomplished Rob and John, time for everyone to move on, IMHO of course. -
mclamb6 at 03:31 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
The age of a paper is not relevant IF additional research has not come along to refute or substantially modify the findings of said paper. Where, however, there has been significant advancements in the science, the age of the paper is clearly relevant. The age of the paper is also relevant where such paper is a commentary/editorial, such as the law review article referenced earlier in the thread. The age of the paper is especially relevant in the case of climate science where the understanding of the climate mechanisms has increased signficantly. Leaving that aside for a moment, earlier you indicated that basically you can't call something "strong" evidence of anything, because the term "strong" (and by extension "weak") is subjective. Suppose that substance X yields result Y 99% of the time. Can it not be objectively stated that there is a "strong" correlation between substance X and effect Y? If one cannot use phrases like "strong" or "weak" evidence (or alternatively, if stating that "strong" or "weak" are solely in the eye of the beholder), how can any science have any meaning whatsoever? -
Arjen at 03:14 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
@Daniel Bailey (21) That is a nice map, but it does not tell the real scope of a 5 meter sea level rise. Looking at that map you only sea some red dots and a few red blodges. Not even 1 percent of the total available land area. That's why I do not like those maps. It does not show that all the seaports, a lot of densely populated area and quite a lot of farm land are in those red areas. -
Bibliovermis at 03:09 AM on 17 February 2011A Case Study of a Climate Scientist Skeptic
Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming Scroll down to "Increased top of the atmosphere energy imbalance". -
pbjamm at 02:21 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
Poptech, My comment at 404 was meant as a summary of the conversation thus far not an invitation to rehash your statements. I thought that was clear when I called it a summary. Your comments regarding deletion of comments posted to your site are highly amusing in the context of your continued complaints about the deletion of your posts here. According to you when comments are deleted here it damages the thread of the conversation but when done on your site it is a legitimate enforcement of policy. Ridiculous. I am pretty sure that the "discussion" has run its course and there is nothing constructive to be gained by continuing it here. Since we are not allowed to continue it on your site i suspect this will be the end of it. also, since this comment has nothing to do with the original subject i full expect it to be deleted. -
Ron Crouch at 02:17 AM on 17 February 2011Meet The Denominator
#428 PT Then I take it Andrew that you don't have a problem with global warming theory in it's base form. What you are telling me is that you only disagree with alarmist views. Interesting. If what you describe should come to pass then what? Would you then be in a position to retract everything you have put to print? -
muoncounter at 01:39 AM on 17 February 2011CO2 has a short residence time
koy: There's nothing to 'defend'. CO2 data comes from NOAA (and several other sources in other countries, Japan has a really good site); you should urge your friend to stop characterizing things as 'lies'. That sort of language doesn't help the conversation. -
Riccardo at 01:14 AM on 17 February 2011Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
Ann different cultures respond differently, true; but the governing factor is welfare. Indeed, population growth rate has peaked even in the least developed countries. Take a look at this UN database. -
Riccardo at 00:59 AM on 17 February 2011A Case Study of a Climate Scientist Skeptic
Bernard J. it's correct and could be usefull to some. But unfortunately there's no single analogy/simplified terminology good for everyone, as you may notice from this discussion. -
Daniel Bailey at 00:53 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
@ Bern (19) One site to see the visual impact of various sea level rises is here. From there, this is 5 meters:(Larger version here) The Yooper
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muoncounter at 00:45 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Peter Offenhartz: "much more informative if the change in polar ice were ratioed " Look at the Arctic ice extent graph; values have declined from a more-or-less steady ~8 to approaching 4. That's approaching a -50% change. "understand the role polar ice plays in stabilizing climate" It seems to be failing at that role; are you implying that as Arctic ice continues declining, things will get worse at an increasing rate? -
Bern at 00:30 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
re Daniel Bailey @ 8 - yes, that's the paper I was thinking of - it's compelling reading. I was taking the 10-year period as a 'conservative' approach (and that thought is scary all by itself!) Some people in many wealthy nations complain about the refugee problems we have today. What's it going to be like when sea levels rise by 5 metres? I saw one estimate (can't recall where) that that much rise puts half of Bangladesh (and most of it's arable land) under water - there's about 80 *million* potential refugees. How are developed economies going to deal with that, while also trying to move trillions of dollars worth of cities & infrastructure to higher ground? The federal gov't estimates from 2009 suggest Queensland alone faces losing between $10-16 billion worth of residential buildings if sea level rises 1.1 metres. That doesn't include the cost of the real estate (potentially as much again), the cost of infrastructure (roads, power, water, comms) to supply those residences, or commercial/industrial property. Or losses due to economic disruption. Clearly, the ice mass loss described in this article is of concern. The 5m plus increase Hansen is suggesting would be catastrophic, even just from an economic point of view. From a humanitarian point of view, it almost doesn't bear thinking about. -
Daniel Bailey at 00:29 AM on 17 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Re: Gordon (10) Fair questions, all. Given the non-linearity of the ice sheet mass losses that have occurred in the paleo record & the anticipated warming "in the pipeline" (even if emissions are magically capped at zero indefinitely), we are clearly past the point of no return with our current shorelines. Whether it's 5 meters by 2100 or 10: the all-important first 2 meters of SLR is what matters. 2 meters will be enough to destabilize the 3rd world coastal nations & most of the developing world as well. If it occurs with the anticipated increase in droughts worldwide (a forthcoming blog post here details that), then the impact on today's society passes reliable calculation. Getting pretty far off-topic here, but I'll close with this: the focus on Greenland is a red-herring. What matters is the impending summer loss of Arctic sea ice cover followed by what happens with the WAIS. Those are the things to monitor. The Yooper -
Ann at 00:29 AM on 17 February 2011Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
IMHO, I don't think we'll ever see 9 billion people on this planet. The world's resources are finite; there is a limit to the earth's carrying capacity; Malthus will be proven right in time. I just hope that we reach that limit softly. The world population, when it grew at it’s fasted rate, increased with 2% each year. Now we are down to 1% per year but compared with the rest of human history it is still a very fast relative growth rate. In the past decade the world population has increased with one billion people. Going from 6 billion to 7 billion (give or take a few …) The fastest addition of one billion people to the world population yet. I think it’s terrifying. The scenarios of the IPCC project a moderate population growth, to even a stabilization of the world population after 2200 (a stabilization will supposedly not be caused by lack of resources, but by improving living standards around the globe which will cause families to have less children). This assumption is taken as is from a study by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and no further dependencies between population/global warming/resources/etc. are taken into account in the IPCC scenarios. I wonder how well founded this assumption is, because so much is dependent on it. Is it just an extrapolation of the demographic evolution in the developed countries ? This would be insufficient evidence for me. Cultures differ, for instance in muslim countries no decrease of the average number of children per family is observed. The only conclusion you can come to when looking at the current graph is that the global population is still rising steeply. But even if the assumption is correct (which basically means: in a world with endless resources the human population would spontaneously stabilize after reaching a certain level of development), will the world population stabilize in time before resources run out ? If not, the world population will stabilize or even decrease by lack of resources e.g. famines. -
Ken Lambert at 00:07 AM on 17 February 2011A Case Study of a Climate Scientist Skeptic
Bibliovermis #76 Where are we observing the forcing imbalance? -
Ken Lambert at 00:02 AM on 17 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Rob Painting #42 "Do you see your lack of internal consistency?." Err No!! The OHC 5 year period is in reference to an OHC graph touted on this website which covers the period 1993-2010 - a 17 year period. Is not 5 years a significant part of a 17 year period?; Especially when that period has seen the full deployment of Argo which (by the sheer number of measurements from 3000+ buoys) should bring much greater accuracy to same. -
Ken Lambert at 23:56 PM on 16 February 2011Guardian article: Australia's recent extreme weather isn't so extreme anymore
Don9000 #41 The piece was from the Weekend Australian Jan22-23 pp10 reported by Tony Koch. The hydrologist quoted was Neal Ashkanasy. The 180 years was no doubt a cursory expression -a pedant would have said '187 years ago'. So no Don9000 - the hydrologist did not say this in 2004 - he said it in response to the 2011 flood. When I get time I will look up the exact reference in the John Oxley library in Brisbane. An old school book on my shelf records that Oxley 'discovered' the site for Brisbane city on 20th September 1824. Is that date close enough?? -
fydijkstra at 23:09 PM on 16 February 2011Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
It makes no sense to describe the present warming as 6.3 degrees per century, because this will not continue for a century. Figure 1 shows a warming of 1.3 degrees per century, with oscillations of plus or minus 1.5 degrees. The period 1980-2010 was not the period with the fastest warming, because 1920-1945 had a faster warming (8 degrees per century, I guess). The present warming can be expected to reverse, as the NAO goes into its negative phase and solar activity is extremely low. My prediction for 2030: 1.5 degree below the 2010 level, and all years from 2030 to 2040 will be cooler than the past ten years. -
Marcus at 22:49 PM on 16 February 2011Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
Just curious, though-how does the warming per *decade* for 1979-2010 compare to, say, 1900-1931 or 1930-1961? -
les at 22:48 PM on 16 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
15: RSVP As you say, I missed one - or two? - or a few. Still clearly we agree there is no coherent view of this from the "contrarian" world. My version of your "so many other problems" one is: - Whether or not it's warming, money is better spent on X. where X = any example of human misery that the author is prepared to make political capital out of. Which has been argued well and badly but is certainly off topic as the ice does not give a fig whether or not it's cost effective to tackle CO2 emissions and such like. As for your last comment "And frankly, if your only concern is Global Warming, you must not have "real" problems." What can I say but get a grip. -
Marcus at 22:44 PM on 16 February 2011A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
Ah, RSVP, you're once again proving that you have nothing worthwhile to add to this conversation. You want to provide the basis for your belief that change is slight "compared to other problems"? Given how many other problems warming will either create or exacerbate, I think you're on very "thin ice" (pardon the pun). When all the refugees created by global warming start muscling into your neighborhood-in the *millions*-then you'll know what *real* problems are. Of course, some of us are not so self centered, as you are, to only be interested in our own problems. Many of us are very concerned about the plight of those living in poverty-& how those people will be impacted by global warming-all because some of us can't be bothered using fuel efficient vehicles or catching public transport more often.
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