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Comments 95751 to 95800:

  1. A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
    I suppose its amazing really to see the changes in the world today, and to see an ice free artic regions would be something this world has not seen for many thousands of years. What wonderful times we live in, in that we can see and monitor these changes. As they say there is nothing new under the sun, it's just we have never seen it before with the naked eye and mankind has to re-educate himself that nothing is permanent and he is going to have to uproot and move with the times. No wonder animal species (as we are) tend to migrate seasonally.
  2. Meet The Denominator
    PT today: "at one time I have either read the abstract, summary or conclusion to all the papers on the list." PT yesterday: "no I have not read every paper completely. I have read many of them and all the abstracts and conclusions (where available)." Contradiction? Qualification? Obfuscation? You be the judge. Either way, the charade will continue ... Let us recall the wisdom of Einstein: “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
  3. Meet The Denominator
    Hmm, comment from Poptech on RSS but not showing here. Anyway, a response for Poptech so he can answer properly. "I don't consider any climate or economic predictions based on computer models to be meaningful" I am well aware of that. What I asked is whether you considered those "alarming". ie IF they were true, would they fit your definition of alarming? This is what I am trying to define. And while you wont accept that they might be true you could also be dead wrong. "I believe these are influenced more by economic policies than climate." Economic policy could be linked but you might need several indicies. However, I am not asking you to agree with mine, I am asking you to name data which you agree would change your mind. You surely arent taking the position that there is no data that could change your mind? "Which are based on bogus computer modeling." I believe you should have phrased that as "models I believe to be bogus despite all the evidence to the contrary."
  4. Meet The Denominator
    400 comments in let me summarize this thread for the newcomers. 1 - Poptech's list of 850 skeptical papers represents a tiny fraction of the total number of papers published on the subject and many that are on the list are of questionable quality 2 - Poptech: There is nothing wrong with any of the papers on my list and they all come from peer reviewed journals. 3 - Some are poor science that has been refuted and some are contradictory! The still represent a tiny percent when compared to AGW supporting papers 4 - Poptech: The papers are fine and your methods are terrible. 5 - OK, the method was flawed, but your papers are of terrible quality. 6 - Poptech: No they are not and you dont know what you are talking about. 7 - GOTO 5
  5. Meet The Denominator
    Hi Poptech I made a comment on your post, nothing remotely unpolite about it, just asking a couple of questions. I think I submitted it correctly - does it pass your blog comment submission policy?
  6. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    Thanks for that S&S paper, Albatross. So much for the long-heralded "recovery". Albedo-flip, here we come. The Yooper
  7. A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
    The first figure is from GRACE data. 2007 is about the mid-point of the reference range, so they used it for a zero point. Mass loss has continued from 2002 (inception of GRACE data). Central Greenland is gaining mass through increased precipitation, principally in the form of snow, but that gain is vastly offset by the thinning margins and marine-terminating outlet glaciers. The Yooper
  8. A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
    Oops, ignore that. I see from here that the figure shows: "Greenland ice mass anomaly - deviation from the average ice mass over the 2002 to 2010 period. Black line shows monthly values. Orange line shows long-term trend (John Wahr)" So it tells you that Greenland has lost about 2000Gt total since 2002 - that's not yearly mass change. Sorry for the confusion.
  9. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    Thanks to all for advice/references. Much appreciated - Screen & Simmonds (2010) is very clear. Implications for the Greenland IS do seem bleak.
  10. A basic overview of melting ice around the globe
    I'm a little confused by that first plot of Greenland ice balance - specifically, that it seems to show that Greenland was in fact gaining ice until about 2007 (if the y-axis shows what I think it does). This does not sync up with the GRACE data shown in this previous sks post: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Greenlands-ice-loss-accelerating.html By the way, that's a post I hadn't read before, and the graph showing how surface mass balance used to track precipitation until runoff started increasing at a rapidly accelerating rate around 1995-2000. What an eye-opener.
  11. Meet The Denominator
    Submitting a papers which are essentially the same, not even necessarily identical, is frowned upon in science. It is called padding one's CV and rehashing, and any prospective (respectable) employer would seriously frown upon that.
  12. Meet The Denominator
    " that paper supports the theory that solar activity is the primary cause of climate change." That would be a hypothesis, not a theory. It would also be a false assertion, as anyone with access to SkS's search function can quickly determine.
  13. Meet The Denominator
    All, Someone is appealing to faux authority. And credentials are not everything-- Michaels, Singer and Lindzen have, or have had, ties to the FF industry. Scientists for hire if you will. It is a long list, they are not the only culprits, to contrarians who mix political or religious ideology with science. While these people may be qualified and their (padded) CVs compelling, their qualifications do not speak to their ethics, morality or integrity or quality of their science. These are the usual suspects in an orchestrated attack on science and climate scientists that has been very well documented. I encourage people reading this to do some rigorous research on their backgrounds.
  14. Meet The Denominator
    'No papers were "waved through" E&E as it has a rigorous peer-review policy" Ha ha. We are well aware you believe that but the science community has passed it own judgement. If you consistantly publish rubbish, noone capable of judging the merits of a paper will believe the "rigorous" bit. Also, its normal when talking about science for "peer reviewed" science to be understood as a/ Science b/ reviewed by other publishing scientists (peers). Journals like "Cato" might well allow you put your hand on your chest and declare "its peer reviewed", and I guess all that's all that matters to your audience, but because neither a/ nor b/ are satisfied, it doesnt mean the same as a paper published in a real journal. Instead of your quoting of qualifications, trying quoting cross-journal citation numbers of their publications on climate change (not other fields), then we might be impressed. Still waiting for your answer to #379
  15. Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
    Come to think of it, such a payment system would be larger but much, much easier than other systems. There are no eligibility requirements apart from existence. No means tests or rate changes or age limits or income adjustments or interactions with the tax system as there are with all other benefits.
  16. Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
    Harry@39. ".... can this really be handled without creating a bureaucracy?" Well, it can be handled without creating an entirely new bureaucracy. There are 2 functions of government that modern societies have really got under control. One is administering taxes, the other is distributing benefits. (Leave aside my personal views about the efficiency of various systems in different countries.) A carbon tax differs very little from alcohol excises or customs duties or sales taxes. Name the taxable item, set the rate, impose the levy / tax / duty / excise. Every industrialised country has one or more established bureaucracies that could simply add this item to the other imposts they collect. A universal carbon payment looks a great deal like other near-universal payments. Child benefits, pensions, you name it. All you need to do is to get the recipients on the system, set the rate, choose the payment intervals, send cheques / transfer funds to bank accounts. The only complications will be those that already affect existing payments - nursing home residents, homeless people and all the similar bureaucratic headaches. But they're the same bureaucratic headaches, nothing new.
  17. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    Regarding polar amplification, don't forget Screen and Simmonds (2010).
  18. CO2 has a short residence time
    @ koyaanisqatsi (22) Patience is a virtue (or so I'm told). Anyway: You're friend is nuts/wrong/misled/mistaken (your call which). Flask, in-situ, ice core: all datasets show increasing concentrations of a globally well-mixed gas. We can even see it from orbit: And over geologic time: Have a great day! The Yooper
  19. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    Flanner et al. (2011) might address your previous point pertaining to the forcing at the poles. In particular note the following "On the basis of these observations, we conclude that the albedo feedback from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere falls between 0.3 and 1.1 W m−2 K−1, substantially larger than comparable estimates obtained from 18 climate models."
  20. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    Agnostic, I chose 64 to 90 N because its the easiest way to partition it in the Gistemp algorithm. It naturally includes that region as its own zone so it makes it easier to extract from that region. The other key point is that what defines the Arctic is very difficult to conclusively define. Lets consider this, northern Labrador is considered to be part of the Canadian East Arctic but the furthest north in Labrador is 60 N. The arctic treeline there is near 57 N which is very low and the mountains there have the only biome consisting of Arctic Cordillera outside of the very high Arctic. Mean annual air temperatures (MAATs) in the region are as low as -7°C. That region is excluded from my analysis but I could make very strong arguments for its inclusion. Nonetheless it is very difficult to conclusively define what is Arctic and what is not and you make an interesting point.
  21. Meet The Denominator
    Poptech, I notice you conveniently neglected to answer my last question, so I'll pose it again. Granted that 850 papers on cigarette smoking exist that could be construed to "strengthen the skeptical position" against the consensus that smoking causes cancer, would you say that that is strong evidence against the consensus, or weak evidence, or could you tell?
  22. Meet The Denominator
    Poptech@385 "Deleting posts wholesale is censorship. Calling it violation of the comment policy does not change this fact." Nonsense. your comments have not been wholesale deleted from this tread as anyone reading it can easily see. If you have made comment that violate the policy they get deleted. Everyone here knows how this works. "I will accept editing of the part of my comments that violate this policy when it is evenly applied." It is highly unfair to expect the mods to edit your posts for you in order to keep the conversation civil. That is the job of the poster. Editing of comments would also open the mods up to accusations of context doctoring.
  23. Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
    Harry S., I'm hoping Obama's budget request is not killed by congress, but my hopes are not that high. I think that in the US, the people that get elected are more often the ones who spend more on their campaigns. That means accepting donations from people with money, and the fossil fuel industry has more money than any other industry I know. And let's not kid ourselves; solving the climate change problem means putting them out of business, and they know it. I'm not saying that politicians necessarily change their opinions based on the donations they receive, but if you are in danger of being put out of business, you are going to support those who see things your way. All that means is that it is difficult to overcome the status quo, but it's not like everyone here didn't already know that. Already there are Republicans in congress who are saying that the $4 billion per year loss of fossil fuel tax subsidies would cost the US to loose jobs. Yeah, no kidding, shifting off of fossil fuels will cost jobs in that sector. The local Republican governor has stated that one of his main goals is to see a new coal plant built, because Kansas needs the energy. Why would a political figure feel the need to push forward a project in private industry? And the vast majority of the energy produced is contractually bound to Colorado; the energy left over is a few windmills worth; so, why does the governor feel that Kansas needs the plant? Pirate, Open up Google Earth and zoom in on an industrial agricultural area. You see roads, train tracks, and about every 20-40 km a town. That town will have a school, a hospital, and other infrastructure. Shift poleward and what do you see; none of that. In the case of southern Australia, you see ocean. You are supposing that shifting where we grow food will have no cost, even if we can grow food there. What if where you can grow food crosses national boundaries? Hadley cells will shift toward the poles and push the rain ahead of them. Thanks Glenn T, you have just repeated the all things that make me wonder why I bother to get out of bed in the morning. But, no matter what happens, my kids will be better off if I give them a good start in life. 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. If the environment is seriously degraded, the earth's carrying capacity will be on a decline when our increasing population hits it, and that is a recipe for a major over-correction. There is a possibility that we will have a revisit of Easter Island on a global scale. In the local newspaper, there was a comment that might as well have said, "I don't want to have to give up luxury items; therefore, AGW is just a government conspiracy." and he had supporters. My hope is not high. I can't comprehend people who argue about the cost of repairing the electrical wires when their house is in danger of catching fire. Sorry, this is getting way to long, but weather has always introduced a certain amount of variability in food production, but we've optimized to certain means and variations about those means. and now we are changing them. Why would anyone think production will not be adversely affected?
  24. Meet The Denominator
    Poptech, still interested in your answer to the questions in #379.
  25. Meet The Denominator
    "Deleting posts wholesale is censorship." Well you'd know, wouldn't you PopTech, as you frequently delete posts on your own site-even if they *don't* violate the comments policy. Not that you have to worry about that so much anymore, now that you've intimidated your dissenters into silence with the threat of releasing their personal info. As it happens, I've had a number of my posts here deleted wholesale because I crossed the line. However, unlike members of the Denialist Cult-who see a conspiracy in *everything*-I just take it in my stride & try & moderate my own comments in future. If you can't stand the heat....
  26. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    And more recent (with references to earlier reviews) Serreze et al 2009
  27. Meet The Denominator
    Poptech at 383: In relation to your claim that 850 papers is "a lot" or whatever language you used earlier in the thread. The whole point, once again, is that 850 papers (taken at face value) is meaningless as a statistic to bolster a particular view point absent a frame of reference to the overall body of peer review climate science relating to climate change. You cannot in good faith argue otherwise.
  28. Meet The Denominator
    "Yes any increase in the number of papers (even by 1) would strengthen the skeptical position. It would be illogical to say that an increase would weaken it." What a load of nonsense. That would only be the case if the paper in question (a) told us something we didn't already know & (b) is backed up by firm evidence. Most of the papers you list tend to be rehashes of long disproved ideas, don't provide evidence to back them up or are-at best-skeptic neutral. Using papers like that doesn't strengthen the skeptic position, it weakens it by proving that your argument is so weak that you need to pad it out with nonsense.
  29. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    Agnostic - there is this article on why. (It's not simple - its what the GCMs predict).
  30. Meet The Denominator
    "Actually they are not identical papers..." Who said they were ? "...another is a much longer paper with a more detailed analysis" Unproven. Prove it. "...as I have proven above" Strawman. What's that got to do with relevance to 'AGW Alarm' - whatever that means ? "All of this has been gone over many times ad nauseum with you." No it hasn't. Prove it. "...the link worked when I just checked it..." No, your link didn't work, which is why I got the error message. You are wrong again. "Not surprisingly I only receive emails on this from those not out to attack the list." Unsubstantiated. Prove it. "Those that are post these irrelevant things..." 'Irrelevance' is subjective and unproven. "Implying what I don't know..." Who implied that ? Prove it. (Actually, no-one needs to imply that, anyway) "I am not an admin of the CSA servers and have no control over their hyperlinks" Strawman. Who said you did or were ? Prove it. "Wow you guys are great, thanks for helping make my argument." Oh dear. You have an argument ? I can see why you would need others to make it for you...whatever it is.
  31. Meet The Denominator
    So, what we're left with here is a list that is predominantly padding-papers which are out of date &/or have been thoroughly debunked; papers consisting of political or legal opinions not backed up by evidence; papers published in multiple journals (& *no*, Poptech, there is not sufficient difference between a 1964-1994 & 1964-1998 timeframe to justify counting it as a completely separate paper); papers published in journals with a clear political/ideological agenda-& with proven track records of below-par peer-review standards (like E&E & Cato Journal); papers that directly contradict each other; papers which don't actually support the skeptic view-& the list goes on. Yet even if this wasn't the case, what does this list actually tell us? That there is a dissenting opinion in the general community on the future dangers of AGW? Well that's hardly a great revelation. Yet the way Poptech & his followers flourish this "list", you'd think they'd stumbled on the smoking gun that "proves" that AGW is nothing to worry about-yet the list provides no such ammunition. Yet every time they pull out a reference to "the list", its with the air of a chess player yelling "Checkmate". Its not Checkmate Poptech-its not even "Check"-just a restatement of what was already known (that those predominantly from the Far Right don't believe global warming is real-whoop chook).
  32. Monckton Myth #12: Arctic Temperature Changes
    I thought that the Arctic was defined either as the 10C isotherm or the tree-line (both of which are moving north) and was internationally recognized as all areas north of the Arctic Circle. Extending it as far south as 64N does seem a bit generous. Even so, Robert Way again shows that Monckton has yet to make a substantive statement on global warming, its causes and effects which is either accurate or excludes misrepresentation of peer reviewed science. I still don’t understand why global warming produces temperature change in the Arctic 3 times greater than in the tropics. Surely this can not be attributed solely to lower albedo due to sea-ice melt?
  33. Meet The Denominator
    Hey Poptech, how can a claim be libelous when you have actually admitted to the relevant facts? Here in the real, rational world (as opposed to Denialist Central), posting someone's personal info-without their permission-with the intent of silencing them is what we call *intimidation*-& intimidation is the tactic of a thug. Just because you refuse to accept that truth about yourself doesn't make it any less true-no more than an alcoholic who denies they're not abusing alcohol. Its certainly no different from your mate Monckton who-when faced with the exposure of his Snake Oil Salesman routine-threatened to try & have someone sacked from their job.
  34. Meet The Denominator
    Poptech, your list is there to bolster the idea that AGW is not real/not alarming. Ie no action required. I have a couple of questions. 1/ Do you consider the BAU scenario outcomes in IPCC WG2 for 2100 "alarming"? I am guessing not. 2/ If you are wrong, then what future data would cause you to change your mind? (eg world mortality rate, insurance costs, food price index, or even climate indicators like ice extent or sea level?). For your chosen index, what level would they have to get to by 2050 for it to be "alarming". Note that I am quite aware that climate now is well within our ability to adapt, but the movements to reduce CO2 are based on premise future change will indeed be costly.
  35. Dikran Marsupial at 10:47 AM on 16 February 2011
    Meet The Denominator
    pbjamm@376 - try counting the peer reviewed papers cited in the IPCC WG1 scientific basis report, there look to be many more than 850. The references in the IPCC report also have the benefit of actually supporting the argument being made ;o)
  36. Meet The Denominator
    I did a quick count of the peer reviewed papers supporting AGW on the Global Warming Links page and came up with a scant 408 unique papers! Best get to work if we ever want to catch up.
  37. CO2 has a short residence time
    drrocket - "...nature is indeed a net source of CO2 in warming epochs, such as the last 50 years..." Not quite right. Warming decreases ocean solubility for CO2, and in the absence of other effects will outgas until the partial pressure of CO2 matches solubility and oceanic concentrations of CO2 complexes. However, if the partial pressure rises, as is the case with our emissions, then the ocean will absorb CO2. It's a race between decreasing solubility due to warming and partial atmospheric pressure, and atmospheric pressure is well in the lead right now. The oceans are a CO2 sink, sequestering ~45% of our emissions.
  38. Dikran Marsupial at 09:56 AM on 16 February 2011
    CO2 has a short residence time
    drrocket@19 wrote "First, nature is indeed a net source of CO2 in warming epochs, such as the last 50 years." No, that simply isn't true; if it were true, the annual rise in atmospheric carbon would be greater than anthropogenic emissions instead of less, becuase both man and nature were contributing to the rise. This is a simple bit of accounting, and the uncertainties involved are too small to have any bearing on the conclusion. While temperature does affect uptake of CO2 by the oceans, the fluxes also depend on the difference in partial pressure of CO2 between the atmosphere and surface waters, so if atmospheric CO2 rises, ocean uptake increases. This is known physics. "Third, your claim that the "then the observed rise will be greater than anthropogenic emissions, as the annual rise is equal to total emissions minus total uptake" is false, if by your second use of the word emissions you are referring to your immediately preceding phrase, "anthropogenic emissions"." No, by "total emissions", I meant total emissions, i.e. anthropogenic emissions plus natural emissions. "The annual rise must be equal to the total inputs minus the total uptakes. " yes, that is the very basis of the mass balance argument that proves that the rise is anthropogenic. "Fourth, your ultimate claim that "the natural environment is a net carbon sink rather than a source" is false. Take a look at the Vostok Record, for example, a period in which man surely had no effect. Sometimes the natural environment is a net sink, sometimes a net source." Irrelevant, I am stating what is observed to be happening now, not thousands of years ago. However, the paleoclimate data strongly suggests that the rise is not natural. In the Vostok data you only see a change in CO2 of 100ppmv in response to the sort of temperature change you see at the start of an interglacial (about 10 degrees C), whereas now we have seen a rise of 100ppmv with a temperature rise of less than a degree. So can you explain why the oceans are suddenly so much more temperature sensitive now than they have been for the last 800,000 years? There are parts of AGW theory that are uncertain; that the rise in CO2 is of anthropogenic origin simply isn't one of them.
  39. CO2 has a short residence time
    Maybe someone can help me. I think I've figured this out, but I'm not sure. At NASA OCO , it is stated (within the first paragraph) that: "Measurements from a global network of surface stations indicate that atmospheric CO2 increased by 1% annually over the past 40 years -- i.e., from 326 ppmv in 1970 to 389 ppmv in 2010." If atmospheric CO2 increased annually by 1% between 1970 and 2010, and the CO2 concentration was 326 ppmv in 1970, then wouldn't the 2010 CO2 concentration be 326*(1.01**40)= 485 ppmv? OK, this is what I think is happening. In reality, the 1% increase is in emissions. But only 43% of that remains in the atmosphere on average. Thus, we would see an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration of 326*(1.0043**40)=387 ppmv, which is consistent with the 2010 MLO CO2 concentration of 389.78 ppmv. I am trying to debate a GW skeptic and that person simply says that NASA is "lying." It's not clear what NASA would be lying about. Can someone help me out? Is my thinking correct?
  40. Climate sensitivity is low
    A question for the group - I hope this is a reasonable place for it, and even more that I'm phrasing this intelligibly. Given that we have raised the CO2 concentration quite high, it's now high enough that the oceans are acting like a sink despite their warming (above solubility pressures) - the oceans are absorbing 2ppm/year or so. If we maintain, as we are doing now, a CO2 concentration above that which would induce CO2 output by the oceans, does that remove one of the feedbacks (CO2 outgassing from said oceans) from the climate sensitivity calculations? In other words, does the forcing by CO2 emissions block the CO2 element of forcing feedback, and thus reduce climate sensitivity??
  41. CO2 has a short residence time
    drrocket: "not trivial because MLO sits in the plume of Eastern Equatorial Pacific outgassing" There's no discernible difference between the monthly MLO CO2 concentration and any station around the world at a comparable latitude -- island or landlocked, no difference. See the thread MLO is a volcano for further information and comments.
  42. Meet The Denominator
    Plilippe... "This obviously indicate that the 850 number is inaccurate. The numerator is all puffed up..." Awww... That means PT is back down to ~0.1% again. So sad. He was doing so well for a little while there.
  43. Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
    From a carbon taxing proposal I've seen in the US: 1. Tax carbon at it's source. 2. The tax will rise at a set rate over a 10 year period. 3. Costs of goods and services will necessarily rise. 4. To offset those costs - 100% of the tax revenue will be distributed to the public as "dividends". 5. There will be no administrative costs. Without getting into a discussion of the validity of a carbon tax, can this really be handled without creating a bureaucracy?
  44. It's the ocean
    On another thread, friend BP linked to Compo 2009, claiming that ocean heating supposedly drives land heating. ... recent ocean warming ... has increased the humidity of the atmosphere, altered the atmospheric vertical motion and associated cloud fields, and perturbed the longwave and shortwave radiative fluxes at the continental surface. This proposed mechanism doesn't seem to make any sense, but it does argue for strong positive water vapor feedback.
  45. Philippe Chantreau at 07:33 AM on 16 February 2011
    Meet The Denominator
    LOL, that was a good one Dhogaza. If nothing else, this rather miserable thread by SkS standards led to a closer examination of Poptech's list. So far, on the very limited focus of numerator only, we've learned: - Some papers do not appear to support PT's position at all, regardless how "alarm" is defined (such as the Feynmana paper pointed by Albatross a while back) - Some papers don't exist at all (see above) - The same paper can figure up to 4 times. This obviously indicate that the 850 number is inaccurate. The numerator is all puffed up...
  46. Meet The Denominator
    And it seems that the little list is relying heavily on papers by the Idso family - mainly Sherwood (with 66), but a total of 69 altogether. Nearly half of them are from the 80s, though, and very few from this millenium. Up-to-date stuff, eh ? When you combine that with the usual suspects of Michaels, Lindzen, Douglass, Singer, Christy, Spencer, Soon, McIntyre, Loehle, McLean, De Freitas, Carter, the Pielkes (especially Jr, who didn't want his papers included in the list), Morner, Eschenbach, Svensmark, Scafetta, Boehmer-Christiansen (!), and about a dozen others with anything between two and five papers each, you're looking at a list which has about 30 people contributing something up to a third of the total. Take them away and you're left with the likes of David Bellamy, Beck and Gerlich, etc, as well as all those waved through on Energy & Environment, and from journals, etc. with no normal link to output concerning AGW, let along 'AGW Alarm' - whatever that means. I.E. It's a joke.
  47. Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
    Pirate, Longer growing seasons don't help if the productive agricultural zones move into areas where agriculture cannot take place.
    Moderator Response: ... and more info is in "It’s not bad" and "CO2 is not a pollutant."
  48. CO2 has a short residence time
    drrocket, a warming ocean can be a net sink of CO2, see /Seawater-Equilibria.html
  49. apiratelooksat50 at 06:52 AM on 16 February 2011
    Monckton Myth #11: Carbon Pricing Costs vs. Benefits
    I've read most of the working links above. Do the background documents take in any of the positive effects global warming: longer growing seasons, increased crop productivity, lower heating costs in winter, etc...
  50. CO2 has a short residence time
    Marsupial at 11:08 AM 2/15/11, Your logic is peccable. First, nature is indeed a net source of CO2 in warming epochs, such as the last 50 years. That is Henry's Law, never mentioned by IPCC. Second, the observed rise could be anything. We don't have the powers of perfect observation. The problem is not trivial because MLO sits in the plume of Eastern Equatorial Pacific outgassing, where the CO2 concentration depends primarily on local temperature. Further, what is "observed" from MLO is a highly processed record, far from raw data. For example, >> Each CO2 concentration record, C (t) was decomposed into a seasonal function, consisting of four harmonics, and a seasonally detrended function, according to the relation [C(t) = C_seas(t) + C_annual(t)] (2.1) where [C_seas(t) = (1-γt) * sum((a_k*sin(ω_k*t) + b_k*cos(ω_k*t)), k = 1 to m] (2.2) >>In the second expression γ (a "gain factor") and the factors, a_k and b_k, denote constants obtained via a fit to the data; t denotes the time in years; ω_k the angular frequency, equal to 2πk; and m the number of harmonics, chosen to be 4. The seasonally adjusted function, C_annual, is expressed by a spline function in which the annual average of the integral of the squared second derivative is set to a predetermined value to provide a nearly uniform degree of smoothing of all of the records. The actual function is established in several steps involving intermediate functions (see Keeling et al. [1989a, p. 167 and pp. 218-227]) to assure stability in the calculation and to determine monthly averages that take into account the actual dates of each observation. The isotopic record, δ13C(t), is treated similarly. Keeling, CD, et al., "Exchanges of Atmospheric CO2 and 13CO2 with the Terrestrial Biosphere and Oceans from 1978 to 2000, I. Global Aspects, June, 2001, p. 5. "Predetermined"? "Nearly uniform"? "Smoothing"? "Intermediate functions"? "Assure stability"? Read how other stations were "identified" with MLO data, how data were adjusted according to "a long-term trend line proportional to industrial CO2 emissions". Id., p. 6. These "data [that] have iconic status in climate change science as evidence of the effect of human activities" [AR4, ¶1.3.1, "The Human Fingerprint on Greenhouse Gases", p. 100] are over-masticated, over-celebrated, and over-fraught with opportunities for subjective influences. Third, your claim that the "then the observed rise will be greater than anthropogenic emissions, as the annual rise is equal to total emissions minus total uptake" is false, if by your second use of the word emissions you are referring to your immediately preceding phrase, "anthropogenic emissions". The annual rise must be equal to the total inputs minus the total uptakes. Fourth, your ultimate claim that "the natural environment is a net carbon sink rather than a source" is false. Take a look at the Vostok Record, for example, a period in which man surely had no effect. Sometimes the natural environment is a net sink, sometimes a net source.

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