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Comments 97351 to 97400:
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muoncounter at 00:46 AM on 29 January 2011Ten temperature records in a single graphic
#68: "bright, educated, college scholarship worthy students" As there is no content in either HS Chemistry or Physics that deals with climate change (even the thermo taught in Physics stops with Carnot cycles), this is neither an issue of 'bright students' having an educated opinion nor one of 'misteaching'. My bet is on parental viewpoint - I recall pirate mentioned the southeastern US - that is politically biased or otherwise non-scientific. Of course, if the same group of students also believes that there is no gravity in space, that would shout 'misteaching'. The experiment that Glenn proposes in #73 would include giving such bright students, who have the pressure of college admits behind them, the opportunity to research the AGW question. Two weeks with groups tackling different pieces of the subject and presenting their results to the class could produce some interesting results. -
Paul D at 00:23 AM on 29 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
I have Open Office 3.2.1 on a Mac. -
Riccardo at 00:15 AM on 29 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
Open Office 3.1.1 running on WinXP does it too. -
Tom Curtis at 00:10 AM on 29 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
HumanityRules @22, it is undoubtedly true that other factors has an impact on the extreme weather events of 2010. It is also clear that their frequency and intensity would not have been as great without global warming. As this is a blog, not a scholarly analysis, the presumption thta we should list every additional factor is without warrant. With regard to the 2011 floods in Brisbane, several factors are relevant. First, in 2011 there was significantly more rainfall in the Brisbane River catchment than in 1893 (the worst prior floods with a rainfall record. Second, more water flowed down the river in the 2011 floods than in the 1974 floods (despite the lower level), even though more water was held back by Wivenhoe then flowed down the river in 1974. In other words, the total amount of water involved was around twice as much as that which caused the 1974 floods. Third, based on hydrological evidence, the 2011 floods would have been around a meter higher than the highest flood since European settlement in Brisbane (1841) where it not for the effect of Wivenhoe and Somerset dams. On top of this, Wivenhoe was upgraded in 2005 from its ability to hold back a 1 in 400 year flood as a result of predictons of increased flood intensity as a result of global warming. As part of the upgrade, an auxilliary spillway was installed, whose first fuse plug was designed to only be overtopped by a 1 in 3,000 year flood. On the week of the flood, water levels came within 100 mm of overtopping that fuse plug. On this basis, the 2011 flood was at least a 1 in 200 year flood, but probably significantly greater. It was probably not a 1 in 2,000 year flood. Any figure in between at this stage involves significant guess work. But as Wivenhoe's capacity exceded that of the pre-expansion (ie, 1 in 400 year flood level) capacity by around 330 thousand megaliters (or 2/3rds of the size of Sydney Harbour) it seems very probable it was at least a 1 in 400 year event. All these odds assume no global warming. Given Global Warming, I would expect floods of similar or greater intensity at least four or five times over the remainder of the century. -
Ed Davies at 23:50 PM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Stefan's surname is spelled Rahmstorf. -
Ed Davies at 23:43 PM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Anthony G. Warming #42: "You would not spread any such irrelevant information concerning those you trust." This makes my head hurt. Either you think such information is irrelevant in which case you would, indeed, have no reason to spread it or you think the information is relevant in which case you wouldn't trust them. -
Rob Painting at 23:15 PM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Dikran, puncturing a "skeptic" fallacy here and there can't hurt. I disagree with both yourself and KR. Let's leave it at that. -
HumanityRules at 23:13 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
James includes a quote from Trenberth about extreme weather events and global warming. It's worth considering just how much further he has now gone six months down the line. I know this has got a lot of coverage on WUWT but his planned speech at AMS is laid out here. I'll give you the relevant quote. "It is worth considering whether the odds of the particular event have changed sufficiently that one can make the alternative statement “It is unlikely that this event would have occurred without global warming.” For instance, this probably applies to the extremes that occurred in the summer of 2010: the floods in Pakistan, India, and China and the drought, heat waves and wild fires in Russia. It likely also applies to the flooding in Queensland, Australia In January 2011." He seems to be making rather exaggerated claims about events that happened 2 weeks ago, we probably don't even yet have all the relevant data collated never mind any serious analysis made. Maybe things have progressed so much that the normal course of science is no longer necessary? This is opportunism not science. -
HumanityRules at 22:56 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
15 Tom Curtis We could argue about the absolute impact of El Nino on the 2010 temperature but that wasn't really my point. In my opinion James has choosen to ignore the impact of El Nino on 2010's temperature record in order to tell a simple story about a warmer world and climate disasters. As highlighted in #21 there are other physical explanations for many of these events which have also been neglected by James. This has the overall effect of telling an unmuddied story about global warming and extreme climate events. I'm sure that soon after the Moscow heatwave the 'frozen' jet stream was also implicated in this event. Did a warming globe contribute 1oC or all 10oC to the Moscow anomoly? It seems unnecessary to contemplate these other physical causes to focus on a consistent story about global warming. Which is what we have here from James. Just on the Brisbane flood. A 1 in 400 year event? Are you sure? -
HumanityRules at 22:30 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
17 Marcus The unusual nature of the Pakistan floods was indeed the place where the rain fell. From memory the whole process began in the mountainous regions rather than the plains. This lead to fast run off into the river systems and devastating surges as the water made it's way downstream. The explanation for these more northern rains was monsoon rains strengthened in a La Nina region begin allowed to move northward by a 'frozen' jet stream. While it's worth considering how much this may have been exasperated by a warming world it doesn't seem to require that warming world for a plausible explanation of the event. -
Riccardo at 21:48 PM on 28 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
The Ville my Open Office 2.1 on linux does it. Anyways, a cross-platform format would be preferrable. -
Eric (skeptic) at 21:24 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
#11 villabolo, no irony at all. The 1970's had some strongly negative AO, but lots of sea ice. So lack of sea ice did not cause negative AO in that case. Now we have negative AO again most likely a natural cycle, plus lack of sea ice (unnatural), but both of those are recent. We simply don't know how lack of sea ice affects the patterns like AO or NAO yet, that's the new territory. "Weird" weather (however one might define it) is not new territory. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:45 PM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Rob Painting@49 FWIW I agree with KR, even if Monckton's use of Morner was an appeal to authority, that doesn't justify the use of rhetorical devices in a scientific discussion. Better to keep the high ground. -
Paul D at 20:27 PM on 28 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
hmmm, tried it in Open Office and none of the labels appeared when it was run as a slide show. -
Paul D at 20:04 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
Norman had a look at the link you provided and it has a list of years with floods in Pakistan. I calculated the intervals in years between each flood. I notice that the average interval for the first 6 floods in the list (1928-1976) was 8 years, the average interval for the last 6 floods (1976-2010) is 5.7 years. -
Bart Verheggen at 19:38 PM on 28 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
Cool, just in time for my climate presentation today! I had already featured the 'still' figure, but I'll change it now to the animated version. -
scaddenp at 19:38 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
"so is the gain of about 1.6, which represents the amplification at the surface for each 1 W/m^2 of energy from the Sun." Again, this is bogus way to do it. You need a certain amount of energy to get past the threshold of having any water vapour at all. With zero CO2, you would still have same sun, but snowball earth and no water vapour. Above a certain point, the solar minus albedo is strong enough to give water vapour and get that feedback. Note also that albedo feedback becomes more important at lower temperatures too. The 3.7W/m2 is calculation by the way too, but you can the verify the RTEs used to calculate it empirically. I repeat, you have to calculate feedback with a model, not some half-baked "gain" idea. And the actual response of surface temperature to increasing CO2 gives a way to empirically estimate sensitivity (or test the sensitivity of model). 3 looks pretty good, but see the IPCC WG1 for variety of other empirical estimates. -
scaddenp at 19:25 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
They do. Water vapour amplifies any surface temperature increase (and vice versa). However, your "Gain" analogy is inadequate to quantify those feedbacks. -
Richo at 19:18 PM on 28 January 2011Understanding the CO2 lag in past climate change
Very good, apologies for the bad link, I must have been delirious with the thought of 1010ppm. -
jyyh at 18:19 PM on 28 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
chemware, rainfall suggestion doesn't work unless one counts in ENSO. I'm expecting droughts to kick in again once the el Niño phase kicks in, add to that the additional kick from the sun 11 yrar cycle some droughts might be pretty quite severely bad or hard, or something like that since the ambiguity of language is somewhat exhilarating in the world of political absolutes. -
Chemware at 17:38 PM on 28 January 2011Animated powerpoint of the Indicators of Warming
Very nice ... and a couple of suggestions: 1. one more indicator: rainfall/precipitation up; 2. and I'd be happy to put together an animated GIF if you want - no PP required, just a web browser. -
Rob Painting at 17:10 PM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
KR @44 - As Tom Curtis points out Monckton's use of Morner was an appeal to authority. CC @ 43 - For the sake of brevity it's prudent not to address every single error. That's the beauty of the Gish Gallop. The essence of Monckton's claim was that sea level rise was much higher early in this interglacial period. Yes, we know that. CC @ 45 - The scale of that graph makes it difficult to discern, but sea levels were higher mid-Holocene. As for juxtaposition, well a matter of interpretation I guess. To the average lurker that seems to justify Monckton's claim that sea level rise was faster earlier in the Holocene. Yes, we know that!. -
SoundOff at 16:18 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
From this article: “Indeed, when the seasonal cycle is removed March 2010 was the third warmest month of all time …” Doesn’t the use of anomalies automatically eliminate any seasonal cycle? If March 2010 had an anomaly of +0.85°C, my understanding is this means March was +0.85°C higher than the average of all the March anomalies during the anomaly base period, 1951-1980 (in the case of GISTemp). Right? There does not appear to be any consistent seasonal cycle in the years shown in the graph at the end of this article (a great graph, BTW).Moderator Response: That's what I meant. It was just another way of saying March 2010 was the third warmest monthly anomaly of all time. - James -
Marcus at 16:05 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
Norman, no one said floods don't occur in Pakistan, its just this one was unusual in its strength-due in no small part to the involvement of Monsoon Rain-which is clearly unusual for that part of the Sub-Continent. -
Norman at 15:49 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
"In a related event, the Asian monsoon occurred further west than usual, creating devastating floods which submerged 20% of Pakistan, killing 1,600 people and displacing millions – more than were affected by the 2004 tsunami." Is flooding in Pakistan unusal? Some recent flood history in Pakistan. -
archiesteel at 15:29 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
"Why don't the same feedbacks occur (excluding the surface albedo) on the 239 W/m^2 from the Sun?" What makes you think they don't? There is some water vapor in the air already, is there not? Why is it there in the first place? -
Tom Curtis at 15:08 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
Humanity Rules @13, comparing 1998 to 2010, I notice that both switched from positive to negative values at approximately the same time of year (aprox April). I also notice 1998 had much stronger positive values than did 2010, while 2010 had appreciably stronger negative values than did 1998. Therefore, absent a long term warming trend, we would expect 1998 to have been warmer than 2010 even with the same lag between the NINO3.4 index and global temperatures. Given that 1998 was several years into a solar cycle, while 2010 was at the start of a new solar cycle following the lowest solar minimum in almost a century, we would again expect 1998 to be warmer than 2010. How strong the trend has been can be seen by comparing 1973 and 2010, both of which had very similar patterns on the NINO3.4 index. That 2010 is 0.69 degrees warmer than 1973 (Hadcrut3 global)shows that there is an ongoing warming trend of about 1.8 degrees C per century, ie, spot on IPCC predictions. As to the analogy, it is very plain nature has been throwing some very strong punches lately. The Moscow heat wave is well known to be a "1 in 1,000" year event in the absence of Global Warming, and the Pakistani floods as a 1 in 100 year event. The recent floods in Brisbane are on various indicators greater than a 1 in 200 year event, and probably at least a 1 in 400 year event. Perhaps we might attribute this to a few lucky punches if they were isolated incidents. But they are not, they are part of a flurry of bone crunching blows. -
jyyh at 14:27 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
Great graph the last one. Have you done further analysis on that? F.e. checked regular legnth periods to see whether the amount of record temps vs. low temps have been increasing? I planned to do that once for monthly data but I guess there should be some correction for the differing legnhts of prior data that I couldn't figure out, plus it's a process that could be programmed to be automatic and I do not do analyses like that, all too easy to get something wrong. -
Tom Curtis at 14:17 PM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Anthony @42 and KR @44, letting readers know that Morner has dabbled in dowsing seems to me more of a notice on Morner's well that he has poisoned it himself rather than actually poisoning the well. I would not ever cite as a scientific authority a young earth creationist, a dabbler in astrology, or a dabbler in dowsing. IMO that they are irrational in one area shows that their "rationality" in the area of their expertise is accidental - that they are not making mistakes (if indeed they are not) simply because they were taught which mistakes to avoid rather than because they are capable of correcting their misakes through rational analysis. I know that in the past, some giants of science have dabbled in pursuits now seen as irrational dead ends. Newton's interest in alchemy is the most famous example. The difference is that while Newton could draw on, there is no area of science that has now not been extensively elaborated. Belief in alchemy for Newton was based on inadequate information to demonstrate the error - belief in dowsing today is the deliberate choice of irrationality. Finally, Lord Monckton introduced Morner's claims by specifying that he was a professor with experience studying sea levels. He did not show the basis for those views, he merely apealed to authority. When an opponent argues by simple appeal to authority (and incosistently in that he is denying the more substantial authority of a large number of other experts in the field), it is certainly OK to impeach that authority. As Monckton's argument was no more than that this is a good well to drink from, pointing out that the owner of the well has poisoned it is no falacy. -
RW1 at 13:51 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
KR, "A 3.7 W/m^2 imbalance at the TOA results in about 1C of surface warming (5.9 or so W/m^2 higher IR at the surface, although backradiation also increases with atmospheric warming, so that's not a direct imbalance). And then feedbacks occur, changing levels of water vapor, long term albedo from ice melt, CO2 balance with the ocean, etc., each of which induce additional TOA imbalances and subsequent warming. Once feedbacks kick in their TOA imbalances are in addition to the original 3.7 W/m^2 forcing from doubling CO2." Why don't the same feedbacks occur (excluding the surface albedo) on the 239 W/m^2 from the Sun? -
RW1 at 13:48 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
scaddenp, "RW1 - the increase in "gain" (which certainly does include feedback) is 406/239 from model results. Again it seems you are trying to predict feedback (the increase in "gain"). Its a bogus procedure to say that "gain" * increase in CO2 will be the increase backradiation. You have to calculate it properly." The 406 W/m^2 you quote isn't from any measurement but from model predictions from numerous assumptions that only exist in a computer. The 3.7 W/m^2 from 2xCO2 is from empirical measurement, so is the gain of about 1.6, which represents the amplification at the surface for each 1 W/m^2 of energy from the Sun. If 3.7 W/m^2 of additional infrared from 2xCO2 is amplified to 16+ W/m^2 at the surface, why isn't the 239 W/m^2 from the Sun amplified by proportionally the same amount to over 1000 W/m^2? -
HumanityRules at 13:09 PM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
"We also saw the fourth largest swing in the Southern Oscillation during a single year, beginning with a moderate-to-strong El Niño but ending with a moderate-to-strong La Niña." Isn't it possible that this fact could account for some of the phenomenon you describe here? For example the Queensland floods and the fact that the mid 2010 months broke records. There is some evidence that increased temperature leads to increased water vapour but there is conflicting evidence as to whether this is translating into increased precipitation (try the recorded presentation here.) I'm not denying that 2010 is at the end of a long term warming trend so there is an obvious reason why the impressive final figure looks the way it does but there seems to be an awful lot of speculation (and unfortunately opportunism) in connecting many of last years natural disasters to AGW. I also just wanted to raise something about the effect of El Nino and La Nina on the 2010 global temp. It worried me with NASA GISS interpretation of this earlier last year and I've got the same problem with the way it's presented here. Here's what you say "We also saw the fourth largest swing in the Southern Oscillation during a single year, beginning with a moderate-to-strong El Niño but ending with a moderate-to-strong La Niña. The latter tends to mean cooler global temperatures, yet the Earth remained hot as late as November." Just like NASA GISS you speculate about what should be the impact of La Nina towards the end of the year while not expanding on the real impact of ElNino in the first 2/3's of the year. What should have been the impact of the La Nina in 2010? I'm going to speculate almost nothing. The lag between Nino3.4 and global temp is generally described as 3 months but this is not set in stone. Below you can see the lag after the 1998/1999 El Nino/La Nina transition is fairly large (~6 month's) whereas there appears to be little lag in the 2008 La Nina (this is closer to the 3 months). What do we see with the 2009/2010 transition? It looks a lot like the 1998/1999 transition. That's 5-6 month's. The La Nina didn't kick in until June/July 2010 so it wouldn't be surprising if this didn't impact on global temp until December 2010. And that is probably what we are seeing. Meanwhile it's obvious to see the short term effect of the 2009/2010 El Nino in the 2010 record in the form of the final blue peak on the graph. Why not dwell on this fact a while in your article? It seems like an important feature of the 2010 record. It would help to explain the record breaking temps in the mid month's.
(Larger version here. NINO3.4 and CRUTEM3+HadSST2)
As I said earlier all this doesn't take away the fact that 2010 is at the end of a long term warming trend and nothing of the basic facts you present are incorrect. This is an error of omission, that has an impact on the implications and attribution of the phenomena you describe.
I'm left with a few issues. How do we attribute the extreme precipitation events when over the passed few decades when there may have been no trend in global precipitation despite the water vapour trend. 2010 is here presented as wierd, the CO2 atmospheric concentration isn't that weird compared with the past two decades. Trying to pin all this on CO2 in the atmospere seems like a stretch. I know John's favorite analogy in this regard is that AGW is training the weather to punch harder. To extend the analogy I just want to know what is the evidence the training has been effective?
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archiesteel at 12:46 PM on 28 January 2011Ten temperature records in a single graphic
@Pirate: "How dare you accuse anyone of "misteaching or misleading" just because they don't agree with you?" Well, if they disagree with the current state of Climate Science without any evidence to support their position while in a science class, I think it's safe to say they have in fact been mistaught. Of course, it is also entirely possible they agree with you because you are an authority figure to them, and you apparently do not accept AGW theory. Like someone already remarked, they are likely to be telling you what you want to hear. In any case, anecdotal evidence offered online is worthless. We have no way of knowing you're telling the truth, after all. I suggest you stick to science and not try to bring such appeals to popularity. Anyway, I think if we were to poll young people on AGW theory we'd find they are more likely to accept it than the general population. -
Albatross at 12:31 PM on 28 January 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
Gordon @38, "May I just suggest the terms "pro-science" and "anti-science"? Seconded :) -
scaddenp at 12:23 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
Of course, the importance of water vapour is common (misunderstand) skeptic argument. See Water vapour for more detail. -
scaddenp at 12:19 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
As for sudden increase in gain... Gain for 0ppm of CO2 = 1 (no amplification) " 360ppm " = 1.63 (1997 value of CO2) " 580ppm " = 1.69 (doubling of CO2) using your definition of "gain" as surface OLR/(solar-albedo) and my calculation of Trenberth using values for models with sensitivity of 3 from above. -
Gordon1368 at 12:14 PM on 28 January 2011A Flanner in the Works for Snow and Ice
@28: Jim, I am quite grown up, thank you. That was a bit of fun. We see the terms "warmist," "alarmist," and "pro-AGW" (as if anyone is rooting for an overheated planet) a lot here, and maybe I took your terminology the wrong way. No personal offense intended. May I just suggest the terms "pro-science" and "anti-science"? It is difficult to find any serious scientist, scientific institution or scientific research that casts doubt on the theory of AGW after all. -
scaddenp at 12:12 PM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
RW1 - the increase in "gain" (which certainly does include feedback) is 406/239 from model results. Again it seems you are trying to predict feedback (the increase in "gain"). Its a bogus procedure to say that "gain" * increase in CO2 will be the increase backradiation. You have to calculate it properly. -
Colin Bridge at 11:25 AM on 28 January 2011CO2 effect is saturated
Thank you Daniel Bailey, it certainly helps my understanding. If no more warming was available with increased CO2, it is hard to see how Snowball Earth could have ended where my reading is that a trigger was reached sending earth into a transient super-greenhouse. -
villabolo at 11:17 AM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
"...eastern Russia, and southern Asia; and cooler than average temperatures in central Russia..." Shouldn't that be eastern Siberia and west Siberia? -
villabolo at 10:00 AM on 28 January 20112010: A Year of Record Warmth and Weird Weather
There are natural precedents for the blocking and negative AO patterns (e.g. the 70's). It could be that the effects of the pattern could be exacerbated by sea ice loss, but we are in new territory and it will take time to see if the pattern holds and if the effects are worse." Do you realize the irony of saying that we are in new territory? -
Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Steve L - I understand that the added 4% is roughly the volume of Lake Erie, or 484 km^3. Surface area of the oceans (skipping rivers and lakes) is ~3.61x10^8 km^2. Quick math (hope I have this right) 484/(3.61x10^8) = 1.34x10^-6 km thickness or 1.34 millimeters drop in the oceans since 1970. That's less than half a single year's 3 mm rise. -
It's cooling
Chris - Lubos Motl does indeed have extensive string theory experience (I won't claim to be an expert in that; I have no real opinion about how good he is). He was at Harvard until a couple of years ago - he left that institution in mid-semester for some reason. He is also a frequent commenter on climate change - his blog apparently seems to alternate between physics and climate change posts. Keep in mind that expertise in one field does not automatically grant expertise in another! I frequently have to deal with PhD's or MD's who make that mistake. I would suggest trying a quick Google search on his name, and read the top 10 or so results. He tends to provoke strong opinions from everyone - he's a less than polite commenter. -
Steve L at 09:03 AM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Here's a probably unimportant question, but potentially interesting: How much water has/will evaporate (to become stored in the atmosphere) relative to the amount of sea level increase? Or, with a different focus, how much higher would sea level be if water vapour hadn't increased since 1970? -
citizenschallenge at 08:54 AM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
This graph makes a good juxtoposition for Monckton's claim: "Past, current and future sea level rise" "What’s there to worry about sea level rise; it’s going very slowly, right? Let’s put current sea level rise in a historical perspective." From: Bart Verheggen’s weblog of climate change issues
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It's albedo
RW1 - The "gain" isn't the correct way to treat the issue, since the relative value is an output of the models, not a simplification you can use for input purposes. A 3.7 W/m^2 imbalance at the TOA results in about 1C of surface warming (5.9 or so W/m^2 higher IR at the surface, although backradiation also increases with atmospheric warming, so that's not a direct imbalance). And then feedbacks occur, changing levels of water vapor, long term albedo from ice melt, CO2 balance with the ocean, etc., each of which induce additional TOA imbalances and subsequent warming. Once feedbacks kick in their TOA imbalances are in addition to the original 3.7 W/m^2 forcing from doubling CO2. As I recall, we had a ~450 post discussion, primarily on these issues with you and George White (who apparently originated this "gain" idea) - I don't believe a single person on the thread agreed with you two, for a lot of very good reasons. You might want to take that into consideration... -
Chris3699 at 08:48 AM on 28 January 2011It's cooling
Someone asked me to name one of the scientists that my skeptic friend was citing to support his position and this morning he named a guy called Lubos Motl. Apparently Motl is a “Theoretical physicist, a graduate of Charles University in Prague, Rutgers University and has been a Harvard Junior Fellow and assistant professor. He’s worked on such common problems as the pp-wave limit of AdS/CFT correspondence, twistor theory and its application to gauge theory with supersymmetry, black hole thermodynamics and the conjectured relevance of quasinormal modes for loop quantum gravity, deconstruction, and other topics.” This is his latest comment on his blog where he seems rather upbeat about the UN and US moving away from tackling climate change: -
Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
Rob Painting - Regarding Mörner, I would have to agree with other posters that bringing up the dowsing smacks of poisoning the well, a form of argumentum ad hominem, and as such is inappropriate. Mörner makes enough errors in his climate-related science to be a poor source, but I think it would be more valid to leave his other (even the rather curious ones) interests out of the discussion. -
RW1 at 08:36 AM on 28 January 2011It's albedo
A rise of about 1 C or 5.9 W/m^2 results in a new gain of only about 1.66 from 1.63 (396/239 = 1.66), which is a negligible increase. More importantly, it is still much less than the over 4x needed to get 16+ W/m^2 for a 3 C rise. More importantly If the effects of the 'feedbacks'(including specifically water vapor) are not embodied in the gain, then explain why it doesn't take over 975 W/m^2 at the surface to offset the 239 W/m^2 coming in from the Sun? Then also explain why the response of 'feedbacks' on next 3.7 W/m^2 at the surface will all of the sudden be nearly 3 times greater than the response of 'feedbacks' acting on the original 98+%? -
citizenschallenge at 08:00 AM on 28 January 2011Monckton Myth #8: Rising sea levels
I’m embarrassed to bring this up but I was disappointed in the last section of the initial post. The explanation seemed to side step the given quote: "SEA LEVEL ACCELERATION - HISTORY REPEATS?" Monckton - "In the 11,400 years since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen at an average of 4 feet/century, though it is now rising much more slowly because very nearly all of the land-based ice that is at low enough latitudes and altitudes to melt has long since gone." Sea levels have been rising 4feet/century... what? Even the implication that there has been steady significant rise occurring these past few thousand years seems questionable from my limited knowledge. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Quoting: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/ . . . A fourth interval of rapid sea level rise 8200-7600 years ago was first identified by a hiatus in coral growth in the Caribbean about 7600 years ago {...} This spurt... apparently resulted from the catastrophic drainage of glacial Lakes Agassiz and Ojibway around 8400 yrs ago, releasing a volume of about 105 cubic kilometers within a few years or even less. But it only produced about 1 meter of global sea level rise, assuming an even spread of this volume spread across the world's oceans. Yet even this minor increase in sea level left an imprint in the stratigraphic record. By the mid-Holocene period, 6000-5000 years ago, glacial melting had essentially ceased, while ongoing adjustments of Earth's lithosphere due to removal of the ice sheets gradually decreased over time. {...} Over the past few thousand years, the rate of sea level rise remained fairly low, probably not exceeding a few tenths of a millimeter per year.{...} Since 1993, an even higher sea level trend of about 2.8 mm/yr has been measured from the TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite altimeter. Analysis of longer tide-gauge records (1870-2004) also suggests a possible late 20th century acceleration in global sea level.
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