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Comments 98151 to 98200:

98151. muoncounter at 12:29 PM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       #16: "I think you will find ..." Its not clear where that comment is headed, but nonspecific accusations of bribery are usually not a good sign. That sort of thing usually gets deleted pretty quickly. As far as good and bad use of statistics is concerned, see On Statistical Significance.
98152. Bibliovermis at 12:22 PM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       My apologies if I am misreading you, but that was addressed by IPCC Working Group II. The IPCC is also a Nobel Prize winner; 2007 Peace Prize. A discussion on how to address the general public is not fostered by continually repeating a contrarian talking point about how the general public is losing belief in science. Demagogy is not the way to counter demagogy when discussing a topic of science.
98153. HumanityRules at 12:19 PM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       MarkR Given the haystack is huge there's a good chance you won't find the needle using the magnet as well. The Soares work does seem poor and you'd have to start to wonder about the scrips.org journals but then every piece of science needs to be assessed on it's merit. You seem to have done a good job of that. In relation to you're question in #1. I'd say more generally there is a tendancy for some conclusions in climate science to go beyond the scope of the analysis. I think that it's due to the interpretative nature of the science, often based on imperfect data sets and uncontrolled experiments. It's a bugbear of mine, some authors are worse than others , of course many manage to say within acceptable boundaries. I'm happy to give my least favorite example of this if it isn't going off topic.
98154. MattJ at 12:07 PM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       Answering Riccardo #2: your comment about statistics reminds me of two things: Disraeli's famous quip about "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" and that marvelous book I hope all contributors to Skeptical Science have at least skimmed, "How to Lie with Statistics". But going beyond and updating Huff and Disraeli's conclusions, there was an excellent article in The Atlantic not so long about about the abuse of statistics that has become the norm in the medical sciences, as exposed by John Ioannidis. Google "john ioannidis atlantic lies statistics" to find it. I think you will find the same thing has been going on in climate science too, especially in "scientific work" sponsored/supported/bribed by the usual suspects.
98155. MattJ at 11:58 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       That jounal definitely deserves to reamin obscure. But since there is so much money riding on the issue, I am sure the oil companies will find it in their hearts to generously donate wads of cash to build up there reputation -- even though they deserve to be shut down instead. But personally, I did not need all the excellent detailed analysis of this Skeptical Science article to figure out how unreliable they are: all I needed was to witness the pathetic abuse of the English language in the first sentence quoted: "The absence of immediate relation between CO2 and temperature is evidence that rising its mix ratio in the atmosphere will not imply more absorption and time residence of energy over the Earth surface." The abuse here betrays the author as uneducated and incompetent. "rising its mix ratio"?? Try "raising its mix ratio". For that matter, there is the incompetent omission of the indefinite article even before that to tip us off. Yet somehow I did not notice it on first reading; but that could be since seconds before I was reading in a language with neither definite nor indefinite articles;) If neither the author nor the editors can take the time and effort to fix such errors before publication, then they are flakes.
98156. funglestrumpet at 11:46 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       44 David Horten 45 Bibliovermis. I am well aware of why the IPCC was created. One can hardly say it has been a roaring success when the likes of Lord Monckton can be invited to appear before a Congress committee on Climate Change. I don’t think we can carry on with business as usual for another 22 years. I can’t remember the exact figures, but the opinion polls showed a considerable drop in public support when ‘Climategate’ first surfaced in the media and they have not recovered. All I am trying to do is to initiate a debate on the way forward. If we accept that we can’t carry on as we are for another 22 years, then something has to change, and the sooner we decide on what that change is, the sooner we can implement it. It is all very well having the IPCC produce its findings, but they are all to do with climate science. In my original post I said that we need to quantify the effects of different courses of action (or inaction, if you prefer) in combating it. Climate Change is not happening independent of other events, almost certainly the most significant being population growth, which is going to hit the fan in a pretty big way without any help from a world of rising seas, temperatures and tempers. I cannot think of a more illustrious body of people to investigate the effects of Climate Change on food production, economic growth, housing needs (including location), possible mass migrations etc. etc., not to mention verifying once and for all the work of the IPCC, than one composed of Nobel Prize winners. If others can, then put them forward, but please bear in mind that the Nobel Prize winners have already been selected, so no possibility of any delaying tactics by the deniers regarding selection. The general public, if pointed to this site, will, in the main, take one look, shake their heads, and go back to watching the telly, yet it is the general public that have to be convinced of the need for action. I have put my views forward and I hope, via all these posts, instigated a debate on how best to achieve that goal. If we can show that the lovely child/grandchild, currently the apple of the family’s eye, so to speak, is likely to face all kinds of privations before they reach the biblical 3 score and ten, then I believe we can get public support for action. The deniers would then be seen as the enemy, not the good guys trying to save our current way of life.
98157. Berényi Péter at 11:34 AM on 17 January 2011
       Global Warming and Cold Winters
       #63 Riccardo at 01:06 AM on 17 January, 2011 the arctic window opens up during winter due to the very low temperatures and dry air. Warming will partially close it, the standard water vapour positive feedback It was still damn cold in most of the Arctic except in western Greenland, North-Eastern Canada & the Eastern tip of Siberia with plenty of opportunity to dry-freeze huge air masses. As winds are blowing around all the time, dry air gets mixed with humid one in a fractal-like manner by turbulent flows. Fractal dimension of humid patches is below one in Arctic winter, so there are plenty of see-through holes in the distribution. I keep telling you average humidity tells nothing about optical depth of the atmosphere at specific H₂O absorption lines, as transparency is a heavily non-linear function of water vapor mixing ratio, but unfortunately you still don't get the message. Also, with increasing temperatures there, thermal IR radiation flux goes up steeply. Black body radiation flux is 62% higher at -10°C than at -40°C and emissivity of a snow covered surface (or airborne ice needles) is pretty close to a black body in thermal IR.
98158. Bibliovermis at 10:40 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       What you are asking for is what the IPCC was created for 22 years ago. I personally know several scientifically-illiterate, but otherwise intelligent, people. Unfortunately, no body of eminence will sway their opinions. The benefit of attributing anything that contradicts that opinion to vast conspiracy is that it is an ever-widening spiral. Your proposal would quickly be shot down as "irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant."
98159. David Horton at 10:34 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       Phil of course there is something wrong with "being a right-wing free marketer per-se" it is a discredited and damaging ideology. And it isn't just Lawson, most of the deniers seem to be imbued with this kind of libertarian, mustn't interfere with the market, mustn't regulate anything for any reason philosophy. And guys, I think you have been a bit unfair to fungelstrumpet (and what kind of a strumpet is? ... oh, never mind). The attacks on the IPCC may not have been related to the appalling stolen email beat up, but as part of the general campaign in the lead up to Copenhagen, the IPCC was simultaneously being hit with the "riddled with errors" nonsense about melting Himalayan glaciers, flooding Holland and drying Amazon. I can understand Ms Strumpet's desire to set up, as it were, a new "cleanskin" body, but that is what the IPCC was and is. Whatever body was established to bring sanity and urgency to the need to deal with rising GHG would be subject to precisely the kind of misinformation and dirty tricks campaign that we see against any organisation or individual who dares to try to warn the world of coming peril. There is far too much at stake financially, and philosophically, for the deniers to ever give in, no matter how much climatic trauma develops over the coming century.
98160. JMurphy at 10:22 AM on 17 January 2011
       Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
       Marvin Gardens, there was a lot more than one link there. Did you miss the list of scientific organisations ? The 1,372 climate researchers in the Andereg paper ? The Oreskes study ? Can you see a pattern there ?
98161. Kooiti Masuda at 10:19 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       The web page of the International Journal of Geosciences is http://www.scirp.org/journal/ijg/ . A page linked from "Editorial Board" shows that its "Editor in Chief" is "Prof. Shuanggen Jin, University of Texas, USA", but I did not find his name at the web site of Univ. of Texas. His name in the "Editorial Board" page links to his "Biography" page, which has a list of his professional publications. It seems that he is an expert of geodesy, in particular application of GPS. SCIRP has another journal "Positioning" (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ijg/ ), and its "Editorial Board" lists Jin as a mamber (not the chief), and his affiliation is shown there as "Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, CAS, China". (CAS stands for Chinese Academy of Sciences.) The web site of the Observatory (http://english.shao.cas.cn/ ) list Jin as one of the scientists (http://english.shao.cas.cn/scientists/ge/ ), and http://www.shao.ac.cn/geodesy directs to a page of his laboratory. So Jin is a real scientist and that his current affiliation is Shanhai Astronomical Observatory. Apparently SCIRP fails to update information of his move, and it seems a significant fault in this particular case where credibility of SCIRP's journals crucially depends on their editors. The rest of my comment is just my guess and does not have enough evidence. It does not seem to me that SCIRP is an organization which has such an agenda as denial of anthropogenic climate change, but just an organization established to hastened to ensure quality. It does not seem to me that Jin has such an agenda either. I guess that the situation is very similar to what occurred in "Climate Research" in 2003, that the decision to appove climate-related papers is delegated to a member of the Editorial Board who may have a political agenda.
98162. Eric (skeptic) at 10:14 AM on 17 January 2011
       Global Warming and Cold Winters
       Albatross (#67), the 1976 SAT of -0.16 came after three years of continuous La Nina, see http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml If that happens again, we'll talk in 2.5 years and I will readily admit that whatever warming is shown between 1976 and mid 2013 is due to AGW.
98163. funglestrumpet at 09:48 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       38 & 39. Bibliovermis. I am retired and no longer move in scientific circles. The people I tend to meet are members of the general public. The sort of people who only have a tenuous grasp of scientific matters, yet have a vote and thus an influence on the way politicians act. In general they know about the emails. They know that they have been claimed to show that the scientists 'fiddled' the evidence. Perhaps I should not have singled out the IPCC and simply put "all scientists." The news that they investigations into the matter completely exonerated the scientists involved seems to have passed the average member of the general public by. The result is that many now believe people such as Melanie Phillips (a U.K. columnist on a daily paper) who claims that it is all "a scam." These are the people we have to win over if we are to force the politicians to act. One person that I discussed Climate Change with wrapped up his case by saying: "Scientists don't know what they are talking about. How come they didn't warn us about that earthquake, then?" The term ‘scientifically illiterate’ hardly suffices, does it? We face an uphill struggle if we carry on believing that sites like this one, excellent as it is, is going to win over the general public. The aforementioned individual is not by any means alone in his lack of scientific understanding. I suppose what I am looking for is a body that can arbitrate. Given an arbitration decision we can move on. It would not silence the deniers completely, but it would make it far more difficult for them to put their views across. Furthermore newspaper proprietors and editors world be exposed as biased if they contradicted the conclusions of that body, providing it was illustrious enough. If a significant majority of people believe in the extent of the problem the politicians will come running for the sake of the votes and the media people will come running for the sake of sales. I am scared for my children and my future grandchildren because I can see what is happening. I think the general public would be too if they could only be made to face the facts. Showing that a person’s grandchildren are likely to be living in a world that can at best only feed a third of its population should do the trick. But that case has to be made properly re #23 above.
98164. Phil at 09:42 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       Sorry, but I should just add that I didn't mean to imply @41 there was anything wrong with being a right-wing free marketer per-se, only that he appears to have reached the conclusion that tackling Global Warming requires state intervention, and has therefore been "extremely motivated" to find flaws in the science.
98165. Phil at 09:16 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       Nigel Lawson is a right-wing free marketer; a common perception is that his scientific beliefs are driven by his ideology rather than evidence. GWPF backed this travesty by putting up some of the finance. They are a contrarian/denier organisation.
98166. Bibliovermis at 09:15 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       Philip Stot is a professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His published opinion is that global warming is a Barthesian myth, i.e. cultural groupthink.
98167. Bibliovermis at 09:02 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       The GWPF is not a white knight. Their header image shows a temperature chart which is crafted to support the "warming has stopped" soundbite. GWPF: Who we are

       Our main purpose is to bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant.

       They, like Monckton, are purveyors of demagogy.
98168. Bibliovermis at 08:49 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       You repeat erroneously. Repeating the fallacious soundbites of the contrarians is not raising the level of the debate.
98169. funglestrumpet at 08:25 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       33 to 36 A point of interest. I have just noticed an item on the web site of The Global Warming Policy Foundation, of which Professor Philip Stot and ex UK Chancellor Nigel Lawson are members: "Lawson suggested that the e-mails from the University of East Anglia "called into question" the integrity of the scientific evidence." So, seeing as the IPCC is comprised of the top climate scientists, I repeat yet again: 'Unfortunately, the IPCC has been discredited by the email incident.' I hope that is sufficient to resolve the matter and we can get on with raising the level of the debate. Otherwise ages from now we will still be arguing about the science while the politicians sit back rubbing their hands. If the scientists are arguing between themselves, the politicians have little incentive to do anything. (And those with an ulterior motive to do little or nothing are laughing all the way to the bank.)
98170. Bodo at 08:15 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       @mspelto: Hehe good comparison!
98171. gallopingcamel at 08:01 AM on 17 January 2011
       Global Warming and Cold Winters
       Daniel Bailey (moderator), Thanks for that link (#53) concerning all the bad news associated with rising temperatures. I am in a "Catch 22" situation as a detailed reply will be ruled "Off Topic" for this thread, so I restrict myself to this question: "How do you explain that empires rise during climate optima (warm periods) and fall during cold periods?" This thread is quite wrong ti imply that recent winters in the northern hemisphere are "Cold". Actually, winter temperatures are well within the range that one would expect given the generally warming climate. In a truly cold winter we would see the Thames freezing over in London and there would be ice floes on the Delaware as in December 1776: "The crossing of the River using the Durham boats, ferry boats and other craft took longer than expected as a nor'easter effected the area causing sleet and freezing rain to pelt the weary troops. Large ice flows and flood-like conditions hindered the nighttime maneuvers."
       Moderator Response: As you know perfectly well, you can reply in detail on the appropriate thread and post on this thread a simple link to your reply. Stop pretending that you do not know that, and that you are being censored.
98172. mspelto at 07:40 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       If I make a chart of how many calories I eat everyday and compare that to my weight change on each day, I bet I could show that it does not matter what I eat, it is not correlated to my weight gain.
98173. Bob Lacatena at 07:09 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       On the whole Monckton issue, I will be very disappointed in those in Congress and the Senate who are respectful of the issue of climate change if Monckton is permitted to again testify before Congress and the Senate, unchallenged, as if his opinions (and, based on his qualifications, that is all that they are) count as any sort of meaningful testimony. The very first questions asked of him should be "What are your credentials? What gives you a right to voice your personal opinions and perspective before the elected Congress of the United States of America? Why should this body even listen to your testimony, let alone give it any weight, let alone give it the same weight as that of scientists who have dedicated their educations and their lives to the discipline of science?" The fact is that a life of privilege, inherited title, and personal wealth are not qualifying attributes, so before another word comes out of his mouth, the American people, and those who use such "witnesses" in official hearings on the issue of climate change, must be forced to recognize how farcical it is for the U.S. government to willingly entertain that sort of testimony.
98174. Albatross at 06:51 AM on 17 January 2011
       Global Warming and Cold Winters
       The contrarians and "skeptics" should be careful about hyping this La Nina and the attendant cooling. Yes, it is a strong event, but that means it should reduce global SATs by up to 0.2 C in 2011. In 1976, following a La Nina of similar strength to the current event the global SAT anomaly (from GISTEMP) was -0.16 C (w.r.t 1951-19080 baseline). The PDO is also currently strongly negative which should allegedly lead to cooler global SATs. In contrast, the UK Met office expects the most likely global SAT anomaly in 2011 to be near +0.44 C. So according to the contrarians who say that the role of anthro GHGs does not play a role, or plays an insignificant role, the global SATs in 2011 should be below the 1951-1980 mean, that is negative. Especially given that we are emerging from a prolonged solar minimum in the 11-yr cycle. Looking at the ONI data here, shows that this is currently not the strong La Nina on record, 1955/1956 and 1973/1974 and 1975/1976 were all stronger. I am going to be only too happy to remind them of the positive global SAT anomalies for the year 2011.
98175. Daniel Bailey at 06:49 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       Re: Sphaerica I, too, watched that airing of The Day The Earth Stood Still (one of the all-time classics of Sci-Fi), and remember the quote well. We are in need this day of our own Michael Rennie and sidekick Gort to police us, as it is self-evident we cannot do it ourselves. Also, I'm in like mind with you regards the IPCC and funglestrumpet's claims. Words to the contrary, repeating a lie spreads the lie; done enough and eventually the lie becomes the "truth". To funglestrumpet's point, worded differently, the IPCC lost a battle of public relations which they did not even know they were engaged in. The disinformation campaign, given wings by those who seek to give equal time to "both sides" (the media and concern trolls), has won over the weak minds of the masses in the US, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. By the time this lot are worried enough to demand action from their leadership, it will be too late. The result? Gaining trillions in profits at the bargain price of billions of lives, payable on demand. A demand note that will come due within our childrens' lifetimes, something that those keeping up with the research know full well but dare not say in public. Blood money on their hands. And no amount of mea culpas and I didn't knows will erase the stains of guilt from their souls. The politics of denial, in-action. The Yooper
98176. Bob Lacatena at 06:42 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       funglestrumpet,

       Like it, or like it not, the IPCC acts as a focus for public suspicion of climate science...

       Agreed, but I see no reason to feed that invalid suspicion by mis-stating the facts. The IPCC was not in any way even implicated, let alone discredited, by the CRU server hack, and phrasing the problem as if they were is as good as any propaganda the denialists might choose to generate. The IPCC was not discredited by the CRU hack. No one was, but in particular the IPCC was not even involved.
98177. Bibliovermis at 06:40 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       The IPCC was not discredited by that event, rather people are simply using a (ir)rationalization to justify their beliefs. If the email incident had never occured, they would have some other reason for saying "the IPCC has been discredited." The "war" is demagogy versus science. Those are the two sides that self-proclaimed skeptics keep referring to when they retort "I've seen enough from both sides of the argument. no thanks." That is a direct quote from a friend last week who was referred to this site after saying that snow shows that global warming really isn't happening and "because "they" couldn't make the global warming thing work, they went to climate change". The war is about taking the debate to another level. Monckton is one of the purveyors of myths that are repeated ad nauseam. It is simple to ask leading, fallacious questions and point to cherry-picked intervals that support the preconceived notions of the audience being led by the nose.
98178. funglestrumpet at 06:36 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       1 "scumbag" was a quotation from another post replying to my original one. 2 I deliberately chose the term ‘directorate’ because I see it as directing the work, not actually doing it themselves. That being the case, they would draft such expertise as they consider necessary. The core issue is scientific, so it would make sense that the directorate be comprised of scientists. I am sure that a considerable number of people would object to many of the people you suggest. Atheists to church leaders, for instance. Restricting it to Nobel Prize winners automatically curtails any argument as to who should be on the directorate. Without that it would take far too long to set the whole process up. You can bet those who do not want any action on Climate Change would do their best to delay the selection process and we must remove any opportunity for them to do so. The most essential thing is that the whole process should raise public awareness of the seriousness of the situation, especially those of the younger generation for obvious reasons. I hope you agree that we cannot carry on as we are with likes of Lord Monckton carrying on unimpeded by proof that his views are discredited.
98179. Marvin Gardens at 06:35 AM on 17 January 2011
       Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
       Murph at 130 - I looked at the link within SKS, and then went to the original site. The 97% figure represented only 79 scientists?
98180. Leland Palmer at 06:28 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       Hi muoncounter-

       It should be no surprise that this book is 'coming soon'. Or maybe it already did; how would anyone know?

       :) The whole episode reminds me of the Soon and Baliunas paper published by Climate Research, which led to the resignation of several members of the editorial board of Climate Research. Soon and Baliunas controversy - Climate Research Both are cases of obscure journals claiming peer reviewed status for papers that are outside the mainstream of climate science, for example. The obscurity of the Journal did not prevent the Soon and Baliunas paper being used in Congressional testimony, however, and having an apparently large effect on the legislative process. Just a thought.
98181. funglestrumpet at 05:35 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       29 Sphaerica. Please re-read my post, especially: "Not because they did anything wrong - we know they didn't." Like it, or like it not, the IPCC acts as a focus for public suspicion of climate science. I have met several people who have cited the email incident as a reason not to trust anything the scientists say on the matter. When one tries to explain along the lines you argue, all one gets is: "They're all in it together (expletives deleted)" or something along similar lines. So I repeat: 'Unfortunately, the IPCC has been discredited by the email incident.' I also repeat that we need to take the debate to another level. If we don't, we are going to spend all our time disproving the denier's 'science' while the climate changes from bad to worse, and the deniers achieve their goal. They will win the war after losing every battle - Bob Dylan.
98182. Bob Lacatena at 05:19 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       26, funglestrumpet,

       The “scumbag scientists” attitude will be seen as a dangerous one to adopt.

       I don't think this will ever happen, because a distrust of anyone who appears to be more intelligent than you seems to be inherent in the human species. I think it partly comes from the fact that if someone says something you can't even understand, you have no way of evaluating its truth or even weight. It literally seems like magic, and so is something to be feared and distrusted. Since the message is frightening, then the messenger — the scientist — is doubly so. Consider this quote from the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (which I happened to catch on TV the other night). This is the version with Klaatu, the alien, threatening to wipe out the human race if they don't learn to stop being so belligerent (as opposed to the 2008 version, where humanity's crime is in raping the planet). The quote below belongs to Professor Barnhardt:

       It is not enough to have men of science. We scientists are too easily ignored — or misunderstood. We must get important men from every field. Educators — philosophers — church leaders — men of vision and imagination — the finest minds in the world.

98183. arch stanton at 05:09 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       JMurphy, at the least it is a useful tool to discern who is the most gullible and desperate.
98184. JMurphy at 04:51 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       Has SCIRP possibly been set up to discover how gullible/deluded the so-called skeptics are, and to show up how they will cite anything in desperation, no matter how far-fetched ?
98185. robert way at 04:35 AM on 17 January 2011
       A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
       For the record NASA uses a different station combination method than the one you outline above. NASA uses the reference station method rather than combining anomalies based upon a base period. The reference station method uses a weighted mean to adjust stations to have temperature sets line up with an initial reference station in their overlapping period. Your method demonstrated here is more similar to what hadley does which is the anomaly method.
98186. muoncounter at 04:30 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       Here's a good one from SCIRP: Causality and Reversibility in Irreversible Time (coming soon...) It should be no surprise that this book is 'coming soon'. Or maybe it already did; how would anyone know?
98187. muoncounter at 04:20 AM on 17 January 2011
       It's not bad
       Monsoon-style flooding: Pakistan, Queensland and now there's ARkStorm: California’s other "Big One" ... scientists unveiled a hypothetical California scenario that describes a storm that could produce up to 10 feet of rain, cause extensive flooding (in many cases overwhelming the state’s flood-protection system) and result in more than $300 billion in damage. ... "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes. The ARkStorm is essentially two historic storms (January 1969 and February 1986) put back to back in a scientifically plausible way. The model is not an extremely extreme event."
98188. Esop at 04:15 AM on 17 January 2011
       Global Warming and Cold Winters
       #62 (William): Are you saying that there are no anomalously high temperatures on this graph (2010 values)? http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php Please check it again. Hint: the green line is the average, the red line is the 2010 values. The red line is way above normal through most of December, with the expection of the last few days before New Years, when it went below average, before spiking back to way above average right after New Year. At the warmest, temperatures spiked to 22F above average in the middle of December. December was cold in northern and western Europe (but very warm in southeast, like Bulgaria). At the same time, eastern Canada and western Greenland were were way above average. The blocking high pressure has now faded and Greenland has now cooled to more normal temps and Europe has warmed to temperatures way above average, with heavy rain and massive flooding as the result. BTW, you mention that the La Nina might be the strongest on record. What is the effect of the La Nina on the global average temperature? What conclusion can you draw from the fact that 2010 set a record/tied global average temperature in a year with the possibly strongest La Nina on record, max cooling effect from the deepest solar minimum in more than 100 years, negative PDO and the volcanic eruption at Eyafjella? (the El Nino was short lived and far from record setting)
98189. muoncounter at 04:05 AM on 17 January 2011
       Glaciers are growing
       Anyone left clinging to the glacier growing myth? Explain the emergence of ice mummies. The discovery of Mr. Pabón’s partially preserved remains was one of a growing number of finds pulled from the world’s glaciers and snow fields in recent years as warmer temperatures cause the ice and snow to melt, exposing their long-held secrets. ... “It looks like the warming trend seen in many regions is continuing,” said Gerald Holdsworth, a glaciologist at the Arctic Institute of North America in Calgary, Alberta. “There are still some large snowbanks left in promising places, and many glaciers of all different shapes, orientations and sizes, so the finds could go on for a long time yet.”
98190. Paul D at 04:04 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       Also if you scroll to the bottom of the scirp page, there is a list of text links, including Contact Us, About Us etc, that aren't actually links. Anyone, starting a genuine publication would never have dead links like that.
98191. Bob Lacatena at 04:00 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       23, fumblestrumpet,

       Unfortunately, the IPCC has been discredited by the email incident.

       This is incorrect. The e-mails had nothing whatsoever to do with the IPCC, and had no effect on their credibility. If anyone chooses to interpret the subsequent validation of the CRU at EAU by three separate bodies as "discrediting," that is their (obviously biased), choice, but in any event, the situation involves a handful of scientists working on one very specific aspect of climate research (i.e. one of several independently compiled set of measurements) at one university. It was not the IPCC, and it did not discredit the IPCC, which does not even perform research... they merely compile the research of thousands of climate scientists around the globe into a cohesive set of reports.
98192. Paul D at 03:59 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       scirp About Us: "Scientific Research Publishing (SRP: http://www.scirp.org) is engaged in the service of academic conferences and publications. It also devotes to the promotion of professional journals. The company has an outstanding work team as well as the widespread third party relations, enables our customers to obtain great satisfactions and convenience in their publications." Apparently based in the US. However the grammar suggests a poor translation from another language.
98193. sailrick at 03:58 AM on 17 January 2011
       It's not bad
       Quietman @13 "Warmer means more like the world that we evolved in during the PETM (when prosimians first appear) in Asia." "We are from a tropical paradise, no polar ice caps and green pole to pole. Which do we wan't for our offspring? Warm and abundant or cold and starvation?" Things have changed a little in the past 250 million years. Modern humans have been around for what, 250 thousand years? I suppose you could also say we evolved in any climate since life began on earth. But the real point you are missing is the rate of change. Changes are happening in a human lifetime that normally would take thousands of years. And at no time in man's history were there 6 billion people with highly industrialized infrastructure near the coastline, burning a hundred million years worth of sequestered carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere. We are not nomadic hunter gatherers who can pick up our tents and move to higher ground or more hospitable climates. We depend on extensive modern agriculture, much of which is in coastal plains. Bruce Frykman "For the record "peer review" is simply a call for rudimentary error checking - it is not thesis confirming and it is by no means systematic, thorough, or even unbiased" I don't think anyone claims the peer review process is perfect. But I don't think you can claim the IPCC reports have not been thoroughly peer reviewed. "Climate Scientists Defend IPCC Peer Review as Most Rigorous in History" by Stacy Feldman - Feb 26th, 2010 "Nicholls, a professor at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, said the IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment report was subjected to several rigorous tiers of review. The study cites over 10,000 papers from the scientific literature, "most of which have already been through the peer-review process to get into the scientific literature." "The report went through four separate reviews and received 90,000 comments from 2,500 reviewers, all of which are publicly available, along with the responses of the authors, Nicholls said." http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100226/climate-scientists-defend-ipcc-peer-review-most-rigorous-history
98194. muoncounter at 03:57 AM on 17 January 2011
       Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
       #128: "could just as easily say the natural cycle is coinciding with the massive outpouring of carbon dioxide." Yes, you could say that. As shown here, the really massive outpouring of CO2 took off right after WW2. About 50% of the cumulative (area under the annual emissions curve in that graph) occurred since the 1970's. What 'natural cycle' is this? What causes it? And what evidence do you offer for its existence? See the thread Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming to see how it's done at SkS. Data, analysis and peer-reviewed science trump 'you could just as easily say.'
98195. JMurphy at 03:30 AM on 17 January 2011
       Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
       Marvin Gardens, have a look at Scientific Consensus
98196. Leland Palmer at 03:24 AM on 17 January 2011
       Not a cite for Soare eyes
       This paper was published by the International Journal of Geosciences, part of the Scientific Research (scirp.org) family of journals. These are very strange journals, apparently, published by an organization based in China. Some of the papers in these journals have apparently been republished without acknowledging the original date of publication, implying that they are new, when in fact some of them are a decade or so old: World's Strangest Collection of Scientific Journals Nature: Two new journals copy the old These journals have also had people listed on their editorial boards who were there without their knowledge. Some of those on the editorial boards actively disagree with the content of the material in the journals, and gave their permission by mistake, thinking that they were agreeing to be on the boards of journals with a similar name, according to Nature.
98197. Anne-Marie Blackburn at 03:23 AM on 17 January 2011
       Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
       Ken Lambert Rather than pointing me to a blog, why not provide links to the primary literature which support all the points you make? And then explain to me why it is okay for Monckton to base his assertions on one article only, with the article in question not looking at all reconstructions. Because this is the whole point of the OP - how to ignore the whole body of evidence in favour of a small piece of the jigsaw that supports your position.
98198. chrisd3 at 03:03 AM on 17 January 2011
       A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
       "why don't you guys roll up your sleeves, get to work and start crunching some data?" Same reason WUWT never analyzed what happens if you remove all their "bad" stations from the analysis: The results wouldn't be what they want. So much better to just say, "These stations are bad and they're skewing the results to show warming that doesn't really exist" without ever demonstrating that that is what it actually does. This is the difference between the "skeptics" and the scientists.
98199. Marvin Gardens at 03:02 AM on 17 January 2011
       Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
       Archie, just curious as to how many total scientists that 97% represents. Thanks, MG
98200. Marvin Gardens at 02:59 AM on 17 January 2011
       Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
       David Horton at #3 - "it's just a natural cycle" that happens to coincide precisely in timing and rate with the massive outpouring of CO2 over the last 150 years, and especially the last 30. The odds of the two things coinciding are astronomical (so to speak)." Not really astronomical. You could just as easily say the natural cycle is coinciding with the massive outpouring of carbon dioxide. We are in a warm phase and human populations, along with other organisms, explode. It stands to reason that we are likely to have high populations during these and the development of technology would occur then.

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