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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 98351 to 98400:

  1. Not a cite for Soare eyes
    According to scientific studies, variation of atmospheric CO2 in interannual time scale is correlated with ENSO. But it is not that the warmer eastern Pacific Ocean give up more CO2 during the El Nino phase. Rather it is the terrestrial biosphere around the western Pacific (and perhaps also Amazon river basin) that take less CO2 then. I think this connection has already been discussed somewhere at this web site. Otherwise I will look for references.
  2. Monckton Myth #3: Linear Warming
    Monckton must have learned his tricks from Fred Seitz, but then didn't they all (Seitz was considered the granddaddy of global warming skeptics). It's just the age old trick of casting doubt; usually with an ulterior motive/incentive. I don't know about you but I wouldn't walk a mile for a "Camel". And I wouldn't listen to anyone who casts doubt on an issue which is being put under the microscope by so many different scientific disciples that have provided substantial proof to the contrary. That's not to say that there isn't room for constructive criticism, and that's why blogs like this and RealClimate and others serve a very useful purpose in informing the public, which is refreshing in comparison to those blogs that more resemble the chaotic nature of a scrum.
  3. apiratelooksat50 at 10:33 AM on 18 January 2011
    Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    I’ve been asked to provide my scientific reasons for not supporting the AGW hypothesis. A short explanation follows. (Sorry for the delay, I’ve been working this past week on delineating a wetland to help minimize the effects of running a 4 mile wastewater effluent pipeline.). In statistics, a null hypothesis is a hypothesis that is presumed true until statistical evidence in the form of a hypothesis test indicates otherwise. For example, in a clinical trial of a new drug, the null hypothesis might be that the new drug is no better, on average, than the current drug. We would write H0: there is no difference between the two drugs on average. Special consideration is given to the null hypothesis, due to the fact that the null hypothesis relates to the statement being tested, whereas the alternative hypothesis relates to the statement to be accepted if/when the null is rejected. H0 can be “not rejected”, or H0 can be “rejected in favor of H1”. It can never be concluded to "reject H1", or even "accept H1". “Not rejecting H0", does not necessarily mean that the null hypothesis is true, it only suggests that there is not sufficient evidence against H0 in favor of H1. Rejecting the null hypothesis then, suggests that the alternative hypothesis may be true.. Prior to discussion of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis it should be established that the Earth’s climate has gone through relatively extensive cyclical changes in temperature throughout its history. In the case of warming, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained as follows: as ocean temperatures rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend, leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the cause and effect of further warming. This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such variation. Additional positive feedbacks which play an important role in this process include other greenhouse gases, and changes in ice sheet cover and vegetation patterns. If changes in the Earth’s orbit can initiate warming changes, then the opposite must be true: changes in the Earth’s orbit can initiate cooling changes, as the feedbacks listed above become negative. Also, as the world is coming out of the Little Ice Age it is only reasonable that the Earth is experiencing a gradual rise in temperature. The fundamental AGW hypothesis is based on the following scientifically verifiable facts: 1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG) and contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing and emitting radiation within the thermal infrared range thus warming the Earth. 2) Through the use of fossil fuels over the past 150 years, humans have contributed to the current rise in atmospheric CO2 levels from 280 ppm to 390 ppm. The AGW hypothesis (H1) then basically states that: current human CO2 emissions significantly affect the climate outside of natural variations. Therefore, the null hypothesis (H0) is: human CO2 emissions do not significantly affect the climate and the variations are the result of natural processes. There are a number of rational and viable scientific objections that have been raised against various parts of the hypothesis, from the nature and sign of the forcings considered and unconsidered, to the existence of natural thermostatic mechanisms. It is the onus of the supporters of the H1 hypothesis to establish enough evidence to reject H0. That is, show where the climate has changed from any historically established norms. First, the climate must be acting significantly anomalously or abnormally. Second, the anomaly must be explained by human actions. And, third modeling (predicting) cannot be used as explanations or facts. At this point, for the sake of brevity, I will end this post. I have rebuttals prepared for examples you supporting AGW you will want to post.
  4. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Marcus, Yes, although it's not that they are dumb. It's a combination of the Dunning-Kueger effect, provincialism, apathy, scientific illiteracy and occasionally willful, even prideful ignorance, fed by a well-saturated misinformation campaign. It's the reason why Monckton is even given any consideration.
  5. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    Both Esop #66 and John Brookes #72: Eyjafjallajokull had little impact on global climate for several reasons. 1: It was a relatively small eruption on the global scale - VEI 3-4 and ~0.25 cubic km of ejected material. Pinatubo was VEI 6 and ~10 cubic km of material. 2: It was at a high latitude - Eruptions that can significantly affect global climate through aerosols stand a much better chance of doing so if they are near the Equator. 3: The Eyja eruption column was not very high - ~8km, and so did not inject much material into the stratosphere. Large Plinian eruption columns such as Pinatubo (>20km high eruption column) inject material directly into the stratosphere, notably statospheric sulphuric acid, influencing climate. Part of the reason Eyjafjallajokull was even as explosive as it was is the presence of the glacier and consequent abundant water around the magma producing phreatomagmatic activity enhancing the explosivity of the andesitic eruption. But that explosivity still isn't very large. Eyja is not going to feature very high on a global list of 21st Century eruptions. So while it's tempting to relate the Eyjafjallajokull 2010 volcanic eruption to snowy weather, it's not relevant here, as Eyjafjallajokull was orders of magnitude too small to have much of a global or climatic impact. The fine ash, the wind direction, and subsequent entrainment of fine ash into higher altitudes of the troposphere course led to plenty of travel disruption and media attention...
  6. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Bern #1 Yes, disappointing that the first comment was a denier. But every comment since then has been positive. The denier 'John Mac' might be feeling a little punch-drunk. Excellent post John.
  7. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    What some people out there don't understand is this-its *not* just Queensland getting flooded. The whole of Eastern Australia has been hit, & now we hear about South America getting hit too-& just months after Pakistan suffered its worst floods in living memory. Yet still I hear people say "well its not as bad as the floods in 1974 or the 1800's" or "how can you blame this on global warming when you blamed the drought on global warming". I mean, seriously, are people *really* that dumb?
  8. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Thanks, Mile. Data is from 1986, and the anomaly maps go as far back as 36 months, as far as I can make out. I'd like to find some longer term data.
  9. Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino
    @ Robert Way #5 Phil Jones has stated recently that with fuller data for 2010 the last 15 year trend comes up to the 95% level. See here - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/12/08/impervious-to-learning/ I guess it semantics of Feb 1995 to Feb 2010 from when he made his interview to the BBC, or Nov 1995 to Nov 2010 when he made comments in the Monbiot piece. Also heres a link to the trends I think probably Monkton uses, they don't seem to match yours but state they are from Hadley data? Jo Nova Graph
  10. littlerobbergirl at 08:56 AM on 18 January 2011
    Monckton Myth #3: Linear Warming
    err yes - very thorough! that last paragraph is a bit of a brain twister. well it all is, but you cant give any wiggle room with these people. tamino has been examining 'noisy short-term temperature data', nice tidy up here http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/sharper-focus/
  11. littlerobbergirl at 08:45 AM on 18 January 2011
    OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    i tried to post a reply to that comment, but abc threw a wobbly at a post from england lol someone else will have to do it. good night/morning john, glad yous and yr town mostly ok (this time around).
  12. Monckton Myth #3: Linear Warming
    MattJ #1 - the problem is that it's very easy to make a false, unsubstantiated statement. It takes a lot more work to prove the statement is false. Monckton constantly takes advantage of this principle, which is why we have to have an entire series of Monckton Myths.
  13. Monckton Myth #3: Linear Warming
    I always knew there was something fishy about the figures Monckton tosses around. Now if only we could state the rebuttal as succinctly as Monckton stated the disinformation.
  14. Not a cite for Soare eyes
    Marco: "I don't think SCIRP is Chinese government-backed. In fact, I think the Chinese involved in SCIRP would prefer to leave the Chinese government out..." Thank you for that reference, that's interesting. So SCIRP perhaps is just a symptom of the general shoddy nature of much of the Chinese academic press ... (for those of you who didn't chase Marco's link, the story is that essentially that rather than promote crappy Chinese science journals, the government is seriously looking into trying to weed them out.)
  15. We're heading into an ice age
    Daniel, 1) The graph I was referring to was a temperature graph. The one you have responded with is a CO2 graph. 2) "For 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 has never been above this line... until now" uses misleading grammar. The word "never" has strong implications. And 650,000 years is not a long time in the grand scheme of earth. The correct phrasing would be "CO2 has not been above this line in the past 650,000 years."
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Sigh. In reverse order (feeling contrarian myself today), 650K years is an immense time in the history of our species; the Earth will abide long after we are gone (unless we get too many handwaving comments). CO2's peak in the Vostok core was 298.3 PPM. The line was to represent 300 PPM. Grammar concerns notwithstanding, the point is unequivocal. And for those who refuse to acknowledge any relationship between CO2 and temps:
  16. Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino
    On that topic also if we are to consider things only from the purely statistical perspective we could not conclude with 95% confidence that it has warmed significantly over the last 15 years using hadley but i don't think anyone would really make that argument. Statistics is important and we hate to be aware of these things when we publish and submit papers but we also have to remember that results are not useless because they're not 95% significant.
  17. Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino
    I used yearly data rather than monthly data. I understand this will alter the trends one would expect and that it is perhaps optimal to use monthly data instead but simply out of ease of usage I used yearly. Regarding the 95% significance trends and so on it was suggested previously to use error bars and so on but John suggested to me to leave them out. If we want to put our statistics hat on and evaluate this then of course the trends in many cases are too short to be statistically significant but that does not make the data useless. Certainly Monckton does not make his statements based upon statistical rigour. More or less this post was meant to use his assumptions that he is implicitly making. He is essentially not making any reference to error bars and is treating the values as the 100% confidence values. If we do the same using his own method we find that his argument is flawed regardless.
  18. Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino
    Hi Robert Are you using annual or monthly data to calculate the trends in table 3 and 4? When I use monthly data from 2001 to November 2010 I get slightly different trends than you. Besides that I think you should also include significance levels or error estimates. None of the trends are significant at the 95% level. See this plot. The errorbars in the plot are 95% confidence limits.
  19. Alden Griffith at 07:18 AM on 18 January 2011
    Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino
    Another way that I like to convey the effect of el Nino / la Nina: At most, a moderate el Nino by itself should make one year warmer than the previous year, but shouldn't make it record setter. The strength of the el Nino phases that we've had since 2000 have been unexceptional, yet temperatures have been quite exceptional.
  20. keithpickering at 07:17 AM on 18 January 2011
    Not a cite for Soare eyes
    I think you missed an important point here, and perhaps need to revise this posting. Soares eliminated the secular growth in CO2 from his data. In other words, he wasn't looking for an anthropogenic signal to begin with: he was looking for (and found) a non-anthropogenic signal of warming oceans giving up CO2, and cooling oceans absorbing CO2. This paper isn't really about CO2 causing climate change. It's more about the cause/effect of, for example, the 800 year temp/CO2 lag seen in ice cores.
  21. Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino
    Robert, Great job. Just one comment for now. Monckton states: "...but exactly the same rate occurred from 1860-1880 and again from 1910-1940" To which you respond: "....only 1 out of the 4 major indices indicates a rate of warming within 0.25°C per century and none within 0.2°C. His claim that the rates are similar is dubious at best. You have demonstrated unequivocally that the rates of warming are most certainly not "exactly the same". I do not know what the 95% confidence intervals are for the trends, there may be some overlap, but even so, they are most definitely not the same, and in all likelihood recent rates of warming are higher than those observe din 1910-1940, and almost certainly higher than those observed between 1860-1880. Watts has sunk to an almost seemingly impossible new low by allowing this drivel from Monckton to be published on his blog. Time for serious "skeptics" and contrarians (e.g., Lucia) to drop Watts too.
  22. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Reluctant as I am to link to the appalling Gerard Henderson, here is his take http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/eco-doomsayers-blind-to-history-unreliable-tipsters-20110117-19u0i.html, For good old Gerard nothing can ever go wrong with the environment, nothing humans can do can affect the environment, nothing that is happening now is of any concern because things have happened before, nothing happening now can possibly be relevant to anything, and there is absolutely no concern for the future - just as long as conservative policies are followed and nobody takes any notice of those environmentalists of course. A column every week in the SMH to spout this kind of garbage, and help to create a political environment where nothing will ever be done to protect the actual environment. Especially nothing to help stop global warming.
  23. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    Speaking of Patrick Michaels (see 4th place in Glieck’s award article).. “The Koch Brothers' Climatologist” by Russell Baker (Huffington Post, Jan 14, 2011) does a nice job of explaining who Patrick Michaels is and what he’s up to. To access Baker’s article, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-baker/the-koch-brothers-climato_b_809014.html#postComment
  24. Eric (skeptic) at 05:37 AM on 18 January 2011
    Global Warming and Cold Winters
    muoncounter, I think it is too soon to discern a trend in early versus late winter snowstorms. IMO, I don't think we have had enough years of very low ice yet.
  25. Not a cite for Soare eyes
    I have actually looked at the short comings of the Soares paper on my own humble blog a week ago; http://lazarus-on.blogspot.com/2011/01/gold-standard-in-science.html An obscure journal is the least of the problems in my opinion and I didn't even really look at the science in the detail you have!
  26. Eric (skeptic) at 05:29 AM on 18 January 2011
    OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    CAPE and climate paper (I only read the abstract): http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2345222 The bottom line of their study is pretty clear from the last few sentences: Although a prediction based on the change in moist adiabat matches the GCM simulation of climate change averaged over the tropical Pacific basin, it does not match the simulation regionally because small changes in the general circulation change the local boundary layer relative humidity by 1%-2%. Thus, the prediction of regional climate change in CAPE is also dependent on subtle changes in the dynamics. IOW, while it's hard to make the argument about a local event without studying the local weather, the argument can be made on average.
  27. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    I've got the feeling that clouds are of some importance here. Since they absorb a wide spectrum of IR and radiate a blackbody spectrum depending on the temperature of the cloud. If more CO2 does not change the temperature/height/amount of the clouds, we expect the surface to warm even more, because it can only lose extra energy where there are no clouds. Is this reasoning correct?
  28. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    John, excellent piece. I think you covered all the bases nicely. Really, what you are saying is explained well by both the Clausius-Clapeyron equation and the equation for moist static energy (MSE = CpT +gz+Lr). In fact, Crook (1996) investigated the sensitivity of Convective Available Potential Energy (measure of buoyancy and updraft strength in thunderstorms) to small changes in the near-surface temperature and moisture. Through a scaling analysis of the equation for MSE he found that an increase in mixing ratio (r) of only 1 g/kg has about 2.5 times the effect on CAPE as increasing the surface temperature by 1 C. To keep things simple by keeping the vertical wind shear constant, a relatively small increases in low-level moisture in a convectively unstable environment can translate into a significant impact of thunderstorm intensity (and in turn increase precipitation rate).
  29. A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
    Thanks, that's very helpful indeed, especially with respect to missing data. Python indeed has a hashmap data structure - dict. It's a built-in and the students tend to use it extensively, for things which never occur to me with my C++ background! I'd already used it to read in the GHCNv3 data using pretty much the data structure you suggest: So far my only difference is to introduce a class at the station level with lat/long info for later use.
  30. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    GC: Enjoy the current warming. Long may it last! This sort of braying certainty really isn't compatible with your attempts to present yourself as a humble amateur truthseeker. Maybe you should approach your own opinions with the same skepticism you recommend when discussing the findings of people who actually have some expertise.
  31. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Good one, John. Great to get exposure on a 'mainstream' media outlet, except for the inevitable rise of zombie comments. A word of warming from US Gulf Coast hurricane experience -- after the flood, first come the home repair scam artists, then the cheesy lawyer commercials. I noticed when I posted this comment on Its not bad that the new term 'atmospheric river' is gaining traction as an observable characteristic of extreme rainfall events. While initially used to explain California flooding, a quick search shows that this phenom may be applicable to the Qland flooding as well. These ARs are highly visible on radar.
  32. A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
    (7), (8), (14): 7: Mea-Culpa -- I used an imperfect recollection of what NASA did when I coded up my app. Didn't check into the details before coding. Just went from (incorrect) memory. So I ended up implementing something considerably simpler than what NASA does. 8: As for the implications for global-scale averages, this should attest to the robustness of the global temperature record. There are multiple ways to skin the "global temperature" cat, and they all give you pretty close to the same answer. There are significant differences between NASA's algorithm and my much simpler one, but both approaches gave very consistent results. That attests to the robustness of the data *and* the averaging methods. 14: My algorithm would quite simple if it weren't for the "data gap" issue. The programming "complications" that could really trip up students have to do with those gaps. Not all stations have data for all years/months. The gaps/missing-data vary randomly from station to station. As a result, when calculating baseline temperatures, you have to keep track of the number of valid temperature samples per station and month. The map template in the C++ Standard Template Library (STL) makes this chore much easier, but C++ isn't exactly a "student-friendly" language. Plus, code with STL templates isn't the easiest to debug -- step into an STL container with a debugger, and you'll see mostly incomprehensible gobbledygook. I presume that Python contains a "map" container similar to the STL map (but I haven't done any Python programming, so I can't say for sure). You will definitely want to use a higher-level "data container" function (like a map) that will help keep you "out of the weeds" with respect to data-gap bookkeeping. Depending on how advanced your students are, you may want to write your own Python "extensions" that hide the uglier coding details, and have your students use those. Anyway, here's a description of the algorithm (I just "coded it up from memory", so I don't have a nice reference document that I can point you to): 1) Read in the data into a structure that allows you to access any particular temperature sample by [WMO-ID][YEAR][MONTH]. (WMO-ID is the unique identification number given to each temperature station). The advantage of the STL map container (over simple arrays) is that if there are data gaps for, say, years 1920, 1930-1935, etc. for a given temperature station, the map container will make it much easier to avoid averaging in "missing" data by mistake. Unlike a plain array, map indices don't have to be sequential. The map container will take care of jumping over discontinuities in the index values for you. 2) For each station, calculate the average temperature for each month over the period 1951-1980. I.e. Calculate the average Jan temp for each station, the average Feb temp for each station, etc. Put all these averages into a 2-d map/array/whatever so that you can index each station/month average by [station-id][month]. The tricky part (for students) here is that not all stations will have data for the entire baseline period. There may be missing years of data, and missing months within years. This will vary randomly from station to station. So you'll want to keep track of the number of valid temperature values for each station and month. (I do this in a separate [station-id][temperature] "sample counter" map). In my code, I define a "minimum valid number of samples" value. For a station to be included in the baseline calculation for a particular month, it must have at least that many valid samples to be included. Otherwise I throw it out. The default value is 15. That means that unless a station contains at least 15 valid temperature readings (i.e. 15 years out of 30 for the 1951-1980 baseline period) for a given month during the baseline period, I exclude that station from the global-anomaly calculations for that particular month. I have found my results to be highly insensitive to that value, however. If I use 1 as the minimum number, I get similar results. Likewise, if I use 30 (the maximum number for the 1951-1980 baseline period), I get similar results. 3) Then you go back to the original temperature data, and for each [station][year][month], subtract the corresponding [station][month] baseline value to get the anomaly value. The anomaly value is simply the difference between the temperature for each [station][year][month] and its corresponding [station][month] 1951-1980 baseline temperature. 4) Then for each year/month, you calculate the average of all anomalies for all the stations. Once again, the number of stations reporting valid temperatures for each year/month will vary, so to compute the averages correctly, you will have to keep count of the number of valid reporting stations for each [year][month]. 5) To get an single average anomaly value for each year, calculate the average anomaly value for all the months in that year (i.e. average over months in the [year][month] array/map generated in step 4). Once again, the number of months reporting valid data for each year may vary, so you'll want to keep track of the number of valid "month" temperature samples for each year. In the GHCN temperature files, missing temperature values are assigned the value -9999, so they are easy to identify and code around. Definitely a challenging project for students, but if it's broken up into digestible "pieces" so that students don't get stuck/frustrated (a common programming teaching challenge), it would be a terrific learning experience. Anyway, I hope that this is "clearer than mud" -- putting something like this together as a digestible "lesson plan" for students would be a great thing to do. I would imagine that having students see that their own independently-generated global-temperature results agree nicely with NASA's would be a mountain of "icing on the cake"
  33. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    funglestrumpet, Thank you for demonstrating what separates the (honest) skeptics from the deniers & contrarians who claim to be such; the ability to learn from the resources presented to you. Keep asking questions & keep updating your understanding. I'm self-taught in this field by that very process. It is difficult to keep the cynicism at bay, but it is necessary in order to continue productive, civil discussions. Now, back to the topic at hand - ocean cooling. Claims of ocean cooling are the same as claims of surface cooling, a failure to take into account all of the evidence & asking questions in defense of preconceived notions rather than in search of knowledge.
  34. Global Warming and Cold Winters
    #78: "positively balmy compared to cold winters during the "Little Ice Age" I don't know what the relevance of that statement is to this thread or any other -- except as a sound byte on threads on the LIA. This thread and Northern hemisphere warming rates both originate in the desperate 'skeptic' claims that even a single winter snowstorm 'proves' warming is over or was never real. And unlike the 'skeptic non-science' of 'natural cycles,' actual climate science must reconcile strong early winter storms with deteriorating Arctic ice and all of the other fingerprints. Denial is easy; science is hard work.
  35. Not a cite for Soare eyes
    As in the case of Energy and Environment, I would like to know more about the International Journal of Geosciences. I would like bone fide climate scientists who have been widely published and cited to step forward and say, "yes, I have participated in peer reviews for that journal and I stand behind the published papers I have reviewed." They don't have to identify which papers, just that they back the journal.
  36. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Nice plain simple language John. Nicely portrays: more heat = more moisture in the air column = greater energy potential. Yes the land being baked dry does make a difference when it does downpour. The water can't sink into the soil so it piles up faster. I'm sure that's probably a factor in the Australian floods.
  37. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    #10 Have you tried: Global Drought Monitor? NOAA Drought Information Center provides data for US and a lot of background information.
  38. funglestrumpet at 01:48 AM on 18 January 2011
    Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    48 Bibliovermis No, you are not misreading me, I simply did not know that what I was calling for had been covered by the IPCC, so no apologies necessary on your part and humble ones on mine. It is perhaps a reflection of the status of the IPCC in the minds of the general public that when someone like myself who is not a scientist, but very interested in it generally, and Climate Change in particular, was unaware of that aspect of its work. I try to keep abreast of events, but have neither the time nor the inclination to read the whole of the IPCC report, relying instead on trusted sources to produce their interpretation of it. I struggle with a considerable amount of the detailed science published on this page, and I am not particularly stupid if my IQ of 135 is any guide, so we face an uphill struggle if we are to convince those members of the general public who have little or no interest in science. Perhaps Professor Lovelock is right when he says that, having swarmed as a species, we are in for a cull in the same way that all other members of the animal kingdom are when they have outgrown their habitat. Perhaps the majority of those that have replied to my posts are also right, judging by the lack of alternative suggestions as to how we move from a business as usual situation i.e. there is nothing we can do other than to carry on as we are. (Or copy ancient sci-fi films and have a bunch of church leaders arguing about the wingspan of an angel assisting us in the matter. Let’s face it, they will probably come up with “God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform” and say we should let The Big Feller get on with it.) Heaven help us – literally!
  39. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Michael, I'm sincerely interested in any drought data available for the globe and for Australia. I have difficulty finding such. Similarly with flooding. Precipitation records are much easier to come by.
  40. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    While we cannot connect a single weather event conclusively to AGW, the list is starting to get pretty long. I think your opinion piece should have been more strongly worded. Scientists have been qualifying their data while the deniers claim certainty. Something like this quote from the WMO, then empnhasing that events match the IPCC projections: "While a longer time range is required to establish whether an individual event is attributable to climate change, the sequence of current events matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming." The general public perceives the qualifications by scientists as meaning the data is not clear. The data is clear: AGW has increased flooding and drought world wide. That fact needs to be emphasized in the first paragraph.
  41. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Here in Brazil we're having a lot of floods and landslides due to heavy rain too. It looks like a specially "disastrous" year, but I don't know about our local long term trends, though.
  42. Not a cite for Soare eyes
    21 Marco You could write a whole blog on the issue of publishing access for scientists is resourse poor regions of the world. I remember a professor of mine when I showed him a paper I'd read said, paraphrasing, "ignore that it's written by Indians". The crassness of that remark may have disappeared somewhat but I think the sentiment is still there. It's not coincidental that many journals who's titles start International are at the lower end of the impact factor scale.
  43. A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
    Great work and I guess the article is here mainly as an example but do you mind a quick and dirty criticism? It's about the text describing Fig 3, I think I won't describe it quite the way you do. I agree with you on the period 1910-1940 but I think the post 1970 description is lacking some detail which would have an impact on your interpretation of the data. You say "post-1970 results show monthly-minimum temperatures rising faster than monthly maximum temperatures". The way I see it that's not quite right. Upto about 2000 the max and min are rising at an equal rate, just like 1910-1940. You can most clearly see that if you look at the 1980 and 2000 years, the grey graph lines help with the eyeballing. In those two years the difference is about 0.2oC. It's only after 2000 that the two lines begin to diverge dramatically. Your conclusion was "These results are entirely consistent with greater CO2 forcing later in the century than earlier." Well the CO2 increase has been a steadily increasing phenomenon while your data (based on my interpretation of the data) shows at best a step change after 2000 (let's say post the 1998-2001 El Nino/La Nina). This seems less consistent with a steadily increasing forcing from CO2. I'm not really interested in who's interpretation is correct, this is a 'quick and dirty analysis' after all. My point would be that large parts of climate science are interpretative. And in some instances interpretations are passed off as fact.
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] Reversal of seasonal warming patterns as a sign of CO2-driven warming was discussed in detail on the Human fingerprint in the seasons thread.
  44. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    For context, the global precipitation trend since 1900 is pretty clear. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/global-prcp-anom/201001-201012.gif
  45. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    I was wondering about precipitation data for Queensland. The BOM provide a handy reference. Queensland recorded it's highest ever December rainfall anomaly last month. The positive trend since 1900 is small, and probably statistically insignificant (data is easily accessed from the links above and below). The trend is higher for January. Data for the current month is, of course, not yet available. Annual rainfall for Queensland has a stronger positive trend of 6cm over the century. The year of greatest rainfall was 2010, beating out 1950 by 7mm. I heard a Sydney shock jock excoriating Bob Brown (Greens party leader) today for linking the floods in Queensland with climate change. The data the announcer referred to was for Brisbane only, and he mentioned several more extreme precipitation events going back over a century. I am leery of connecting specific weather events to climate change. I am (pleasantly) surprised at how little the flooding in Queensland has been connected with global climate change in the mainstream media - the cause, I suspect, is not caution, but rather that there are more marketable grabs (human interest, damage and costs, civil scams and flood related policies). I do not know exactly what Brown said, but he would have had to have been quite discursive to have avoided propagandizing. The connection to climate change can only be gleaned from long-term data and analysis. The pages above are a good resource for anyone interested, capable and willing to do so.
  46. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Monckton's resemblence to the late Argetinian president Nestor Kirchner is stunning. (sorry, I know it's totally irrelevant. Just could not resist.)
  47. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    The International journal of Geosciences definitely looks very suspect. Three of the papers in the current issue appear to be climate change sceptical whilst the others area curious mix of obscure topics. To set up a new journal with such broad coverage is bizarre and the editorial board whilst impressively long does not include any names I recognise. There is one paper from my field, micropalaeontology, published in the journal, Jayaraju et al. (2010, issue 1/2). There is nothing disastrously wrong with this paper but it is based on analysis of only four samples which for the type of study reported would be regarded as too small a sample set for publication in a regular peer-reviewed journal. As with the Knox & Douglass paper this paper was published in a very short timescale "Received May 14, 2010; revised June 13, 2010; accepted July 11, 2010". It appears that this is essentially grey literature. My guess is that climate change sceptics are exploiting pre-existing dubious outlets rather than actually setting them up.
  48. A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
    Tamino had a good string of blog posts about a slightly more sophisticated version of this game, using area weighting. I think he also did some sort of baseline adjustment but I'm not sure. Regrettably, these seem to be from just before the Great Blackout but not to have made it to the wayback machine. In case they're useful to anybody here are a few 404ing links from my feed reader: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/prime-meridian/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/dropouts/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/ghcn-preliminary-results/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/show-and-tell/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/thanks/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/update/ and two tail-enders which are still there: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/replication-not-repetition/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/global-update/
  49. OK global warming, this time it's personal!
    Well done John, excellent piece. Hopefully it will generate some good discussion on the ABC website. Seven years of drought, now record floods, it really looks like Climate change is beginning to bite. Unfortunately the first hit and the hardest hit will be the people who live in the "marginal" lands of outback Queensland. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a growing stream of people "evacuating" these areas in the next decade.
  50. Monckton Myth #1: Cooling oceans
    Hi Guys, all good stuff, but might be worth mentioning that the ocean is partly absorbing heat through the water heated at the equator, ie through the gulf stream and other Hadley like convections, that gets to the poles and through having become more salty due to evaporation sinks, still warmer, down to the bottom of the ocean and enters one of the deep ocean currents, that may take decades or more to well up again, and only then will we find the ocean in part has become fundamentally warmer. The ocean is huge, but to find more heat down the bottom could be major as significant currents well up at the Antarctic and for those cold currents to be warmer could have huge effect on the Antarctic ice shield, particularly the West, (WAIS).- and would continue, - horrific in the long-termness of that extra heat. Keep up the good work, Geoff Thomas.

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