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Comments 99601 to 99650:

  1. Did Global Warming stop in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010?
    JMurphy #65: "...trying to think beyond what a so-called skeptic would call his (let's face it, the vast majority of them are male) world..." It seems that the the vast majority of so-called warmists are also male, so what was it you were trying to hint at? Please elaborate!
  2. Antarctica is gaining ice
    #62: Have a look at Climate's changed before, Correlation between CO2 and temperature and CO2 is not the only driver. "If this was someone's ,say..., bloodpressure chart," Interesting analogy. In those terms, today's records would be the chart of a person who is being given CPR by a hyperactive teenager or perhaps the Incredible Hulk. Please note this thread is about current Antarctic ice loss. One of the links above is a more appropriate place for the 'driver' question.
  3. A Positive Outlook For Clouds
    michael sweet #23 "Other threads on Skeptical Science describe this lag as 40 years and more. Thus the 0.8C that we have already measured is due to the CO2 released decades ago. The increase from the last 40 or 60 ppm of CO2 has not yet been seen." I have often thought about this 'temperature lag' and it seems to make intuitive sense until one thinks it through with reference to the first law. As the Earth system (atmosphere, land, oceans, ice) absorbs heat energy from the theorized positive forcing imbalance it either performs phase changes (melts ice or vaporises water) or warms land and water. My understanding is that up to 90% goes into the oceans because the other sinks have little storage capacity and ice melt is a tiny portion of the total energy absorbed. The energy absorbed in the oceans must be obviously taken from the atmosphere and direct radiation via a temp increase in the top layers. Conduction and convection and complex mixing in the oceans will distribute heat and there will be a lag in the spatial distribution of temperature rise, but this process is moving around energy already absorbed in the system. There is no pipeline of energy from 40 years ago which is just arriving now. Your comment: "Thus the 0.8C that we have already measured is due to the CO2 released decades ago. The increase from the last 40 or 60 ppm of CO2 has not yet been seen" - cannot be true if the CO2GHG forcing is continually (in real time) adding energy to the system, because the bulk of that energy can only be stored by temperature rise of real mass mainly in oceans.
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] The appropriate thread for discussion of the 40 year lag is The 40 year delay between cause and effect.
  4. A Positive Outlook For Clouds
    Soundoff #27 If you have not already done so, I suggest you have a look at this paper: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf In particular Fig 4 which lists the various forcings and the energy equivalents (E20 Joules/year). "Forcing (E) and Temperature (T) are interrelated (E = εσT^4)." What you have quoted is the S-B Eqan for radiative cooling for a body at absolute Temp T in degK. Not the same thing as a temperature increase of the Earth system between two points in time. "If one adds one W/m² of forcing in a single day and sustains that forcing until equilibrium is reached, or one adds the same forcing gradually over a period of 100 years, the end result is the same - the measured temperature of Earth will be ~0.75ºC warmer." I don't think so. The equilibrium will never be reached if a positive forcing is sustained. As temperature rises S-B radiative cooling (currently a climate response feedback of -2.8W/sq.m as per the above paper) increases with absolute T^4 and the forcing gap closes until it approaches zero - at which time the temperature approaches a new higher equilibrium.
  5. Berényi Péter at 01:07 AM on 2 January 2011
    Did Global Warming stop in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010?
    #75 michael sweet at 22:54 PM on 31 December, 2010 Maybe all that heat is going to melt the ice in Greenland. According to this weather map the high temperature in Greenland was +14C yesterday. They measured a minimum temperature at the same location of +10C--> this is Greenland we are talking about. It has been over 0C most of this year. That must be in the vicinity of Narsarsuaq Airport (Mittarfik Narsarsuaq, 61.16083°N, 45.42556°W), close to the southern tip of the island. As you can see there's no ice there to be melted. Here is the December 2010 weather record for Narsarsuaq, Greenland. There is indeed a "heat wave" there in the last couple of days, but minimum temperature for this month was -11°C while the average is 1°C. Not exactly warm. It is not even a record. On December 21, 2001 maximum temperature was 16°C there. I live at 25 meters above sea level, how about you? It is 106 meters here, why? At Eureka it was 20C higher than normal for the past week !!! Yes. Maximum temperature for the month there is -4°C, average -25°C, minimum -44°C. There's a warm anomaly there, but no warmth at all. I still don't get your point. Over the ice sheet it's still damn cold, even if it is warmer than usual. Snow surface in thermal IR acts pretty much as a blackbody. Radiation flux goes up fast with increasing temperature due to the fourth power temperature dependence of radiation law. It is 240 W/m2 at -18°C and 315 W/m2 at 0°C. With so many dry-freezed patches of air above the region, most of this radiation escapes to space. The tiny portion absorbed in the 14 μm - 16 μm CO2 band is re-radiated by ice needles floating in the air. This radiation has a much broader spectrum, so again, only a tiny fraction is re-trapped by CO2, the rest escapes to space on both sides of this band. The extra heat transported there from lower latitudes by advection has really nowhere else to go.
  6. Antarctica is gaining ice
    Well i see one....does anybody else? I see ca.130,000 years ago the same CO2 levels like today, again 230,000 the same levels and 330,000 higher than today. If this was someone's ,say..., bloodpressure chart, i would say this person has elevated bloodpressure every 100,000 years (lol) Its safe to say that if we erase the text from the graph and show it to anyone, everyone would see the pattern. But one question stands and no one can answer.... Ok, humans drive our climate today with CO2 emissions, who was the driver 130,000 years ago and the exact same driver 230,000 years ago and did it again 330,000 years ago? thank you for your time....
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] You are very much incorrect about the same CO2 levels as today existing in the timeframes you mention. The graph you refer to had a zero year baseline of 1950, when CO2 levels were much lower than today. See the updated graph I posted in comment 60 above. As for the blood pressure reference, Muoncounter nailed it in Comment 63 below. In fact, see the links Muoncounter cites for the appropriate answers to the rest of your questions. Thanks!
  7. Anne-Marie Blackburn at 23:49 PM on 1 January 2011
    Italian translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    The French version is almost finished, too.
  8. Eric (skeptic) at 22:54 PM on 1 January 2011
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Muoncounter, those are good questions. I need a better blocking metric than NAO and see if that relates to heat waves and other potential causes like UV. I do know that Antarctica is doing its own thing, as AO has been negative the past two NH winters, AAO has been positive http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/month.aao.gif.
  9. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    "Can anyone enlighten me on the actual facts surrounding this?" Yeah, the Kiwi people were forced to redo their temp reconstruction analysis. The old trend and the new trend are exactly the same to the .01C level. Denialists proclaim victory because ... nothing has changed.
  10. We're heading into an ice age
    #206: "it stands to reason that each year will be warmer than the next until the warming trend ends." That would be nice, if we lived in some kind of cartoon-world, where the requisite laws of cartoon physics apply. However, you may be aware we had a 'Little Ice Age' and have fully recovered from that. So your idea that there's any possibility of monotonically increasing temperatures is not even lukewarm.
  11. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Re: muoncounter (64) More like this. The Yooper
  12. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Here is what I expect Giss(nasa) 1st warmest year Noaa 2nd the possible 7-9th ranking dec that is possible made it 2nd in my opinion. Uah-2nd...Not going to quite top 1998, but very near it. Rss-2nd or 3rd? I don't even take the UK one serious because it don't include the arctic.
  13. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    #62: "Fortunately the planet has actually done the xperiments for us so we do not need to worry about the current theories until they agree with the empirical evidence." Yooper, You missed that last bit. What does it mean? Could he be referring to this experiment? Or maybe this? Happy New Year!
  14. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #157: Eric, I'm just not getting the connection between blocking, UV and the NAO. As I observed in #155, there doesn't seem to be any consistency between NAO and UV. Can you document prior episodes of blocking? Compare those to prior heat waves; see if some kind of chronologic relationship exists? Only then could you unravel what is cause and effect -- and whether the NAO has anything to do with it at all. Recall, too that there are heat waves and droughts in other parts of the world. If it's NAO, then how does it work in Asia or the southern hemisphere? Or does the supposed non-AGW mechanism for all this need to get even more complicated? None of that takes anything away from the observation that extreme weather events, especially heat waves, are consistent with warming. Here is a review of the 2003 European heat wave; both it and 2010 were regional in scope; UHI isn't a factor. Here is a snippet, documenting that it wasn't an urban effect. The 0°C limit rose above 4500 meters elevation for 10 days. This unusual duration increased impacts, especially on shady rock walls at high altitudes, where thaw penetrated considerably deeper than in previous (warm) years and some areas may have been exposed to thawing for the first time.
  15. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    Thank you for the response Daniel Bailey. So, just like "Climate Gate", this is just another Tempest in a Teacup manufactured by the Denial Industry. Even if they were able to show now warming for the last Century (which they haven't), we already *know* that not every part of the planet has warmed at the same rate-& some small areas have even cooled slightly. What matters is GLOBAL temperatures, something the Denial Crowd never seem to quite grasp.
  16. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Re: Dung (62) OK, let's do something differently: Debunking back to front this time!
    "The science suggesting that man is warming the planet and that this is happening through increasing Greenhouse gases is theory, it is not tested/proven experimentally/empirically."
    Wrong. Science has known about the GHG properties of CO2 for over 150 years, in theory, experimentally and empirically. That the planet is warming is accepted fact. That man is the cause of it is over 90% certain (google the National Academy of Sciences position statement on this).
    "Secondly even if there WAS a consensus on the scientific basis for AGW (which I do not agree exists) it would be irelevant."
    Wrong again. All right, I'll help ya out. That consensus statement can be found here.
    "Firstly the raw temperature data from around the planet does not support the claim that there is ANY warming going on. Only after NASA or the UEA have "ahem" adjusted the data does warming appear."
    Strike Three. See, actual scientists use temperature anomalies (deviations from established norms) so they can actually find out the answers to questions like that. There's no mystical mumbo-jumbo going on. anyone with a modicum of computer skills can google the wiki page on temperature datasets and adjustments & find that out for themselves. Or you can just look at the summary of all of them here: (using the 133-month average filters out the noise effects of the solar cycle, revealing the signal in the data) Either the sky in your world is a different color or you've been feed a long line of hoo-hah. But don't take my word on it. Everything you need to find out the truth for yourself on things climate-related you have available with a few mouseclicks. The only remaining question is this: 1. Are you really interested in thinking for yourself? or 2. Are you content to have others do your thinking for you? If the answer is Yes to number one, a good start can be had by going here first and then here. Your call. The Yooper
  17. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    Hey guys. I read some crap about this so-called "Kiwi-Gate", from back in October 2010. It has something to do with a "Skeptic" Group taking the NZ meteorological society to court. Can anyone enlighten me on the actual facts surrounding this? The only place I see it mentioned are on Denialist Web-sites, so its hard to be sure if its even real (if it was, then The Australian failed to pick up on it-which is unusual for a Murdoch Rag).
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Michael Tobis covers that to some degree here. Gareth over at Hot-Topic also has has several posts on it, including this one.
  18. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    How about this one-sided moderation, Huh? You made my point about one sided review ...
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] And your point is...? Only comments in violation of the Comments Policy get deleted. Stay on topic, accept responsibility for the content of your comments and bring a strong logically constructed argument with links to peer-reviewed supporting sources to lend credibility. Blaming moderators, being off-topic and saying inflammatory things about others mandates moderator intervention. That's life.
  19. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Strangely (as an AGW sceptic) I agree that it is the science that divides us on AGW. Firstly the raw temperature data from around the planet does not support the claim that there is ANY warming going on. Only after NASA or the UEA have "ahem" adjusted the data does warming appear. Secondly even if there WAS a consensus on the scientific basis for AGW (which I do not agree exists) it would be irelevant. The science suggesting that man is warming the planet and that this is happening through increasing Greenhouse gases is theory, it is not tested/proven experimentally/empirically. Fortunately the planet has actually done the xperiments for us so we do not need to worry about the current theories until they agree with the empirical evidence.
  20. Eric (skeptic) at 12:20 PM on 1 January 2011
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Albatross, my goal is to explain causes of blocking. Ice free Arctic is at best only a partial cause, or perhaps a factor in lengthening or deepening the blocking. I agree with the rest of your summary regarding the role of CO2 warming in making heat waves worse. As I pointed out in 51, 56 and earlier, record highs are not corrected for UHIE like average temperatures are, so the numbers of record highs is higher and record lows is lower because of UHIE. Muoncounter, a theory of blocking requires more than just a powerful forcing from CO2. The theory proposed in your link in 149 is a reinforcing, not a cause. On another thread you mentioned something about how skeptics are treating winter differently. It is different although some underlying mechanisms might be the same. In winter it might be that the lack of sea ice determines the placement of highs and lows and performs a reinforcement like warmer sea surfaces in summer (from 149). Still that begs for a causal explanation that was present before AGW played any role. NAO is one measurement of blocking, the lower the NAO, the more the blocking. There are other measurements. UV heats the stratosphere, see http://www.springerlink.com/content/h0q4h17u4632671v/fulltext.pdf Low UV cools the stratosphere along with GHG increases, that gives the potential of reinforcing by AGW. Seasonally the solar role would be greater in NH summer. Cooling of the stratosphere and blocking are both cause and effect (see http://ams.confex.com/ams/16Fluid/techprogram/paper_124458.htm) so it seems that the spatial variation in stratospheric temperature plays the greatest role in producing and sustaining blocking events.
  21. Philippe Chantreau at 11:45 AM on 1 January 2011
    The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    I lost interest half way through Monckton convoluted excuse for claiming to be what he's not. I'll take the word of the House of Lords vs his any time. However, this has no bearing on the vacuity of his arguments, which has been thoroughly exposed, nor does it lend more credence to the gross misrepresentation and deception that he has made his trade.
  22. It's cooling
    @101, thanks a lot, albatross. I've been a bit down lately with the amount of persistent rot-postings here. Inviting another one looks almost like masochism. Back to Chris's problem. The friend seems not to have provided names or references for this assemblage of learned persons. My response to this on other sites is to ask for names - I can do the scholar and general google searching thereafter myself. Chris cannot possibly deal with the mindset or the ideology or the paranoia. The strategy is simply to focus on specifics. And show a proper regard for facts - "I found this paper by A Williams, is that the one you meant?" Remember, you're not looking for a road to Damascus moment for this particular person. You're looking to chip away at the edges of their certainty about particulars, a.n.d. , to display to any observers of the exchange which of you has a better grasp of the correct way to find and interpret facts about science.
  23. It's freaking cold!
    #73: See earlier comments. Interesting how the deniers use the jetstream to 'explain away' summer heat waves, but in the winter, they call it 'climate astrology'. How do you spell 'double standard'?
  24. It's cooling
    Chris @ 100 - where's the evidence from those scientists that the Earth is cooling?. Not the UK or parts of the US in winter, the Earth.
  25. A Positive Outlook For Clouds
    The goal of my calculation was to test whether the consensus 3ºC climate sensitivity figure for a doubling of CO2 (~0.75ºC per W/m²) is reasonable. Forcing (E) and Temperature (T) are interrelated (E = εσT^4). Time does not play a part in this relationship at the planetary level. Time is only needed to allow equilibrium to be reached so we can see the new temperature properly reflected in surface measurements. A 36-year period should allow that to happen. If one adds one W/m² of forcing in a single day and sustains that forcing until equilibrium is reached, or one adds the same forcing gradually over a period of 100 years, the end result is the same - the measured temperature of Earth will be ~0.75ºC warmer. The continuous warming that occurs over the much longer period is constantly radiated away into space leaving 0.75ºC for us to measure at the end of that period. The time for which the forcing is applied is not relevant to the calculation. As I stated earlier, other non-CO2 forcings neutralize each other (by chance) so they don't really need to be accounted for separately in my rough calculation, and 0.75ºC per W/m² is assumed to reflect all feedbacks, both positive and negative, well-defined or unknown. It is this assumption that I'm testing against reality. In all likelihood, the period for which I calculated the expected warming of 0.67ºC had/has both 0.5ºC of committed warming in the pipe at the start and end of the period, effectively allowing me to see a clear CO2 effect in surface temperatures without waiting for equilibrium to settle in and reflect what's still in the pipe at the end (i.e. the two cancelled). I'm not saying my calculation is proof of the consensus 3ºC climate sensitivity figure. I'm just showing that applying that figure in the standard forcing calculation gives an expected result that's consistent with the observed result. Had the results been wildly different, then I'd be wondering if our scientific understanding is correct. I'm sure if I tried the same calculation with shorter periods or periods before 1975, the result would not match so well. My explanation for that would be to say that CO2 needs to be the dominant driver of temperatures to see the effect clearly. My understanding is that CO2 has been dominant since 1975.
  26. It's cooling
    Chris @100, IMHO, this is a no win for you. Your friend has clearly made up his/her mind that some conspiracy is afoot; so no matter how much science, data and reason you provide, s/he will just keep moving the goal posts or arguing strawmen or claiming there is a conspiracy going on. I my experience, people like this never concede a thing, and have no interest in the "truth", but only the "truth" as they perceive it. I sense a lot of bluster and extremely little, if any, substance in his/her rant. Rather it is just another long list of common (and predictable) misinformation being parroted from places like ClimateDepot. I might regret this, but perhaps the best thing to do is to urge/challenge him/her to post here. That way we can address each and every misguided, unsubstantiated and incorrect assertion they make. Also, it will force him/her to put their money where their mouth is.
  27. We're heading into an ice age
    Dorianmc forgets (or is unaware) of the multiple layers of the atmosphere and that at the level of the TOA, convection is largely non-existent and radiative transfer rules. And that at no point in the last several interglacials did CO2 concentrations ever approach what they are today, heightening the importance of back radiation. Also remember that the zero baseline of Petit 2000 was 1950. Let's take a look at that whole timeframe, extending it to today's CO2 levels: A re-watching of Alley's talk would be instructive here. The Yooper
  28. We're heading into an ice age
    Dorianmc, Firstly, who said we were undergoing runaway temperature increases? So far warming has been very tightly controlled, doing pretty much what climatologists said it would do in reaction to increasing CO2 levels. Secondly, we're in the middle of an interglacial period that should be cooling according to natural forcings, but it isn't. Temperature is spiking rapidly on a geological timescale. Thirdly, exactly how do you know that radiative transfer is "meager"? And what gives you the bizarre idea that convection isn't taken into account? Which model states that only radiative effects are taken into consideration? Your previous post is a rambling mess of assertion.
  29. We're heading into an ice age
    Have any of those individuals pointing to the “Petit 2000” graph actually bothered to look at it and study what it means? According to the graph if you move backward through time to "now" you see a rapid increase in temperature - consistent with other ice ages - but the highest temperature reached, during the present temperature increase period, never reaches the same high it reached in previous ice ages. The high in previous periods is over 3 deg above the baseline whereas it is less than 2 deg above the baseline for the present. How can anybody interpret this as a temperature rise that’s out of control? If we’re in the middle of a glacial warming period it stands to reason that each year will be warmer than the next until the warming trend ends. BTW: The most efficient way to transfer thermal energy is by convection. If you remember your physics there are three ways to transfer thermal energy – radiation, conduction and convection. Why does the GW model only consider the meager role of radiation heat transfer when convection heat transfer is far more efficient?
  30. It's cooling
    Thanks for the responses Archiesteel & Bipliovermis. I directed my friend to this thread and this was his response: "Well, I followed the link you provided to the Skeptical Science site and I read what they had to say about the assertion that the earth is in a current cooling trend. I really don’t see what you see in the site? I provided you with a long list of scientists who are in agreement that the earth is cooling and skeptical science writes: “Whilst it’s natural to start with air temperatures, a more thorough examination should be as inclusive as possible; snow cover, ice melt, air temperatures over land and sea, even the sea temperatures themselves.” Yes … they thought of that! In fact it was a thorough study of temperatures from the sources listed that brought the list of scientists to the conclusion that the earth is in a cooling trend. This is a good example of the “Straw man” arguments put up by many Global Warmers. The Skeptical Science author implies that people who believe the earth is cooling just haven’t thought of measuring things like ocean temperature. Then he steps in and provides the easy answer to the ravings of the lunatic scientific fringe, “They only look at air temperature! They need to check the oceans!” Ahhh, thank you oh wise one! Of course, anyone who actually looked at the research being conducted by vast numbers of scientists all over the world would understand that their temperature data was amassed from a wide sampling. Also, and I mention this only in passing, anyone who even casually read the emails from the University at East Anglia would know that a major concern that the top Global Warming scientists had (Their research went directly to the U.N.) was that they had no data showing a heating planet and therefore conspired to destroy the data they had. They did in fact destroy and manipulate their data, ultimately resulting in a number of firings. I’m absolutely loving watching Global Warmers explain the current cold snap. The problem, of course, is that Global Warmers had been predicting heat …hence the name, Global “Warming.” So now Global Warmers must emphasize that hey, a few years or even a decade or longer means nothing, what really counts is the long term trend! Here’s how Skeptical Science put it: “For climate change, it is the long term trends that are important; measured over decades or more, and those long term trends show that the globe is still, unfortunately, warming.” Now, go to the site that Chris linked to and drop down to the graph. Click on anything, Ocean heat Content, Sea Surface, etc. (Strangely, no matter what you click on you’re taken to the same story from the government agency NOAA but remember, “There is no political connection between government and Global Warming scientists” …keep repeating that) Look at the title of the NOAA story, See the word “Decade”? Now I don’t see any Global Warmers criticizing the government agency NOAA for irresponsibly reporting how the earth’s temperature increased over a decade when real science looks at the long term picture. Why is this? Why is it that we see Global Warmers jumping up and down and frothing at the mouth to explain away relatively short term cold spells when a simple Google search will reveal that Global Warmers use ANY sort of heating trend from a lake that appears to be drying up to a hot week in November to try and prove their theory that mankind is dooming the planet? Long term trends are indeed all that are important and real scientists know this. Global Warmers, on the other hand, play both sides of the fence. When things are hot, it’s a sign of the coming apocalypse, when it’s cold, it’s just “weather” that really doesn’t mean anything."
  31. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    @TÖP #49 At most AGW and GW are different "agendas" to people who only have a life with those. AGW is GW with an specific cause. You know it and you also know you were playing with the ambiguity in your words. Just in case you "won't understand", this is an analytical site that has developed a number of different argumentative lines not only for the sake of analysis but also as a way to neutralize the insidious tactic of the self called global-warming-skepticism, that of "throw(ing) everything at the wall a see what sticks". Following that lines this post offers a depiction including some GW evidence. You simply tried to make the causes of it the argument -a complete offtopic-. You later included Hansen in your plea, what dispels any doubt one can have, methinks.
  32. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    Hugo, "GWPPT6" is the clearest description of GHG forcing that this scientifically literate non-expert has ever read. Thank you.
  33. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 07:20 AM on 1 January 2011
    It's freaking cold!
    Article from JGR that people might find interesting JGR article I think the reduction of Arctic sea ice may be having an impact on atmospheric circulation.
  34. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #150: "Temperature causes things, not delta T." Sorry, I just noticed that. Delta T (temperature anomaly) is just the difference between a given measurement and the average for a standardized period; ie, a measure of temperature. A +0.8C deltaT means a higher temperature - which leads to unusual weather events. However, we are looking for the cause of the continuing trend of increasingly positive deltaT; for that, we cannot use cyclical variations. We must have causes that include a largely increasing component. Until the 'natural causes' you want to rely upon can be shown to have that characteristic, they are not part of the story.
  35. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Norman, The Northern Hemisphere snow cover in summer has declined so far that there is little room left for decline. The snow is essentially all gone. I conceed that you are correct that in 1988 there was almost no snow and that the current years are not significantly lower (since it is impossible to go lower than zero). I will also conceed that there is no longer retreat in those glaciers that have completely melted. I do not think that the disappearance of the snow cover in summer means it is not getting warmer. Argue however you want. The data is clear.
  36. Did Global Warming stop in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010?
    Archie and Argus, Argus, I cannot understand why you would blindly follow BP's bizarre reasoning and unsubstantiated claims. OK, own up-- who abducted the good old BP and where is he? Please bring him back, we miss him. UAH (ch 5) data show that December 2010 is going to come in slightly above normal. Anyways, since when did 'skeptics' become obsessed with regional, monthly temperature departures when they fit their ideology? Oh right...never mind ;) Anything to detract from the fact that 2010 is likely going to be the warmest, and almost certainly the second warmest on record. 2009 was the previous second warmest year on record in GISTEMP. It is also lost on Argus that BP is contradicting himself, agreeing that there is a warming trend on another thread, while here claiming that the earth is 'cooling itself' and that global temperatures in December are below average. The contradictory, incoherent and inconsistent arguments made by so-called "skeptics" continues unabated, but thanks to SS, not uncontested.
  37. Antarctica is gaining ice
    Expalain this. Is there a pattern? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Do you see a pattern? Please elaborate more on what your question is, as I don't have enough specifics to go by. Thanks!
  38. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #150: The reconstruction of UV you cite (Haberreiter 2005) is for the period 1975-2002. It shows peaks in the wavelengths 115-400nm that follow a roughly 11 year cycle ('80, '90 and '01). But the amplitude of these spectral irradiance peaks is a mere 0.004 W m-2 nm-1. To put that in perspective, the TOA peak around 500 nm is 2 W m-2 nm-1. I'm astounded that anyone -- especially the same folks who deride CO2 forcing 3 orders of magnitude higher -- put any credibility in that. The word 'blocking' does not appear in this paper. Then there is the NAO link in #147: The '80 UV peak is NAO negative, the '90 UV peak is NAO positive and the '00-01 peak is in between. To go two steps further, summer '03 NAO is near zero, summer '10 NAO is big negative. What is the correlation between UV, NAO and blocking? Isn't it a stretch to even consider this relationship 'crude'?
  39. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Eric, Anything but GHGs eh? The UV hypothesis may well be a valid one, but correlations is not causation, especially in the absence of a credible and physical mechanism. Anyhow, what you say does not change the fact that record highs, at least in the USA, are being broken twice as often as record lows. The planet is warming, and heat waves are on the increase. The actual point of me including Trenberth's quote is that every weather event now has both a natural and anthropogenic component. You just agreed to that--and there is no way that what he says applies only to WV. These extreme events do not happen in isolation form the rest of the climate system, it is a continuum. So if one does have a major blocking event in the summer, especially over a large land mass, there will be an anthropogenic signal/component superimposed on that because of the underlying long-term warming trend, which is going to exacerbate the situation. Worse still, the higher night time minima (an AGW fingerprint) reduce the time people have a respite from the heat stress, and that too makes matters worse. There is also something called the "Humidex", and as Trenberth noted (and you agree), there is more moisture out there, which can also potentially increase the apparent temperatures. Now as to exactly what causes blocking events to happen where and when they do, well now that is an interesting area of research.
  40. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    Here is Monckton's explanation of his membership, from the footnotes in Wikipedia: The House of Lords has firmly rejected Monckton's explanation, and I suspect they're a bit more knowledgeable about their rules of membership than he is. It suddenly strikes me that Monckton is basically the person many "skeptics" accuse Al Gore of being. The tireless self-promotion, the baseless claims to have invented this or that, the overheated alarmist rhetoric, the padded resume, the unconcealed elitism and snobbery...Monckton is the hard-right caricature version of Gore in the flesh, and far too many "skeptics" seem to love him for it. Or they did, anyway. He doesn't seem to get the respect he used to, thank heavens.
  41. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Given that the 'skeptics' are too lazy to actually back up their assertions with some numbers and to crunch some numbers, I have done it for you. Mean N.Hemi snow cover extent (SCE; data from Rutgers) for March-May (Boreal Spring) is not explained by a simple linear model (the fit is not statistically significant, with R^2 =0.01). The cherry-picked data are, as predicted, explained pretty well (R^2 = 0.345) by a quadratic function, with an inflection point in 1998. So, "skeptics", please allow us then to pick 1998 as the start point for a rapid decline in N. Hemi. SCE? ;)
  42. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Billj, The graph is a schematic. With that said, the baseline typically used for global SATs is 1951-1980--of course the window used does not affect the long-term trend. My take of these data is that they obviously are intended to reflect the warming that has been observed during the instrumented record, say circa 1850 (HadCRUT) or 1880 GISTEMP.
  43. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Baseline for changes is readily accepted in other scientific disciplines.I would have thought that a simple annotation to the graphic would make the point of this post really clear.I'm surprised by the lack of this data here and the rather childish response of 'go look for it somewhere else'.
  44. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Billj, That information is readily available. Newcomers, start here What is the basis for presuming there was an optimum decade?
  45. Eric (skeptic) at 05:27 AM on 1 January 2011
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Albatross, yes, and that canyon just got wider. I presented real world data which shows a correlation (albeit imperfect) between the external UV and one internal measurement of blocking. Your response is that a probability distribution from a model can be used as a likelihood estimator. That is a huge difference in how we are deriving attribution and a big difference in understanding of statistical attribution (from measurements versus assumptions). The Stott powerpoint says "Human influence has very likely at least doubled the risk of European summer temperatures as hot as 2003". The "very likely" seems to come from the statement that "most of the observed increase in GAT is very likely due to the observed increase in AGG". Next, we need to find a connection from the observed increase in GAT to the blocking pattern in 2003. There is obviously no such connection as GAT is not an input to any process in any model (it is derived from model results only). The model output probability distributions are entirely dependent on input variable distributions and model dynamics and I have seen no indication that model results of blocking events are validated. In fact they tend to underestimate blocking which indicates missing factors such as solar UV that I pointed out. http://www.springerlink.com/index/RDQ5DJ9LQAGPE7LB.pdf (an old study). I agree with Trenberth, the extra water vapor is going to have a big effect, but it doesn't relate to the blocking patterns we are talking about.
  46. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Norman why cherry-pick 1988? What is so special about that particular year, are we missing something? Why not look at all the data? Well, a quick inspection of the data betrays your intent. Anyhow, N. Hemi. snow cover in the warm season is decreasing, stop trying to claim otherwise by eye-balling and cherry-picking. It didn't work with SATs and 1998, and it is not going to work now. PS: Actually, I bet that if you cherry pick 1988, a quadratic will give you the best fit (vs linear), with an inflection point around 1996.
  47. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    in science when you report an increase or a decrease, you would normally be required to state 'from when', at least in my experience ?
  48. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    Here is Monckton's explanation of his membership, from the footnotes in Wikipedia: Monckton, Christopher (2020-07-15). "Questions from the Select Committee Concerning My Recent Testimony". Science & Public Policy Institute. Monckton said: "The House of Lords Act 1999 debarred all but 92 of the 650 Hereditary Peers, including my father, from sitting or voting, and purported to – but did not – remove membership of the Upper House. Letters Patent granting peerages, and consequently membership, are the personal gift of the Monarch. Only a specific law can annul a grant. The 1999 Act was a general law. The then Government, realizing this defect, took three maladroit steps: it wrote asking expelled Peers to return their Letters Patent (though that does not annul them); in 2009 it withdrew the passes admitting expelled Peers to the House (and implying they were members); and it told the enquiry clerks to deny they were members: but a written Parliamentary Answer by the Lord President of the Council admits that general legislation cannot annul Letters Patent, so I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise."
  49. The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award
    memoryvault: FIRST PLACE goes to anybody who dares to suggest that maybe whatever was happening as far as warming went, has now stopped and maybe things are starting to cool off. It's very easy to wallow in sarcasm, and to treat people who are going out of their way to make demonstrably false claims as somehow "daring" (or better yet, "oppressed," no matter how big their megaphone is). It's very easy to say "I doubt it," and when presented with facts, say it again and again, louder and louder. What's more difficult is making a coherent scientific argument for "cooling," and backing it up with plenty of solid, non-manipulated evidence. My guess is that if you were capable of doing this, you wouldn't be wasting your time and ours with childish sarcasm of this sort. Feel free to prove me wrong (on the correct thread, please).
  50. The many lines of evidence for global warming in a single graphic
    Bibliovermis (51): the Optimal Decade gambit is clearly a straw-man, logic-fail argument.

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