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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 100551 to 100600:

  1. Conspiracy theories
    #2 meerkat… “The AGW debate is fascinating” What “debate”? As far as I am concerned, there is nothing to debate. AGW is not a conspiracy, it is a fact – as are its consequences and the sooner this is accepted and dealt with, the better.
  2. Comparing all the temperature records
    #1 My understanding is that one of the reasons is that it helps to eliminate instrument variability. Just as a simple explanation, let's say we have two thermometers side by side. One reads correct temperature while the other reads the temperature 5 degrees higher. The average of those two instruments would be wrong. But if we only look at the change in temperature, the anomaly, they will both be the same.
  3. Comparing all the temperature records
    Great resourse John. Any idea why the satellite data starts in 1984? I thought data was available from 1979.
    Response: You're correct, satellites started in 1979. It's because this graph shows the 133 month average. Download the spreadsheet to check out all the sausage making that went into this graph.
  4. Comparing all the temperature records
    That is a great graphic. The myth that satellite temps. show cooling is widespread. (Especially here in Huntsville with UAH down the road!) Big thanks to John and Ben. I put that up on twitter and will post it on my AGU blog as well.
    Response: Thanks Dan. Don't forget to credit Kelly O'Day from Climate Charts & Graphs.

    Just a reminder to all, Dan's very cool AGU blog is Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal. BTW, the Twitter link on your blog doesn't work - do you still have a Twitter account?
  5. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    No one here has adequately debunked anything I've said. No one has yet to explain what is so special about each 1 W/m^2 of additional forcing from CO2 that the system is going to treat it as being 5 (or at least 2.5 times) as powerful as each 1 W/m^2 from the Sun. No one has yet to explain why the oceans will obey radically different physics globally than they do hemispherically to increases in radiative forcing. A few people have acknowledged that of the additional absorbed power from CO2, only half of it can affect the surface because the other half is radiate upward out to space. When asked for a source or some kind of documentation that for the total net forcing to be 3.7 W/m^2, the total absorbed actually need to be 7.4 W/m^2, no one has provided it. Now, I know must have missed answering some questions directed to me here, so please remind me of anything I failed to address to anyone's satisfaction.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] You have been repeatedly corrected, most recently by KR at 174 below. Please read his comment carefully and review the previous comments others have made. Thank you.
  6. Comparing all the temperature records
    HH - I think the paper you want is Hansen and Lebedeff (1987) on why anomalies are used - and whether there is such a thing as an meaningful measurement of absolute mean global surface temperature extractable from the temperature network. How do you "average" thermometers at different heights, with different screen etc. However, the anomalies are highly spatially correlated and thus meaningful.
  7. Comparing all the temperature records
    Response: I'm not so sure that it's not free - a European scientist once mentioned to me in passing that the data was freely available online (but neglected to point to where).
    Yes, John. I think I've found where the data is. Unfortunately, there are multiple re-analyses and none continuously cover at least the MSU period.
  8. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    @RSVP #82 As I told you, you had from the very beginning a problem understanding what "unexcited" means. You must solve that in order to make the simplest step further. You also made a mistake judging what's going on: Almost anybody here is in need of "clarifying [their] positions" because you and another guy simply don't understand the underlying physics. Get it crystal clear: I don't see here any fellow adopting positions and debating them with you. We are just trying to make you to understand physics by building bridges. You may cross that bridges or ignore them or spit on them or even burn them, but still there's no "positions" in this level. That's the marvel of physics: the universe is not build from opinions. Just in case this is not clear, this post, as many of them in this site, is built with bricks got from experimental science. Your comments are answered "get the fact and logic straight" what is a previous condition to design any experiment. I suspect that find some pleasure from debating matters beyond your actual education and at some point beyond your potential abilities. Your verbal and social abilities -your ability to understand the social effect of a debate- is a thousand times stronger than your ability to pile up simple units of physical laws and principia and make sound inferences from that. And it's this wolverine-like attitude and militant skepticism of yours (the buzz-word skepticism I mean) what I find most interesting and valuable in you. Imagine your comments and the answers we give you analyzed in School -that's what I did, do and intend to do- not within a frame of boring physics but within a multidisciplinary frame including social sciences and studying how common people is manipulated. All the students became suddenly interested and they even learn the scientific method and some physics! That's the opportunity that comes from the pseudo-debate implying the reality of climate change. You shouldn't mix up social debate which includes some shreds of tottery physics, what you appear to have embraced, with a debate about physics: you voluntarily have put yourself out of that sphere. Just keep your comments coming, no matter they take a sentence here, shake it a bit and convert it in another thing. But you may also return to what unexcited is and your 'two-timing' packets and fix your initial mistake.
  9. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    VeryTallGuy (RE: Post 165), The questions I asked were perfectly reasonable.
  10. Comparing all the temperature records
    Hyperactive Hydrologist #1, GISS's calculation does produce a gridded data set of temperature. But the final gridded product that's readily available is in the form of anomalies. As per the GISS documentation, one could take annual averages and add, I think, about 14 degrees C to get back into temperature. The HadCRUT spatially averaged product is only available in anomalies. However, the 1961-1990 climatology is available, so one could add that to the anomalies to get back to temperature. NOAA is only available as anomalies for the most part (I think). Now if one did produce a temperature (as opposed to anomaly) time series, as the spatial coverage changes over time, that will certainly show up. Also, if the temperature time series is monthly, the annual cycle will obscure the changes relative to the long-term monthly means. The only way to solve this is the calculate annual averages.
  11. Comparing all the temperature records
    It appears that the ERA 40 reanalysis is not free. Looks like it's about 500 British pounds. Here's a link to the page with the order forms. However, NCEP and NCAR's reanalysis is free (in gridded form).
    Response: I'm not so sure that it's not free - a European scientist once mentioned to me in passing that the data was freely available online (but neglected to point to where).
  12. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 09:33 AM on 23 December 2010
    Comparing all the temperature records
    Why can't you just leave the mean global surface temperature as a absolute figure? I think I must be missing something really simple somewhere but surely you would still be able to see the change over time.
  13. A Merchant of Doubt attacks Merchants of Doubt
    ClimateWatcher - Also of interest is the Is the IPCC alarmist thread. In terms of CO2 emissions, sea level rise, and Arctic ice melt, the IPCC was quite conservative - observations are at the high end of or beyond all IPCC predictions. Your suggestion that "observations converge to a mild rate of change" really isn't supportable.
  14. A Merchant of Doubt attacks Merchants of Doubt
    ClimateWatcher - That's already been done. Look at the link I provided in my last posting, also take a look at How reliable are climate models, where this is discussed in some length. You might also look at this article on Deep Climate (June 2009), indicating that recent trends are slightly below predictions, but well within significance limits. I expect that if this analysis were to be updated with the very warm 2010 data there would be even less difference. Short term variation in global temperatures is quite large compared to the ongoing trends - you really need to take a 25-30 year view to really see what's going on.
  15. A Merchant of Doubt attacks Merchants of Doubt
    #27. KR, I would challenge you to do this analysis for yourself. The data is publicly available and the objective trend is unambiguous.
  16. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    I would have to second Ned's comment. Eric, if you are not actually a scientist, then you are thinking like one. You would be welcome in our tea room anytime.
  17. It's cosmic rays
    Den siste mohikanen said: "For sure, neither the sun nor CO2 nor the two together make up for the only climate forcing. So your argument is a bit weak by itself, but even if we assume that all the unexplained difference is due to CO2, that doesn't give as much room for IPCCs +6°C forecast that you seem to imply." This is only true if there are no "tipping points" involved. However, if the current temperature rise is sufficient to bring trapped methane out of solution in the oceans, permafrost, clathrates etc, then there could be a feedback effect. Or there are other possibilities that could have the same effect. Here is a comment from Michael Benton, a paleontologist at Bristol University. He says that evidence points to the cause of the Permian extinction being prolonged and violent eruptions from the Siberian traps, a huge region of volcanic rock. In this scenario, mass eruptions triggered environmental catastrophe by belching an overwhelming quantity of gas into the atmosphere for half a million years. "The main follow on was a flash warming of the Earth. That caused stagnation in the oceans, as normal circulation shut down. On land, the consequence of all the carbon dioxide and other gases appears to have been massive acid rain that killed the forests and stripped the landscape bare," Benton said. "This was the greatest of all mass extinctions, the time when life was most nearly completely wiped out."
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] Good points. See the discussions on methane hydrates here and here.
  18. A Merchant of Doubt attacks Merchants of Doubt
    Moderators - I'm a bit puzzled by the nearly identical posts here and here, showing up under Monckton and "temperature overestimate" searches. I also seem to recall at least a little discussion when this topic was originally posted, although there's only one comment visible between the two pages. I've seen much the same thing with Basic/Intermediate/Advanced discussions and duplicate postings of updates to one of those three - we end up with duplicate topics that don't share comments. I would suggest URL redirects rather than the duplicate content.
    Response: [John Cook] There are two sections in Skeptical Science - the blogs and the rebuttals. Originally, it was just the rebuttals - my ideas was to create an encyclopedic reference but then all you whippersnappers said I should do a blog as well, which apparently are all the rage on the interwebs.

    So I consider the blogs a snapshot in time - often blog posts are actually rebuttals being added into the rebuttal section. Then over time, subsequent blog posts feature updates to the rebuttals (a good example is Greenland ice loss which is constantly updated as observations find the ice sheet is losing ice at a faster rate as time goes on). So yes, there is some duplication of content as the rebuttals mirror the blog posts. An additional complication is having 3 levels of rebuttals - we debated at length what to do about comments. Do you have 3 different sets of comments or one set of comments for all 3 rebuttals. I opted for the simplest option (and not just because it was the least amount of work) of having a single set of comments. If you can think of a better way to do it, I'm all ears. :-)
  19. A Merchant of Doubt attacks Merchants of Doubt
    ClimateWatcher - You might want to look at the IPCC overestimate temperature rise thread, where this accusation (originally from Monckton) is rather completely debunked. I would suggest moving ongoing discussion of this argument over to that thread, as it's right on topic there.
  20. A Merchant of Doubt attacks Merchants of Doubt
    KR, archiesteel, muoncounter, Phil: Regarding #17, please do a least squares fit of the MSU data (UAH and RSS), the surface temperature indices (NOAA, GISS, or CRU) and the SSTs (Hadley). Do this fit since 1979 ( the beginning of the MSU data ). Then refer to the IPCC which predicts the best estimate for a low end scenario. Note that all the above measurements indicate trends less than even the low end scenario. Note this message quickly, because the mods don't seem to like reasoned responses which contradict popular conception.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Actually, the "mods" love reasoned responses, even those that "contradict popular conception". It's just that there are extremely few of them which don't run afoul of the Comments Policy.
  21. Conspiracy theories
    #14: "Whereof one shouldn't speak, thereof one must remain silent. Or else."
  22. Conspiracy theories
    #13: "a "skeptical" transvaluation of philosophy" Don't even suggest that or the State of Texas will start printing philosophy textbooks with "I don't think, therefore I am." Of course, that will immediately be followed by "Ignorance is strength".
  23. Conspiracy theories
    Incidentally, misuse of Kuhn is a fairly common "skeptical" tactic. See, for instance, GM flack misuses Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science (!) to defend Lutz climate skepticism and Climate junk hard to dump. Once they get tired of this shiny bauble, perhap they can move on to the Foucauldian episteme. Eventually, we can have a "skeptical" transvaluation of philosophy, to go along with the "skeptical" transvaluation of science and history.
  24. Conspiracy theories
    #2 (meerkat),
    But I don't think the world is going to end soon, or that the AGW panic is helpful.
    Exactly what "panic" are you referring to? This is a denier BS habit that really bugs me... casting the AGW situation as CAGW, and equating calls for action to "panic." No one is panicking. If we begin to take moderate, considered and effective action now, there won't be any need to panic. On the other hand, if we sit around doing absolutely nothing until we have reason to panic...
  25. Conspiracy theories
    meerkat #2: - if we take a Kuhnian approach to the history of science then consensuses are temporary alignments I think this is a misreading of Kuhn. Paradigm shifts happen, granted, but they don't usually involve a complete overthrow of our understanding of basic physical laws. More often, they involve an enlargement of our understanding of the implications or consequences of those laws. If anything, it's the gradual acceptance of the seriousness of AGW that represents a scientific revolution in Kuhn's sense, and it's the "skeptics" who are failing to rise to this occasion, intellectually and emotionally, by sticking their heads in the sand. Furthermore, Kuhn would (I think) argue that a new paradigm would have to offer a more comprehensive or consistent account of the phenomena under discussion. "Skeptics" haven't come anywhere near to offering such an account. They haven't even tried, as far as I can tell. Instead, they've reflexively offered a bunch of improvised and often contradictory counterarguments against specific data and interpretations. The only thing that unifies these counterarguments is a fundamental assumption of conspiracy, in my view; that's the only "paradigm" within which most of their speculations make any sense at all. And that's where I'd disagree (slightly) with this post. I don't think there's some vocal subset of "skeptics" who are prone to conspiracy theories. I think conspiracy theory is absolutely fundamental to the anti-AGW endeavor, both because it provides a framework in which mere speculation takes on the appearance of rigor and logic, and also because it's a compelling marketing tool (people love to feel like they're apart from the herd by being in on secret or forbidden knowledge).
  26. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Here's the high-density windmill paper - Whittlesey et al 2010, free access to an earlier version at Dalribi on Arxiv. Counter-rotating vertical axis turbines arranged to take advantage of upwind turbine wakes increase area power density by an order of magnitude over horizontal axis (propeller style) windmills.
  27. It's cooling
    Still Happening (hmmm, just like the Energizer bunny): 2010 was the second-warmest year on record, says the Japanese Meteorological Agency (The ranking is preliminary and is based on the January to November data) (Anyone know if JMA corrects for ENSO?) This other relevant bit caught my eye:
    "The average temperature over land is expected to hit the warmest record."
     See JMA press release here. It's like Deja Vu all over again... The Yooper
  28. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    RSVP - Another fixed sum experiment/analogy? With pre-heated bottles? A more realistic rate experiment consists of two containers (CO2 and N2 filled), each with a piece of dark paper (or perhaps some dirt) in the bottom. Add energy with a visible light lamp, measure the temperatures. The CO2 filled container will rise to a higher temperature because the CO2 inhibits the thermal radiation from the paper, the visible light absorber. Visible light comes in, warms the surface, IR is emitted, and the CO2 slows it's exit rate by re-radiating part of it back to the surface. Rates, RSVP, not fixed sums.
  29. Conspiracy theories
    Dueling conspiracy theories: FF companies are trying to cover up climate change, or scientists are fabricating the fear. Numbers: very few FF companies in a handful of countries, controlled by a handful of people versus thousands of scientists working at hundreds (thousands?) of institutions around the globe. Motivation 1: trillions of dollars at stake for FF companies, versus perhaps a slight edge at getting additional grant money to fund research (which does not affect a scientist's already meager salary, but probably at best merely keeps them employed for another short span of years, or perhaps enables them to keep working/focused on their chosen topic instead of something else). Motivation 2: Corporate FF leaders personally make millions or billions of dollars a year (7 to 10 figures). Most scientists earn 5 figures. Their preferred reward is generally success and recognition in their field. Motivation 3: If the threat of AGW is believed, FF companies will lose trillions upon trillions in profits, now and forever. If the threat of AGW is not believed, climate scientists will simply work on something else within climate science. They don't need a threat to global civilization to keep their jobs. Climate and ecosystems have been studied for centuries, and we'll continue to do so, with or without the threat of AGW. Organization: One FF leader can fund and direct any number of "think tanks" or propaganda/media cronies through a well structured corporate chain of command. Who is in charge among the thousands of independent, institution/university employed scientists worldwide? Facts: If anything the FF companies say is false, they can continue to spout it over and over again, no matter how firmly it is refuted. There is no court governing propaganda. In advertising, if you say it often enough, people believe it. If anything a scientist says is false, it will quickly and thoroughly be taken to task (such as the mistake concerning the projected melting of Himalayan glaciers). Scientists live in a vicious world of peer-reviewed literature, professional competition, and (now) continuous, intense professional, public, media and governmental oversight. If there were a real chink in the armor, it would have been found. Tactics: Businesses are in the business of marketing. The most successful companies are great at advertising and marketing, which means getting you to notice them, and believe them. Scientists are in the business of doing research. They are often clueless in the nuances of convincing large groups of people. They expect the facts and logic to stand by themselves, without the window dressing that is the bread and butter of for-profit corporations.
  30. Conspiracy theories
    meerkat at 21:34 PM on 22 December, 2010
    “If we take a Kuhnian approach to the history of science….”
    Why would it be helpful to do so meerkat? Are Kuhn’s ideas on the nature of scientific revolutions relevant to climate science and the predicament of man-made climate change? Of course one can only truly address this from a (Kuhnian) historical perspective, but the essential scientific consensus in climate science/global warming (i.e. that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and augmenting its atmospheric concentration will result in warming of the Earth), is not subject to a Kuhnian-style revolution; it’s a truism. The important sub-elements of the science (how much warming and how fast, and where; climate sensitivity determination; paleoclimatology and past greenhouse gas-climate relationships etc. etc.) are being addressed rather productively, I would say (spend a bit of time reading on this site, for example!). In any case Kuhn didn’t consider what he called “normal science” (i.e. the science done within existing paradigms between “revolutions”) to be poorly productive; on the contrary, according to Kuhn, scientific “revolutions” can’t occur without the tensions, and ultimately, crises, that may arise as a result of "normal science". And in fact the current tensions that might presage a Kuhnian revolution in “worldview” is less a scientific one now than a socio-political one; if there is to be a “revolution” I would predict it will be to a worldview in which it becomes obvious that we cannot continue to power our societies on fossil fuels, and that there are productive alternatives.
    “…we still need to ask Kuhn's question about scientific practice.”
    What question are you thinking of meerkat, and why do we need to ask it?
    “it's just wrong to imagine there is a black and white distinction between the interests of corporations (bad bad bad) and the interests of scientists (good).”
    A straw man. No one thinks so, and Nic’s example in his top article of the nefarious actions of some of the tobacco companies is a simply a fact; there are many examples (e.g. elements of the pharma industry misrepresenting the science on the relationship between aspirin taking in children and Reyes disease in the 1980’s). On the other hand we can recognise, for example, Dupont’s far-sightedness in unilaterally ceasing CFC production in response to scientific evidence of ozone destruction in 1988, well before the mandated ban on CFC production by 1996. It’s easy to recognise good practice and bad practice and we should be smart and mature enough to recognise these when we encounter them. It’s obvious that there are vested interests in misrepresenting the science on climate change and these largely arise from some elements of the corporate sector and misguided political positions. This does constitute a conspiracy (to misrepresent the science and mislead the public) of sorts. We'd be silly to pretend otherwise. Going back to Kuhn, it's the latter viewpoint (i.e. that of the easily identifiable misrepresenters) that will lose out in the inevitable "revolution" of worldview to come. The science always prevails eventually, although the efforts of the misrepresenters can cause unnecessary misery along the way...
  31. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    KR #83 Consider a cylindrical thermos container with a double plated glass on one end, filled in two cases with two distinct mixtures of a hot gas at the same temperature. In the first case, the mixture is N2, and in the second, it is CO2. I assume you would agreee that in pointing an IR detector at the glass (from outside the cylinder), the detector would register higher for the CO2 than for the N2, since the CO2 is able to emit more energy per unit time. In the same way, the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more capacity for emanation, or at worst, any downward emanation should be compensated for this reason. This line of reasoning looking at the problem from a macro level just happens to coincide with the simple photon accounting explanation, and seems to agree with Figure 3 above. For all practical purposes, the two curves are sitting one on another, making more of a case against AGW than for it. I am not saying more CO2 is a good thing, and who knows, maybe it is causing warming in some way, but as the story is being told so far, these explanations seem incomplete, and fairly susceptible to critique (or at least debate archiesteel). Or if the bad CO2 really does slow down cooling, does that mean instead of the temperatures dropping to ten below by midnight, it happens five minutes later? (in which case, is this really a problem?)... or what relation does half of airports shutting down in Northern Europe last week due to bad weather have to do with any of this? Etc.
  32. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    Thanks for the praise, Ned. I read all the threads here (or at least the head post) and choose carefully where I can understand and respond to science issues. As I said on another thread, I was brought here after I spewed some "talking point" without doing proper research over on a weather forum that has occasional climate opinion pieces. I have two goals here, to hopefully never make claim that I haven't researched, and second to get critiques of my own, sometimes outlandish-sounding theories. In order to do the second, I have to explain what I mean very carefully which is great practice for the long run. If I can make one useful contribution to the site it would be if someone takes one of my explanations above and cleans it up and turns it into a post, e.g. why lack of warming in the perihion does not disprove sensitivity or something like that.
  33. Conspiracy theories
    Meerkat: " it's just wrong to imagine there is a black and white distinction between the interests of corporations (bad bad bad) and the interests of scientists (good). " There is a huge difference between the two. Corporations are designed to create 'fantasies' for humans, whether that is insurance, bank accounts, cars or light bulbs. Those fantasies can be anything (like Marmite flavoured chocolate I saw today!). Corporations are guided by how much they can manipulate the public and governments. Science has only one answer, one result, because we live on this one planet in this one universe. You can't design a science theory to fit your desire, no matter how much people try to distort the reality, PR and advertising can not wrap up science and pretend it is a different product to what it actually is. If humanity disappeared along with it's corporations, the science that made it happen would still hold TRUE.
  34. It's freaking cold!
    Mike H writes: and all this in an extremely complex environment with multiple independent variables. Well, in terms of the big picture: (1) Fairly simple physics suggests that adding CO2 to the atmosphere should cause the Earth to warm. (2) The only thing that could prevent this would be strong negative feedbacks in the climate system. (3) Past climate change (glacial-interglacial cycles, the "Medieval Warm Period" and the "Little Ice Age", etc.) suggests that there isn't a strong negative feedback in the climate system. So we would expect fossil fuel combustion to lead to climate change. Our observational systems (weather stations, satellites) are imperfect, but over the past three to four decades they show a very definite warming trend. Occam's Razor says that at this point the ball ought to be in the skeptics' court. It's not sufficient to say "well, the climate is complicated and our observations are kind of noisy". That's not an argument against the existing body of evidence ... and if it were a valid argument, it could be used both ways: your reasoning could just as easily be used to claim that maybe climate sensitivity is being underestimated. So ... individual cold-weather episodes at this or that place aren't evidence against global warming. "Uncertainty" in and of itself also isn't evidence against global warming.
  35. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    @RSVP: "You write that I am wasting everyones time" Indeed you are. "stalling the "debate" on AGW (herein admitting there is something to debate)" Yes, there is, i.e. what to do about it (not whether it's true or not). "The idea being that you can debate it as long as you agree with it!" No, the idea being that bringing up the same debunked myths and refusing (or being unable to) respond to counter-arguments isn't debate, it's propaganda. It is obvious to *anyone* here that you're not interested in debating the issues, but rather you seek to push the same old talking points and stalling the debate on a point that is already settled, i.e. AGW is real, and happening now. As far as incorrect analogies go, they are tools of sophistry, not intelligent debate. Please stop using them. Thanks.
  36. Conspiracy theories
    "So how do we know who is right? How do we tell consensus from conspiracy?" 'Conspiracy' is a loaded word; perhaps it is better to describe 'a group that acts in a manner that excessively promotes group-interest over objective decision-making'. Nah, that's too hard to say. I find the idea of a 'scientific conspiracy' hilarious. Go to any scientific conference: 'Big Science' research may be done in collaboration, but the people involved are at heart individualists. People listen to and read papers looking for flaws and ways to out-do each other. A good example is CERN's effort to build the LHC, supplanting FermiLab as the most powerful particle accelerator. The technical people from FermiLab participated in every phase of the design and many phases of construction. While that lengthy process was going on, they were flying back to Chicago hoping to beat the LHC to some hint of the Higgs. The lure of being the one who discovers something or the one who figures something out is too strong to allow 'conspiracy' to last very long. The folks who are more likely to 'conspire' under the long-winded definition are the ones who set the policies, run the large corporations, represent the paid political think tanks lobbies. Look at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, who are "pleased to work with reporters, producers, bloggers and editors to offer background information and interviews on topics related to coal-based energy" for an example. Look for conspiracy not among scientists, but among interest groups. Look for conspiracy on the other side, where science is thin and the politics of influence looms large. If any other proof is needed, look at the climate science situation: The real scientists are terrible at this game; the denial machine is thriving. How can anyone believe there's a conspiracy?
  37. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    RSVP - In short, your analogies are all fixed-sum in basis. The change in your pocket, single packets of energy changing positions, etc. The reality (the complex system your analogies refer to) is one of continuous energy flow. Solar energy comes in, IR goes out to space at a rate dependent on temperature and the emissive properties of the Earth. Greenhouse gases change those emissive properties (framed here as changing the altitude distribution of IR emission), causing an energy imbalance, and changing the temperature. There are no fixed sums of energy packets, photons, or pocket change - what comes in goes out again, with the environment determining the rate/temperature relationship. However, every post I've seen from you on this topic includes fixed amounts as part of the framing. Bad analogies lead to incorrect conclusions if you try to reason from them.
  38. Conspiracy theories
    meercat writes: consensuses are temporary alignments and arguably the least productive periods of scientific activity What exactly does that mean? Let's take the case of another scientific consensus -- plate tectonics. Did the geosciences suddenly become less productive between the 1950s and 1970s, when the consensus over plate tectonics solidified? Would the field be more productive if there was a small but vocal community of "plate tectonics skeptics" who used their influence in the media to force the mainstream geosciences community to continually defend the existence of plate tectonics? Scientific consensus is a good thing, because it lets us focus more energy on the areas where there isn't a clear consensus yet. Let's say that a decade from now, we've all come to agreement on climate sensitivity (it's 3C). It's true that there would be much less energy and resources devoted to trying to understand climate sensitivity. People who are now doing that would then need to find other research topics. That's a good thing. There are plenty of other topics that need to be explored! meercat continues: I don't think the world is going to end soon, or that the AGW panic is helpful. Like CBDunkerson, I don't see how this kind of inflammatory talk is helpful. Are there people here who claim that the world is going to end, or who are promoting "panic"? My concern about AGW is that it will impose a lot of undesirable economic, social, and environmental costs on future generations. We are going to have to move away from fossil fuels anyway. If we can start that move sooner rather than later, we reduce the likelihood of adverse consequences from climate change. Like Alexandre, I agree that the actual problem we're facing is not panic but complacency.
  39. Conspiracy theories
    #2 meerkat - if we take a Kuhnian approach to the history of science then consensuses are temporary alignments and arguably the least productive periods of scientific activity. I'm no scientist nor historian, but consensuses are just the mounting evidence pointing to one particular explanation, reinforcing the possibility of the theory being truthful, or at least useful. Any problem about the consensus about the existence of Hadley Cells, or gravity or Ohm's Law? Any "period of low production" associated to them? But I don't think the world is going to end soon, or that the AGW panic is helpful. Panic? You mean overreaction? Take a look at the steady upward trend of the CO2 concentration. You see any reaction at all?
  40. Conspiracy theories
    Excellent post, Dr. Nic! Albeit one sure to bring out the wingnut contingent... The logical incoherence of denial is forced to rely on conspiracy because science, data and simple physics is not on their side. As to Fawkes, a part of him lives on in all of us. The part that focuses on the truth, fie the consequences. The theory which best explains all of what we see and measure is summed up in 3 letters: AGW. And it doesn't take being a rocket scientist to understand it. Just having an open mind. But, as Tamino recently said:
    "Keeping an open mind doesn't mean letting your brain fall out."
     Let it begin. The Yooper
  41. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    In the past, I've pointed out that most of our regular "skeptic" commenters appear to follow an unwritten rule never to say anything critical of another's "skeptic" arguments, no matter how far-fetched. So I have to note here how much I appreciate the tone set by Eric (skeptic), who has been very calmly and even-handedly responding to comments from both the pro-consensus and anti-consensus "side" in this thread. This is a real breath of fresh air ... and it's very reassuring to those of us who have been starting to wonder whether there's anyone on the "skeptic" side whose comments here are worth taking seriously. We need more of this. John has created a really great site here, but it's constantly in danger of succumbing to the typical pattern of two noisy "sides" yelling at each other. Anything that tends to break down the homogeneity of these two "sides" is a good thing, IMHO.
  42. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    Riccardo, I found this excellent exposition of the concepts by Chris Colose It turns out that the definition of the no-feedback temperature increase for a forcing is based on the effective emission temperature rather than the actual surface temperature. Using 255K as the effective temperature (that of a notional blackbody with overall emission equal to total net insolation TOA) that gives 1K for 3.7W/m2. I guess that the often quoted 1.2K comes from working through the calculation to give the surface budget accurately for real temperature, without feedbacks, but applying it directly to the effective temperature gets approximately the same answer much more simply. RW1 - if you want to understand this better, Chris's post includes how to calculate for solar forcings, albedo etc.
  43. Conspiracy theories
    meerkat wrote: "But I don't think the world is going to end soon, or that the AGW panic is helpful." Straw man argument. No one involved with AGW science claims it is going to cause the world to end. Just as nothing in the post above made the black and white 'corporations bad / scientists good' distinction you falsely ascribe to it. Panic is never helpful to decision making. Neither is fiction.
  44. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    VeryTallGuy I haven't seen any rough calculations and I don't think it is possible. The problem is that you need to consider the wavelength dependence of both emission by the earth surface and absorption by the atmosphere; also, other forms of energy other than radiative need to be taken into account. In other words, you're asking for the climate sensitivity which proved to be hard to calculate.
  45. Irregular Climate 16: a leak for all seasons
    Not to pick nits or anything but it seems like your "The Climate Show #4" post doesn't appear in your feed. It's not just my feed reader - I "manually" (with wget) downloaded the feed.xml file, opened it in an editor and searched for "Climate Show" and "#4". Commenting here rather than on the post in question so anybody else who relies on the feed can see the comment and maybe throw some light.
    Response: I found posts with YouTube code broke the XML feed so I exclude any posts with embedded YouTube movies. If anyone has some tech tips on how to resolve this in a better manner, please don't hesitate to let me know :-)
  46. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    KR #75 "Please stop with the inappropriate analogies" I will grant it is possible to draw poor analogies, yet all cognition ultimately depends on simple mental models. If what I posted is oversimplified or can be shown to be inappropriate, feel free to explain why. Alec Cowan #74... instead of clarifying your position, you attempt here to place the burden of explaining what you think on me. As above, why not simply say it as it is? archiesteel #76 You write that I am wasting everyones time, stalling the "debate" on AGW (herein admitting there is something to debate).... The idea being that you can debate it as long as you agree with it!
  47. Conspiracy theories
    A couple of things, hope they're reasonably on topic. They are written from a mildly sceptic viewpoint so my tin hat is firmly strapped on - if we take a Kuhnian approach to the history of science then consensuses are temporary alignments and arguably the least productive periods of scientific activity. Nancy Orestes paper looks a bit on the simple side to me, but even if it were possible to line up papers in the way she did, we still need to ask Kuhn's question about scientific practice. - it's just wrong to imagine there is a black and white distinction between the interests of corporations (bad bad bad) and the interests of scientists (good). Science is a complex activity full of interests and rhetoric. The AGW debate is fascinating in this respect. Personally I'd like to see more use of renewable energy sources. But I don't think the world is going to end soon, or that the AGW panic is helpful.
  48. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    #80 Patrick 027 at 16:47 PM on 22 December, 2010 True, where much is absorbed, there is also emitted much - but the importance of adaibatischen moist circulation for the temperature characteristic is forgotten, as well as changing the height of the tropopause.
  49. Lindzen and Choi find low climate sensitivity
    RW1, you're simply not listening, I'm done. Riccardo @141 do you have a reference or link for how the calculation for surface heat flux change and therefore temperature change is done from the TOA 3.7W/m2 ? As I said in the post, conceptually I'd expect the surface change to be larger, but I'm interested if a rough methodology is available to work through.
  50. Harald Korneliussen at 18:30 PM on 22 December 2010
    Conspiracy theories
    Conspiracy theorists sometimes argue that climate scientists and their co-conspirators have something to gain by convincing us that humans are causing global warming. But that's a gross distortion of the truth. If we reasoned that way consistently, then whenever medical researchers discovered a new health hazard we shouldn’t heed their warning, we should accuse them of conspiring against us. Not only that. You should not brush your teeth with fluoride toothpaste, floss, avoid eating between meals, and drink water when thirsty (instead of juice or soft drinks). See, all these things are recommended by dentists to avoid cavities, but dentists are economically dependent on filling your cavities! They have a strong economic incentive to lie, or at the very least downplay the risks. The perverse incentives of a scientist seeking funding pales in comparison. Yet we believe our dentists, and distrust our climate scientists.

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