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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 103901 to 103950:

  1. It's the ocean
    h-j-m Stefan-Boltzmann´s law applies to bodies. All of them. They all emit energy if their temperature is above 0ºK. What you said is like stating "Newton never said his laws applies to cars!".
  2. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    Re: fydijkstra (47) Perhaps you can use your Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English to look up this: What do you call someone who persists in seeing conspiracies despite multiple investigations proving none exist? Seriously now, despite some bad press, what has really come out of this manufactured non-story (other than a crime being committed by whomever stole the emails)? The science of AGW is more robust than ever and the deniers have less credibility than they ever had (which wasn't much). End of story. The Yooper
  3. It's the ocean
    KR, I checked about Bolzmann's law and failed to find any hint that it could be applied to a body surrounded by other matter. So I am rather confident that I don't have to "overturn a lot of physics!". About water vapour. The article you mention states: the level of water vapour in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. When I wrote about my argument against that notion (basically the same I gave in a previous post) concerning the wikipedia article on water vapour that part of the article got removed in response.
  4. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Re: Hyperactive Hydrologist (10) Having been an employee of the US Government (Department of Defense), I can certainly guarantee that not anywhere near all of the data collected by my former employer is readily available to anyone, despite being acquired at taxpayer expense. The Yooper
  5. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    John can you just clarify why this is specifically a "human fingerprint"? As you point out water vapour is a very strong GHG. Increased water vapour (as shown in the graph below) is a product of a warmer world rather than specifically a human-induced warmer world. I'm guessing you consider most of the GHG effect is coming from water vapour? Just to emphasis the importance of water vapour I'm going to take a stab that the highest year in the warm nights graph (fig1) is 1998 and is a product of El Nino, the peak is there in the Tamino graph as well. I'm suggesting that the interpretation of this data goes way beyond what the actual data is telling us.
  6. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    caerbannog @6:02 AM, I'd be willing to bet the the surfacestations.org folks HAVE done the necessary calculations. They just haven't published the results because the results don't agree with their desired outcome.
  7. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Hyperactive Hydrologist : "All data that has been funded directly or indirectly by the tax payer should be readily available to everyone." The problem isn't the generated data, the CRU has always made that available, the problem is the source data, that is owned by different nations. The UK isn't responsible for data licensing for say China or other nations. Also what if a government lends money for research that gives a UK company an edge on its competitors. If that research became public, then competitors that have their head offices in other countries could take advantage of research funded by UK tax payers! The issues aren't as simple as you suggest.
  8. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 09:01 AM on 22 November 2010
    Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    I think the UK could learn a lot from the US in terms of data availability. All data that has been funded directly or indirectly by the tax payer should be readily available to everyone. The availability of rainfall and flow data is also pretty poor, although it is improving. I also get a bit annoyed with the time spent on disproving deniers when we should be working on mitigation and adaptation.
  9. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Re: Camburn (24) If I understand you correctly, then yes, temperature by itself is a poor metric indeed (in the sense that it's extremely difficult to establish contextually what is really going on in the climate due to the noise in the signal). Would there only exist other, more accurate, ways of tracking climate change... Fortunately for us, climate scientists today use many metrics, such as temperature anomalies derived from terrestrial, marine & orbital data collection platforms, various proxy records, and many other measurable signatures of a warming world. See here and here for starters. Many more posts exist on this at SkS. Try the search box at the upper left of every page. The Yooper
  10. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    "It can never be a scandal that a paper appears in a peer-reviewed journal." What planet does he live on? Six editors resigned in the aftermath of the publication of the S&B paper precisely because it was a scandal, and they wanted to distance themselves from that scandal. Scandals of this sort are, thankfully, uncommon, but they do occur, regardless of your own personal (and, I might add, irrelevant) opinion.
  11. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Albatross: What are those other metrics?
  12. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    I didn't say we aren't warming. I did say...and will state strongly, that temperature by itself is a poor metric.
  13. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Daniel@21, Not to mention that stating "we are using temperature, by itself, as a measurement of heat of the atmosphere" is wholly inaccurate. Several other, independent,metrics are used by scientists and they all point to a warming planet.
  14. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    #20: "The ghosts are ... astonished that we are using temperature, by itself, as a measurement of heat of the atmosphere." There's very little that can be said in reply, except perhaps: temperature is a measure of the thermal energy held by matter. An immediate way of sensing this is by touching the material and deciding whether it is hot, warm, or cold. A thermometer precisely measures the temperature and records a numerical value for the temperature. Astonishing that we rely on numerical values as well. Perhaps the ghosts will also be astonished by that.
  15. Climategate a year later
    KL #various Now that you've made the tacit admission that your main basis for intepreting the emails stolen from CRU is not acutally supported by the evidence, it's quite clear that you are aware that the premises for the starting point of your argument are fatally flawed. However, as you have not explicitly made this admission, and continue to pretend that everything is well with your argument, it seems that you are wasting your time trying to shore up an argument that you are aware is not supported by the evidence.
  16. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    I was working out in the garage when I heard the sharp shrieking of moving goalposts... First there was this:
    "And this statement in the article, in and by itself, shows why temperature is such a poor metric when measuring climate."
    When pointed out that by Ned (19) that two centuries' worth of physical geographers had been using temperatures to measure climate, there came the loud shrieking noise of this:
    "The ghosts are laughing at us right now, astonished that we are using temperature, by itself, as a measurement of heat of the atmosphere."
     (emphasis added). Those ghosts are still laughing, but now at all the backpedaling. The Yooper
  17. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    fydijkstra wrote : "Affecting the quality of an IPCC report can be considered a harmful action. So, this ‘secret plan made by two or more people’ can be considered a conspiracy." No it can't, unless, as Composer99 suggests, you believe that anything should be included, no matter how wrong ? Perhaps you also believe that Creationist views should be allowed to be published alongside those of Evolutionary Theory ? Anyway, to see how shallow your conspiracy theory is, see the Muir Russell report, particularly 9.3 The CRUTEM Temperature Series
  18. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    And here is a rewritten version of the post to which Caerbannog (#26) replied: According to Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English a ‘conspiracy’ is ‘a secret plan made by two or more people to do something that is harmful of illegal’. It is a matter of taste whether certain events that are elucidated in the Climategate e-mails can be called a conspiracy. On 8 July 2004 Phil Jones e-mailed to Michael Mann about some papers by Michaels and McKitrick and by De Laat and Maurellis, both discussing the influence of urbanisation on temperature. About half of the observed warming could be explained from the warming effect of urban agglomerations. Jones and Mann were not amused, and Jones wrote: ‘I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Cheers, Phil’ Keeping some papers out of an IPCC report is not illegal. But is it harmful? The 2007 IPCC-report would certainly have been less comprehensive without reference to these papers. Affecting the quality of an IPCC report can be considered a harmful action. So, this ‘secret plan made by two or more people’ can be considered a conspiracy. Redefining what peer-review literature is, is not illegal either, although it is against the rules of scientific publication. And, moreover, it was impossible for Jones, Mann and Trenberth to redefine peer-review literature. This phrase can be considered boasting. It is no conspiracy. Nevertheless, this example shows, that there was at least one event that can be considered a conspiracy. This conspiracy was unseccesful. The papers by MM and DLM were mentioned in the final version of AR4. But Jones was successful in omitting the papers from the first and second draft. It was only after repeated comments by Steve McIntyre, that Jones was forced to add a paragraph. Conspiracy or not? Fact is, that the members of the Climategate e-mail club sometimes call themselves ‘the gang’ (11 times in the e-mails). Maybe that is another sort of boasting. My Longman’s dictionary says about a gang: (1) a group of young people who spend time together and often cause trouble and fight against other groups (2) a group of criminals who work together (3) humorous: a group of friends, especially young people (4) a group of workers or prisoners, doing physical work together. Which of the 4 definitions is appropriate is up to the readers. It’s their word, not mine!
  19. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    As an extension of tobyjoyce's comment #43, I follow a few medical blogs (such as Science-Based Medicine or ScienceBlogs' Respectful Insolence), and I would venture to say that the two strains of science contrarianisms most often analyzed on those sites (anti-vaccination sentiment and anti-mainstream medicine) rely, on occasion, on strikingly similar arguments as some of the AGW contrarian claims that are documented here at Skeptical Science or that one might find when surfing over to WattsUpWithThat. Also, fydijstra in #45, I must beg to differ. The Lancet published a positively scandalous paper in 1998, retracted early this year, by a now much-discredited Briton who engaged in what amounts to scientific fraud. If the Wakefield 1998 paper, had it not been retracted, were to be included in an IPCC-style summary on the present body of evidence surrounding mass vaccination, it would be an unequivocal travesty.
  20. It's the ocean
    h-j-m - The IR power emitted by the ground is a very straightforward application of Bolzmann's law, as well as per observation (with FTIR spectrometers and other instruments). And 396 W/m^2 is the correct number; that is what will be emitted from the ground and water at the current surface temperature. If you disagree with that, you're going to have to overturn a lot of physics! You don't feel it because at your body temperature you're emitting more than that. In an earlier version of the paper Trenberth estimated 390, then corrected it based on surface temperature variations - +/- swings around average temperatures, due to the T^4 term in thermal radiation, means that a varying temperature surface will emit a bit more than an evenly warm surface. The IR backradiation has also been directly measured, repeatedly and quantitatively, since the 1950's. (Stern, S.C., and F. Schwartzmann (1954) An Infrared Detector for Measurement of the Back Radiation from the Sky in J. Atmos. Sci., 11, 121-129. This documents early measurements of backradiation with a pyrgeometer). As to water vapor, you should read the page on Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas. That states the scientific case regarding water vapor feedback more clearly than I can in a few lines.
  21. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    caerbannog @8, "all the people associated with that project should be presumed incompetent until they can demonstrate otherwise." That would include Pielke Snr.... To be fair though, Watts et al. claimed recently that they have submitted something for publication.
  22. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Folks, this post, among other things, should show you how utterly *incompetent* Anthony Watts and his "surfacestations.org" crew are. The "surfacestations" project has been active for *over three years*. And in the three+ years of project's existence, nobody affiliated with it has been able to produce even *one* cursory analysis of temperature data collected by the stations. This, in spite of the fact that the temperature datasets are no more than a few mouse-clicks away for anyone smart enough to figure out how to use a web-browser. It would have been a simple matter for the surfacestations folks to download and crunch the temperature data from the stations as they were conducting the survey. And it would have been almost a "no brainer" for them to compare temperature data collected from "well-sited" vs. "poorly-sited" stations in order to confirm or disprove their claims about temperature data quality. But in 3+ years' time, nobody affiliated with the project has done that -- this in spite of the fact that the gridding/averaging procedure is a task that capable undergraduate compsci/engineering students would have no problem implementing. It was left to others to perform the analysis work that the lazy and/or incompetent surfacestations folks were unwilling or unable to perform. The fact that the Muir Russell commission was able to do in *two days* what the Anthony Watts' and his surfacestations crew were unable to do in 3+ years should be a reminder to one and all how lazy and/or incompetent the folks who have been attacking the surface temperature record are. The surfacestations project is a complete joke; all the people associated with that project should be presumed incompetent until they can demonstrate otherwise.
  23. Climategate a year later
    KL, May I point out the irony, neigh hypocrisy, of you (falsely) accusing others of "smear". I am merely stating the widely-known facts about NP and Corcoran. NP is being taken to court for very good reasons-- NP repeatedly libeled Weaver (and other scientists) and frequently fabricates or distorts information pertaining to climate science. By knowingly doing so, Corocoran is actually smearing his own reputation. In short, the NP is not a credible, trustworthy, or impartial source of information on climate science. Anyhow, Marco has addressed the misinformation that you quoted from NP in his post @57. KL, is the theory of AGW/ACC a hoax? The reason I ask is that I'm trying to figure out what your position is, because you seem both skeptical of the nuts and bolts (i.e., the science and data) as well as the scientists. In fact, you seem to opportunistically attack the science and scientists whenever you think that doing so will reinforce/support your belief system. My assessment of your posts here at SS is that you are a contrarian and that you think/believe AGW is either a hoax or a non-issue. I could be wrong, so please do state clearly for the record exactly where you are coming from. You might not believe this, but I often naively wish that I could wish away AGW, to make it a non-issue-- but the fact is, is that AGW/ACC is a reality and multiple, independent lines of evidence support a warming of around 3 C for doubling CO2 (and we will easily more than double CO2). And warming is not the only issue, the negative impacts of ocean acidification are already making their presence felt.
  24. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    The ghosts are laughing at us right now, astonished that we are using temperature, by itself, as a measurement of heat of the atmosphere.
  25. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    For "skeptics", the temperature record is reliable just as long as it supports "cooling" or "no warming". If Phil Jones says the last 15 years had no warming trend to the 95% confidence level, then the record is spot on. If someone says it stopped in 1998, then NASA, NCDC and CRU are beyond suspicion. But if you point out the obvious long term warming trend, then it's just a bunch of numbers made up by the secret brotherhood of the warmist scientists.
  26. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Ed @4, Thanks for picking up on that. I checked Michael's testimony again and he does not specify which records he is using-- he refers to using the CRU surface temperature data or using data from the Hadley Centre. So it looks like he may have been using both HadCRUT and CRUTEM, the fact that he did not uses the accepted nomenclature does not help. Anyhow, the whole point is the irony of the "skeptics" making (fallacious) claims as to the integrity of the CRU and CRU data, but then going on ahead and using those data repeatedly because they are underestimating the amount of warming.
  27. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    Caerbannog (#26): The moderator does not want this topic to be discussed; he deleted the comment that you are commenting. My original comment can be found here. It can never be a scandal that a paper appears in a peer-reviewed journal. That only means that an editor and two reviewers appreciate the paper. Any other scientist who disagrees can write another peer-reviewed paper to demonstrate that the first article is wrong. The scandal begins, where Jones tries to keep the paper out of the IPCC-report, without a peer-reviewed article that shows that the paper is wrong. The task of the IPCC is to review the peer-reviewed literature. Keeping out some articles, because Jones does not agree with them, is wrong. Jones was lead author of a very important scientific review, he was not editing a private publication supporting his personal views. So Jones, Mann and Trenberth were making a secret plan to narrow the scope of the IPCC-report, without justification in the peer-reviewed literature. That was harmful for the quality and independence of the IPCC-report. According to Longman's dictionary, that can be called a conspiracy.
  28. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    The ghosts of two centuries' worth of physical geographers will be astonished to learn that "temperature is [...] a poor metric when measuring climate".
  29. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    "Water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas and the dry desert air traps much less heat than more humid areas." And this statement in the article, in and by itself, shows why temperature is such a poor metric when measuring climate.
  30. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    Sorry, but I have just noticed a problem with this addon. When I first installed it, Firefox started playing up, I had recently upgraded my video driver and thought maybe that was the cause - which is one of the reasons that I decided to update my PC as mentioned in my last post. The problem I was having was that my mouse pointer, when over a link, would flicker and change back to an arrow from a hand. Having just installed this addon it started happening again until I disabled it - now all is fine again. Does Shine Tech know of this issue?
  31. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Marcus@11: You say the sun has just come out of the deepest solar min in 100 years. It would appear that you are basing that on sunspots? On what basis are you suggesting that sunspots are the measure of solar activity?
    Moderator Response: See both the Intermediate and the Advanced versions of the Argument "It's the Sun."
  32. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    You really need to add a link to this from your Home page like yopu have done for the iPhone App. I have just reinstalled it after updating my PC and it took me a while to remember it was for Firefox and find it.
  33. It's not us
    > fossil carbon ... we know this ... > the two types of carbon have > different chemical properties. Erm, well, that's not how; isotopes can behave slightly differently in chemical reactions, but http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
  34. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Re: Ed Davies (4) The Review would be the independent Muir Russell Commission. Link here. The Yooper
  35. Climategate a year later
    Ken, it indeed appears GRL deliberately ignored Mann. In fact, Mackwell implicitely admitted to Mann that they only would allow a reply by the criticised authors if the criticism was submitted as a comment. A "original paper" would just be reviewed by reviewers GRL selected, which apparently did not standard include those that were criticised. Now, the reviewers for M&M need not be biased, they simply may have been incompetent. Indeed, this appears to be the case here: follow-up comments by Huybers and Von Storch&Zorita showed that M&M's GRL paper was fundamentally flawed. Why did the three (not four) reviewers not see what Huybers and Von Storch&Zorita did see?! Simple: they were not competent enough. It is a major embarrassment for a journal to get a comment pointing out that a paper is wrong. Getting TWO is even more embarrassing. Finally, I like to point out again that I will soon submit a comment that will require the authors or the journal to retract a published paper, due to even the most basic aspects already being fatallay flawed. It was most assuredly peer reviewed, and yet those peer reviewers did not see the flaws. Worse even, well over a hundred papers have been published with the same type of mistakes (although this particular paper took it to new levels of incompetence). All peer reviewed. Mistakes are made. But if a paper criticises someone else's methods, it is not only common practice, but even morally appropriate to get the original authors to review the paper (not as sole reviewer, though!). The fact the GRL Editors did not do so is poor scholarship. A "leak" in proper scholarship. I hope the journal I will use to submit a general criticism will use reviewers from papers I criticise. If not, I merely have further confirmation as to why they published so many flawed papers: they are incompetent Editors.
  36. It's the ocean
    KR, first you may have to explain why you estimate the diagram by Trenberth to be more reliable than that of NOAA. Besides, Trenberth states that he got the numbers for the IR radiation from the ground by calculations applying Bolzmann's law. I am pretty sure that if he tried living in quarters where the floor emits 396 W of IR peer square meter he will rather fast learn that this approach might be inadequate. Second, about my argument on evaporation. Unfortunately you completely failed to show any evidence that at least one part of my argument is wrong. Therefore I will apply Mr. Hitchens advice to your comment, though I am unaware that he is considered some sort of authority on science theory.
  37. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    "The Review took a similar approach, ..." Which review is being discussed here? There have been quite a few reviews of different aspects of the "climategate" non-sense so it's worth being clear. Albatross: I don't suppose it's that important but note that this article is talking about CRUTEM (which is the land-only dataset compiled by the Climatic Research Unit) and is only a component of the HadCRUT which also includes the sea-surface temperatures from the Hadley Centre.
    Moderator Response: Sorry, I meant to say the Muir Russell review. The full context is given in the first post in the series. - James
  38. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    The Skeptical Chymist #122 You are a brave man to call me a dunce on the meaning of Dr Trenberth's papers. You answer is here: (Riccardo's quote from the paper) "" "The TOA energy imbalance can probably be most accurately determined from climate models and is estimated to be 0.85 ± 0.15 W m−2 by Hansen et al. (2005) and is supported by estimated recent changes in ocean heat content (Willis et al. 2004; Hansen et al. 2005). A comprehensive error analysis of the CERES mean budget (Wielicki et al. 2006) is used in Fasullo and Trenberth (2008a) to guide adjustments of the CERES TOA fluxes so as to match the estimated global imbalance." So they choose to take the value from Hansen et al. 2005 and adjust the CERES TOA fluxes to match this value."" The actual CERES imbalance is 6.4W/sq.m and this is 'corrected' back to 0.9W/sq.m - a 5.5W/sq.m correction. And Hansen's 2005 model is not supported by recent OHC measurements - see here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-cherry-pickers-cooling-oceans.html and 'Robust warming of the global upper oceans"
  39. Climategate a year later
    Ian F, Albatros, Marco, What counts here is not the source of the story but whether or not it is true. Smearing NP and Corcoran does not address the truth of the quotation. Marco seems to carry the story further and refers to Mann not getting a right of reply by GRL as a 'leak in the proper scientific process'. An omission is a leak? - strange way to describe that. Or are you saying Marco that the Editor of GRL was deliberately ignoring Mann and publishing hopelessly flawed papers by design or neglect in order to damage Mann's reputation?? What of the report that 4 scientists had peer reviewed the subject paper which raised Mann's ire?? Is this false? Was there no peer review of 1,2,3 or 4 scientists involved? Are you asking us to believe that not only the Editor of GRL was biased or incompetent but 4 other scientific reviewers were similarly prone to passing hopelessly flawed papers for publication in a respected journal?? Pull the other one Marco - it has bells on it.
  40. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    #27: "the border line between being experimental and observational is not a black and white one but a gray scale." Thus own words render it utter nonsense to declare 'it is a fact that climate science is ... '. It is your opinion as to where 'experimental' ends and 'observational' begins. Here is another opinion. This misconception arises because people assume that climate science is all about predicting future climate change, and because such predictions are for decades/centuries into the future, and we only have one planet to work with, we can’t check to see if these predictions are correct until it’s too late to be useful. In fact, predictions of future climate are really only a by-product of climate science. The science itself concentrates on improving our understanding of the processes that shape climate, by analyzing observations of past and present climate, and testing how well we understand them. So there is physical theory, data gathering and verification of model by comparison to the past. Of all the sound byte issues raised by skeptics, this is more of a bit than a byte. It is also veering wildly off-topic.
  41. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    @batsvensson, No, I am not calling you a creationist, just pointing out that nearly all denialists sooner or later come around to using similar arguments. To be anti-science, there are only a certain amount of arguments you can use, so this is no surprise. I cannot see why picking out climate science as "observational" implies anything negative. Atmospheric physics, on which a lot a climate science is based, is one of the earliest branches of physics (going back to Franklin, Fourier, Tyndall, Beaufort, Arrhenius, Angstrom and on to Gilbert Plass in the 1950s). Incidentally, in defining "astrophysics" as "observational", you seem to have forgotten that the physics of planetary motions is the oldest branch of physics, the daddy of them all. How many "just so" stories did Newton and Galileo make up?
  42. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Besides the numerous replications of the temperature record, see also these two links showing that CRU’s data handling has not inflated the warming trend: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/are-the-cru-data-suspect-an-objective-assessment/ http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smoke-hardly-any-gun-do-climatologists-falsify-data/
  43. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    This is part of a broader problem with climate change reporting: the media holds scientists to far higher standards than it does contrarians. I think that really needed to be said.
  44. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    Some of the observational data that CRU held did not have restriction about re-distribution, but some others had. Let me call them "open source" and "closed source", though this is not about computer program codes, because the situation is analogous. CRU refused to give the closed source data because of the conditions given by the organizations which provided the source data. (CRU was also reluctant to give the open source data as responses to freedom of information requests, because they think that providing source data is not their job, but of data centers such as U.S. National Climatic Data Center.) As for global scale syntheses aimed at global mean or hemispheric mean temperatures, we now know that open source data are enough for us to reproduce essentially the same results which CRU achieved by a mixture of open and closed sources. That is a good news, but it does not mean that scientists should always avoid closed source data. We (scientists etc. of the world) still need data from high density observation networks in order to study regional climate changes. And they are often closed sources. Very regrettably, many governments think about potential economic returns by intellectual property rights more seriously than about freedom of information or transparency in environmental assessments. (People gathered at Surface Temperatures project discussed the way how to make use of closed source data.) The case of urban effects in China really needed closed source data, and obscureness around it mainly comes from the policy of the Chinese government which discloses information about only those stations selected for international exchange.
  45. Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
    So rate of tropospheric warming is less than expectation. How was the expectation derived? Did it include, for example, heat transfer to oceans? Did it include increased rates of evaporation (due to surface warmth) and consequently of condensation/precipitation ("Water cycle"). Water molecules absorb sensible energy at the surface when they evaporate, and re-release that energy at whatever tropospheric height when they re-condense. That is, intensification of the water cycle results in energy "bypassing" tropospheric greenhouse gases as it departs earth. (Also, surface layers of ocean are now rather less opaque than previously thought (lower densities of phytoplankton), then insolation is penetrating to greater depths. This would tend to decrease surface temperatures because energy is not being absorbed at surface.)
  46. Climategate a year later
    Ken Lambert: Let me point out another thing about M&M's comment to Mann (because that was what it was: a criticism of Mann's prior work): did Mann get the possibility to reply? Yes? No? that would be a no, which is really odd. We thus have indeed a leak: a leak in the proper scientific process of allowing the author of a criticised paper to reply to that criticism. Thus, Mann expressed concern with that rather odd path. Mackwell then 'offered' Mann the option of sending a comment, which would be followed by a reply by M&M. Mann declined, after a flurry of hopelessly flawed papers in GRL indicated to him, and various others, that the Editors of GRL were clearly not doing their job. With new leadership, the "leak" of publishing hopelessly flawed papers and criticisms without letting the criticised author respond, was plugged- FYI: I recently got a comment published that I found was not reviewed at all by any of the authors I criticised. It made me upset and angry as a scientist that this had happened, and I have noted my dismay to the Editor of that journal. He did not respond.
  47. The Fake Scandal of Climategate
    batsvensson #32: observational data can essentially be experimental if predictions were made before going out to observe. Think the prediction that palaeontologists would find something like Tiktaliik in Greenland - and they did. This was an experiment. You're arguing like a creationist, which does not mean you are. The accusation seemed simple enough.
  48. Climategate: Tampering with Temperatures?
    James, you make some excellent points, inconvenient points that I am sure will be lost and/or dismissed by the skeptics. One of the many things that I find ironic about the CRU faux scandal, is that on the one hand the "skeptics" are claiming that Jones et al fudged the data, but on the other Lindzen, Michaels and others have recently cited the HadCRUT data. In fact, Michaels showed the HadCRUT data in his misleading testimony to congress earlier this week. And we know why that is; HadCRUT is very likely underestimating the rate of warming: "The ECMWF analysis shows that in data-sparse regions such as Russia, Africa and Canada, warming over land is more extreme than in regions sampled by HadCRUT. If we take this into account, the last decade shows a global-mean trend of 0.1 °C to 0.2 °C per decade. We therefore infer with high confidence that the HadCRUT record is at the lower end of likely warming." The 'skeptics' and those in denial about AGW are now even turning on their beloved UAH MSU data now that it is allegedly being "stubborn". The incoherence and inconsistency of the "skeptics'" actions and arguments continue to amaze.
  49. actually thoughtful at 12:28 PM on 21 November 2010
    The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Chris Shaker - Let's try a different approach. Climategate is ancient history, and has been pointed out, didn't change the science one fig. So, as I ask many skeptics - what will it take to convince you? How warm? How much CO2? How acidic the oceans? How much sea level rise? How many droughts and floods? How many melted glaciers? How much ice loss in Greenland and the Arctic? Just think about where you will believe/understand. Because whatever your level, under BAU, we will get there.
  50. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra wrote : "Concrete examples that the Climategate e-mailers were highly in doubt can only be given from interpretations of the e-mails. Concrete examples that they wanted to hide uncertainty and prevent that other views are published. Again, we are talking about the interpretations of the e-mails..." If I may be allowed to interpret your post, I don't believe you understand the difference between a 'concrete example' and an 'interpretation of an email'. What you can interpret (or, at least, read what other people have interpreted) from a limited number of emails taken out of context, means nothing unless you can point to real-world actions that followed on from those emails. Can you ?

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