Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 2071 2072 2073 2074 2075 2076 2077 2078 2079 2080 2081 2082 2083 2084 2085 2086 Next
Comments 103901 to 103950:
-
terrarossa at 18:39 PM on 22 November 2010Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
Philippe Chantreau "I am subsidizing the use of inefficient vehicles by paying a price higher than it would be without the artificially high demand." Not too sure about this. The price of pertol/gas is mostly market driven and rises as demand rises (production being limited). Your demand, however minimal, also helps push the price up. The problem with allowing market forces to control the price is that the price is currently far too low for something we cannot replace and currently use profligately. A scarce and non-renewable resource should be used very sparingly or be rationed. At least a higher price will encourage alternatives to be developed and used. Related to this - Economists need to open their eyes and see beyond their growth mantra. Reasonable people can see that continued growth cannot be sustained in a finite world. -
The Skeptical Chymist at 18:06 PM on 22 November 2010The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
Ken @ 139 So you have read Kevin Trenberth's papers? Great. Then you will be aware than using his email to suggest he wouldn't agree with the statement "The evidence for human caused global warming is as solid as ever" was not consistent with his views. Aside from his published work, another easy way to "ask" him is to check his website, where he says of the email you quoted: "In my case, one cherry-picked email quote has gone viral and at last check it was featured in over 107,000 items (in Google). Here is the quote: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability." (bolding is my emphasis) So no Ken, I don't think you are a dunce, but when it comes to the meaning of Kevin Trenberths' papers, I'll stick with what Trenberth says he means, not what others claim he means. -
Daniel Bailey at 16:56 PM on 22 November 2010Climategate a year later
Re: Albatross (60) I think we all know the answer to that. :) Our usual coterie of "skeptics" were conspicuous by their absence during the recent thread hijacking by The Contrarian. Their typical case of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose. Interesting to see if Congress opens up a can of whoop-a** on Wegmangate... The Yooper -
Albatross at 15:49 PM on 22 November 2010Climategate a year later
kdkd @59, Thanks for you post, it nicely summarises what seems to be going on here. I wonder what KL et al. think of the revelation that Wegman deleted emails? Note the difference between threatening to out of pure frustration after been harassed and actually doing so. Joe Romm has the juicy details at ClimateProgress. I eagerly await KL et al. condemning the scientific misconduct by Wegman et al. in the strongest terms possible. -
Albatross at 15:42 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn, Again with the obfuscation. RH is a very unreliable measure of atmospheric moisture content, because it is a relative measure of moisture, not an absolute measure. Dessler et al. and others tend to look at the mixing ratio, or even better the specific humidity when tracking moisture. Globally, the specific humidity in the troposphere is increasing in response to the warming. -
The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn - See Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas, also Urban Heat Island, and Are surface temperature records reliable. These issues are rather obvious, and have been addressed by the research. Your objections are quite simply not valid, but rather contentious, and do not reflect you reading any of the links that have been provided. -
Albatross at 15:37 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn, This is silly. Your argument is a strawman-- you originally complained that "temperature, by itself, as a measurement of heat of the atmosphere." I suggested that other metrics, you asked for examples and I and others have answered-- your question has been answered. Also, temperature, like other metrics, is not considered alone, but represents part of a bigger picture. Other metrics are used,there are multiple, independent sources of data which are used to to track heat (and heat balance) in the climate system and they are in very good agreement with the thermometers and observed temperature trends from thermometers. Please go back and carefully read the literature referenced in the links that I and other have provided. Murphy et al. (2009) would be a good start, as well as some of Trenberth's recent work. What to do your questions have to do with the "human fingerprint in the daily cycle"? I know, nothing. Rather it seems an attempt to derail the thread and obfuscate. If you have issues with the temperature record, please take it to the appropriate thread. And you still have not answered KR's questions @33...very telling. -
Camburn at 15:31 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
rh=realtive humidity. -
Camburn at 15:31 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
KR: Temperatures as presented ARE part of the data. My point is....once again......they are NOT a good measure of HEAT content. WE have the tools at hand do we not? Let's use those tools. We all know that urban island heat effect is real. What we don't know, because of the lack of incorporation, how much actual heat is retained by the micro climate because we are NOT using all the tools available. And some cities are so large that "micro" climate really doesn't apply. There have been papers published about this exact thing I am talking about. There has been no attempt to incorporate the knowledge from these papers...one referenced above...to improve the data. -
The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn - Rh? Do you mean "pH"? (I actually have a personal connection to the soap opera mentioned in that link...) The pressures are known, so are the temperatures. I still fail to see your issue with long term, highly sampled, multi-decade surface temperatures (air and ocean) as at least part of the data for tracking climate changes. Please point out what temperature records you feel are unreliable. You have yet to clearly state why you doubt temperature records are poor indicators. -
Camburn at 15:05 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Albatross: I am not worried that warming is happening. That is a given is it not? I am not even worried that it may be partially co2 related. The climate sensativity to co2 will be in question for 10-20 years at least, and potentially longer. My point, once again is: Temperature, as in a mercury bulb reading, is a poor metric of climate heat of the atmosphere and even of the ocean as heat content is relative to water pressure as well. -
Camburn at 14:56 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
KR@33: With the tech we now have available to us, I would like to see heat content rather than temperature as the metric. We should be able to measure rh and temp, and yes pressure, and extrapolate the heat content. The anomolies should reflect heat content as that is a true constant within verifiable metrics. -
Phila at 14:48 PM on 22 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Nevertheless, this example shows, that there was at least one event that can be considered a conspiracy. Yeah, the theft of the e-mails and the well-orchestrated blitz of accusations against honest scientists. The "skeptics" in this thread are really grasping at straws. Being confused about the science is understandable and forgivable; taking Climategate seriously, at this late date, is an act of sheer self-delusion. -
Albatross at 14:48 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn @25, Sorry for the late response, have been busy. After reading your response to others who have answered your question, I have reason to suspect the sincerity of your question, but for what it is worth I will also do so. Please read the following and references cited therein. Specifically, the ones found: here, here, here, and here. A consistent and coherent story. -
The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn - Any reply to my questions here? You've responded to several others since then... -
adelady at 14:34 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
camburn 41. Surely if the records are kept night and day, spring to winter, el Ninos and La Ninas, rain and shine, high tide and low tide, these variations in humidity or insolation or precipitation or whatever are all taken into account. We've been measuring what we can. We've got more and more sophiticated and getting more and more measurements and at working out what those measurements tell us. But for global warming, what we do know is that there's a certain amount of energy delivered by the sun and we can measure that precisely. We also know how to measure what's being released at the TOA as outgoing radiation. What you're worrying about is where the energy that's not escaped through the troposphere is at particular moments. Most of it's in the oceans and we're doing our best to catch up with measuring that. What's in the atmosphere is measured pretty well in the large scale and over longer lengths of time. You're just asking for day by day accuracy and precision that just isn't yet available from the systems we've got. But we don't need that level of accuracy. My mum and her peers were able to produce perfect roasts, cakes, bread and scones with wood stoves that had no measuring devices at all. Most of us don't need the baby health nurse to tell us that our precious little one is gaining or losing weight. We can make perfectly reasonable judgments and decide on appropriate actions without pinpoint accuracy all day every day. -
kdkd at 14:30 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn #41 As well as more humid air containing more heat than less humid air, I'd also expect that air at low pressure contains less heat per unit volume than air at high pressure too. Given that there's a fairly close relationship between humidity and temperature anomaly (the graphs show humidity over time, but it's worth comparing the trend to a temperature anomaly plot over roughly the same time period), then your point seems to be valid and interesting. However, the interest here is that it seems to provide a visualisation confirming that your argument is incorrect. -
HumanityRules at 14:14 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
37.muoncounter This paper seems to link UHI with water vapour and identify an urban-specific diurnal cycle (based on the abstract). I wasn't really trying to counter what was written by you, or the references, rather just point out there are other factors involved in the mix. I now notice you mentioned some of them in your following posts. I'd still like to know if the research mentioned in John's article is really specifically a human fingerprint or just the fingerprint of a warmer world? -
Ian Forrester at 13:54 PM on 22 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Hot of the presses. E-mails were deleted.xxxxxx said his "email was downloaded to my notebook computer and was erased from the xxU mail server,"
Read all about it. -
MattJ at 13:50 PM on 22 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
This is an excellent article in many ways, but I have to shake my head when I read, "the public needs to understand that science cannot and does not produce absolutely precise answers." This is itself an extremely unscientific hope. Even only a cursory acquaintance with "political science" should make it absolutely clear: the public has -never- understood this -- and it has only been getting worse, not better in recent years. If we have to change this to get timely action on AGW, we are doomed. -
Camburn at 13:28 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
kdkd: You are missing my point entirely. An anomoly, even within a spatial area, using temperature is not a valid climatic heat indicator. You would have to assume that the RH is constant, which in most areas it is not. Where I live, rh can be as low as 15% and as high as 99%. There is absolutely no pattern to the rh, and is not dependant on temperature. The heat content of the air at say 30% rh @80F is a lot less than 80%rh @80F. Do you agree with me on that? -
kdkd at 13:15 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#36 cont "When talking about climate one must think in terms of heat content. A temperature in a desert, @ say 100F, is not the same heat content as a temperature in the tropics of 100F." This argument is also fallacious. Aside from your clear confusion over the difference between temperature anomaly and temperature (the quote above should have referred to anomaly rather than absolute value), you are making the assumption that the temperature anomaly measured in the desert is being compared to the temperature anomaly being measured in the tropics. In fact what happens in practice is that we measure a mean anomaly for a given spatial area, and compare that at different points in time. So long as the sample of measures are reasonably consistent with each other for a given spatial area at the different times, there is nothing wrong with this. Procedures have also been developed to deal with heat island effects, and changes in station location to improve the validity of this approach. Do you have any more fatally flawed arguments for us to deal with? I'm trying to write something quite difficult at the moment, and the ease with which your arguments are demolished is nice light relief. -
kdkd at 13:11 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn #36 "by itself tho, [temperature anomaly is] a useless metric when talking about climate" A bit strong. Must be treated with caution would be a more temperate way of making your point. However (cherry picking so-called-sceptics excepted) generally we do not use temperature anomaly alone to examine climate, although it is a useful and reasonably valid measure that makes good intuitive sense. There. It would appear that as you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, that your argument is not valid. -
muoncounter at 13:05 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#36: "A temperature in a desert, @ say 100F, is not the same heat content as a temperature in the tropics of 100F." Just for fun, which way would heat flow: from 100F desert air to 100F tropical air or vice versa? -
muoncounter at 13:02 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
#28: "Particulate and pollution domes and changes in evaporation and hydrology processes" Indeed. But if we're looking for a human fingerprint, evaporation won't cut it. How do 'hydrology processes' know when the weekends are and what the weekday peak traffic hours are? And how does water vapor know to take Easter week off in Mexico? I had a reference that showed different weekly patterns in the Arab countries (Friday is the weekly low in urban CO2 in Kuwait City, compared to Sunday in Rome), but it has escaped my sieve-like filing system for the moment. But riddle-me-this: where does the 500 ppm CO2 from urban traffic eventually wind up? Can it be seen 'downwind'? Are there any temperature anomalies that follow that distribution? I'd love to see evaporation and clouds changing with traffic density, but I'm betting that's not happening. That's why I don't get the point of the graph you posted in 27; nor do I give what I think Camburn is hinting at -- atmospheric moisture as a 'metric' for heat content -- much credit as a 'human fingerprint'. I'll give you that particulates and NOx are probably factors, but if the folks that think the urban CO2 domes don't extend upwards more than a few hundred meters are correct, then neither do those exhaust products. I live near a freeway with heavy rush hour traffic; I have a fine coating of black dust on my front porch on a regular basis. Never had it analyzed, but I bet its full of particulates from car and truck exhaust settling out. -
Camburn at 12:49 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
kdkd: The 2nd proposition. Temperature is not a useless metric in given circumstances. It, by itself tho, is a useless metric when talking about climate. A temperature anomoly is based on temperature data. That is a given. When talking about climate one must think in terms of heat content. A temperature in a desert, @ say 100F, is not the same heat content as a temperature in the tropics of 100F. Can we agree on that? If anyone knows of a temp base that includes heat content as part of the anomoly I am all eyes. -
Daniel Bailey at 12:17 PM on 22 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
Great piece here from Joe Romm at ClimateProgress on the Wegman Report plagiarism-thingy. Shows the lengths some went to in their attempts to discredit and smear climate science and climate scientists alike. I won't spoil your fun by quote-mining the piece... The Yooper -
Daniel Bailey at 12:07 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Re: Camburn I'm wasting my time with this one. He seems to be cut from the "we-can't-know-anything-so-we-shouldn't-do-anything" cloth. He's all yours, guys. The Yooper -
kdkd at 12:04 PM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn: I'm not really sure what your point is. Are you suggesting that temperature anomaly is not a measure of the relative energy content of a body of matter? Or are you just complaining that its sensitivity is relatively poor. The first proposition is absurd. The second proposition is valid, but it does not make it a useless metric, just that it should be triangulated for consistency with other data. -
The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Camburn - What would you consider a reasonable metric when measuring climate? You have disparaged temperature, and changes in long term temperature averages (anomalies); what are the alternatives you propose? Top of atmosphere radiation balance? Perhaps ocean thermal content or stratospheric cooling? Or ocean acidification? Flora matter, perhaps plant zone changes? Ice balance at the poles and on glaciers (numerous links, all measures are declining, use the search box)? If you have issues with temperature, essentially stating that rising temperatures do not indicate climate change, it's upon you to state what changes you would consider valid measures of climate change. -
Camburn at 11:51 AM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Daniel: No matter how you cut it, a temp anomoly is based on temperature. Yes, it is a deviation, but the base is still the raw data. -
Daniel Bailey at 11:44 AM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Re: Camburn (29) Go here, then scroll down to number 6. Temperatures are useful to describe weather. Anomalies are used to describe climate. Did you wonder why I said climate scientists use anomalies instead of temperatures & why that is? The Yooper -
HumanityRules at 11:22 AM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Continuing #28, this page is OT but interesting. -
Daniel Bailey at 11:16 AM on 22 November 2010The Fake Scandal of Climategate
RealClimate has a new post up with a nice graphic (see here) from Jen Sorensen at Slowpoke comics which really illustrates the nature of the give-and-take present in much of this thread. Funny, too. The Yooper -
Camburn at 11:13 AM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Daniel Baily: Ref@26: A temp anomoly is based on temperature. Humanity Rules@ 27: Thank you. I was trying to lead to those studies by showing what a poor metric temperature is. It would appear that you study climate as I do. With an open mind, willing to absorb all sources of information and thought process. -
HumanityRules at 11:10 AM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
3.muoncounter From memory there are many specific urban effects. Particulate and pollution domes and changes in evaporation and hydrology processes compared with the surrounding rural area being a couple of them. As with many aspects of the climate discussion things go way beyond just CO2. -
DSL at 10:26 AM on 22 November 2010It's the ocean
h-j-m: "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!'." You also didn't find any hint that SB only describes emissivity in a total vacuum. Have fun here. -
Alexandre at 10:24 AM on 22 November 2010It'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!". -
Daniel Bailey at 10:24 AM on 22 November 2010The 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 -
h-j-m at 10:15 AM on 22 November 2010It'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. -
Daniel Bailey at 10:02 AM on 22 November 2010Climategate: 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 -
HumanityRules at 09:48 AM on 22 November 2010The 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.
-
BillWalker at 09:14 AM on 22 November 2010Climategate: 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. -
Paul D at 09:10 AM on 22 November 2010Climategate: 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. -
Hyperactive Hydrologist at 09:01 AM on 22 November 2010Climategate: 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. -
Daniel Bailey at 08:20 AM on 22 November 2010The 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 -
dhogaza at 08:06 AM on 22 November 2010The 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. -
Camburn at 08:01 AM on 22 November 2010The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Albatross: What are those other metrics? -
Camburn at 08:01 AM on 22 November 2010The 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. -
Albatross at 07:55 AM on 22 November 2010The 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.
Prev 2071 2072 2073 2074 2075 2076 2077 2078 2079 2080 2081 2082 2083 2084 2085 2086 Next
