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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 104151 to 104200:

  1. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    I found the Wikipedia on Climategate interesting reading as well. Gives a good description of the event, and what we've learned about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climategate Chris Shaker
  2. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Clean up my own act? I just posted comments from sources, and included the actual sources. So far, I have not yet found your post where I assume you do the same. Your main intellectual activity seems to be name calling. It is not very flattering. Chris Shaker
  3. Antarctica is gaining ice
    I would appreciate it if you would provide pointers to data to back up those claims, because so far, all I've seen is data agreeing with the inverse. Chris Shaker
  4. We're heading into an ice age
    It appears to me that most of the warming we have seen over the past 14,000 years is from the natural glacial cycle. I'm posting some references about what we know about the glacial cycle, from the proxy temperature record extracted from the ice cores, in hopes that someone will be able to provide me with better ones. I remain dismayed at how hard it is to find accurate descriptions of the glacial cycle. Over the past 800,000 years, we've had at least 8 glacial cycles, each about 100,000 years long, consisting of roughly 90,000 years of advancing ice followed by roughly 10,000 years of warmth. Sometimes, the warm period has been up to 23,000 years long. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/289/5486/1897 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/5486/1897 This National Geographic web page mentions that the highest and lowest temperatures obtained from analysis of the ice cores spanning the past 800,000 years occurred during our most recent glacial cycle. The hottest temperature was 4.5 degrees Celsius warmer than today. That was 130,000 years ago. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070705-antarctica-ice.html It seems interesting to me that record high and low temperatures, and the glacial maximum, for the past 800,000 years were set during this most recent glacial cycle! According to some sources, we're about 14,000 years into this warming phase. Given that the maximum temperature during the last warming phase was about 4.5 C warmer than today, it seems likely that we'll continue to see much warmer temperatures and sea levels during this warm phase, just due to the natural glacial cycle. This source gives a history of the science behind our understanding of the past glacial cycles. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm It seems to show that the end of this warm period is fairly near. Chris Shaker
  5. Antarctica is gaining ice
    It used to be so. Not anymore apparently, we are seeing warming both in the north and in the south. Something different is going on, guess what?
  6. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    cjshaker: "Squeaky clean white knights they are NOT!" Clean up your own act before criticising others. As I pointed out the article you referred to was published immediately after by the Wall Street Journal. An analogy would be to quote a news article about someone arrested a year ago by the police for murder on the day after the event. Ignoring the fact that months later the arrested person was found to be innocent and more recent news articles publishing updates. It is pretty dumb to quote old news.
  7. It's the ocean
    h-j-m - See Trenberth 2009. My numbers are drawn from that. 80 W/m^2 evaporation, 17 W/m^2 thermals, 396 W/m^2 IR from the ground, with 161 W/m^2 solar and 333 W/m^2 back IR. (Sorry about the inexact numbers before, I was typing from memory) Warmer air will hold more water vapor - the same relative humidity at different temperatures leads to different absolute humidities. So warmer air over water at an unchanged temperature will end up with more absolute humidity, more H2O in the air column, more greenhouse effect. And warmer water can raise the relative humidity in the air above it, again raising the amount of H2O in the air column. So these effects interact. Increasing H2O therefore acts as positive feedback upon CO2 driven global warming.
  8. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    cjshaker: "In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with" OK this is quoted from a Wall Street Journal article not long after the event in 2009. It is interesting to note that cjshaker is to lazy to reference the article directly via a link. Poor research and cherry picking. It has little valid relevance now, although is of historical relevance to see how media hype something and speculate immediately after an event. The CRU had problems with source data licensing. Not all data is open and public, even public data has licensing agreements. For instance, in the UK the public weather data and national weather forecasting is run by the Ministry of Defense, there is a good reason why much weather data is historically held by military authorities. This causes issues in licensing, since some countries still see it as militarily sensitive. In the same article the American Association for the Advancement of Science is quoted as saying: The association believes "that climate change is real, it is related to human activities, and the need to counteract its impacts is now urgent," eg.they were unfazed by the thefts.
  9. It's the sun
    cjshaker - Regarding the cosmic ray argument you presented here, you should read the Could cosmic rays be causing global warming page. No statistically significant correlation between cosmic rays and global temperature has ever been established, unlike the clear correlation between temperature rises of the last 150 years and CO2 concentrations. Dr. Shaviv is expressing a viewpoint not supported by the data. The link you present here, on solar forcing, discusses the last 6500 years, not the present, and states "We present evidence to support physical links between variability in solar irradiance and change in the hydroclimate of southeast Australia and suggest that the effects of global warming and solar maxima on atmospheric circulation over extra-tropical regions may exacerbate these impacts" (emphasis added). This is hardly a critique of AGW. You should read CO2 is not the only driver of climate - CO2 has a dominant effect now, but hasn't been the driver for most climate changes in the past.
  10. It's the ocean
    KR, somehow your statements seemed odd. So I looked and found this Diagram. It gives the numbers in percent of total radiation and shows that your numbers can hardly be correct and I sincerely doubt that NOAA counts as a discredited source here. As to evaporation it seems you are seemingly mixing up possibility and reality. Warmer air can hold more water vapour therefore warmer air will lead to more evaporation. That seems to me the line of reasoning and it is a logical fallacy. Let me explain with the case at hand, evaporation. It should be obvious that the conditions governing the process need to be in place where the process takes place. Now I think it is no deep secret that the bulk of evaporation takes place over tropical ocean during daytime (when sunshine warms air and water). Unfortunately the bulk of warming occurs at far higher latitudes and during the night. Therefore it is quite unlikely that evaporation will significantly increase. The correct conclusion that can be drawn is that higher atmospheric temperatures may influence (diminish) the conditions that govern condensation (and precipitation in consequence) which by the way gives a perfect explanation for the ice loss of alpine glaciers in permafrost regions.
  11. Antarctica is gaining ice
    I don't see anyone pointing out that Ice core temperature proxy data shows that as Greenland warms, Antarctica cools. As Greenland cools, antarctica warms. They seem to have an inverse temperature relationship http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/nov06/WebExtra111006.html Chris Shaker
  12. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    cjshaker: "They also subverted Freedom of Information laws by deleting information like Ollie North did." Totally incorrect. Where is your evidence that any data was deleted? Data was not deleted, some source data was not archived, but the data was held by the nations authorities that supplied the data. The CRU wasn't an archive facility, so it was happy for sourcing authorities to keep their own archives. BTW the UK has it's own FOI laws, they have nothing to do with the US. So to be honest it's not really any of your business! I doubt if you actually know what is in the UK FOI legislation. I know Tony Blair has said that the FOI legislation in the UK was never intended to be used the way it was, aggressively against the CRU. The CRU were spammed by deliberate repetitive requests by a bunch of techie nutters. As a result of the emails theft, the CRU now have the money to archive data. The point being that the issue was a management one, not a science one.
  13. It's the sun
    CO2 believers attempt to squash consideration of solar forcing, while other scientists keep raising its validity. This one is from Australia, and was actually published by the AGU: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042918.shtml Chris Shaker
  14. It's the sun
    If you're interested in reading the opposing viewpoint, Nir J. Shaviv, Isreali Astrophysicist, writes about Solar Forcing. He is quite readable. Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing? http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar Chris Shaker
  15. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra refering to e-mail 0983566497 Chris Keller: "Well, they did not explain this, but calculated averages of different series so that the variations were masked." Where is your evidence that any variations were masked? As has been pointed out many times, emails are not much use when understanding an issue. The discussion in the email is a genuine ongoing discussion about proxy timings, regional variations and various issues you would expect in an ongoing analysis.
  16. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Fydijstra's first example of scientists doubt is claiming that the last decade is not the warmest in the past thousand years. In Schmidt and Mann's response to Mcshane and Wyner, they calculate a 99% probability that the 1990's were the warmest decade using the lasso technique of MW. If 99% is uncertain then what does Fydijstra think is certain?? Mann et al discount the 99% in the end, but that is the calculated result of MW's technique. Since the 2000's have been warmer, where is any doubt left? If that is the best doubt you can find you need to get a new argument.
  17. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Climategate emails showed the climate researchers suppressed dissenting views, even if that meant getting editors fired, or redefining what peer reviewed literature meant. They also subverted Freedom of Information laws by deleting information like Ollie North did. "The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with." ... "In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics' research was unwelcome: We "will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!" Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday." ... "John Christy, a scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville attacked in the emails for asking that an IPCC report include dissenting viewpoints, said, "It's disconcerting to realize that legislative actions this nation is preparing to take, and which will cost trillions of dollars, are based upon a view of climate that has not been completely scientifically tested."" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html The statute of limitations prevents them from being prosecuted, but they broke the Freedom of Information law, deleting data that had been requested under FOI "In his statement, Smith said that Holland's request was not dealt with correctly by the university. "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information." But he added that it was now too late to take action because the legislation requires that sanctions are imposed within six months of the offence. "The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. It is important to note that the ICO enforces the law as it stands – we do not make it."" http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/27/uea-hacked-climate-emails-foi Squeaky clean white knights they are NOT! Chris Shaker
  18. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    If you think the skeptics here are tough to counter, try to deal with rhetoric like this from the chief Merchant of Doubt trolling where I generally comment. I just want you to know it's going to be a tough fight. (Note, just to be clear, I don't support any of this.) [quote] That [exponential growth with fixed resources is a recipe for disaster] would be yet another ulterior motive for supporting the AGW paradigm, to add to the following ones: 1- For researchers, once a paradigm becomes popular and dominant, it is career limiting to oppose it. 2- If the climate is presented as something about which governments can make policies, then government money will flow for research. If climate is something that we cannot affect, funding is not going to be as forthcoming. 3- Plus of course it gives researchers a good feeling to imagine that they're working to save the world instead of, say, developing a new scent for feminine hygiene products. 4- Environmentalists see carbon emission control as a means to reduce real pollutants like NOx, SO2, Hg, etc. as a side effect. 5- Luddites see carbon strangulation as a way of dismantling the industrial economies to force everyone to a much reduced subsistence. 6- 'Personal isolationists' try to use AGW as a way to eliminate big utility companies, with power generated at home from wind, solar, or even car batteries, and even sold to the local grid at retail (or higher) rates. 7- EU trade isolationists see carbon regulation as a way of increasing the energy cost, and thus decreasing the competitiveness, of North American economies _vis a vis_ EU ones. 8- Opportunities to use carbon emissions as pretexts to block or heavily tariff imports abound, thus degrading international trade even further. 9- Local trade isolationists like the idea of overseas products becoming more expensive, and if they can't do that by punitive tariffs and quotas, they hope to do so by artificially driving up shipping costs. 10- Various people see Kyoto-type agreements as a way of transferring wealth from developed economies to lesser ones, as our one-time Liberal cabinet minister Stewart once claimed. 11- Some also envision carbon strangulation as a pretext for involving governments deeply into the economy, via direct and indirect subsidies for energy alternatives that can claim to be 'green'. Naturally, those who are involved and invested in such industries have their own greed factor. 12- Believers in Big Government also love the idea of sending governments even more of our money under any pretext, and use carbon taxes as a way to transfer even more money to people in lower income levels. 13- Some politicians see taking 'the west' off oil as a means of removing the dependence the US in particular has on politically uncertain sources. 14- Other politicians see 'cap & trade' or other quota management as a way to direct corruption to their buddies and relatives. 15- Nuclear energy proponents see carbon strangulation as a way to promote nuclear power. 16- Some people imagine that energy cost reductions will magically pay for, and even squeeze profit from, expensive carbon control technologies whose payback times are actually measured (when they aren't just dead costs) in decades. 17- Opportunistic "businessmen" see the panic of the masses as an opportunity to solicit donations to so-called "non-profit" organizations or to operate carbon credit companies in order to enrich themselves financially. 18- Financial trading corporations like Goldman Sachs see carbon trading as an opportunity to generate a new financial bubble out of an inexistant commodity (carbon credits) with which to justify huge profits and staggering executive bonuses. 19- In politics it is generally held far more important to be consistent than it is to be right. Lies and errors about warming are thus propagated further, instead of being squelched, in order to bolster the political optics. 20- Some people propose deliberately crushing economic growth to be an improvement over what they think will happen if we let growth proceed naturally. [end-quote] Link to original comment
  19. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Stephen @55, A sincere thanks. The world, especially the world of journos, needs more people like you.
  20. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    A glaring fingerprint are the so-called 'urban CO2 domes' in large cities. Various studies show consistent evidence that CO2 concentrations 30-40% higher than the global 'background' are found in urban centers. For example, Koer et al, 2002: Phoenix, Arizona had a peak concentration in excess of 500 ppmV in 2000 (while MLO was 369). CO2 concentration is are higher during weekdays than weekends and especially during peak traffic hours. ... anthropogenic sources of CO2 appear to be largely responsible for the CO2 dome present in the Phoenix valley. Vehicles are by far the largest contributor (79.9%) of CO2 in Phoenix. There is also strong seasonal variation, corresponding with the heating season. Wang et al 2002: The seasonal variation of atmospheric CO2 concentration in Beijing exhibits a clear cycle with a minimum in summer and a maximum in winter almost every year. From 1993 to 2000, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 averaged 384.1±13.5 in spring (Mar Apr May), 369.0±6.9 in summer (Jun July Aug), 400.4±15.7 in autumn (Sep Oct Nov), and 426.8±20.6 in winter (from Dec Jan Feb next year). In winter, the combustion of fossil fuel for heating emitted a great quantity of CO2 in Beijing, and the photosynthetic sink of CO2 is quite low because most of the plants in Beijing are deciduous plants. The human fingerprint is unambiguous. From Velasco 2005, reporting about Mexico City: ... an average difference of 20 ppm was observed during the morning rush hour between the Holy Week (week 2) and the first week of the campaign. This difference represents the vehicular traffic reduction due to the national holiday period during week 2. The average difference between week 1 and week 3, in which almost all schools were still on holiday, was 6 ppm.
  21. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    I'm afraid I don't buy the honourable "whistleblower". Whoever it was that tried to upload this stuff into other systems was either a very strange kind of whistleblower or a malignant hacker. The hacker didn't "search" for lots of individual emails. They stole thousands of pages of stuff and then released only partial "juicy" bits they thought would cast a negative light on the writers.
  22. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra.... “Quantitative probabilities (as in the likelihood scale) should be used to describe the probability of well-defined outcomes only when there is sufficient evidence. Authors should indicate the basis for assigning a probability to an outcome or event (e.g., based on measurement, expert judgment, and/or model runs).” The IPCC is not out of line with this statement from the IAC. You just happen to disagree with the expert judgements.
  23. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra: "Climategate confirmed that the science is not settled and that the e-mailers were highly in doubt." No it doesn't. fydijkstra: "e-mail 0983566497 Chris Keller..." The email you refer to is firstly misquoted by you, hence I assume you have taken it from a doctored or rewritten version from a skeptic web site (a bad one). The email dates to 2001, not 1999. That is a millenia as far as climate science goes. Firstly you have cherry picked the email, here is part of the original: "...This may be the nubbin of the disagreement, and until we answer it, many careful scientists will decide the issue is still unsettled and that indeed climate in the past may well have varied as much or more than in the last hundred years." One obvious difference is that you have replaced 'nubbin' with 'nub'. Nub means 'the core'. Nubbin means 'small or underdeveloped'. You can not replace words in a quote. By doing so you are forcing your meaning on the text and misleading the reader. The full email is quoted totally out of context, because we do not know what emails preceded or succeeded it. Also unless you understand the author, you will never understand the text. You seem to read what you want to see fydijkstra and then mislead people purposefully. One would like to think it was because you didn't fully understand the subject.
  24. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    fydijkstra... @58 If it were a "whistleblower" they would have nothing to worry about and could come out and be the hero of the denier community. Whistleblowers are protected by law. @57... A count of the word "uncertain" would tell us little if there were only a few occurrences. But 1300 occurrences tell us very clearly that the IPCC reports discuss uncertainties in climate science extensively and in depth. Now, you may have a personal opinion that the uncertainties are higher than what they report. You can debate that. You can NOT though, in any way, suggest that the IPCC it trying to hide uncertainties as you originally stated.
  25. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    #58: "leaking by a whistleblower seems “more probable than not”" In one sentence, you say 'we don't know for sure'; in the next sentence, you've got a more probable outcome. Isn't that called a guess? In fact, nothing in the stolen e-mails or computer code undermines in any way the scientific consensus—which exists among scientific publications as well as scientists—that climate change is happening and humans are the cause. -- SciAm 4 Dec 2009 Stolen. Not leaked. Let's don't conflate the two.
  26. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    @Daniel Bailey I am glad to see optimism contrary to my pessimism, as optimism is what drives use forward. However, for those that see a problem, I am afraid there is no solution to this one at least there exist not a "not too hard" solution - any such "easy" solution is pure fiction and fantasies and is a result of ignorance or denial of the real causes why we sit in the current boat as we do - and that root cause have no easy solution. There has been many before that promised solution to almost anything but they all turned out to be wrong in the end - I don't see what special position this case has and I don't see any special reason for believing in all promises made for an happy end.
  27. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Marcus (35) and Chantreau (40) Were the e-mails hacked or leaked? We don’t know for sure, but leaking by a whistleblower seems “more probable than not” (sorry for this IPCC-speak). A hacker would have an enormous job to find all these relevant texts, and he must have hacked many times without being noticed. For an internal whistleblower, this is all much easier. And indeed (RSVP, 45) a whistleblower could have known where he had to look. But I don’t suggest any name.
  28. Philippe Chantreau at 07:55 AM on 20 November 2010
    Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Terrarossa: "To put this another way, should you be allowed to drive a Hummer as long as you pay for the priveledge ie pay a lot." Interesting question. I was considering this once and came to the conclusion that inefficient vehicles not used for productive reasons should pay a surcharge at the pump. I get up to 400 miles (st.) from a tank of gas (10.5 US gallons). A hummer gets a lot less, as do most SUVs. As a result, all the inefficient vehicles create more demand for fuel, hence increasing the price. They bear a much higher responsibility in this price than I, yet we pay the same amount per unit at the pump. In essence, I am subsidizing the use of inefficient vehicles by paying a price higher than it would be without the artificially high demand. Of course it is not practical to adjust price at the pump, but these vehicles should have some sort of compensation built in their price. Some of their cost is externalized, so at the end, everybody pays for it.
  29. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    Rob Honeycutt (38, 53) Simple counting of the word ‘uncertain’ in the IPCC reports does not say anything about the openness of IPCC about uncertainty (and no: you need not do the same count in others reports!). By the way, in the Summery for Policy Makers (2007) the word ‘uncertain*’ occurs only 14 times, mostly in footnotes and in captions of figures explaining the shaded areas and only 4 times in the main text. But that is not the point. The IPCC makes the science more robust in the SPM than in the underlying reports. Moreover, they often assign a confidence level to a conclusion without any quantitative basis. That is why the IAC recommends: “Quantitative probabilities (as in the likelihood scale) should be used to describe the probability of well-defined outcomes only when there is sufficient evidence. Authors should indicate the basis for assigning a probability to an outcome or event (e.g., based on measurement, expert judgment, and/or model runs).” The IAC does not recommend this without a reason! There were too many examples of confidence statements without sufficient evidence.
  30. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    JMurphy (28) (1) Concrete examples that the Climategate e-mailers were highly in doubt can only be given from interpretations of the e-mails. We are discussing here the question whether Climategate changed our understanding of global warming. Well, as I claimed, Climategate confirmed that the science is not settled and that the e-mailers were highly in doubt. The knew in 1999 that their arguments that the present warming is unprecedented in 1000 years were weak. Just one example: e-mail 0983566497 Chris Keller about the temperature variations in the past: “what can generate large temperature variations over hundreds of years … If we can’t [explain] this, then there might be something wrong with our rationale that the average does not vary much even though many regions see large variations. This may be the nub of the disagreement, and until we answer it, many careful scientists will decide the issue is still unsettled, and that indeed climate in the past may well have varied as much or more than in the last hundred years.” Well, they did not explain this, but calculated averages of different series so that the variations were masked. And there are many more of such cases. You can give a friendly white washing interpretation of some of these e-mails (‘out of context’, ‘informal talk’ etc.), but not of all. There are too many of them! (2) 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: the e-mailers wanted to get the term ‘inconclusive’ out for conclusions with a probability of 34-66% and suggested the term ‘quite possible’ (e-mail 0967041809). And what would you think of ‘relaxing the criteria determining what agreement means would yield a greater agreement’ (e-mail 0968705882). OK, this was informal talk, and they did not publish it, but it was a serious proposal. There are many examples of attempts to prevent the publication of other views. You only need to visit climataudit.org to find many examples. Several of Steve McIntyres stories are confirmed by the Climategate e-mails.
  31. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Re: batsvensson (167) I'm here primarily for the science and to communicate the science myself. While I acknowledge the need for solutions (presuming one agrees with the science), I recognize my own dearth of knowledge on the solutions to the problem. So I wade through the chaff of posture and politics to get to the kernels I need to learn. But just because Skeptical Science is starting to foray into solutions doesn't mean it's core mission of communicating the science has been abandoned. There is a continual stream of posts "in the pipeline" of development. Even if I have to write some of them myself (I've made remarkably little progress on the two I started, but we just changed homes, and the transition is almost over), there will be new topics coming. The Yooper
  32. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Couple of points: 1 If we accept, broadly, that Thomas Kuhn was right in his characterisation of scientific activity, then the finding that most science within a field shares a common paradigm is hardly news or proof of anything. 2 To portray science on one side and politics on the other is naive: the history and sociology of science is showing quite plausibly that science and politics are always mixed together.
  33. Climategate a year later
    Re: Marco (41)
    "You see, that's what we do in science: when people write nonsense, they are called out for writing that nonsense. Gatekeeping, as in keeping nonsense out of the literature, is part of our job. Scientists know that not every opinion is equally valid."
    Nice point, Marco. In essence, scientists (through peer review) act as Moderators to the literature published in their field. A comparison could be made between Nature and E&E and Skeptical Science and WUWT. Nature and SkS are moderated/peer reviewed, while the others essentially are not. Interested in developing your insightful comment into a post here? Doesn't have to be an end-all, be-all; I know that the insights of a working scientist into the peer review process would be very valuable to many. Thanks! The Yooper
  34. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    @Daniel Bailey Thanks for that reference URL. I stand corrected. However I think it is a shame, skepticalscience.com used to be a science related discussion only - which is the reason I came to start to read here in the first place but the more non-scientific discussion over time have made me visit this this site less and less. My default position has always been and still is a skeptical position towards CO2 as the main cause for GW. In this skepitcalscience.com has come to be a well of knowledge to try to refute that position. I which John had opted for creating a sister site instead in which the political aspects could had been discussed to keep the subject separated - the reason I think so is because political discussion tends to be discussions between "believers" in different camps who believes what they say must be the correct - no matter what the argument are against them.
  35. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Shoot, HTML fail when posting hyperlink. Try this instead.
  36. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Hasn't this very post been published on Skeptical Science before...? I vaguely recall reading something very much like this post. Unfortunately, I can't recall when or I'd be able to produce a cite. Okay, I think I found it: http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-happened-to-greenhouse-warming-during-mid-century-cooling.html The concluding remarks are (almost) exactly the same:
    Nevertheless, the CO2 warming was still percolating away while we were sleeping. [Emphasis mine for the only difference.]
    Now that I look at it, the posts as a whole are not quite the same.
    Response: Yes, I did plagiarise myself a little. This post is a focus on the daily cycle (plus explaining in more detail WHY the daily cycle should shrink) but as an afterthought, I decided to tack on that bit about mid-century cooling. I couldn't resist rehashing the percolating line at the end.
  37. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    @Albatross here it is" Canada's govt kills climate bill public wants
  38. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    @actually thoughtful I am not trying to discuss the motive behind this post. That would lead to an guaranteed deletion of my post according to the policy rule which clearly states accusations of deception is not allowed. "So, ironically, your main point that it is political is essentially the point of the post. So I remain confused what it is you are complaining about?" Precisely what I wrote in the last statement in my post: this article has nothing to do with the goals (as I perceive them) of this site. Anyway, if you believe there is nothing technological that stops use now, then I understand that as you either are over/under estimating what current technology can do and is able to do or that you would need to rethink this issue much deeper. Again, such claim is an indication about simplifications around the problems related to issue.
  39. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #43: "evidence of the chaotic nature of climate." OK, I'll see your evidence and raise you this bit: Even though climate is chaotic, with weather states impossible to predict in detail more than a few days ahead, there is a predictable impact of anthropogenic forcing on the probability of occurrence of the naturally-occurring climatic regimes. ... it is a false dichotomy to suppose that some recently-occurring drought or flood is either on the one hand caused by global warming, or on the other hand is merely due to natural climate variability. Rather, the correct way to address such an issue is to ask instead whether anthropogenic climate change will increase or decrease the probability of occurrence of the type of drought or flood -- emphasis added All that is similar to the comments here: Weather in a given region occurs in such a complex and unstable environment, driven by such a multitude of factors, that no single weather event can be pinned solely on climate change. In that sense, it's correct to say that the Moscow heat wave was not caused by climate change. However, if one frames the question slightly differently: "Would an event like the Moscow heat wave have occurred if carbon dioxide levels had remained at pre-industrial levels," the answer, Hansen asserts, is clear: "Almost certainly not." So even if we accept your premise that climate has chaotic behavior, that does not mean it is unpredictable. End of story.
  40. actually thoughtful at 05:20 AM on 20 November 2010
    Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Batsvensson - the purpose of the post is to point out, contrary to "skeptic" (actually ignorant) claims - there is NO technological hurdle to a carbon free economy (work - yes, decades of it! Profitable work at that) - but nothing technological is stopping us. So, ironically, your main point that it is political is essentially the point of the post. So I remain confused what it is you are complaining about? BTW - humans are pack animals (socially, not as beast of burdens). If you want more solar in the world, put it on your roof. When we get to a critical mass (1 in 100?; 1 in 50) - it will take off exponentially. This is a conversation we can win - and are winning. But it takes every single person who gets the problem taking action. Every one of us MUST act - this is the leadership you can bring to the equation.
  41. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    To further Rob's point, one also does not crack into a university computer system and go directly for emails related to climate science. There are much more juicy targets for free-lance crackers. This was a commissioned job; the buyers had no idea what they'd get. It's not only possible but likely that other systems were hacked but nothing juicy was found. The buyer had to go with the best bet, because having multiple systems hacked would obviously suggest a well-organized effort. The best they could get was to pull "trick" and "hide the decline" out of context, roll up the rhetoric machine, and wait for it to go viral amongst the gullible and those in need of such ideas.
  42. Climategate a year later
    Ken, please send me your business mails (John can be the intermediate). Don't worry, I will promise NOT to take the most positive view of your business dealings, but try and twist any and all honest remark you made, such that it looks like you are a big fraud and extorted large amounts of money from your customers by not providing them with all required information. More seriously: FOI requests are not something a professional scientist feels very confident with, as it is nothing but administrative work that does not positively affect their work. I know, I *am* a professional scientist, and know there is nothing more likely to get me and my colleagues all upset when yet another administrative rule interferes with our actual work: teaching students and doing research. As a professional scientist I also frequently discuss ways to suppress publication of other's work, most importantly through the peer review process. This, of course, is all related to papers that make fundamental mistakes, willingly or unwillingly. In fact, next week I will submit a "reject" recommendation for a paper, and by the end of this year I will submit a comment that should get the author or the journal to retract a published article. I guess that makes me a bad person in your opinion. My colleagues, however, are happy that someone is willing to do the job several reviewers clearly were not able to do (for whatever reason). You see, that's what we do in science: when people write nonsense, they are called out for writing that nonsense. Gatekeeping, as in keeping nonsense out of the literature, is part of our job. Scientists know that not every opinion is equally valid.
  43. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    ClimateWatcher... I believe the IPCC says 2C to 4.5C with 3C as best fit based on the results of dozens of papers on the topic. Call it "Merchants of Scientific Range of Uncertainties."
  44. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    ClimateWatcher, Are you claiming that detailing multiple results based on differing scenarios is sowing doubt?
  45. The question that skeptics don't want to ask about 'Climategate'
    RSVP @45... "At the end of the day, the leak, hack, or whatever, may have been someone's desire to provide certainty on a different level." The claim made by fydijkstra was that the leaked emails "proved" that scientists were attempting to hide the uncertainties in climate science. With over 1300 references to "uncertainty" in WG1 fydijkstra's statement is nothing short of absurd. It's a colossal case of missing the trees while standing in the middle of the forest. At the end of the day, the person or people who hacked and leaked the emails had to go to extreme lengths to create an image of impropriety by cherry picking a total of 3 or 4 quotes out of 10 years of emails. The only certainty of a different level this provides is the certainty that there is a well orchestrated attack campaign against climate science.
  46. The Climate Show #2: Merchants of Doubt and Twitterbots
    The IPCC offers a range of 1.1°C to 6.4°C warming. I think we know who the real 'Merchants of Doubt' are.
  47. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    Michele - Your statement "the feedback radiation isn’t possible" is quite simply incorrect. This is a measured value, observable everywhere on Earth. Your statement contradicts both physics and observations. The sum of upwards and downwards energies is (at equilibrium conditions) zero. Heat flow from incoming solar photons warms the earth, the atmosphere, oceans, etc., and then goes upwards out to space. The greenhouse backradiation (which is always less than the upward IR) slows the cooling of the earth, limits the outgoing radiation, and causes the Earth to stabilize at a much higher temperature than it would have otherwise. Please read the links I provided here. Heat flow requires an inequality in energy flows, not a uni-directional energy flow. Basics: An object has 100 watts of energy coming, warming it until it radiates 100 watts. If you then place a nearby cooler object that (back) radiates 25 watts to the object, it has 125 watts coming in, but is only radiating 100. It will heat up until it's thermal radiation matches incoming energy at 125 watts. Multiple vectors, Michele, not a uni-directional flow.
  48. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    I try to write my thought in other way. Energy is a scalar physical property that acts in different forms, all equivalent between them. If not confined (potential energy form) it spreads in order to be shared with surrounding, flowing according to the gradient of its density that’s a vector. In other words the energy flow field is a vectorial field and it’s well known that the lines of a vectorial field never intersect, i.e. at any point of such a field exists only one vector (the resultant of whatever number of presumable components) tangent to such a line and the effect caused at that point (the effect of the resultant vector, not the resultant of the effects of component vectors, that are different between each other if there isn’t a linear relationship tying causes and effects) is only one: the vector, if not zero, solely operates in a direction or in the opposite direction. At the Earth’s surface the energy flows as sensible and/or latent heat and as EMR. There will occur only a single sensible heat flow, only a single latent heat flow, and, for any frequency into the whole spectrum, only a single EMR flow that, in not zeros, are directed or upward or downward. Then, the feedback radiation isn’t possible because in this case the vector of energy flux doesn’t comply with the vectorial field line uniqueness rule and it would be in contrast to its gradient and hence to the second law of thermodynamics, that has a general value for any form of energy, not only for the heat. Otherwise we have to come back to 19th century’s *caloric theory*.
  49. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Re: batsvensson (163)
    "So how to solve global warming, even if we assume every one agrees it is a real threat, is not a technological nor a scientific question but a political issue. Science and technology are only tools in this process not a solutions."
     So the $64,000 question is this: How do you provide a solution to the problem without the tools to achieve the solution? One cannot effectively compete in a marathon without legs to run on. Hence the need to begin to address the solutions part of the equation. The Yooper
  50. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    If a pessimist may speak, this is just another example of "if we just simplified enough it doesn't look so hard any more". Ex: Assume as scenario such that it (technological) can be so arranged that we can replace all energy sources with nuclear energy. Then who will be the producer? Will, say, Iran be allowed by the international community to produce energy on their own terms or will Iran be allowed consumption only and thus be forced to be a dependent nation. If so, dependent on which country for energy delivery? North Korea maybe? Will Iran care? My pessimistic claims is that this is not a pure technological issue. There is always a politics issues involve when we talk energy production. In my pessimistic opinion it is simplified, ignorant, naive or shallow thinking to believe there is a "not to hard" solution to these problem. The more important question to address first is if there is any (humane) solution at all to this? To know the answer to that question we first need to make sure we actually are asking the right questions to start with and those question will involve growth, urbanization, populations density, birth control, economy, use of land/sea/energy etc, etc, etc. These are known to be hard questions. So how to solve global warming, even if we assume every one agrees it is a real threat, is not a technological nor a scientific question but a political issue. Science and technology are only tools in this process not a solutions. Therefore, and this is my final conclusion/opinion in this matter, this article is not part of the mission statement of what questions skepticalscience.com claims to have as a goal to address and answer.

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