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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 104801 to 104850:

  1. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    The Art of cramming loads of skeptic nonsense into a concise paragraph can be seen in his letter to Senator Lieberman: "The science shows that there has been no warming for ten years. All data show this. We are in the eighth year of cooling, however carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. There has been no correlation between the two for ten years nor was there any correlation with temperature from the mid 1940's to the late 1970's when the global temperature data show decades of cooling. " Horn then goes on... "Climate modelers are not forecasters. They have no real world experience in makeing predictions. They have never known what it is like to fail because their predictions won't verify for 50 to 100 years. If there is no fear of failure there is not limit to what you will forecast. Computer models have many flaws that even the modelers will admit but they also create and maintain careers and funding. A climate model can be tweaked to give you the result you want or need." In another post, he talks about his program for high school students that he's trying to sell. "The program I have for high school students is called "Understanding Global Warming" This hour long powerpoint show gives the students a look at the science of this issue. Newpapers, magazine, television shows, news programs and movies have their own point of view of global warming with the intent of increasing their audience. My program cuts to the heart of the matter with real world data and observations. Powerful forces of nature have controlled the climate in the past and are continuing to do so today. Computer models are the only evidence that humans affect the climate and computer models are not evidence. I will demostrate clearly with vivid graphics how computer model foreasts are not able to predict the climate 50 to 100 years in the future. In fact they can't even "predict" the climate of the past. The warming of the climate is nothing new nor is the current warming unusual or unprecedented. In fact the earth has been warming for some 300 years since we began coming out of the "Little Ice Age" that dominated the earth from about 1400 to 1850. The melting of glaciers is used by some to say "See the glaciers are melting and we are doing it!" but the melting of glaciers is nothing new, they have been melting and at time advancing for 250 years. Long term changes in solar activity have a strong relationship to global temperature and in this program you will come to understand this. All five data centers that track global temperature show no global warming for 12 years. The earth is now in it's eighth year of global cooling. Changes in the sun and the oceans are causing this. Today's students will soon be tomorrow 's voters and they will need to know the science, not the politics of this major issue to make educated choices. My program will give them that. Please feel free to email me for availibility and cost." http://arthorn.theartofweather.com/ The line that begins "Today's students will soon be tomorrow's voters" is especially amusing.
  2. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Its unfortunate that, even here, I seem to be running into much the same narrow thinking about solutions as what I do on sites like The Australian. For example, RSVP talks about crop-land that could be displaced by solar panels. For starters, he doesn't seem aware of just how much land is displaced by the average coal mine-& how this demand for land is already placing pressure on food security here in Australia. Not only is there the direct land displacement by the mine, though, but coal dust & coal slurry can damage even more of the land outside of the mine site. By contrast, how much roof-space (commercial & residential) do you think there is in-say-Australia? How much of that space would you need for just 3KW of generating capacity? At the moment all this roof-space is primarily wasted space, when it could instead be converted into one giant, but highly decentralized, solar power station. The main point though is that, whether built in deserts, fields or on rooftops, the nature of photovoltaic energy (& wind energy) is that they can harvest energy *without* necessarily disrupting whatever activity might otherwise occur on the site. That is thanks to the *modular* nature of the power supply-something that both coal & nuclear lack. Another benefit of modular power supply, though, is that you can scale it up to meet demand-or scale it back if you realize demand won't be met. For instance, if you build a 1,200MW coal power station, then you're committed to that-even if demand only ends up being 800MW. Also, you don't get *any* of that power until the power station is completed. If, in the future, demand exceeds that 1,200MW of supply, then you have to build a *whole new power station* to meet demand-or else import electricity from elsewhere at a higher price. If that power station were made up of photovoltaics though, you could stop building your power station at 800MW-& still have a fully operational power station. Also, as long as the transmission infrastructure is already in place, then you get power even before the power station is fully built. Lastly, if demand one day routinely exceeds supply by 10% or 20%, then you just throw in 80MW to 160MW of more solar panels!
  3. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    clonmac. The biggest issue I have with "official" fuel efficiency ratings it that it *assumes* open highway travel only. How many people actually use their cars primarily for this purpose though? In peak hour traffic, cars usually consume 20% more petrol than what their official fuel efficiency claims. So if a car is officially rated as 8L/100km, then in peak hour traffic its more like 9.6L/100km (or often as high as 10L/100km). Yet it never ceases to amaze me how many otherwise *intelligent* people will die in a ditch to defend their RIGHT to let the Oil Companies pick their pockets with impunity. Even suggesting that they might consider car-pooling or-heaven forbid-public transport gets you dark looks & mutterings of "Communist". Hilarious :)!
  4. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Re: Jevons paradox I've been following this thread with great interest, as it finally begins to address the next needed step: taking action on what we know about global warming. Since I have little expertise in most of what's been covered in this thread thus far, I've been content to lurk. What The Ville & CBD have identified, Jevons paradox, touches upon the heart of AGW: the need to educate people about the dangers of the CO2 derived from the burning of fossil fuels so that they will want to leave the stuff in the ground. Without that same educational process, Jevons paradox will kick in and reduce the effectivity of the changes applied to each wedge. In short, people will adapt to the wedge in unanticipated ways, negating some of the intended benefit of the wedge. Like the unlamented turn towards pro-nuclear power on a recent thread by some individuals, without the education to make the need to allow the wedge to come to complete fruition, or the need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, the result will be less than the intent. People are people, after all. And being people, they are resistant to both change and to education. And will fight both kicking and screaming. Like a child going to the dentist, even if for their own good, they will resist. The Yooper
  5. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    To say that wedge one is useless simply because of Jevon's principle is obsurd. Also, comparing older technologies to newer technologies and saying that the samething will happen is crazy (Steam engines vs cars). If you do the math on fuel efficiency, you will see why Jevon's principle doesn't completely apply to automotive technology and fuel consumption. Fuel efficiency in cars is not linear. The more efficient a car gets in fuel efficiency is not 1:1 with how much gas is consumed. The math shows you that. When they talk about the average fuel economy of a fleet of cars, it is exactly that...the "average" fuel economy taking into account that some of the cars have a fuel economy of 20 MPG and some of them might get 40 MPG. Now here is why you can't take the "average" fleet fuel economy number at face value. For one, the MPG number doesn't necessarily mean that the "gallons" is referring to gallons of gasoline. But, let's assume that we're talking strictly gasoline. Let's take two sets of two cars each (these are our fleets). The first set consists of a car that receives only 10 MPG and another that receives 100 MPG. Together they average out to 60 MPG. But if both cars were to travel 100 miles, they would together consume about 6 gallons of gasoline. Now let's look at another fleet that consists of two cars that both average 60 MPG. The average MPG of both these cars is obviously 60 MPG, but if you look at the amount of gasoline consumed if both these cars traveled 100 miles, we'd see that it comes out to be almost HALF of what the first fleets uses. What this means is that even though wedge one would propose levels increased to 60 MPG (up from 30 MPG), the amount of gasoline consumed (and therefore burned releasing GHG) is going to be much more than just double! The reason for this is because of the fact that by the date 2054, there will be much less cars on the road that only get 10, 20 or even 30 MPG. There is a very sharpe upcurve to the graph of fuel consumption that shows that as a car becomes increasingly fuel efficient, there is a much sharper decrease in actual fuel consumed. That doesn't even take into account that much of today's technology in fuel efficient cars allows for almost no fuel consumption if the commuter only travels a few miles a day (ie, plug-in hybrids). Wedge 1 doesn't concern itself with the number of commuters who will decide to drive a car when traveling for the holidays that would've otherwise said "no" if fuel costs were too high. Wedge 1 concerns itself with the average commuter. That is where the greastest savings in fuel consumption will come from. And it is from those commuters that we'll see the greatest decrease of fuel consumption if fuel efficiency in cars increases from 30 MPG to 60 MPG. The less we see vehicles that get 10-20 MPG on the road, the greater the savings in fuel comsumption are.
  6. CO2 effect is saturated
    Re: Climate4you I also went to a ring of sites linking to it (there are dozens) - all very similar, some with even more polish. Some of the data manipulation gets sophisticated - to the point that (coupled with the quality graphics) the "errors" become intentional (the knowledge needed to pull off what they're trying to do makes it obvious they should know better). That's why I called it a bait-pile (deer season in 6 days colors my thinking process a bit). The Yooper
  7. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    One of the problems with the satellite measurements is that the raw channels are actually pretty wide with respect to the altitudes they sample. So a "lower troposphere" channel may well sample everything from near the ground to the mid-upper troposphere (peaked in the lower troposphere). The upper troposphere is cooling (also a prediction of AGW) so a little of that in the sample really disguises any LT amplification. Getting a narrower altitude sample involves synthetic analysis (adding and subtracting channels) which of course is dependent on certain assumptions, etc. On balance, the observations are reasonably consistent with the modeled amplification factors, but it's not absolutely nailed down either. Whatever minor corrections may or may not occur from further observation, climate sensitivity will still be roundabout 3.
  8. CO2 effect is saturated
    Yooper - Thanks for the Climate4you evaluation! I had taken a quick look at it, saw that all the temp records appeared to not show 20th century temperature increases, but hadn't had time to dig far enough to find out why. Apparently the creator of the site is attempting to compare the various records GISS, UAH, RSS, etc.) against each other - apples/oranges, really, especially surface vs. satellite. Norman, detrending the data without saying you're doing it is rather deceptive (the real data is there, but at least one level deeper, and the detrended graphs are not labeled clearly as such). I would rate Climate4you as a junk site as well.
  9. CO2 effect is saturated
    The problem posed by Norman has nothing to do with the saturation of CO2, any comparison with fig. 1 here makes no sense. The OLR is a balance between the increasing blackbody emission from the earth surface (some 250 W/m2 with a variability of some tens of W/m2) and anything that can block it, including CO2 absorption (of the order of 1 W/m2 over the full period of the figure). The former depends on temperature. Anything else being equal, if for some reason temperature does not rise fast enough the OLR decreases (of a fraction of a W/m2), and viceversa. If you add ENSO, clouds, GHG and all other sources of variability, it's a mess. Trying to draw any conclusions eyeballing a graph like the one shown by Norman is meaningless.
  10. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Bern @ #31Phila @ #28: It already *has* happened - if you consider the lack of regulation of the finance sector and the resulting economic chaos of the last few years... My implicit point exactly and explicitly. The only people who've managed to "wreck the economy" are the kneejerk anti-regulation types. Which suggests that it might be time to start listening to people with a better track record, or failing that, a more plausible set of basic assumptions.
  11. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Why would there be no mention of biocharcoal technology? Combined with tree planting this technology can sequester as much CO2 as is required to stabilize climates and restore once fertile soils, as well. Another wedge. http://www.biochar-international.org/
  12. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    The Ville @52 That makes sense, as it opens to the idea of finding rather niche solutions that make sense locally, while having benefits globally, in the same way that so many locally "good" things may have a globally "bad" effect. When considering a global issue, you are concerned with an overall average. Since the task is to affect the average, you can end up with solutions that make little sense to the local condition. The prescriptions in the article in no way differentiate between regional needs. Some things may be universal, while other make no sense at all. A simple example would be not using wood to heat a home that is isolated in the middle of a forest or orchard, especially where the amount of heat needed is equal to the rate of local growth and or normal pruning, etc.
  13. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman, the only way energy leaves the earth is radiation, mostly LW. What it should do is match incoming energy at TOA (first law). If it doesnt, (it doesnt), then planet is accumulating heat but you dont expect to see a trend. The surface heats because of increased GHG effectively impede the efficiency with which the surface can radiate (LW is radiated back onto the surface). You would expect TOA outgoing LW to increase only if the cause of warming was more incoming energy from the sun.
  14. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Ned, Thanks for the info. I'll have to look at the RSS data. I actually think that part of the problem is that I misinterpreted the 1.2. My factor of 1.54 (or 1.55) is used to convert the LT temp into a corresponding surface temp, e.g. Ts = (1.54 * Tlt) - 134.16 for 30 day smoothing, and it does so with a fairly high correlation. But the two numbers aren't the same thing. My 1.54 factor converts a tropospheric temperature to a near surface temperature. The 1.2 (in the other direction) converts a tropospheric anomaly to a near surface anomaly, a completely different animal. The flaw lies in my misunderstanding, and my erroneous assumption that if LT temp (over a short timespan, only 2002 to 2010, or 8 years, for with UAH data was available) closely ties to surface temps, then the anomaly would as well, and to the same degree, but that assumption is clearly false, and unwarranted.
  15. CO2 effect is saturated
    Re: Climate4you stuff Went to Norman's website source for his graph & poked around a bit. On this page I noted that: 1. All data is in absolute temps, not anomalies 2. They establish the post-industrial runup in the temperature trend and use that trend to de-trend the signal in the data. I.e., they "hide the incline" in the 20th Century temperature data. 3. They attribute 100% of CO2's effects on temperatures when comparing the CO2 rise to temps, showing that since temps don't rise in lockstep with CO2 levels it can't be the CO2 affecting temps 4. They use a paper by Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu as a basis to say that any warming since the LIA is just a reflection of the Earth returning to "normal" and that it's a natural cycle. Trenberth demolished Akasofu here. The whole site is a bait-trap for the unwary. The Yooper
  16. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    RSVP: "How is it not so that a plot of land designed for collecting solar power, isnt one plot less for growing food?" Actually there are a growing number of Brit farmers that are interested in putting solar PV panels in their fields, keeping livestock underneath.
  17. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    BTW, you don't have to refer to Jevons or any other market theory/concept to understand what happens if something becomes cheaper or more expensive. There are hundreds of millions of people running businesses that will tell you what happens.
  18. CO2 effect is saturated
    Tom Dayton "Radiation outside of the greenhouse gases' absorption wavelengths will merrily escape to space, so total longwave radiation escaping will increase." The graph does not seem to show this increase. It does not show a trend in increase or decrease, just cyclic pattern. If the Earth is warming then the Outgoing longwave radiation should increase for all wavelengths not absorbed by GHGs. I do not see an increase or decrease.
  19. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Dana: "thanks, that's what I was driving at about Ville's unrealistic assumption." Unrealistic? What planet are you living on? Dana: "Specifically, if fuel costs are somehow held steady (e.g. by enacting a carbon tax) then the increased efficiency does NOT lead to lower costs and usage does not increase." Fine, if you want to regulate prices (communism??). I suggest that renewables and nuclear (for the fans of) would do the job better than messing around with fossil fuel prices and trying to improve efficiencies of fossil fuel power stations.
  20. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Sphaerica writes: What is the appropriate conversion factor, and if it is 1.2, where did it come from? This comes from analysis of the results from GISS's GCM. Basically, Gavin Schmidt says that the model results show amplification of warming trends in the lower troposphere -- in the model, the LT generally warms at a rate 1.2 times faster than the surface. (That's the global average -- over the oceans, the LT warms 1.4 times faster than the surface, but over land it's 0.95, meaning that the surface warms faster than the LT). Thus, Sphaerica, if you assumed that the UAH LT trend of +0.14 C/decade is actually correct, and if you assume that the amplification shown in GCMs is correct, then the surface ought to be warming at only +0.12 C/decade (0.14 divided by 1.2). However, there are some obvious problems with this. First, and foremost, the land needs to be warming faster than the ocean, and the sea surface temperature trend itself is at least +0.12 C/decade. (Note that SST is measured by satellite -- no UHI there -- and is very well validated, so this number should be considered reliable). This is a real puzzle, IMHO. Either the satellite LT trends are erroneously too low, or the surface (incl ocean) trends are too high, or there isn't as much tropospheric amplification as GCM results suggest. Or some combination of all of the above ... It's worth noting that RSS is a substantially better fit than UAH in this respect. The RSS Lower Troposphere trends are as follows: Land+Ocean: 0.16 C/decade Land: 0.20C/decade Ocean: 0.15 C/decade Dividing those by the amplification factors of 1.2, 0.95, and 1.4 respectively, gives the following predicted surface trends: Land+Ocean: 0.14 C/decade Land: 0.21C/decade Ocean: 0.10 C/decade These are just a bit lower than the observed surface trends of Land+Ocean: 0.15 - 0.17 C/decade Land: 0.20 - 0.30 C/decade Ocean: 0.12 - 0.14 C/decade In other words, assuming the LT amplification factors behave as Gavin thinks they should, then either the RSS LT record is just a little too low, or else the various met station and sea surface temperature records are all just slightly too high.
  21. Ice-Free Arctic
    #49: "(to do with geomagnetic research, solar winds, " If you want to invoke solar winds, explain recent heating concurrent with weakening of the solar wind. Solar wind output is at its lowest since accurate records began 50 years ago. This finding comes from the seasoned ESA/NASA solar probe Ulysses, which completed nearly three polar orbits of the Sun from 1993 to 2008 Why is it necessary to speculate about these exotic mechanisms? Arctic ice melts in response to warming temperatures.
  22. Ice-Free Arctic
    #35: "What is the effect of cosmic rays? " Not much. Were you referring to something else with "the effect of magnetic flux on high latitude temperatures"?
  23. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman - I think you are falling for a lot of denialist junk. At best this is amateurs making simplistic analyses about data they dont understand and at worst, the work of clever people practicing on the uninformed (and who dont want to be informed). A first cut filter for the rubbish is the simple question of "is it published?". There are glittering prizes for anyone who can disprove climate theory or come up with an improved theory. If the analysis is sound then why wouldnt you publish? The unscrupulous will say one thing to a naive audience (eg congress) but dont make such claims to their peers. However, this is a good site for finding out what is wrong with the some of wild stuff out there.
  24. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Another wedge that I would identify is human behavior. My specific bone of contention is that in the pre-global-economy world, every office worked from 9-5, and everyone was there at the same times the same days of the week, so that everyone with whom one might need to have contact was simultaneously available. In today's global economy, as likely as not the person you need on that conference call is on the other coast in another time zone, or even another continent and another date (and perhaps in a country with a different work week). There are a number of easy changes here. The first is simply for businesses to stagger their hours more, lowering commuting times and road usage peak volumes. This equates to less congestion, time spent idling, less asphalt and road maintenance, and less human hours wasted listening to talk radio. Similarly, everyone works Monday to Friday, except that a lot of businesses now operate 24-7, so again the old 5 day work week approach is somewhat outdated. I already know people that share cubicles to let the company save money on space (mostly sales reps and managers who are only in the office part time). I frequently choose to work weekends, to take advantage of smaller crowds for leisure time spent during the week (a luxury I have by being self-employed). Beyond this, telecommuting and other options are far more viable than they once were. In general, the point is that we are stuck in a 1950s paradigm that no longer fits and is no longer necessary. All it would take to change is some very cheap tax credits for businesses that comply (based on staggering work hours and days, and the actual use of telecommuting options).
  25. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    RSVP, the projection is for 2054. Very few people are still going to be driving the same car in 2054 that they are today... even without fuel economy standard changes. Thus, the need to buy new cars is a pre-existing condition rather than something introduced by improving the fuel economy of those new cars.
  26. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Sphaerica, Thanks. I'm no expert on this either, but if I were using the RSS data (which, as you know, is much more reliable) I'd use their TMT data. The RSS page has a nice figure showing how the weighting works for different channels,I am not aware of such a figure for UAH. For UAH, one could regress the AMSU ch 5 or ch 6 against the near-surface surface data. But Spencer had something up on his page a while ago about problems they are experiencing with splicing/comparing the near-surface layer data because of orbital changes. I could be remembering incorrectly, but I recall that the conversion factor in the past has been calculated between the SAT record and mid-tropospheric temperatures (i.e., using independent data)...but Drs. Schmidt, Santer or Sherwood would likely be the go to persons on this.
  27. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    I regressed AMSU LT data versus AMSU near surface data, by using the "Show data as text" link at http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps. Perhaps the difference lies in what the AMSU near surface data actually represents. I'm not well informed on that particular detail.
  28. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    CBDunkerson #46 "So the end result is no change in the cost to you." Except that you had to buy a new vehicle every how many years?
  29. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Sphaerica @36, Excellent observations. The unusually high AMSU channel 5 temps., given the circumstances, are for obvious reasons proving to be somewhat of a headache for "skeptics". As for the conversion factor, that is not my field of expertise. But Dr. Gavin Schmidt might be able to help you out. Were you regressing the Channel 5 data against the surface GISTEMP data, or all surface data (i.e., including over the oceans)? Please let us know if Dr. Schmidt gets back to you.
  30. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    I've been following the UAH temperatures regularly, and I think it is quite telling that despite the La Nina, except for a short period in October, those temps are hovering around (just below or above) the record temperatures. In fact, they recently spiked over the record again, after first collapsing into what in my own mind I call a "bundle point" (Apr 21 and Nov 21 seem to regularly see temperatures converge, before diverging again, no doubt due to interesting factors that I won't speculate on here). On those temperatures, a question... as Ned pointed out, the UAH temps appear to be an outlier at +0.14C per decade, but I believe that value is for tropospheric, not surface, temperatures, so to compare them is apples to oranges. I also believe that I've read that the conversion factor is roughly 1.2, so +0.14C/decade troposphere equates to a surface change of +0.168C (pretty close to NASA GISS at +0.166C). Which gets to my question. I believe I've read that the conversion factor is 1.2, but when I run my own regression on the data from AMSU (which only runs from 2002 to the present), depending on the smoothing period, then I get a factor anywhere from 1.53 to 1.56, with a pretty good R2 of anywhere from .95 to .96. That would turn the UAH +0.14C into +0.217C surface anomaly, making it an extreme outlier on the high end. The question: What is the appropriate conversion factor, and if it is 1.2, where did it come from? And does the higher conversion factor that I'm finding in the last decade point to another change in the system, where a warmer world sees a higher discrepancy between the surface and the troposphere?
  31. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    quokka #41: "Increasing energy prices (in this case petrol) will certainly curtail consumption but will have adverse economic consequences." Why? If it used to cost you $800 per year to buy 260 gallons of gasoline needed to commute to and from work each day why would there be adverse economic consequences if in the future it cost you $800 per year to buy 130 gallons of gasoline to commute to and from work each day? Yes, the price of a gallon of gasoline has doubled... but the amount of gasoline you use has been cut in half. So the end result is no change in the cost to you. Less fuel consumption, no impact on the consumer, and a significant revenue stream which can be devoted to cleaning up the problems caused by the fuel. That's a powerful way to utilize efficiency improvements.
  32. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    KR "the Sahara, or large chunks of Northern Africa" Where all the natural gas is??
  33. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    quokka 41 "The conclusion - energy must have very low emissions AND reasonable price to keep the humans happy." I remember a TV documentary years ago about how Eskimos burnt whale blubber in a tiny jar sufficient to keep the igloo nice and warm. The energy was just right so that it igloo didnt melt. They looked happy, and achieved this without computers.
  34. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    RSVP - Not a lot of viable cropland in the Mohave Desert, the Sahara, or large chunks of Northern Africa. Plenty of places to put solar collectors without interfering with cropland.
  35. CO2 effect is saturated
    Thanks CB! I didn't think to look in the "temperature" section for that graph. I skimmed there, and skimmed the result of clicking the "i" for more info, and though I found no listing of the wavelengths covered by "total OLR," I take that to mean you are correct that it covers a wide range.
  36. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    How is it not so that a plot of land designed for collecting solar power, isnt one plot less for growing food? (with exception of mushrooms perhaps) The same could be said about displacing land for forests.
  37. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman, without knowing more about the image you linked to, it is difficult to respond. But I'm going to guess that your graph presents an average across a really wide range of longwave radiation. In contrast, Figure 1 at the top of this Skeptical Science page (the Intermediate tabbed pane) is presented to illustrate the reduction of outgoing radiation in the very particular wave numbers that are specific to greenhouse gases. Your graph does not contradict that. Energy trapped (delayed in escaping, really) by greenhouse gases raises the temperature of the atmosphere/land/water, which causes an increase in that system's attempted emission of radiation to space. Radiation outside of the greenhouse gases' absorption wavelengths will merrily escape to space, so total longwave radiation escaping will increase. The problem is that the escaping total cannot increase fast enough to prevent the temperature from increasing, because the increase in the escaping radiation is a response to the increasing temperature.
  38. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    #39 CBDunkerson Important point that has far reaching implications, and shows why the climate problem is so difficult. Increasing energy prices (in this case petrol) will certainly curtail consumption but will have adverse economic consequences. That may be perfectly acceptable up to a certain point, but extended further could lead to major economic crisis. In that context, environmental concerns including climate go to the bottom of the list of priorities. It it possible to conceive of a future caught between energy poverty due to peak whatever and environmental collapse, in permanent economic crisis that is very difficult to break out of. The conclusion - energy must have very low emissions AND reasonable price to keep the humans happy.
  39. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    CBDunkerson - thanks, that's what I was driving at about Ville's unrealistic assumption. As Ann has pointed out, we're not operating in a vacuum where all else is held constant other than these wedges. There will no doubt be some sort of mechanism to put a price on carbon emissions eventually, which can be adjusted as necessary to address Jevons paradox. I just didn't want to come out and say it because I don't want the discussion to devolve into shouting about a carbon tax.
  40. CO2 effect is saturated
    Tom, I believe this is the graph and related text in question. However, it says nothing about wavelength. The suggestion seems to be that increasing CO2 should reduce ALL wavelengths of OLR... which doesn't seem an accurate statement of greenhouse gas behavior to me. In short, a straw man... the graph shows that total long wave radiation is not decreasing, but the claim that it should be has no basis in AGW theory.
  41. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman, where exactly is that image on climate4you.com? The image itself does not give enough information about exactly what the graph represents (e.g., what wavelengths).
  42. Ice-Free Arctic
    Arkadiusz Semczyszak wrote : "The conclusions suggest themselves ..." Not to me, at least. Your first link doesn't mention anything to do with the quote you referred to from Camburn (to do with geomagnetic research, solar winds, sun cycles or jet streams). Your second link does refer to sunspots but doesn't mention jet streams or anything to do with climate on earth. And the main graph at that link (just like every other sunspot graph I've seen) doesn't seem to correlate to any temperature reconstructions going back that far, that I'm aware of, especially over the last 50 years or so. Please 'suggest' those conclusions.
  43. CO2 effect is saturated
    Still won't connect. I will try another graph from Climate4you that shows the same thing, cycles but no downward direction for the outgoing longwave radiation. Outgoing longwave radiation cycles but does not trend down.
  44. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Relating Jevons paradox back to the wedges and issues raised by The Ville and Ann would go something like this; Wedge 1 proposes doubling fuel efficiency from 30 mpg to 60 mpg (bother me not with metric conversions). Of course, if you did that gasoline might still cost $2 per gallon (or whatever)... but that gallon is going to allow you to drive twice as far. Thus, if you drive the same amount you did before you are going to spend half as much on gasoline. When gas prices shot up a few years ago people drove less. Ditto during the current recession. Thus, it seems clear that if gasoline prices were cut in half people would drive more. Indeed, Jevons paradox suggests that they would drive more than twice as much as they did before... mainly due to more people driving more often. For instance, people who previously took mass transit might drive because it was now actually cheaper. In any case, it is clear that doubling gasoline efficiency will not halve gasoline consumption and thus wedge 1 would fail... UNLESS gasoline prices were increased to keep the cost of driving high enough that people would not drive more. The same logic applies to wedges 3 & 4 and any other efficiency improvements. Increased efficiency inherently leads to lower cost and higher usage... unless costs are artificially inflated.
  45. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 01:36 AM on 10 November 2010
    Ice-Free Arctic
    Camburn says that: “ Geomagnetic research is showing that solar winds and the sun's cycles play an extremely important role in the placement of the jet streams.” I think he's right. If compared to the work on the optimum of the middle Holocene: “We do not know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely devoid of ice, but the areas north of Greenland, it was more open water than today ... " - says geologist and researcher Astrid Lysa ...” (NGU). “Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today ... " ... and this paper: “Evidence of 6 000-Year Periodicity in Reconstructed Sunspot Numbers”, M. A. Xapsos and E. A. Burke, 2009, Solar Physics, Volume 257, Number 2, 363-369: “We have examined these data using Hurst analysis, a moving average filter, and Fourier analysis. All of the procedures indicate the presence of a long term (≈6 000 year) cycle not previously reported.” The conclusions suggest themselves ...
  46. Skeptical Science moving into solutions
    The most fundamental policy response is a price on carbon (and other gases). This is the best way to drive the economic change needed. We also need to agressively construct renewable energy (and not build any new coal power stations).
  47. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    What The Ville is describing in #34 is commonly known as Jevons paradox... which, as it happens, was first formulated in relation to coal usage. Basically, economist William Stanley Jevons showed that when efficiency improved it led to an increase in usage so great that the total fuel consumption went UP. His specific example was the use of coal after James Watt vastly improved the efficiency of coal powered steam engines. They went from being an expensive niche product to cheap and widespread use... with corresponding greater total coal consumption. The same effect has been seen repeatedly with efficiency improvements since then... to the point that it is often considered a given in economic theory that efficiency improvements will lead to increased consumption. That said, there is a proven method of preventing the Jevons effect. Specifically, if fuel costs are somehow held steady (e.g. by enacting a carbon tax) then the increased efficiency does NOT lead to lower costs and usage does not increase.
  48. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    You're right, Grim_Reaper - thanks. It was due to putting a '2' at the beginning of the link, rather than the " from the same key. It should have been http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/solar-storage-1026.html.
  49. How you can support Skeptical Science
    Thank you so much for your wonderful site! It is informative, accessible, and a great source of information (which in turn makes it the ultimate weapon against disinformation).
  50. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    JMurphy @ #32: The link doesn't seem to work. Here's an alternative. The molecule that's caused interest is called fulvalene diruthenium.

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