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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 107901 to 107950:

  1. gallopingcamel at 15:29 PM on 4 October 2010
    Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    Daniel Bailey (#61). Most of the time I am flying against the wind on this blog and the faithful are used to applying ritual flagellation. Once in a while I agree with them but the knee jerk reaction is to beat up on me, regardless! Actually, the electric automobile was developed first but somehow the internal combustion engine has gained a temporary ascendancy. Real electric cars do not have on board generators powered by internal combustion engines as in the Chevrolet "Volt" or the Toyota "Prius". They are very simple vehicles with batteries and electric motors. Test marketing shows that people love such vehicles even though they have limited range with today's battery technologies. For a thoroughly entertaining and informative story about electric automobiles I recommend Sony's movie called "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Here is a two minute intro but you should seek out the entire (90 minute) movie about GM's EV1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJAlrYjGz8 I own a Jeep "Grand Cherokee", a Honda "Odyssey" and an electric car. If I could get my hands on an EV1 it would replace my existing electric car and one of the gas guzzlers. This would improve my cash flow so nobody would have to hold a gun to my head.
  2. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    Re: Ken Lambert (128)
    "kdkd is heckling from the bleachers because he finds my arguments so threatening to his belief structure."
    Must be a Freudian slip. Surely you meant the word "my" instead of "his". archiesteel, in his closing comments at 130 above, offers some cogent advice worth considering. You are capable of being a valuable resource here, and elsewhere. The Yooper
  3. Newcomers, Start Here
    Ken #34: I think you mistake the term "random" when it comes to evolutionary processes with "equiprobable". Evolution (or more accurately, natural selection and genetic drift) at small scales (time or space) is indeed random, but usually it is also heavily biased in certain directions depending on the environment. Natural selection can be stabilising or disruptive, in both cases the dice are loaded, and statistically will bias survival rates. The more severe the selective pressures are, the less opportunity more and more species have to adapt. The first ones to go are the specialists; and it's usually the generalists that we class as pests.
  4. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    Re: adelady (4) Thanks for the SLR mapping website. I note with amusement that windowing in on Washington DC & cranking the SLR up to 14 meters results in waves lapping at the White House and the steps of Capitol Hill. Perhaps then the denizens therein will finally start serious discussions on the issue. Nah. ******************* Re: jyyh (5) As a former cartographer, I cringed as well at certain liberties taken in inland areas (the Aral Sea's 1960 elevation above mean sea level: 53 meters). Take it as a useful reference tool, not as a map with built-in geodetic accuracy. For world sea level rise area inundations and impacts estimation: perfectly useful. The Yooper
  5. Irregular Climate podcast 11
    @chriscanaris: "I'm not sure that an ice-free Arctic is the major driver." It's one of the main ones, for sure. Accessing these resources with thick multi-year ice above would be prohibitively expensive. The lowering ice is clearly one of the reasons behind the Russians' increasing presence in the Arctic (*much* higher north than the gulags you seem to refer to). This includes their provocative assertions about the underwater ridges earlier this year, a diplomatic show of force with Canada. Russians have figured out that AGW is real, and that an ice free Arctic ocean is an opportunity for them. The US, bogged down by the delaying tactics of the Climate Denial Machine, risks losing influence in this important region if it keeps burying its head in the sand.
  6. An underwater hockey stick
    > > Where is that heat coming from? > > From the tropics. Allow me to rephrase the question. What is producing the heat? The thermohaline current doesn't produce heat, it transports it. Where is the origin of the additional heat? I was talking about instrumental readings, not reconstructions. The hypothesis that the Earth is warming from the inside out could be readily demonstrated.
  7. An underwater hockey stick
    @Joe Blog: apparently you overlaid them as well. Why don't TOP and you post your reconstructions so we can eyeball them as well? Also, what do you mean by "THC"?
  8. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    I agree it's pretty crude. And I should have pointed out the provisos. It doesn't do anything for bodies of landlocked water. I confess I didn't look at the Aral Sea. By the time I'd got through the Nile, Mekong and Ganges deltas and a bit of a look at the Philippines I'd had enough.
  9. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    @KL: "A reduction in slope of a curve is 'flattening'" Especially if you want to suggest that global warming is over, right? It's all in the way one presents things, i.e. glass half-empty vs. glass half-full. The reality is that there have been such reduction of the rate of increase before, and there will continue to be such noise in the complex weather system. What matters are statistically significant trends, and these clearly show a dramatic increase in world temperatures. By the way, you may have missed it, but 2010 is on par to be the hottest year on record. How will you cherry-pick your time periods then? "BP demonstrated a reduced slope in the SLR curve" Barely reduced - not what I'd call a flattening, but then again I'm not pushing an anti-AGW agenda. Overall, the fact remains that sea levels are still rising. "It is still a 'linear increase' - but flattened from a steeper slope!!" "Flattened" suggests no increase, not "increasing less." Of course it doesn't sound as dramatic. "kdkd is heckling from the bleachers because he finds my arguments so threatening to his belief structure." I don't think anyone would ever feel threatened by your arguments. You've demonstrated time and time again how weak those arguments are, and how you ignore valid counter-arguments. From an outsider's point of view, kdkd has a lot more credibility than you on this sugbject. Your use of "belief structure" is also a dead giveaway about your strong bias, which clearly clouds your judgement. Instead of wasting your time exposing your ignorance in these threads, you should honestly try to understand the actual science.
  10. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    adelady, I don't know what to make of the inertia in cartography... Aral Sea is not like that in the real world :-/.
  11. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    KR, the statement that "a system with positive feedback is by definition unstable" is not mine, it is my paraphrasing of a sceptic claim. What this set of articles needs to do is clarify that the existence of positive feedbacks in the climate system does not imply |gain| > 1, because the Planck feedback dictates that the the Earth's climate sensitivity is low. It doesn't do that, it goes off onto a tangent about a toy model of a carbon cycle feedback.
  12. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    I found this map a couple of days ago. I found it a bit a bit slow and clumsy to navigate until I got used to it. However, if you use it at minimum size while you get to an area, say, the Mekong delta, then maximise the view and adjust the amount of SLR you get a fairly clear, fairly depressing picture. The Nile delta is a bit of an eye opener.
  13. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    Chris G: I think the changes are also stemming from the altered Polar vortex. One such study for 10 degrees warmer arctic: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Pliocene_megabiome.png of course the oceanic circulation in the prev study was different than now but as the Indian Ocean warms this effect of Agulhas current may well become more common or permanent: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0485%281999%29029%3C2303%3ATROMEI%3E2.0.CO%3B2 One must remember "close to 40% of the Earth's land surface is presently used for cropland and pasture" so the choices of the farmers will have an effect on how the carbon on the air is used by the food plants. I'm expecting (natural) C4-plants becoming more common all over the planet, where it rains enough. One needs quite detailed info on the rainfall patterns, like you said, to predict what the likely biotopes are in future, but I wouldn't be surprised of rice fields in central Germany by 2050, and maize where it rains little enough.
  14. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    I think that the sea level rise itself will drive larger problems. Will the relations between China, India, and Pakistan remain stable when these countries are stressed with the redistribution of water resources that this much warming will bring, at the same time that they are dealing with tens of millions of refuges, or more, from Bangladesh? Are there other parts of the world where this much sea level rise will add stress to already stress-filled relations? Honestly, I don't think that sea level rise is the biggest threat. I think the biggest threat will come from losses in agricultural productivity resulting from changes in rainfall patterns that are driven by changes in Hadley cell circulation. I'd like to see an study that estimates climate zone regions then and overlay that with the present zones. That would give us a better idea what will happen to our food production. Still, the conclusion is the same: The sooner we reduce emissions the less it will cost us.
  15. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    "can 6 to 9 metres sea level rise be considered safe?"
    Not for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who live in that 6-9 metre zone who will no longer have anywhere to live. And when those displaced by the sea level rise are forced to migrate, the resultant social unrest will keep many others from being safe as well. Sell those beachfront timeshares, if ya gots 'em. The Yooper
  16. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Adelady @26, I love that analogy...very good.
  17. Irregular Climate podcast 11
    tobyjoyce @ 23: Fair point about the Piomass calculation. But, as you say: 'I have no doubt the Arctic holds some surprises for us. They may not be the ones anyone expects.' Well, yes, my point exactly. You and I might have different or similar expectations - I'm certainly open to the possibility/ probability that Arctic ice cover may be decreasing. However, as the Nature article suggests, all sorts of unusual things can happen. No doubt, the Arctic population is increasing. Russia (or to be more precise the Soviet Union as it was then) has a long and hallowed tradition of settlement in the Arctic (not all of it entirely voluntary - hence the capacity to send large numbers of people into highly inhospitable regions). The push into the Arctic long predates the Soviet dystopia and includes a number of non Russian ventures as you'll find in the Brittanica online artice. Moreover, the article highlights the sheer wealth of natural resources in the area. Whatever we might think of it for ecological reasons, governments in an age of advancing technology will seek to exploit what are some of the world's largest resources of fossil fuel and other mineral wealth. I'm not sure that an ice-free Arctic is the major driver.
  18. Irregular Climate podcast 11
    tobyjoyce @ 23: Fair point about the Piomass calculation. But, as you say: 'I have no doubt the Arctic holds some surprises for us. They may not be the ones anyone expects.' Well, yes, my point exactly. No doubt, the Arctic population is increasing. Russia (or to be more precise the Soviet Union as it was then) has a long and hallowed tradition of settlement in the Arctic (not all of it entirely voluntary). The push into the Arctric long predates the Soviet Dystopia and includes a number of non Russian ventures as you'll find in the Brittanica online artice.
  19. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    JohnD - lets also try and make a very clear distinction between forcing and feedback. Feedback is something that changes in response to temperature change. Forcing is something that can change independent of temperature. (Some subtleties over change to other than temperature but thats an aside). Solar is forcing because both earth orbit, and solar output can change irrespective of earth temperature. Aerosols are largely independent of temperature. Albedo and GHG are both feedbacks and forcings because you can change both independently of temperature. Wind is response ultimately to a temperature differential so is feedback to whatever caused the temperature differential to change. Clouds have a more complex relation to temperature and can also be affected by aerosol but cannot independently alter.
  20. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Re: nofreewind (25) If you look at the overall trend lines in the long term data shown in the comment 18 you reference, you can see clearly the upward rise in sea levels, despite the noisy seasonal variations present in the signal. A clear analogy would be to maintain that the sun no longer exists because it disappeared over the horizon at the end of the day. Someone intelligent enough to do data research, construct a graph & post it online as part of a blog would know that to focus on such a short-term variation is meaningless. Except for, apparently, Goddard. The Yooper
  21. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    #25: "meaning the rate of rise has decreased compared to the past rate the past 20 years" Not so. In a time series such as this, small variations do not have a significant impact on the long term trend. Those variations are called noise: In signal processing or computing it can be considered unwanted data without meaning.
  22. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    I love all this stuff about graphs and trends showing declines or slowing or whatever for a few years or months. It's like a commentator on a car race. Oh, my goodness, that last lap was 3 hundredths of a second slower than the previous lap. The fact that the driver in question is lapping the field is irrelevant - because the race is actually won. So we have to find -something- to talk about.
  23. Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect
    This article is extremely poorly worded. The title says there is a 40 year delay between cause and effect, which makes it sound like the warming effect of co2 doesn't *start* until 40 years after co2 starts rising. Obviously that's wrong. But throughout the article this impression is given. Eg: "The reason the planet takes several decades to respond to increased CO2 is the thermal inertia of the oceans." The planet doesn't respond *at all* to rising co2 until several decades after? Of course it does. And: "With 40 years between cause and effect, it means that average temperatures of the last decade are a result of what we were thoughtlessly putting into the air in the 1960’s" And the 1970s and the 1980s and the 1990s. Not just the 1960s. Obviously what you mean is that there is a 40 year delay between cause and *maximum* effect. I only say this because I feel strongly that the way the article is worded, only people who understand this already are going to get it. People who are new to this or are not but are easily confused (*cough* Steve Goddard *cough*), will get (or have already got) the wrong idea.
  24. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Not sure about Goddard(he doesn't seem right in this case), but the graph at the top of this post and the one at comment 18 both show the rate of sea level rise to below the mean for most of the past 3 years, meaning the rate of rise has decreased compared to the past rate the past 20 years.
  25. Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    Re: gallopingcamel (57, 60)
    "Daniel Bailey doubts my motives so let's clear that up."
    Nothing personal, GC. Perhaps if you had phrased your comments with a bit more clarity so that there would be no doubt as to your intentions then I would have worded my response differently. My position is unchanged until I have seen evidence supporting the compatibility of A & B. I do have an open mind on it, but the intractability of humanity leaves me skeptical about its ability to change its behavior until its too late to have any meaningful impact. Given where we are now and the emerging picture of the nearness of the cliff we approach, the more my doubts about Lovelock's stance dissipate. Only my nature's staunch refusal to give up, even in the face of insuperable odds, keeps me searching for a way forward. CBDunkerson & scaddenp summarize the remainder of my position well (kudo's to those estimable gentlemen), only with greater eloquence than I. If the electric automobile had been developed first, then there would be no need for widespread internal combustion engine use. Coal is another bugger, tho. The Yooper
  26. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    KL #128 "kdkd is heckling from the bleachers because he finds my arguments so threatening to his belief structure." Nope I'm pointing out that your argument is wrong. It's not based on any competent standard of evidence. The more you repeat this nonsense, the clearer it becomes to others that your case is based on the contents of your own confirmation bias rather than anything to do with empirical validity. Go back and look at what it takes to show a statistically significant change in slope over short time periods again. Once you understand this, you'll understand how foolish you've made yourself look by perpetuating this nonsense argument.
  27. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    JohnD - Firstly, want to back the assertion "possibly, second after sunlight" with data? Think for a moment on why wind affects evaporation. You take a cubic meter of air over water. Evaporation follows CC, raises partial pressure of water in that parcel of air, then wind moves it away. New parcel of air has lower pp of water so evaporation rate continues at same rate. However, our original parcel of area is over water in another place, and evaporation is slower because it already has an elevated pp of water. Locally wind is important, basin wide - not so much. The parameterization of the effect of wind used by models is based on empirical data. I cant see these studies back your assertion. Also, I cant see how wind can be a forcing. "some consider clouds a forcing". So who is "some"? How can clouds be a forcing? What can change cloud formation independently? Only the GCR hypothesis had an answer for that. Is that what you mean (which makes GCR the forcing not the clouds)? Or do you have another hypothesis?
  28. An underwater hockey stick
    archiesteel at 10:27 You can just drag the NAWT one and overlay just in the article above... but not the otherway round because it rescales... the Y axis's o course are at different scales however... But this is the obvious thing wrong with this picture... unless the globe decided to ignore the laws o Thermodynamics at some stage, ocean Ts are driving atmospheric in these graphs.
  29. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    archiesteel #126 A reduction in slope of a curve is 'flattening'. Go back and read other threads - the idea that warming might have slowed - 'flattened' is not controversial. BP demonstrated a reduced slope in the SLR curve - almost identical to my 2.0mm/yr number - much reduced from the claimed 3.3mm/year number. It is still a 'linear increase' - but flattened from a steeper slope!! This is very significant when you know how much heat sequestration is involved in a 1mm steric SLR rise. kdkd is heckling from the bleachers because he finds my arguments so threatening to his belief structure.
  30. An underwater hockey stick
    @TOP: why don't you show us your overlaid graphs so we can see for ourselves?
  31. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    KL #124 It's extremely frustrating to discuss these matters with you, as you basically ignore the majority of the relevant evidence in order to focus on your preconcevied notion that the so-called sceptic position must be true regardless of the evidence. #122 and #124 are excellent examples of this in action. In particular watch the way that you ignore detailed explanations of why your position is illogical, wrong and based on mischaracterisation of the evidence (see #123 for an example of this). It's a repeating pattern which is why I've been referring to your recent material as 'repetitive rubbish'.
  32. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    I love those extreme cherry picks. Sea level has not risen for 6 months! It´s almost 8 pm here. Global Warming has stopped for at least 5 hours...
  33. An underwater hockey stick
    Bibliovermis at 09:05 AM says "Where is that heat coming from?" From the tropics, the oceans are going to be a much more efficient transporter of energy than the atmosphere, if the THC is slow, more energy will be lost via radiation to space than if the same energy is transported via currents. So an increase in the THC will result in more energy being transported to higher latitudes than if it is slowed. "What other observations could be made to validate or refute this hypothesis?" Just more extensive sedimentary reconstructions in the north Atlantic... This study more pertains to the warming in the first part of last century, and may raise a few Q's about natural variability... and whether the initial cause of the "unprecedented" warming as seen in the paleo reconstructions is anthropogenic in origins... Or did anthropogenic influences cause the THC speed up(assuming this is what is being seen)... I doubt we did, we weren't really effecting radiative forcing all that significantly at that stage.... and the cores were disturbed for the later part o last century.
  34. An underwater hockey stick
    johnd, the UNSW are still claiming what you were astonished about : A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water - dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia. Have you been in touch with them to show them their error, or have you alerted the Japanese or Indians about their work being plagiarised/misused/whatever you think ?
  35. An underwater hockey stick
    Yeah, johnd, you're the expert, after all. Clearly you've a good grasp of the literature.
  36. An underwater hockey stick
    TOP, For the sake of discussion, let's examine this hypothesis that the ocean is the source of heat. Where is that heat coming from? What other observations could be made to validate or refute this hypothesis?
  37. An underwater hockey stick
    archiesteel at 06:32 The thing with this reconstruction, is its showing MUCH larger anomalies of deepish water, (400m, and double the size in a straight T comparison... water has a vastly greater thermal capacity than air) than atmospheric anomalies, at all instances in the past up until the core was disturbed(Mid last century). Energy dosnt sink, or concentrate itself, entropy increases, chaos increases(or stays the same) It dosnt decrease. You would expect this reconstruction, if it was driven by atmospheric T's in its region, to be considerably smaller than the atmospheric anomalies, and to be lagging atmospheric T's. This isnt the case. What this reconstruction, seems to imply to me, is that there was a sudden increase o the transport o warmer water into the north Atlantic shortly after 1900, and the atmospheric temperature anomaly at that time, is probably a result of this, rather than the cause of this. Why the increase in the THC?(if thats what it was) http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3328.1 I dont know, but ill pretend i do, for arguments sake ;-)
  38. An underwater hockey stick
    doug_bostrom at 08:39 AM, I haven't got time to answer you fully now, I will come back later. However I think you will find that any BOM references to IO SST is unrelated to the areas where the IOD data is collected. Perhaps you can find something that indicates when they began incorporating IOD data into their modeling. BOM were critical of the Japanese researchers a couple of years ago, 2007?, when the Japanese alone correctly forecast that a La Nina that was virtually promised daily by BOM as being imminent, was overidden and failed to eventuate by unique conditions that developed, and had been seen developing in the Indian Ocean by the Japanese. It became quite a story in the Australian rural press the following year when it was revealed that the correct forecast was available but BOM chose to ignore the signals instead following their own outdated, and still outdated modeling. Legal action was being considered against BOM for losses incurred by those who followed BOM, whilst those who followed advice based on the IOD talked of being hundereds of thousands of $ in front.
  39. An underwater hockey stick
    I overlaid the OP's bottom water hockey stick onto the IPCC's hockey stick. It looks to me like the water temps are driving the air temps. Water has a low albedo, it doesn't reradiate much of the energy that strikes it back into space. The anomaly in the water temps is larger than that in the atmosphere. It is the driver.
  40. An underwater hockey stick
    @TOP: you're not making any sense. What two graphs did you overlay? What do you think isn't "driven by CO2"?
  41. An underwater hockey stick
    The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is a unit of the University of New South Wales. Or is it the opposite? Southwest Western Australian winter rainfall and its association with Indian Ocean climate variability 29 DEC 2000 Potential predictability of winter rainfall over southern and eastern Australia using Indian Ocean sea-surface temperature anomalies 1993 - bom.gov.au Sea surface temperatures and Australian winter rainfall 1989 Etc. Indian Ocean + Australia: new to you, not so much to the people you're claiming are ignorant.
  42. An underwater hockey stick
    doug_bostrom at 07:57 AM, the importance of the Indian Ocean to Australia's weather has yet to be fully appreciated by the likes of the UNSW, and even BOM and CSIRO. I have closely followed any research involving the Indian Ocean since the 1990's as I was interested in the apparent connection between weather patterns in SE Asia and SE Australia, two places that I had personal experience in. I had approached BOM scientists on two separate occasions and was told any connection was coincidental. Then I found the work of the Japanese researchers who actually identified the IOD in 1998, and an Australian forecaster/researcher who had also made the link and incorporated Indian Ocean data into his modeling at about the same time, leading to very accurate forecasts, which the Japanese also became able to provide. Australia's BOM has only in the last couple of years began to even refer to the IOD, and have not fully incorporated it into their modeling, I think they are waiting on new computers and say even then, reliable forecasts are probably still up to 7 years away. Fortunately reliable forecasts have been available for the last decade from other sources. It was against that background that I was astounded to read last year that the UNSW had just made a "discovery" linking the Indian Ocean to Australian weather. I'll take the work of the Japanese researchers any day over that of the UNSW, even BOM and CSIRO.
  43. An underwater hockey stick
    I just overlayed the two graphs. I'll have to read the paper. Given the very low albedo of the oceans it is hard to believe this is driven by CO2. More like the atmosperic temps are being driven by the ocean.
  44. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Albatross, if he used the barometer-corrected data, it wouldn't show what he wants it to show, so what good would it do him? I like the comment on Goddard's thread from the guy who's against the metric system. Hilarious. It reminds me of a thread on another denier site where they were arguing that ice sheets like Greenland's must be able to come and go in the relative blink of an eye because the earth is only 6000 years old, after all. It shows you the mindset that science and reason are up against.
  45. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    #21: Yes, we are subverting their innocence with such filth as 2+2=4 and the like.
  46. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    piloot at 07:14 AM, sunlight is also subject to cloud cover. Wind is a big factor, possibly second after sunlight. The study indicates that evaporation rates were higher in the periods when the air was supposedly "dirtier" than more recent times, so that doesn't seem to follow that evaporation rates dropped. The general consensus seems to be that clouds are a feedback mechanism, but some consider that they may instead be a forcing which could tie in with the evaporation rates.
  47. An underwater hockey stick
    No, johnd, in point of fact you're claiming you know more, apparently: the UNSW video only reinforced my opinion about their climate expertise. I made the mistake of imagining you might have noticed the nuance conveyed by the UNSW researchers, how what they say comports w/your and Ken's remarks about moisture distribution. Nope, apparently you're focused on the things with which you disagree. You've reminded me of the futility of discussion in certain circumstances. Thanks for saving me another hunk of time.
  48. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Goddard has no shame, apparently. Against my better judgment but driven by curiosity stimulated by this thread, I mooched over to his blog and within a moment found him likening teachers to pedophiles.
  49. It's El Niño
    Continuing from #20 on the Goddard-is-cherrypicking-sea-level-data thread. The same statement was made as in #3 here: ENSO are, after all, cycles, which don't make much difference in the long term. However, as the familiar MEI graph shows, there seems to be a lot more red since about 1977 or so. From a fascinating model run made by Timmerman et al. 1999: The tropical Pacific climate system is thus predicted to undergo strong changes if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase. The climatic effects will be threefold. First, the mean climate in the tropical Pacific region will change towards a state corresponding to present-day El Nino conditions. It is therefore likely that events typical of El Nino will also become more frequent. Second, a stronger interannual variability will be superimposed on the changes in the mean state, so year-to-year variations may become more extreme under enhanced greenhouse conditions. Third, the interannual variability will be more strongly skewed, with strong cold events (relative to the warmer mean state) becoming more frequent. If I read that correctly, sounds like more red overall with the occasional deeper blue.
  50. An underwater hockey stick
    doug_bostrom at 06:19 AM, are you saying that the just because you referenced a link to a UNSW video that they know more than researchers anywhere else? Just check the facts, check for yourself and see if the publication regarding their "discovery" is still available on their website. It had been authored by Bob Beale early 2009. Check the data on the Indian Ocean dipole and see if what was said in the video correlates with the recorded data. You may have your sources that support your views, most researchers have their own views, I look at a range and find some are more credible than others.

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