Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 2152 2153 2154 2155 2156 2157 2158 2159 2160 2161 2162 2163 2164 2165 2166 2167 Next
Comments 107951 to 108000:
-
Doug Bostrom at 23:39 PM on 4 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
TOP: Do you have data for deeper waters or waters in tectonically active areas? Are you aware of any papers? If you're constructing an alternative hypothesis about why the oceans are warming, it's incumbent on you to find information lending support to your hypothesis, not everybody else. It's odd, how frequently we have skeptics saying words roughly along the lines of "But this other thing might be happening, and you can't show otherwise until you've found the information I've not provided to support my hypothesis." TOP, there's scads of literature on heat flux at the bottom of the ocean. Go look at it, bring us the pleasant surprise we're all hoping for. -
Riccardo at 23:31 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
RSVP #14, very naif and meaningless comment. Does anyone count on the right outcome from a wrong action? You need to be very lucky ... A brake is a brake, if you push the wrong pedal it's not a brake. As easy as this. I'd love to read more thoughtful comments here at SkS. -
barry1487 at 23:29 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
"For this worse case scenario, has anyone demonstrated that there will actually be less habitable land as sea level rises? Shouldnt all kinds of land tracts be getting freed up of ice compensating loss of coastal regions?"
How much arable land will there be at high altitude? Is it cheaper to build towns and cities on crags or on flatlands? As ever, it is not the change so much as the rate at which it occurs that will yield the cost. 2C over a thousand years is a much more manageable impact than 2C over a century. -
adelady at 23:27 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
Massive infrastructure changes? I already thought of cars when I read about a wind generation problem in Germany. They're actually paying some people to leave lights on all night when the turbines are putting in more power than is needed. If cars or other battery storage facilities were recharged at low use periods, there's no reason why the recharge shouldn't be overridden - on or off - depending on imbalance in turbine output and network requirements. Cars, buses and other equipment could function as a network equaliser. Neat, huh? -
Doug Bostrom at 23:24 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
CBD, certainly it's possible to "build a car with ~100 mile electric range AND a backup gasoline powered electrical generator" with today's technology. GM is doing -almost- exactly that, with the difference their offering "only" goes 40 miles on batteries at the modeled fleet end of life. The challenge of the next 60 miles is primarily money, not technology, plus a bit of the same physics rocket scientists face. Leaving aside the lunatic marketers responsible for the soccer-moms-and-accountants-in-work-trucks fad, GM is actually quite good at figuring out how to build things that are affordable for their market. Especially they're good at looking at what happens when they have to make a lot of copies of a product. Given some fairly tight prognostication on constraints and limits of future battery costs, GM has found that adding 60 miles of battery range to the Volt while leaving their rather nicely implemented gasoline-electric drive train in place will push the Volt's price up in a way that leaves it far outside the price range even of most "early adopters," with little prospect for a decline to realistic levels. Remember, to be useful these cars have to go beyond the boutique, they've got to slip into a family budget as a drop-in replacement. Also, as with rockets, the more potential energy stored, the less efficient the vehicle becomes for its primary requirement, delivering payload. All this w/-present- technology, mind. The world of electrochemistry still continues to deliver surprises. -
CBDunkerson at 23:20 PM on 4 October 2010Irregular Climate podcast 11
chriscanaris #25, without an ice free Arctic, oil drilling in the region would be impossible... and I'm not talking about just part of the year. If the water around an oil rig were to freeze into ice several meters thick that rig would be badly damaged and immediately begin leaking oil. Note that all of the exploratory wells being dug are in areas that have been ice free year round for decades now. And even there they've got tug boats on call to divert icebergs away. In short, the only way any of these countries are going to be drilling for oil in the Arctic basin is if the ice melts out year round... something which won't happen for decades yet under the worst case estimates. Based on IPCC 4 it'd be at least a couple hundred years. Yet there is a race on now to lay claim to these future mineral resources. Which ought to indicate pretty clearly that they know IPCC 4 was hugely conservative and the Arctic sea ice is not 'recovering'... as claimed by some of the very same politicians pushing for Arctic oil exploration. -
CBDunkerson at 23:04 PM on 4 October 2010Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
Baz #94: "What else could have caused a fairly-sharp upturn in temps?" Increased solar radiation could have... but didn't, because solar radiation actually decreased over that timeframe. A massive change in cloud cover could have... but didn't, because cloud cover was largely unchanged. Dropping from a highly active volcanic period to low volcanism could have... but didn't, because we've been in a period of low volcanism the whole time. Et cetera. Anything which logically (and even ILlogically, c.f. 'cosmic rays') could have caused the warming has been examined and found not to be the case... except that the increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases absolutely should have caused a sharp upturn in temperatures... which did in fact occur. -
Baz at 22:58 PM on 4 October 2010Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
sime, or... "Science is the desire to know causes" - William Hazlett -
CBDunkerson at 22:56 PM on 4 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
Top #33: "The anomaly in the water temps is larger than that in the atmosphere. It is the driver." Given that more than 90% of the enhanced greenhouse warming accumulates first in the oceans your statement above is obviously true... but your apparent conclusion that this means the oceans are somehow 'generating' the increased temperature is clearly illogical. If this were simple a matter of heat being transferred from the oceans to the atmosphere then we ought to be seeing ocean temperatures falling while atmospheric temperatures increase. Instead BOTH are increasing. That unquestionably indicates that some external factor, in this case an enhanced greenhouse effect, is causing warming to both. #46: "What this paper opened up is the possibility that a ocean heat transport has melted the arctic ice from below." We have known for some time now that most of the recent Arctic sea ice decline is due to increased ocean temperatures. Indeed, ocean warming is also believed to be responsible for much of the observed loss of land ice from Greenland and Antarctica. Again, this is due to the oceans absorbing additional radiation from the enhanced greenhouse effect... not some form of 'spontaneous ocean heating'. -
CBDunkerson at 22:42 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
GC #60, "I would like to set you straight but that would get us into the realm of "solutions"." Solutions are bad? Political arguments are to be avoided, but reality based solutions are fine. On the whole 'electric auto' front... I'm not looking to trade in my 2001 Prius yet because I drive more than the Leaf's 100 mile range several times a year and more than the Volt's 40 miles electric range every day. The 200+ mile range of the Tesla Roadster would be enough... but it's a ridiculously ostentatious 'look at me' mobile. Given current technology it ought to be possible to build a car with ~100 mile electric range AND a backup gasoline powered electrical generator. That would allow 99% of the drivers in the world to complete their daily commute on electric power. People would only ever need to put gas in their tank for the few trips a year (if that) where they were going further. No 'range anxiety' problems and gasoline usage cut to an insignificant fraction of current... yet nobody seems to be building such a car. Instead we've got all electric or electric with gasoline backup, but too short an electric range to ever leave the gas tank empty. Sure, going directly to all electric would be great... but realistically it isn't going to happen without massive infrastructure changes. A 100 mile electric / gasoline hybrid could get us most of the way to zero gasoline usage NOW. No waiting on a network of charging stations, faster charging battery technologies, batteries that don't deteriorate as much over time, and/or batteries with higher energy density... all of which would also get developed much faster if electric powered driving were already predominant due to hybrids. Thus, I see well designed hybrid cars (not the illogical designs we're getting now) as a stepping stone getting us to an all electric infrastructure much faster than we would without them. -
sime at 22:40 PM on 4 October 2010Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
And today's thought for the day is... "What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?" -- Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland (referring then to ozone depletion) -
Baz at 22:38 PM on 4 October 2010Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
Hello all. 30 to 35 years ago something appears to have happened to global temperatures. Indeed, that is even refected locally here in the longest dataset we have: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_graph_ylybars_uptodate.gif Even in the Arctic, a period of 30-35 years of gradual ice-extent loss seems again evident. Only the Antarctic shows no sign of a similar change (and a number of temp recording stations around the world). Given that science is never certain, and climate science falls a long way short of that, and if you can suspend your belief that the principle cause of this is/was man-made, what else could it be? What else could have caused a fairly-sharp upturn in temps? -
TOP at 22:36 PM on 4 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
Scaddenp Do you evaluate basins like this? I would think that borehole data on really deep water is missing. Deep water is is 1 mile these days AFIAK and in fairly stable areas. Do you have data for deeper waters or waters in tectonically active areas? Are you aware of any papers? I agree with very cold, the paper stated that temps in the area in question was around 4C. -
TOP at 22:19 PM on 4 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
When you overlay two graphs with dissimilar axes you have to rescale one or the other so they match. You also have to shift the zeros. Basic graph handling skills. Here it is. Pretty ugly but it gets the point across. Atmospheric "hockey stick" from IPCC as posted on wikipedia.
The principals of heat transfer have been peer reviewed for hundreds of years. You have three choices:
- Conduction slow not likely in liquids and gases
- Convection rapid can transport vast amounts of heat very likely in gases and liquids not particularly dependent on the nature of the materials
- Radiation speed of light very particular about the nature of the materials occurs at interface of two bodies separated by relatively free space, does not occur inside solid or liquid matter to as great a degree as in gases or vacuum
- Phase Change As an adjunct to convection can transport orders of magnitude more energy than storage by temperature change alone. Transport of heat to the upper troposphere by phase change of water comes to mind.
-
adelady at 21:56 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
Chris, Keynes dictum is about _current_ affairs. When we're talking about warming and disruption, I actually care quite a lot about what my descendants may face long after I'm dead. I can't save them from failed love affairs or worries about passing exams. But I can be part of an effort to ensure that they get the best possible chance of living in a world that's congenial to healthy life and not torn by strife over inadequate water, food or living space. I'm not asking for utopia. Life is always difficult and dangerous. I lived through polio epidemics and the cold war and several other wars. Our generation has the opportunity to try and avoid making life more difficult and dangerous than it need be for our grandchildren's grandchildren. -
RSVP at 21:15 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
"...global temperatures have warmed around 0.8°C from pre-industrial temperatures" Is "pre-industrial" before or after the invention of the thermometer? Continutin... the link in the first sentence, takes you to a past article that starts... "Unfortunately, the discussion went pear shaped with some ideological anti-intellectualism " The word "anti-intellecutalism" in turn links to yet another article that contains the proverbial graph wherein CO2 and temperature track perfectly one on the other given two linear scales that are selected for this purpose, even though the "intellecual" theory dictates that temperature changes as the log of GHG concentration. -
chris1204 at 20:55 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
*@#! those links! Make this the final version and feel free to delete the others. John, I take your point about the Eemian period, which seems to have been a predominantly solar based event. Actually, being on the real Titanic would serve as a better analogy for the point you're trying to make. Ironically, because its electrical power plant functioned until the very end, many passengers were reluctant to disembark from the seeming comfort and safety of a well-lit ship. Interestingly, the Titanic was designed to float with the first four compartments flooded. Instead, the glancing blow to the starboard side caused buckling in the hull plates along the first five compartments, more than the ship's designers had anticipated. Coming back on topic, I looked at earlier posts on ice loss which seems to be the real polar bear in the room. It ultimately depends on whether we're looking at a CO2 forcing to equal the solar forcing of the Eemian. In the case of CO2 forcing, we're looking at concurrent H2O forcings and increased precipitation which could include increased snow cover in some settings (recall that Antarctica is the world's driest continent and hence there's some scope for negative feedbacks to GHG forcings in such settings). Coming back to the Titanic analogy, we don't really know whether we're flooding five compartments or four. In the former case, we would be silly to clamber into the lifeboats. In the latter, we can take cold comfort from Keynes dictum: 'The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.' He also said: 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' -
RSVP at 20:19 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
#10 "I think that the real question is "how hard can we push the brakes?". If you are pushing the wrong peddal, it wont make any difference. -
RSVP at 20:17 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
#12 "We're doomed! " For this worse case scenario, has anyone demonstrated that there will actually be less habitable land as sea level rises? Shouldnt all kinds of land tracts be getting freed up of ice compensating loss of coastal regions? -
pikaia at 19:29 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
Most scenarios only go as far as 2100AD, but these all show the temperature still rising at a considerable rate. Ultimately the increase looks like being much more than 2C, even with the most optimistic model. We're doomed! -
scaddenp at 19:28 PM on 4 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
Bibliovermis, forgive me if I misunderstand your question. The heat being transported in THC is solar radiation warming tropical water and transporting it about the globe. The idea that heat is from the inside the earth can be readily dismissed. The bottom waters are dense and cold. We measure that. The heat flux from inside earth to surface is also measured from boreholes - routine part of petroleum basin evaluation these days (and part of my job). At around 40-80 milliwatts/m2, this is inconsequential compared to the 190 watts/m2 from sun. -
JMurphy at 18:55 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
gallopingcamel wrote : "Most of the time I am flying against the wind on this blog and the faithful are used to applying ritual flagellation." Do you see everything in life in religious terms ? I suggest you should lean less on religion and more on science, when it comes to AGW at least. -
Paul D at 18:55 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
chriscanaris: "So John, I wonder whether we really should be talking about rises of 6 - 9 metres. I do agree however that two metres would definitely be a worry." 1 metre would cause many problems at Portsmouth UK, at high tides. 2 metres would cause flooding in some places. Portsmouth is densely populated, so many homes would be at risk at regular flooding. 3 metres would result in the Millennium tower to be closed regularly and some parts of the island to be un-inhabitable. 4 metres would be very difficult to defend against, probably leading to serious plans for moving the 200,000 population onto new homes and towns on agricultural land. Although I suspect at 3 to 3 metres plans would already be in place. 5 metres would mean abandonment of the city. About half of it is below 5m, certainly not higher. 6 metres ... There would be the question of pollution, due to land fill and materials from buildings being flooded. I guess that would be planned as well. Total costs would be billions probably just for one city and a loss of farmland to home the displaced. The surrounding coastal area would also be affected, with similar evacuations and loss of farmland and other green spaces. -
Joe Blog at 18:42 PM on 4 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
archiesteel at 14:52 I shall attempt to... if this works this is just the top one dropped on top o the bottom one, not rescaled on the Y axis, for obvious reasons... The THC is thermohaline circulation. A major ocean current, that basically pumps energy from the equator to higher latitudes.
Bibliovermis at 14:58
I think you will find, that, that giant fusion furnace in the sky is responsible for the VAST majority o the energy in the climate system, not the fission one under your feet. An obvious point, would be the lack of documented oceanic convection...
-
Riccardo at 18:34 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
Actually, I'm very pragmatic on this issue. Taken for granted that we're already outside the safe operating space on a few systems, I think that the real question is "how hard can we push the brakes?". Politically we need to define a threshold (a goal) and 2 °C is a good one, but I do not put much value on it. Indeed, I believe that we will push the brakes anyhow and we've started doing it, although not that hard yet. Like it or not, the fossil fuel era will (relatively) soon come to an end and the very long term impacts will be avoided. I can't speak for John, but this is my take on this post. -
archiesteel at 18:14 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
@gc (#62): "Actually, the electric automobile was developed first but somehow the internal combustion engine has gained a temporary ascendancy." Indeed, at some point electricity, steam and internal combustion all competed. The main reason the latter won is that it was much easier to set up a gasoline distribution network (i.e. gas stations and trucks) throughout the US than have an electric power grid covering the majority of such a vast therritory (unlike what we have now). Steam engines used coal, so you can imagine what that would have done for pollution... :-) -
Riccardo at 17:53 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
chriscanaris, "wonder whether we really should be talking about rises of 6 - 9 metres." It depends on our ability to discriminate between different time frames. -
chris1204 at 17:42 PM on 4 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
From http://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1004/full/climate.2010.30.html">Lowe and Gregory in Nature Reports 2010: 'New research suggests that the possibility of sea level rise of up to two metres by 2100 should be given serious consideration. One key study examined the ice flow rates that would be required to produce substantial sea level rise by 2100 and concluded that a rise of much more than two metres would be “physically untenable” [which is from the Pfeffer 2009 abstract verbatim]...Proxy evidence from oxygen isotope ratios in Red Sea sediment cores6 suggests that sea level rose by as much as 1.6 metres per century at a time in the past when the large ice sheets covered an area similar to their present-day extent...Although increases of up to two metres this century can't be ruled out, this does not mean that they are inevitable or even likely. For climate change to produce much more than one metre of sea level rise, ice sheets would probably have to contribute considerably more to the rise than they do now... The recent acceleration of Greenland outlet glaciers and Antarctic ice streams [this is a reference to Velicogna’s GRACE study of 2009] may be due in part to natural variability, and it might not continue. Some observations indicate that a number of the outlet glaciers and ice streams that accelerated in the 1990s have since started to slow down... In this sea of uncertainty, how do we derive a better estimate of sea level rise? ...The [current semi-empirical modelling] approach is loosely based on an understanding of physical processes, but the relationship is determined by statistical methods. The general assumption is that the relationship between sea level rise and temperature (or forcing) will hold in the future and for a much greater range of warming than occurred during the period from which it was calibrated... There has already been some debate about the statistical validity of these approaches... Adding up the estimates of the various observationally derived contributions to historic sea level rise, which all have uncertainties, we find that their sum may fall short of the measured total sea level rise... The semi-empirical methods assume that any difference is due to a missing contribution that will increase with global warming. Though that assumption may be correct, without understanding/ identifying the physical processes that may make up this shortfall in sea level, there is little in the way of supporting evidence.' The ellipses are in the interests of attempted brevity. Lowe seems to have made a major contribution to the UK defra site which concludes: *Our analysis gives projections of UK coastal absolute sea level rise (not including land movement) for 2095 that range* from approximately 13–76 cm. *Taking vertical land movement into account gives slightly larger sea level rise projections relative to the land in the more southern parts of the UK where land is subsiding, and somewhat lower increases in relative sea level for the north. We have, for example, derived projected relative sea level increases for 1990–2095 of approximately 21–68 cm for London and 7–54 cm for Edinburgh (5th to 95th percentile for the medium emissions scenario). *A low probability High++ sea level range has been defined for vulnerability testing. For the UK this absolute SLR estimate is 93 cm to 1.9 m by 2100. In the case of recent iconic flooding such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, we find that much of the problem emanated from the fact that some 49 percent lies below sea level, in places to 10–12 ft (3.05–3.66 m)- a problem compounded by subsidence of reclaimed land. I leave aside the contentious question of whether Katrina like events are more likely - I think they belong on another thread. So John, I wonder whether we really should be talking about rises of 6 - 9 metres. I do agree however that two metres would definitely be a worry. Similarly, I really have no way of knowing whether Lowe and Gregory's take on Velicogna is overoptimistic.Response: Thanks for that link, Chris. The Nature commentary doesn't, however, touch on empirical determinations of Eemian sea levels. Instead, it looks at semi-empirical attempts to predict the trajectory of sea level rise over the next century. As I say above, there's uncertainty about the time-frames involved.
But the end destination, 6+ metres sea level rise under sustained temperatures 2 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels, is determined empirically and independently of the methods discussed in the Nature commentary. I liken it to watching James Cameron's Titanic. We know how it ends but we're not exactly sure what's going to happen along the way and whether Leonardo di Caprio gets offed or not. -
Daniel Bailey at 16:17 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
Re: gallopingcamel (62) My apologies for being less than clear with my comments about the development of the electric auto. I should have said something along the lines of "If the electric auto had achieved widespread market penetration before the development of the internal combustion engine...". Thanks for the additional background info. If an electric car could put up with the deep snows of winter and the 200-250 miles per day work entails, I would have one instead of my Jeep PatriotPOS'fine example of American engineering' my company furnishes me with. FYI: It IS possible to fly against the wind without drawing flagellating fire, depending upon the idiom employed. :) The Yooper -
kdkd at 15:43 PM on 4 October 2010New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
To be fair KL and I have history, and in places other than this one, I have been exceptionally rude to him (and him to me). I won't link to the examples as that would be against the comments policy. Let's just say that "repetitive rubbish" is a more polite version of a particular name which I have called him elsewhere. To Ken's mind my impatience with his repetition is unacceptable. Instead I think he considers that we should accept his argument's validity because he's repeated it so often. It's worth noting that Ken's argument remains unchanged in nearly 18 months, despite a range of people pointing out to him the fatal flaws with his argument with varying degrees of civility. -
gallopingcamel at 15:29 PM on 4 October 2010Climate 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. -
Daniel Bailey at 15:22 PM on 4 October 2010New 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 -
ginckgo at 15:05 PM on 4 October 2010Newcomers, 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. -
Daniel Bailey at 14:59 PM on 4 October 2010What 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 -
archiesteel at 14:59 PM on 4 October 2010Irregular 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. -
Bibliovermis at 14:58 PM on 4 October 2010An 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. -
archiesteel at 14:52 PM on 4 October 2010An 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"? -
adelady at 14:46 PM on 4 October 2010What 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. -
archiesteel at 14:41 PM on 4 October 2010New 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. -
jyyh at 14:29 PM on 4 October 2010What 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 :-/. -
hadfield at 14:27 PM on 4 October 2010Positive 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. -
adelady at 14:16 PM on 4 October 2010What 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. -
jyyh at 14:10 PM on 4 October 2010What 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. -
Chris G at 13:29 PM on 4 October 2010What 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. -
Daniel Bailey at 13:20 PM on 4 October 2010What 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 -
Albatross at 13:16 PM on 4 October 2010Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
Adelady @26, I love that analogy...very good. -
chris1204 at 13:01 PM on 4 October 2010Irregular 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. -
chris1204 at 12:36 PM on 4 October 2010Irregular 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. -
scaddenp at 11:48 AM on 4 October 2010Uncertain 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. -
Daniel Bailey at 11:45 AM on 4 October 2010Climate 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
Prev 2152 2153 2154 2155 2156 2157 2158 2159 2160 2161 2162 2163 2164 2165 2166 2167 Next
