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Riccardo at 05:52 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Sorry Dana, I now a switch to serious mode. I strongly agree with your beginning with the legal part of the problem. Indeed, I often see a lot of confusion on this respect. People think that a pollutant is something dirty or something that directly and immediately hurts our health. They tend to see it more like a poison than a pollutant. Clarify on this was a great move. -
Riccardo at 05:44 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Arrhenius in his recent paper no more than a century old, with all of the massive parallel computing power he used, milions of lines of codes, tens of super-specialists working for him, an integrated network of land, ocean and satellite instruments, huge fundings from what we now know as IPCC, got his numbers wrong by a factor of two ... what a shame! John Cook, you should consider a new skeptic argument: Arrhenius was off by a factor of two so AGW is disproved. It's easy, you don't even need a formal rebuttal.Moderator Response: Let's take this conversation to a more appropriate page, please. -
CBDunkerson at 05:42 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
BTW, given that the whole 'skeptic' argument here is that something cannot be a pollutant if it is naturally occurring and/or has some beneficial effect(s) I might suggest the 'Basic' version of this article just list various examples of other substances which meet the same criteria but, like CO2, become pollutants at higher concentrations. -
dana1981 at 05:41 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Good point doug - seeing as how the EPA cannot regulate CO2 if it's not a "pollutant" which endangers public welfare, it's not surprising that this is such a sore subject for those who are 'skeptical' of AGW because they oppose government regulation of CO2. But as I think the article clearly shows, there's really no question that CO2 is a pollutant by whatever definition you want to choose, whether it be legal or encyclopedic. It's certainly not harmless. -
Phila at 05:39 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
#16 CO2 cannot "enter" the air, since "air" takes its definition from its constituents, CO2 being one of them. Air is a mixture of gases by definition. It's not at all clear why this definition should prevent us from speaking of a constituent gas "entering" the air. I'd love to see the logical steps here laid out in a little more detail. The idea that CO2 is pollutant is absurd since according to AGW if it were completely removed from the atmosphere we would all perish. The definition of "pollutant" is not "something that's inherently bad in all concentrations and at all times and places." And the fact that CO2 is necessary for life doesn't mean that industries should be allowed to emit as much as they want. "A little is necessary, so a lot is beneficial or harmless" doesn't make any kind of logical sense in the real world. These really are not difficult concepts. #17 I have a pretty good grasp on what drives the Earth's climate from the view of an engineer. Oddly enough, a lot of us prefer to get our information from climatologists, whose expertise and training tend to be a lot more relevant. Full disclosure: I also take my cat to the veterinarian for check-ups, rather than the mechanic. -
Bibliovermis at 05:38 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
TOP, Please learn what the ad hominem fallacy is before falsely throwing out accusations of such. "It's odd how skeptics say ..." is not an ad hominem. "Skeptics are wrong because of their general political ideology" is. TOP & scaddenp, If the oceans aren't generating energy, then this assertion that the oceans are heating the atmosphere is nothing more than "It's the Sun!" - the most used skeptic argument. Please read that article. -
dana1981 at 05:38 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Speaking of which, whoever is acting as moderator is doing a commendable job referring to the appropriate rebuttals. Nicely done. -
Doug Bostrom at 05:37 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Expect a lot of squealing as the rubber of regulation meets the road. "C02 is a pollutant" goes straight to the gut of the fossil fuels industry, so of course there's been a lot of attention paid to sowing confusion on the issue. -
Alexandre at 05:37 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Inconvenient Skeptic Oh, no... another "skeptic" throwing out claims in a faster rate than he can deal with. "Models are not confirmed by observations", "Arrhenius got it wrong and everyone else just followed it", "period x had low CO2 and high temperatures"... Come on, pick any source you think is reliable for atmospheric physics. Maybe a university's website, some large research institute or just a plain textbook. I'm sure your background as an engineer will be enough to understand it. If you don't have any source in mind, don't hesitate to ask. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:37 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
gallopingcamel... There is a section on SkS for thathere.Moderator Response: And galloping camel and everyone who wants to reply to him, please comment on that page, not this one. -
dana1981 at 05:35 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Oh boy, this comment thread seems to be de-evolving into a repetition of every long-debunked skeptic myth, from 'models are useless' to 'CO2 is saturated'. I suggest that those making these arguments spend some time perusing Skeptical Science, where these myths are refuted. gallopingcamel - believe it or not, life on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago was slightly different than life on Earth today.Moderator Response: Indeed, we are going to start deleting comments (and even responses to comments, to be fair) that are off the topic of this page. -
CBDunkerson at 05:34 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
RSVP #16: You need to read the definitions of 'pollution' in the article again. MANY pollutants are naturally occurring and/or beneficial in smaller quantities. Ergo, the fact that a certain level of CO2 is needed does not change the fact that CO2 far in excess of that level is pollution. Without light there would be no life on this planet at all... yet "light pollution" is a real problem for cave ecosystems and some cities. TIS #18: "That it exists at high altitudes is irrelevant as it has absorbed those bands long before the higher altitudes is reached." That statement is false. I suggest reading Is the CO2 effect saturated?Response: Not only reading that post, but commenting there, not here. That includes people responding to those comments mis-posted on this page. You are free to post a comment pointing to your response on the appropriate page, though. Reminder to everyone: You can see all recent comments regardless of which page they appear on, by clicking the Recent Comments link in the blue horizontal bar at the top of this page. -
archiesteel at 05:33 AM on 5 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
@RSVP: what's a "warmest"? Also, convincing politicians who know nothing about science is actually pretty hard when you have a huge Climate Denial Machine funded by the Koch bros. and their ilk drowning real research with their anti-science propaganda. -
Doug Bostrom at 05:33 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Pardon me for making free with advice but this conversation is rapidly heading in an extremely boring direction, promising all sorts of pointless repetition of shopworn canards. "TIS" (The Inconvenient Skeptic) if you're going to make any serious inroads into thinking around here, you're first going to want to revise the inconvenient embarrassment of the article you wrote and have advertised here, taking into account the corrections already on offer. Blunders like your essay are a solid impediment to your credibility and you'll never be allowed to forget it; getting fundamentals so wrong is an important clue as to how seriously any remarks you make here should be taken. You're using your real name, you should respect its worth because it's the only one you have. Also, your alacrity in citing Judith Curry is a unhelpful clue about your perspective and further saps your credibility. Dr. Curry is of course a handy rhetorical prop these days for self-professed skeptics; among skeptics Curry's seen as some sort of evangelized convert to climate skepticism. While it's true that pickings in that department are precious thin, leaving only one example from which to choose, invoking Dr. Curry immediately casts a political tone over anything else you say, meaning people are made aware you're not really concerned with science but instead political theatrics. Problems with dully redundant regurgitation of tired misdirection can be avoided by circumspection, looking at the complete picture as best we know it today, which of course implies such easily accomplished behaviors as not referring to anachronistic narratives of science as it stood over 100 years ago, politically expedient personalities, etc. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:31 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
gallopingcamel... There is a section on SkS for that here. -
gallopingcamel at 05:26 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Inconvenient Skeptic (#6), Thank you for pointing out the absurdity of the idea that rising CO2 levels significantly impacted climate over the last 80 years. Even though the idea does not fly at any time scale the faithful on this site are hard to persuade! Getting back to the idea that CO2 is somehow a "pollutant", it seems that the EPA is running this flag up the pole to see if anyone salutes. Thus far they have have dismally failed with all the scientists I work with. For those of you who see CO2 as a pollutant, can you explain how life flourished during tens of millions of years when the atmospheric concentration of CO2 exceeded 6,000 ppm (15 times higher than today)? -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 05:22 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
CB Dunk, CO2 does in fact have a limited absorption bank limited to 14-16 micron (for purposes of the GH effect). That it exists at high altitudes is irrelevant as it has absorbed those bands long before the higher altitudes is reached. I only point out Arrhenius because he is often cited as the originator of the idea behind global warming. It is worth noting that no "theory" was provable until the 1970's. That is when time series temperature data became readily available. Arrhenius's idea that doubling CO2 levels would increase warming 5-6C is still used by many. Only the explanation of why it happens has changed over the years.Moderator Response: See CO2 effect is saturated. And post any comments about that topic there, not here. -
johnd at 05:16 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
doug_bostrom at 05:05 AM, doug, you've got no choice, the Nichols red herring you dished up has come back to repeat, unable to be digested. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 05:13 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
The classification of CO2 as a pollutant is a very serious subject that will have a profound impact in the United States. I have spent a significant period of time studying all aspects of this from original sources. I have a pretty good grasp on what drives the Earth's climate from the view of an engineer. Modeling is not science until the results match the observations. Using them as proof until that is achieved is not science.Moderator Response: See Models are unreliable. And post any comments about that topic on that page, not this one. Off topic comments will be deleted from this page. -
RSVP at 05:13 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
CO2 cannot "enter" the air, since "air" takes its definition from its constituents, CO2 being one of them. The Clean Air Act targeted CO emmissions as these are toxic. The idea that CO2 is pollutant is absurd since according to AGW if it were completely removed from the atmosphere we would all perish. First, from a lack of food and second from temperatures dropping (according to AGW). -
Albatross at 05:10 AM on 5 October 2010Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
pbjamm, Sorry if I was not clear. Your position on this was evident to me, I was not criticizing you :) -
CBDunkerson at 05:10 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
TIS #6: "My article on the original theory based on Arrhenius is here:" What is with the 'skeptic' tendency to focus on disputing 100+ year old science? Are they stuck in the wrong century or something? From the article; "Unfortunately it was 80 years before it could fully be proven as incorrect and as a result the flawed idea had plenty of time to become well entrenched in the scientific community." So this is to be a work of fiction? In reality Arrhenius's idea of human CO2 emissions increasing global temperatures was completely rejected based on reasonable but ultimately incorrect objections; At the time instrument quality was not sufficient to show the IR bands absorbed by CO2 but not water vapor, scientists hadn't considered that CO2 occurs at higher altitudes than water vapor and thus would have a warming impact even if they DID overlap totally, and it was believed that the oceans would be able to absorb all human CO2 emissions because they didn't consider the surface saturation rate. Et cetera. Arrhenius's theory was consequently all but forgotten for decades until the accumulating evidence proved him right. The exact opposite of the scenario presented in the story. I see below that Agnstrom is cited. It was Angstrom who made the aforementioned incorrect assumptions about the IR absorption of CO2, so apparently TIS is aware of some of this but chose to present a false narrative anyway... even claiming Angstrom's findings as correct when they've been proven to be completely wrong for many decades now. -
dorlomin at 05:09 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
"The Earth was at it's warmest period from about 5,000-9,000 years ago when CO2 was in the 260-270ppm range. The Earth has cooled over the past 5,000 years while CO2 has gone up." When it was physically closer to the sun during the nothern hemisphere summer. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 05:07 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Dana, The problem with modeling the future is that those same models cannot be used to explain the past. For instance. The warming at the end of the last glacial is a serious problem for computer models that depend on CO2 levels. If the feedback of the global climate is so sensitive to CO2 levels then the any change in CO2 would cause unbounded feedback and thermal runaway. Since the Earth is stable (within a temperature range, +/- 7C over the past 1 million years) there has never been a thermal runaway. The reason is that the Earth is a stable system. Your chart showing CO2 levels for the past 10,000 years shows a gradual increase in CO2 levels for basically the whole period until anthropogenic CO2 changed the path. The problem is that the steady increase in CO2 has not caused a steady increase in global temperatures. Temperature has been widely variable in the past 10,000 years. The Earth was at it's warmest period from about 5,000-9,000 years ago when CO2 was in the 260-270ppm range. The Earth has cooled over the past 5,000 years while CO2 has gone up. It is that disconnect between temperature and CO2 that I am referring to. While it is fun to focus on short term (our lifetime is very short scale climate wise) changes, it is the long term that matters. If the climate is so sensitive to CO2 that it was responsible for the end of the last glacial, then the increases in the past 5,000 should have caused warming. The increases CO2 for the past 5,000 years did not. Any model that tries to deal with that disconnect fails. That is why models have not been able to deal with the past. Since they cannot do that, they cannot be trusted for the future. I should have stated that the brightness temp post was the most convincing argument showing CO2 matters. Again, I don't argue the anthropogenic impact on CO2 levels, but what impact that CO2 will have on the temperature. John Kehr The Inconvenient SkepticModerator Response: See the Argument CO2 is not the only driver of climate. -
Doug Bostrom at 05:05 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
I'm going to leave the kitchen in your hands, johnd. We're into completely different cuisine than the thread topic. -
johnd at 05:02 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
doug_bostrom at 04:46 AM, what is clear to me that for many people the weather and the climate is a matter for conversation or of academic interest hence the interest in the theories, formulas and peer reviewed papers and little appreciation of how it all manifests itself in the real world. On the other hand there are others who are involved in the world of weather, or whose world is subject to the vagaries of the weather and the climate, and look for explanations for what is so readily observed. This is where I would put myself accounting for the differences of our perspectives. As far as the awareness of the IOD, firstly you have to distinguish between IO data and IOD data, but go back and read that email again to distinguish between awareness and implementation. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:58 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
TOP, try to get your terminology correct. "Skeptics are often wrong" is not an ad hominem attack, nor is saying "skeptics often scurry to the refuge of claiming to be the victims of an ad hominem attack" the real article. In the specific case, I was remarking on a general feature you'd just demonstrated, namely that skeptics are frequently found demanding that others answer questions they're capable of answering themselves. On the other hand, saying "TOP is stupid" while ignoring your errors would be an example of an ad hominem attack. Also, temperature times mass times specific heat equates to energy, TOP. Sometimes it's possible to get so tangled in terminology that one misses the point. -
pbjamm at 04:56 AM on 5 October 2010Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
I agree that the 3 year period is far too short to show anything useful and that choosing mid 2007 as a start date would be cherrypicking. I only mentioned it because of the comments by nofreewind @25. -
RSVP at 04:56 AM on 5 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
Riccardo #19 "I'd love to read more thoughtful comments here at SkS" Warmest actually have it pretty easy since they only have to convince politicians who know nothing about science. Is that thoughtful enough? -
CBDunkerson at 04:55 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
TOP #54: Again, your claim that the oceans are accumulating heat faster than the atmosphere is true, but not at all "curious". That is an expected result of global warming. You seem to claim that it is NOT due to global warming, but dance around precisely where this energy is supposed to be coming from. Are you hinting at sea floor volcanism driving observed warming? It'd be a bad joke if you were, but you don't really say. As to the semantic flim-flammery with temperature vs energy... sorry, can't be bothered. -
dorlomin at 04:52 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Incidently The Inconvenient Skeptic, is your post not merely link baiting? -
dorlomin at 04:49 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
The Inconvenient Skeptic, 'debunking' Aarhenius is all very well but his work has been superceded by others many times over. I would recomend Ramanathan and Coakley as a good place to start getting up to speed on the modern (i.e post 1905) science. -
dana1981 at 04:48 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Byron - thanks, and fair point. I didn't intend to imply that the increased extinction rate was solely due to climate change. I'll modify the wording. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:46 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
Was that supposed to be a dramatic unveiling, JohnD? I'm sorry, I just don't get the "ah, hah!" What I read is that there's a lag in incorporating theoretical treatment of Australia's regional climate and its external influences into models used by the Australian weather bureau. Is this supposed to be a black mark on climate science in general? Extending our food fun, "where's the beef?" I see a bun but no patty, it's not the meal I was promised. I think I understand from your general remarks here that you're involved in agriculture in Australia. If I'm right, inter-annual climate/weather predictions having to do w/Australia are certainly going to be near and dear to you. Supposing I'm right, I speculate perhaps you're so close to this subject that it's relative importance in the grand scheme of things is viewed very differently by you as opposed to folks in the wider world. On a more general note, your quote seems to indicate a general awareness of the IOD, hardly bolstering your case that it's been studiously ignored or exemplifies a black hole of ignorance in Australian climate research circles. Speaking of red herrings, exactly what does all this have to do with the topic of this thread? -
dana1981 at 04:45 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
John Kehr - I suggest you click some of the links in this article. You might learn something. Your claim "The only empirical evidence you have ever posted is based on differences in brightness temperature" is false and refuted by those links. As for the accuracy of climate models, in addition to the 'fingerprints' article linked in this rebuttal, I also suggest you read the Advanced rebuttal to 'Hansen's 1988 predictions were wrong'. I'm not sure why you seem to consider Judith Curry the world's foremost authority on climate models, since unlike James Hanse, she's not even a climate modeler. As Senator Pat Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." -
Byron Smith at 04:43 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Excellent post Dana (once again!). Just a small point: is it worth pointing out that the extinction rate is currently primarily due to habitat destruction/land use change, plus widespread agricultural practices? Climate change will increasingly contribute to this and exacerbate the problem, but as it currently stands it is not the top driver, let alone the only driver, as is possibly implied by your current wording. Keep up the great work! -
Phila at 04:36 AM on 5 October 2010What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
Shouldnt all kinds of land tracts be getting freed up of ice compensating loss of coastal regions?" There's this odd tendency, on the "skeptical" side of the argument, to see all types of land as basically equivalent: If you lose some habitable space here, you simply make it up there. Wetlands flooded? Move everyone inland and northward, to the convenient "tracts" of melting permafrost! I generally expect "skeptics" to overlook biodiversity and ecosystem services. I'm more surprised by how often they overlook the logistical difficulty of the adaptations they suggest. Especially when it comes from people who see mitigation measures as seriously if not fatally disruptive to The Free World, the relatively sunny outlook re: climate-forced migration is really puzzling. -
TOP at 04:36 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
QUOTE d_bostrom 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." Ad hominem attack. Timeout in the corner please. I asked scaddenp anyway. His data is probably unpublished anyway. QUOTE CB_Dunkerson but your apparent conclusion that this means the oceans are somehow 'generating' the increased temperature is clearly illogical. Straw man argument. I didn't say that the oceans were generating energy. You did. QUOTE CB_Dunkerson Instead BOTH are increasing. But what is curious is that the ocean temp increase is leading the atmosphere temperature increase. You also need to get your terminology right. Generating increased temperature doesn't make sense. We are talking about transport of energy. Temperature is not energy. TOP-skeptical about skeptical skeptics -
muoncounter at 04:30 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
"We know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic from a number of lines of evidence." Here's another bit of evidence, from Cerveny and Coakley 2002: The Mauna Loa MSR [a statistic developed by the authors] curve (figure 1a) strongly suggests a prominent seven-day cycle in CO2 concentrations. Friday through Sunday experience the lowest values of CO2 while Monday through Wednesday has highest values. ... Such a weekly cycle would be due to either local causes or hemispheric causes. Such weekly cycles were also reported for NO2, which is clearly a pollutant, by Beirle et al. 2003: In the cycles of the industrialized regions and cities in the US, Europe and Japan a clear Sunday minimum of tropospheric NO2 VCD can be seen. Sunday NO2 VCDs are about 25–50% lower than working day levels. Metropolitan areas with other religious and cultural backgrounds (Jerusalem, Mecca) show different weekly patterns corresponding to different days of rest. In China, no weekly pattern can be found. Since the former work was based on surface measurements and the latter based on satellite measurements, with VCD='vertical column density', it would seem that 'measurement error' or 'sample bias' is not an issue with these conclusions. -
The Inconvenient Skeptic at 04:30 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
I agree that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere as a result of human activity. After that we disagree. The science behind CO2 as a problem with warming is absurd. If the basis that it causes warming is the only reason for it being a pollutant then you have nothing. My article on the original theory based on Arrhenius is here: http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/09/the-extremely-flawed-foundation-of-global-warming/ You can argue all you want about the water vapor feedback, but the simple fact is that no model has ever been able to predict the impact of CO2. Even Judith Curry is not convinced the models can show anything useful. The only empirical evidence you have ever posted is based on differences in brightness temperature which is independent of infra-red energy transmission. If the atmosphere is not absorbing more energy as a result of higher CO2 concentrations, then there is no such thing as global warming. My article tomorrow will be about pollution and CO2 emissions. You should read it because it focuses on what matters. I will gladly discuss science on any topic. Should be fun. :-) John Kehr The Inconvenient Skeptic -
Tom Loeber at 04:28 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
Good point Mr. Murphy. Not much registering of broken records in those articles. It is me stretching that probably they were but not recorded. Sorry about that. I do think though that, so far I have answered your question "Do you have any evidence for any of those claims of "wide spread record cold?" in the affirmative at least a bit since your question is relatively extreme. Hope to cement that a bit more with time. Really should go do some physical work on my B100 consuming car. Got a schedule to keep. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:28 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
It strikes me that the combination of Tom's articles in with what looks like an innocuous slight negative anomaly over parts of South American serves as a handy reminder that seemingly insignificant average anomalies can translate into dramatic local weather events. -
CBDunkerson at 04:27 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
That GISS link Doug provided in #67 makes about how the question, 'was weather event XYZ caused by global warming', is usually answered which has bothered me for a long time; ------------------- "Finally, a comment on frequently asked questions of the sort: Was global warming the cause of the 2010 heat wave in Moscow, the 2003 heat wave in Europe, the all-time record high temperatures reached in many Asian nations in 2010, the incredible Pakistan flood in 2010? The standard scientist answer is "you cannot blame a specific weather/climate event on global warming." That answer, to the public, translates as "no". However, if the question were posed as "would these events have occurred if atmospheric carbon dioxide had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm?", an appropriate answer in that case is "almost certainly not." That answer, to the public, translates as "yes", i.e., humans probably bear a responsibility for the extreme event." -
johnd at 04:27 AM on 5 October 2010An underwater hockey stick
doug_bostrom at 04:06 AM, perhaps the words of a researcher, Harry Hendon from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research division of BOM might enlighten you. However given your criteria you will probably consider him a definite crank. Hope you don't choke on your red herring.:-) His details are at http://cawcr.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/hhendon.htm, contact him and ask him to verify that the following comments he emailed to another researcher, Gary Meyers, Director, Integrated Marine Observing System, University of Tasmania are indeed correct.............. Gary, I was thinking about the official seasonal forecast issued from BoM (which is currently based entirely on empirical relationships). They don't even factor in the IOD. They assess the likely state of El Niño, and the likely state of the subtropical Indian ocean (the so called Nicholls dipole), which was shown to have a relationship with Australian winter rainfall in an older Nicholls paper (which I think is now regarded as a bit of a red herring as far as predictive capability is concerned). The importance and predictability of the IOD has not percolated up (or down) to those who issue the forecast. I guess that's the fault of the researchers (like me) in BMRC. For those interested, I include a link to the official BoM seasonal forecast issued last July 2006, when we knew we going to have a pIOD. As you can see from reading the justification of the BoM forecast, http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/ahead/20060725R.shtml the warm loading onto the subtropical IO was an important factor. This link shows what this SST pattern is in the IO http://cas.bom.gov.au/misc.dir/atlas.dir/index.html , which you can see has nothing to do with an IOD. So, in the official BoM forecasts, there is no mention of the IOD. Of course as it turned out last year, the official forecast for the SE of Australia wasn't too good: we had a pIOD and record drought. Ideally, in the near future the Bureau will switch their official seasonal forecast to the direct output from the dynamical ensemble system (single model or multi-model), for which the hindcast skill is well documented. In this case, we won't selectively call out a dipole event or El Niño event, rather, we will directly provide the regional climate predictions (e.g. pdf of eastern Australian temperature and rainfall) that result from prediction of the entire coupled system. Harry -
JMurphy at 04:22 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
Tom Loeber, your first newspaper article mentions some days of low temperatures due to a cold front in certain areas of Southern Brazil, Northern Argentina and Uruguay, and one claim of worst for 47 years - lots of dead fish in Bolivia. Your second article mentions "coldest winter in [Argentina in] 40 years". Your third piece is a blog which re-iterates the number of dead fish in Bolivia (See your first link also). Your last link mentions "coldest temperatures in 10 years" in Argentina and a general "cold spell" in South America. The LAHT link about Peru wouldn't load for me but I doubt whether there is anything there more unusual than the rest of your links. So, am I right in thinking that when you mention "widespread record cold" you are basing your views on newspaper articles ? What records have been broken in any of those articles, that can compare to record high temperatures ? You know, the temperatures that have been the highest in ALL records ? -
Bob Guercio at 04:19 AM on 5 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Just another thought. Even though we may not be past the danger level, I'm sure that a 2°C is still going to put us on a roller coaster. Therefore, I'm guessing that more than a 2°C rise will put us past a tipping point. Some say we may have already passed a tipping point but reversibility may still be an option. Sounds bad to me! -
Doug Bostrom at 04:19 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
Oops, sorry! Here you go: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2010 — How Warm Was This Summer? -
Tom Loeber at 04:17 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
Cool, I see a blue smudge over Australia too. Could you post the source of that please? -
Albatross at 04:16 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
You beat me to it Doug! :) -
Albatross at 04:15 AM on 5 October 2010We're heading into an ice age
Tom, Cherry-picking at its extremes and confusing regional weather events with long-term global trends. Did you know that 2010 likely going to be the warmest year in the instrumented record? Did you know that 17 nations this year have set all time record high temperatures, while only one nation has set an all time record low? (H/T Jeff Masters) Did you know that: "The June–August worldwide land surface temperature was 1.00°C (1.80°F) above the 20th century average of 13.8°C (56.9°F)—the warmest June–August on record, surpassing the previous June–August record anomaly of 0.92°C (1.66°F) set in 1998." [from NCDC] Did you know that so far this year the S. Hemisphere has had its second warmest year on record? [NCDC] Please read this and have a look at the figure below:
Also look at Fig. 21 in this
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