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Comments 108151 to 108200:

  1. 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.
  2. 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 ?
  3. An underwater hockey stick
    Yeah, johnd, you're the expert, after all. Clearly you've a good grasp of the literature.
  4. 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?
  5. 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 ;-)
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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"?
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    #15: "SSTs respond to ENSO cycles." This is about sea levels. Can ENSO cycles really have any long term effect on sea level? They are, after all cycles, which tend to average out to small change. Switching now to the ENSO thread.
  20. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    @johnd I'm very much at layman level, but what I understood from a very interesting documentary I once saw about "Global dimming" was that evaporation has dropped worldwide, caused by a reduction of sunlight which is a much bigger factor in evaporation than temperature (that went up in those places). I also understood that in more recent years the air in most western countries has become cleaner because of regulation (car catalyst converters etc) which has drastically reduced dust and soot particles (not reducing co2 though). Ironically the cleaner air is reducing global dimming, but increasing evaporation and increasing global warming. Neither phenomenon is nice. Apologies if I've just totally missed the point.
  21. gallopingcamel at 06:44 AM on 4 October 2010
    Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    CBDunkerson (#58), I have no argument with you as I am trying to make a case against burning fossil fuels. We appear to be on the same side as far as the big picture (cutting CO2 emissions) is concerned. Even so, your closing statement is absurd on many levels: # Switch all public funds currently supporting fossil fuels to renewable energy (even ignoring the larger disparity which has accumulated over the past ~150 years) and it is the fossil fuels which are not economically viable. # I would like to set you straight but that would get us into the realm of "solutions".
  22. An underwater hockey stick
    @TOP: which two graphs have you overlaid, and how is this a good argument against AGW?
  23. An underwater hockey stick
    So sorry, johnd, I forgot: you've got more knowledge stuffed between your ears than entire faculties of multiple universities. In future I'll remember not to bother trying to offer you anything that might be of interest to us ordinary mortals.
  24. An underwater hockey stick
    I just overlayed the two graphs. Seems to be a good argument against AGW. I'll have to read the paper.
  25. Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    GC - I completely agree that we can find the energy for our civilization without fossil fuel. What I am amazed about is the apparent assumption, too political for you to post, that somehow climate scientists would disagree.
  26. An underwater hockey stick
    doug_bostrom at 00:08 AM, the UNSW video only reinforced my opinion about their climate expertise. Early last year they published an article "Indian Ocean causes Big Dry: drought mystery solved". Anyone reading the article would get the impression that "the surprising finding" had been done by the UNSW scientists alluding it was they who had discovered the Indian Ocean Dipole IOD and "detailed for the first time" the link to Australia's weather. I found it most disappointing that they created that impression as it had been discovered by Japanese researchers, but also it had been discovered a decade before which put them well behind everybody else, even private forecasters and researchers here in Australia. In the video one of the speakers mentioned how the negative dipole that is associated with increased rainfall had been absent for about 15 years and seemed to allude that this was due to a permanent change in circulation patterns. What he didn't say however was the the long absence was not something new, in fact in the late 1800's it was absent for at least 25 years (the chart I took that from only began in 1880), absent again from about 1917 - 1930 and absent again 1942 - 1958, apart from the smaller gaps, but overall it seemed to be present more frequently from the 1970's to 1990's than any other period since the 1800's. All in all I wasn't impressed by the video presentation.
  27. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    And note also please, it seems that Goddard used the SL data to which the inverse barometer correction has not been applied. If true, double fail for Goddard.
  28. Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    gallopingcamel #57, without getting into the political downfalls around taking 'free market' ideology to extremes... I always find the free market argument against controlling fossil fuels inherently illogical. The amount of money spent to subsidize fossil fuels is enormous. Even leaving out the cost of wars instigated, at least in part, over these resources we are talking about amounts far in excess of anything which has even been proposed in the way of subsidies for other energy sources. Ridiculous amounts of public funding are provided to oil companies for exploration and research. Entire aircraft carriers have been built and permanently assigned to the gulf region with the sole, officially stated, purpose of protecting oil shipments. Switch all public funds currently supporting fossil fuels to renewable energy (even ignoring the larger disparity which has accumulated over the past ~150 years) and it is the fossil fuels which are not economically viable.
  29. An underwater hockey stick
    Ken Lambert at 00:02 AM, this may not be the paper you were think of, but may be be of interest anyway CHANGES IN AUSTRALIAN PAN EVAPORATION FROM 1970 TO 2002 One of the earliest things I remember learning about the Darling River at school was how the river boats that used to go up the Darling in the 1800's to carry the wool out, would get stranded for years at a time if they missed getting out before the water levels fell. Even the Murray River stopped flowing during some of those early droughts.
  30. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Goddard, FYI.
  31. Newcomers, Start Here
    Or mountain pine beetles. The current destructive spread of this beetle is ten times worse than any previous infestation. I lost a tree yesterday, and the tree cutter said that "ten times" sounds about right, because he'd cut down about ten times the usual number of pines this year. The current spread is being blamed primarily on warmer winter temps preventing the usual die-off. Many tree species may be more flexible than insects in their ability to individually survive changing climate conditions, but they can't, as species, rapidly evolve to survive a changing insect, bacteria, and/or fungal context.
  32. Newcomers, Start Here
    Ken #34: "These fraught 'wildlife' impacts of AGW always follow the same theme - the impact will always trend between negative and disaster." I take it you haven't heard about global warming impacts on mosquitoes or marmots.
  33. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    Daniel Bailey at 01:14 AM, whilst there may be higher levels of moisture in the atmosphere, your comments about evaporation are a distortion of reality. Evaporation data collected around the world show falling evaporation rates over the last 50 years as this study shows,CHANGES IN AUSTRALIAN PAN EVAPORATION FROM 1970 TO 2002 which notes that "the terrestrial surface in Australia has, on average, become less arid over the recent past, just like much of the Northern Hemisphere."
  34. Newcomers, Start Here
    ClimateWatcher, you have completely ignored my comment which covered the issue you raised. Human with gun versus polar bear. The same situation has been seen in Afrika with Elephants and India with Tigers. Humans win the habitat war, so lets assume the bears migrate and adapt, they aren't going to compete with humans.
  35. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    An earlier post referred to how certain UK newapapers ( such as the Daily Mail) might report this . Just to point out that several commenters made a spirited defence of science of global climate change and of the Royal Society At one point there were 212 comments about their article on http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1316469/Royal-Society-issues-new-climate-change-guide-admits-uncertainties.html I'm not sure why, but these have all mysteriously disappeared . Perhaps we need a commission on this.
  36. Irregular Climate podcast 11
    chriscanaris #20 "three years in a row of unusual conditions." is a fairly bland and anaemic misrepresentation of the factual situation, given the actual figures on ice volume. What conditions are you talking about, exactly? I have no doubt the Arctic holds some surprises for us. They may not be the ones anyone expects. If you have been keeping a weather eye on political developments, you will find that all the Arctic nations (Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark) are making medium term preparations for a growing regional population and a resource-rich ice-free ocean. The USA is also making preparations of sorts, but we have to wonder what a Tea Party Secretary of Defence will make of it all. Arctic ice is recovering, after all, so let's not waste the taxpayers' $dollars, right? Russia Claims Arctic Natural Resources "Russia has a "natural claim" to vast supplies of natural resources in the polar region a Kremlin aide told an international forum on the Arctic on Wednesday."
  37. An underwater hockey stick
    I see your hockey stick and raise you a wavy line. The first reconstruction I found from a search I did on Web of Science. A NEW RECONSTRUCTION OF TEMPERATURE VARIABILITY IN THE EXTRA-TROPICAL NORTHERN HEMISPHERE DURING THE LAST TWO MILLENNIA Ljungqvist FC GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES A-PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY Volume: 92A Issue: 3 Pages: 339-351 From the data and methods section "The new reconstruction presented in this paper consists of 30 temperature sensitive proxy records from the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere (90–30°N), all of which reach back to at least AD 1000 and 16 all the way back to AD 1." From the abstract "The highest average temperatures in the reconstruction are encountered in the mid to late tenth century and the lowest in the late seventeenth century. Decadal mean temperatures seem to have reached or exceeded the 1961–1990 mean temperature level during substantial parts of the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. The temperature of the last two decades, however, is possibly higher than during any previous time in the past two millennia, although this is only seen in the instrumental temperature data and not in the multi-proxy reconstruction itself." The money shot. http://i54.tinypic.com/11wd2r5.png John it worries me that lines such as "The growing body of evidence is strengthening the view that current warming is unprecedented over the past 1000 years" means that this has turned into a fight over a sound bite. I'm more curious about what the various reconstructions tell us about natural variability. I know the conclusions drawn from a Mann hockey stick are very supportive of AGW. Would something like the Ljungqvist wavy line say this approach to diagnosing AGW is less conclusive?
  38. gallopingcamel at 02:17 AM on 4 October 2010
    Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    That's better! (posts #54,55 & 56), Daniel Bailey doubts my motives so let's clear that up. I am not trying to bait a trap in the hope of shouting "Gotcha!". It is much simpler than that; I strongly support the idea of a sharp reduction in CO2 emissions (point A), one of the key notions on this thread. Many people seem to believe that points A and B are mutually exclusive so my task is to convince you otherwise. If you tell people that they have to give up heating/cooling their homes, motor transportation etc. etc. in the hope of limiting global temperature rise to <2 degrees Kelvin, nothing is going to change. doug_bostrom, it is clear that you are familiar with BNC (Brave New Climate). Marxists can be found there but also plenty of free market folks (like me). Persuasion works much better than coercion (IMHO). I want people to drive electric cars (as I do) because it makes sense rather than because they have no choice. scaddenp, John Cook will (rightly) censor me if I respond to your question about the motivations of "Climate Science". All I am suggesting is that there are ways to get the energy our civilization needs at an affordable price without burning fossil fuels.
  39. Irregular Climate podcast 11
    @chriscanaris: when posting images from wikipedia (or wikicommons, which in this case has an updated graph), you have to click on the file name again at the "File" page (the page you linked to) to get the actual file path. As you can see from this more recent graph, the September minima was actually lower this year. The earlier graph probably used the early September figures, which included a lull in the decrease that was mistakenly interpreted as the minima.
  40. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    @KL: I'm not particularly interested in your interpretation of the P&J paper. Unless I'm mistaken, they don't claim to have found all of the missing heat, but rather showed heat could be found in such places that are not adequately measured. #122: A "flattening?" You're grasping at straws, here. Even BP agrees that his graphs show a "linear increase." I'm sorry, but your repeated errors and mischaracterizations have pretty much destroyed your credibility on the matter.
  41. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    Re: adelady (87) You make a very cogent point about people not understanding the impacts. Perhaps the most useful way to frame a better understanding is in terms of capacity. In a warmer world, air has more capacity to store moisture (and thus more energy). As a result, soils on average dry out more between precipitation events. When those events do occur, they have a greater capacity to deliver precipitation (think: bigger fuel tanks) due to the extra moisture available. The perverse result? More droughts AND more floods. More floods, more erosion and landslides. All of which result in declines in crop productions. Equals less food... The Yooper
  42. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    Mike I think you're right about people not understanding the impacts of warming climate. The global average temperature is literally a statistic. No-one anywhere lives in this "average" state. What people really need to understand that warming or heating is another way of saying 'a higher level of energy'. Then you marry that to higher water vapour because of higher evaporation. That higher level of energy and higher evaporation means more variations and more extremes in temperature, evaporation and precipitation extremes lead to more droughts, more floods, more snowstorms. What I see in many comments in various places is that many NH people really think that another couple of degrees would be mild, pleasant and therefore desirable. They overlook the horrible 2003 summer and the recent death toll in Russia's heatwave. And it's really hard to get across the message that "global warming" means more shovelling of snow in some places rather than less. Hence my preference for the "climate disruption" description. Warming is too likely to evoke images of holidays at an idyllic beach or a hot toddy by an open fire, rather than a scalding hot bath or a non-functioning air conditioner. Disruption has no immediately positive imagery to counteract,nor is it irretrievably catastrophic. Routine disruption is roadworks or power blackouts or storm damage or delays in deliveries. It's always annoying and in some circumstances it can wreck your plans. Serious disruption can wreck your life.
  43. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    muoncounter #14: And, of course, the 15,000-year period he uses includes almost all of the sea level rise resulting from the end of the last ice age. The vast majority of this rise was finished by about 7,000 years ago. This is like saying that the four pounds Harry has gained since last year is meaningless because it's less than his average annual weight gain since birth. Goddard has to compare the current rate to the rate over the entire post-glacial period rather than to the rate over the last ~5,000 years because then he'd have to change "much lower than" to "much higher than". That wouldn't be helpful to his position.
  44. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    Just two points that I know may have an effect (without denying climate change) is when glaciers melt the weight allows the continental land mass to rise in a reflex action. The other issue is when heat leaves one body and enters another the former body will naturally contract as the heat (energy) leaves and the structural atoms slow down their activity due to less energy to drive the activity and move closer together hence contraction. Sea level would therefore fall marginally. The only snags to these two ideas is that I have no idea what data points they use to measure the sea level from outer space and whether the expansion/contraction actually is that massive to give a observable change in sea levels. On the issue of graphs you can make them look even more impressive by simply changing the scales on the x or y axis to heighten the point you wish to make. Take a 1 degree temperature rise over 30 years. If you shorten the x axis and lengthen the y axis you will produce a graph that looks like the Himalayas. Do the opposite and it becomes a flat line which appears to show nothing. Depends on who you want to convince of the facts and how gullible the listeners are I suppose.
  45. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    SSTs respond to ENSO cycles. The current la Nina is a very cold one. You can check out the drop here by selecting 'sea surface' (instead of near surface layer ch04). You can see the drop graphically here, and see the indices here.
  46. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    9x10^16 Watt-hours here, 9x10^16 Watt-hours there, pretty soon you're talking real SLR.
  47. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    Archisteel #118 "As far as OHC goes, the Purkey and Johnson study gives a good hint as to where the "missing heat" is hiding (with troubling implications)." This is my take on P&J from the 'Billions of Blow-dryers thread which elaborates P & J paper: "Dr Trenberth's TOA imbalance is 0.9W/sq.m of which he can account for about 0.55W/sq.m with wide error bars. Of the 0.35W/sq.m 'missing' the above analysis (0.095) accounts for about 27% - again with wide error bars. A total contribution 0.146mm/yr of SLR is tiny compared with the current trend of 2.1 - 2.5mm/yr." Strangely I am not looking over my shoulder for the P&J missing heat to suddenly king hit the SLR.
  48. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    #5" "His sample consists of only twelve data points (apparently not grasping that his data set only amounts to less than one third of calendar one year" Ah, but with such a sample, the graph above and a ruler, one can see the new trend: sea level is falling by 30 mm/yr! Clearly, Goddard must now be considered an alarmist! An yet, he goes on to throw a stone at our own John Cook, observing Current sea level rise rates are much lower than the average for the last 15,000 years. Current trends are more than an order of magnitude lower than Hansen’s forecast. In the-world-according-to-Goddard, trends can simultaneously be both smaller and larger.
  49. The Skeptical Chymist at 00:09 AM on 4 October 2010
    Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    Doug, I thought your comment about the treatment of uncertainty in the report was very interesting. When I talk to people in my lab (other scientists, PhD students etc) I know they understand the difference between "uncertainties" and "uncertain", we inhabit a world of error bars and standard deviations so evaluating uncertainties is second nature. But I'm really not sure how this plays to the general public. Having just read the RS Guide, what is there is almost identical to the IPCC working group 1 (scientific basis). Which as Steven Schneider observed is packed so full of caveats and expression of uncertainties it doesn't make for very entertaining reading. As MarkR observed the RS Guide doesn't deal with paleoclimate and how this is used to constrain climate sensitivity against real world data. Paleoclimate also gives us a pretty good handle on how much sea level changes with global temperature. Omission of these important points, although with the fact that uncertainties in ice melt are all pretty much in the "how much faster" category was unfortunate IMHO. As to Joe Romm's critique I think I understand where he is coming from. The report doesn't explain what a warming climate will actually mean for people and as such is lacking in meaningful context. I would guess, for example, that lay readers would be more interested in how various amounts of warming will effect heat waves than the change in radiative forcing (in Wm-2) from a doubling of C02.
  50. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    Re: tobyjoyce (82)
    "Finally, I get to the point. The more I read your logic, the more I am convinced (and by other evidence also) that the climate science - denier debate is at its core political, and is really concerned with the political and economic impacts of global warming. Faux-scientific "debate" is just the first line of defence favoured by fairly powerful economic agents, as it was in the minor case of nicotine abuse. I believe we are now seeing a fallback to the second line (a grudging, fighting retreat) by denialism - that the problem is exaggerated, climate change may be beneficial etc. etc."
    Well-spoken, sir. You unerringly strike at the crux of the science/"skeptic" debate @ expose its heart to the light of day. Deny, Delay, Mitigate, Adapt...or Die. The longer we take to reach the Adapt stage with our way of life, the more likely the option becomes closed to us & we then pass to the final stage. In the end, it may be that our descendants will have little say regarding us and these times as there may well be none left to judge us. The Yooper

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