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Comments 108401 to 108450:

108401. lord_sidcup at 02:40 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        The spin the GWPF is putting on the Royal Society guide is simply outrageous. It is worth noting that the GWPF has charitable status in the UK and as a result enjoys certain tax breaks and financial benefits. The GWPF stated 'charitable' objectives are: "TO ADVANCE THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF GLOBAL WARMING AND OF ITS POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES, AND ALSO OF THE MEASURES TAKEN OR PROPOSED TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE TO IT, INCLUDING BY MEANS OF THE DISSEMINATION OF THE RESULTS OF THE STUDY OF, AND RESEARCH INTO A THE SCIENCES RELEVANT TO GLOBAL WARMING B ITS IMPACT UPON THE ENVIRONMENT, ECONOMIES AND SOCIETY C AND THE ABOVE-MENTIONED MEASURES" It seems to me they are actually doing the complete opposite of the above and are actively misleading the public. For some time I've wondered if there is a basis for complaining to the Charity Commission (the body that regulates charities in the UK) about the GWPF. Their status as an educational charity is dubious to say the very least.
108402. ClimateWatcher at 02:40 AM on 2 October 2010
        Newcomers, Start Here
        The lack of critical thinking really does amaze me. The HCO exposed the polar bears to thousands of years of higher summer temperatures and much less sea ice. The polar bears survived just fine. They don't care. They won't hug you for buying a 'Leaf' ( which will likely be powered by coal anyway ) they will eat you because that's what they do.
108403. MarkR at 02:31 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        #9 NETDR: "Ok if you want to say 3 ° C so be it but when the scientists want to scare the public they use the higher number." This is a confusion between climate sensitivity and what is projected to happen. Let's say the shopkeeper tells you that an apple costs 3p, but if you buy 2 apples it will cost you 6p. Both of these are true, but the 2 numbers are different and 6p looks worse than 3p. The 3C figure is commonly quoted as the eventual warming if you double CO2 once. 6C is what we expect if we double CO2 twice, which is what is expected to happen under 'business as usual'. It gets even more complicated as 6C is the upper bound of warming by 2100 which includes us heading for 2 doublings of CO2 and the upper bound in the uncertainty of climate sensitivity (3 C is the best estimate, but models still calculate a good chance of up to 4.5 C)
108404. Rob Honeycutt at 02:15 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        NETDR... "Ok if you want to say 3 ° C so be it but when the scientists want to scare the public they use the higher number." No. I think you're hearing what you want to hear. Problem is you have to listen very closely to what scientists say because there is usually a lot of information imbedded in what and how they say things. Scientists are generally extremely careful to be accurate about what they say (i.e., Phil Jones' "no statistically significant warming"). What you are doing is EXACTLY what you are accusing scientists of doing, only in reverse. You are claiming 6C of warming isn't being seen in current trends, when no one even suggests that you would see them now. Slow down. Listen to what scientists are really saying.
108405. Tom Loeber at 02:10 AM on 2 October 2010
        We're heading into an ice age
        Research noctilucent clouds. Me thinks they are purposely ignored due to their suggesting carbon dioxide build up leads to quick cooling of the globe. That makes Robert Felix' theory (if you can call it that) even more non-threatening to the robber-baron fossil fuel industries than the global warming theory but makes them both quite unlikely. Carbon dioxide leads to more methane thought to be the main source of the high altitude ice crystals of noctilucent clouds first noticed at the start of the industrial revolution and steadily increasing since then to record extent last year. There is research that suggests they block one percent of the incoming sunlight during the summer months when they peak. That is ten times more solar variation than what has been observed during humanity's existence in the sun's changes in output. It was just found that the mesosphere, where these clouds happen, is now coldest recorded. The jet stream is observed to be at record speeds as well as unusually low, blamed for both the floods in Pakistan and the heat wave in Russia. Recently, Bolivia had their worst environmental catastrophe as normally tropic areas plunged to record cold killing millions upon millions of wildlife and hundreds of people. Tens of thousands of sheep just died in New Zealand due to record cold. Wild gorillas in Rwanda Africa just died from record cold. Germany just saw the most recorded rain for an August. Canada is suffering significant crop destruction from record rains. If the record precipitation persists into the winter, it is liable to bury whole cities under snow and ice. Here is a video made by NASA on the noctilucent clouds: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8920558797349908992&ei=NfVUS-rYNJWUqAOzmfzEAw&q=noctilucent# "Are you tied to our destiny?"
108406. JMurphy at 02:08 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Ken Lambert wrote : "Happy for you to point out the parts of my post #98 which are wrong JMurphy. Where do you want to start?" I see others more capable have already done so. I would like to add the following quote from your post, which is also wrong : Maybe all those 'scientists' out there who are working on their complex specialties miss the simpler minded basics. In fact, I had already pointed that out but you seem to have a blind-spot when your unsubstantiated beliefs are pointed out to you.
108407. MarkR at 02:03 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        #3 NETDR: I suggest reading a few of the articles on this site or elsewhere that try to explain the concepts of radiative forcing, climate sensitivity and what this means for future temperature change. Climate sensitivity is a very technical term and in most cases we have reported equilibrium climate sensitivity - which can take a significant time to occur! We also have transient climate sensitivity, which is a bit more relevant and is less than the equilibrium value. Equilibrium says that if you double CO2, you'll eventually get 2-4.5 C warming, most likely 3 C. Your 6 C value comes from almost doubling CO2 twice by 2100, which we haven't done yet! Heating will probably accelerate from today's value. We have increased CO2 by 40%: aerosols approximately cancel out the other greenhouse gases but there are big uncertainties in the cloud effects so they might not be, or they might be partly cancelling out CO2. We expect about 1.4 C warming from CO2 eventually, but it takes time for this to happen. We have climate models that tell us how long we expect to wait, and current temperature change is well within the uncertainty bounds of current generation models - we are warming and the rate we're warming at does not contradict eventual 6 C warming if we double CO2 twice.
108408. CBDunkerson at 02:03 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Ken #98: "Maybe all those 'scientists' out there who are working on their complex specialties miss the simpler minded basics." I'm afraid I may not be simple minded enough to follow this. "If the Solar forcing curve were to start not at (0,0) but say (0.1W/sq.m, 0) - a slight positive forcing, then the extra area under the curve would be offset positively by 0.1W/sq.m x 260 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 3600 seconds x surface area of Earth; which equals approx 4190E20 Joules." So... you're saying that if there was a 0.1 w/m^2 rounding error in the baseline solar irradiance figure for 1750 then that would act as an ongoing forcing, never reaching radiative equilibrium, for the entire subsequent 260 year period... and thereby explain a large portion of the observed warming? So... from this we should conclude that the MUCH larger radiative forcing from the enhanced greenhouse effect will ALSO continue to accumulate heat, with no slowdown, for at least another 260 years and therefor we can look forward to temperature increases of +6 C or more even without any further fossil fuel emissions.
108409. dana1981 at 02:00 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        NETDR, you are rejecting physics in your comments. There is still a net planetary energy imbalance (measured by satellites), so we know that there is more 'warming in the pipeline'. Climate scientists almost never refer to 2xCO2 climate sensitivity as higher than 3°C, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you're referring to the warming projected by 2100, which may be as high as 7°C because atmospheric CO2 may rise well above 560 ppmv.
108410. JMurphy at 02:00 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        “There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.” Of course, and that is a classic crumb which has been thrown to the so-called skeptics, and perhaps why some of them are more keen on the Royal Society than previously, i.e. whereas previously the RS was part of the great big conspiracy, now they have apparently turned about-face and embraced denialism (according to the GWPF, anyway). Supposedly this no doubt means that scientists are slowly moving away from the lies they have previously been telling about AGW, because they aren't interested in the money and power anymore, but have developed a conscience thanks to great men like McIntyre, Watts, etc. Anyway, after that fantasy, here's another possible future : "There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of gravity and the theories of relativity and quantum physics could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding." Anything is possible...
108411. Ned at 01:59 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Ken Lambert writes: By definition all the AG forcings were zero in pre-industrial times (set at AD1750 by IPCC AR4). If you plot the AG forcings (heating and cooling) in W/sq.m on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis, you will start at (0,0) in AD1750. You're right, the forcing for GHGs in 1750 is 0 ... because we've chosen 1750 as a baseline! It's not because there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in 1750, nor because they were at "equilibrium" in 1750. Likewise, if you choose a baseline of 1750 for solar forcing, then the solar forcing graph will start at 0,0 in 1750. Just like the greenhouse gas forcing graph. Do you really not understand the concept of "baseline", Ken? You are trying to force people to use an imaginary "equilibrium condition of the Earth" as the only acceptable baseline for calculating forcings. But you can't force (pun not intended) the entire scientific world to abide by your idiosyncratic redefinition of terms.
108412. Riccardo at 01:59 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        chriscanaris, what the guide says and you report here sound a little obvious. What I found in the new version of the guide is that they utterly fail to give useful information to the public. If this is the contribution of the skeptics i'd be happy to live without it.
108413. MarkR at 01:58 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        #2 HR: I've edited the first section. One of them is listed under the working group that produced the article (what I would call a co-author) and one of them as a contributor. I've changed the wording and now I hope it combines accuracy with succinctness.
108414. tobyjoyce at 01:51 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        I thought the RS report was ok, nothing spectacular but sound enough. Then I saw Joe Romm having a cow over it on his blog, so I thought again. But I think Joe is wrong on this one. The public are not clued into the nuances of denialism and will see it as an endorsement of the science of global warming. There is enough in the document to convince readers of the reality of global warming.
108415. chris1204 at 01:41 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        The RS document seems to have a substantially less forceful tone than its predecessors, which took a very polemic stance of debunking 'dangerous myths.' Much more prominence is given to uncertainties. For example, they state: “It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future. “There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.” Now if I posted a comment on those lines, I suspect many on this site might take issue with me given my role as one of a number or 'sceptics in residence.' I suspect the AGW debate follows the time-worn Hegelian path of thesis, antithesis, & synthesis. So-called sceptics increasingly acknowledge the basic physics and strive to educate their readership on the blogosphere. Warmists increasingly reach out to sceptics (and sometimes get tarred and feathered for their troubles). Nevertheless, we do not yet have synthesis or complete 'consensus.' Nor should we. The science is never settled. In the late 19th century, many believed that physics under the Newtonian paradigm had answered all the basic questions. That all changed in the early 20th century (no doubt, as a non-physicist, I may be grossly over-simplifying the history of relativity and quantum mechanics). Settled science however becomes a stagnant backwater.
108416. NETDR at 01:40 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        Dana [8] The point is that what you see is what you get. We have seen approximately the mount of warming expected without feedback. [Or less ] That isn't scary enough ! As far as the thermal inertia of the oceans that has been debunked by the "missing heat" arguments refereed to above. If it is hiding at the bottom of the oceans why do we care? When will it return is more germane ? The "long term" feedbacks Hansen refers to have the same problem. Where is the heat now? When will it return ? Ok if you want to say 3 ° C so be it but when the scientists want to scare the public they use the higher number.
108417. dana1981 at 01:32 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        NETDR - your numbers are wrong. I refer you to Quantifying the human contribution to global warming, which shows that we expect to see ~1.4°C warming from the CO2 we've already emitted, but have only seen ~0.8°C due mainly to the thermal inertia of the oceans. Rob Honeycutt - A study by James Hansen set 6°C as the *long-term* sensitivity to 2xCO2. This accounts for slow-acting feedbacks, as I discussed in a detailed look at climate sensitivity. However, the short-term climate sensitivity is in the 2-4.5°C range, most likely around 3°C. Thus NETDR's reference to the 6°C long-term senstivity is inappropriate and incorrect.
108418. Doug Bostrom at 01:26 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Arguments like Ken's always leave me wondering, what's the upshot of X+Y+X+Y... where X and Y are in the same magnitude, X tends to be positive and Y dithers around zero? If I'm interested in knowing the sign of the result in the future, is X more important, or Y?
108419. archiesteel at 01:24 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        @NETDR: that is almost the exact same message you posted in a different thread, repeating the same erroneous affirmations which were thoroughly debunked in that previous thread. At this point, I think it's fair to say you're not interested in learning, but only in regurgitating the talking points you've read on contrarian sites. Trolling, in other words.
108420. Doug Bostrom at 01:19 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        Sounds as though you have a hypothesis about a cooling ocean, NETDR, a hypothesis you prefer because (as your last sentence suggests) it fits your political perspective. You're touting a scientific case for what seems a political reason, only your case is incredibly thin compared to that offered by the IPCC. For my part, I'll go on listening to the scientists. Lest anybody be confused by NETDR's rarefied treatment of ocean heat, here's a synopsis of the latest thinking on OHC measurements, "Robust warming of the global upper ocean" where the matter can further be discussed. Regarding surface temperatures, see Did global warming stop in 1998?.
108421. Rob Honeycutt at 01:18 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        As I ***understand*** it... (Fingers too fast, eyes too slow.) :-)
108422. Rob Honeycutt at 01:17 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        NETDR... Can you please inform us which scientists are using the 6C rate? As I understanding it everyone is fairly well in agreement on 3C being the best fit. Your argument seems a bit of a straw man.
108423. SRJ at 01:05 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        @ Ken Lambert, 93 "What does that mean SRJ?? Does it mean no statistically significant warming at all in either time period??" No it means a ten year period is too short a time to see a linear trend in the monthly data - given the size of the trend and the annual variability. To get a statistical significant trend one needs around 14 years of monthly data. See Taminos article "How long". And by the way, the trend for the period 1990-2010 is statistical significant: 0.0206 K/yr +/- 0.0033 K/yr (AR1 corrected) Double the probable error to get 95% confidence interval. "No different from a random walk perhaps??" I think usually when one examines statistical significance of a trend, it is against the alternative of observing that trend in a series of white noise numbers. When using the AR1 corrected probable error, that changes to testing against a series of numbers with a similar AR1 structure. So I guess one could say for 10 years of monthly data we could find as large a trend as I did if we had a series of numbers of the same length with similar AR1. This is off topic for the thread so if you have more questions you need to find an appropiate thread to take the discussion to.
108424. NETDR at 01:00 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        The article states: "The decade 2000-2009 was, globally, around 0.15 °C warmer than the decade 1990-1999." Make of that what you will. . OK I will! That is a long way from the 6 ° C warming which some scientists have lead us to believe will occur in the next 100 years. Why should we believe the rate will accelerate? . So far the warming has been far below the 6 ° C rate the scientists want to use for a doubling of CO2. Since we have had 1/3 of a doubling of CO2 we should have had more than 2 ° C warming we haven’t had this. [.7 ° C is the accepted value and less than ½ of that is from CO2 in the best case.] The relationship is logarithmic so this understates the expected warming. . To get around this scientists have speculated that the ”missing heat” is stored in the oceans ! The problem is that since 2005 both the atmosphere and the ocean have been cooling. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2005/to:2009/plot/uah/from:2005/to:2009/trend Some have SPECULATED that the missing heat may be in the deep parts of the ocean but since they haven’t measured to test this speculation they don’t know. One article claims to have found 20 % of it. . The most important and ignored part of the missing heat controversy is when the heat will return. ? The surface area of the ocean is orders of magnitude greater than the slight polar warming the article seem to find. When will the missing heat return to the surface where it can cause substantial warming ? . Since we are only speculating where the heat has gone and have only speculation about how it got there how can we predict how long it will be until it returns ? Answer: We can’t ! We have a theory of CAGW which DEPENDS upon the “missing heat ” returning in the next 100 years and we don’t know where the heat is and don’t know if or when it will return. Since we cannot find it we cannot measure it so we don’t know much of it exists. . Despite all of this “the debate is over” and we should throw ten’s of trillions of dollars at the nearest politician to make it go away.
108425. kdkd at 00:59 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        KL #98 "Do you start at (0,0) in AD1750? To do that you must assume that Solar forcing was zero in AD1750. To do that you must assume that the Earth was in equilibrium -no heating or cooling from Solar forcing and of course no AG forcings exist." Thanks for demonstrating another fundamental flaw with your analysis which has been pointed out to you previously. There is no assumption of equilibrium here - the figure of 0 is merely a baseline, which has nothing to do with equilibrium at all. The logic underlying one of your fundamental assumptions is wrong, and there's absolutely no getting around that. Although you could continue to ignore the problems with your argument and continue with the same old repetitive rubbish.
108426. Ken Lambert at 00:57 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        JMurphy #99 Happy for you to point out the parts of my post #98 which are wrong JMurphy. Where do you want to start?
108427. HumanityRules at 00:56 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        I'm not sure "self selected “skeptics”" means anything. If you mean Anthony Kelly and Alan Rudge as the two individuals they don't seem to be authors. The authors are listed under "Working Group The Royal Society would like to acknowledge the members of the working group that produced this document" While the two above are listed under "Contributors The Royal Society gratefully acknowledges the contribution of individuals who have commented on the document at earlier stages of its preparation. These individuals were not asked to endorse the document." Commenting on and not endorsing is very different to authoring.
108428. JMurphy at 00:44 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Ken Lambert wrote : "Maybe all those 'scientists' out there who are working on their complex specialties miss the simpler minded basics." Of course ! That must be it. Not only are none of them proper scientists (they are 'scientists') but they are probably not reading these threads (especially the ones you are posting on) and thereby missing all the basic stuff that they have obviously forgotten about. I think we should all make it our duties to contact as many of them as possible and pass on your details so they can be made aware of what they are stupidly missing. They are SO going to kick themselves...;-)
108429. Ken Lambert at 00:35 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Ned #77 "Ken, that's just handwaving." Handwaving - a new scientific or engineering term Ned? Forcing is an unscientific term for energy flux or power with the units W/sq.m. These values are instantaneous at any point in time. Total energy transferred is the time integral of the forcing - and temperature change beween times T1 and T2 is a measure of the total energy transferred to or removed from the mass in that period. By definition all the AG forcings were zero in pre-industrial times (set at AD1750 by IPCC AR4). If you plot the AG forcings (heating and cooling) in W/sq.m on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis, you will start at (0,0) in AD1750. Integrate the Forcings WRT time and you will get the area under these curves (positive or negative) and the sum of these areas will give the total energy balance in Joules added or removed from the Earth system due to AG forcings. CO2GHG should be positive and Aerosol albedo should be negative. Throw in volcanic aerosol cooling as well if you like. Now do the same chart with 'natural' Solar forcing with W/sq.m on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis and plot the curve. Do you start at (0,0) in AD1750? To do that you must assume that Solar forcing was zero in AD1750. To do that you must assume that the Earth was in equilibrium -no heating or cooling from Solar forcing and of course no AG forcings exist. With me?? Now we have already seen that the areas under all the AG curves when summed give the total energy applied to the Earth system since AD1750, so similarly the area under the Solar forcing curve will give the Solar energy applied to same. If the Solar forcing curve were to start not at (0,0) but say (0.1W/sq.m, 0) - a slight positive forcing, then the extra area under the curve would be offset positively by 0.1W/sq.m x 260 years x 365 days x 24 hours x 3600 seconds x surface area of Earth; which equals approx 4190E20 Joules. At Dr Trenberth's current 145E20 Joules/year imbalance -that equals 29 years warming at todays full rate and 56 years warming at half rate, which alone would account for a big chunk of 20th century temperature increase by energy imbalance, without the rest of the curve which we know is also positive. Now do you see the importance of a non-zero Solar forcing in AD1750?? Maybe all those 'scientists' out there who are working on their complex specialties miss the simpler minded basics.
108430. JMurphy at 00:34 AM on 2 October 2010
        Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
        Are the GWPF reading the same Royal Society report that everyone else is ? I understand that WUWT also like the report. Are the so-called skeptics so desperate that they will avidly feed on any crumbs no matter how illogical to their own stance (see also the recent Loehle belief about the Ljungqvist paper) ? Or do they really see reality in a different way, for some strange reason ?
108431. CBDunkerson at 00:31 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Even more than the point that a long time frame with statistically significant warming will likely not show that warming at the same confidence level when carved up into smaller sub-durations, I think the telling part of this analysis is that the supposed 'extreme warming' of the 90s and 'cooling' of the 00s are not statistically different from each other. In short, people are assigning different perceptual significance to things which are mathematically NOT different. The reality is that both decades show apparent warming, but it falls short of 95% confidence until the longer combined period is considered.
108432. kdkd at 00:25 AM on 2 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        KL #93 "No different from a random walk perhaps??" Another piece of so-called sceptic misanalysis of the instrumental record you've latched onto. Yes, quite different from a "random walk" when the analysis is done properly, according to the respectable analysis I've read in the past. But with abuse of the assumptions, as ever it's possible to "prove" anything using statistics - the trick is knowing when the assumptions have been abused. In the case of the WUWT crowd (where I think the 'random walk' idea came from) this seems to be pretty much any time they do statistical 'analysis'.
108433. Ned at 23:57 PM on 1 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        It might be helpful for Ken to consider the following set of questions: Is the temperature trend during the first week of spring significant? Is the temperature trend during the second week of spring significant? ... Is the temperature trend during the last week of spring significant? If your answer to each of the above questions happened to be "No", would that mean that there's no temperature change between winter and summer?
108434. Ned at 23:52 PM on 1 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        Getting excited there, Ken? Guess what? The warming in the 1980s is not statistically significant on its own. The warming in the 1990s is not statistically significant on its own. The warming in the 2000s is not statistically significant on its own. But the warming from 1980-2009 is very highly significant. Can you explain what that means, Ken?
108435. Ken Lambert at 23:33 PM on 1 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        SRJ #92 "Correcting for AR1-noise, they are not statistical significant on their own." What does that mean SRJ?? Does it mean no statistically significant warming at all in either time period?? No different from a random walk perhaps??
108436. CBDunkerson at 23:27 PM on 1 October 2010
        Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
        batsvensson, let's say an apple grows on a tree. To do so it had to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. That carbon is now in the apple. However, this carbon will eventually be returned to the atmosphere... whether it passes through a human who ate the apple or the apple simply falls and decomposes on the ground all of the carbon that the apple eventually puts into the atmosphere came FROM the atmosphere in the first place. Thus, neither increasing nor decreasing the number of human 'producers of CO2' would have any impact on total atmospheric CO2 levels... we can't increase the atmospheric CO2 level when all of the carbon in our bodies came from the atmosphere. We're just 'temporary storage'.
108437. batsvensson at 22:49 PM on 1 October 2010
        Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
        Quit interesting argument that a producer of something doesnt contribute with anything. How does this argument logical account for the possibility of the removal of a producer?
108438. johnd at 22:11 PM on 1 October 2010
        Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
        adelady at 22:46 PM, I don't think that there is any viable alternative to feeding the masses other than the way agriculture is heading. Advances in technology now has twice as many people being fed off half the area of land compared to not so long ago, and that trend is still continuing. Where the really BIG advances can be, and MUST be made is to reduce the waste. Modern lifestyles means that only about half of the nutrients stripped from the soil and converted to food are actually utilised, the rest being lost as wastage along the way or simply being thrown out. Virtually none of that wastage, or any of the waste byproducts produced even if the food is consumed wisely, make it back to the point of origin to be recycled. I think it is a nonsense to expect that the problems can be fixed by changing farming methods when all such changes will do is allow the mindset that is oblivious to all the wastage to perhaps waste even more. In recent years we saw such mindset when Victorian politicians congratulated capital city dwellers on reducing water consumption by X litres per day. That left many country dwellers wondering what the city dwellers were doing with what they, the country dwellers, considered a precious resource, as their own normal daily consumption was somewhat less than the X litres supposedly being saved. Now that it has rained, the water saving measures are being relaxed and people are again free to quickly resume the wasteful usage of water once again.
108439. robert way at 22:02 PM on 1 October 2010
        An underwater hockey stick
        Moberg not Mobert haha
        Response: It's been a long week :-( I fixed that error and while I was in there, I anti-aliased the text (it really bothered me that I'd missed that) and added some descriptive text to Figure 1 in case someone copies and pastes it out of context onto some other website.
        
108440. TOP at 22:01 PM on 1 October 2010
        The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
        I thought checking the qualifications of the writers of paper on GW was one of the methods that was used to discredit various people's opinions on GW. Monckton comes to mind. For example this quote from the abstract:
        The analysis considers two time periods — one during the time when the papers were found to be overstating challenges to then prevailing scientific consensus, and the other focusing on 2008, after the IPCC and former Vice-President Gore shared the Nobel Prize for their work on climate disruption, and before opinion polls showed the U.S. public to be growing more skeptical toward climate science once again.
        This sentence could be written in a more neutral and informative way by stating the dates for the control period and another set of dates for the after period. The next few sentences could state the events that set those dates and the names of the papers used. Are winter and summer and 1998-2002 and 2008 and on so hard to write? Are New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and WST so hard to write? My comment is no more vacuous than that of Freudenberg and Muselli:
        Instead, Hirt emphasized that organized industrial interests -- often in alliance with relevant governmental agencies of that era, most notably the U.S. Forest Service-- tended not just to support lines of research that indicated higher levels of logging to be "sustainable", but also to hire the most skillful experts available to challenge or attack any research that might have suggested the need to reduce logging rates.
        Muselli comes to mind as fitting this bill for environmental interests.
108441. Ned at 21:56 PM on 1 October 2010
        Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
        Way back yesterday, chriscanaris wrote: 1) CO2 has been rising 2) Temperatures have been rising 3) (1) very likely has made a substantial but not exclusive contribution to (2) As you know, I'm always grateful to see sceptics agreeing with these points. It's nice to know there is some common ground here. I will try to reciprocate (at least a little!) below. continuing... 4) We're not as confident that temperature rise is unprecedented - ie, we have some doubts about the palaeoclimate proxy record when it is 'spliced' onto the modern record I'm pretty confident that this is the warmest it's been in the past few millennia (and that unless we act soon we will exceed the peak warmth of the previous interglacial). But, from your perspective, can you explain why this question of "precedents" is important? I can see two possibilities. Some people seem to believe that if one or more previous intervals were as warm as today (for presumably "natural" reasons, ignoring Bill Ruddiman), then that would cast doubt on the anthropogenic origins of modern warming. An alternative reason for focusing on "precedence" is the idea that if societies and ecosystems survived an equally warm period in the past, the impacts of modern warming can't be too serious. IMHO there are obvious, serious flaws with the first alternative and more subtle issues with the second. (It's also possible you have some other reason for placing importance on the question of "precedents" that isn't obvious to me...) OK, back to chriscanaris: 5) We don't want to overlook the role of other feedbacks which may be important whether as exacerbating or mitigating factors I appreciate the way you worded this. It's important to keep in mind that the range of values for climate sensitivity (2 to 4.5 C per doubling) is intended to cover the uncertainty on both the high side and the low side, around a best estimate of 3 C. It is frustrating to me that so many sceptics focus exclusively on one half of this range of uncertainty while ignoring the other half. That seems like a dangerous (if all too human) irrational mindset. It is very easy to justify a low value for climate sensitivity if one hunts for all possible lines of reasoning that would support a low value while (not necessarily deliberately) avoiding thinking about those that would support a high value. This, to my mind, is a rather common theme in the writings of a great many "sceptics" on this site. chriscanaris continues his list: 6)We're not as confident of catastrophic outcomes even if temperatures and CO2 rises more or less as projected This, I think, is your strongest point, at least if you can guarantee that we don't switch over heavily towards burning coal or tar sands when the conventional oil starts to run out. The uncertainty on the question of impacts (economic and environmental) is real. To be perfectly honest, the tendency of many (most?) sceptical commenters to reiterate easily rebutted claims (yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas; no, the CO2 rise is not coming from the ocean; no, there is no way that solar irradiance can explain modern warming) lets us supporters of the "mainstream climate science" position off the hook -- we get to provide easy answers, rather than discussing the more murky questions of impacts & consequences. I don't think the outcomes of a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario will be uniformly "positive" or "negative", but rather a mix of both depending on your location and your viewpoint. And although I use it myself from time to time, I'm not convinced that the "precautionary principle" argument is a really solid one. In balance, I think the costs of 21st century climate change will be greater than the benefits, but I recognize this is a purely qualitative interpretation on my part. Of course, there has to be a limit somewhere. We've burned around 300 GT of carbon since 1750. I agree that the impacts of this are likely mixed. The business-as-usual scenario would see us burning around 2000 GT carbon. If we burned all the reasonable coal reserves available, this would be 5000 GT carbon. I cannot imagine the impacts of the latter scenario being anything short of disastrous. Returning to chriscanaris's comments: 7)Even if our reservations in (4),(5), and (6) prove to be correct, becoming much less dependent on fossil fuel and decarbonising our economies and our emissions is a very good idea anyway for lots of other reasons. Thank you for including that. I think it would be really helpful if our society could focus on identifying common grounds for at least some action, and go ahead with those actions while we debate whether concerns about climate change justify further action. 8)However, we're much more likely succeed at (7) if we avoid a panicky response and scare the proverbial horses whilst triggering the laws of unintended consequences. I'll have to remain agnostic on this, I guess. We don't have parallel Earths to experiment on, so I guess we'll never know whether some hypothetical (different) approach to dealing with the energy/environment/climate nexus would have worked better. There is certainly a part of me that would like to believe that we've just handled this all badly and that our failure to take any significant steps on this issue is not a sign of inherent failings in human nature. Who knows? Anyway, thank you for your comments, chriscanaris -- as always they are a bit of a breath of fresh air after reading too many frankly silly dispatches from strangely unsceptical "sceptics" here and elsewhere.
108442. Vinny Burgoo at 21:39 PM on 1 October 2010
        It's not bad
        'Severe consequences for over 60 million people dependent on ice and snow melt for water supply (Barnett 2005, Immerzeel 2010)' It's good to see that you update things, JC, but now you've understated the problem. Immerzeel et al's 60 million is related to ice-melt alone (not ice and snow) and is for only five river basins. Adding the inhabitants of the Tarim oases in NW China might take the number that'll eventually be threatened with food insecurity because of vanished glaciers up to 70 million. (I've never found a reliable number for the western China component. Thanks to Barnett et al, many sources say that 23% of China's population - all in Western China - relies on glacial melt but that's hooey. I suspect the claim originated with a journalist's ambiguous padding of a 2004 newspaper interview with Yao Tandong.) Adding a quota for ex-Soviet Central Asia might take you to... 100 million? The small populations outside Asia... Dunno, but a wild guess: 150 million in all. Or you could stick with ice *and* snow melt and reinstate Barnett's (dodgy) 1 billion. But at the moment you're using a partial number for ice and ascribing it to ice and snow, which is no better than the earlier problem (Barnett's billion all down to ice).
        Response: Thanks for the feedback. I've gone for "at least 60 million people dependent on ice melt" which is as weak as dishwater but Immerzeel is really the best estimate we've got so far, even if it only covers 5 river basins. Where does your figure for NW China come from?
        
108443. tobyjoyce at 21:26 PM on 1 October 2010
        An underwater hockey stick
        The Ville, Yes, slow down!! But, maybe not. I keep leaving aside interesting posts to read later, but never get to them because another post just as interesting comes up!!! Congratulations, John, this side is easily the best climate science resource on the web.
108444. CBDunkerson at 21:14 PM on 1 October 2010
        IPCC Reports: Science or Spin?
        The Ville, I wouldn't say Spencer is indecisive so much as 'conflicted'. He has religious ('creationism is more logical than evolution') and political ('environmentalists want to wreck the economy') beliefs which are at odds with observed reality. Over time the scientist in him has given more and more ground to reality, but he still clings to core beliefs in any case where he can construct possible doubt in his own mind. That said, his calls (along with others) for a sort of 'anti IPCC' which would receive large amounts of funding to 'find evidence against AGW' is inherently anti-scientific. It is a continuation of the 'skeptic' myth that AGW findings are all due to scientific bias and efforts to get funding. They suggest that without funding 'scientists' dedicated to the view that AGW is false we can't get an accurate picture. Which is nonsense because true scientists look at reality and make conclusions... not make conclusions and then try to fit 'reality' to them. This is why climate scientists are constantly finding things which don't immediately add up; the area around Antarctica is warming... but sea ice there is increasing, sea levels are rising... but the measured increases in ocean heat content and land ice melt are too low to explain this sea level rise, earlier OHC measures actually showed cooling... until errors in the instruments were discovered, et cetera. The REAL skeptics are already reporting contradictory findings and searching for alternative explanations... within the bounds of consistency and reason. Spencer straddles the line... drifting back and forth between skeptic and 'skeptic'.
108445. JMurphy at 21:03 PM on 1 October 2010
        Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
        chriscanaris, you know very well that there are many so-called skeptics out there (including self-appointed auditors) who are obsessive about proving a global MWP. Why do you think that is ? And, don't forget that another self-appointed blog expert has only this year brought out a book referring once again to the 'hockey-stick'. Finally, you have only to read the threads about the 'hockey-stick' on this site, to see so-called skeptics claiming that Mann has been 'proved wrong' (which seems to suggest that, therefore, AGW is also proven false) and that McIntyre, etc. are heroes who have proved...well, who knows, but they keep coming up for adoration by some on here. Why the obsession ?
108446. Ned at 21:02 PM on 1 October 2010
        An underwater hockey stick
        Nice post, John. Also, I like the use of the francophone spelling in the Y-axis of the graphs.
108447. Riccardo at 20:49 PM on 1 October 2010
        An underwater hockey stick
        The Ville, John Cook is trying to show what overwhelming evidence means ;)
108448. SRJ at 20:46 PM on 1 October 2010
        New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
        @80 Mathew and 85 kdkd Regarding the trend for 1990-2000 vs. 2000-present: I made a plot showing the trend for the last period August 2000-August 2010 and for the period August 1990- August 2000, with confidence intervals (with and witout AR1 correction) for the trendlines: It shows that the trends are not different from each other in a statistical signicant manner. Correcting for AR1-noise, they are not statistical significant on their own.
108449. Paul D at 20:38 PM on 1 October 2010
        An underwater hockey stick
        I can't keep up with all the posts on this site. Slow down! (not).
108450. Paul D at 20:34 PM on 1 October 2010
        IPCC Reports: Science or Spin?
        Actually on a similar note, the Royal Society here in the UK has been forced to change it's document about climate science by a minority of members that suggested it didn't make clear what the uncertainties are. Some of the members complaining are members of Nigel Lawsons political climate change skeptic group. Lawson is pro fiscally neutral taxation regimes, so he doesn't like the idea of 'green' companies getting tax breaks. eg. it's a case of the science having to fit his political ideology.

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