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Comments 110651 to 110700:

  1. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke, You claim: "Thus to conclude that I have ever not been concerned about the addition of CO2 and how it affects the climate system misrepresents my perspective. I am particularly concerned with respect to the biogeochemical effects of added CO2." Hang on, but in your paper you state, and I quote: "We therefore conclude that hypothesis 2a is better supported than hypothesis 2b, which is a policy that focuses on modulating carbon emissions." You choose your hypothesis 2a which down plays the relative (is that better?) contribution/importance of long-lived GHGs on the climate system. So you are skeptical of the science presented in the IPCC assessments, and of the role of long-lived GHG forcing. In fact on your blog you say: "The 2007 IPCC failed to adequately consider anthropogenic land cover change in their assessment of how humans can alter the climate system on the regional and global scales. This serious oversight needs to be remedied in the next assessment." I think that I have fairly presented your position on this....and even defended you against others people's choice of a certain undesirable descriptor. What are your thoughts on the anthro cooling associated with widespread irrigation as discussed in this JGR paper by Puma and Cook (2010)? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100907171644.htm Seems we humans can cool regions too.....
  2. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    "With respect to OHC, the objective conclusion is that the annual average heating of the well sampled upper ocean halted for at least a 4 year time period." I find this sentence a bit disappointing. It makes the pair with the claim that summer arctic ice ice has recovered. Anyone doubts that 2008 showed more ice than 2007 and 2009 more than 2008? No, i guess. Does it mean the the decades of decreasing ice we've seen is over? No, we can't say that. It looks like we're playing with words. Take the 5 years from 2004 to 2008. Assuming that the measurements we have are "perfect" we can say that the upper ocean OHC didn't change. Ok. Than what? We can not claim that global warming halted, not even that the decades long OHC increase did. What we can say, and i'm sure we all agree, is that we still cannot explain climate variability. Following GISS, the temperature anomaly in 2008 and 2009 were 0.43 and 0.57 °C. The "objective conclusion" is that there has been a trend of 14 °C/century. A good laugh. So, let's not use these words so easily, we're trying to do science afterall.
  3. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke, Thanks for your response. You state that "The EOS article is introduced to document that we have identified a wide range of human climate forcings, beyond the radiative forcing of CO2." That may be true, but is irrelevant to this discussion on OHC; sorry, but you are arguing straw men. You also state that "This does not mean that future global warming will not occur." Well, of course! That is what this is all about. You previously did NOT provide that critical caveat, nor did you provide the caveat that 4 years is way too short period to determine a statistically significant trend. Moreover, given the well-known uncertainty in the OHC measurements, making such assertive statements as you have done is especially irresponsible. So are you going to do the right thing and set the record straight and post a corrigendum on your blog? In fact, I am urging you to do just that. You also say "To refute this claim, present data for these 4 years that conflicts with this finding." GPWayne has provided you TWO sources which do just that-- von Shuckmann and Lyman et al. (2010). Yet you choose to ignore them.
  4. Roger A Pielke Sr at 05:48 AM on 9 September 2010
    Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Cynicus - The statements that "global warming halted on this time period' and "global warming of upper ocean halted on this time period' both are correct, but the former requires an additional assumption. To heat lower levels of the ocean (below ~700m), heat would have to flow downward through the Argo network undetected. Such heat flow of a large enough value has not been observed, based on analyses discussed by Josh Willis on my weblog. Albatross - The EOS article is introduced to document that we have identified a wide range of human climate forcings, beyond the radiative forcing of CO2. The IPCC is too conservative at presenting these other forcings. These are in addition to the human caused CO2 forcing. Thus to conclude that I have ever not been concerned about the addition of CO2 and how it affects the climate system misrepresents my perspective. I am particularly concerned with respect to the biogeochemical effects of added CO2. With respect to OHC, the objective conclusion is that the annual average heating of the well sampled upper ocean halted for at least a 4 year time period. This is a science question and should be addressed that way. To refute this claim, present data for these 4 years that conflicts with this finding. This does not mean that future global warming will not occur. However, to better understand the climate system, we need to understand why this halt occurred. Moreover, we need to see if in the coming years the heating will be amplified so as to catch up to the model predictions.
  5. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Cynicus @38, IMHO, using the word "halted" is still highly misleading, it is very definitive and assertive, and says nothing about what will happen down the road-- the interpretation of that is going to be especially troublesome for someone who is not in the know. I can imagine people concluding this: "Did you hear that a famous scientists says that global warming has stopped, so what is the big deal?" And it still remains to be answered, so what if the increase in OHC slowed or even decreased slightly in that 5-year window? It is still way too short a time interval to make any statistically robust conclusions. The unfortunate part is that Dr. Pielke Snr knows that, yet opined publicly about it anyways, and from their it was echoed/trumpeted loudly by the denialosphere. IMHO, Dr. Peilke's public musings on such matters (in the manner he has chosen to do so thus far at least) is not unacceptable and not in keeping with proper scientific protocol. After Tamino's run in with a particularly hostile contrarian earlier this year, a number of pages on Tamino's blog have gone AWOL (I used the URL for the post in question but the page is now blank). I also tried the waybackmachine but had no luck.
  6. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke, leaving all other issues aside, I humbly feel that your original claim: "This means that global warming halted on this time period." would probably need rephrasing to: "This means that global warming of upper ocean halted on this time period" based on your following statement: "However, the data is clear that for this period of time, global average annual upper ocean heating halted." (emphasis mine) Do I see that correctly?
  7. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke, Instead of keep referring to your EOS paper, could please state here specifically which findings you believe to be relevant to this discussion on OHC [I have not been able to find anything pertinent]. Thank you. PS: GPWayne, if you read the EOS article it seems Dr. Pielke supports their stated hypothesis 2a. So, again, I agree with Pielke that associating him with those in denial about AGW/ACC is incorrect. That said, contrary to the majority of climate scientists, Dr. Pielke does NOT believe the following to be true: "Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades." So if I interpret this correctly, he does seem skeptical of the importance/contribution of GHGs and the severity of the expected negative impacts associated with doubling CO2. Perhaps that is why he is latching onto short-term trends which indicate that things are perhaps not as bad as originally expected. Well, IMHO, doing so it simply deluding oneself and smacks of confirmation bias. It is worth mentioning that reputable scientists such as Dr. Schmidt have taken issue with how Pielke et al. (2009) framed the problem.
  8. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    People reading this may find this exchange with Pielke Snr of interest: http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/on-constructive-debate This is not the first time Pielke Snr has gotten into trouble for making misleading claims on climate science...
  9. Roger A Pielke Sr at 04:49 AM on 9 September 2010
    Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    RSVP Thank you. You have actually very clearly framed the issue that is causing the misunderstanding in several of the above comments. You wrote "Another "dumb" or "naive" question... Why is oceans warming always published in Joules, while global warming is expressed in degrees Centigrade?" The reason is that heat involves mass and Joules includes mass. When global warming is expressed as a trend in degrees Centigrade, it is incomplete, as this is just part of the heat. Jim Hansen agrees that the monitoring the ocean heat change is the most appropriate reservoir to monitor global warming (as he stated at a National Research Council meeting on the 2005 report National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp. http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309095069/html/). The only relevant issues in the above comments that pertain to this metric are the short duration of the lack of heating and the sampling issue. With respect to the later, satellite altimetry data is used to complement the Argo network. Except for ice covered areas (which is only a small fraction of the ocean), since 2004 the coverage is accepted by oceanographers as being adequate to diagnosis heating and cooling, within observational uncertainties as illustrated by Josh Willis in my Physics Today article. The short duration of the lack of global average, annual cooling (4 years unless it extended beyond 2008) is correct. It may not have continued. However, the data is clear that for this period of time, global average annual upper ocean heating halted. It is important to emphasize, of course, that this observation says nothing about the role of humans within the climate system, nor of the importance and cocern with the continued increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. I note so far that none of the commenters have discussed the findings we presented in our paper Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/r-354.pdf
  10. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    I think Tamino's "Riddle Me This" post would be most revealing in this discussion, but I can't find it. Anyone who has a link?
  11. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke, With respect, I find your position on this issue and your refusal to acknowledge what you have recently stated concerning Arctic sea ice, sea-level rise and now OHC was (and is) highly misleading to be most troubling (and this is coming from a scientist who works in your field). As others have repeatedly pointed out to you (most recently KR), one cannot conclude that global warming has stopped based on only 5 years worth of data, and that fact is especially true when working with OHC data. Surely you understand that by applying your logic one could erroneously claim/conclude that global warming has "stopped" multiple times over the last century-- yet the long term trend (which IS statistically significant) remains positive (see Hansen et al. 2010 in press). I honestly thought it was only some lay people who mistakenly thought that AGW translated into a monotonic increase in global temperatures. Hansen (and others in the know) would also most certainly take issue with your claim that there is no lag in the climate system, especially when it comes to the oceans. From Hansen et al. (2008): "The lag of GHGs after temperature change is several hundred years (Fig. 6 of [6]), perhaps determined by the ocean overturning time" And "Let us consider climate change averaged over a few thousand years-- long enough to assure energy balance and minimize effects of ocean thermal response time and climate change leads/lags between hemispheres [22]" And "The deep ocean can carry a temperature change between hemispheres with little loss, but because of the ocean's thermal inertia there can be a hemispheric lag of up to a millenium" For more on lags in the climate system because of thermal inertia also see Meehl et al. (2005), Wigley et al.(2005), Friedlingstein and Solomon (2005), Hansen et al. (2005). There are, of course, many more examples in the literature as well which speak to lags in the climate system. The biosphere has been positive energy imbalance (e.g., Murphy et al. (2009) for many decades now because of increased levels of long-lived GHGs from human activities; why do I get the distinct feeling that you seem to have trouble accepting that fact and the associated consequences? I trust Dr. Trenberth on this file; as for trusting you, well after this fiasco, not so much, and that saddens me greatly. Had you been willing to concede your mistakes, then I might have felt very differently.
  12. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Many posters have alluded to a lack of a mechanism for transporting surface heat to the abyssal depths. Here is my take on this problem, please let me know if I have gone off the rails on this. As cold water moves from the antarctic it warms. As it warms more water is evaporated thus causing an increase in salinity. Some of this evaporated water will rain out over land thus the salinity will not be reduced. As the water goes further north it warms even more and we experience an El Nino event. This warm water evaporates and becomes even more saline. Since the equator seems to act a a barrier to further movement of the water it remains at rest when it nears the equator (at least it will not go further north). It warms even more, more is evaporated and it becomes even more saline. The more saline it becomes the more dense it becomes. Eventually it become so dense that it begins to sink into the less dense (less saline) water below. When this happens the El Nino is over and the water is replaced by cooler less saline water from further south and we experience a La Nina. This warm, highly saline water eventually makes it to the abyssal depths where it remains for a long time. There are a number of papers coming out showing an increase in the temperature of the abyssal water but it is still spotty so it is difficult to measure the increased energy content of this part of the ocean. Hopefully more research will be forthcoming in this very relevant area.
  13. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    RSVP, you could as easily ask why an expanded sample base couldn't be introducing a spurious 'cooling' effect (perhaps causing the leveling off since 2004). There is always the possibility of instrument errors... in either direction. Could the changing measurement methodologies be resulting in skewed OHC results? Yes. In fact, several such errors HAVE been found and adjustments made in an effort to correct them. It is an ongoing process. That said, even if we just take the earliest measurement tools and continue them through to present we get an increasing OHC trend. Ditto using just the latest / most accurate tools. Ditto proxies. Et cetera. Thus, the idea that the whole warming trend might be error induced is belied by multiple lines of evidence to the contrary. There is alot of uncertainty around the OHC data, but not so much that the multi-decadal warming trend is in doubt. As to joules vs degrees... most humans on the planet are very familiar with surface temperature readings in degrees (either C or F usually). Thus, it just makes sense to express warming as anomaly values on those units. How often do you hear about the ocean temperature at 1000 feet below the surface? Pretty much never. It would be a pretty strange way to express things as that water at 1000 feet down could be in a current which moves it away and replaces it with warmer or colder water quite quickly. Joules are a better measurement because they (theoretically) give the total amount of energy which has accumulated in the oceans... regardless of how that energy is distributed three dimensionally.
  14. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Another "dumb" or "naive" question... Why is oceans warming always published in Joules, while global warming is expressed in degrees Centigrade? Also, no one ever answered my other question on the original thread,... how could one know the difference between a real increase in Joules over the last 60 years vs. effects of improvements in data taking and an expanded sample base? Only asking because I am sure the sample base has always increased and the methodology has always been improving...
  15. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    1. Humanity Rules -- "The NODC near realtime update of OHC shows that the oceans haven't been warming since 2004ish." Just as well your own graph goes all the way back to 1955 for a more meaningful look at the data, then. What do your own eyes tell you?
  16. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke remarks indirectly on something we've noted here many times, namely the unfortunately inadequate instrumentation of the ocean basins. The true meaning of Trenberth's "missing heat" cannot be resolved without better measurement capability. The nature of "missing" is ambiguous without more information. Dr. Trenberth is also widely quoted thanks to his use of the word "travesty." The real travesty here is that amateurs and professionals alike agree the oceans are the bulk repository of whatever energy is accumulating on the planet thanks to anthropogenic warming but we've still got a huge gap in our data collecting ability. There'a an assumption operating here that thermally speaking the deep oceans are somehow disconnected from shallower waters, yet repeated measurements at sadly sparse stations in various ocean basins actually do seem to consistently hint at increasing heat content of the deep ocean. We could wish for a dynamic buoy system similar to ARGO but capable of deeper operations and indeed the folks running the ARGO network are trying to attack that problem. In the meantime, "simply" planting some instrumentation capable of logging temperatures at the deep ocean stations currently used for infrequent measurements would be a very beneficial thing. A few years of relatively continuous recordings at a few sites would go a long way to resolving the question of how heat is "missing." As well as engaging in argumentation about issues that cannot be settled without more data, let's also encourage folks such as Dr. Pielke Sr. to exert whatever leverage they can apply to improving our instrumentation of the oceans.
  17. Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
    CBW If the science is "good enough", it should be able to quantify the trade offs and make clear exactly what action is needed. In fact, if the science is so advanced, peers should produce a chart that has "ocean rise cm" vs. "action", where "action" quantifies how much GHG needs to be cut back. If you are aware of this "recipe", please let me know. Thanks in advance.
  18. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    To be even more clear on my last post, drawing unqualified conclusions on 5 years of data is statistically unsupportable. Making a qualified statement such as "The current data is not showing a warming trend, this may be statistically significant in a few years" would be entirely supportable. But absolute statements based on short time frames and noisy data? No.
  19. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Dr. Pielke, thank you for your comments here. I believe, however, that gpwayne's point in this post still holds; that stating "...global warming halted on this time period" is simply not justified from the short period of time and the noise inherent in current measurements of ocean heat content. Looking at the data available, it appears that a 15-20 year period would be the absolutely shortest time frame from which to draw a definitive conclusion about trends. We absolutely need to improve our measurements, and the joules present in the ocean are an excellent metric, within our ability to measure them. Given the current measurement issues, sampling rates, calibration concerns, S/N ratio, etc., 5 years of data is not sufficient to draw any firm conclusions whatsoever. Gwayne's point (and with which I must agree) is that you have drawn such conclusions from a very short time frame, and, that such conclusions are not statistically supportable.
  20. Roger A Pielke Sr at 02:50 AM on 9 September 2010
    Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    I have read the Reply [as Moderator] to my comment [I would appreciate if you could identify yourself. :-)] On the issues, you seem to be assuming that climate change is synonymous with global warming. Global warming, however, is a subset of climate change. "Global warming" occurs when Joules accumulate within the climate system, of which the oceans is the largest reservoir for heat changes within the climate system. I agree that other climate indices have changed (e.g. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice), but these are not direct measures of global warming. With respect to the quantitative accuracy of the upper ocean heat data, even Kevin Trenberth admits there is "missing heat" as discussed in the web posts that are in my Comment that I provided the links for earlier today. Josh Willis, also, places uncertainly bars around his data in his figure in my paper Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-334.pdf so the statement such as "there was no global average warming in the upper ocean from 2004 to 2008" are consistent with his analysis. If they find an error, of course, that would need to be changed, but until it is, it is a robust, peer-reviewed scientific finding. I still feel you are missing my main point. With all of the remaining unresolved uncertainties and systematic biases in the land surface portion of the multi-decadal global surface temperature trend, as we reported, for example, in Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-321.pdf and Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/r-345.pdf we should move towards the more appropriate global warming metric of heat which is Joules, most of whose changes occur in the ocean. The ocean below 700m does not seem to be a major reservoir for this heat, as discussed in the web posts I sent in my first Comment. Even with the remaining issues with the quantitative accuracy of the ocean heat content measurements, it should become the primary metric to diagnose global warming and as a measure to compare with the IPCC models. Until about 2004, the comparisons between the GISS model and the upper ocean heat content changes, for instance, were quite good as I reported on in my post Update On Jim Hansen’s Forecast Of Global Warming As Diagnosed By The Upper Ocean Heat Content Change. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/update-on-jim-hansens-forecast-of-the-global-radiative-imbalance-as-diagnosed-by-the-upper-ocean-heat-content-change/. Since 2004, however, the model predictions have not been as good. Perhaps, this is a short term effect associated with natural variability. If so, we should see a resumption of heating rates that were seen up to 2004. This comparison with models, as a test of their accuracy, is the basic scientific method of hypothesis testing. Why you chose to label me a skeptic or a denier, besides being completely incorrect in this labeling, obscures the actual scientific issues and valuable discussions that could take place on your weblog.
  21. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Were we able to close the energy budget (i.e. better measurements) we could take advantage of the integral nature of OHC. Unfortunately we still can not. It is unfortunate that reputable scientists like Prof. Pielke Sr. have recently shown the attitude to downplay the need of decades long datasets to assess the trends. This tendency has led him to the highly unlikely, and for sure unproven, claims that global warming has stopped since 2004 or that there has been a recovery of the arctic ice since 2008. I'm with ProfMandia (#9) hoping for the always wellcome loyal opposition to any mainstream scientific theory.
  22. A detailed look at climate sensitivity
    I teach chemistry at the university level. The Atmosphere is a chemical system in equilibrium with the chemical sytem of the oceans. Le Chatalier's principle states that a system in chemical equilibrium reacts to external stimulus to maintain that equilibrium. So the system may react to changes by maintaining it's equilibrium. What happens is this: the system changes very little until it's ability to react is overwhelmed, then changes are rapid and drastic. This is why climate scientists talk about a "tipping point" beyond which the Earth cannot comfortably recover.
  23. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Simple question from a layman... If, what Dr Pielke claims is correct, that "global warming has stopped during this time" should there not be a corresponding measurement in the satellite record showing that incoming and outgoing radiation are in balance? Would that not be the smoking gun to prove the statement? Conversely, if we are still seeing an energy imbalance then shouldn't we be discussing where the heat is instead of saying there is no warming?
  24. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Eyeballing from the graph presented so authoritatively by HR and using short periods as approved by expert climate scientist Dr Pielke Sr I can firmly conclude that global warming did not happen in the periods: 1977 - 1982 1985 - 1990 1991 - 1996 1996 - 2001 2004 - 2009 So, there has been no global warming or it even cooled 25 of the 32 year period between 1975 and 2010! Shock..horror!!! Lots of ice has melted this year too as glaciers and Arctic sea ice shrunk which means the ocean is even cooler after 2010 (everyone knows that melting ice cools water). We must therefore conclude that a new ice age could be imminent. We need to burn more carbon quickly!
  25. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Can someone clue me in on how anyone can declare the ocean is adequately monitored enough to say that the warming has stopped? I find it strange that people draw conclusions about the Argo data when the Argo team themselves declare that there is not enough data to perform adequate analysis. This interesting video clip shows Argo floats as they travel around the ocean. At the 24 second mark, Jan 2004, there are just over 1000 floats deployed. Each float is on average measuring more than 1,000,000 cubic kilometres of ocean! They aren't evenly spread so there are huge pieces of ocean completely unmonitored. One section of the South Pacific greater than the size of Australia is completely free of a float. The floats spend most of their time drifting so they seem to be measuring the same section of water many times over. The Argo floats cannot measure under the sea ice, and they only go down to a maximum of 2,000 meters, in an ocean that has an average depth of about 3,730 meters. Is there a scientific paper that can tell me why definitive conclusions can be drawn from this data? I'm very skeptical.
  26. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    On the weblink page, at the bottom, is a link to a Lateline transcript between George Monbiot and Ian Plimer. It's quite entertaining http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2009/s2772906.htm and Monbiot plus the presenter tackle Plimer on why he continues to use wrong (made-up) data and false interpretations. It's fascinating to see how Plimer evades the questions and no doubt he will trot out the same arguments if on stage tomorrow. Oh and on the Schneider program I thought the bank balance analogy was better than the bathtub one!
  27. Climate and chaos
    Not necessarily a very good analogy, BP, since the bird isn't just a statistical outlier from the same distribution as the rest of the heavy objects. Its behavior can be ascribed to obvious physical processes. Climate is very "noisy" at short spatial and temporal scales. Thus, one can almost always find some individual location that's abnormally cold at some particular point in time. Pointing to such areas may convey a misleading impression of long-term trends in global climate. I think my lengthy comment above provides a more useful framework for understanding things.
  28. Berényi Péter at 00:24 AM on 9 September 2010
    Climate and chaos
    Or like claiming that because a birdie dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa flies away happily, dropping objects heavier than air does not necessarily make them fall down.
  29. A detailed look at climate sensitivity
    cruzn246 writes: Could anyone explain how it got almost 3C warmer than now prior to the last Ice age with lower CO2 levels? There are several contributing answers to this. First, the fluctuations you see in Fig. 1 took place over long periods of time -- by comparison, the modern CO2 & temperature increase is just getting started. Second, despite the caption to Fig. 1, it's not necessarily certain that global temperatures were that much warmer during the previous interglacial; the ice cores presumably weight temperatures in the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean more heavily than the rest of the globe. Third, as scaddenp and Tom Dayton note, there are other factors at play. As just one example, if we stopped emitting sulfate aerosols and let the atmosphere clear for a few months, we'd find that the radiative forcing from CO2 was being masked by aerosol cooling. Obviously, heavy industry was not quite as much of a factor 120,000 years ago! There's probably other points that I'm forgetting, too. The bottom line is that there's no one single answer to that question; it's a combination of multiple effects.
  30. Climate and chaos
    Did you actually read the article you linked to, BP? The existence of an anomalously cold winter in parts of South America is a fact, but there's actually a great deal of uncertainty about the specific event you're referring to and the relative importance of different causes. In any case, you apparently missed the point of my comment. Claiming that individual cold snaps in place X or place Y are somehow meaningful indicators of trends in climate is like claiming that individual cases of infant deaths here or there mean that we haven't made any progress on reducing infant mortality rates. Or like claiming that because your uncle Afred was a lifelong smoker and lived to be 92, smoking does not reduce life expectancy. Emotionalism isn't a very good substitute for reasoning, IMHO.
  31. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    HumanityRules writes The NODC near realtime update of OHC shows that the oceans haven't been warming since 2004ish. That's exactly the problem. You're picking out a specific year and saying there's no warming after that. We already know the data fluctuates quite a bit, look at the few years before that for an example. The ocean didn't warm that quickly, the data bounces around because we lack sufficient measurement of it.
  32. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Ken says: So in answer to Ned - the oceans have a storage capacity at least 30 times that of all other combined sinks - thats about 96% - so I would think that what happens in the oceans is crucial to the whole AGW story. Yes, nobody disputes this. The questions are how do we interpret what is happening in the ocean, and how much weight do we give our interpretation of that vis-a-vis our understanding of other components of the climate system. You keep citing BP's remarks earlier, which seem to have impressed you greatly. Others, however, are less impressed. With a certain degree of trepidation lest I be misrepresenting something, I would characterize his argument as follows:
    (1) If we assume that individual year-to-year wiggles in the OHC data were valid representations of interannual variability in OHC, that would lead to physically unrealistic conclusions about the planetary radiative imbalance. (2) Therefore, there's no reliable evidence of long-term warming in the OHC data. (3) From this, we conclude there's no long-term warming in the ocean.
    That is, at least, how BP's (and your) claims appear to me. But (1) is obviously a straw-man argument, (2) does not follow from (1), and (3) does not follow from (2). Again, Ken, I've seen you refer to this line of reasoning many times on this site, so clearly it seems convincing to you. I think there are serious flaws in it. We can't both be right; presumably, science will continue to progress and sooner or later the answer will be obvious to everybody, one way or another.
  33. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    CBDunkerson writes: Darnit Ned... if you're always gonna say the same things I want to better than me then you need to type slower. :] Great minds think alike? Or folie à deux? Who can say...
  34. Berényi Péter at 23:22 PM on 8 September 2010
    Climate and chaos
    #20 Ned at 22:33 PM on 8 September, 2010 In contrast, the occasional spatial or temporal cold anomalies (like parts of the US last winter) are best described as reminders of the climate we're leaving behind. They're not representative of what most places will feel like most of the time in 2020 or 2040 or 2060. Do you mean the recent cold spell in Bolivia, unprecedented in recorded history that emptied rivers there of fish and wreaked havoc on wildlife is supposed to be a reminder of the climate we're leaving behind? Sounds funny.
  35. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Ken Lambert writes: Although Dr Pielke puts his case a little clumsily, his basic point is right. If you can't find an increase in OHC between times T1 and T2, then as oceans are the main store of heat in the Earth system - there is no warming imbalance between T1 and T2. Just a word of caution, Ken. Our inability to find X does not mean that there is no X. Let's imagine that, through some remarkable case of short-sightedness, we had collected vast quantities of data about the climate system but had somehow neglected to ever measure the temperature of the ocean. Would that failure to record a rise in OHC somehow mean that the ocean could not be warming? Obviously not! In reality, of course, the problem is not that we haven't ever measured temperature in the ocean, but that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the measurements. For those of us who have been observing this field for a long time, the experience of the MSU data from the late 1990s is a cautionary tale. Satellite microwave data from MSU showed a cooling trend that was in direct conflict with both the predictions of climate models and the trends from other data sources. And people certainly argued -- with some validity -- that the MSU data ought to be a more objective and reliable source of information on the climate. Of course, we all know the history -- a series of corrections and improvements to the methods used for processing MSU data repeatedly brought those data into closer and closer correspondence with surface temperature trends, such that today the 1979-present trends from RSS, GISSTEMP, and NOAA NCDC are all within less than 0.01 C/decade of each other. The moral of this story is that we need to look at all the pieces of the puzzle, not just one.
  36. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    As I have suggested elsewhere, measurement of OHC changes needs a baseline viz. a snapshot of the 'tiled' oceans. The 'ideal' system would be a global array of tethered buoys measuring the same 'tile' at the same time. A tile might be 500m deep by 1 degree square to have enough resolution. The gold standard would be a snapshot of temperatures of each tile at time T1 and another snapshot at T2. A summation of each would give accurate changes in OHC for the whole. The Argo buoys are at present about 3500 in number covering on average a square of ocean 330km x 330km down to 2000m. The average ocean depth is 3700m. Not all the Argo buoys are measuring down to 2000m. How close the drifting Argo come to the 'ideal' is hard to determine. For sure, strong currents will tend to coagulate drifting buoys so that the same 'tile' of ocean might might not be measured at time T2 as was measured at T1. Two or more buoys might enter a tile of ocean and leave none where a prior measurement was taken. Now this might even itself out with some sort of statistical correction, but currents moving at 3-4 knots would move buoys and water out of a tile in a matter of hours, so it would seem a difficult problem to correct back to the 'ideal' measurement system of tethered buoys. Those more expert that I might explain how this is done. I suspect that the noisy and inconsistent nature of OHC reconstructions might be due to this problem.
  37. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    The serendipitously-named commenter "SNRatio" writes: [...] it is really hard to take Pielke, HR (plus BP here) quite seriously. Looking at the historical data, there is clearly a rather low signal-to-noise ratio here, which means that heat content may be suddenly "increasing" (like after 2000), only to "decrease" slightly for several years thereafter. chriscanaris objects: BP hasn't even posted a comment yet (and may or may not want to) and you say a priori that you won't take him seriously. True, BP hasn't commented in this thread. But he has provided recent comments on this specific topic in another thread earlier this week. It's possible he has changed his position in the past 48 hours, but it seems unlikely. chriscanaris continues: Sorry, guys, but 'superstition' kind of also fails the civility test. This is in response to the final paragraph from SNRatio's comment. I wish that every one participating in this site would read that paragraph. Note that SNRatio phrases it in an objectively "centrist" position -- people on all sides should be conservative in their interpretation of noisy data, and avoid claims of significance for what may be short-term, spurious trends. That said, chriscanaris is one of the most polite and reasonable commenters on this site, and one of the very, very few commenters from the "skeptic" side whose comments I always look forward to reading. I can see cc's point about the use of the word "superstition"; and more generally speaking, it seems to me that we should take cc's perceptions of language and civility seriously. I know it's very easy for me personally to lapse into dismissive and contemptuous responses to those with whom I disagree, and it would be better if I could restrain that impulse in all my dealings on this site.
  38. Roger A Pielke Sr at 22:59 PM on 8 September 2010
    Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    In order to assure that my view is accurately presented, I am posting a comment on your weblog. I appreciate that you have provided this opportunity. There are several incorrect statements in your post. First, as long as the sampling of the ocean heat is sufficiently dense, a snapshot is not cherry picking, as there is no lag involved. A simple analog is a pot of water on the stove. When the burner is on, heat is added in Joules per second which results in the temperature increasing. By measuring the total heat of the water in the pot at any time, we can diagnosis the average rate of heating between sampling times. This integrated assessment is much more accurate than seeking to measure the heating rate itself. In terms of the climate system, the heating rate is the global average radiative imbalance (which is made up of the radiative forcings and feedbacks). The difficulty of monitoring the fluxes, as contrasted with the integrated heat changes, is discussed in a series of weblog posts involving Kevin Trenberth and Josh Willis on my weblog; i.e. My Perspective On The Nature Commentary By Kevin Trenberth http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/comments-on-nature-commentary-by-kevin-trenberth/. The issue of sea ice and glacial melt is not a significant component in the global average climate system heat changes, as presented in Table 1 in Levitus, S., J.I. Antonov, J. Wang, T.L. Delworth, K.W. Dixon, and A.J. Broccoli, 2001: Anthropogenic warming of Earth's climate system. Science, 292, 267-269. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/levitus2001.pdf. As I wrote in Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-247.pdf "[T]here are several major reasons that the assessment of the earth system’s heat budget is so valuable. • The earth’s heat budget observations, within the limits of their representativeness and accuracy, provide an observational constraint on the radiative forcing imposed in retrospective climate modeling. • A snapshot at any time documents the accumulated heat content and its change since the last assessment. Unlike temperature, at some specific level of the ocean, land, or the atmosphere, in which there is a time lag in its response to radiative forcing, there are no time lags associated with heat changes. • Since the surface temperature is a two-dimensional global field, while heat content involves volume integrals, as shown by Eq. (1), the utilization of surface temperature as a monitor of the earth system climate change is not particularly useful in evaluating the heat storage changes to the earth system. The heat storage changes, rather than surface temperatures, should be used to determine what fraction of the radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere are in radiative equilibrium. Of course, since surface temperature has such an important impact on human activities, its accurate monitoring should remain a focus of climate research (Pielke et al. 2002a).” The recent data (2004-2008), according to Josh Willis, is quite robust in showing no global annual averaged upper ocean warming. This is also documented in the papers Cazenave et al. Sea level budget over 2003-2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry, satellite altimetry and Argo. Global and Planetary Change, 2008; DOI:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.10.004. http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Cazenave_et_al_GPC_2008.pdf Willis J. K., D. P. Chambers, R. S. Nerem (2008), Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JC004517.shtml as I discuss in my post Sea Level Budget over 2003–2008: A Reevaluation from GRACE Space Gravimetry, Satellite Altimetry and Argo by Cazenave et al. 2008. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/sea-level-budget-over-2003%e2%80%932008-a-reevaluation-from-grace-space-gravimetry-satellite-altimetry-and-argo-by-cazenave-et-al-2008/. If the ocean data is further corrected for the period 2004 to 2008, I would, of course, change my conclusion. The more important issue, however, is the recommendation that upper ocean heat content in Joules be used as the primary metric to monitor global warming. In terms of the time since 2008, I suspect (and am waiting until the latest data is released this Fall) that upper ocean heating content increased during the recent El Nino. The radiative imbalance during this time period can then be compared with the models. With respect to responding to comments, I would be glad to reply on your weblog in order to further clarify my perspective. Finally, I propose that you discuss the conclusions that we reached in our paper Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/r-354.pdf.
    Moderator Response: [Graham] Dr. Pielke - thank you for your comments. I am obliged to point out, with the greatest respect, that my argument seems to be validated by what you have written. Given the range of discussions regarding measurement, metrication and analysis, it is clear there is much work to be done, and that there is considerable uncertainty about ocean heat, its distribution and effects. On that basis, I must ask you how you come to make such definitive statements about one five year period. Your claim that the oceans did not gain heat during this period may be correct, but it is hardly proven, and certainly not representative of any consensus among those with sufficient expertise, such as Trenberth and von Schuckmann. This point of course must lead to my second observation: you have not addressed here the remark that so concerns me, and that was central to my entire argument. If ocean heat is not yet well understood, and many other indicators of global warming show warming - the cryrosphere in particular - how can you claim, as you did yesterday on your own blog, that a disputed measure of OHC "...means that global warming halted on this time period". I do not find this claim at all convincing because you do not appear to have any evidence to support it (indeed the evidence, including your own comments here, suggest the assertion is flawed), and you have not addressed these points, which are the essential premises on which my argument stands.
  39. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    HR #1, DW #7 and Ned #10 All good comments gentlemen. Although Dr Pielke puts his case a little clumsily, his basic point is right. If you can't find an increase in OHC between times T1 and T2, then as oceans are the main store of heat in the Earth system - there is no warming imbalance between T1 and T2. Where else are you going to store the heat energy? Dr Trenberth reckons on a yearly imbalance of 145E20 Joules. He puts 2E20 Joules into land heat up, 1E20Joules into Arctic sea ice melt, and 2-3E20 Joules into Total land ice melt. Thats a total 5-6E20 Joules/year out of 145E20 Joules of supposed imbalance which must go somewhere in the system. Total ice melt and land heat up is only 4%. So where is the other 140E20 Joules/year? Dr Trenberth accounts for only 20-95E20 in the oceans (a wide range), 16E20 in reduced TSI (which should probably be deducted from the 145 to start with), and a "residual" of 30-100E20 Joules which is unaccounted for. It could be in the deep oceans or 'exited to space' - ie. it was never there to start with. So in answer to Ned - the oceans have a storage capacity at least 30 times that of all other combined sinks - thats about 96% - so I would think that what happens in the oceans is crucial to the whole AGW story. Willis: DW #7 I must admit that I was unimpressed by the story of the Willis 'Eureka' moment. Argo is not anywhere near a complete story for measuring OHC - but I would expect a helluva lot better than what preceded it (XBT etc). See my next post. Von Schukmann: BP produced a comprehensive demolition of the Von Schukmann chart - pointing out the impossibilities of the bumps in the curves in terms of TOA imbalances. This is similar to the the Lymann chart above which has similar impossible jumps coinciding with the Argo-XBT transition I noted that Dr Trenberth started quoting von Schukmann to Dr Pielke Snr in an email tete-a-tete as a 'nice analysis' in April this year. Well Dr Trenberth was unaware of the Von Schukmann paper in February this year, and had expressed frustration with the inconsistency of the OHC measurements in his Aug09 paper which came to light after his now famous 'travesty' in the Climategate emails. As far as snapshots go - Dr Pielke Snr might have been reading my July 15 post revisited below.
  40. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Re: Hunt Janin (8)
    "I've read that agriculture first developed in the Fertile Crescent, maybe around 8,000 BC. I've also read that around that time (c. 6,000 BC), sea level was about what it is today. My question: is there any relationship between the rise of agriculture and sea level?"
    While this is OT, I don't believe that Skeptical Science has an appropriate post (perhaps the climate sensitivity thread comes closest) anyway, so I'll feebly attempt to answer you here. Or at least give you some leads to follow for an answer. As I mentioned previously, William Ruddiman has developed his "early anthropocene hypothesis, the idea that human-induced changes in greenhouse gases did not begin in the eighteenth century with advent of coal-burning factories and power plants of the industrial era but date back to 8,000 years ago, triggered by the intense farming activities of our early agrarian ancestors." Tied in with that is his overdue-glaciation hypothesis, in which "Ruddiman claims that an incipient ice age would probably have begun several thousand years ago, but the arrival of that scheduled ice age was forestalled by the activities of early farmers." This is possibly supported by the existence of evidence that the Amazon supported societies in excess of 20 million at one time where now stands rainforest. Related conceptually is the existence of sophisticated societies that predate that of Egypt, such as on Malta. Even older is the Jomon Culture of Japan, which also inhabited many of the islands in the archipelagos extending from Japan towards Guam. The temple of Mahabalipuram, India, are said to be the 7th. The first was located miles away, under what is now the Indian Ocean. Rising sea levels forced the building of a new temple further inland, which was then inundated. This process continued through the current iteration, the 7th. The remains of what is said to be the 6th temple are located offshore and discussed here and here. That second link references the submerged "temple" of Yonaguni, Japan. Where situated, if indeed a manmade structure, it would have been constructed more than 10,000 years ago, the last time the site was above the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Here's a quick timeline to keep in mind. Keep in mind that evidence exists for a human-decimation of North American megafauna around the time of the Laurentide deglaciation. It is theorized that human predation of megafauna 13,800 years ago caused the extinction of the wooly mammoth, allowing various plants kept in check by browsing of the herds to proliferate, changing the albedo of the Arctic and warming it. What we know: Climate sensitivity (of a doubling of CO2 concentrations) to fast feedbacks is about 3 degrees C, more or less. Hansen believes long-term feedbacks add another 3 degrees C on top of that. We know from looking at the ice core records that there is a narrow range of CO2 concentrations between glacial and interglacial periods, with a temperature range of about 6 degrees C from hottest to coldest. Effectively, even a tiny change in albedo of the planet can drive large changes in climate. So, conjecturally, if by driving the megafauna to extinction precipitated the demise of the last glaciation, giving rise to advanced agricultural societies, which through agricultural activities maintained the climate to a range conducive to the development of our modern societies (the climate "sweet spot"). A lot of hoo-hah, right? 30 years ago, who among us would've thought of this communication medium such as this? Or of what we know now of global warming? Email me if I can make better sense of this for you. The Yooper
  41. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    Darnit Ned... if you're always gonna say the same things I want to better than me then you need to type slower. :]
  42. Climate and chaos
    HumanityRules writes: NASA GISS discuss Moscows summer events under the headline "What Global Warming Looks Like". This seems like an entirely reasonable headline to me. Global warming does not mean that every place will be a tiny bit warmer each year than it was the previous year. Spatial and temporal variability continues, but there are proportionately more extreme warm events and fewer extreme cold events. Eventually, conditions that were previously extreme on the warm side become normal, while conditions that were normal on the cold side become rare. Thus, the GISS headline is literally correct: the summer of 2010 is an indication of where we are headed. It is a good example of What Global Warming Looks Like -- a planet that still has spatial heterogeneity in climate, but where in a given month the few cooler-than-normal places are outweighed by a lot of somewhat-warmer-than-normal places and a couple of extraordinarily-hotter-than-normal places. That IS what global warming looks like, HR, and GISS is entirely correct to say so. In contrast, the occasional spatial or temporal cold anomalies (like parts of the US last winter) are best described as reminders of the climate we're leaving behind. They're not representative of what most places will feel like most of the time in 2020 or 2040 or 2060. So the asymmetry you object to in how people respond to warm vs cold anomalies is actually entirely reasonable. HumanityRules continues: It's actually possible to be equally clear about the Pakistan and Moscow events being linked to very specific weather conditions. [...] It's very easy to be as clear that these events are unrelated to climate change Like CB Dunkerson, I observe that you write this with a great deal of certainty, which IMHO is entirely unjustified. How do you know that these events are unrelated to climate change? That's a remarkable statement, one that's far more extreme than anything one generally sees from the "mainstream science" position on this website (and far more radical than anything in the GISS article you dismiss as "propaganda"). I'm sure you're familiar with the "loaded dice" analogy. AGW doesn't deterministically and singlehandedly cause particular heat waves, droughts, or floods. But it loads the dice in favor of more heat, and in favor of greater heterogeneity in the hydrologic cycle. When you roll a six on a loaded die, you can't say that the loading caused the six, but you can certainly say that it affected the probability (and that an abnormal string of sixes is "what the dice will look like" if we keep loading them). In contrast, HR, your definitive statement "It's very easy to be as clear that these events are unrelated to climate change" is rather shocking. HR concludes: Without resorting to bias and underhand tactics I can't explain why NASA GISS can't be equally clear about this summers events. This scaddenp is propapanda dressed up as science. I strongly disagree. The GISS article seems entirely appropriate in its discussion. Let's quote the relevant section:
    Climate anomalies in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2010, including the heat in Eastern Europe and unusually heavy rainfall and floods in several regions, have received much attention. Are these climate anomalies an example of what we can expect global warming to look like? [...] The location of extreme events in any particular month depends on specific weather patterns, which are unpredictable except on short time scales. The weather patterns next summer will be different than this year. It could be a cooler than average summer in Moscow in 2011. But note in Figure 1, and similar maps for other months, that the area warmer than climatology already (with global warming of 0.55°C relative to 1951-1980) is noticeably larger than the area cooler than climatology. Also the magnitude of warm anomalies now usually exceeds the magnitude of cool anomalies. What we can say is that global warming has an effect on the probability and intensity of extreme events. This is true for precipitation as well as temperature, because the amount of water vapor that the air carries is a strong function of temperature. So the frequency of extremely heavy rain and floods increases as global warming increases. But at times and places of drought, global warming can increase the extremity of temperature and associated events such as forest fires.
    That's not "propaganda", that's carefully-written and entirely reasonable explanation of the relationship between underlying trends and superimposed spatio-temporal heterogeneity.
  43. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    If we look at the data over a multi-decadal time scale there is no question that 'oceans heated up, ice melted, and sea levels increased'. None. The changes in each of these areas are significant enough to dismiss any concerns about measurement error or random fluctuation producing the apparent trend. Thus, if Pielke were arguing that these things had not happened or the data could not be believed he'd be firmly in the 'denial' camp... maintaining a position solely by denying overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, as I understand it, he is applying a narrower focus and claiming that these changes WERE happening, but have now stopped. This goes back to his underlying theory that global warming has been more due to land use changes than CO2 increases. If warming and its effects were to level off while CO2 continued to rise that would tend to validate his theory. The problem, as John pointed out in the article, is that he is basing his claim on a time frame too short to support it and, if anything, with the balance of the evidence even over that short span against him. He is making a definitive statement of global warming having stopped founded almost entirely on statistical uncertainty (i.e. all data contradicting it must be erroneous and OHC data that most think is very incomplete and uncertain being the best indicator) and his own preconceived views. Yes, it is true that highly accurate OHC data would likely be one of the best gauges of ongoing global warming... but Pielke is only assuming that the current data is that accurate (sufficient to show a change in trend over just four years), in the face of quite alot of evidence to the contrary. To me that doesn't reach the level of 'denial', but certainly demonstrates 'unfounded advocacy' rather than mere 'skepticism'. If he'd throw in a few qualifying statements (e.g. 'global warming MAY have stopped', 'ice MIGHT not be melting', et cetera) he'd be fine. However, he simply doesn't have anything like the proof needed to be making definitive statements. If anything I'd say he's reaching.
  44. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    billkerr writes: He is saying that ocean heat is the most reliable measure we have of global warming because the ocean is the largest reservoir of heat change. Hence, ocean heat change measured in joules is a superior measure to average surface temperature. This is a slightly confusing point. Ocean heat would absolutely be one of the best measures of global warming if we could measure it well. Unfortunately, the actual global measurement of ocean heat is still in its infancy. This is in contrast to many other areas (sea surface temperatures, land surface temperatures, sea level rise, mass balance of ice, etc.) where we have longer records and/or more alternative measurement options. So by all means, let's do collect as much OHC data as we can, and let's try to wring as much information as possible from the spatially and methodologically inconsistent historical record of pre-ARGO OHC measurements. But let's also recognize that while the land, the atmosphere, and the cryosphere may not soak up as many joules as the ocean, we've been studying them much longer and much more robustly, and they can tell us a great deal about the state of the climate. We need to avoid making a fetish of any one subject -- like OHC -- to the point where you override or throw out useful information provided by people studying other parts of the Earth system.
  45. Climate and chaos
    #18, the jet stream shift that caused the heat wave (Meridional flow) was of course "possible" 100 years ago and there were outlier years. But you are generally correct that the Meridional flow is more likely now than it was 100 years ago. See Figure 3.10 here www.salemstate.edu/~bhubeny/Hubeny_Dissertation.pdf for example. This particular paper does not discuss what causes the jet stream shifts. But please don't put words in HR's mouth: he did not say "caused", only "related". Also he did not mention "increased water vapor content" although it would be interesting to see how that might be linked to a jet stream shift. It seems to me that jet stream shifts have a lot more effect on water vapor than water vapor has on jet stream shifts.
  46. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    If RP, Sr. wishes to be "The Loyal Opposition" he should remain focused on the uncertainties without making such ridiculous claims that "global warming has halted" in some very short time scale. He knows better so there must be some motivation to feed the contrarian crowd.
  47. Climate and chaos
    HR #10, can you say definitively that the jet stream shift and other weather conditions (e.g. generally higher local temperatures / increased water vapor content in the atmosphere) which led to the Russian heat wave and Pakistan monsoons were even possible under the climate of a hundred years ago? If not (and the answer is definitely "not") then you REALLY need to ponder the old adage about glass houses and stones before you go start making definitive statements and accusations of scientific bias. Because even setting aside that they DIDN'T say those things were "caused" by global warming... you saying they weren't is every bit as unfounded as it would have been if they had said they were.
  48. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    The online video is working now. Good to see it works OK outside Australia. Very good discussion, we could do with more of those. I think the woman at the end who said the bathtub analogy convinced here, raised the point of how valuable simple models and visualisations are. Such models were common in the past, educationists seem to have forgotten the importance of such methods. I remember as a teenager being fascinated by pictures of trains and clocks used to describe Special Relativity.
  49. A detailed look at climate sensitivity
    For contrast, here's the simplest possible explanation of sensitivity: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/east/latest_eastwv.jpg When water vapor is uneven the earth cools, when it is more uniform the earth warms. Models show concentrated convection cools, high clouds warm, low clouds cool, upper tropospheric water vapor warms, all resulting from the distribution of water vapor. Water vapor is distributed by weather and weather is poorly modeled in GCMs at the smaller scales (local convection) where the detail is important.
  50. Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
    This question is, I'm afraid, off-topic but I don't know where else to post it. At least it deals with oceans... I've read that agriculture first developed in the Fertile Crescent, maybe around 8,000 BC. I've also read that around that time (c. 6,000 BC), sea level was about what it is today. My question: is there any relationship between the rise of agriculture and sea level?

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