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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 110751 to 110800:

  1. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    I think he gave an 'UHI biases are factored into the temperature record' answer to what was actually an 'Anthony Watts says poor station siting skews the temperature record' question, but sometimes it can be difficult to figure out exactly which skeptic argument is being made... especially when relayed by someone at several removes from the original claim.
  2. Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
    RSVP, there will always be people clamoring for some kind of action on everything that goes on in the world. But if we were to take action that significantly reduced the risks posed by climate change, it would be the science that would tell us that the risks were reduced.
  3. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    This is a must see for every one of you climate scientist frustrated by the confusion among the public. You (climate scientists) have your work cut out for you. As an interested layperson, I only hope that viewing this can give an insight on how to better frame your arguments for public consumption. I learned a lot from Stephen Schneider's discussion.
  4. Climate and chaos
    Top: "But everybody is fast on the draw to attribute the heat wave of 2010 or the monsoon disaster in Pakistan to climate." No they're not. Some people have started asking what statistical methods might allow us to attribute probabilities that these sort of events are climate-change driven.
  5. Climate and chaos
    Not so, TOP. Although it is projected/predicted that global warming will result in higher global temperatures (and therefore hotter heatwaves) and more/heavier precipitation in certain regions, I can't see where "everyone" is attributing particular heat-waves or monsoon disasters to climate, let along global warming. They do, however, add to the long list of evidence backing the theory of global warming, and are more significant than the claims of the so-called skeptics whenever we have a local cold spell or lots of snow.
  6. Climate and chaos
    But everybody is fast on the draw to attribute the heat wave of 2010 or the monsoon disaster in Pakistan to climate.
  7. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    theendisfar: Scientific discourse between scientists is different from the level required with the public. If someone tells me that a set of my measurements are wrong, it will likely take hours, and possibly weeks or months, to check that (unless, of course, the stuff is already published in the peer reviewed literature). You might be more interested in the question: 'what happens when you have thousands of scientists of different approaches working on a problem and only being able to publish work which passes a minimum standard of scientific quality according to an anonymous review of their peers'. We already have that, and you're welcome to take a look through as much peer reviewed literature as you want.
  8. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    Daniel.... If it'd been a snake... ;-)
  9. Climate and chaos
    Roulette is a chaotic system. Nevertheless, you can easily predict the odds of winning. If they change much from their predicted values banks will notice. Chotic does not means that average behaviour is unpredictable. Only the short terms trajectory is. This is why this si called deteerministe chaos. Nevertheless, you might observed unpredictable jump in dynamics. Pickover called them "magic doors". This is a well documented phenomenon.
  10. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    Re: robhon (9)
    "Does anyone know where to view this after the airing?"
    See the link BaerbelW (6) kindly provided above. The Yooper
  11. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    Does anyone know where to view this after the airing?
    Response: http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/302#webextra
  12. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    I watched, and it was pretty good. All the usual dodgy arguments came out. Particularly illuminating was the woman who complained how she was treated when she published a "skeptic" article. Schneider sympathised with her, and pointed out that he had been subject to much abuse, including death threats. That may have made some people think. I just love the level of understanding that climate scientists have!
  13. Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
    Article asks... "Shouldn’t we wait for 100% certainty before taking action?" What would define "taking action"?... or rather, how much action, (and what actions) would be enough action? ...no matter how much action is taken, there will always be those clamoring that not enough action is being taken, that and a never ending stream of scientific papers to back up these claims...
  14. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    MattJ @9: Shadow on lungs does not automatically equate with lung cancer. It could be TB, a viral infection, and a host of other illnesses. I'd choose another metaphor :-) Or maybe stick with the metaphor - if BP & HR are right then the metaphor may well be apt - the shadow mightn't be quite what we think it is.
  15. Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
    Adelady: I'm glad you pay insurance. Most of us pay some form of insurance - we rarely view ourseloves as winners when we get an insurance payout. I guess some have issues about the costs of some proposed premiums.
  16. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Good question, LazyTeenager. Go to the Argo home page and look on the left side for the links about Argo Data. A key is "gridding," which is construction of a single temperature per geographic grid cell, which provides equal weighting per geographic area.
  17. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Question: can someone explain how the Argo float data is used to infer a global average temperature. This sounds like a naive question I know but it crosses my mind that samples made by buoys carried by ocean currents and subject to periodic submersions may not produce an unbiassed sample and some adjustments would be needed.
  18. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    JohnD, Here is a scenario that might help you understand the energy budget diagram. You and your wife wish to buy presents for your three children; You put in $324, your wife puts in $168. Your baby gets a $24 rattle, your young son gets computer games worth $78 and your recently graduated daughter gets clothes worth $390. (The numbers have, of course, been chosen to match the heat budget ones in Trenberths diagram) Three questions: 1. How much money is left ? 2. How much did you (as opposed to your wife) contribute to each present (3 answers) ? 3. How important is it that your daughter got a present $66 more than you contributed ?
  19. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Ken #28 Please explain why in a large complex, difficult to measure system like the ocean, that you never discuss issues relating to measurement uncertainty? This glaring omission really detracts from your argument, and if you want to be taken seriously you need to address it.
  20. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    It's worth it. Just one woman publicly said that the bathtub analogy explained the 3% accumulation to her. I'll bet there were a few others, and they all have friends and relatives who'll hear a different story from now on. And many of the others seemed impressed to find that he had neither horns nor tail.
  21. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    macwithoutfries and others: I don't think the latent heat associated with melting ice is large enough to play much role in this question. Unless I'm getting my orders of magnitudes scrambled, melting one gigaton of ice requires 333.55 x 10^17 J. Let's consider both sea ice and land ice. Over the past decade, according to PIOMAS, the Arctic Ocean has lost around 500-1000 km3 of sea ice volume per year, depending on what you pick as starting and ending dates. This works out to around 1.5 to 3 x 10^20 J/year. Sea ice in the southern hemisphere mostly disappears every year, so it's not really relevant. For land ice, NSIDC says that in recent years melting land ice has contributed 1.19 mm/year to global sea level rise (1993-2003 ... presumably more since 2003, but this is good enough for now). This corresponds to 433 gigatons/year, or 1.4 x 10^20 J/year. So ... the latent heat taken up by melting sea and land ice has been on the approximate order of 4 X 10^20 J/year. This is a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than the values being quoted in this thread for upper ocean heat content anomaly.
  22. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    The program can now be watched via the "webextra" tab on the SBS-website. I'm not through watching it yet but it for sure is interesting!
  23. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    HR #14 Good points HR. BP #5 has of course thrown a very big spanner in the OHC works. Moderator John has produced a rerun of the chart of OHC for the top 700m from a prior thread: "Robust warming of the upper oceans" here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=78&&n=202 Please re-read BP#6,#16,#30,#45,#72, and my own humble contributions #24, #43, #60. I think that we showed that the jump in the OHC chart in the 2002-03 period was impossible; and most probably an artifact of the XBT to Argo transition - ie; an offset. Yet 'scientists' simply did a linear curve fit through this composite chart and called it 0.64W/sq.m rise in OHC equivalent for 16 years. Yet if you average Lyman's 7 curves on the 2010 chart from 2003-2010 - it is pretty flat - strangely coinciding with the full deployment of Argo. Could it be that better Argo measurement has shown little if any OHC increase for the last 7 years? Could that possibly mean that far less extensive and inaccurate XBT measurements prior to 2002 were not very reliable, and that the whole OHC story prior to 2002 is likely to be as useful as a third armpit? Which punches a hole right through the theory of an increasing warming imbalance of the order of 0.9W/sq.m. And you all wonder why there are sceptics? Hello?
  24. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    gpwayne@6 Pielke says "with respect to the diagnosis of global warming using Joules of heat accumulation in the oceans, snapshots of heat content at different times are all that is needed. There is no time lag in heating or cooling. The Joules are either there or they are not. The assessment of a long-term linear trend is not needed." Now it strikes me that fundamental here is the variability in the data. Be it via measurement error, bias caused by changing currents, changes in the balance of latent (ice melt) vs sensible heat etc etc, there is inherent variability. Personally, I'd look for changes beyond 2 sigma as a basic test as to whether a claim was significant or not. I'd guess that Pielke's assertion that snapshots are meaningful fails this test, in the same way that BP's use of quarterly data isn't meaningful. I had a quick look for the raw data, but it's in too complex and fragmented a form on the NOAA site for me to run a regression quickly. I'd guess that the natural variability precludes any quantitative use of the data without at least looking at a 5 and maybe 10 -20 year period. Anyone more competent than me able to give us the trend since (say) 1970 and the standard deviation of residuals of the 12 month and three month averages ? Does anyone other than Pielke and BP seriously think individual datapoints can be used as a snapshot to calibrate the overall global heat balance ?
  25. macwithoutfries at 22:25 PM on 7 September 2010
    Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    The '2004-2009 anomaly' on which Pielke Sr. clings is probably from the huge latent heat from the arctic ice loss - which also happened to be at a very high level in the 2004-2009 interval - combined with the constant decrease in solar output consistent with the downward trend of the solar cycle!
  26. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    All the usual denier talking points, Stephen Schneider had so much patience.
  27. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    HR @24 - "This is not a mechanism to get the energy to depths were it can't be measured by ARGO." I didn't suggest it was, I would have said so otherwise. Regardless, interesting that such a short lived event "may" be a significant player in ocean heat transport.
  28. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    What do you get when you put 2 scientists in a room when one is a Skeptic and one is an Advocate of Anthropogenic Global Warning?
  29. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    20.Daniel Bailey From reading his posts I get the feeling Pielke is happy to engage with climate scientists of all shades. I can understand why he wants to avoid moderating comments while at the same time being frustrated by it. 21.gpwayne Erm are we reading the same thing? It's all about science. Can you quote the emotionalism? The only time he gets personnal is to refute your name calling and even then he uses his peer-reviewed work to show your error rather than claims of victimhood. 23.Dappledwater These seem still only to describe mixing in the upper ocean (above 1km). This is not a mechanism to get the energy to depths were it can't be measured by ARGO.
  30. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    MattJ @71 -"The biggest failing I see in Trenberth's diagram is that although sure, the energies add up as you say, the huge value of energy in backradiation is never explained" scaddenp @72 - "Since it is a pciture of global heat flows, I cant see what you could gain by day/night - its day somewhere, night somewhere." The diagram is clear to me as well, but how many laypeople overlook the contribution of incoming solar radiation? i.e. it only occurs to the side of the Earth facing the sun, whereas back radiation occurs day & night all over the planet?, I'd guess quite a few.
  31. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    I tried viewing the video in the UK, but it isn't streamed live. However I can watch last weeks episode, so the Schneider talk should work later. BTW, the long shots of the studio make it look very futuristic.
  32. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    AT @15 - "It is relatively hard to get warmer water to go DOWN a column of water" More pieces of the puzzle seem to be emerging all the time Observational evidence for an ocean heat pump induced by tropical cyclones (Sriver 2007) & Climate change: Tropical cyclones in the mix
  33. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Graham (moderator) @44 - The Elsner 2008 paper doesn't address my question. I'll continue fossicking through the literature on hurricanes, I'm sure you're busy enough.
  34. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Dumb question: I would expect "nondenialists" and/or real field experts claim that the methodology for gathering data has improved immensely since the 1950's, and that since there is now more data, the "real" ocean temperature over time is being acquired. Meanwhile, however, it has supposedly been increasing. How does one differentiate these two effects?
  35. What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    There is an amazing recent talk and video by Steve Schneider at: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/schneider08/schneider08_index.html
  36. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    OK girls and boys - I see the link to Pielke's item is already up here. As Daniel points out (beating me to it) we have a blog here on which he could have debated the issue. Instead, we get a defence on his site without the option to discuss it. Personally, I think he's making some rather odd assertions, including playing the rather sad 'victim' card. Still, if your argument don't quite add up, I guess a bit of emotionalism will cover the cracks, right Roger?
  37. Antarctica is gaining ice
    Might be interesting to keep a watch on Antarctic sea ice extent and the rate of change , it seems to be doing some interesting things down there .
  38. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    GC, my comment on that more relevant thread complements scaddenp's comment that he has correctly put on that other thread. Gee, it seems you've made that same contention on that other thread earlier, and were given the same information in return. But you never responded and now are repeating the same contention.
    Moderator Response: Everybody please follow scaddenp's example by continuing this discussion on that other thread.
  39. Station drop-off: How many thermometers do you need to take a temperature?
    (Replying to GC from another thread but more relevant here). GC - the article you cite shows that dropping the stations doesnt produce a warming bias. However, your post implies that you think that wicked scientists are willfully holding back data that they should be using. However the data isnt in their hands to withhold. To quote NCDC. "The reasons why the number of stations in GHCN drop off in recent years are because some of GHCN’s source datasets are retroactive data compilations (e.g., World Weather Records) and other data sources were created or exchanged years ago. Only three data sources are available in near-real time. The rise in maximum and minimum temperature stations and grid boxes in 1995 and 1996 is due to the World Meteorological Organization’s initiation of international exchange of monthly CLIMAT maximum and minimum temperature data over the Global Telecommunications System in November 1994." (Source here Of course nothing that a willingness to pay more tax on your part to support these data collations wouldn't fix...
  40. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    GC - the article you cite shows that dropping the stations doesnt produce a warming bias. However, your post implies that you think that wicked scientists are willfully holding back data that they should be using. However the data isnt in their hands to withhold. To quote NCDC. "The reasons why the number of stations in GHCN drop off in recent years are because some of GHCN’s source datasets are retroactive data compilations (e.g., World Weather Records) and other data sources were created or exchanged years ago. Only three data sources are available in near-real time. The rise in maximum and minimum temperature stations and grid boxes in 1995 and 1996 is due to the World Meteorological Organization’s initiation of international exchange of monthly CLIMAT maximum and minimum temperature data over the Global Telecommunications System in November 1994." (Source here Of course nothing that a willingness to pay more tax on your part to support these data collations wouldn't fix...
  41. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    michael sweet (#46) Amen to the idea of using all the data. I totally support John Cook on that one. When it comes to selecting surface weather stations for inclusion in HADCRUT3, GHCN and NOAA/GISS databases the same idea should apply. Yet this excellent website seems to meekly accept that over 80% of the available stations have been discarded since 1975. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Station-drop-off-How-many-thermometers-do-you-need-to-take-a-temperature.html
  42. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    I thought Ryan Maue's website might be useful for the discussion. The final section in Graham's article "Never mind the frequency, feel the width" worries me. What seemed to be the most recent concensus was summed up in a Nature paper earlier this year. It was authored by most of the personalities involved in the debate and seems to have come to the conclusion that we can not yet distinguish any anthropogenic signal in the hurricane data. They remain certain of future predictions. So Graham's comments should really be in the future tense rather than the present tense. Any suggestion that the recent increase in any hurricane metric is anything but part of the natural variability is wrong.
  43. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Re: HR (19) Thanks for the Pielke link. Perhaps it's just me, but does anyone else see the irony in this quote from the link:
    "What would be useful is for the weblog Skeptical Science authors to discuss the value of using (and issues with using) the accumulation of Joules in the climate system as the primary metric to monitor global warming."
    and that Pielke allows no comments on his post urging more discussions at Skeptical Science? The Yooper
  44. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    You seem to have riled the beast. :) Skeptic and denier do seem to be inappropriate with regard to Pielke snr. 18.Pete Dunkelberg Agreed but there is absolutely no reason to believe that energy is transferred to the deep at rates that would clear up the missing heat problem, as things stand we almost certainly have to look somewhere else.
  45. Pete Dunkelberg at 12:00 PM on 7 September 2010
    Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Conservation of energy is fairly classical, and much better known than ocean currents.
  46. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    BP #5 I fear that you are creating false expectations that the measurement model for ocean heat can be more precise than is currently possible. I'd expect to see detailed statistical work demonstrating the validity of the problem you allege that you have observed, not just a mere assertion, which is the current status of what you have written. On a related note, I see that you are allowing an accusation that you may be engaging in scientific fraud to go unchallenged.
  47. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Glenn Actually there have been studies of Ocean Basins. Interestingly the Basin that is warming the most is the South Ocean and there have been basins in the North that have cooled. The Dutch paper touches on some of that. Waar blijft de energie van het versterkte broeikaseffect? I find it rather interesting that we don't see weather in the oceans like we do on the surface. Maybe it is there but at a much slower time scale.
  48. actually thoughtful at 10:45 AM on 7 September 2010
    Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    I think Trenbeth is right that this is a very sad state of affairs (not being able to show where the heat is). If you think of the ocean as a water heater (cylinder for some readers) - you can maintain incredible stratification. I have seen 40F at the bottom of a 4 foot tank and 140F on the top (ie 55C across 1.3 meters). But this requires NO mixing! So if the oceans are mixing, that kind of stratification is not going to happen. It is relatively hard to get warmer water to go DOWN a column of water. I will be very surprised if we find oodles of heat at lower depths. Which, to my mind, makes it a mystery. It is one the VERY few chinks in climate theory. As you blast away at my comment - no need to tell me I have oversimplified - I promise that I know that!
  49. actually thoughtful at 10:31 AM on 7 September 2010
    What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
    52 embarrassed skeptics (if they are honest)
  50. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    4.Gordon "it is very clear to me why Pielke did not use 2001 as the starting point for his claim." The ARGO system that measures OHC saw a huge expansion in instruments around 2003. This gave something closer to global coverage. It makes sense to highlight a 'complete' data set and avoid comparing this to a spatially and temporally weak data set. As BP has pointed out energy in the ocean should be a relatively stable beast, it's difficult to generate real world mechanisms that allow large, fast shifts in the amount of measured energy once you have a reliable, global measuring system. 8.Pete Dunkelberg and 12.Glenn Tamblyn Classical theory of the oceans is that energy is only slowly transferred to greater depths. I'm not against overturning concensus ideas but ........

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