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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?
    Re: robhon (9)
    "Does anyone know where to view this after the airing?"
    See the link BaerbelW (6) kindly provided above. The Yooper
  2. 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
  3. 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!
  4. 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...
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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 ?
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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!
  14. 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?
  15. 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 ?
  16. 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!
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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?
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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
  24. 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.
  25. 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?
  26. 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
  27. 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?
  28. 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 .
  29. 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.
  30. 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...
  31. 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...
  32. 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
  33. 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.
  34. 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
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. 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.
  38. 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.
  39. 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!
  40. 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)
  41. 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 ........
  42. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    Perhaps also as a general point wrt the basic versions. Should they link to the scientific papers directly, or should they link to the corresponding sections on the intermediate level. I also think the second graph is confusing for a basic level description. You need to go to the paper to understand the significance of the different lines and the whole point of basic posts is to avoid that level of complexity.
  43. Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
    It might be worth stressing that the Levitus study relates to the upper ocean, top 700m, that the Argo floats sample down to 2000m, the average depth of the oceans is 3800m and the maximum over 10,000m. There is a lot of uncertainty about what is happening down deep and the change of heat content of the top 700m is the difference between the heat flux in from above and the heat flux out to deeper levels
  44. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    I also think the diagram is crystal clear. That is not the problem. We spent over 300 posts on the waste heat and related threads trying to explain the exchange of heat in the atmosphere to Johnd and RSVP and at the end they still did not understand. Since my last post scaddenp, Tom Dayton and Phil have all tried to help. I doubt that they will succeed.
  45. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    I noticed that the Pew graph used ALL the available data from the north atlantic. BP's US landfall graph probably uses 5% of the data, (or less). This relates to John Cook's mantra that we need to look at all the data and not just one litle piece. You can look at 5% and say that you see no pattern, only noise. Or you can look at the whole picture.
  46. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    Well the diagram seems crystal-clear to me - a brilliant depiction of the energy flows. However, it isnt going to make sense if you dont understand the individual processes, especially black-body and greenhouse which I guess is the source of confusion. Since it is a pciture of global heat flows, I cant see what you could gain by day/night - its day somewhere, night somewhere.
  47. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    Scadenp, #65: the way this argument drags out shows the weakness of using that diagram. Indeed: some years ago, I remember being told that one of the famous French math journals, I forget which, had banned articles including proofs which were in turn based on diagrams. Their attitude was that if you need a diagram, then you had not worked out your proof in sufficient detail and rigor. I suspect the same thing is going on here. I have yet to see a good diagram on this issue, Trenberth's is copied over and over -- and is misinterpreted over and over. Yet somehow all these people copying his diagram seem to have forgotten the old saying: the definition of insanity is repeating the same failed operation over and over and expecting a different result. 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, and seems to even violate conservation of energy when compared to the energy irradiated at top of atmosphere -- wherever that really is. Then more confusion is added by using yearly average figures, where the energies are averaged over day and night, even though the picture of the energy flows (in particular, their directions) is so very different.
  48. Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
    That's strange, George--I don't see the quote you say you took. However, I suggest the best venue for discussion of this particular topic is in the comments section of your blog, where Steve Easterbrook himself has responded well.
  49. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    johnd, the conversion of latent heat to sensible heat by the condensation of water vapor does not happen at the surface. It happens in the atmosphere. Thermals transfer energy only from the surface up, not down. Hot air rises, it does not sink. Those two heat "sources" (note the quote marks) heat the atmosphere. Then the atmosphere radiates up and down.
  50. Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
    Hi Tom (#22): Thanks for the suggestion. But the entire post is based on a quote I took out of that exact post by Easterbrook. Should I aver that I did not stop reading when I got to that quote in the post? Or that I subscribe to Dr. Easterbrook's blog? I would be glad to discuss the merit of Argument From Authority to decide if IV&V for climate codes is meaningless. George

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