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Comments 110951 to 111000:

  1. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    Phil at 19:44 PM, rate and equilibrium are closely related. With two opposing forces, in this case incoming energy and outgoing energy, equilibrium will only be found at the point where the energy gained balances the energy being lost. But is equilibrium ever found? In the case of a single location where the length of days and nights vary, and so too the rate at which energy is gained or lost, at what point of any day, or at what day of any annual cycle can the system be said to be at equilibrium?
  2. Carbon dioxide equivalents
    TOP said "States like Wisconsin that once were huge forests and now have a lot of worn out farm land " I was driving through farm land yesterday (not Wisconsin) seeing all that is grown... is the use of land for farming also not a form of carbon secuestration?
  3. The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
    Dappledwater @ 59: Actually, if you knew anything much about sphygmomanometers and blood pressure measurements, you'd know that there's very considerable variability in readings depending on type of sphygmomanometer, the size of the cuff, the size of the patient's arms, and in the case of the old fashioned mercury sphygmomanometers, the sensitivity of the doctor's ears as s/he listens via a stethoscope for the sound of turbulent blood flowing through the brachial artery. There's even a direct effect caused by the doctor - some patients get nervous when they see a doctor and their blood pressures come back as high (but show normal range readings with ambulatory blood pressure monitoring). However, it was not I who introduced the blood pressure analogy. The analogy was introduced by omnologos @ 19. I responded to his or her analogy. I note you've raised the issue with omnologos @ 62. I do know the difference between absolute measurements and anomalies. What puzzles me is not the presence of a warming trend regardless of station siting but rather the extraordinary lack of divergence between poorly sited and well sited stations - indeed, in many instances it would seem absolutely no divergence over a number of years particularly in minimum temperatures. To return to the blood pressure analogy (and attempt to make it more valid), let's say I visit 100 doctors on the one day and get my blood pressure checked. I revisit the same doctors a year later and have my blood pressure checked again. If my blood pressure has gone up significantly, I'd expect most of the doctors to come up with a higher reading. However, I'd be very surprised if, say, 97 out of 100 doctors came back with blood pressure readings exactly 15 mm-Hg higher than my initial reading. I'd expect some of the doctors to come back with readings 10 mm-Hg higher, others 12 mm-Hg higher, others 20 mm-Hg, and so forth. I'd expect the anomaly (ie, the rise over the course of the year) to vary from doctor to doctor. However, I'd probably still end up concluding I needed to have treatment for elevated blood pressure. Similarly, I would argue from the data presented that the temperature record argues for a warming trend in the US because of the consistent direction of the anomaly. However, the sheer uniformity of the anomaly seems counterintuitive - hence my reservations about the paper.
  4. How we know an ice age isn't just around the corner
    Joe Blog (#30), I don't doubt what you say about the importance of continental drift when it comes to the "big picture" of climate over hundreds of millions of years. However, global temperatures were high in the Ordovician but fell sharply toward the end of that era and then rose again in the Silurian. The time scale is too short for continental drift to be a factor and CO2 concentrations remained high throughout that period. So what caused that Ice Age? Shariv postulates that the Earth's movement into a region in one of our galaxy's spiral arms with a high stellar density could be responsible for the late Ordovician Ice Age. Do any of you have a better hypothesis?
  5. How we know an ice age isn't just around the corner
    Ned (#32) Thanks for the RSS graph. It clearly shows that there is no temperature rise in the last decade in spite of the recent peak due to the summer of 2010. This thread was about the possibility of a plunge in temperature leading into a new Ice age. Let's stop drifting "Off Topic". The current era (Holocene) is technically an Ice Age but we live in a fool's paradise called an inter-glacial period. The Vostok ice cores show that inter-glacials are relatively short, so enjoy it while it lasts.
  6. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Nice work Graham. As with so much else in climate change the burden of proof argument has come to fall the wrong way. If deniers are really going to argue that frequency and/or strength of hurricanes is NOT going to increase with rising temperatures, it should be up to them to explain why this would be the case. I can see no good reason why both intensity and frequency would not increase. Given that hurricanes always occurred with lower temperatures, it is nonsense to suggest that, once given the conditions to start, greater warmth wouldn't, on average, leader to a greater intensity. It also seems to me intuitively obvious that warmer moister air columns are going to be more frequently available to trigger initial hurricane formation. The graphs that Graham and Dappled Water show exactly coincides with others showing the rise in CO2 levels and the resultant effects, beginning around the mid 1970s. Either we are faced with the most astonishing and inexplicable series of coincidences or all of these graphs show the consequences of climate change. And l we also have in this thread, yet agin, the use of figures from the US to try to disprove some obvious outcome of global warming. And even then, whatever else BPs graph shows, it concurs in the recent increase in activity. In thread after thread we are it seems to keep forever being asked to prove that one plus one equals two.
  7. Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
    Thanks Rick. That's covered in the human CO2 emissions rebuttal. It's a cause of the anthropogenic warming as opposed to a consequence of it.
  8. The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
    Omnologos, sorry you've not improved on the analogy at all. Sphygmomanometers or EKG's still aren't appropriate analogues, the surface temperature record deals with anomalies, not absolute temperature.
  9. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    Whoops should read: On the other hand you seem perfectly content to dismiss the logical, obvious way of increasing evaporation - more radiation warming the surface.
  10. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Whilst hurricane intensity in the US may be of interest to Americans, the US is only some 2% of the Earth's surface, and most of us aren't Americans. What happens if we look at the tropics?, an area making up roughly 25% of the Earth's surface and inhabited by some 40% of the world's population?. It is the region where hurricanes/cyclones form after all. Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years Emanuel 2005 "Whatever the cause, the near doubling of power dissipation over the period of record should be a matter of some concern, as it is a measure of the destructive potential of tropical cyclones.Moreover, if upper ocean mixing by tropical cyclones is an important contributor to the thermohaline circulation, as hypothesized by the author, then global warming should result in an increase in the circulation and therefore an increase in oceanic enthalpy transport from the tropics to higher latitudes."
  11. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    ProfMandia , Thanks for the link to the paper I can see their reasoning now and it seems sound . It surprises me that results of papers like these are not discussed more in the general media as they are quite dire examples of what could be in store for the world .
  12. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    Re: davidwwalters (37)
    I guess my question now is why CO2 trumps water vapor as the prime greenhouse gas even though there is so much more water vapor in the atmosphere relative to CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
    Short answer? The concentrations of water vapor in the atmosphere are pretty stable. Variations from background concentration levels normalize within a 9-day period (the residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere). Thus, while there is vastly more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2, the greenhouse gas effects of that water vapor change little. Also, those effects are played out in the lower troposphere (because temps decline with increasing altitude, extra water vapor precipitates out...and when the freezing point of water is passed, the air gets pretty dry indeed). CO2 concentrations, on the other hand, are rising (about 40% above the interglacial range). And much of their effects occur in the upper troposphere, above the point where water vapor plays much of its King Lear role. Must-see video: Richard Alley AGU talk: CO2 Biggest Control Knob. For more in-depth background on greenhouse gases, global warming & climate science in general, go here. A little bit of CO2 goes a long ways. Hope this helps, the Yooper
  13. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    Johnd - still not making sense. I think the drivers for evaporation for warm water is perfectly well understood. I cannot understand what model for warming you are proposing - the some supposed interaction between clouds and wind can change the overall energy balance?? Seriously? On the other hand you seem perfectly content the logical, obvious way of increasing evaporation - more radiation warming the surface. Do accept the more radiation globally warming the ocean will increase water vaour? If not, what is postulated way of saving First law if the increased radiation is not warming the waters. If you are trying to make any sense at all, then please give us physically reasonable model so we can examine, make predictions and compare with reality.
  14. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    It seems to me I was reading just last week that an increase in co2 causes a corresponding decrease in air saturation by co2 and therefore removes the warming effect of co2.average humidity has decreased worldwide since the 1940's ,so there might be some truth in that theory.whats up with that?
  15. Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
    Great post, thanks! How about carbon isotope ratios showing that the increased carbon is anthropogenic?
  16. New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
    "fact" finder - your comment about "fairy tales" is somewhat ironic. However, to have any sensible discussion here, perhaps you would outline what you think is a reasonable process for you to distinguish "fact" from "lie"? Then we might be able to help you sort out a few fictions.
  17. Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    Sorry, BP, that's not good enough. What are the statistics for the model? How confident are we that the data you used are actually representative (given that they apparently showed a rather different trend than the actual land surface temperature records)? I'm sure your handwaving argument in your later comment is convincing to you, but that doesn't mean it's going to convince anyone else. That line of reasoning is built on one hidden assumption after another. We can talk about those assumptions, but let's first answer the questions about your regression model.
  18. Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
    TOP at 23:57 PM, the absorption band chart illustrates very well the role each component plays. It is no coincidence that humans radiate at about 10um which is right in the transmission window. It is also illustrated very clearly that if there was no CO2,then the water vapour alone would allow more thermal energy to be radiated off as the transmission window gradually closed. With CO2 added, the transmission window closes off earlier, so the loss of heat is halted earlier. However it does not overlap the point at which water vapour allows maximum transmission. The only way for CO2 to overlap that portion of the spectrum is for it to change it's properties, or for the properties of water vapour to be altered. The chart represents very well the properties of H2O and the band occupied by water vapour reflects the points at which the changes of state occurs. For the concept of CO2 saturation to apply, the width of the CO2 window would have to either widen or the position occupied on the spectrum shift, something the known properties of CO2 do not allow for. If an analogy helps, water vapour is a sliding window that opens once solar radiation streaming through closed windows heats the room. As the heat increases, the window begins to open becoming almost fully open at about 10um which by coincidence allows us within the room to enjoy a comfortable environment, then as the loss of heat going out the window begins to overtake the heat coming in, the window begins to slide close. However with CO2 present, the final few um of the window opening has already been blocked off so the loss off heat is curtailed a little earlier than it otherwise would have been.
  19. Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
    Composer - thanks and yes, it was deliberate. apeescape - thanks, I fixed the link.
  20. Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
    Okay I see, your point is that the greenhouse effect is dependent upon the thermal radiation from the Earth's surface, which in turn is dependent upon the incoming solar radiation. My initial reaction to that is that total solar irradiance generally only varies by a fraction of a percent, so treating it as constant is a safe assumption.
  21. Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    BP #37 That's a cop out par excellence. If you do a regression model (which you have) then you can not demonstrate its statistical significance without presenting the results of the F test, to show whether it predicts better than chance or not. Seeing as it's a univariate regression you might as well do the statistical significance of the correlation coefficient as well, to show if r is significantly different from zero. If you're not prepared to do an essential part of the job, then don't make the claims.
  22. Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
    dana1981 "I'm not sure why you think the CO2 radiative forcing is dependent upon the atmospheric temperature or solar irradiance." CO2 does not generate energy on its own. Even according to AGW it is only a reflector of IR. The amount of energy assumed to come from CO2 according to your ln function only holds IF solar irradiance patterns do not change. But if it does what? CO2 would contributes nothing in a case where the sun shuts down for instance even if concentrations triples or quadrouples.
  23. The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
    Omnologos, Since your post talks about EKG's you have no call to suggest I am off topic. Your analogy is completely wrong. We are talking about measuring a simple result: temperature, not a complicated one. It is simple to measure and, since we are measuring the anomaly, the calibration can be off and still give the correct result. There is no indication that the data has been measured wrongly. You are trying to wish away a clear result. As it has been pointed out several times above, if you visit 100 people for your blood pressure and they all tell you you have a problem, you have a problem. It does not matter if some are not calibrated. The result is clear: no matter how you slice the data you get a strong warming trend. Good sites, bad sites, urban sites, rural sites all show the same warming trend. How can you claim that this somehow indicates that that there is no trend?
  24. Berényi Péter at 07:39 AM on 4 September 2010
    Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    #39 michael sweet at 05:47 AM on 4 September, 2010 Since Dr. Hanson has shown here that the warming trend in the rural stations and at very dark stations is the same as at stations that have large urban developments, how can you claim that you have something worthwhile? For once try to think please. Let's suppose (an alternate) Earth had a fairly stable climate with no average surface temperature trend whatsoever. Still, Urban Heat Islands would exist even there. Whenever you drive from the countryside to a city center, you can easily measure a several centigrade increase in air temperature. You can also measure a logarithmic dependence of this UHI effect on city size without referring to history. The only thing you have to do is to visit as many cities as you like multiple times and register temperature differences between centers and surroundings. An order of magnitude estimate of the effect is something like 0.2°C per doubling of city size. As the climate here is not changing, if the population of the same city grows in time, you'd expect the same temperature increase, that is a trend of about 0.2°C per doubling, right? Now, let's suppose population of this alternate Earth is increasing steadily with a fix doubling time of 55 years. Growth rate in different cities may be different, but the average rate would be the same as the global one. Therefore urban weather stations would measure a 0.36°C/century warming trend. Now let's suppose a scientist in this world, call him Dr. James E. Hansen for the sake of convenience, discovers the very same average temperature trend is measured even at rural stations, where local population density is extremely low. I have already mentioned climate is stable in this Earth, therefore in reality surface temperature trend is zero. Still, a global surface warming trend of 0.36°C/century is measured. How can we resolve this paradox?
  25. Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
    link to Zhang et al. (2007) has an extra space at the end.
  26. citizenschallenge at 07:16 AM on 4 September 2010
    New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
    factfinder while you're at it, how about a little detail on the following: "Physics is based on Experimental data - not "empirical evidence that > Has Been Shown To Be Caused By Dozens Of Other Causes." What other causes have shown the physics of GHG's to be false?
  27. Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
    Was the similarity between the symbols used to delineate the level of the rebuttal and the standard symbols for ski trail difficulty deliberate? Good post, by the way. Even at this level, the site does a good job of making things clear for the non-scientist (such as, say, myself).
  28. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Tobyjoyce, I haven't heard that statement before :-) I browsed around a bit and it appears that the Dutch have been making polders from marshes and lakes for over a 1000 years already (but possibly even 2000 years) where the first polders used gravity to drain the area into (tidal) rivers when their water levels were sufficiently low enough. It was only after 1400 that the first windmills arrived. The windmills were eventually needed because of the compaction of the peat soils (possibly some 2 meters!) due to water drainage and higher boezem water levels due to ever more polders draining their excess water into those canals. Among other things, the need for new polders was created by a fast growing population which needed fuel (from peat in those days) which eventually, due to several factors, resulted in the accidental creation of new lakes and reduced dry land area via erosion of the soft lake banks. This was one of man's earlier environmental 'disasters'. By pumping the lakes dry further erosion was prevented and created new fertile land as a bonus. Early geoengineering to counter environmental challenges at work and the Dutch master it! ;-) Creating and maintaining a sizeable polder is, ofcourse, not a task for a single person, so all who had a stake in the polder would usually cooperate (this period might be the source of your quote!). But not everyone is able to do so ofcourse, hence unions were established. Everyone with a stake was forced to pay to the union, an ancestor to the modern municipality, which in turn would ensure good maintenance. The unions would slowly start to merge into ever bigger unions called 'waterschap' covering multiple municipalities, creating a separate specialist government layer rather unique in the world. The first waterschap was created in 1255. Developing new polders became a profitable speculative business due to high land prices in the years 1550-1650 and more audacious new plans attracted ever more speculators. Eventually this bubble blew like many other bubbles to come when land prices dropped during the construction of polders causing often massive loss of private capital. It looks like the story of the Dutch polders holds some valuable lessons to the current generations which seem largely to have learnt nothing from history. I'm sorry about the length of this post, it got a bit out of hand. :-)
  29. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Heh. I wasn't referring to you, or to anyone else in particular. I was just using that as an example of the kind of remark that tends to hinder rather than promote useful discussions.
  30. Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    Thanks for the link, Michael. I agree that it's important to know how significant BP's regression model is. However, it's also very important to know how representative BP's set of stations is. As I noted above, his stations show a much larger warming than other people's reconstructions using station data over the same decade. That bias seems like an indication that his stations aren't necessarily representative of the actual land surface record. That wouldn't be as big a concern if he were using gridding, kriging, or some other method to compensate for the irregular distribution of stations. As we recently saw in another case, the "cooling" he reported after just averaging a bunch of met stations in Canada turned out to actually be "warming faster than the world as a whole" once the spatial autocorrelation in his data was taken into account. If the F-statistic indicates very low significance for his model, then it's probably not worth bothering about anything further. (And in fact, my purely uninformed guess is the model is not at all significant.) But if the model seems prima facie strong, I'd like to see a map of the stations used, or a table of their coordinates, or something like that.
  31. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    #29 Ned I wasn't getting riled up, I was just rolling my eyes a bit, and hoping I was being Poed. }|
  32. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    This is a good topic for discussion, by the way, if sensible people can avoid getting riled up over silly remarks like "just another attempt to scare up more support for the warmista agenda!" It's an area where the science is genuinely still being worked out, and where there really is more fertile ground for genuine skepticism.
  33. Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    BP: Since Dr. Hanson has shown here that the warming trend in the rural stations and at very dark stations is the same as at stations that have large urban developments, how can you claim that you have something worthwhile? You have cited a blog post on WUWT as your primary source. You claim your correlation is "not very strong" without saying what the correlation is. You have not said anything that Dr. Hanson has not already shown in a peer reviewed study is wrong. "I think" is no better than "I doubt it" if you have no supporting data. Your claim that one person moving into a 10 km2 area would raise temperatures significantly is completely unbelievable without solid data. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You have "not very strong" so far. That doesn't make the grade.
  34. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Since I tend to be harshly critical of many of BP's do-it-yourself analyses, let me say that I think his graph is pretty robust this time. It doesn't matter whether you use a 25-year smoothing, 10-year smoothing, or no smoothing. It also doesn't matter whether you just count the number of hurricanes, add up their category #s, or only look at major storms. There isn't really any long-term trend in hurricanes making landfall on the US. Now, maybe "hurricanes making landfall on the US" is not a good proxy for global tropical cyclone numbers, I don't know. But this isn't an issue of smoothing or of how you count the storms.
  35. New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
    factfinder... Can you direct us to where the greenhouse effect was disproved in 1909?
  36. Berényi Péter at 05:13 AM on 4 September 2010
    Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    #24 Turboblocke at 03:38 AM on 4 September, 2010 what does that do to the trend, as it dilutes the recent rise? Ten year running average looks like this: There is a recent rise indeed, but it's a far cry from being unprecedented. More like a recovery, even if it is a bit fainter than the scary surge around 1880. See The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2006 from NOAA National Hurricane Center. BTW, there are only three category 5 hurricanes on record that made landfall in the US. 1935 "Labor Day" 1969 Camille 1992 Andrew Years with category 4 storms: 1856, 1886, 1893, 1898, 1900, 1915(2), 1919, 1926, 1928, 1932, 1947, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1961, 1989 and 2004. Again, no increasing frequency is seen.
  37. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Dammit, I must not have been fully awake when I read that graph. Though in fairness, I wasn't the one making the comparison. Anyway,in that case, BP's findings directly contradict what I've heard in talks on this issue and read in sources like the 2008 CCSP report, at least on Atlantic hurricanes (although I'll admit that my investigation into this issue has been somewhat limited). I'd still like to see what it looks like with a lower amount of smoothing, though. As for your statement about the "last couple of years", this is too vague to tell me anything useful. If you're talking about ten years, then maybe it's relevant. If you're talking about two, then it's meaningless in this context. And I'd want to know your source for those claims. Also, I don't know if you were being facetious about "warmist agendas", but I'll just hope you were.
  38. citizenschallenge at 04:24 AM on 4 September 2010
    New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
    Ditto to that. Great educational video. Keep them coming! Since we are on the topic of Monckton I'd like to mention my layperson's critique of SPPI and their braintrust Chris Monckton. I'm reviewing aspects of Monckton's message that are beneath the dignity of serious scientists to pursue. Claims and issues that are nonetheless relevant to the struggle against the "AGW is a Hoax" industry. If you curious please visit: http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com Peter M.
  39. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Werecow We're talking apples and oranges here one is about frequency the other about intensity. Over the past couple years the worlds total cyclonic energy has dropped to at or near all time recorded lows.This is just another attempt to scare up more support for the warmista agenda!
  40. New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
    Alden is putting together some really great presentations here. I hope he keeps more of these coming.
  41. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    BP: it's all very well taking a 25 year average and justifying it by saying we're talking about climate not weather... but what does that do to the trend, as it dilutes the recent rise? What's the trend just using basic yearly data?
  42. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Cynicus, I concede your superior knowledge of the Netherlands. Diamond uses polders as a metaphor for the nations of the world as a whole. He quotes a Netherlands acquaintance: "You have to be nice to your enemies because he may be the one operating the neighbouring pump in your polder". I am sure polders could not have been maintained without co-operation within and between the people who live in them. If one fails, they all fail.
  43. Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
    CBDunkerson@ 35, Thanx for replying.....I understand now the mechanism of how greenhouse gasses work. I guess my question now is why CO2 trumps water vapor as the prime greenhouse gas even though there is so much more water vapor in the atmosphere relative to CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
  44. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    This is very confusing, indeed. The data (NOAA) analyzed below seems to suggest that in the NA the frequency is increasing. Not only is it increasing, but follows the temp variations pretty close. The analysis also tries to take in to account the reporting problem and appears to be pretty thorough. http://residualanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/04/intensity-or-frequency.html
  45. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    #16: "There is no increase in severity whatsoever, a slight decrease, if anything. " I still maintain, as I did the last time this came up, that this isn't a valid measure. Ask anyone who lives on the Gulf Coast: a season with 3 cat 2 storms is NOT more severe than a single cat 5. And tropical storms, which are missing from your severity index are counted in number making landfall -- as they should be. The supposition that older storms are uncounted is just that -- supposition.
  46. Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
    Lots of comments to respond to overnight. RSVP - I'm not sure why you think the CO2 radiative forcing is dependent upon the atmospheric temperature or solar irradiance. The solar forcing is a different calculation entirely. The CO2 forcing should just depend on the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, as the formula shows. HumanityRules - yes, the warming from a doubling of CO2 alone should be about 1.2°C. However, climate sensitivity takes into account all variables which change in response to increasing CO2, not just water vapor. I'll be working on a rebuttal on "climate sensitivity is weak" this weekend which will discuss this to some degree, but estimates of the value are based on empirical observations, among other things. It's not just the water vapor feedback which determines the sensitivity value. As for the Arctic study you reference, unfortunately I don't have access to the full paper. However, they suggest that when the Arctic warms, the Antarctic should cool. Currently both are warming, which would seem to throw a wrench in the spokes of this natural warming theory. TOP - as Ned shows, CO2 is not saturated. Additionally, if you check the formulas in this post again, you'll see that it's not a linear relationship between the radiative forcing and CO2 concentration, but a logarithmic one.
  47. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Ah, yeah, sorry, I Guess I missed the part about assigning it to the middle year. You compiled these data yourself? Could you post the ten year running mean for comparison purposes?
  48. Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    Berényi Péter, there are a number of lines of reasoning that suggest that the eventual "downstream" impact of UHI on global temperature trends is pretty small. Given that, it's hardly surprising that most scientists who hold that view haven't focused on trying to quantify this effect better. There are plenty of problems worthy of investigation in science. What seems interesting and important to you won't necessarily seem equally interesting and important to others. But that doesn't address KDKD's question! Given that you have done a regression analysis that seemed convincing enough to be worth writing about here, what was the statistical significance of the model? You did the regression; I assume you must have the numbers for F-test, 95% CIs, things like that. Is your model relating population density and warming trend significant? You say the correlation between the two is "not very strong" ... can you be a little more informative than that?
  49. Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    Thanks for the reference to the Power Dissipation Index, which would seem to be a fairly critical piece of science. I would suggest that an article be written about the history of increasingly powerful storms, their impact, and projections. The insurance companies have already incorporated this into their operating models, as evidenced by the difficulty in getting homeowners insurance for coastal residences.
  50. Berényi Péter at 01:22 AM on 4 September 2010
    Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
    #17 werecow at 01:18 AM on 4 September, 2010 No, it runs up to 2009. The 25 year running average makes it look shorter. But anything less than three decades is just weather, not climate, is it?

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