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Comments 112401 to 112450:

  1. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    Just for Eric, the study referred in in post #51 Rice yields in tropical/subtropical Asia exhibit large but opposing sensitivities to minimum and maximum temperatures
  2. Anne-Marie Blackburn at 22:55 PM on 18 August 2010
    Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
    Chris, Cherries may be nice, but picking two or three data points to make your point is taking it a tad too far. Three decades is long enough to detect a trend - if you include all data points that is. Here are good, recent posts on the Arctic and Antarctica. There are plenty more if you do a search.
  3. Eric (skeptic) at 22:39 PM on 18 August 2010
    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    Rice yield growth is down, in Asia especially and is considered to be a serious problem. There are numerous articles on it like this http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90856/6571461.html But yields have not declined anywhere. The quantitative statement in the link in post 51 is about a decline in yield growth. The other statement that "rice yields drop" is not based on any collected statistics of rice farm yields. It may well be some sort of experiment that they ran, but the article doesn't say. The statement is not quantitative and not sourced.
  4. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    I suppose the production of rice would benefit slightly from rising sea-levels - if only it wasn't for the extra methane production and the declining yields due to rising temperatures. In other words, as the article states : "...showing that most climate change impacts will confer few or no benefits, but may do great harm at considerable cost."
  5. Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
    Well,we all like cherries. Arctic ice however seems to be doing some strange things. Part of the problem lies in the fact that our only reliable record goes back to the 1970s with the advent of satellites. Other records seem to go back no further than the 1870s. Do we have proxies for ice sheet extent predating this period? Currently, it seems to be defying trends with a summer melt less than predicted while Arctic temperatures appear to be below average (if I'm to believe the sceptics). On the other hand, Antarctic sea ice seems to be growing with a net increase in world sea ice (again, if I take sceptical sources at face value). I appreciate the Greenland ice sheet mass seems to be declining as is the Antarctic land ice sheet and I'm aware of the instability in the West Antarctic peninsula. So which cherries do I pick? Proxies for pre 1870s ice sheet extent if available would be helpful in placing today's behaviour in perspective.
  6. Anne-Marie Blackburn at 21:54 PM on 18 August 2010
    Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
    Fantastic post that perfectly illustrates the problem of the cherry-picking done by contrarians and the need to look at trends rather that single points.
  7. Long Term Certainty
    About Moderator´s response at #7: I have also noticed this "alarmism against mitigation" here and there. For those, any change in the climate is manageble, even if science shows it´s probably unprecedented in human history. Any interference in the use of fossil fuels, on the other hand, is doom - even if phased out in the pace of generations.
  8. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Hey Marcus, I'm aware of all that. I'm just suggesting that all three need to be covered in one post because I've pointed people at the intermediate version of this post before and immediately had them come back at me with those other arguments, which I then had to hunt down refutations for. It would be handy to have it all explained succinctly in the one page is what I'm suggesting.
  9. Is the sun causing global warming?
    John I know this is correct and agrees with a rather famous figure from Max Planck Inst but could you provide references for your data? Tony
  10. Long Term Certainty
    Pikaia, as we go further out the total amount of fossil fuels we will end up burning and long term climate feedback effects play a bigger and bigger role... making the eventual maximum highly uncertain. Even the rate at which we burn fuels would play a significant part as the oceans could absorb most of the extra CO2 if given enough time to disperse it rather than the ocean surface always being saturated. That said, I recall a worst case scenario study in New Scientist based on burning all available fossil fuels coming out to about 13 C by 3000 AD. Sticking just to known conventional reserves would top out around 7 C. Since then Canada has gone big into tar sands and deepwater drilling is becoming commonplace... so we're looking at exceeding 'conventional reserves' unless things change.
  11. Is global warming still happening?
    Thingadonta, you are essentially arguing that we should consider the possibility that recent data are indicative of a change in trend rather than just standard short term variability. Ok. Clearly the extreme heat, weather, and other data this year indicates that we have now entered a phase of profound global warming which will quickly grow to devastating proportions. Either that, or focusing on the tree immediately in front of us is a poor way of viewing the forest.
  12. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    Eric, I'll assume you somehow don't see the flaw in your comparison. The finding of DEcreased rice yields is in reference to existing farms in Asia... those farms are now producing less rice than they used to. The finding of INcreased rice yields you cite is the global total over the past 50 years... which thus includes the development of new rice farms (such as those in the Philippines cited in that very article) and the introduction of new high yield rice strains during that time frame. In short, they are completely different things and your citation in no way detracts from the validity of the declining yield problem.
  13. Long Term Certainty
    Another analogy might be smoking. I recall being struck by a number of friends who were light smokers (not even daily smokers, reasonably fit, and hence presumably at 'mild risk') who had coronary events in their mid-forties. Now smoking that one cigarette probably does you very little harm. However, each cigarette carries a cumulative risk of a range of well-documented adverse events. Interestingly, a heavy smoker's chances of having a heart attack fall by about 50% within eight hours of their last cigarette! Then again, every heavy smoker or drink has a grandfather/ uncle/ significant other (usually male) who smoked 40 cigarettes a day and half a bottle of whisky a day and lived till the age of 90. Probabilities and how we behave in response to them are fascinating. There's a vast body of evidence that people do not respond logically to probabilities but rather to perceptions. Consequently, people will respond differently to scenarios which carry identical risks/benefits depending on presentation much to the despair of economists, game theorists, and other practitioners of the dark arts.
  14. Eric (skeptic) at 20:34 PM on 18 August 2010
    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    The article says "Rising temperatures during the past 25 years have already cut the yield growth rate by 10-20 percent in several locations." And then it says "We found that as the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop," According to this http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/irri-tpt021910.php yields have more than doubled worldwide over the last 50 years.
  15. Is global warming still happening?
    #1, thingadonta: "The above diagram may be true, but is slightly misleading/doesn't present the whole picture. Skeptics have pointed out that several indicators are slowing in their rate of warming, contrary to IPCCC projections." Where in IPCC projections it shows that there can't be few years of slowing in the rate of warming?
  16. Berényi Péter at 20:05 PM on 18 August 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    #119 scaddenp at 14:53 PM on 18 August, 2010 Do think it reasonable that stations going into the GHCN have temperatures corrected so that every station measures temperature on the same basis? Definitely. That is, it would be reasonable, but unfortunately it is not what happens. In reality data from GHCN stations inside the US of A go into the raw data file pretty much unchanged, then later on multiple adjustments are applied to them as they make their way to v2.mean_adj. The bulk of the 20th century warming trend for the US is introduced this way. For the rest of the world an entirely different procedure is followed, where adjustments are hidden from the public eye. That is, for these stations the additional upward trend introduced during the transition from v2.mean to v2.mean_adj is next to negligible, but there are huge adjustments to data before they have a chance to get into the raw dataset. Of course it is always possible to re-collect data from the original sources and make a comparison (that's what I was trying to do with Environment Canada and Weather Underground), but it is not a cost effective way to do the checking, that much you have to admit. Worse, for most of the stations in GHCN there is no genuine raw data online (not to mention metadata) from the original source, so one would need a pretty extensive organization to do an exhaustive validation job of GHCN data integration procedures.
  17. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    The major decline in rice production in recent years appears to be, again, a continuation of a long-term trend. Higher night time temperatures seem to be the culprit. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100809161138.htm
  18. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    Ari: Skeptics don't do their homework and then claim that the work has not been done. That makes it easy for them to claim that we don't know a lot that we actually know. Thank you for providing this link to show what really is known.
  19. Long Term Certainty
    johnd Cloud cover in Perth - any month of the year? Having spent a bit of time there on business a few years ago, during what passes for winter in Perth, I'd be reasonably confident of it being clear. Only once I arrived during a horrendous storm, on the other occasions I left my coat, gloves and other winter type paraphernalia in my room every single day. Apart from the winds off the beach at Freo, all was mild and warm.
  20. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #46, thingadonta: "Yes, but no research has been conducted that I am aware of the rate of dissolution/precipitation of carbonate on the sea floor, so we don't know the rate of this potential negative feedback to ocean acidification." Here's just one example: In situ measurements of calcium carbonate dissolution rates in deep-sea sediments - Berelson et al. (1990)
  21. Long Term Certainty
    I have seen predictions of warming up to 2100AD, with increases of between 2 and 5 degrees, depending on the scenario. However, these graphs show the temperature continuing to rise steadily at the end of this period. What will happen in the next thousand years? I cannot find much info about when or how high the maximum will eventually be. Does anyone have any info about the long-term?
  22. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    thingadonta wrote : "your point about more rain is partly why agricultural output (including rice) is also increasing- and why the discussion about agricultre in the above article is wrong/misleading-more rain means more crops, particularly in marginal temperate zones. Too simple for AGW promoters to understand." Yes, of course, very simple. All that lovely rain, leading to lots of lovely crops - sounds very simple, doesn't it, especially in Pakistan : Floods likely to have destroyed crops worth $1 billion As for rice, well... : There has been a major decline in world rice production since late 2007 due to many reasons including climatic conditions in many top rice producing countries as well as policy decisions regarding rice export by the governments of countries with considerable rice production. Rice Trade The above article says something about floods and drought...
  23. Long Term Certainty
    @6 - Mmmmm, there are a lot of problems with that outlook.
    While it can't be predicted with 100% certainty now there are very few realistic outcomes.
    Indeed. Same goes for rising temperatures over short geologic timescales which have no other rational explanation other than increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Realistic outcomes include "moderately bad", "really bad", and "holy crap that's bad". The problem is that all 7 billion of us haven't experienced such rapid change before, and we're pretty fixed in our ways. Our agriculture production, our beachfront cities, etc etc. It doesn't take much (as you can see from even temporary drought effects, etc) to throw things into relative chaos, and we historically do not seem to adjust well.
  24. Long Term Certainty
    I am wondering why the said eclipse is being predicted as being visible from Perth. As has happened many times in the past cloud cover has obscured, or partly obscured such events around the world. If of course the cloud cover for that particular point of time is also able to be predicted with the same degree of accuracy as the movement of the planets, then the claim that the eclipse will indeed be visible may be justified. However for that particular period of any year, May/June, the likelihood of thick cloud cover is quite high. Perhaps being able to predict the winner of the grand final would be far more realistic than being able to predict cloud coverage so far out especially given the poor current understanding of what are all the drivers of cloud processes.
  25. Is the sun causing global warming?
    To add to my earlier comment, this is from the abstract of the Pablo 2010 paper: "We obtained that,after eliminating the secular trends and smoothing out the solar cycle,there is a strong positive correlation between the residuals of both the Sunspot Number and the stream flows, as we obtained for the Parana´." Which I interpret as being that the global warming trends being removed, what they mean as being secular isn't explained in the abstract or full report.
  26. Is the sun causing global warming?
    What is the connection between solar activity and river flow?? I have come across a number of research papers that look at various locations (South America, Europe and China) that appear to correlate river flows with solar activity?? Probably the most prominent is Pablo Mauas et al - "Long-Term solar activity influences on South American rivers" - 2010, which adds to a previous similar report, but there are others (can't remember report titles at this time). From what I can make out, the authors focus on the relationship and don't suggest it is an alternative to an AGW explanation.
  27. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Picoallen. Sunspot numbers & TSI have been trending downwards for the last 30 years. According to all I've read, cosmic ray levels are inversely proportional to solar activity-i.e. as solar activity goes up Cosmic Rays reaching Earth decline. Again, according to all I've read, the recent decrease in solar activity should have led to an increase in Cosmic Rays reaching Earth which-in turn-should have caused levels of cloud cover to increase (thus increasing Earth's albedo-a negative feedback). Yet in spite of everything pointing towards a *cooling* trend for the last 30 years, we've seen a *warming* trend instead. I'm happy to countenance something *other* than GHG's as the cause, but only if sufficient proof can be provided to back this alternate explanation. Its this proof that has been very lacking over the course of the Global Warming "debate".
  28. Long Term Certainty
    No one in their right mind would drive into a brick wall because the outcome is “uncertain.” Yes, but no one in their right mind would drive into a ravine to avoid the brick wall. Also because cars are designed to help passengers withstand some kind of impacts, but not others. It would be ironic to see the world embark into another Titanic moment a hundred years after the original tragedy, steering away at the wrong moment and therefore ruining any chance of survival.
    Moderator Response: I am intrigued by the various degrees of alarmism raised to counter my suggestion that people would be ill-advised to drive into a brick wall. I agree, if avoiding the wall meant driving into a ravine, then the choice would be challenging indeed. However, this is not the choice we have to make. There are clear precedents that it is possible to slow down while being paid to do so: Denmark cut carbon emissions by 21% between 1990 and 2006 while at the same time increasing its GDP by a whopping 44%, and Germany reduced carbon emissions by 28% whilst increasing GDP by 32% and creating more than 300,000 clean-energy jobs at the same time. Lest you think only Europeans can be that smart, the Australian CSIRO released a study recently which indicated that some 3 million jobs could be created during a 20-year transition to a low-carbon economy. So, there is no imaginary ravine. The choice is between hitting a brick wall and the economic *REWARDS* associated with slowing down and avoiding the impact. SL
  29. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    Sorry, I left out one more detail. All this assumes no reason for surface radiation to increase. If anything, it should be lower in fact if GHG are trapping more heat coming in from the Sun. For this factor, I will definitely concede a "green house effect" affecting daytime peak temperatures, however, these same gases will work the other way around accelerating cooling at night. This thread has to do with energy accumulation.. and waste heat, etc.
  30. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Solar irradiance cycle does correlate with sunspot activity - to miniscule value of 1w/m2. The past two solar cycles have been lower than the most active cycle - 50 years ago. According to the cosmic ray theory, popular five years ago, there should be a pronounced cooling period in progress. The exact opposite is reflected in the trend - the 12-month period June 2009 to May 2010 was the hottest in 130 years of record-keeping. Decent graphs are here (and cover the points raised fairly well): http://www.climate4you.com/Sun.htm Latest NOAA global assessment here:- http://tinyurl.com/2aqso2u
  31. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    KR 219 If surface radiation was the only source of atmospheric heating, you might be correct. However, the atmosphere derives heat from other places as well... surface convective cooling, incoming light and IR scattering directly from the Sun, and other sources such as human waste heat, geothermal, brush fires, etc. If air warmed by these sources cools via so called GHGs in the upper atmosphere, it stands to reason that the more to be found, the cooler it will be (overall).
  32. Is global warming still happening?
    @huntjanin: it appears it's not possible to please everyone... ;-) The original explanation is a bit longer, at 700-odd words, and includes numerous references to scientific papers that present the evidence in a more technical fashion. The whole point of this "Basic Version" is to provide a cut-down explanation that is clear, simple, and gets the main point across. Of course it's not going to cover every base - it's not intended to. And the next time I see a 5000-word article from the 'deniers' that contains more than one piece of valid scientific evidence (or perhaps even one!) will be the first... The most common skeptical tactic we've seen is to make a simple, sensible-sounding statement, and repeat it many, many times. The fact that the statement is often scientifically inaccurate (or just plain false) is usually irrelevant to the presentation. I feel that the mix John & co are going for with these basic arguments is good - present one, or at most, a few, clear scientifically valid pieces of evidence that support the AGW hypothesis.
  33. Is the sun causing global warming?
    PS: especially if what is written is true. :-)
  34. Is the sun causing global warming?
    A brief comment about known physical properties of greenhouse gasses might be pertinent. Eg: We know that gasses like CO2 absorb heat energy. This helps keep the earth warm. However, average temperatures are now increasing roughly in pace with greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. This suggests that greenhouse gasses like CO2 are probably causing the temperature rise. No, I haven't joined the dark side of the force ;-) But I like the idea of a plain English project which can engage people in communicating clearly about a complex subject.
  35. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Skeptic use three versions of this argument based on TSI, sunspots and cosmic rays respectively. I think you need to address all three.
  36. Temp record is unreliable
    BP - the irony in your post on objectivity is amazing. Signal to noise in MSU and sealevel is easily quantifiable. And your UHI doesnt make any sense with numerous papers on measuring and understanding the effect. As to GHCN. Do think it reasonable that stations going into the GHCN have temperatures corrected so that every station measures temperature on the same basis? THEN you worry about gridding etc. I think you should actually get the station data and the GHCN adjustment data from the station custodian. Why guess?
  37. Long Term Certainty
    Well the AFL Grand final will be won by one of sixteen clubs (probably less by now). And most likely will be won by St Kilda, Geelong or the Magpies. While it can't be predicted with 100% certainty now there are very few realistic outcomes. In comparison the climate is far more complex and chaotic. To keep the footy analogy we don't actually know how many teams are playing. And even some of the teams we know about we have absolutely no idea about their form. Even supposedly the most important player on the field, CO2, is far from completely understood. It is as you say a simple matter of understanding a not infinite number of physical processes (that's true about everything), problem is we don't have that understanding yet. Just on the Wally Broecker prediction. How many temperature estimates have been published over the past 3 decades? My guess is many and most are far less accurate than that. Hansen 1988 might be one example. I'm saying we shouldn’t act on climate change because of uncertainty but I'm with you in not recommending the brick wall at 80mph thing.
  38. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Why did you use an 11 year average instead of a yearly average? That may be more clear. Based on sunspot activity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle, the past 2 solar cycles have been extremely active (past 22 years, plus the past 4 have been stronger than normal). I'd be shocked if solar sunspot activity does not correlate to sun temperature emissions.
    Response: The 11 year average is used to filter out the solar cycle. The yearly values are shown in the intermediate version, along with the 11 year average (see the link to "Its the sun" for the intermediate version
  39. Is global warming still happening?
    It seems to me (heretic as usual!) that such a short and simplistic explanation of a very complicated and politically highly-charged issue --"Is global warming still happening?"-- plays right into the hands of the deniers. If they hired me to do PR for them, I would say: "Look, this is the very best that believers in climate change can come up with. In contrast, here are 5,000 words proving that global warming is not happening at all."
  40. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    A small remark seems to have unleashed a perfect storm of argument. So is increased Internet traffic a positive or negative consequence of climate change? Arguably, every energy expenditure however small increases net entropy in the universe as we know it thus hastening our own demise as a species. Just kidding :-)
  41. Long Term Certainty
    Add one uncertainty with a substantial economic downside to a known and inevitable economic brick wall also with an extraordinary negative outcome and one could say we have a compelling case for change. It's a certainty that our supplies of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons are going to buckle under the present demand curve, leading to fundamental inability to satisfy increasing consumption and thus inevitably escalating prices compounded by volatility. That's how our beloved market works, after all. It's safe to say that as far as petroleum and natural gas are concerned, they're a looming dead end for anybody wishing to preserve and extend our energy intensive lifestyle. For that matter there's huge spectrum of products touching every single aspect of our lives whose prices will balloon as we fecklessly burn hydrocarbons instead of using them more wisely. Does anybody think we're going to substitute coal for oil at the present rate of petroleum extraction and the type of applications satisfied by petroleum? Show some numbers. Exactly how is that going to work? Ignoring this is a good prescription for willingly abandoning overall economic prosperity but for some unfathomable reason it's become a standard part of the climate contrarian mantra, as demonstrated by Thingadonta. So, taking the contrarians' advice we're going to see our mobility massively impaired as we return to the age of coal. We'll be making polymers and fuel from increasingly lousy, dirt-saturated sub-bituminous fossil plants. That's it, the best we can do because we're so scared of facing the future, frightened by demagogues conjuring ghosts of failed totalitarian regimes? Now that's depressing. Surely we can do better.
  42. Long Term Certainty
    Stephan. Nice work. Good to see it come together so nicely.
  43. Long Term Certainty
    Thingadonta. "It would be a great mistake to restructure the world's economy and sources for fuels if climate change has relatively minor impacts." That might be true for a single, isolated issue (I can't think of a suitable parallel just now). But it certainly isn't for this one. Not only do we have this particular uncertainty about the consequences of burning fossil fuels, we have another one. There is equal uncertainty about how soon, how fast, those self-same fossil fuels will run out. Equally there is also uncertainty about how soon, how far, how fast the prices for these increasingly rare commodities will rise. And we do know, for a fact that they will be, one day - which day? - unaffordable for the general uses we now apply them to. So combining these uncertainties, we can address two (or three depending on your point of view) problems with a one-size-fits-all solution. This is an advantage, not a problem. We don't have to find several solutions, with the associated additional financing and reorganisation, to deal with several, simultaneous unrelated problems. Just one focused approach will deal with all the issues - including the effects on the oceans.
  44. Long Term Certainty
    @thingadonta - I think nature is 'rigged' as far as climate is concerned, but we're doing the 'rigging' by dumping tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, and it probably wont be to anyone's benefit. And restructuring of our economies, particularly with regard to energy supply, is going to happen soon in any event - there's only so much oil to be drilled, and the 'cheap' resources are fast running out.
  45. Of satellites and temperatures
    #34 Berényi Péter at 10:26 AM on 18 August, 2010 So what if they don't (and they normally don't) run the model for each pixel independently? The RMS error is reduced whether averaging is done before or after modeling or in some combination of averaging before and after modeling. For example, RSS first calculates monthly averaged 2.5 x 2.5 angular degree cells. So there are "only" about 10,000 of these cells covering the earth. Each of these cells is composed of about 2000 elemental samples and have a significantly reduced RMS error compared to a single elemental sample. These are then modeled and the 10,000 x 12 x 10 = 1.2 million cell samples covering a global decade are used to compute a global temperature trend. As long as the modeling and other processing don't introduce a time dependent systematic error then a global temperature trend can be computed at much higher accuracy than the temperature of an individual pixel sample.
  46. Is global warming still happening?
    @thingadonta - I don't really think it's misleading. The whole point of the post is to answer the question: "Is the world still warming?" The answer to that question is an unequivocal "Yes". As this is the "basic" version of the response, I feel that discussion of the rates of warming, variations in the rates, and the causes of those variations are not appropriate, and would only confuse the issue. They belong in the intermediate-level version, perhaps, and certainly in the advanced version, but not in the basic one. And regarding Trenberth's misquoted line - ocean heat content may just be a convenient excuse, or it may just be the truth. The statement should perhaps be this: "We know X amount of additional heat energy is being retained by the Earth, but we don't know where it's going, as it doesn't seem to be warming the atmosphere as fast as we thought it might".
  47. Long Term Certainty
    "And no one in their right mind should delay action on climate change because we don’t know exactly how bad it is going to be" This is not necassarily true. It would be a great mistake to restructure the world's economy and sources for fuels if climate change has relatively minor impacts. Restructuring economies based on long term projected benefits/negatives has been done before, with disastrous consequences (eg 1920s-1930s agriculture in Russia, 'Great leap Forward' in China). Partly because of these sort of historical precedents, a widespread and influential school of thought exists which rejects such large scale 'interferances' in eg market forces. Or alternatively, you have to do it from within the market system itself-which is what the whole carbon tax thing is about. Simply repeating 'its going to be bad' over and over is not going to have much affect on such thinking which has built up from mistakes made over the centuries, one needs to prop up the science and present the whole picture with regards to net risks and benefits, as well as providing viable alternatives, otherwise such a school of thought simply replies "we've heard it all before". As for your long term certainty, Burswood casino is rigged to benefit the casino, nature isn't 'rigged' to benefit anything, one way or another.
  48. Is global warming still happening?
    "those long term trends show that the globe is still, unfortunately, warming." The above diagram may be true, but is slightly misleading/doesn't present the whole picture. Skeptics have pointed out that several indicators are slowing in their rate of warming, contrary to IPCCC projections. (Which is also why the kefuffle with Trenberth and Jones' (mis)quotes 'we cant account for lack of warming', 'no warming since 1995' etc etc has occurred-they cant account for the 'slowing rate', unless one takes into account overall ocean heat-which may just be a convenient excuse). If global warming 'rate' is slowing in these indicators (air T near surface, T over land, reduction in sea ice, sea surface T), this is in contradiction to IPCC projections. This may of course be natural variation, as often claimed, but it is more correct to state it so, and make it explicit, unlike in the diagram above: data indiactes several warming indicators are in fact slowing in the last decade or so. (Also in line with a cooling sun, also suggesting the sun is still a major factor in recent climate variations).
  49. Temp record is unreliable
    BP writes: In all these cases people are desperately looking for tiny little effects hidden in huge noise with predetermined expectation. Not the best precondition for objectivity. I don't think that's a reasonable suggestion. Spencer & Christy are "skeptics" but their UAH satellite record is not dramatically different from RSS's version (+0.14C/decade vs. +0.16). Several of the recent "blog-based" replications of the GISTEMP/HADCRUT surface temperature record were done by "skeptics" or "semi-skeptics" ... but they don't show any difference from the mainstream versions. If Greenland were gaining ice, or if the global mean temperature were falling over the 1979-2010 period, or if there were a reasonable way to process satellite altimetry data that showed sea levels declining ... somebody would have published it by now. Do you seriously think Spencer & Christy haven't scrutinized their methods, looking for anything that could get them back to the (erroneous) cooling trend they got so much fame and attention for in the 1990s? Sorry, BP, but that argument just won't fly.
  50. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #41: "RATE of change that matters. RATE of change is what causes mass extinctions. RATE of change results in acidification become overwhelming before processes operating on geological...." Yes, but no research has been conducted that I am aware of the rate of dissolution/precipitation of carbonate on the sea floor, so we don't know the rate of this potential negative feedback to ocean acidification. The geological record indicates the ocean is strongly buffered, and takes a very long time to acidify, suggesting such a buffering as suggested above to ocean acidification is more or less instantaneous. #44 muoncounter: your point about more rain is partly why agricultural output (including rice) is also increasing- and why the discussion about agricultre in the above article is wrong/misleading-more rain means more crops, particularly in marginal temperate zones. Too simple for AGW promoters to understand.

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