Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 2242 2243 2244 2245 2246 2247 2248 2249 2250 2251 2252 2253 2254 2255 2256 2257 Next
Comments 112451 to 112500:
-
Berényi Péter at 12:14 PM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#42 muoncounter at 11:16 AM on 18 August, 2010 Why not look a little further on the NOAA site and find this graph for Atlantic storms I tell you why. Hurricanes making landfall in the US during the last 160 years are well documented (there were insurance companies there during the entire epoch). Named Atlantic storms on the other hand, are not, especially before the satellite era. In earlier times there must have been a lot that would have deserved a name but never got one, because went unnoticed. -
Ned at 12:04 PM on 18 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
I find it a bit amusing that BP accused me of "exaggerating" when I stated a plain, simple fact (for the entire duration of the satellite record, RSS and GISTEMP have trends that are identical to within 0.01 C/decade). The data for both are available online. Calculate the trends, 1979-present. One is +0.16 C/decade and the other is ... +0.16 C/decade. -
Berényi Péter at 11:58 AM on 18 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
#115 scaddenp at 11:20 AM on 18 August, 2010 never found out what the homogenisation procedure was Listen, I am talking about adjustments done to raw data here. I thought homogenization is supposed to come later. Anyway, it is next to impossible to assess the validity of a procedure if truly raw data are not published. How likely is it that Environment Canada stations needed an increasing upward adjustment starting in 1964 up to 0.9°C toward the end to make their way into GHCN raw dataset? -
muoncounter at 11:48 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#39: "Also it largrely depends on the type of crop, many crops only need a little more water, rather than more sunlight, as the main factor in their productivity." Oh, there's plenty of water available: 50% rise in extreme rain incidence in last 50 yrs Extreme rainfall events (rainfall more than 100 mm/day) have increased by 50% during the past 50 years. ... And, most climate models predict that global warming will increase such events. We cannot claim that a specific extreme event is due to global warming although we know that the probability of such events will increase as the earth becomes warmer. That reminds me of another recent article, cited here. -
Berényi Péter at 11:44 AM on 18 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
#113 scaddenp at 10:52 AM on 18 August, 2010 BP- and I will ask again. What do you think the probability of surface temp record, glacial ice volume, sealevel and satellite temperatures trends ALL being wrong so as to give us a false trend? I can't assign a probability to that event, because the sample space is undefined. We have no idea what might or might not going on in the background. But I would say it's likely in the ordinary sense of the word. 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. At least the surface temperature record has serious problems with neglecting the temporal UHI effect due to fractal-like population distribution and quadrupling of global population density in slightly more than a century. If you subtract this from the trend, not much remains, leaving all the multiple independent lines of evidence inconsistent with each other. -
muoncounter at 11:36 AM on 18 August 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
As the commercials say, "Here we go". High-tonnage tanker through Northeast passage -
muoncounter at 11:27 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#39: "Mass extunctions occur when sea level falls, not rises. Sea life and biodiversity generally flourishes in the geologial record with seal level rises." Here is a top 5 list of biggest known mass extinctions. Note causes include asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions on a large scale ("which may have led to global warming"), flood volcanism leading to loss of oxygen in the oceans and, yes, dropping (but then rising again) sea level. Of course, it is apples and oranges to compare mass extinctions in geologic time periods when most forms of life were marine to what we are talking about here. And we're not even talking about 'extinction', we're talking about floods, loss of agricultural resources, loss of infrastructure and general crappiness for anyone living along the coastline. No, that's not extinction, but its darned unpleasant. -
scaddenp at 11:20 AM on 18 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
BP - you show a site saying how interesting but never found out what the homogenisation procedure was. As I pointed out earlier, people have done this for 2 stations in NZ where "they were apparently adjusted to show warming", but when the station siting history etc was examined, the homogenisation procedure was shown to be correct. Its not enough to show just the readings, you have to have site history and adjustment procedure. And you guess on probability that the consilience is wrong? -
muoncounter at 11:16 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#38: Sum of Safir-Simpson number by year is an interesting statistic. I took the same data and divided your cumulative SSN by number of storms in 5 year bins. Looked quite different. Of course, SSn is based on pressure and windspeed. As a victim of TS Allison, I'm here to tell you that storms that don't contribute to your statistic sure make a heck of a mess. So it would appear to be number of named storms that is a better indicator. Why not look a little further on the NOAA site and find this graph for Atlantic storms:
Bars depict number of named systems (open/yellow), hurricanes (hatched/green), and category 3 or greater (solid/red), 1886-2004
This seems to indicate a gradual increase in the number of named storms in later years.
-
scaddenp at 11:08 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
thingadonta - Please, please back your assertions with references. "well known" my foot. The only reference you provide is wiki and clearly you didnt bother to read the Tyrell paper that it quotes, nor its gloomy cites. And to endlessly repeat the mantra - Its the 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 However, instead of arm-waving about it, you could read IPCC WG2 instead. -
Berényi Péter at 11:07 AM on 18 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
#112 scaddenp at 10:49 AM on 18 August, 2010 Pick a station in this high arctic set. Dig out the data needed for homogenization, follow the GHCN manual and show us where they went wrong. Just one station. Nah, that would be cherry picking and excessive detail. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:01 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Experts overwhelmingly disagree with you, BP, probably because you did not take into account the fact that years leading up to the 1960s were unusually active. Look at it from the power dissipation of larger storms viewpoint as well as what happens when natural variability is superimposed on the secular trend (or climate change is superimposed on the variability?): Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years Low frequency variability in globally integrated tropical cyclone power dissipation Heightened tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic: natural variability orclimate trend? Trends in global tropical cyclone activity over the past twenty years (1986–2005) The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones -
scaddenp at 10:52 AM on 18 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
BP- and I will ask again. What do you think the probability of surface temp record, glacial ice volume, sealevel and satellite temperatures trends ALL being wrong so as to give us a false trend? Consilience anyone? -
scaddenp at 10:49 AM on 18 August 2010Temp record is unreliable
BP - homogenization adjustments are something that happen at an individual station level and relate to time of day of reading, screen type, thermometer type, altitude etc. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you think the homogenization is done wrong, then you need to show us a station where the adjustment procedure has been incorrectly applied or proof that those procedures have flaws. There is just not enough information here to assess whether you supposed problems are real problems. Pick a station in this high arctic set. Dig out the data needed for homogenization, follow the GHCN manual and show us where they went wrong. Just one station. -
thingadonta at 10:44 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
"You'd need to provide the other side then, for your assertion to be taken seriously. Substantiate your claim please with facts." Here is a few others. Sea Level. Mass extunctions occur when sea level falls, not rises. Sea life and biodiversity generally flourishes in the geologial record with seal level rises. Health. I dont know where you get your stats from; it is well known that cold related deaths far outweigh heat related deaths. I think your figures are actually a projection in very high IPCC warming scenarios, but are not current stats. Lomborg has some good data on this in his book 'Cool It', which is the opposite of what you say, cold related deaths are ~5-10 times heat related deaths. Also, malaria is a poverty related disease, which has been declining since 1900 as the world has warmed, the exaxct oppoisite of what you project above. Also, draining of wetlands (eg Southern US) has generally been shown to reduce malaria prevalance. In the case of tropical disease incidence, I'm sorry, but biodiversity is generally a bad thing. 'Biodiversity' also means virus diversity. That is why in low biodiversity temperate forests there is low rates of disease generally; tropical Africa would probably be better off reducing its rainforest and wetlands extent if it wants to reduce malaria and enhance human health (a sure heresy amongst the green brigade). Polar Melting Greater access to mineral and petroluem resources. Ocean Acidification I'll get back to you about possible positive benefits, but oceans wont acidify if the rate of burial of carbonate sediments and the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments responds to changes in pH and provides provide a negative feedback to ocean acidification: from Wiki: "Leaving aside direct biological effects, it is expected that ocean acidification in the future will lead to a significant decrease in the burial of carbonate sediments for several centuries, and even the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments.[49] This will cause an elevation of ocean alkalinity, leading to the enhancement of the ocean as a reservoir for CO2 with moderate (and potentially beneficial) implications for climate change as more CO2 leaves the atmosphere for the ocean.[50]" Agriculture: The area of temperate land which receives a net benefit from warmer temperatures greatly outweighs the area of land where the sun's angle of incidence is too high to benefit agrculture. Also it largrely depends on the type of crop, many crops only need a little more water, rather than more sunlight, as the main factor in their productivity. The area from China to Europe has a greater area which will benefit from warmer temperatues whilst still having enough sunlight to grow crops. The issue here isn't angle of incidence of the sun, but largely T and precipitation (which is both projected to increase in these areas).Moderator Response: Graham's response: Thanks for your comments. Sea-levels: I think the timescales we're interested in as a race lie outside that of evolution, so I wouldn't agree that this was a benefit the human race might accrue. Health: you say you don't know where the stats came from. The intermediate rebuttal is the answer, so you can look that up yourself. All the claims made here are referenced to the original papers. Your point about cold related deaths belies the fact that we are discussing projections - not what happened in the past. Polar melting: true, more resources would be available - theoretically. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing, however, but I've put it in. Ocean pH: cite your sources. A wiki doesn't cut it. Same with agriculture - a lot of claims there, no detail, and no substantiation. -
scaddenp at 10:39 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Doug, it is also good to see Roy Spencer trying hard to persuade people that G&T is a load of cobblers. -
Berényi Péter at 10:37 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
#36 Ned at 09:35 AM on 18 August, 2010 * Some people accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but are under the impression that there are all kinds of problems with the surface temperature record, such that Gistemp and Hadcrut can't be replicated (wrong). right -
Berényi Péter at 10:26 AM on 18 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
#31 elowells at 09:40 AM on 18 August, 2010 There are about 320,000 pixels over the surface of the earth, or more than 640K samples per day Don't try to tell me they run the model for each pixel independently. Of course they don't, because it would not make sense. But that reduces the degrees of freedom drastically (as it should). -
Berényi Péter at 10:15 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#35 doug_bostrom at 05:33 AM on 18 August, 2010 when we look at statistics it becomes clear we may conclude that a proportion of increasingly frequent extreme weather events are themselves indicators as well as outcomes of climate change OK, let's have a look at statistics on some extreme weather events. Fortunately we have this technical memorandum on The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2006 from NOAA National Hurricane Center. In Appendix A of the report one can find a complete Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2006. I have also collected hurricane data for the most recent three complete hurricane seasons from 2007-2009, so I could produce an overview of this special type of extreme weather event for the last 159 years. As a crude measure of hurricane intensity, I have simply added up the category numbers of all hurricanes annually. As we are talking about climate (not weather), it is a 25 year running average of that number, assigned to the middle year. It looks like this:
As you can see, hurricane intensity is decreasing slightly on a century scale, therefore increasingly frequent extreme weather events do not include hurricanes hitting the US. More importantly, no relation to either any kind of global average temperature history reconstruction or atmospheric CO2 levels can be seen. At least in this respect, if hurricanes are considered indicators, climate does not even seem to change much, not in the Atlantic region for sure.
-
Doug Bostrom at 10:01 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
On the other hand, if you dont' want to be constructive, continue presenting counterfactual narratives of climate science here and in a strange way you can be equally helpful to Skeptical Science's never ending quest to reassemble intellectual integrity from the broken shards scattered about as the result of degenerate rumor-mongering. Please, however, try to be original. Put some effort into it, don't lean on extended quotes from fringe specialist conspiracy theorist websites, don't cite political pundit blather only tangentially related to science, don't lazily say "what if" without bothering to explore "if," don't parrot the latest talking point or strange theory from your favorite contrarian source. Take a look at the "Argument" list, eliminate the obvious, innovate. Or, at least use the "Argument" list to make comments in the appropriate thread, rather than blurting seemingly random non sequiturs in the wrong place. Borrowing from Sherlock Holmes, it's the dog that didn't bark that's interesting, even if it turns out the dog has nothing useful to say when asked. -
elowells at 09:40 AM on 18 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
#31 Berényi Péter at 22:15 PM on 17 August, 2010 The RMS error is for an ensemble of "pixels": samples at the spatial resolution of the instrument, which is about 40 km x 40 km. Pixels at the equator are sampled twice per day and pixels at the poles about 14 times per day. There are about 320,000 pixels over the surface of the earth, or more than 640K samples per day. Over a decade this is more than 2.3 Gigasamples. What limits the accuracy of determination of a trend in Global Average Temperature are time dependent systematic errors, such as the orbital decay/diurnal correction. Just because one can only determine the temperature of a single pixel at one sample time to within a few degrees doesn't imply that one can't determine the global temperature trend over a decade to much higher accuracy using billions of samples. -
Ned at 09:35 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
John Cook writes: Climate skeptics vigorously attack any evidence for man-made global warming yet eagerly embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that refutes global warming. and Pete Ridley replies: The majority of those who are sceptical of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis do NOT reject the notion that humans case global warming. What we reject is the claim that there is convincing evidence that any such change is significant for global climates or that our continuing use of fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global climate change. I'm not sure what your confident assertion about "the majority" is based on. I doubt it's correct, but it doesn't really matter anyway. The great thing about this site is that it provides information to address people's questions more or less across the board: * Some people come here wondering whether the observed rise in CO2 is really caused by humans -- maybe it's coming from the ocean! (Nope) * Others have heard that the greenhouse effect contradicts the second law of thermodynamics (nope, again). * Some people accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but are under the impression that there are all kinds of problems with the surface temperature record, such that Gistemp and Hadcrut can't be replicated (wrong). Now, it's fairly common for people to come by here and say "Why are you addressing all these absurd and obviously wrong arguments when you should be addressing mine, which is the one that all real, serious skeptics believe?" In point of fact, though, all of the arguments here are addressing claims or questions that other people actually do raise. So, Pete, instead of giving John a hard time for all the work he's put in responding to other peoples' questions and arguments, why not do something constructive? Next time you see a "skeptic" claiming that CO2 isn't actually rising, or that it's coming from the oceans, or that it isn't a greenhouse gas, or whatever ... why not help correct their misimpressions yourself? I've said this before, but it's stunningly rare for any "skeptic" to ever speak up here and contradict or correct another "skeptic's" mistaken claims, no matter how absurd they are. There are a few examples elsewhere (e.g., Ferdi Engelbeen trying to convince people at WUWT that the CO2 rise is real and anthropogenic). But on this site it's very, very rare. I could probably count the number of times it's happened on the thumbs of one hand. So ... to end what is already a too-long comment, I would once again ask my "skeptic" friends on this site to (a) be patient when we respond to claims that you think are stupid, because someone else actually does believe them, and (b) feel free to pitch in and help address those claims. Hey, the sooner we can get everyone to agree that yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and yes, the observed rise in CO2 is real, and yes, it is coming from fossil fuel combustion ... the more time we'll be able to spend on debating climate sensitivity or 21st century emissions scenarios or whatever you think is the real problem with the IPCC projections! :-) -
Doug Bostrom at 08:14 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
More happy talk: One 2008 study by researchers Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography estimated that if current consumption patterns are not altered, Lake Mead has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021. Water managers in the West were skeptical, as was The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which blasted the study in an editorial. “Predictions such as these virtually never come true,” the paper declared. “From Thomas Malthus in 1798 to Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, the forecasters of famine, abandoned cities and desolated economies always look like fools in the end because they refuse to take into account the ingenuity and enterprise of the human race.” What's happening after the editorial was published Hint: Levels Plummet in Crucial Reservoir Oh, yes, it can't be put down to climate change, not definitively. It's entirely consistent with predictions, the variability is exactly what's expected and traditional, the trend appears to follow projections but let's not overdo it and form any conclusions, let alone imagine climate change might not be a walk in the park. -
Newcomers, Start Here
Pete Ridley - I read the Joanna Nova blog posting too. It's self-congratulatory, condescending, rather lacking in facts - fairly typical of her site. A lot of the comments there point that out clearly. It's hard to say "endorsed" when John states that this Nova app is "comprehensively misleading". Now, I haven't purchased the "Our Climate" app myself, and have therefore not reviewed it (have you?). However, if it contains the same arguing points that Joanna uses on her blog, it is indeed self-contradictory. From her Skeptics Handbook: "Something else (not CO2) caused warming", "It's not warming", "CO2 is trivial", "CO2 is saturated". The disagreements between climate skeptics aren't trivial. CO2 has no effect? CO2 effect is saturated? It's the sun? Cosmic rays? Ocean? Climate has varied a lot before (indicating high sensitivity to forcings, incidentally)? Records are unreliable (then how do you know the climate changed before)? Feedbacks will cancel out all change (contradicting the climate changing before)? If the various skeptics weren't all arguing against the science, there would be sufficient differences between them to spark inter-skeptic wars. The focus on the small points rather than the big picture (somehow assuming that any potential issue with any measurement invalidates a multiply supported theory), strawman arguments (her "hit list" postings), cherry-picking (choosing the last 10-12 years to argue for warming has stopped, when the statistics argue for a minimum of 30 year averaging based on the internal variability of weather): these are serious issues with the arguments Nova presents. If they're in the "Our Climate" app, then it's a piece of junk software. I would agree with Trueofvoice, incidentally - your pasted quote from Joanna Nova doesn't really inspire confidence in her rationality. -
scaddenp at 07:57 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Pete - given Nova's abuse of science in past, it would hardly be surprising if she liked take downs of her stuff here. Do you actually believe there is any importance in her uninformed misunderstandings of science? John isn't trying to win a popularity contest, just accurately portray the science. Instead of posting useless opinion, how about putting up some actual science if you dont like John's stuff. Nova's complaints are roll on the floor laughingly bad as the "climate's changed before" thread would tell you. -
Doug Bostrom at 07:57 AM on 18 August 2010Greenland's ice mass loss has spread to the northwest
A little update: Researchers Race to Catch Up With Melting, Shifting Polar Realities When the Petermann Glacier calved an ice island four times the size of Manhattan earlier this month, GPS sensors embedded in the ice and time-lapse cameras sitting on nearby rock were watching. But scientists who put them there were caught off guard. Traveling to northwestern Greenland to retrieve the data that equipment recorded will cost them roughly $93,000, money they currently don't have. That's unfortunate, says Jason Box, a climate scientist at Ohio State University who helped place those instruments, because the difficulty comes as his research team has made a startling discovery. Of the 30 widest glaciers in Greenland, it's the ones in the north -- where Petermann is located -- that are collectively losing the most ice. "The science really hasn't caught up with the observations," he said of those results, which he will present at a scientific meeting this week in Ohio. "The observations are showing really dramatic changes. There is an element of surprise. The fact that there is so much change in northern Greenland is not something the community is aware of yet." Box's dilemma illustrates the difficulty and expense of operating in harsh polar environments, factors that can magnify sheer bad luck. (Scientists set up their monitoring of the Petermann Glacier last summer, when they expected it to calve at any moment.) But the story of the recent calving also offers a window into the intense, ongoing effort by scientists who study the world's ice to improve their understanding of how melting at the poles will contribute to sea level rise. "One of the major impacts [of the calving] will be that we expect Petermann Glacier ... to speed up, something like a factor of two, because glaciers always speed up when ice shelves break off in front of them," said Robert Bindschadler, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, at a recent congressional briefing. "That's an expected consequence. And that's going to increase the drainage of the Greenland ice sheet and contribute to a rise in sea level. But just how quickly the massive freshwater ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will melt is still uncertain. And that uncertainty carries over into projections of how high and how fast the world's seas will rise. Just three years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted seas would rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100 -- but couched that estimate with a giant caveat. The IPCC cautioned that an additional rise could come from rapid and unpredictable melting in Greenland and Antarctica, which it didn't attempt to estimate. "The terminology in a football game is, we punted," said Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Richard Alley, one of the scientists who worked on that portion of the IPCC's wide-ranging fourth assessment report. "We didn't know what to do." Now scientists are scrambling to play catch-up amid high stakes. Greenland's ice alone contains enough fresh water to raise the world's seas by 23 feet. Reconstructions of the Earth's past climate indicate that a temperature rise of roughly 2 to 7 degrees Celsius could cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt entirely, Alley said. "What we find from looking at history -- when the world warms, the Arctic warms more," he said, citing a 2008 federal report on abrupt climate change that he helped author. "When the Arctic warms, Greenland melts." Scientists don't believe the Greenland ice sheet will disappear anytime soon. But if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked, Earth's climate could reach a tipping point in a decade that would put Greenland's ice on a course to disappear within centuries, Alley said. Satellite measurements show the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are thinning, driven primarily by the acceleration of outlet glaciers like Petermann. "As the Earth is getting warmer, ice sheets are going to shrink and sea level will go up," Bindschadler said. "There is no doubt about it. The key question for experts such as myself are these: How much will sea level go up, and when is that going to happen? That's where research is going right now." More, including many interesting remarks by researchers -
michael sweet at 07:56 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Argus, I did not notice your post of your result. Once I see the data we can discuss it. Keep in mind that 17 all time high records have been set so far this summer. You are attempting to cast doubt on how hot it has been this summer by quibbling over a statistic. Look at figure 1 above and tell me where your doubt comes from. The GISS record is at an all time record high. I see no resonable room for doubt. As John often says, look at the whole picture. -
Trueofvoice at 07:46 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
Pete, Is your lengthy cut-and-paste intended as sarcasm? I would assume so, as it succeeds in making Mrs. Nova look rather unhinged. Keep up the good work. -
Trueofvoice at 07:42 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
TOP, Please provide a link to the Weizmann study of reforesting the Sahara to eliminate man-made greenhouse gases. I'll be damned if I can find a reference to it. -
Pete Ridley at 07:12 AM on 18 August 2010Newcomers, Start Here
John, not everyone agrees with what you claim this site is all about. While searching for more information on positive feedbacks I happened across this beauty from Joanne Nova (http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/skeptics-iphone-app-endorsed-de-facto-by-critic/#more-9801). QUOTE: .. Cook runs the ambush site SkepticalScience.com. .. SkepticalScience.com is a parody of skepticism. It is “skeptical of the skeptics” .. but it accepts everything offered up by Authorities as if it is the Word of God. “NOAA can do no wrong” (and was that NOAA or Noah?) All of the points held up by Cook are weak “whatever” issues: things that are hardly a flaw. He’s noticed that the disorganized mass of real skeptics sometimes disagree with each other, golly gee, which proves we think for ourselves and don’t answer to a higher bureaucracy. John Cook — who so wants to be seen as skeptical – instead is anything but, and conforms strictly to the text-book litany as written by the IPCC. .. Cook of course, doesn’t quote directly. This is a classic modus operandi for unskeptical scientist. If they quote directly, they can’t impute things, like “sceptics citing this fact as if it’s never occurred to climate scientists”, which we don’t say, but Cook says, thus creating a strawman. Why would he bother stringing out this kind of weak speculative stuff if he actually had something real to attack? He makes preposterous claims that skeptics cherry-pick, focus on small picture, never on the big picture; except the graphs the skeptics use cover the last 30 years, the last 1,000 years, the last 10,000 years, the last 500 million years. There’s no period we won’t talk about — unlike the AGW crowd, for whom a trend is between 10 and 50 years (to get the last warming period 1975 – 2001 in) and who don’t want to talk about the little ice age or medieval warm period. Unskeptical scientists think “long term” means 100 years and repeat graphs from 1880 -2010 ad nauseum. They weren’t exactly producing billboards with graphs of the last 500 million years. UNQUOTE. I couldn’t have described it better myself. Best regards, Pete Ridley -
Doug Bostrom at 05:33 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
As Chris' cue above has largely been ignored, I'm going to respond to one of Chris' remarks. It's a very convenient truth that of course we cannot ascribe any particular weather event to climate change, not with certainty. However, when we look at statistics it becomes clear we may conclude that a proportion of increasingly frequent extreme weather events are themselves indicators as well as outcomes of climate change. When experts tell us so and we choose instead to focus on the uncertainty of a particular event, we're ignoring an inconvenient truth larger and more significant than the event itself. In the case of Pakistan, we have an event that has exceeded any previously recorded, in a way that has overwhelmed the resources of the country and is threatening Pakistan's stability in an entirely new way; Pakistan is in fact an example of what we may expect to see in the way of both physical and cultural impacts of climate change. Again, choosing to interpret this year's monsoon in Pakistan as a singular feature without heed of local as well as larger context is to lose perspective. We have other examples of stability being upset this year. When an extended history of cultural habit is overturned by a weather event transcending a local population's notion of where to live and how to live in that location and such an event is entirely in keeping predictions, that's a message to be folded into statistics. Such an occurrence is not only useful from a statistical standpoint but more germane to the topic of this thread is an indicator of how disruptive the sequence of action we've set into motion will be. If we choose not to see and allocate costs of climate change, our understanding is impaired and our ability to respond will be irrational by choice. -
sailrick at 05:23 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Arguments that warmer is not necessarily worse, miss the point that it is the rate of the changes that are so dangerous. That, at least in part, is what makes all these effects of climate change so hard to adapt to, for humans as well as other species. -
dsleaton at 04:23 AM on 18 August 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
D (and others) -- Yes, ideally we could arrange people neatly in rows in Manitoba and make it work. But let's take a hard look at the economic reality of the private property system. We don't have a world government that can quickly plan and implement the kinds of population movements that have been discussed. We have hundreds of small and large nations (and global entities) in competition with each other for resources, and many of these nations are themselves made up of millions of plots of private property. Consider the current U.S. response to immigration (illegal or otherwise). Consider the U.K. response to the Empire machine being shifted into reverse. How long will it take for >ordered< mass immigration to take place, even on the realistic scale (5-10% of world pop)? And will the people who have to migrate also have to sell their futures to real estate opportunists? Worse yet, if people are to move, how much energy (and from what source) will be needed to build new homes (or are we thinking tent farms?), create new transportation, food, water, energy, communication networks, etc.? And who is going to pay for it? (don't mention raising taxes in the U.S. or, I'm guessing, Canada) And how much ill will and resistance will occur among the "natives" of these immigration destinations (an example)? We do need a change in mentality, but such changes occur very slowly, and how much frustration, misery, and despair will occur in the meantime? -
Doug Bostrom at 04:08 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Argus if you dig into records you'll see that all-time high records were set pretty much across Russia from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Lots of media focus on Moscow, but the impact of the heat wave was much broader. Anyway, this is a "lost in the weeds" argument; persistently zeroing in on distractions about the proper comportment of how information is conveyed is suggestive of a wish or need to ignore a larger message. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:01 AM on 18 August 2010Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
D, all very interesting speculations leaving a myriad of important details unaddressed. Have we got a grip on providing decent living standards for people situated where they live today? If we don't, why would we believe we can relocate hundreds of millions of people and end up with an improvement? Is something about human nature going to change in way that makes such an enormous upheaval and migration feasible, desirable? Anyway, your remarks leave a bigger question hanging in the air. Why set such a course? Why would we do such a thing if we don't have to? -
Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
Canada and Russia are almost empty countries and seem likely to become more hospitable. The northern half of the USA, and its west coast, could possibly warm 6 degrees and still be more habitable than Florida (hot, humid) today. While the USA's not "almost empty", it has <10% the population density of many European countries. It needs a change in mentality. People might have to move country, and countries that believe they have a right to sprawl might have to accept European-style small-scale, space-efficient living - whether this be narrow streets, public transport or row houses. As far as I am aware, the entire world could move to Canada (3 people per km2) and it would still be ... about as densely-populated than England or the Netherlands are today (500 people per km2). I'm not proposing this, but matters might not be as bad as we think, if northern countries with space are willing to let some people in. Europe has some very underpopulated countries; e.g., France, Sweden, Finland. Surely there's space here for 50-100 million climate refugees? I live in the UK which is contemplating a rise in population from 60 million to 70 million by 2050. If this is possible, I fail to understand objections from other cool countries to admitting more people. -
Paul D at 03:25 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
huntjanin: "I can't believe that there will be absolutely NO benefits, anywhere in the world, as a result of sea level rise. Might not some river ports become seaports?" Possible, but then some will be lost as well or very difficult to defend. I don't think one can really say that relocating many millions of people away from flooded coastal cities as being positive. Another problem with increasing sea levels is that salt water makes it's way further up a river causing all sorts of problems. -
JMurphy at 02:34 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Argus wrote : "I am very open for the addition of possible new local (state) records within the U.S. (I did write 'so far'.) I just didn't find any such records where I looked (www.infoplease.com). Way to go, Delaware and Rhode Island!" Did you miss this bit : The persistence of this pattern over the last several months has resulted in the warmest May-July on record for several east coast states from South Carolina to New Hampshire. Have a look at the rest of the NOAA report for July for more details, and to pick other months this year to find more possible records. -
cbrock at 02:24 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Minor technical correction to the post--"vegitation" is a misspelling. Otherwise I agree it reads very smoothly and hits the important points without too much detail. The nuances belong in the "blue" section. -
LewisC at 02:14 AM on 18 August 2010Three new studies illustrate significant risks and complications with geoengineering climate
Batsvensson - your sarcasm is misplaced - particularly in a forum dedicated to rational discussion - if you were to read my posts you'd find no support for the use of sulphate aerosols. What you would find are some of the argumants why Geo-E is now essential to avoid otherwise inevitable catastrophic climate destabilization. You'd do better to address those arguments that to attack a position I don't hold. Regards, Lewis -
muoncounter at 02:13 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#18: "ports that are now on rivers but which, thanks to rising sea levels, might eventually become seaports." I wonder how that's going to be beneficial. Consider the industrial infrastructure in place on the lower Mississippi River and for that matter, all of coastal Louisiana. Here's a snip from a report written in 2006: The technological infrastructure of the petrochemical industry in the Gulf Coast has become more vulnerable in recent years for several reasons. Declining global crude oil and natural gas reserves have rendered supply chains more tenuous and less flexible. Storms have struck the area with increasing ferocity and frequency. And in 2009: "With rising sea levels, subsidence, and catastrophic storms such as Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike, the risk to coastal communities and the critical economic, energy and navigation infrastructure upon which the nation depends is incalculable." In short, rising sea level is a looming disaster along that coast. You won't be able to just pick up oil refineries, pipeline hubs, natural gas compression and processing plants, etc and move them upriver. What will happen to million bbl per day that move through the LOOP? The onshore terminal at Port Fourchon is shown as having an elevation of 0 ft. I supposed this would be considered by some as 'alarmist,' but 'alarm' has an implicit sense of urgency; these concerns have been talked about for years -- and still we do nothing. -
Argus at 01:55 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
JMurphy at 01:53 AM on 17 August, 2010, I am very open for the addition of possible new local (state) records within the U.S. (I did write 'so far'.) I just didn't find any such records where I looked (www.infoplease.com). Way to go, Delaware and Rhode Island! The problem is still that if there will be any new state records this year, USA will still contribute with just 0 km² to the total area, according to the metrics of Dr. Jeff Masters. Unless the national record from Death Valley is also beaten (unlikely), in which case all 9372614 km² will suddenly be added to the total land area that has experienced all-time high. -
Argus at 01:35 AM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
michael sweet at 00:44 AM on 17 August, 2010: So you think it is OK to claim that 19% of the total land area of Earth has experienced all time heat records, when more than half of this land area (11.5%) is based on one record somewhere in Russia? You find that "helpful". I find it misleading. Criticizing someone who has done the work without providing an alternate method of analysis does not advance understanding at all. Read again! I did provide a possible alternate method of analysis. -
Mikemcc at 00:46 AM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
One minor point, in the polar melting section surely albedo is dealing with reflection of visible light (mainly),rather than heat. So a lower albedo means more energy is absorbed in the ground to be re-radiated as heat? -
Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
RSVP - I can't let the statement "the more GHG, the more overall absorption and the more emission, therefore the more global cooling" slide by. That statement is completely, absolutely incorrect! You are, for some reason, ignoring the word "absorption", the input side of the equation. Additional GHG's increase the ability of the atmosphere to heat, and yes to cool, via IR. The global and atmospheric effect, however, is that IR on it's way to space is intercepted, re-radiated spherically distributed, causing half of it to go back down, thus reducing the IR to space, and therefore warming the global system. And in the process warming the atmosphere. All three (earth/air/water) are warmer due to GHG's. Not cooler! Increased GHG's raise the ability of air to cool via IR - but at the cost of raising its ability to heat via IR, with a net effect of heating the atmosphere and everything under it. -
Ned at 23:34 PM on 17 August 2010Of satellites and temperatures
The standard deviation of both surface and satellite trends is presumably larger than 0.01C/decade. But right now the best estimates of each are less than 0.01C/decade apart (both are 0.16C/decade). Obviously there's a certain element of coincidence in that, and next year they could be 0.15 and 0.17, or vice versa. But the fact that the current observed trends are identical rather nicely contradicts claims (as in Doug Proctor's comment in this thread) that they're diverging. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:30 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
The violent weather phenomena are correlated only with the equally rapid cooling common at the end of long (always quiet) and rapid warming, often at the end of strong and violent El Nino (perfect example is the beginning of LIA, and the last: 1997 / 8; 2010 - the end of a strong El Nino - heat waves and floods, for example in Europe). Altithermal: "... warmest period during the last 75,000 years ..." „The palynological studies (ie, fossil pollen) that boreal coniferous forests (taiga), western Siberia and Canada, then stretched approximately 300 km further north, and so occupied areas, has completely treeless (tundra), but now overgrown with grass, shrubs and moss. Ocean water temperature was higher in some areas by up to 6 ° C above today's, oceans steamed so strongly, resulting in increased humidity. Increased rainfall filled to the brim Saharan pools and lakes, and Lake Chad, for example, took on the size of a real sea, spilling an area comparable to today's Caspian Sea [!!!]. Then it just became a green Sahara and the Middle East. Great rock rites and paintings testify, to the fact that these areas are rich with life and lived on them typical fauna - for today's, of the African savannah.” (author: dr. Ryszkiewicz; translation - unfortunately - my) Altithermal - the SH geological period might have been even warmer than the Eemian - Sangamon. It turns out that only in this period - from several million-year - part of the Atacama desert was green. If this is what I wrote above, and others "deny", it is really a picture of the disaster, it is a picture of a particularly "beautiful" disaster ... Described in the IPCC's fourth report: "increasing the number of violent climatic events", refer only to a further warming of 0.5 - 1 deg. C (maximum of 1.5 deg. C). Response to climate warming is not linear. -
TOP at 23:07 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
The Weizmann Institute in Israel has proposed reforesting the Sahara desert. This is possible because of higher CO2 levels caused by human activity and sufficient water in the area to maintain a reforestation activity for 200 years. Higher CO2 levels allow certain species of trees to prosper with less water. The finding that higher CO2 levels can cause a forest in an arid zone to grow better was a result of studies of the Yatir forest in the Negev. Such a project may be able to absorb all man made green house CO2. In addition the food and building material from such a project would help meet the growing needs of Africa and the rest of the world. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 22:35 PM on 17 August 2010Did global warming stop in 1998? (basic version)
"... does not challenge the conclusion that human activity drives climate change." - and if I and the aforementioned (through me) of scientists - with the great achievements - a lot of significant - “pre-reviewed” - the papers, we agreed with that. We disagree only on the actual "severity - weight " Human activity drives in relation to natural climate variability (estimated by IV IPCC report) - and looking at the "flat" trend in the last decade, especially in the tropics, it seems to us that we have “full” right ..., ... and S. Solomon says: it might really we (maybe) have “partly” right... - this is a small, but - comparison the last period - great progress towards an agreement. -
CBDunkerson at 22:16 PM on 17 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Chriscanaris #7, whether the recent flooding in Pakistan was 'caused' by climate change is irrelevant to the point at hand... it was precisely the kind of flooding which climate change is projected to cause. It's effects have NOT been beneficial. Ergo, a relevant example of the kinds of problems climate driven flooding would cause. BTW, I find the whole 'we cannot say whether climate change "caused" weather event X or not' argument nonsensical. Weather occurs within a climate. If the climate changes significantly then ALL weather which occurs is, in some part, 'caused' by those new climate conditions. Without them the weather WOULD have been different. Could the weather have been 'better' or 'worse'? Sure, it is still weather, with a large degree of natural variability. Thus, in one sense a weather event can only be said to be 'caused' by climate change if it is SO extreme that it falls outside the bounds of what was possible under the previous climate conditions (a situation which we are now approaching), but in another sense ALL weather we are experiencing is 'caused' by climate change because it is all dependent on the current climate. When that weather includes more 'extreme weathers events' than normal then we very much CAN say that climate change has "caused" an increase in such events.
Prev 2242 2243 2244 2245 2246 2247 2248 2249 2250 2251 2252 2253 2254 2255 2256 2257 Next
