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mdenison at 06:37 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
2. chriscanaris Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check This post show sea ice back to the 1880's from the work of Walsh and Chapman. -
Doug Bostrom at 06:37 AM on 19 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Happily, Russia's heatwave is set to end today, after a final excursion reaching 93F. Less happily, Pakistan's trial by rain continues. See Jeff Masters' blog for details. -
Doug Bostrom at 06:22 AM on 19 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Pete, historical temperature records have been broken in many places across the globe this year. Seizing on the omission of a qualifier in a single sentence in a blog comment does not change that fact. Past changes in climate or the notion that we are unable to modify the climate somehow gets us off the hook today are ill-founded ideas and do not affect physical facts today. Here are some places you can take those arguments if you wish to pursue them: What does past climate change tell us about global warming? Are humans too insignificant to affect global climate? In fact, the historical record does say this year is unusual and as well the past 10 years exhibit a notable statistical aberration in terms of extreme heat records. You can repeat over and over again that you don't believe so, but the numbers written in meteorological records will not change as a result. As to the statistical probability of Russia's heatwave, that's been looked at and of course it's possible to draw some conclusions. Here's a professional meteorologist's description of how it's done, using only the month of July as an example. Taking the whole pattern of this summer's weather over Russia into account, odds of such an occurrence lie somewhere between 1:1000 and 1:3000. See a treatment of the anomalous heat from June leading into August here. -
muoncounter at 06:11 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
#2: "defying trends with a summer melt less than predicted" That sounds like the kind of misconception posted around denier sites who happily pore over these curves. What do they fail to notice in graphs such as this?
Everybody looks at the 2007 curve and concludes that the melt amount is less because all other curves are well above that minimum. However, look where the yellow and red curves start the melt season: at a value well above the black curve. Its the difference between annual max and annual min that counts. If the prior year's max extent is greater and the mins are close, the melt amount is in fact increasing.
#6: "in the context of climate change, thirty years is really too short a time span."
A sea ice reconstruction going back to 1870 is available here. The min extent (column 4) is fairly flat thru 1950, then begins falling at an increasing rate. Is it just coincidence that the CO2 (ice core+atmospheric composite) curve begins taking off at about the same time?
But why should that matter? If 30 years of decreasing extent isn't enough to establish the problem, how will presenting more make any difference?
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Pete Ridley at 05:39 AM on 19 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
I am puzzled as to why my comment was removed but have modifeid it slightly and hope that it stays posted this time. Doug, “ .. if you dig into records you'll see that .. “ the world has experienced warming and cooling numerous times before and almost certainly will continue to do so. We have been coming out of an ice age for a few thousand years so it is bound to be warming up. It would have done this even if we had never found a use for oil or coal or gas. Changes to global climates have been going on since the beginning, as a result of natural (not human) processes and drivers. Global climates change drastically as a result of long periods of bitterly cold and pleasantly warm. We are presently in between these two extremes of global temperature conditions but have no idea for how long. Humans can exert no control over this on a global or even regional basis. All that we can hope to achieve is what we have always had to do, react to and protect against such changes as best we can. You say “ .. all-time high records were set pretty much across Russia from St. Petersburg to Siberia. ..” Since worthwhile temperature measurement only started in the 1700s it is difficult to accept that as gospel. The historical record tells us that there is nothing unusual about current weather events around the globe. According to the 2004 paper “Geography of Droughts and Food Problems in Russia (1900-2000)” (Note 1) by Golubev and Dronin, Department of Geography, Moscow State University, the “Numbers of years with droughts in the main economic regions of the Russian Federation in 1891-1983” are: - North West 21, - Central 29, - Central Chernozem 32, - Northern Caucasus 24, - Volga-Vyatka 32, - Volga 28, - Urals 28, - West Siberia 18 Joe Romm quotes from the Russian Met. Centre “There was nothing similar to this on the territory of Russia during the last one thousand years in regard to the heat.” (Note 2). The validity of that claim needs substantiation. I’m not aware that there was a mechanism for measuring heat as long ago as that. Can you advise on this? According to “Across the Nations .. the World’s Worsts Disasters” (Note 3), floods occurred in China in: - 1642 Flooding takes about 300,000 lives. - 1887 The Yellow River overflowed, causing the death of about 900,000 people. - 1911 Yangtze River flood - approx: 100,000 deaths. - 1931 A flood on the Changjiang River took at least 145,000 people - 1935 Another Yellow River flood "caused 27 counties inundated and 3.4 million victims". There is no reason to believe that the future will be any different, regardless of how much fossil fuel we continue to use. As for the two beautiful graphics in Joe Romm’s article comparing 2003 & 2010 (and the one above), I prefer this couple for 1936 and 2010 (Note 4). NOTES: 1) see http://www.usf.uni-kassel.de/ftp/dokumente/projekte/droughts_and_food_in_russia.pdf 2) see http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/09/russia-heat-wave-one-thousand-years-global-warming/ 3) see http://across.co.nz/WorldsWorstDisasters.html 4) see. http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/08/nasas-giss-moscow-is-burning-human-co2induced-unprecedented-global-warming-is-to-blame-not.html Best regards, Pete Ridley -
RSVP at 05:35 AM on 19 August 2010Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
KR 222 single number for you, KR +125 C. Surface temperature of on the Moon. Explain how it gets so hot without GHGs.? That aside, I just happen to have "experienced" 25 years in engineering labs. Hands-on. doug_bostrom To answer your question, you can respond if you please. -
eric144 at 05:21 AM on 19 August 2010Is the sun causing global warming?
Jasper Kirkby, a British experimental particle physicist currently with CERN, Switzerland presents a lecture in which cosmic rays show a strong correlation with global temperature over short and long time periods. He is currently involved in research on their effects on clouds at CERN..... Some of these reconstructions show clear associations with solar variability, which is recorded in the light radio-isotope archives that measure past variations of cosmic ray intensity. However, despite the increasing evidence of its importance, solar-climate variability is likely to remain controversial until a physical mechanism is established. http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073 Jasper Kirkby is a British experimental particle physicist currently with CERN, Switzerland. He originated the idea for the Tau-Charm Factory, an accelerator now under construction as BEPC II in Beijing. He has led several large particle accelerator experiments at SPEAR; the Paul Scherrer Institute; and most recently, the CLOUD experiment at CERN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Kirkby Results from CLOUD are expected soon. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:51 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
W/regard to Chris' concern about what we know of past Arctic sea ice extent, not surprisingly this has been a subject of research. Thanks in part to fanatical peering through microscopes at diatom and foraminifera skeletons, past sea ice extent can be teased out of the record. Assessing inter-decadal conditions stretches reconstruction skills but there is enough detail in the record to begin making comparisons between today's conditions and past patterns of behavior of Arctic sea ice. We're not really in the dark on this. Past extent of sea ice in the northern North Atlantic inferred from foraminiferal paleotemperature estimates Sea ice variations in the central Canadian Arctic Archipelago during the Holocene A biomarker-based reconstruction of sea ice conditions for the Barents Sea in recent centuries Arctic climate change: observed and modelled temperature and sea-ice variability Palaeoceanography and climate changes off North Iceland during the last millennium: comparison of foraminifera, diatoms and ice-rafted debris with instrumental and documentary data Abrupt climate changes for Iceland during the last millennium: evidence from high resolution sea ice reconstructions Arctic environmental change of the last four centuries Past glacial and interglacial conditions in the Arctic Ocean and marginal seas-a review -
tobyjoyce at 04:22 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
Arctic Ice extent is only less than predicted if you are talking about a LINEAR trend. However, as Tamino showed, it fits a quadratic trend pretty well, implying an acceleration in recent years.
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CBDunkerson at 04:02 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
Chris, the skeptic claim that global sea ice is increasing is, like the others you cited which have already been addressed, simply false; Global trend If you look at the red anomaly data on that graph you'll see that on the left the anomalies rarely dipped below the baseline... while on the right they seldom rise above it. In short, the anomaly trend for global sea ice area is very clearly decreasing. Also, the fact that Arctic sea ice extent does not set a new record low every year is not indicative of a 'recovery'. Indeed, the fact that the Arctic sea ice volume (the actual AMOUNT of ice... as opposed to how 'spread out' it is) has continued to plummet shows just how ridiculous that claim is. -
Doug Bostrom at 03:46 AM on 19 August 2010Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
Here's a meta-question. RSVP-- taken as a contraction, what do the letters mean? -
Berényi Péter at 02:21 AM on 19 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#61 JMurphy at 01:21 AM on 19 August, 2010 two knowledgeable sources linked to above say one thing, and you assert another. Who to accept as knowing more on this subject, I wonder? Accept the truth and nothing but, of course.
From 2002 to 2008 average annual growth of yield was 1.62%, growth of production 2.69%/annum. Click on images for the respective spreadsheets.
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owl905 at 02:09 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
chriscanaris, the main problem with reading your comments are that you try to score a point without doing any homework - leveraging the assumption of no useful pre-1979 data into undermining the observations of decline. There is no 'defying trends', a cold spell in the Arctic is obvious - when it's covered in smoke (http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/DATA/SMOKE/2010H050457.html) is typical of a hoodwink. Any research at all would have shown you that Antarctic sea-ice isn't a proxy for cooling, and the trend is flat, with a very very small increase as a trend. The worst problem, however, is that after demonstrating little of your own reseach, you conclude there's similar 'cherry-picking' from the two sides (that's a symptom of anti-science syndrome). Just so there's no confusion about the lack of homework your post represents, a 101 start is Wikipedia:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_of_sea_ice Then move up to the NSDIC data that's graphed back to the early 50s - and shows the late 70s as the start of more than just satellite records. http://nsidc.org/sotc/images/mean_anomaly_1953-2009.png http://nsidc.org/sotc/images/mean_anomaly_1953-2009.png In fact, the article pointing out the ugly state of the arctic (as opposed to the 'just fine' joke) is bang on. -
gpwayne at 01:42 AM on 19 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Could we also bear in mind that rice paddies are starting to be contaminated by salt water contamination from rising sea-levels, destroying all current and future potential. The agricultural impacts of climate change are complex, nuanced and interlinked, and not simple at all. -
JMurphy at 01:21 AM on 19 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Berényi Péter wrote : "No, it is not. The transient setback between 1999 and 2002 has nothing to do with climate change and everything with market forces. After 2002 growth resumed at a slightly faster pace than before." From a different page in your own link : A major reason for the imbalance between the long-term demand and supply is the slowing growth in yield, which has decreased substantially over the past 10–15 years in most countries. In South Asia, average yield growth decreased from 2.14% per year in 1970-90 to 1.40% per year in 1990-2005. In some years, this has been below 1%. Yield growth in Southeast Asia has decreased similarly. In the major rice-growing countries of Asia, yield growth over the past 5–6 years has been almost nil (Figure 4). Globally, yields have risen by less than 1% per year in recent years. And I just want to re-post what I posted previously, in case anyone missed it : 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 So, two knowledgeable sources linked to above say one thing, and you assert another. Who to accept as knowing more on this subject, I wonder ? -
Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
A single number for you, RSVP - 33°C. That's the difference between the temperature of the earth with and without the greenhouse effect. It's 33°C warmer - not cooler. Note that relative nighttime warming, more than daytime warming, is one of the classic indicators of an increasing greenhouse effect - and that is exactly what is observed. Contrary to your last posting. You've presented arguments by analogy, RSVP - the numbers, however, prove you incorrect. Look at the energy budget - 80% of energy coming from the temperature of the Earth leaves as IR, only 20% as convection/evaporation. Only 1% of the energy present comes from anthropogenic heat flux. You are incorrect. What's I'm seeing (IMO) is the unfortunately common "Common Sense" logical error. Many people discussing science try to project their personal, local experiences upon large scale or unfamiliar systems - quantum mechanics, climate change, electromagnetics, etc. The problem is that local personal experiences do not map 1-1 with other, complex systems, and hence "common sense" will lead you astray. If you don't try to understand the complex systems as they exist, rather than projecting your daily experiences onto them, you will quite simply be wrong. As above... -
skywatcher at 00:29 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
chriscanaries - Arctic ice melt does not seem to be much less than expected to me, in that according tot he latest IJIS data we're at 5.83m sq km, with a loss rate that has been steadily above 50-60,000sq km since mid-July. We're closely tracking 2008's extent, which would lead to the 2nd or 3rd lowest in the record. As for Arctic temperatures, maybe others here can confirm (or corrent me if I have it all wrong), but so far as I understand it, the Arctic air temperature in summer is not a good guide to warmer/cooler conditions. When you look at the Arctic temperature graph (>80deg N is the skeptics favourite), you see it flattens out during summer months, rather than smoothly heading to a peak several degrees higher. The reason for this is that much of the energy that would otherwise be warming the air temperature is being used up in melting ice (latent heat of melting), and so this holds temperatures close to freezing until all the ice is melted away. North of 80deg N the ice does not melt out entirely (at least for now), so temperatures are held down all summer. Thus a tempeature around 1C in the Arctic may only tell you that ice is melting, not whether it's much warmer or colder than previous years. -
tobyjoyce at 00:23 AM on 19 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
Here's a scary thing. This is a graphic from the IPC TAR of 2001
Are my eyes deceiving me, or is the Actic Ice minimum extent for the last few years much closer to the 2040-2060 scenario than the one projected earlier?
Here is an image from a few days ago (white is 100% concentration, declining to blue <~30%):
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adelady at 00:19 AM on 19 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Hang on a minute, BP, did you read the article I cited? It has nothing to do with world markets. It's about continuous records of productivity on 227 individual irrigated farms in 6 Asian countries. Over 25 years, productivity on those farms decreased by between 10% and 20%. -
daniel at 00:06 AM on 19 August 2010It's a 1500 year cycle
No one seems to be interested in a discussion about the quality of data presented in this video. I would like to add to my above comment that the error in assigning years to layers in any ice core is intrinsically cumulative. If you assume a conservative error estimate of say 1%. That is only 1 in every 100 annual layers is misassigned, then at 50 kyr BP when the most recent of the most striking DO events are suppossed to be taking place you have a +/- 500 year window within which you can align peaks. Given the peaks are so difficult to distinguish in time as they are currently portrayed, what does that tell you about the quality of work in the field of "Climate science"? Even in their current format the two datasets are not opposed but actually aligned at the first DO event at ~90-95kyr BP! But the video is trying to say they are not! Even the trail off from this initial "global" peak is the same in both hemispheres! The further in time we go back from 50kyr the worse (more cumulative) the error. Are there any obvious or striking DO events between 0 and 50 kyr BP? Even at 1% error is there a large enough window to align the supposedly bipolar peaks in this more recent region of time? Are we being too conservative at 1% error? Is "Climate science" really science? -
Anne-Marie Blackburn at 23:42 PM on 18 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
Chris, The problem is that we can only deal with the data we have. Satellite data over the past 30 years give us a clear picture of what's happening. Knowledge of past Arctic changes are not needed to draw conclusions about what's happening now. I agree that it would be interesting to have data for other periods but we don't - or I'm not aware of such data. However, the point of this article was specifically to highlight the outrageous cherry-picking by Monckton, which is as unscientific as it gets. -
Berényi Péter at 23:41 PM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
#51 adelady at 20:04 PM on 18 August, 2010 The major decline in rice production in recent years appears to be, again, a continuation of a long-term trend. No, it is not. The transient setback between 1999 and 2002 has nothing to do with climate change and everything with market forces. After 2002 growth resumed at a slightly faster pace than before.
*USDA data via IRRI (International Rice Research Institute)
BTW, the market is absolutely inadequate for providing reasonable food security. It's because food is a special commodity in that if consumers are denied of it for a couple of months, they get permanently removed from the market (because the dead neither eat nor can make money). World food stockpile is at an all time low, it can cover consumption only for two or three months. It means we are just a single major volcanic eruption away from a global disaster unprecedented in human history. This is because governments utterly fail to take due responsibility and neglect public food stockpiling recommendations described in this paper (stocks for seven years are needed). A natural phenomenon like that might be good news for the environment, albeit very bad for everyone else. -
jonathansf13 at 23:37 PM on 18 August 2010Is the sun causing global warming?
Here is a more comprehensive article on cooling of the mesosphere and thermosphere: Beig, G., et al., Review of mesospheric temperature trends, Rev. Geophys., 41(4), 1015, doi:10.1029/2002RG000121, 2003. These are not easy reading, but they represent the best scientific work to date that I am aware of. -
chris1204 at 23:35 PM on 18 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
Anne-Marie, I have no quarrel with the trends over thirty years which your post deals with. However, in the context of climate change, thirty years is really too short a time span. After all, the MWP and LIA (be they localised or global phenomena) are substantial climatic events which took place over many years. It would be interesting to know if we have any way of tracking sea ice extent at those times. For example, if we had evidence that sea ice extent was greater in the MWP than today...? Hence, my question regarding proxies over recent centuries. Reference to such data if available would make the argument more robust. -
John Brookes at 23:33 PM on 18 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
Thanks Alden. Once again, the full presentation on Fool Me Once is brilliant. I'm surprised that his lordship's lawyers haven't been in touch with you yet! On a serious note, Monckton's cherry picking is scandalous, particularly just focussing on the rebound in the September minimum from 2007 to 2009. If you look back to 1990 - 1992, you will find a remarkably similar rebound, followed by, oh yes, a continued decline. -
mehus at 23:21 PM on 18 August 2010Is Arctic Sea Ice 'Just Fine'?
I also love how Monckton picks a graph from Jan 1980 that has NO snow on it. I mean, look at all the snow in the 2009 graph. It looks soooo much colder to me! -
jonathansf13 at 23:20 PM on 18 August 2010Is the sun causing global warming?
Stratospheric cooling: Ramaswamy, V., et al. (2001), Stratospheric temperature trends: Observations and model simulations, Rev. Geophys., 39(1), 71–122, doi:10.1029/1999RG000065. Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere: She, C. Y. et al. (2009), Long-term variability in mesopause region temperatures over Fort Collins, Colorado (41°N, 105°W) based on lidar observations from 1990 through 2007, J. Atmos. Solar-Terr. Phys., 71, 1558-1564. See also: Roble, R. G., and R. E. Dickinson (1989), How will changes in carbon dioxide and methane modify the mean structure of the mesosphere and thermosphere? , Geophys. Res. Letters, 16, 1441–1444. -
Eric (skeptic) at 23:11 PM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Dappledwater thanks. Fact from table 1: rice yields are increasing everywhere. But the paper shows that the growth rate is decreased due to warmer nighttime temperatures and could turn into decreases in the future. Ann, "Such greening of the Sahara/Sahel is a rare example of a beneficial potential tipping element." From http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.long -
jonathansf13 at 23:06 PM on 18 August 2010Is the sun causing global warming?
Should the sun be the primary driver of climate change, the atmosphere would heat throughout, from the ground to the thermosphere. However, we know that the stratosphere is cooling, and there is also evidence of cooling in the mesosphere-lower thermosphere, which is what enhanced greenhouse warming would cause. I will look up some references for these and add them later. -
Ann at 23:05 PM on 18 August 2010The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
Today I encountered the following claim: "Due to climate change the southern border of the Sahara has moved northwards (by 50-60 kilometers), resulting in new rain forest the size of France and Germany put together." Has anyone heard this claim before, and are there any reliable reports to back up this claim ? Or is it nonsense ? If it is true, it would definitely be a benefit of global warming. -
JMurphy at 23:00 PM on 18 August 2010NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
Pete Ridley, you need to read a bit more widely on this site, especially Climate's changed before, It's just a natural cycle, and Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate With regard to ice ages, see this : Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says -
Ken Lambert at 22:56 PM on 18 August 2010Is the sun causing global warming?
Yes it is. Integrate the area under the TSI curve and you will get an increasing accumulation of energy added to the biosphere. Constant elevated TSI above a baseline will give linear increase in energy accumulation. Throw in a few non-linear but small energy absorption processes such as ice melt and evaporation and possibly some positive feedbacks from CO2GHG, cooling aerosols and clouds and you might bump the temperature curve around a bit mid century but produce a roughly linear temperature rise for the last 80 years. -
Rob Painting at 22:56 PM on 18 August 2010The 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 -
Anne-Marie Blackburn at 22:55 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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. -
Eric (skeptic) at 22:39 PM on 18 August 2010The 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. -
JMurphy at 22:39 PM on 18 August 2010The 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." -
chris1204 at 22:23 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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. -
Anne-Marie Blackburn at 21:54 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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. -
Alexandre at 21:50 PM on 18 August 2010Long 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. -
Craig Allen at 21:43 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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. -
Tony Noerpel at 21:41 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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 -
CBDunkerson at 21:36 PM on 18 August 2010Long 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. -
CBDunkerson at 21:04 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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. -
CBDunkerson at 20:59 PM on 18 August 2010The 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. -
chris1204 at 20:54 PM on 18 August 2010Long 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. -
Eric (skeptic) at 20:34 PM on 18 August 2010The 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. -
Ari Jokimäki at 20:17 PM on 18 August 2010Is 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? -
Berényi Péter at 20:05 PM on 18 August 2010Temp 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. -
adelady at 20:04 PM on 18 August 2010The 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 -
michael sweet at 20:03 PM on 18 August 2010The 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.
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