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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 112701 to 112750:

  1. Newcomers, Start Here
    I think your elephant example illustrates my point very well. You can't know which way the elephant is 'going to head next', because it is an animal with its own volition. A thick hide might mean it doesn't move at all (a climate with very low sensitivity). Elephants are able to be domesticated, like horses, but zebras are not. Zebras wont follow an alpha male, unlike horses, cows, sheep, or dogs. They dodge the noose thrown at their necks, and will not accept any 'external' authority. For this reason they have never been, and never will be, domesticated. Only those animals with a strong social hierarchy in their natural state in the first place are able to accept humans as a substitute authority, and are able to be domesticated (cats with difficulty). Each animal is different. How do you know that climate isn't more like a zebra than a horse, or an elephant with a thick hide? How do you know this isnt just human hubris, to say we can predict climate, affect climate, and control climate, like a horse, the same as those who still try to domesticate the zebra? And as for you looking at the elephant, by looking at the tail it might give you a better idea of which way its going to move (tails are known to support movement) than looking at anything else (say, its pretty tusks), or even the whole body, so your analogy isn't very good.
  2. Eric (skeptic) at 21:56 PM on 15 August 2010
    More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    I disagree with the moderator response in #32. The new statistics paper is about statistical models (which test statistical hypotheses), not climate models.
  3. Newcomers, Start Here
    Thingadonta, you're talking about the Pareto Principle - and it's not a particularly strong argument you're presenting. As I understand it, you're saying that climate skeptics are skeptical because there is such a paucity of evidence for their own position, not because the evidence for the other side of the argument doesn't convince them. The example of Mercury's orbit doesn't fit your argument either - the discrepancies in it's orbital period were measured, and provided strong evidence that Newtonian physics didn't explain everything about the universe. Similarly, Einstein's relativity, while it did a much better job than Newton's theory at explaining the trickier cases, appears to have its own shortcomings. But Newtonian physics still give a pretty good approximation, especially at relatively low speeds outside of strong gravitational fields. Your post reminds me of the story of the blind men asked to describe an elephant. Each had a very small piece of 'evidence', and each thus produced a description that did not resemble the whole elephant. Climate science is about trying to figure out which way the elephant is likely to head next... and how being prodded with a sharp stick might affect that. If you want to make any meaningful guess, you really need to keep the whole elephant in view, rather than just looking for which way it's tail is twitching.
  4. Newcomers, Start Here
    "In the case of climate science, our understanding of climate must come by considering the full body of evidence. In contrast, climate skepticism look at small pieces of the puzzle, not the full picture". I would suggest many of the differences berween climate skeptics and the mainstream stem from different philosophical assumptions with regards to this very statement. I think its best explained by the '90/10' rule, well recognised in eg business and social systems. 90% of a 'system' often fits into a coherant predictable pattern, 10% does not. It's has long been recognised within various philosophical and scientific contexts that these 90/10 proportions are often not proportional; that is, the 10% can over-ride and outweigh the other 90%, or to put it another way, the 10% that doesnt 'fit' can be more important than the other 90%. I have had many discussions along these lines with fellow scientists, and of course it really depends on the particular system you are talking about. Systems with high levels of uncertainty, highly variable rates of change or scale (eg relativity and Mercury's orbit) or those which deal with future projections with uncertain variables, are partcularly prone to being outweighed by the 10% which doesn't 'fit'. Some people diligently follow the '90% rule' their whole lives in all contexts and all situations, without even questioning such an assumption, others follow quite the opposite. Both have scientific validity, but again it depends on the particualr system you are referring to. Steve McIntyre comes from a scientific background which deals strongly with the importance of the rare 10%-mineral exploration. (So do I). The 90/10 rule of thumb by nature is by default strongly uneven, and is therefore also strongly a-socialistic. (Look at eg 90% of the world's remaining oil concentrated in less than 10% of countries, which is in the hands of less than 10% of any population in those countries). It produces great inequality and is also self-perpetuating, such as within capitalism.
  5. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Doug, if you look at the figure I have referenced (courtesy NASA and WUWT), you will see there is more land below average temperature (57%) from West Africa to Japan at the time of the Russian heatwave, than the proportion of land, which includes Moscow, above average temperature (43%). The 2 figures seem to be in contradiction, but where I am, I believe the locals, coldest year in 35 years, despite your Figure 1 above.
  6. Newcomers, Start Here
    Maybe you could add this post as a link in the Home page opening paragraph?
    Response: That's the whole reason I wrote this post. I'll add it once the post has dropped down the page in a day or two.
  7. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    CBW (#48): GISS is the only temperature record that has not 1998 as the hottest year. When we look at the averages of the various records (satelites and surface stations) the picture is as follows. This picture, taken from www.climate4you.com shows quite other things than you claim. The use of a 12-month running average is a convenient trick to show an intermediate all time high, when you expect that the annual average of the running year will not break records. Such an average has no climatological meaning for the long term trends. Dough-Bostrom (#29). Yes, you are right, Nasa used these words first. John, I apologize. But this makes things even worse. I should have written: 'Nasa has not learnt from the attribution errors that the IPCC made in 2005'.
  8. Newcomers, Start Here
    RSVP - it may not have your prefered title of "It's greenhous gases", but there is "Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming" which provides the explanation you say is missing from the site.
  9. Newcomers, Start Here
    scaddenp #3 Science (and language for that matter) is a tool which can be used or misused. Normally, what appears in a textbook is passive information and has not bearing on our lives until someone comes along and starts using it against you. I think that is when "skepticism gets going" as you say.
  10. Newcomers, Start Here
    Investigating for myself, I find the idea of GHG as a cause for global warming is not listed as a skeptical argument. Just as it says, "It's the Sun.", there should be an argument, "It's greenhouse gases.". Therefore this site is not about being skeptical, rather it is about defining anyone who argues with AGW as being skeptical. Quite perverse.
  11. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP at 16:54 PM on 15 August, 2010 You are mistaking the rate at which a value is increasing with the value itself. The difference between waste heat and greenhouse warming is still a factor of 100. CO2 does appear in the sentence last. One could interpret in increasing, decreasing or of no order in importance. If a writer gives no order I assume the last of the three. If they wish to stress an order they do so.
  12. Newcomers, Start Here
    RSVP - just dont get lost in sophistry. Most of the time, I would accept what is in a textbook. Its too hard to learn all of science from first principles. However, when you have an observation that doesnt match the textbook prediction, then the skepticism gets going - usually with the accuracy of your results first, but then going backwards to examine where the assumption that were made really hold. This is far cry though from uncritical acceptance of a cherry-picked data on denialist site. Then it makes sense to get the all data, examine its metadata for fitness for purpose and seeing whether the cherry pick was valid.
  13. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Stormhunter - your friend should also note that warming by milder winters is a key AGW prediction - differentiating GHG warming from say solar warming.
  14. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    Referring to the SkepticalScience section... http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm It contains a link to Wang 2009 http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml That includes the following in the abstract... "We found that daily L d increased at an average rate of 2.2 W m−2 per decade from 1973 to 2008. The rising trend results from increases in air temperature, atmospheric water vapor, and CO2 concentration. " ...The value 2.2 W/m2 is per decade, which means dividing 2.2 by ten, and only making the comparison with waste heat ten times more rather than 100 as has been touted throughout this discussion. Furthermore, the article itself attributes this downward radiation to temperature and water vapor, with CO2 appearing last. If temperature is already associated with waste heat, the downward radiation is actually sourced by waste heat, such that the factor is now less than ten, and could ultimately prove to be the only significant source of downward IR.
  15. Newcomers, Start Here
    "Genuine skepticism means you don't take someone's word for it but investigate for yourself." If I go to... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism ...I have "investigated", yet with this type of investigation, I am again having to take someone else's word for it. Since language is a convention, that may be good enough.
  16. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Thingadonta, if you look at the map above, you can certainly see some areas that are anomalously low in temperature. Others are anomalously high, collectively more than are low and as well generally skewed more. Over time, that sort of disproportionate relationship is what produces a 12 month running mean such as is also visible above. W/regard to Moscow versus Russia, how large do you imagine Moscow to be? Now, keeping that thought in mind, take a look again at the map above. Is Moscow as large as the areas of the map covered by the largest positive temperature anomaly? Even if I should wish to do so there's no reason to "spin" this information, the plain truth is quite remarkable in itself.
  17. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    The reference to 43% below avergage temperature from ~West Africa to Japan is here, courtesy WUWT. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/14/more-of-the-moscow-heat-wave-satellite-analysis/#more-23439 Its still cooler than normal in SE Asia, and for the last several months.
  18. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Hey thanks muon - appreciate it. Being a met means I've had some climatology training, but it takes some searching to find the data I need and often the deniers are already off and runnng with a totally new argument before I can rebutt the original. BTW - there's a new paper at WUWT that is causing quite a stir. I'd love to see a real analysis of it: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-2010.pdf
  19. Newcomers, Start Here
    Ok John, you got me hooked :-) I will take a look at your scepticism Michael Gold Coast
  20. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #62: "There is no warming, summers are cooling. It's milder winters that is increasing the average of the yearly mean " How about this response? That is just flat wrong. See the seasonal RSS temperature anomaly graph at the Has Global Warming Stopped? thread. Summer and winter anomalies are on the same upwards trend; but I agree, that does give the appearance of warming.
  21. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #60: "only 43% of the land area extending from West Africa through to Japan is above average T. ... This means that is cooler than average, overall," Your conclusion is Utter Nonsense. Example: Take the integers 1 thru 10. Their average is 5.5; half are above and half below. Now take these integers: 1,2,3,3,4,5,7,9,10,12; their average is 5.6, which is higher than the prior average. Only 40% of the new integers are higher than either average, yet the average has gone up! If those were temperatures, would that be warming or cooling? No cherries picked here.
  22. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    Johnd: "The heat content of the atmosphere, primarily carried by the greenhouse gases" was discussed at great length here: waste heat thread. This is a misconception that you and RSVP share. Absorbed heat is carried by all molecules in the atmosphere and not just by a select few. The heat absorbed by CO2 (and H2O) is shared to the rest of the N2 and O2. This is very basic, long well understood, physics and chemistry. AGW theory will not make sense until you understand heat transfer in the atmosphere. I suggest you review the waste heat thread.
    Moderator Response: I second that suggestion to take further discussion of that particular topic to that other thread.
  23. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Thingodonta, In figure 1 above when I draw a line from west Africa to Japan there are only two small spots where the temperature is below normal and the vast majority of the area is red. One small spot near Kenya in the ocean and the low end of the cold area in Northern Asia. Where did you get the 43% figure? Can you explain to me from Figure 1 how you see July as cooling? The reddish colors are hot in the figure and the cold are blue.
  24. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Ok, here's a new argument I've never seen and they pertain to this topic: There is no warming, summers are cooling. It's milder winters that is increasing the average of the yearly mean to give the APPEARANCE of warming. How would this even work? BTW - ths guy also says that "there is no climatic event that is outside the normal" and expects that this is an argument of some type.
  25. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    New paper on the Mann temperature proxy reconstruction: to be published in the Annals of Applied Statistics . A Statistical Analysis of Multiple Temperature Proxies: Are Reconstructions of Surface Temperatures Over the Last 1000 Years Reliable? http://tinyurl.com/AAS-paper Abstract. Predicting historic temperatures based on tree rings, ice cores, and other natural proxies is a difficult endeavor. The relationship between proxies and temperature is weak and the number of proxies is far larger than the number of target data points. Furthermore, the data contain complex spatial and temporal dependence structures which are not easily captured with simple models. In this paper, we assess the reliability of such reconstructions and their statistical significance against various null models. We find that the proxies do not predict temperature significantly better than randomseries generated independently of temperature. Furthermore, various model specifications that perform similarly at predicting temperature produce extremely different historical backcasts. Finally, the proxies seem unable to forecast the high levels of and sharp run-up in temperature in the 1990s either in-sample or from contiguous holdout blocks, thus casting doubt on their ability to predict such phenomena if in fact they occurred several hundred years ago. We propose our own reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere average annual land temperature over the last millenium, assess its reliability, and compare it to those from the climate science literature. Our model provides a similar reconstruction but has much wider standard errors, reflecting the weak signal and large uncertainty encountered in this setting
    Moderator Response: A perfect topic to take to the "How reliable are climate models" thread. Please continue discussion of this paper at that thread.
    Thanks!
  26. More evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at
    doug_bostrom at 10:27 AM, when considering the heat energy being carried by water vapour we should confuse the heat content itself with how it may manifest itself. Latent heat and sensible heat are not two different types of heat but rather the means of describing different conditions involving the transfer of heat energy. What is relevant to the subject of how the weather, and thus the climate varies, is how the heat content of the atmosphere may vary. With weather and climate both being subject to the balancing of various forces, any factor does not have to be the dominant reservoir, but rather the one most sensitive to any underlying changes, and this is the function of water vapour. This subject is leading I believe into the recent argument, put I think by RSVP, who IIRC, argued that all the gases in the atmosphere could be considered greenhouse gases if they absorbed IR, against much opposition, again IIRC.
  27. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    thingadonta wrote : "According to NASA, only 43% of the land area extending from West Africa through to Japan is above average T a the time of Russia's hewatwave. This means that is cooler than average, overall, but you have managed to cheery-pick Moscow simply for the purposes of highlighting warm temperatures." Is it really the case that there are no average temperatures at all, or are you saying that average temperatures are only present in 6% or less of that land area ?
  28. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    "WMO takes note of the conspicuous nature of this year's weather in Russia......." You state "Russia" and then go on to make a quote which refers only to Moscow. "July 2010 is the warmest month ever in Moscow....." According to NASA, only 43% of the land area extending from West Africa through to Japan is above average T a the time of Russia's hewatwave. This means that is cooler than average, overall, but you have managed to cheery-pick Moscow simply for the purposes of highlighting warm temperatures. So, you have convinced me, global warming looks like cooling. This site constantly states how skeptics cherry pick data while ignoring the bigger picture, well you have just done the same.
  29. Dikran Marsupial at 09:47 AM on 15 August 2010
    Has Global Warming Stopped?
    fydijkstra "Yes, the oscillation in Akasofu’s model is super-imposed on a linear trend. We don’t know how long this trend will continue. Not to infinity of course, because nothing in the climate goes on to infinity." Yes, and the same could be said of a linear model used to determine more recent trends. It seems to me that you are being a little inconsistent there. "Here we see a multi century oscillation with a wavelength of about 1400 years" The human eye is great at picking out cycles that are merely the result of random variation. That is why science has developed the use of probability and statistics to guard against such mistakes of intuition. Again there isn't even two full cycles shown in the graph, so projecting forward on that basis is a guess, nothing more. BTW, Roy Spencer isn't the only person to have come up with a 2000 temperature reconstruction - what do the others say? "It is not possible to calculate error bars with only 10 points on a flattening curve." Nonsense, if you were fitting using maximum likelihood based methods, of course it is possible to calculate error bars. "I used this flattening function only to show, that the data fit better to a flattening curve than to a straight line." I think I may have mentioned that fitting the calibration data better doesn't mean the model is better because of over-fitting. This is especially relevant when there are only a handful of data. "When it is said that ‘global warming has stopped’ this is only about the data onto the present. Nobody denies that it is possible that global warming will resume." The principal cause of variability is ENSO, which involves a transfer of heat between the oceans to the atmosphere. That means you can't unequivocally tell if global waring has stopped by looking at air temperatures alone, as there may still be a net warming of the Earth as a whole but a transfer of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans. The test does show that air temperatures haven't risen much (if you choose the start date in the right place).
  30. Why I care about climate change
    Sorry, truncated my remark there. I've been looking at the whole adaptation thing (which, no surprise we're going to be doing more or less, regardless of how we feel about mitigation) and among other factors in adaptation costs is how to account for direct impacts of a transitional climate. For example, there are twenty million people out of their houses today in Pakistan due to the recent flooding there, apparently much of the housing stock being destroyed beyond repair. Now, rather than argue about whether this is entirely due to climate change or entirely because of natural variability, we can take a statistical perspective and say that some proportion of these people need new homes due to a change in climate. Let's take a conservative approach and say that only five million are homeless due to climate forcing, arguably a reasonable number when the flood probability itself is taken into account. That number has to be entered into a ledger and stacked against benefit. There are myriads of details like this to take account of, "detail" perhaps being a poor choice of word. I use it because the intricacy and scale of this situation makes some millions of persons forced out of their homes into a "detail." See Tol, Stern and their citations for more information.
  31. Has Global Warming Stopped?
    fydijkstra at 05:48 AM on 15 August, 2010 To me that's simply too much ad hoc-ery to be realistic fydijkstra. (i) Braun et al (2005) explicitly rule out the 1470 year cycle for Holocene events. Their tentative conclusion for the driving of Dansgaard Oescher phenomena relates to the possibility of threshold events resulting from meltwater pulses involving massive N. Hemisphere ice sheets that result in large temporarily perturbation of the thermohaline circulation with dramatic and rapid effects on temperature in the N. Atlantic. We know these processes have nothing to do with current global warming. In any case the current warming is out of phase with the supposed "cycle" (if the peak of the last cycle was around 800-900 AD then we shouldn't be getting a new peak until 2300-2400). Or are you suggesting that we've got another 300-400 years of relentless warming due to some uncharacterised putative cycle? (ii) This seems a little unlikely in the context of the Spencer/Loehle and Akasofu's notions. Firstly, if one were to take the Spencer/Loehle sketches at face value, then we should take on board that their sketches only go to 1935. If we add on the real world warming since then, current temperatures are already well above the supposed maximum of the Loehle/Spencer sketch you reproduced. We're surely much warmer than we should be if our temperatures were dominated by your 1500 year cycle which projects a substantial warming from natural causes still to come... (iii) Akasofu proposes a linear "recovery" from the LIA that continues to this day and through the next ~ 100 years. That seems astonishing to me. It implies that the Earth has a much higher sensitivity to changes in forcings than current understanding would support, and that the climate system has such an extraordinary inertia that "recoveries" (from temperature perturbations) are dominated by processes with time constants on the century timescale or longer (how can this possibly be true?). Let's hope that Akasofu isn't correct else we're probably in a lot more trouble than we think we are! (iii) Of course we probably don't believe Akasofu's ad hoc-ery if we think about it for a bit. Looking at the temperature record (reconstructions and direct measurements from the mid 19th century) indicates that "recovery" from the LIA was largely complete by the early 19th century. (iv) I suppose the other problem inherent in ad hoc-ery is that the ad hoc decision to project the "Braun et al" cycle into the Holocene (where Braun et al state it doesn't apply) seems entirely incompatible with Akasofu's ad hoc construction. Akasofu's sketch doesn't show any of these supposed 1500 year cycles? And while according to Akasofu, we should be already heading into a cooling phase which will continue for another 20-odd years, according to the 1500 year cycle idea we should still be on a rather relentless warming "curve" that should continue for another 300 or more years... (v) Is there a good reason for rejecting everything we know about the climate system, and basing our ideas on mutually incompatible ad hoc notions? I can't think of one!
  32. Why I care about climate change
    GC, you're speaking of net benefit, aggregate so to speak?
    Moderator Response: Great discussion to take into detail on the thread It’s Not Bad (Positives and Negatives of Global Warming).
  33. gallopingcamel at 08:46 AM on 15 August 2010
    Why I care about climate change
    scaddenp (#140), Good question---"What would convince me that AGW is real?" Actually, I am already convinced but as I have said several times on this blog, I see it as a small beneficial effect rather than a problem (see #111 in this thread for example). You are probably right to suggest that next year will be cooler. The ENSO and PDO cycles will drive temperatures down for a while but in 20 to 30 years the trend will be up again. That is what I think of as Mother Nature revealing herself. Adding another 20+ years to the existing ~37 years of satellite data will greatly improve our ability to critique predictions by the IPCC and others.
  34. Has Global Warming Stopped?
    Presuming for a moment Akasofu were right, I'm sure I'm not the only one to point out that what we're doing to the atmosphere will be added to whatever Akasofu's model might predict, which in turn is paltry in comparison to the GHG effect. So ~0.015 degrees C warming per decade per Akasofu will be added to the observed ~0.13 degrees per decade per anthropogenic forcing. Of what relevance is Akasofu's work right or wrong? Much? Little?
  35. Has Global Warming Stopped?
    Dikran (#65) your 5th remark: “but it is super-imposed on a linear function of time, so it too goes on to infinity.” Yes, the oscillation in Akasofu’s model is super-imposed on a linear trend. We don’t know how long this trend will continue. Not to infinity of course, because nothing in the climate goes on to infinity. We can look at Roy Spencers reconstruction of 2000 years of global temperatures. I gave the link in my previous posting, but here is the graph. “it would be interesting to see the error bars on your flattening model. I suspect there are not enough observations to greatly constrain the behaviour of the model beyond the calibration period, in which case the model [is] not giving useful predictions.” It is not possible to calculate error bars with only 10 points on a flattening curve. I used this flattening function only to show, that the data fit better to a flattening curve than to a straight line. This is only about the data onto the present, it is not a prediction. When it is said that ‘global warming has stopped’ this is only about the data onto the present. Nobody denies that it is possible that global warming will resume. SNRatio (#69): “The simple Akasofu formula "anomaly = LIA recovery + MDO" predicts falling temperatures now - and therefore I wonder if it is not already partly falsified.” No, the Akasofu model does not exactly predict the year when the falling temperatures should continue. Moreover, just as with the model of ever rising temperatures, there is noise in the data. Akasofu’s model perfectly fits with the data so far. “The trend also seems rather speculative: What is the physical basis for this continuing "LIA recovery" in the 21st century?” See my above given reply to Dikran.
    Moderator Response: See the Skeptical Science posts are "We’re coming out of the Little Ice Age" and "Climate’s changed before."
  36. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    I should add, Eric, that if you want to get calibrated against the level of effort required to mount a useful discussion here, look for examples by Berényi Péter. Péter puts a serious amount of hard work into teasing out quibbles he has with climatology. Meet or exceed the metric Péter provides when it comes to showing how a substantive argument against expert knowledge can be attempted and you're doing ok. Again, "I doubt it" is not an argument.
  37. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Eric, you're hypothesizing about Meehl's paper without doing any work to support your hypothesis. "I appeal to myself as an authority, take my word for it." Not persuasive. Rumor has it that Meehl replies to polite inquiries. Why not ask a real expert? As to record high minimums clearly you can type, you've got an Internet connection, you're capable of performing your own literature search. You'd nonetheless like to send somebody (me, for instance) beavering away to produce some references for you thereby supplying you with fresh opportunities for making lazy assertions. Forget it; I did a good faith effort for you once, not again on this topic. Do your own work.
  38. 3 levels of cherry picking in a single argument
    #34, I agree. David #3 wonders if the problem with deniers is they can't read charts. Probably they can't - but they can read tea leaves, and they tell what most scientists won't say outright - fixing this problem (it's no longer fixable) would have required radical sacrifice in lifestyle on the part of every citizen of developed countries, and a universal one-child (or less) policy. The scientists and climate change activists who promise that we can convert to clean energy and restore the economy without giving up our fuel-gobbling toys are making a huge mistake. The deniers know instinctively that isn't true. You don't need charts or graphs to see where how this movie is going to end. Scientists should stop pussyfooting around and demand that fuel be rationed on a per-person basis, and restricted to only the most essential purposes until it is replaced with sustainable sources for electricity. Don't you have kids too?
  39. Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
    #2: Something the Bush admin said in 2008 seems to be correct? "As options dwindle for negotiating a global pact to fight climate change, the United Nations is pointing to today's "extreme conditions." "As global temperature records have been set for the early summer months, states and cities are also setting hundreds of temperature records. ... Unfortunately, climate models indicate that an average summer in 2050 will have even more days topping 90°F if global warming continues unabated."
  40. Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
    That good friend of AGW, Dr. Roy Spencer, has empirical evidence for the greenhouse effect. "Particularly difficult to grasp is the concept of adding a greenhouse gas to a COLD atmosphere, and that causing a temperature increase at the surface of the Earth, which is already WARM. This, of course, is what is expected to happen from adding more carbon dioixde to the atmosphere: “global warming”. ... This [Spencer's experiment] shows that the addition of an IR absorber/emitter, even at a cold temperature (the middle level clouds were probably somewhere around 30 deg. F), causes a warm object (the thermopile [in his IR thermometer]) to warm even more! This is the effect that some people claim is impossible.
  41. 3 levels of cherry picking in a single argument
    Scaddenp writes (first comment), apropos of why there is so much climate denial, "There must be a lot of people with shares in fossil fuel industry." We _all_ have shares in the fossil fuel industry. Not necessarily stock, but a frightening, radical dependency. Coal and oil feed us, light us, clothe us, entertain us, truck and ship all our crap and necessities around the planet, move us back and forth to our jobs and vacations, build our homes -- keep the whole industrial circus from collapsing into apocalyptic chaos and mass death. Denialism's reassurance that all is basically well, that all will continue to be well, that we can all continue to do our familiar things and burn our familiar fuels and live our familiar way and be safe forever, that there is nothing fundamentally, fearfully wrong with the planet or with our dream of technology-driven prosperity and progress . . . it's very tempting.
  42. Why I care about climate change
    #139: "When a student finds something in a science text book that makes no sense he asks his teacher for an explanation." These days, students go to the interwebs (and each other) well before asking their teachers. That's why 'science' via echo-chamber-blogosphere is so dangerous and why your next statement so important. "I hope we can agree that widespread scientific illiteracy is dangerous when our survival depends on sophisticated technology. " Amen to that. Illiteracy is dangerous in all forms, but scientific illiteracy is like not knowing which is the business end of a loaded gun.
  43. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    michael sweet The average temperature on the Moon is fairly meaningless in this context given temperature swings that take minutes relative to daylight and night hours on Moon that last roughly 300 hours. Please check the curves here and see temperature transitions... in evacuated tubes... on the Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_collector
    Moderator Response: Your comments on this topic belong on the thread CO2 effect is weak.
  44. Eric (skeptic) at 22:33 PM on 14 August 2010
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Doug, am I not going to get any links about studies of the effect of urbanization on record high minimums? If not, why not? I can obviously see why higher *average* minimums might be interesting to some, and the Easterling links are convincing enough. But this thread is about records, not averages. Am I not going to get an answer to why Meehl did not have any discussion of urbanization in producing his chart in the head post, even just a sentence referring to Weber? It would not be directly relevant since Weber studied the effect of urbanization on a city by city basis with all of his available data (no selection bias), but at least it would be something. Appeals to authority only work if the authority has shown some thoroughness, otherwise you need a new authority.
  45. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    miekol at 17:35 PM on 14 August, 2010 I'm getting a distinct feeling this is not a science site. Its as its title says,"skeptical about global warming skepticism," This is a science site. When you have any concpt of science maybe you will be taken seriously. Until then, whatever.
  46. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    I'm getting a distinct feeling this is not a science site. Its as its title says,"skeptical about global warming skepticism," and unless one is pro GWers its pointless posting because any negative posts to pro warming get deleted. [further thoughts off-topic for this thread deleted]
    Moderator Response: To the contrary, Skeptical Science deals with a multitude of arguments and as long as they do not degrade into insults, accusations of dishonesty, hypotheses of general corruption of the entire scientific community or the like they are allowed to follow their natural course. However, in the interest of encouraging useful conversation, Skeptical Science does not entertain bundled collections of misconceptions but instead deals with each misconception individually. By using the "Search" function at upper left, you will most likely be able to find a suitable location to take your concerns. More information on expectations for comments may be found at the Comments Policy page.
  47. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    I don't mind my comments being removed by moderators, and I was right-on-target wiuth mine. And I am on "your side" whatever that may be. But. If you are going to remove my post at least have the courtesy to send me an email which I use to register with your site so I b) know what it is I said that offended your moderator. I know what am talking about and I ave te shingle to prove it.
    Moderator Response: We apologize for any unintended offense. It may be that your comment was one of several diverging into a discussion of the role of C02 as a GHG which were removed after the pointer to Miekol upthread. If you feel your comment was removed in error please feel free to post it again.
  48. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Interesting perspective there, Eric. The Weber paper was about the Alps in Europe, found minimum and maximum temperatures to be increasing at both low-lying stations in Central Europe as well as mountain tops. The mountain tops of the European Alps are not urbanized and of course are quite distant from Washington, D.C. which although a sprawl has not yet grown across the Atlantic. As to Meehl, can you show that the change in ratio is due to urbanization? Remember, when you convey the impression you know better than experts on a given topic, you incur a sort of debt against your credibility. You can't just create an argument out of thin air by implying you're more expert than Meehl and his coauthors, you have to show how, specifically by improving his results. That's how you pay for credibility, by doing the work necessary to back up assertions. Not an assertion? Simple doubt is not an argument.
  49. Eric (skeptic) at 13:55 PM on 14 August 2010
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Doug, thanks for the links. The Weber paper (last link) confirms what one forecaster alluded to here in DC in a July forecast discussion (actually the Sterling VA office) which was that the record high minimums are affected by urbanization in DC. The Weber paper says there is little effect on record high maximums. I see the Meehl paper used 1800 stations out of 11,000 or so. There's no discussion of that possible urban bias in the paper for station selection. As with the record high mins, an increasingly urbanized area is also less likely to reach new record low mins. RBW, for the record I am referring to urbanization (the process), not urban versus rural (static). Records, unlike averages, cannot be homogenized.
  50. Why I care about climate change
    "I guess we will continue locking horns until Mother Nature reveals herself. I suspect we will not have to wait much longer." Hmm, could I be hopeful in reading this, or do you actually mean that you believe that suddenly AGW is going to get away and are expecting a down trend any day? Well I can predict with considerable confidence that next year will be cooler than this year. However, the interest will be comparing temperature with previous La Nina's of same magnitude. Not the start of the cooling trend - El Nino will return. GC - can you tell us what data would finally convince you that AGW is real? 10 year from now and warming continues apace, will you still be finding reasons why its not largely due to us? With so many predictions from AGW it is easy to see what data would could me and others to rethink our position. What would it take from you?

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