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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 112851 to 112900:

  1. Newcomers, Start Here
    If this post is going to headline your site and introduce newcomers, you might want to work on this sentence from the first paragraph: "In contrast, climate skepticism look at small pieces of the puzzle, not the full picture." Either "skeptics look" or "skepticism looks," though I think the former is stronger, especially if you put scare quotes around "skeptics."
    Response: Thanks for the tip. I think I went for skeptics look then edited it. Have updated the text.
  2. 3 levels of cherry picking in a single argument
    No Antarctica shown in either HADCRUT or ECMWF maps? Are _both_leaving out the intense warming in the West Antarctic peninsula?
  3. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    fydijkstra, No, the use of a 12-month average helps reduce seasonal variability. I'm also unsure as to what you think the graph you link to demonstrates, other than you believe satellite data is somehow more accurate than ground readings. It isn't.
  4. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    thingadonta at 00:07 AM, depending on where you are, yes, it can get very cold in Indonesia especially if you go into some of the mountain areas. Weather and climatic conditions in Indonesia are dependent on conditions in the Indian Ocean more so than the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean based cycles affecting all the surrounding land masses, Indonesia, India, Africa and large parts of Australia. The Dutch compiled long term weather records, some of which show that droughts in areas close to the equator follow a similar pattern to droughts in south eastern Australia, Victoria included. Climatologists in Australia long rejected any connections, but the identification of the IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole) by Japanese researchers about a decade ago confirmed what many working independently of official bodies had long known.
  5. Newcomers, Start Here
    Interesting comment on CNN debate Gavin and Economist Sachs say we have the technology and act now. Michaels says we should just wait to see if technologies come up... Fareed Zakaria "Mr. Michaels, is your research funded by oil companies?" Patrick Michaels-Not much of it Fareed "Mr. Michaels, how much of your research is funded by oil companies?" Michaels-I don't know, 40%
  6. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    As a general remark I find it amusing how the figures in this article are "mine" and along those lines that NASA-GISS and WMO are "media." Nope, not mine, no more than photos of a Saturn V rocket lifting off suggest that a news photographer had constructed the rocket in the picture. As to "media", rather than refer to such a source instead it's of course better to go to the horse's mouth, in this case NASA-GISS and WMO, what's quoted from and linked to above. Laughter aside, let's not go down the path of imagining that the sources above are that darned liberal media, or that I've used a spreadsheet to make up some graphics friendly to a "case." What you see is what the best authorities have to say about this matter. Yes, that's right, authorities, they do exist, there are discernible differences in reliability between different sources of information, that difference being manifested in part by the actual amount of information conveyed to the public as well as an authority's relative honesty w/the public. The relative reliability of authority in part manifests itself by exhibiting characteristics of the formal sense of the word "circumspection," the trait of trying to take all things into account when making a judgment. Above, in the article and more particularly in the NASA-GISS and WMO articles linked there you can see a circumspect assessment of what weather today may tell us about climate. Conversely, at WUWT you may see an intentionally circumscribed picture in the form of an incomplete portrayal of temperature anomalies, this apparently conveyed as an attempt to sway public opinion. There's the difference between "media" and useful authority, in a nutshell; NASA-GISS and WMO try to convey as much information as possible, WUWT conveys only that which is suitable for making their case.
  7. Newcomers, Start Here
    #2: "If I go to... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism ... I have "investigated" " Well, no. As I tell my students, wikipedia is not a credible scientific source. Steven Colbert demonstrated that when he caused the extinction of the African elephant. If you really want to investigate, try Google Scholar and even then cross-check for factual misrepresentations at all times. Hey, if it was easy, everybody with a blog would do it.
  8. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #73: "last winter could then be said to be within a perfectly normal event that is within a natural variation with in the predicted trend. Therefore I find it strange that this summer, just because it is such an media attention, is not attributed to the very same variation within the very same trend." Please look at the temperature anomaly vs. time graph at the top of the page (figure 2). When you strip away all the newspaper jabber and anecdotal stories, you are still left with rising annual average temperatures. Seasonal highs and lows, el Nino/la Ninas fade into the background. Unfortunately, climate science is an awkward position, similar to the dilemma of earthquake prediction. Few seismologists will go on record saying X marks the spot and H is the hour, but a consensus agree that an earthquake is coming on the San Andreas. Oh wait, if a scientific consensus exists, then it can't be right.
  9. It's the ocean
    h-j-m, you can conduct your own experiment to demonstrate that the atmosphere transfers energy to the ocean: Step 1: Chill beer. Step 2: Pour beer into glass. Step 3: Sip beer, noticimg its temperature. Step 4: Wait three minutes. Step 5: Go to Step 3.
  10. Philippe Chantreau at 02:09 AM on 16 August 2010
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    "I believe the locals, coldest year in 35 years" Incidentally, the average age in Indonesia is 27. Anecdotal "evidence."
  11. It's the ocean
    If the oceans are warming in response to increased atmospheric warming due to anthropogenic green house gases then undoubtedly there has to be a mechanism (physical or chemical) resulting in a net heat transfer from atmosphere to ocean. So far I completely failed to find such a mechanism mentioned. By contrast, most ocean-atmosphere interactions mentioned (el Nino, Gulf stream, fueling extreme weather events) constitute a net heat transfer the other way round. Further more, the quote provided by Quietman "the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy”, clearly rules out any knowledge of a mechanism resulting in a net heat flux from atmosphere to ocean. But unless such a mechanism is found and sufficiently supported by evidence a warming of the oceans seems far more likely to cause global warming than anthropogenic increase in green house gases.
    Response: The mechanism of transferring heat from the atmosphere to the ocean is an increase in the amount of downward infrared radiation. Normally a certain amount of infrared radiation escapes out to space. But with greenhouse gases increasing in the atmosphere, this extra gas both absorbs and scatters the outgoing radiation and some of it returns to the Earth's surface.

    There are various independent lines of empirical evidence that this is happening. A series of papers analysing different satellite data find less infrared radiation escaping to space. Similarly, a number of different papers find more infrared radiation returning to the Earth's surface. So we have a mechanism for warming the oceans and evidence that this mechanism is indeed at play.

    For the record, I'm actually planning a post that specifically looks at the pattern of ocean warming and how it indicates human influence on climate - but just haven't had the time to write it yet.
  12. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP, Is this impression of your argument correct: the CO2 warming effect cancel itself out and the warming we see is an accumulated effect mistaken to be a GHG effect. By stating the GHG effect exist as counter argument those argument effectively shoots at the side of the target.
  13. Newcomers, Start Here
    Why I don't listen to thingadonta:
    Elephants are able to be domesticated, like horses, but zebras are not.
    Wikipedia: "In England, the zoological collector Lord Rothschild frequently used zebras to draw a carriage. In 1907, Rosendo Ribeiro, the first doctor in Nairobi, Kenya, used a riding zebra for house calls. In the mid 1800s, Governor George Grey imported zebras to New Zealand from his previous posting in South Africa, and used them to pull his carriage on his privately owned Kawau Island. A tamed zebra being ridden in East Africa Captain Horace Hayes, in "Points of the Horse" (circa 1893) compared the usefulness of different zebra species. In 1891, Hayes broke a mature, intact mountain zebra stallion to ride in two days time, and the animal was quiet enough for his wife to ride and be photographed upon. He found the Burchell's zebra easy to break, and considered it ideal for domestication, as it was immune to the bite of the tsetse fly. He considered the quagga well-suited to domestication due to being easy to train to saddle and harness.[6]"
    Zebras wont follow an alpha male, unlike horses, cows, sheep, or dogs.
    More wikipedia, on the harem structure of two of the three species of zebra: "Like most members of the horse family, zebras are highly social. Their social structure, however, depends on the species. Mountain zebras and plains zebras live in groups, known as 'harems', consisting of one stallion with up to six mares and their foals. Bachelor males either live alone or with groups of other bachelors until they are old enough to challenge a breeding stallion. When attacked by packs of hyenas or wild dogs, a zebra group will huddle together with the foals in the middle while the stallion tries to ward them off." Note: "harems" are built around the "alpha male" Thingadonta insists don't exist in zebra social groups. Don't get me started on dogs, modern research into wolves, and the whole "alpha male" fallacy there ...
  14. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @doug at 08:23 AM on 14 August, 2010 My understanding is that the deviation of last winter may be due to a recent La Niña, hence last winter could then be said to be within a perfectly normal event that is within a natural variation with in the predicted trend. Therefore I find it strange that this summer, just because it is such an media attention, is not attributed to the very same variation within the very same trend. Why do I care about this? Well, this is what a scientist writes in the Guardian: "For climate scientists, having to continually rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme is all due to climate change is, at best, hugely frustrating and, at worst, enormously distracting. Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of the science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening. Both undermine the basic facts that the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut drastically and swiftly over the coming decades." It makes at least me asking the question why someone would have any interest in overplaying these things in any direction.
  15. Newcomers, Start Here
    Oh good grief, what a surprise that thingadontas 'scientific' views are clouded by politics! How many scientists or engineers apply the 10% of theory in an application such as designing a car? People use what works. 10% of 'theory' might suggest perpetual motion is valid, but how many people apply that to building the world around us? You distort and manipulate the reality thingadonta. We all use the 90% of practical science because it serves us well and it is how we have achieved what we have achieved. Human achievement I am afraid isn't based on choice, instead it is built on what works 90% of the time!
  16. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Thingadonta, The map on WUWT is only for July 20-27, although it was posted on August 14. The map in figure 1 above is for the entire month of July. WUWT has apparently cherrypicked one week in the past six weeks of hot weather in Russia to make their claim that Russia is not hot. Figure 1 is not cherrypicked and reflects what the temperatures in Russia really are. Read WUWT very carefully, they do this on purpose to catch people who do not pay attention.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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'.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
  31. 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.
  32. 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.
  33. 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.
  34. 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
  35. Newcomers, Start Here
    Ok John, you got me hooked :-) I will take a look at your scepticism Michael Gold Coast
  36. 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.
  37. 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.
  38. 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.
  39. 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.
  40. 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.
  41. 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!
  42. 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.
  43. 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 ?
  44. 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.
  45. 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).
  46. 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.
  47. 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!
  48. 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).
  49. 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.
  50. 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?

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