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miekol at 09:46 AM on 23 July 2010The nature of authority
Blooming marvelous, for a moment I thought I was reading the word's Ayn Rand's John Galt might have written in "Atlas Shrugged." I read all of John's comment "The nature of authority," I thought it excellent. However I wondered whether or not John has read Professor Ian Plimer's book. Michael on the Gold Coast -
omnologos at 09:37 AM on 23 July 2010The nature of authority
Despite being part of what "we are to be clear about", there is no explanation about what "deference" entails? Without that, it is going to be hard to discuss about the practical meaning and consequences of "scientific authority". -
scaddenp at 09:37 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
'My issue isn't the math that about how much man emitts, rather I have a problem with it being the only thing we do measure." actually I agree that accounting only shows you that you have order of magnitude right. With the isotope data, it also tells you how much is being absorbed. However, you cant duck the isotope evidence. Fossil fuels CO2 is different isotope signature from other sources. This is evidence that CO2 is from emissions and not other sources. Things like the corals that John mention provide multiple checks on these calculations. There is no reasonable way to presume CO2 in atmosphere is not from our emissions. -
KR at 09:36 AM on 23 July 2010Models are unreliable
Pete Ridley - reading Hansen et al 2006 is quite clear; Hansen's most likely scenario (scenario B), with a particular CO2 increase plugged in, actually predicted temperatures over the last 22 years quite well. If you take Hansen's model and put in the actual CO2 numbers (5-10% less than his scenario) his model is even more accurate. This is discussed in the paper in the section labeled Early Climate Change Predictions, pages 1-3 of the PDF. It's a major part of the paper! The quality of a model lies in whether it makes correct predictions based on various inputs (Given 'A', you will get 'B'). His scenarios covered a range of different inputs (CO2 production), and the the prediction given closely matches the real-world result of that range of CO2 numbers. You can't ask for much more - it's a decent model, and predicts the correct result given a particular set of our actions, even at it's 1988 level of simplicity. That's what a good model does! -
adelady at 09:32 AM on 23 July 2010The nature of authority
It's a shame it has to be intellectual, where people have to acknowledge others' superior expertise. It would be so much easier if it were more like tennis or basketball. The scores tell the world who won each match. The rankings show who's won the most matches. -
scaddenp at 09:30 AM on 23 July 2010Models are unreliable
Pete, I do however have more than a passing acquaintance with this type of physical modelling. You ask for evidence of models predictive skill. You are pointed at comparisons between models prediction and actual data. I dont know what other kind of evidence you could mean. Hansen (and everybody else) cant predict what future CO2 emissions will be so of course he works with scenarios. "If you emit this, you will get this climate". You verify by comparing actual forcings (not just emissions but volcanoes, solar etc), versus the models prediction for the scenario that closest matches these forcings. Please also note that you need to distinguish between people giving you "opinions" versus people giving you verifiable facts. The source of facts is important, not the person giving it to you. -
TruthSeeker at 09:29 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
KR #84 "Watt seriously unless he does some numeric analysis to demonstrate his point." He does in the link I provided, you should read it. -
TruthSeeker at 09:27 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
KR #84 Thanks for the link, and I see that some of Watt's statements raise criticism and appear to be proven false. That, however, doesn't mean he is wrong about the data he collected. I don't see how his comments about his analysis of his own data are anecdotal (really, you can disagree with it but its not anecdotal). He should have been part of the Menne peer review team, and to exclude him is a corruption of the Peer Review process. I find it Hypocritical that Soon-Baliunas is considered "nonsense" based on how they used a data set contrary to the advice of the data generator, while Menne is given a pass for the same offense. Its self serving and stinks of corruption. -
TruthSeeker at 09:22 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
KR #57 My issue isn't the math that about how much man emitts, rather I have a problem with it being the only thing we do measure. We don't measure any of the other variables, and a less than 10% swing in any of them could cause the same increase. Until you measure and record all the moving parts, you cannot exclude them from making contributions. It is fallacious to do so. -
KR at 09:05 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
TruthSeeker - there's a thread here on just that topic, Watt and Menne 2010. You might find that interesting. I personally can't take Watt seriously unless he does some numeric analysis to demonstrate his point. I eagerly await a paper from him - if it appears. Until then it's anecdotes versus statistics, and I put more weight on actual statistics. -
TruthSeeker at 08:56 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Watt's full list of issues with how Menne used his data, sounds like cherry picking to me. And excluding Watts from the Peer Reveiw process stinks of corruption. Watts -
KR at 08:52 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
John, should there be a new skeptic argument for "It's waste industrial heat, not CO2"? I don't see anything like that on the list... -
TruthSeeker at 08:52 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Its Menne 2010 and the issue is covered on this site, which reports it as the end of the story. Menne 2010 The problem, however, is that the guy who collected the data (Watts) wasn't invited to "peer review" the paper. Which is the normal Peer Review process. Which is too bad, because the data was incomplete and uncontroled. Here is some of what Watts has said about the miss-use of his data. As for the Menne et all 2010 paper itself, I’m rather disturbed by their use of preliminary data at 43%, especially since I warned them that the dataset they had lifted from my website (placed for volunteers to track what had been surveyed, never intended for analysis) had not been quality controlled at the time. Plus there are really not enough good stations with enough spatial distribution at that sample size. They used it anyway, and amazingly, conducted their own secondary survey of those stations, comparing it to my non-quality controlled data, implying that my 43% data wasn’t up to par. Well of course it wasn’t! I told them about it and why it wasn’t. We had to resurvey and re-rate a number of stations from early in the project. .... Menne et al 2010 mentioned a “counterintuitive” cooling trend in some portions of the data. Interestingly enough, former California State Climatologist James Goodridge did an independent analysis ( I wasn’t involved in data crunchng, it was a sole effort on his part) of COOP stations in California that had gone through modernization, switching from Stevenson Screens with mercury LIG thermometers to MMTS electronic thermometers. He sifted through about 500 COOPs in California and chose stations that had at least 60 years of uninterrupted data, because as we know, a station move can cause all sorts of issues. He used the “raw” data from these stations as opposed to adjusted data. He writes: Hi Anthony, I found 58 temperature station in California with data for 1949 to 2008 and where the thermometers had been changed to MMTS and the earlier parts were liquid in glass. The average for the earlier part was 59.17°F and the MMTS fraction averaged 60.07°F. Jim A 0.9F (0.5C) warmer offset due to modernization is significant, yet NCDC insists that the MMTS units are tested at about 0.05C cooler. I believe they add this adjustment into the final data. Our experience shows the exact opposite should be done and with a greater magnitude. I hope to have this California study published here on WUWT with Jim soon. I realize all of this isn’t a complete rebuttal to Menne et al 2010, but I want to save that option for more detail for the possibility of placing a comment in The Journal of Geophysical Research. When our paper with the most current data is completed (and hopefully accepted in a journal), we’ll let peer reviewed science do the comparison on data and methods, and we’ll see how it works out. Could I be wrong? I’m prepared for that possibility. But everything I’ve seen so far tells me I’m on the right track. -
KR at 08:49 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
RSVP - Direct heat from industrial/coal/nuclear/oil/auto sources could over the last 100 years account for ~0.01 oC, out of the total warming of ~0.8 oC, <2%. It's a pretty trivial factor compared to the CO2 forcing. You should know this, it's been repeatedly discussed with you on multiple threads. As to N2 and O2 being heat "stores", take a look at Graph 4 on that same page, Total Heat Anomaly. The total heat sink for land and air combined (mostly land) is only a few percent of the total heat sink - most of the energy is going into heating the oceans. Please - if you want to promote (as you apparently do) the idea of waste industrial heat causing global warming, then look at the numbers. It just doesn't add up. -
John Russell at 08:34 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
There's a popular denialist meme that those 3% of scientists who cannot accept that humans are heating the planet are today's Galileos, bravely standing up to persecution. The argument seems to be that because Galileo was subsequently proved right about the planets orbiting the sun, it somehow proves that all noble mavericks who argue against the consensus view must be right, by definition. This is an illogical argument, of course, because it fails to account for the huge number of scientists who challenged one consensus or another then were subsequently proved wrong -- and thus their names have been forgotten. So it's a complete red herring. It's yet more evidence that the deniers' favourite modus operandi is cherry-picking. -
Mangeclous at 08:14 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Thanks again for reassuring us Science-illiterate people in our trust for Science. :) -
TruthSeeker at 08:14 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
#77 dhogaza, Do you really want the use of threats, coerrsion, and censorship to be part of the "Peer Review" process? That isn't concensus, and it isn't science. -
TruthSeeker at 08:12 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
#77 - dhogaza, no that isn't what I am saying. I don't even know how you can suggest that. I am confused how my desire to have the scientist refrain from using threats and coerrsion aginst thoes that disagree with them could be interpreted that way. -
RSVP at 08:04 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
KR #57 "If you think there is an alternative explanation, that explanation has to both account for the increased CO2 and energy entrapment via other means AND indicate why the known amount of CO2 we're putting out isn't making that contribution." Man made waste heat raises the temperature of gaseous components of the atmosphere (namely N2 and O2) that (according to AGW theory) are not good emitters or absorbers of IR. Therefore these gases would tend to "store" energy that would otherwise not affect them. -
dhogaza at 07:32 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
TruthSeeker seems to be saying that journals should publish every paper that's submitted, regardless of quality. Sorry, that's a non-starter. -
scaddenp at 07:05 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
HR - since you seem more familiar with "natural variation" hypotheses than me, can you explain how these theories account for the OHC record? Is there a creditable theory or just playing to the crowd? -
shawnhet at 06:30 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
skywatcher:"Don't think there's a strong correlation between PDO and global temperature. If you remove the trend in temperature there is a beter relationship... but hey, that's what McLean et al did. Trouble is, you're finding a relationship with the variability about the trend, rather than the trend itself (see Foster et al 2010)." Well, that's the point isn't it? - whether changes in the *distribution* of heat on their own can affect temps without a change in forcing. I am not arguing that temp change isn't also forced. The fact that there may not be a trend in the PDO doesn't establish that the PDO does not affect temps. Cheers, :) -
TruthSeeker at 06:01 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
PC #72 I respectfully disagree, and so did the report following the official investigation of Climategate, as it expressed dissapointment in the siege mentality. "If you don't want scientist to have a siege mentality, you shouldn't besiege them" They weren't under siege, they had all the power and misused it. Debate is required, and it is entirely inappropreate to react in a retalitory way, by black listing scientist and threatining publications that produce papers that don't support your conclusions. If the Soon-Baliunas paper is so scientificly flawed than address it in the debate, but they didn't stop there. Furthermore, the fact that they didn't even do Peer Review on several of the claims made in the IPCC report, clearly shows that these scientist suffer from group think and have a big blind spot. This is truley not justifiable behaviour, I am supprised you would defind it. As a result they by there actions completely corrupted the integrety of the -
KR at 04:42 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
TruthSeeker - We know how much carbon we're burning (basic economic statistics). We know from isotopic analysis that the change in CO2 levels is driven by those burnt fuels. The changes in oxygen level alone corroborate that. We can measure the amount going into the oceans via pH and dissolved carbon dioxide levels. These numbers add up to the increase in atmospheric CO2. Entirely. And very importantly, the increased CO2 effects, via fairly basic physics, match the observed temperature changes. If you think there is an alternative explanation, that explanation has to both account for the increased CO2 and energy entrapment via other means AND indicate why the known amount of CO2 we're putting out isn't making that contribution. If you have such an explanation, something physically based, I would love to hear it. But the human origin of rising CO2, and the temperature forcing thereof, really are established facts. -
Ned at 03:49 AM on 23 July 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Lon Hocker writes: With a 5-year tome constant, the anthropogenic contributions to the CO2 increase would be about 25% of the observed increase, leaving the rest for the temperature change. This is still just plain nonsense. The anthropogenic contribution is larger than the observed CO2 increase, meaning it accounts for more than 100% of the increase, not "25%". The excess is taken up by the oceans and biosphere. I realize that this is an emotional subject for all, and I likely would have been more politic to not have written such a aggressive headline! In any event the science is far from settled, and I wanted to present a contrasting argument to that usually accepted. It's not a problem of "emotions", "politics", or your headline. You did not understand the meaning of the statistical methods used in your post, and drew completely erroneous conclusions. Some aspects of science are not "settled" but one thing that definitely is settled is the anthropogenic origin of the observed atmospheric increase in CO2, and the fact that the ocean is currently acting as a sink for (part of) that increase. This is not a speculative or uncertain point; the evidence is overwhelming. -
werecow at 03:34 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Hmmm.... You get a cold reception, followed by increasingly heated arguments? I'm sorry, I'll try to do better next time. -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:31 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Chriscanaris early in this thread said "having heard a few things about the safety culture of a well known Australian airline from an engineer ostracised by its management." I hope this is not about Qantas. It would be a fine example of how facts and one disgruntled individual's view can not hold the same significance. Facts: The company has neither lost a jet airliner nor had any jet fatality, ever. To my knowledge, no other long established international jet operator can make such a claim. Total fatalities between the creation of the company and 1945 number 63, mostly owed to WWII and operational considerations in which safety did not have the same place. Total fatalities since WWII is 17, the last fatal accident was in 1951: a DHA-3, center propeller failure. This can be categorized as a design flaw; the prototype airplane had a similar accident in 1952. Despite such acccidents as the 1999 Thai landing, the facts clearly indicate that Qantas must be doing something right. Whatever the version of one disgruntled individual is, it can't be the full truth. The facts are still there. Kinda like with GW. -
skywatcher at 03:04 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Don't think there's a strong correlation between PDO and global temperature. If you remove the trend in temperature there is a beter relationship... but hey, that's what McLean et al did. Trouble is, you're finding a relationship with the variability about the trend, rather than the trend itself (see Foster et al 2010). A better explanation on this very site! And of course, correlation is not causation... -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:03 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Truthseeker, you have your facts backwards. The corruption of the peer-review process resides in the publication of such nonsense as Soon-Baliunas (the subject of the e-mails you allude to), or Carter et al or G&T. The anger in the e-mails refer to that kind of paper. It is entirely justified. The siege has been on for quite a while and is still happening. That includes: Hansen being gagged by the governement. The oil producing countries holding undue influence on the formulating of the IPCC reports. The media frenzy around the non-existing climategate, and that same media lack of reporting on the 3 separate enquiries that concluded there is nos such thing as climategate. The attempts at shutting up Mann by a zealot attorney general. The lynch mob culture at WUWT, where Anthony Watts gives to his public the places of work of scientists he dislikes so that his crowd can harass them. The abuse of FOI requests in organized fashion for the sole purpose of harassment. Rush Limbaugh calling on scientists to be drawn and quartered. It goes on and on. If you don't want scientist to have a siege mentality, you shouldn't besiege them. -
TruthSeeker at 02:20 AM on 23 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
At #35, thanks for your considerate response. I like the way you also provided additional lines of thought for consideration. Let me clarify my issue a little better. First off, there is no dispute that we are contributing CO2 and other GHGs to the atmosphere, and clearly this activity is manmade. My real question deals with gaining having certainty that we are the only point of contribution in flux? How do we know (models don't provide information, they just reflect our assumptions back to us). Honestly, the fact that it isn't increasing by the direct amount of what we are emitting, clearly shows that this is a system which is dynamic so why do we assume that all other contributions are stable? I think this in this whole line of thought could be a candidate for the classic statistical trap of equating correlation to causation. Remember, during the 1800's in London the correlation of storks on the roof of houses with new babies had an R^2 > 80. That's how we got the wives tale that the stork brings the baby.Response: I didn't know that about stork's on London rooftops - you learn something new every day :-)
If there were some unique stork isotope that was being transmitted to babies as they delivered them and there was a close match between the observed stork isotope and observations of storks on rooftops, then we would have more evidence of causality.
But enough torturing of the metaphor. We have more than just correlation of CO2 emissions to CO2 levels. There's also measurements of carbon isotopes which confirm fossil fuel burning is responsible for rising CO2 levels. There's also measurements of carbon isotopes in corals over the last few centuries that corroborate this finding. It's not just wives tales or statistical traps - it's multiple lines of empirical evidence. -
Jeff Freymueller at 02:07 AM on 23 July 20103 levels of cherry picking in a single argument
#29 Marcel, polar amplification (at least in the Arctic) is certainly happening -- it's observed, and not just in the present but also in paleoclimate. The explanation of why is much more speculative -- like you, I doubt that albedo is all of the story. -
shawnhet at 02:07 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
"I agree that Milankovitch cycles redistribute heat - but they do this globally - such as shifting insolation preferences from the NH to the SH, namely to a place where it cannot easily redistribute back. Regional redistributions have much less of an effect. Why should the PDO -ve of the present have a global cooling effect when the North Pacific as a whole is warmer than all previous PDO +ve phases?" Personally, I don't see the problem you're having here. If you think that a large change in the distribution of heat(where forcing is held more or less constant) can have a large effect on global temperature, what is difficult about claiming that a smaller(but still substantial) change in the distribution of heat will have a smaller(but still substantial) effect on the global temperature. IAC, empirically, it is pretty easy to demonstrate a strong correlation btw PDO index and global temperature. Cheers, :) -
TruthSeeker at 01:59 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Frankly, I think the question stacks the deck so the 97-3 is meaningless. If Climate Gate showed one thing, its that there was a "siege mentality" held by the scientist at the heart of the controversy. They proved a pattern of not only black listing publications that disagreed with the conclusions of AGW, they willingly to publishing in the IPCC report many fallacious claims that went unscrutinized but supported the AGW agenda. Of course they later needed to be pulled. Corruption of the "Peer Reviewed" publication process was the real crime of climategate. The impact of the "Siege Mentality," they were willing to censor data they didn't agree with, while not questioning conclusions that they did agree with. -
Svatli at 01:51 AM on 23 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Well, I'm going to try to go for the joke ;) What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room? ... 3 nuts in a shell. Remember,this is a joke :) -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:49 PM on 22 July 20103 levels of cherry picking in a single argument
And according to me we have more to do with global warming. However - the third point is a typical incomplete information: “The Climate Prediction Center recently released its equatorial upper ocean heat content for April 2010. One of the primary areas that they focus on is the equatorial heat content averaged over the area from 180-100W. The decrease in upper ocean heat content from March to April was 1C, which is the largest decrease in equatorial upper ocean heat content in this area since the CPC began keeping records of this in 1979. [...]” Of course, El Nino, but if only? Scary-looking figure 4 shows primarily the effect of AMO. In the initial phase of positive, followed by accumulation of energy (although some parts of the ocean - sometimes most - losing it slightly). Then (a measure of positive phase of the AMO), we have a very slow passing of energy (1.), until the sudden acceleration (possibly sudden reversal of meridional transport of energy - balance of energy -2.). 1. Widely discussed papers: Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system, Schwartz, 2007: “Also, recent studies with coupled ocean atmosphere GCMs have shown that the thermal signal from even a short-duration volcanic event is transported into the deep ocean and can persist for decades [Delworth et al ., 2005; Gleckler et al ., 2006 a , b ]; such penetration of the thermal signal from a short- duration forcing would suggest that the autocorrelation of GMST over a decade or more would be representative of the longer time constant associated with the coupling to the deep ocean and not reflective simply of a short time constant associated with the ocean mixed layer.” 2. Changes in net flow of ocean heat correlate with past climate anomalies, I chose a more accessible information: ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2009): "These shifts happened relatively abruptly," says David Douglass, professor of physics at the University of Rochester, and co-author of the paper.” “Douglass says the last oceanic shift occurred about 10 years ago, and that the oceans are currently emitting slightly more radiation than they are receiving.” “The team believes that the oceans may change how much they absorb and radiate depending on factors such as shifts in ocean currents that might change how the deep water and surface waters exchange heat. In addition to the correlation with strange global effects that some scientists suspect were caused by climate shifts, the team says their data shows the oceans are not continuously warming—a conclusion not consistent with the idea that the oceans may be harboring "warming in the pipeline." -
sebastian.tyrrell at 23:48 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
100 climate scientists in a room? Surely you mean "under Al Gore's hollowed out volcano"? -
adelady at 23:27 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Marcel Bökstedt at 20:26 PM on 22 July, 2010 "The scientific question remains unclear to me ..... its just my impression that this is an area of uncertainty." Well I'm not a scientist either, but I really don't expect to master all areas of 20+ scientific disciplines. Let alone understand them well enough to make serious judgements about the remaining areas of uncertainty. Like most non-scientists here, I'm able to follow good explanations well enough. Too much maths or physics and we have to make a decision. Do we put in 6 or 12 hours of brain pain just to read the details of something that's already well-known to experts? I don't, some do. As for uncertainties or unsettled details. If I'm making a sweater for someone and they complain that it's not yet finished, I reckon I'm right to get a bit testy when I point out that it just needs the last seams sewn, edgings on and a few threads neatened off. If the lucky recipient could learn to sew, knit and crochet for themselves it would all be done sooner if not better. My view is that the patterns shown by agricultural and ecological researchers, oceanographers, physicists, chemists, biologists and the thousands of other scientists and technicians are complete enough. Maybe not finished enough to wear if it was a garment- ...... -But we are absolutely certain that it *is* a garment and not a billiard cue or a jar of jam. 2 things we must live with. Uncertainty is one of the few certain things in life. Expertise in anything is hard to come by and should be respected in others. Moaning about doubts or uncertainties is a very unscientific thing to do. In science, uncertainty is an opportunity for interest or even excitement. In life, if we face uncertainty we take out insurance or we over-engineer the foundations for our house extension or we leave an hour earlier to catch our plane. -
canbanjo at 23:01 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
i asked my mother what she thought of rounding up one hundred scientists and putting them in a room and she said well at least they won't be doing any harm. glass is always half full with her. -
kampmannpeine at 22:57 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
corrected the link in 61 - sorry: Article in Die Zeit of 1967 -
kampmannpeine at 22:49 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
wanted to add the link to the "Die Zeit": http://www.zeit.de/1967/23/Wieviel-Schicksal-bestimmen-die-Planeten -
Alden Griffith at 22:30 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
John - I think you should quickly convert this into an op-ed (with the graphic!) and send it out to a major paper like the NY Times. (also your responses to questions 1 and 5 are worth weaving into the text). Just a thought! -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 22:29 PM on 22 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
The vast majority of scientists actually argues that the theory AGHG-AGW: makes sense. But I guess the same the majority is no longer argues that the current warming of up to 90% corresponds to man. Sentence above-quoted Matthews & Weaver, 2010: "We Argue That The Notion of unavoidable warming owing to inertia in the climate system is based on an incorrect Interpretation of climate science." Climatologist should consider how much of that 90%, the often still is UNKNOWN: "... inertia in the climate system ... "(my favorite system of resonance overlapping cyclical impact of our solar system to Earth - you really are at the beginning of the road of understanding and measuring the phenomenon) and how much positive feedback AGHG ... Of course, for honest skepticism about the skeptics' thank you JC, but for the fact that most cares about the "culture of debate" (sometimes excessively). Antarctica - the scientists - but skeptics, say: there is nothing to what it was in the past, or what we should worry too much - the rest (plus and minus) is a policy - the manipulation of data. -
Alexandre at 22:28 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
I think it's worth keeping in mind that this 97% is the result of a poll asking for these scientists opinion. If you look for what they've published, you get something closer to Oreskes' 100%. The rare contrarian paper that survives the peer review scrutiny falls into at least one of these categories: - does not conflict with what's known about GHG influence on temperature and climate - just count on e.g. a huge cloud negative feedback, which is also climate change. - it's a lonely conclusion that does not survive replication. -
skywatcher at 22:27 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Marcel - why do you feel the need to find an unknown natural forcing when there's decent evidence for positive feedbacks (e.g. water vapour, albedo)? Presumably you don't doubt that a dark object reflects radiation more poorly than a white one? You also have coincidence of timing. I agree that Milankovitch cycles redistribute heat - but they do this globally - such as shifting insolation preferences from the NH to the SH, namely to a place where it cannot easily redistribute back. Regional redistributions have much less of an effect. Why should the PDO -ve of the present have a global cooling effect when the North Pacific as a whole is warmer than all previous PDO +ve phases? -
johnd at 22:02 PM on 22 July 2010Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
scaddenp at 08:46 AM, given that water vapour is a direct function of temperature, this chart (and accompanying explanation) showing the total column of water vapour, would then indicate a past decade of stable temperatures, below previous highs."Variations in the total column water vapour in the atmosphere since July 1983. The upper graph (blue) shows the total amount of water in the atmosphere. The green graph shows the amount of water in the lower troposphere between 1000 and 680 mb, corresponding to altitudes up to about 3 km. The lower red graph shows the amount of water between 680 and 310 mb, corresponding to altitudes from about 3 to 6 km above sea level. The marked annual variation presumably reflects the asymmetrical distribution of land and ocean on planet Earth, with most land areas located in the northern hemisphere. The annual peak in atmospheric water vapour content occur usually around August-September, when northern hemisphere vegetation is at maximum transpiration. The annual moisture peak occurs simultaneously at different levels in the atmosphere, which suggests an efficient transport of water vapour from the planet surface up into the troposphere. The time labels indicate day/month/year. Data source: The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). There is a possibility that the step-like change shown 1998-1999 to some degree may be related to changes in the analysis procedure used for producing the data set, according to information from ISCCP. Last data: June 2008. Last figure update: 14 June 2009."
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Marcel Bökstedt at 22:00 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
skywatcher> There is no doubt in my mind that the greenhouse gasses are producing warming, and that we can calculate the resulting forcing pretty accurately. But I do have some doubts about the amount of positive feedback. There is still the possibility that the feedback is smaller than we think, and that some unknown natural variation is added to that to produce the observed warming. Maybe not likely, but possible. Chris> Why can natural internal variation only redistribute heat? By playing with redistribution of temperature between sea and land or between high and low latitudes, I can offhand think of several conjectural scenarios where total cloud cover, snow cover, humidity etc. could change, and then influence the global temperature. And I've got a slow imagination. Besides, one could equally argue that the Milankovitch cycles only redistributes heat, they do not change the total amount of received solar radiation, only its distribution. -
CBDunkerson at 21:32 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
HR #24; "Theories around 20th century hurricane numbers and intensity were recently debunked." Debunked? No. They were disputed... only 'skeptics' (who by such behavior prove that they AREN'T skeptics) assume that the alternate viewpoint MUST perforce be correct. In reality there isn't much foundation for that. Basically, Landsea argued that the data showing increasing hurricane activity over time was incorrect because he ASSUMED that earlier data, before satellite tracking, 'missed' some hurricanes which did not make landfall. He offered no real scientific evidence of that and also did not consider the equally 'valid' possibility that some pre-satellite hurricanes were counted TWICE when they were spotted in different regions. Once you exclude the pre-satellite records the remaining trend, while still increasing, is not statistically significant and thus also dismissed. Also note that pre-satellite counts have been validated not just by observations, but also by analysis of the frequency of sediment deposits being carried inland by storms... a physical science confirmation of increasing storms which Landsea just ignored. Essentially it is the classic 'deny the data' tactic. Hardly a 'debunking'. As to the oddity of three climate scientists actually saying that humans are NOT causing warming... note that this is based on one of those petitions sent around. Several skeptic scientists have stated that they signed on to such petitions, even though the wording wasn't entirely correct, to help demonstrate that 'there is no consensus'. In short, they wanted to make a political statement badly enough that they were willing to put their name to something they knew to be inaccurate. Which I think is an important point... I cannot think of a single skeptic scientist who is not extremely 'partisan'. Sure, there are also plenty of AGW scientists who are equally partisan... but there are also alot who are NOT emotionally invested and still find strong AGW solely on the basis of the evidence. -
Cornelius Breadbasket at 21:20 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
100 climate deniers go into a bar. Spencer goes up to the landlord and asks "do you sell pure alcohol?" "No mate, just the usual wines, beers and spirits" he replies. "Right lads, next pub" says Spencer. The landlord is stunned. "What's wrong?" he asks. "Nothing mate" replies Spencer, it's just we require 100% proof". -
chris at 21:20 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Marcel Bökstedt at 20:26 PM on 22 July, 2010 Yes, fair enough. I would say that the bottom line is that enhanced persistent surface warming can only come from changes in external forcings (solar or greenhouse gas and Milankovitch variation), or from massive tectonic events that release large amounts of greenhouse gases (or extraterrestrial impacts that slam into carbonate rich deposits). Volcanic activity and solar variation can result in cooling on medium to long (solar) timescales. But we can assess all of these things in detail in the context of 20th century and contemporary warming and establish their contributions, and determine that they have made little net contribution to global warming. Natural internal variations (e.g. ocean currents like the PDO/AMO) can pretty much only redistributed heat. It's difficult to conclude anything other than that these effects average temporally to near zero. That's not to say that the particular phase of an ocean oscillation might not have a significant regional effect depending on the "phase" that the oscillation happens to be in. For example some of the current Arctic warming likely has some contribution from the AMO which involves residtribution of heat into the N. Atlantic. But one would have to conjure up some rather extraordinary thermodynamic arguments to satisfy a notion of persistent accumulation of heat into the climate system by internal variations! Since we know that that is exactly the effect of enhancement of the greenhouse effect it would be silly to attempt to pretend that this isn't dominating contemporary warming, all uncertainties about the true climate sensitivity notwithstanding. I'm away until Sunday so won't be able to respond any more til then... -
skywatcher at 21:19 PM on 22 July 2010What do you get when you put 100 climate scientists in a room?
Marcel: John Cook's response to post #5 neatly deals with your point I think. It's not just a case of explaining away everything else and being left with inferred CO2, but it's a case of actually directly observing the CO2 causing the warming at it's specified wavelengths. So your mystery natural variation has to both cancel out a CO2-induced warming that we see (ie be a cooling), and then create an entirely different warming all on its own, therefore it's net effect is zero??? The PDO, so far as I understand it, is a spaial variation in temperature distribution, not an absolute measure of heat gained or lost by the North Pacific. This seems a common misconception. Its consequence is to change the pattern of warmer/cooler weather in related regions, but not to make the overall system substantially warmer or cooler. For the last 15 years, more or less, the North Pacific has been warmer than at any time in the past, including all previous PDO 'positive' phases, yet for most of this time the PDO has been neutral or slightly negative. I would think of it like having a radiator and a cooling air conditioner in the same room, set to the same setting. One way round, your sofa's warm and your dining table is cold, swap them over and the dining table is warm and your sofa cold. The overall effect on the room may be close to zero (but dependent on the heat capacity of neighbouring objects), but an index like the PDO records the fact that the warmer and cooler regions have switched around.
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