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tobyjoyce at 01:54 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
HR @3, The situation comes back to the precautionary principle (or the prudence principle); if the prediction is for a global warming of 4C +/- 5C, should we act on the assumption (or hope) that a -1C cooling is what it going to happen in practice? Besides, the irrevocable events are all on the temperature upside. If actions taken prove to be unwarranted by events, they can be undone. Not many people retrospectively complain about the obvious overkill in nuclear defences, missile arsenals and star wars alternatives in the Cold War, though the trillions spent on them would have had better uses. -
angliss at 01:45 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
I've forgotten most of my Philsophy 101 class from college, but one of the things I do remember is that not choosing is itself a choice. There well be many options to choose from, but refraining from choosing any of the options inherently defaults to one of those options (or to another option that should have been included in the options in the first place). In the case of addressing climate disruption, we have two main choices: we either choose act to address climate disruption or we choose to not address climate disruption. Refusing to choose defaults to choosing NOT to address climate disruption. -
mspelto at 01:42 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
The grounding line is where the glacier goes afloat and it can be a point of weakness but seldom is it a place where tidal or wave action leads to cracking. Typically the grounding line for most substantial ice shelves (Ross Ice Shelf, Amery Ice Shelf) and floating tongues of outlet glaciers is well inland (Petermann Glacier), is quite insulated from waves and the glacier is both thick and strong here. What the grounding line does represent is a location where longitudinal compression is reduced as friction declines, this would cause acceleration, but longitudinal extension due to downslope flow and gradual ice thinning, and even lateral spreading can also be reduced. -
KR at 01:18 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
Dennis - excellent questions, it can be hard to follow the terminology. "Buttressing ice shelves" and "Longitudinal compressive force": Ice shelves hanging onto the edge of the glacier and surrounding areas hold back the glaciers ('cause there's an ice shelf in the way!), applying the "longitudinal compression", i.e. pushing back against the glacier. This slows glacial movement. "Glacier's grounding line": Once the glacier gets far enough out into the water to float, wave action helps crack it and calve it, which means that the glacial ablation increases sharply there (fast ice loss). -
John Russell at 00:57 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
Regarding the response to my comment above (#9); it's important to include the link, even if it is behind an annoying paywall. At least it is there, should someone really want to pursue it. If I want to check a quote I usually find that googling the first half dozen words will find the original and perhaps several instances of it being used -- often cited -- which at least helps to establish its credibility. On other occasions, of course, a quote proves to have been taken out of context -- though not in this case! -
mspelto at 00:47 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
This is well put. It should be noted that surface mass balance such as is reported to the World Glacier Monitoring Service by scientists like myself (I report 12 glaciers annually) is a measurement simply of melt and accumulation. The balance velocity is a key concept that is not analyzed in such observations. The observations for the WGMS are all from smaller alpine glaciers, which typically slow down as they shrink, and have fewer crevasses. The complete opposite often happens on larger calving glaciers with reduced back pressure leading to greater velocity, more calving, more retreat, more thinning, reduced back pressure and so on. The balance velocity is not something that is determined annually. But is something as you correctly note that must be considered along with the basic melt and accumulation at the surface. For the large glaciers we have not had accurate mass balance assessment from the field, only the recent better satellite data has allowed this. So in fact balance velocity was the key in the assessment of a 1990 paper I published from U of Maine work that noted the Jakobshavn Glacier was in equilibrium for the 1950-1985 period. This is obviously not the case their or on Pine Island Glacier or Petermann Glacier. -
Dennis at 00:43 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
I'm not a scientist, so much of the terminology is lost on me. I'm afraid you lost me at the paragraph that starts "The second mechanism refers to when the forces at the downstream terminus of a glacier or ice stream are disturbed or altered." What does "buttressing ice shelves" mean? And "glacier’s grounding line (point where glacier ice reaches floatation)?" I really like the cross section in figure 2 (pictures are great conveyor of these sorts of things), but those terms aren't in the image. And what is a "longitudinal compressive force?" With your conclusion that this second mechanism is important to Antarctica, these details are key to understanding your post, so if someone can elaborate on this, or point to something that provides more details, it will help. -
RickG at 00:39 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
Steven Goddard has never heard of "sublimation"? Oh my. -
mspelto at 00:34 AM on 15 July 2010Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
I published a paper back in 1990 called the Equilibrium balance of the Jakobshavn Glacier. This paper looked at the consistent velocity data from 1950-1986, the consistent terminus position and field measurements of snow depth and snow melt, all lines of data suggested a near equilibrium balance for this system, which now is anything but. That is the long range evidence we actually have. That study was undertaken by the U of Maine partly because we saw the Jakobshavn as an analog for other glaciers particularly Pine Island which might accelerate in a similar fashion. -
chris1204 at 00:32 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
HR @ 16 I almost mentioned the Nazis but thought it would be too off topic :-). The Nazis were the first government to run a serious anti-smoking public health campaign highlighting its links to all the nasty diseases we recognise today. It helped that Adolf was a fanatic anti-smoker (by the standards of his time) and a vegetarian to boot. Pity the rest of their ideology had some shortfalls! -
Ned at 00:28 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
HR writes: The problem I see here is that you assume all the partial knowledge suggests we should act. This is one of my pet peeves, although it's hard to use the word "peeve" for something that is potentially of vast importance to future generations. The situation is not one where we're deciding whether to act or not. We are going to act, one way or another. We either take one action (cutting back emissions to avoid doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere) or we take a different action (burning lots of fossil fuels and doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere). There is no way to "not act" here. We have to choose among possible actions A, B, C, etc. each of which involves some expected changes to our technological infrastructure and/or the climate. The right way to make this choice isn't to pretend that action A (doubling the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere) is some kind of non-action "default" choice that we can safely take for granted right up until the point where the need for "action" becomes obvious to everyone. The right way is to weigh the expected costs and benefits of each potential action, including the uncertainties associated with each. Unfortunately, there's no straightforward universally accepted way to do this -- it's going to be messy, and the uncertainties create lots of opportunity for disagreement. But it's better than just fatalistically pretending that the choice we're making (burn lots of carbon and ignore the climate) is not itself a deliberate choice! -
HumanityRules at 00:23 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
6.Chemware at 16:33 PM on 14 July, 2010 Chemware gets the prize for first to mention the Nazi's. Congratulations! -
HumanityRules at 00:21 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
4.caerbannog at 15:16 PM on 14 July, 2010 You should tell GRL and the like because they are the journals publishing the C- papers. Your comment suggest you do wish to simply ignore anything that questions AGW. -
robert way at 00:18 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
enSKog, I actually have not looked into that question but I could make an assumption that where sea ice forms primarily from salty ice and then becomes desalinized over time, it is maybe more difficult for it to form in high calving regions because the water is usually quite "freshened" with the inflow of land ice. -
Ned at 00:10 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
enSKog, the short answer is "no". People make that suggestion a lot, but calved ice from land ice sheets doesn't make any significant contribution to sea ice area or extent. -
Ned at 00:09 AM on 15 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
Goddard has been using the same argument with Greenland (implying that it can't be losing mass because air temperatures over much of the interior are below freezing). He doesn't seem to understand how glaciers (or ice sheets) work. -
SNRatio at 00:07 AM on 15 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
I think the issue of foundation of political action is more of a decision problem than a purely scientific issue. It can be extremely dangerous, at the very least counterproductive to accept the ordinary rules underlying scientific consensus as the basic rules in cases like AGW. There is an asymmetry built into science, in that we are much more afraid of accepting wrong hypotheses than rejecting correct ones. For building a corpus of secured knowledge, this is nesessary, but for the managment of a global civilization, it can be dangerous. Because the "alternative" hypotheses will always get the benefit of doubt, and that doubt may, in effect, paralyze us. The basic phenomenon, is that when we start large-scale irreversible experiments (they constitute a big part of our civilzation enterprise), we will, very often, not have enough knowledge and data for precise assessment of the consequences before it is too late to avoid them. This applies to a large number of environmental issues, AGW is a prominent one. We may, for example, be well past the point of no return for the melting of Greenland's ice cap, for considerable ocean acidification etc. And still, it is only during the recent years we have accumulated knowledge about these processes to such a degree that we should have a broad scientific consensus on them. And still, we don't have really narrow estimates for climate sensitivity, maybe the most important environmental parameter of all. This has little to do with lack of basic understanding, it is mostly mere real-world complexity. In such situations, the basic issue is not one of precise estimation and scientific penetration, but of risk assessment and management. Expected benefit/loss is the main parameter in the first place. It is a decision problem, and rather than producing precise predictions, workable prabability estimations are needed for handling them. For example, because the cost to society of a Greenland meltdown will be huge, it is enough to have a rather small probability for that in order to warrant drastic measures. Og course, some denialists will say that the probability is about nil, and here is where the game gets interesting. They must provide reasons for that, which not only implies that they must argue their case, but that they must argue against other explanations. And this agrumentation must be held within the observable and predictable. Now, we have a case where we handle everything symmetrically, in probability assessments nothing, in principle, gets the benefit of doubt. And wrong predictions and assessments invariably leads to the probability estimates based thereupon get weighted down. In adequate risk management, lack of precise knowledge directly results in larger safety limits, while in the AGW political debate, it results in NO safety limits. Think about it: There may still be quite a few unknowns, after more invstigation, the Greenland ice loss may seem to be partly periodic, with a larger time frame for complete meltdown, the climate sensitivity may turn out to be closer to 1 than expected etc. Which means that we may have some more time to fix things, but they still have to be fixed. But presenting this as solely a scientific problem, less drastic estimates are almost bount to result in less efficient measures - the result being that we lose life-saving time. -
enSKog at 23:59 PM on 14 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
When faced with the 'Antarctic sea ice is increasing' argument I have been tempted to respond with 'That will be all the ice sliding off the land into the sea!'. Does increased glacial calving actually make any significant difference to sea ice extent/area? -
Tom_the_Bomb at 23:26 PM on 14 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
This isn't to do with the post, sorry. Can I suggest that John moves the article "Peer reviewed impacts of global warming" into a more visible place? I think it is one of the most useful articles on this site, comparing peer-reviewed impacts of warming both good and bad, and it deserves more attention. Personally I think it should be up there with the two blue boxes on the home page, but that's just my opinion. Also, the version of this article on the iPod app, called "Global warming is good", doesn't show up on the unless you search for it. Again, I think it's one of the most important pages and should be as visible as possible. Can something be done about that? Thanks! -
F. Murdoch at 23:14 PM on 14 July 2010Part One: How do ice sheets lose ice?
Excellent, very informative, and clearly written piece. Well done. -
Riccardo at 23:06 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
John Russell, the full report is not free but the Report in brief is. It starts with: "A strong, credible body of scientifc evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses signifcant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." You could have found it yourself before saying that "hese guest posts are little better than the sceptic's blogs that we rail about." -
John Brookes at 22:58 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
Tony Noerpel @8, relativity is not so esoteric. The GPS satellites actually do have to correct for the time effects of special and general relativity. Without this correction, positions measured by GPS would drift by about 12km per day. The clocks are synchronised regularly as well. -
Ken Lambert at 22:52 PM on 14 July 2010Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
Chris#33, BP#36 "In other words, some of the apparent shortfall in the thermosteric (ocean heat absorption) contribution to sea level rise during the period ~ 2003/4-2007/8 may be due to a larger than "average" transfer of heat to the somewhat deeper layers of the ocean" "May be due" is sheer speculation. At the time the paper was written (Aug-09), Dr Trenberth was not aware of the Von Schukmann paper which claimed to find a large chunk of the 'missing' heat down to 2000m. In fact I drew the Von Schukmann paper to Dr Trenberth's attention in February this year, and he has since used it in a banter with Dr Pielke in April - calling it a 'nice analysis'. Well, BP produced a pretty convincing demolition of the Von Schukmann paper and its 'bumpy' OHC chart elsewhere in this blog. Willis subsequently came up with a 'small' number for deep OHC of about 0.1 W/sq.m which is only about 16E20 Joules/year. The 1.22E22 Joules in the Trenberth paper is a typo - not a serious one - but I read this some time ago and could not make out the following 1.35E20 as a 12.5% increase on the former number. Who said this stuff was 'peer reviewed? Anyway, the essential point is that the SLR budget and the energy budget do not come close to consistency, and more ice melt component for a given SLR worsens the shortfall in the energy budget. In reality you can't have more ice melt and more steric rise at the same time for a given SLR. -
JMurphy at 22:43 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
John Russell, the nearest I could find to what you are looking for, is this - Open letter: Climate change and the integrity of science, in THE GUARDIAN. Supposedly the original is behind a paywall in SCIENCE. Doesn't seem to be exactly related, though. -
Sense Seeker at 22:08 PM on 14 July 2010Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
Can anyone explain Figure 2 to me? First, it shows a very short timeframe - the sort of thing I would expect from denialists, not here. Second, it seems to show that up to mid 2006, the ice mass was actually growing. It cannot have done that forever, and the quadratic fit looks nice by I do not expect that will hold forever, either. As I see it, this picture could just be a small section in a process of random fluctuation. Any thoughts?Response: Figure 2 is a short time frame because that's as long as the GRACE satellites have been measuring the gravity around the Greenland ice sheet. Would be lovely to have more data but that's the hand we've been dealt. In fact, we're lucky that the latest data through to early 2010 fell into our hands in May, giving us an even longer data series than was publicly available until then.
That's why Figure 1 is so important - it shows other estimates of Greenland mass balance back to 1960. The fact that the other estimates are consistent with the gravity data gives us confidence in the estimated rate of ice loss.
I don't expect the quadratic fit to hold forever either. The ice melt has continued to accelerate because the ice loss has spread to the northwest but I expect the rate of ice loss will eventually reach a peak. So how do we know the current ice loss isn't just a random fluctuation and things will bounce back to mass balance?
We get a good sense of Greenland's trajectory by considering all the evidence. We see accelerating ice loss from both Greenland and Antarctica - similar patterns from opposite sides of the globe. We look at past sea level and see it closely copuled to changes in temperature. Looking at the Earth's past, we see that the last time temperatures were 1 to 2 degrees warmer than now, sea levels were at least 6 metres higher than present levels. This tells us that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are highly sensitive to sustained warmer temperatures.
You're correct in identifying the dangers of looking at narrow pieces of data. You need to take in the full body of evidence to get an accurate picture. All this evidence taken together indicates Greenland will contribute sea level rise in the order of metres over the next few centuries. -
chris1204 at 22:04 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
The cancer example is very pertinent. We have excellent remission rates for some cancers and very poor remission rates for most. Much depends on early detection - however, once a cancer has metastasised, remission rates (measured as five year survival rates) are poor save for some of the leukaemias and lymphomas. Cancer chemotherapy/radiotherapy once a cancer has metastasised essentially buys time and relieves discomfort. However, most cancer therapies act by killing fast growing cells (malignant tumour cells are the fastest growing) whilst trying to avoid damaging other fast growing cells (which include out immune system which is part of our defence against infection and cancer cells). Chemotherapy/radiotherapy can thus cause major discomfort or even kill for example through infection following immune suppression. So really, much chemotherapy and radiotherapy may prolong life a bit and palliate some of the discomfort at the end often at a heavy price. Your best bet as an individual lies in avoiding cancer (lifestyle choices - eg quit smoking) and early detection. However, governments face questions as to resource allocation. Paradoxically, far more is spent on chemotherapy/radiotherapy than prevention and early detection (the former two are very expensive. However, if you're unfortunate enbough to develop a nasty cancer, you're likely to curse a government that won't fund cutting edge therapies for you. At the same time, much early detection involves difficult decisions around determining the true significance of screening measures at both population and individual levels. An equivocal biopsy result represent hard choices in the face of, say, surgical risks, for the individual, and for governments looking at resource allocation (surgery is expensive and for those without health insurance subject to waiting lists). So, coming back on topic, our current state of knowledge about climate may equate to early detection of malignancy calling for imnmediate action, a grey area in which the costs of intervention may or may not exceed benefits, or metastatic cancer in which we face likely catastrophic outcomes at best partially responsive to costly and burdensome mitigation strategies. The choices aren't straightforward. All I know as an outsider to climate science is that seemingly intelligent, honest, and articulate people espouse variants of all three positions. -
John Russell at 21:58 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
It's clear from the ellipsis that The US National Academy of Sciences' statement has been heavily edited. Is it possible for us to have a link to the original? Otherwise these guest posts are little better than the sceptic's blogs that we rail about.Response: Here's the full quote:Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.
The National Academy report comes from America's Climate Choices which is behind a pay wall.
I know, it annoys me too. -
Tony Noerpel at 21:53 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
I'm not sure this is a good analogy. Newtonian mechanics (plus Maxwell's EMT) is exact and rigorous when dealing with virtually everything we have to deal with in our lives here on Earth (excluding all of our fancy electronic devices). We only need quantum mechanics when dealing with small particals and Einstein's general theory of relativity only comes into play if one is interested in a very precise description of the orbit of Mercury. But Newtonian mechanics is sufficiently accurate to getting a man on the moon. The force of gravity is 40 orders of magnitude smaller than the electromagnetic force so gravitrons will likely elude discovery for another few years. I think this is Kip Thorne's view. We need to build a sufficiently sensitive device and be able to cancel out lots of noise. The uncertainty associated with climate physics is of a somewhat different nature. I think suitable analogies might be what caused dinosaurs to go extinct, did snowball Earth events happen? plate tectonics? ice ages? evolution? I suggest you might say that we are as certain about anthropogenic global warming as we are about plate tectonics and evolution. Which is to say there isn't really much room for uncertainty. :+) We can freely discuss and embrace plate tectonics, today, because it doesn't threaten anything (though it did threaten cherished scientific opinion back in the 20's and up until the 60's). Many folks find evolution to be very threatening to their entire belief system. And this is true of climate change as well. Tony -
Berényi Péter at 21:10 PM on 14 July 2010Hotties vs Frosties?
#174 KR at 09:59 AM on 14 July, 2010 That's really rough with radon - it's estimated at 330 mCi/GW, and you really can't filter it. I don't see why. The radon isotope with the longest halflife is 222Rn (3.82 days). It's just emissions have to be delayed a bit (a month or so) to decrease radiation levels by three orders of magnitude. It is much easier than permanent sequestration. -
macwithoutfries at 21:04 PM on 14 July 2010Could CFCs be causing global warming?
What I find very relevant and not discussed enough is the actual mechanism by which CFCs would need to act - the denier problem being that the atmospheric concentration of CFCs is 1000000 (one MILLION) times smaller than those of CO2. -
Berényi Péter at 20:49 PM on 14 July 2010Hotties vs Frosties?
#172 scaddenp at 09:32 AM on 14 July, 2010 nuclear has waste issue Not really. Old technology apparently has it, because a lot of long halflife isotopes are left in spent fuel. However, advanced breeder technology with onsite closed system reprocessing can burn out all of it. In fact the huge reserve of present day nuclear waste can also serve as fuel, so not even mining is necessary for several decades. What is left behind is a mix of light short halflife radionuclides (a few thousand tonnes annually), which decay into stable isotopes in several hundred years. Therefore no long term (hundreds of thousand years) safe storage is needed. You can compare it to dangerous chemicals (like heavy metals) in some industrial waste that remain toxic practically forever, still, we tolerate them in quantity. Built in structural safety has also improved a lot. With modern designs neither explosion nor meltdown can possibly occur even in case of a serious system failure. It still costs money to bring such a system back online, but at least no dangerous stuff escapes. Nuclear proliferation issues can also be handled by designing the process in a way let's say 233U gets involved. It decays by emitting hard gamma radiation and it's extremely difficult to filter out (other than burning it along with the rest). As long as something like this is present in the mix, it's unusable for weaponry. BTW, I think this is the primary cause this kind of technology has got much less attention than it would have deserved. Earth as we know it can't last much longer than a billion years for solar radiation is increasing steadily. If we manage to nudge it gradually to ever wider orbits, its lifetime can be extended to five billion years perhaps. Nuclear breeder technology is capable to provide the necessary energy supply on this timescale somewhere around present day prices. Therefore it is a long term solution to the energy problem. In such a long time we may still have other problems though. Including the question of who we are supposed to be after the umpty thousandth transhuman extension, but these questions can wait. I dont see why the land use is such an issue Because land is the only resource which can not be increased by any means, not even with advanced molecular nanotechnology. Terraforming other planets is a rather long term project and there are not many candidates nearby anyway. We could build some surrogate land in space by constructing huge spinning cylinders, filling them up with air, water and soil and trying to inhabit the inner surface, but no matter how hard we try, it's still a far cry from the real thing. Security issues aside, it would always be a Disneyland with "oceans" several meters deep, no hills or skies. Real estate on Earth, even if it is undervalued now, will have a much higher price in the long run. -
sime at 20:16 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
"Hi I'm Doctor Fred, I'm a consultant cancer specialist." "I am sorry to have to tell you that my colleagues and I believe your mother has cancer... however because we can't be sure, and because we can't yet cure cancer, and because the science is not settled, and because it might cause disruption and change your family life style and because it will cost money, we have decided to do nothing for say oh... thirty years until we are really sure we have got the science right..." "What!, but she will die a horrible death, I want a second opinion and I want medical intervention now not in 30 years, you sir are an idiot!" -------------- "Hi I'm Dr Fred I have a PhD in Climate Science." "My Colleagues and I have determined that the planet Earth has the equivalent of climate cancer, however it is still treatable if we act now..." "Na, don't be silly, we can't be sure, and because we can't yet cure climate cancer, and because the science is not settled, and because it might cause disruption and change your family life style and because it will cost money, and because it will upset big business and because we have loads of fossil fuel to sell you suckers yet, we have decided to do nothing for say oh... thirty years until we are really sure we have got the science right, oh and I need a second opinion!..." "What!, we have given you hundreds of independent opinions and data sets and you are ignoring all of them, you sir are an idiot!" Sigh. -
Berényi Péter at 19:01 PM on 14 July 2010Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
#33 chris at 08:08 AM on 14 July, 2010 you can find it stated rather explicitly in Trenberth's review Yes. But he also says in his review: "A 1 mm eustatic rise in sea level requires melting of 360 Gt of ice that takes 1.2×1022 J. Because the ice is cold, warming of the melted waters to ambient temperatures can account for perhaps another 12.5% of the energy (total 1.35×1020 J)." That must be a misprint. 360 Gt of ice is 3.6×1014 kg. Heat of fusion for (freshwater) ice is 3.3355×105 J/kg. Therefore the energy required to melt that much ice at 0°C and atmospheric pressure is 1.2008×1020 J, which is a hundred times smaller than Trenberth's figure (his total of 1.35×1020 J seems to be correct, at least as an order of magnitude estimate). What do reviewers do? -
Esop at 18:42 PM on 14 July 2010What's in a trend?
#7: By "tweaked", I was referring to the new versions of the UAH data (5.3 etc) that conveniently dropped the anomalies so they would not beat the 1998 data. -
Chemware at 16:33 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
Actually, the parallels to Relativity and the Nazi's attacks on "Jewish Science" are extremely strong. Einstein himself said in 1920: This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation. -
John Brookes at 15:41 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
I think all the Relativity skeptics (who are cruelly and unkindly usually bundled together under the general term "nutter") should get their act together and start insisting that the Global Positioning System stop using Relativity to keep the satellite clocks accurate, because Relativity is "flawed", and Einstein was wrong. Seriously, HumanityRules, I believe we should act prudently and now. If the evidence that there is no need to act improves a bit, then we can reconsider the need to act. Right now, the evidence for inaction is insufficient. -
Peter Hogarth at 15:25 PM on 14 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
daniel at 00:36 AM on 14 July, 2010 "The 1 sigma bounds are irrelevant Peter". This is not science, it is not recognisable statistics either. Irrelevant, or inconvenient? It fits the 1 sigma bounds where it is. It does not elsewhere. -
caerbannog at 15:16 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
If these few papers suggest we don't need to re-organise society should we ignore that? The few papers that I've seen like that would earn a freshman a grade somewhere south of a C- at any respectable university. So, should we ignore the few papers with freshman C-student errors that somehow managed to get through (half asleep) peer-review? Absolutely! -
HumanityRules at 15:04 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
The problem I see here is that you assume all the partial knowledge suggests we should act. In fact within the body of partial knowledge some data says maybe we don't need to act. If these few papers suggest we don't need to re-organise society should we ignore that? -
Rob Painting at 14:58 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
Marcus, you are correct, the graviton is the carrier particle of gravity. All that Star Trek obviously paid off. Pity it doesn't mesh at all with the General Theory of Relativity, which posits that gravity is the curvature in space-time caused by mass/energy within it . Don't tell the skeptics though. -
pmain68 at 14:20 PM on 14 July 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Whilst this is not specifically related to the artic ice methane release it is related to methane. Does anyone have any scientific evidence that supports the global catastrophe theory of massive methane release imminent in the Gulf of Mexico due to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil drilling accident. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65L6IA20100622 http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event -
scaddenp at 14:04 PM on 14 July 2010Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
Bern: IPCC AR4 WG2 would be good place to start, specifically here. -
Marcus at 13:57 PM on 14 July 2010Does partial scientific knowledge mean we shouldn't act?
Hmmm, I always thought that gravity existed as both a particle & a wave-much like light. Though that might just be too many years of Star Trek talking ;)! -
Bern at 13:47 PM on 14 July 2010Watts Up With That concludes Greenland is not melting without looking at any actual ice mass data
CBDunkerson @ #27: I would have thought that such an effect would be very minor - if you consider that oceans already cover ~70% of the Earth's surface, the maximum impact of the increasing area would be around 43% (1/0.7). But that would be the point at which *all* landmass was covered by water. I think, when we're still talking tens of millimetres, that the increased ocean area would be very, very small. A quick search didn't turn up any numbers for inundation areas with various sea level rises, I'm sure the numbers are out there, though. -
Marcus at 13:42 PM on 14 July 2010What's in a trend?
What I don't get is why the Denialists rely so heavily on UAH data. I've read at least one paper that suggests that Spencer hasn't corrected properly for diurnal drift, which slices a good 0.02 degrees per decade off the trend. If you look at the data from RSS, you get a trend of +0.16 degrees per decade for 1979-2010 (June), & a +0.19 degrees per decade trend for 1990-2010 (June). The other thing though, is that none of these results (whether RSS or UAH) can properly account for the role that this decade's deep solar minimum has played on the trends. With Solar Activity picking up again this decade, I think it's fair to say that the trend will probably climb to +0.18/decade (or higher) for a 1979-2019 graph. -
HumanityRules at 12:24 PM on 14 July 2010What's in a trend?
#13 You read the paper? Mail John, he has a copy. These graphes whole hemispheres? Chylek is looking at only high latitudes, poles. -
tomasyn at 12:12 PM on 14 July 2010Abraham reply to Monckton
Thank you, Dr. Abraham, for doing this. You not only thoroughly exposed Monckton, you provided valuable teaching on how to find and evaluate information. It's perfectly absurd that Monckton, with his journalism degree and 0 journal articles, is trashing your credentials as not good enough to understand climate science. Can he not hear himself? -
KR at 09:59 AM on 14 July 2010Hotties vs Frosties?
Berényi - "...all pollutants from burning coal can be filtered out and should be required to be filtered by regulators": That's really rough with radon - it's estimated at 330 mCi/GW, and you really can't filter it. Most of the other radionucleotides (thorium, uranium, etc.) get removed by standard pollution controls. And then you have some really nasty ash... But I do agree with you on several points - nuclear and breeder reactors should receive much more emphasis. Proper breeder reactor approaches should (IMO) include local reprocessing, so almost none of the dangerous stuff ever leaves the site - it gets burned. Coal is a lousy, filthy power source, though, and we should just drop it entirely just on sanity grounds. Subsidies? Renewables receive ~4.9B US$, nukes 1.3B, while coal receives 3.3B, oil/natural gas 2.1B (5.4B total for carbon tech). But renewables ARE developing technology with a lot of promise. I believe (personal opinion, mind you) that the investment can be argued as worthwhile. -
KR at 09:40 AM on 14 July 2010Hotties vs Frosties?
Berényi - Yep, land use is proportional to total energy density. The nice thing about wind farms, however, is that the actual power producing density is ~300-1000 W/m^2 (including access roads), spread over a much larger area to space out the turbines, for a sum density of 3-4 W/m^2. And (!!!) the area between and under the turbines is completely usable for agriculture. Total land removed from use drops right back to 300-1000 W/m^2 levels. Of course, some wind farms (many in my area) are mounted along ridgelines, where effective land use otherwise is essentially nil. They don't subtract any otherwise desirable area. -
scaddenp at 09:32 AM on 14 July 2010Hotties vs Frosties?
BP - wont argue on cleanup wrt to coal - nuclear has waste issue. Hydro v wind is the issue here. But we still farm under windmills. I dont see why the land use is such an issue. I'll also agree with subsidies - apparently $550 billion pa on fossil fuels according to IEA. End that now. Disclosure: my section does research on CO2 sequestration. However, I'd say from research so far is that it remains an open question. Not something you can just fix every coal plant with but a possible solution for some plants. Of course, the added cost will make coal uncompetitive against many renewables in most places.
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