Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 2314 2315 2316 2317 2318 2319 2320 2321 2322 2323 2324 2325 2326 2327 2328 2329 Next
Comments 116051 to 116100:
-
John Russell at 05:26 AM on 4 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
One of the things I've always wondered about is the effect dimming has on crop growth. If we are seeing a 10% reduction in brightness of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, does this reduce our ability to produce the yields required for the 50% increase in food production that the UN says we'll need by 2050 for the additional 2.5bn people that will be clamouring to be fed by then? Perhaps this is something to factor in when considering dumping sulphates in the upper atmosphere as a geo-engineering 'fix'? I'd be grateful if one of the scientists here could set my mind at rest. -
Willis Eschenbach at 05:03 AM on 4 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
doug_bostrom at 02:59 AM on 4 July, 2010 I said:...we have been told over and over that the IPCC considers nothing but peer reviewed documents.
This statement was questioned, and I was asked to provide citations. I provided a number of quotations from the head of the IPCC, Pachauri, saying that exact thing. Now you accuse me of not sticking to the facts? That's the facts, I have provided the quotations as requested. You replied:In point of fact the IPCC has never had such a policy. Why does Willis want to convey the opposite, incorrect impression?
A citation for your claim that they have no such policy would be helpful. Oh, and you should tell Pachauri, as he has said over and over that they do have such a policy. For example, he explicitly said that they don't use discussion papers, they only use peer-reviewed science, and the rest they just "throw into the dustbin" ... but guess what? The IPCC does use discussion papers, but only the ones that fit the party line. Go figure. Next, you say:Of course, Nepstad is in fact the author of the papers in question and has specifically pointed to the papers he authored and which he points out justify the IPCC's remarks. Why does Willis want to convey a false impression?
Nepstad is not the author of the un-reviewed IPCC citation in question. That would be Rowell and Moore writing for the WWF. Nor is he the author of the un-reviewed paper that Rowell and Moore cite. I have read the papers by Nepstad. None of them contain the claim made by the IPCC. Perhaps you could point out where Nepstad claimed that "Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation". He may believe that, and it may be true, but I have looked, and I can't find it anywhere in Nepstad's work. Now I certainly could have missed it ... so if could you point out which of Nepstad's peer-reviewed papers and which paragraph of that paper made that claim? I have provided the citations and exact quotations that you requested, perhaps you could return the favor. Next, you say:Anyway, the statistical outcome from looking at Willis' original claim that the IPCC relies on "propaganda pieces so often" is obviously not helpful to your case. No wonder he avoided putting up numbers. Who is conveying propaganda? Seeking to distort public thinking by suggesting "often" equals less than 1/10th of 1% seems to me like promoting an agenda based on false impressions.
Doug, if a man said "I never cheated on my wife", finding out that he cheated once makes his word worthless. Doesn't matter that he had sex with his wife a thousand times, so he only cheated on his wife 1/10th of 1% of the time. He still cheated. The same is true about the IPCC. Pachauri has repeatedly claimed that the IPCC only used peer reviewed science, and never used anything else because the rest was "voodoo science". I have given a dozens and dozens of examples of the use of newspaper articles and discussion papers and the like. As a result, just like the wife of the man who was cheating, people reasonably feed betrayed. You still seem to think that the issue is the veracity of a working paper or a discussion paper or a newspaper article. I know very well what a working paper is. I also know what a discussion paper is, and a newspaper article. The point is that they are not peer reviewed. You folks have established peer review as the gold standard, not me. You made your bed, you established the rules, now you want to say well, we only broke the rules dozens and dozens of times, so it doesn't count. Nice try. Finally, you say:Anyway, the statistical outcome from looking at Willis' original claim that the IPCC relies on "propaganda pieces so often" is obviously not helpful to your case. No wonder he avoided putting up numbers.
Here are the numbers I put up: WORKING GROUP, Percentage of citations not peer-reviewed. Working Group 1, 7% Working Group 2, 34% Working Group 3, 57% For an IPCC which claims that its results are based on nothing but peer-reviewed science, that's pathetic. You can defend it all you like, but you'd be better off to obey the first rule of holes - when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Doug, like I said, I think that the rule on only peer reviewed science in the IPCC reports is stupid. I would allow any valid, supported, verified science. But I wasn't consulted when they made that rule. I see that they are now planning to change the rule for the Fifth Assessment Report, which is reasonable to me. But until they do so, the IPCC made the rules, Pachauri proclaimed the rules far and wide, the IPCC broke the rules, and as a result the IPCC lost the trust of the public. You may not like that, but there it is. -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:36 AM on 4 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
Two more points if I may, Marcus. First I reject the idea that "volcanoes do more damage than man". It is incorrect. Second, I augmented my argument above from volcanoes to from volcanoes to the pointlessness of German cuts in the context of manmade totals. The cuts are scientifically insignificant (0.05% of the manmade total). Since this is a science thread (and site) I don't want to argue whether or not the German cuts make a political difference. -
RSVP at 04:20 AM on 4 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
"The majority were middle-aged and elderly." Normally, it's the young that are more concerned with gaining approval of their peers and possibly find themselves with more to loose by standing out as the odd-ball. Perhaps the age of those attending can be interpreted as a "proxy" measurement of the popularity of AWG. -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:09 AM on 4 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
Marcus, I correctly pointed out that the volcano matched the EU cuts and easily undid the cuts by Germany which was my own research, not cribbed from a "denialist" site. On the other hand, your response is erroneous. You claim that Germany's emissions have decreased to 487 million tonnes in 2007 from 650 million tonnes 10 years ago, apparently by extrapolating their 2007-2008 "cuts" in reverse. As I pointed out, the cuts are only the "verified" cuts from sources controlled by their cap and trade, not country totals. The total German emissions were 1078 Mt in 1997 and 1002 in 2007 for a drop of 76 Mt over 10 years (from http://www.umweltdaten.de/publikationen/fpdf-l/3436.pdf data source). Out of the 76 Mt drop, 30 Mt (worst case) were undone by the volcano. Let's hope the volcano doesn't erupt any more or that it doesn't produce any larger amounts of CO2. -
Peter Hogarth at 03:42 AM on 4 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
daniel at 18:21 PM on 2 July, 2010 I think you may have missed or misunderstood the point. If there were short term variations of the magnitude which you suggest between the sparse points then the probability of all of these randomly sampled points fitting any smooth long term curve is small. Statistically, your alternative is most certainly not "just as likely"! Any extra points we find which also fit the curve increases the probability that the curve is a good model, and constrains other probable models to those with low amplitude variations. With respect, if this is lost on you, then I understand why you keep re-iterating your point, and you should address this. I would not argue that you should not question the work of experts. I am arguing that Donnelly is presenting work that is specialist. His data is site specific and is intended to add a small piece to the unfolding picture which is science, rather than act as first line defence against "climate skepticism". That you accept that drivers of sea level should be accounted for is a good step, yet you still do not appear to modify your suggestion of "likely" high sea level variations in light of this. This is not scientific. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:59 AM on 4 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
Willis does not seem to be able to have a discussion while sticking with facts. As Riccardo suggests, this means talking with Willis is rather pointless. ...we have been told over and over that the IPCC considers nothing but peer reviewed documents. In point of fact the IPCC has never had such a policy. Why does Willis want to convey the opposite, incorrect impression? With regard to Nepstad, Willis says "So why should I care what Nepstad says in answer to a question by a reporter? What he said is no more peer reviewed than what I say. If it were, how come nobody can provide us with a citation to the study?" Of course, Nepstad is in fact the author of the papers in question and has specifically pointed to the papers he authored and which he points out justify the IPCC's remarks. Why does Willis want to convey a false impression? As to "working papers" being yet another badge of unreliability, Willis connects the concept with "not even finished", again seeking to convey an incorrect impression that a working paper is some sort of student project that was not completed. Why does Willis want to convey that wrong impression? A person authoring and then persistently defending what by almost any definition is propaganda relying on false impressions is a useless discussion partner. Propaganda does not axiomatically equate to untruth, but it may include untruth. What I read of Willis' work suggests he's conducting a campaign to sway public opinion, relying on conveying wrong impressions to promote his agenda. Anyway, the statistical outcome from looking at Willis' original claim that the IPCC relies on "propaganda pieces so often" is obviously not helpful to your case. No wonder he avoided putting up numbers. Who is conveying propaganda? Seeking to distort public thinking by suggesting "often" equals less than 1/10th of 1% seems to me like promoting an agenda based on false impressions. It's pretty appalling to witness this style of cognitive vandalism, I'll say that. -
chris at 02:31 AM on 4 July 2010Astronomical cycles
Ken Lambert at 22:57 PM on 3 July 2010 O.K. I thought that was where your “offset” might have come from; it’s much as I showed here. Agreed? However that is a spurious analysis Ken. Regressing small sections of any dataset with a linear trend that has variability in its progression will result in regression fits that don’t “meet” at the ends. That doesn’t mean that there is an “offset”! It just means that the data doesn’t conform to a mathematically perfect straight line. All your analysis shows is that there is variability in the temporal progression of sea level rise around its long term trend. But we know that already. So there is no evidence for “offsets” yes? Analysis of sea level trend. Apparently you didn’t look at Peter’s quadratic fit. Fitting the satellite sea level data with a quadratic results in a curve that is almost indistinguishable from a straight line (see here for the data). The reason that the linear fit is appropriate is because its context can be made explicit; i.e. we can ask: ” Given the variability in the data is the sea level rise consistent with a linear progression in time, or is it accelerating or decelerating?” Whether one uses a linear regression or a quadratic there is no evidence in the data that sea level rise is accelerating or decelerating. The current sea level is pretty much smack on the level it “should be” by projecting forward from nearly 18 years ago with a linear trend of around 3.2 mm.yr-1. Why does the linear regression and the quadratic give virtually the same fit? It’s because the constant of the third term of the quadratic is close to zero (it’s around 0.03, a value more than 100 times smaller than the year on year change in sea level of around 3.2). Attempting to infer an “acceleration” or “deceleration” from the sea level rise from the coefficient of a quadratic fit is simply spurious in this case. On ocean heat content and steric sea level rise. You seem surprised that ”steric SLR is non-linear against OHC rise”. There’s no reason why they should be linear Ken. The steric sea level rise from a given addition of OHC depends on where the heat ends up. The same number of calories (the energy required to warm 1 gm of water by 1 oC) results in a volume expansion that depends on the water temperature (and pressure). 1 calorie of thermal energy causes an expansion of warm surface waters that is larger than the thermally-induced expansion of colder deeper water. The difference is large; up to 2-fold for heat deposited in the upper 700 metres compared to heat deposited in the deeper oceans. And we know that measurement of OHC content is very difficult; even the last few years have seen large readjustments in the data. It’s unlikely that we’re yet on top of the OHC measurements, especially in accounting for heat that is taken to depths below 700 metres. Otherwise attempting fundamental interpretations by fixing in stone uncertain numbers obtained over very short periods isn’t that helpful. As Trenberth points out [*] the entire apparent discrepancy in apparent ocean heat content, sea level rise and TOA radiative imbalance over a very short time period could be resolved if the “residual heat” ”is being sequestered in the deep oceans below the 900 m depth used for the ARGO analysis where it would contribute 0.4-0.5 mm.yr-1 sea level rise….”. We know that 0.1-0.15 W.m-2 (globally averaged) of the apparent heat imbalance can be understood in terms of the descent to a very prolonged solar minimum during the period 2003-2009. Each of these (as well as short term variations in atmospheric conditions) may be contributing to the apparent imbalance during the very short period 2004-2008. Already the sea level rise has recovered during the last couple of years, likely due to an acceleration (during this short period) in the steric sea level contribution. When these very short term uncertainties have been sorted out we’ll have a clearer picture obviously… [*] K.E Trenberth (2009) An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy Curr. Op. Environ. Sustain. 1, 19–27 -
KR at 02:08 AM on 4 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
Actually, daniel, I think that would be insulting unicorns would be ad Unicornis, as best I can tell. I'll apologize now to the greater Unicornis community... Sorry about the mis-reference to temperature, instead of sea level - proof that I sometimes don't proof-read enough! And that perhaps I'm taking too much cold medicine at the moment :) "Are there excursions outside that linear trend that don't fall upon the sample points" means that the sample points in that Donnelly paper mark, within the errors on vegetation prevalence and radiocarbon dating, points on the sea level record. The simplest fit justified by the record is a piece-wise linear fit running through each data point. The least justified fit is a line that avoids your data points. Given the noise in that simple reconstruction, it's reasonable to time-average data points, especially for the recent (dense, somewhat noisy) data points. Note that the core samples have some implicit time averaging - it takes time for vegetation to grow, and the sample investigated is not going to be a 2D core slice; the thickness of it (and is the sediment flat there?) will introduce some time averaging. I didn't see that explicitly stated in the paper, but that's a known element for core analysis - you don't tend to see day-to-day changes in them! Either way - the reconstruction best justified from the evidence in this experiment should pass through or very close to each of the data points or averages. The data "anchors" the reconstruction there, and any large deviation from the trend (excursion) would have to either (a) show as a shifted data point, or (b) occur between data points - and vanish again before the next one. However, there is in this experiment actual evidence against offsets from the reconstructed sea level trend around the data points themselves. -
Adam C at 01:51 AM on 4 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
#34 and 38: I have to agree with Joe Blog here. I was dinged during my comps for making a statement similar to "As greenhouse gases stop heat from reaching the upper atmosphere, a distinct greenhouse signature is a warming lower atmosphere and cooling upper atmosphere." The key is that the energy balance of the stratosphere is dominated by the absorption of UV radiation from the sun, not IR radiation (or conduction) from below. This is why (as Joe noted) it has an increasing temperature profile with height. The outgoing portion of the energy balance is restricted. The stratosphere has no clouds to speak of and little water vapour, and so outgoing radiation is dominated by IR emission from CO2. Increasing the CO2 concentration greatly increases the efficiency of the stratosphere as an emitter of IR radiation. It doesn't matter whether that radiation goes up or down; what matters is it carries energy out of the stratosphere (causing cooling). Ozone depletion has a cooling effect. Increased heat trapping in the troposphere has an effect (but only in the transient case!). Both are much smaller than the direct effects of increasing stratospheric CO2. None of this, btw, contradicts anything said in John's fine pamphlet, which doesn't specify the relationship between increased CO2 and stratospheric cooling. -
Lou Grinzo at 01:11 AM on 4 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
Great post, John. What worries me about this situation is the relative life spans of CO2 and other pollution (sulfates, etc.) from burning coal. If we reduce our use of coal, the dimming effect will end almost immediately, leaving us at the mercy of a couple of centuries of CO2 emissions. If we keep burning coal as we are now, we're cooked. The only alternative is to find a way to make CCS work on a large enough scale and then deploy it to new plants as well as those already in operation. Quite the nasty corner we've painted ourselves into... -
Bernard J. at 00:49 AM on 4 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
"I was trying to prick Annie's prejudged liberal conscience with her apparent ageism, very silly of me." It's actually a good point, but one that requires careful balance. The tension between the wisdom that comes with age, and the potential intellectual scenescence that also follows aging, is one that could keep a number of philosophers - and also some psychologists - occupied for years. Not at tax-payers expense though - of course... -
Chris G at 00:07 AM on 4 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
JohnD at 10:01, Had to chuckle. My wife works at a university and is in the school paper from time to time. Sometimes what the student journalists report bears little resemblance to what she said. CNN came to town and did a story once. They manufactured a lot of drama, and in the end, the guy with the longest time on screen was the window washer who just happened to be there. -
LukeW at 00:04 AM on 4 July 2010CO2 is Good for Plants: Another Red Herring in the Climate Change Debate
There's evidence that increased CO2 also increases cold injury to plants (although diehard sceptics will say "but there's not supposed to be any more frost under AGW - sheesh !) Also will increased CO2 preference C3 native woody shrub growth in savanna grasslands (C4s)- so biasing grasslands into woody thickets such as happens in Australia, southern USA and southern Africa. Of course much of contemporary thickening is probably due to fire suppression but CO2 can increase the trend further. Examples of shrub invasion in Australia would be the huge woody weeds patch around Cobar. http://theland.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/woody-weeds-love-co2/1729857.aspx?storypage=0 The ecophysiological effect on grasslands will be complex. On the plus side perhaps more freshwater runoff through improved transpiration efficiency although the following paper is somewhat controversial. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7078/full/nature04504.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7157/abs/nature06045.html -
HumanityRules at 23:48 PM on 3 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
Bernard J. at 23:11 PM on 2 July, 2010 There are also many societies that recognise the risk of dotage in older generations. Marcus at 23:25 PM on 2 July, 2010 There also those who recognize that those of the older generation can sometimes be conservative to the point of blind stubbornness. lol, I have to say I agree with both. I was trying to prick Annie's prejudged liberal conscience with her apparent ageism, very silly of me. The youth should be the vigor and drive in changing society it's just a same that climate change is one of the many causes in today's society that encourage cynicism and dis-engagement. -
neilrieck at 23:28 PM on 3 July 2010CO2 is Good for Plants: Another Red Herring in the Climate Change Debate
Using this line of simplified reasoning means that I only need to eat a high protein supplement in order to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger :-) So here are the facts about CO2 and plants: 1) It is true that the amount of pollen released by a plant is proportional to the level of CO2 so you would expect many more plants. But the "keeling curve" continues to increase so why aren't the plants compensating? 2) In controlled experiments, a huge increase in CO2 will only increase the growth speed, size, and numbers of plants by a few percent because plant growth is limited by a lack of nitrogen (protein synthesis is impossible without it). Ammonium Nitrate is more important to plant growth than increased levels of CO2. (as an aside, even if plants did better in controlled experiments they would still have problems in the real world. Why? Plants are on the ground but CO2 is distributed throughout a three-dimensional volume. It's an area vs. volume issue) 3) plants pull in CO2 through a hole known as a stoma (or stomata). Since these pores also are also the site for water loss, a plant growing in a high CO2 environment will actually adapt to produce much fewer stomas TO LIMIT WATER LOSS. -
Ken Lambert at 22:57 PM on 3 July 2010Astronomical cycles
Chris #122 Again Chris - stick to the numbers. If SLR is supposed to be linear - simply do a linear curve fit for Topex 1993-2002, and a linear fit for Jason 1 2002-2009 and see if the end of Topex matches up with the start of Jason 1. If not; there is your offset. Your emotive language like 'trolling, bullying and numerology' is just a cover Chris for the fact that you will not engage on the numbers. Your comment: "Fitting a quadratic to a temporal progression of a parameter is meaningless unless one has some independent justification for the quadratic and its particular form"; is just nonsense Chris. You could equally make the same nonsensical point about 'linear' relationships. I have just shown that steric SLR is non-linear against OHC rise according to Dr Trenberth's numbers. Neither have you addressed the ice melt/steric numbers which don't match the 'observed' SLR rise according to Dr Trenberth and are no where near the OHC budget. Nor have you explained why Dr Trenberth's 0.9W/sq.m (145E20 Joules/year)heat gain is NOT what the Earth is purportedly accumulating every year. The 0.9W/sq.m is composed of a sum of several heating and cooling forcings and responses; but the main driver is CO2GHG. The claim of AGW scientists such as Dr Trenberth is that the cooling forcings (clouds and aerosols) are not changing much if at all year on year, so the 0.9W/sq.m should hold and increase - driven by logarithmic CO2 ratio. -
HumanityRules at 22:29 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
"Wild just said that you can not compare SSR and forcing at TOA taken at face values." That still doesn't detract from the idea that he uses an inadequate argument to dismiss the role of TSI in the change of measured SSR. An arguement he, and you, state is based on a false comparison. What is the magnitude of the "enormous" difference in the decade changes in SSR and the long term TOA trend and where does that difference arise? My argument is it is sufficiently large to allow changes in TSI to have some impact on the changes seen in the SSR measurement. Dismissing TSI based on the 0.17 figure is dismissing it based on the wrong measurement. That is what Wild does in his review. -
Riccardo at 21:33 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
HumanityRules, it's not that SSR and TSI are incommensurable quantities. Wild just said that you can not compare SSR and forcing at TOA taken at face values. -
HumanityRules at 21:25 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
Apologies that the quote from the review is so long but here it is in full. "The decadal changes in SSR found in the dimming/ brightening literature are at first sight often unrealistically large from a radiative forcing viewpoint, as, e.g., presented by IPCC [2007]. Therein, radiative forcings altering solar radiation between preindustrial (year 1750) and present day are on the order of minus 1–2 W m2 on a global average, while some of the surface-based estimates show similar or larger changes already within a decade (Tables 1–3). Indeed, under the assumption of a climate sensitivity of 0.5–1C perWm2 radiative forcing as suggested by current climate models, a change of several W m2 decade1 as inferred from surface observations would imply enormous decadal variations in surface temperature which are not observed." It appears from the numbers presented here that the decadal changes in SSR are an order of magnitude (or more) greater than the long term decadal trend at the TOA. Where does this enormous difference come from? Surely from the changes in the additive effects of a greenhouse atmosphere. That means the additive effects on the paltry 0.17 from changes in the sun must also be enormous when measured at the surface. The question surely has to be if "enormous" is anywhere near "an order of magnitude". Wild doesn't say. And until he does it seems difficult to rule out how much changes in the sun is contributing to these changes in dimming/brightening as measured at the surface. To go back to my original point, what he's doing here "The larger of these two estimates is equivalent to a global average increase of 0.17 W m2 decade1 in energy input to the climate system due to the variable emission from the Sun. These estimates are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the changes detected from surface observations of SSR." seems to be exactly what he warns against doing here. "The decadal changes in SSR found in the dimming/brightening literature are at first sight often unrealistically large from a radiative forcing viewpoint, as, e.g., presented by IPCC [2007]. [...] However, one should be aware that the radiative forcing concept as used in the IPCC reports applies to changes at the tropopause, which cannot be directly compared to changes at the surface." that is comparing a TOA reading to SSR. Maybe we could clear this up if you could state what the changes in SSR would be from the 0.17Wm2/decade measured at the TOA due to solar variation. I don't think Wild presents enough here to state that accurately. -
RSVP at 21:05 PM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
Riccardo This is what I suspected. My sense is that GHG's explain how the atmosphere has comes up to temperature since O2 and N2 would otherwise only warm through convection off the Earth's surface, and I assume that this has been deemed or calculated as not sufficient to explain current temperatures. If these gases are not good radiators of IR, and as they make up the bulk of our atmosphere, it should be fair to say they are responsible for holding (or storing) energy at some ambient level. For this same reason, the direct heating of these gases through industrial waste heat should be accumulating in these gases as well, and possibly the only way for it to cool is actually via GHG's, as they emit IR. -
Riccardo at 20:21 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
HumanityRules, "all else being equal", the change is still proportional to the change in TSI (both scattered and absorbed fluxes are proportional to the incoming flux), and is "at least an order of magnitude smaller than the changes detected from surface observations of SSR." -
chris at 20:17 PM on 3 July 2010Astronomical cycles
Ken Lambert at 00:24 AM on 3 July, 2010 ONE offsets: You're trolling Ken. We've already shown you how the satellite data was merged to effectively eliminate offsets. You ignored this, but you should address it if you wish to pursue the insinuation of "offsets". I have asked you and kdkd has asked you to show how you determined the offsets. You ignored those requests too. I suggested what you might have done based on your assertions. You ignored that. And yet here you are asserting "offsets" by insinuation again. That's trolling. Why not simply state explicitly how you determined these apparent "offsets"? I think I know what you've done...if so it's invalid numerology. But we won't know for sure unless you tell us. TWO: linear/quadratic trends: Science isn't addressed by attempts at bullying Ken ("Prove to me that BP's quadratic approach is wrong!"). Fitting a quadratic to a temporal progression of a parameter is meaningless unless one has some independent justification for the quadratic and its particular form, and you should be careful not to be fooled by flawed analyses [*]. In the case of a relative short (18 year) period of sea level rise with significant variability from measurement "noise" and internal variability we have to be careful not to mislead ourselves with inappropriate curve fitting that is hopelessly biased by the short term variability (see [*] below). However we can ask a simple question about the data, namely: ” Given the variability in the data is the sea level rise consistent with a linear progression in time, or is it accelerating or decelerating?” If we take the data (say the unadjusted dataset with seasonal signal removed ) and project forward from the very start of the record with a linear trend of 3.2 mm.yr-1, we find that the current sea level is pretty much smack on the projected trend. That’s an inescapable fact. However one fiddles around with inappropriate curve fits and other numerological “analyses” (see [*] below), one can’t escape the observational fact that the sea level data is entirely consistent with a continuing linear trend of around 3.2 mm.yr-1 rise . Might sea level rise be decreasing? Possibly, but there is no evidence for such a conclusion. Might it be accelerating? Possibly, but we can’t say from the data yet. THREE: heat budget Your other points were addressed here. You're still asserting a fundamental fallacy, i.e. "...keeping in mind that the CO2GHG theory requires that the biosphere gain 145E20 Joules/year every year."; this will never be correct no matter how many times you repeat it. ------------------------------------------- [*] the problem with Peter's seductive numerology can be seen by fitting a quadratic to the full satellite data set (Peter apparently fitted only 16 years of this). If one does so the already small "acceleration term" of -0.108 mm.yr^(-2) is reduced to -0.0318 mm.yr^(-2). The resulting quadratic fit is barely distinguishable from a linear fit. Scientists and skeptics aren’t fooled by flawed numerology….. -
HumanityRules at 20:06 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
My understanding is the additive nature comes from the energy being re-measured at the surface due to the greenhouse properties of the atmosphere, i.e. it is trapped and reflected back down to be measured again. This is why surface measurements are amplified compared to TOA measurements. Let's say more energy is entering the system from the sun (0.17 W m-2decade-1) surely that energy will also be scattered,absorbed and reflected to the surface and show as an amplified signal in the SSR. There is no reason this extra solar energy should behave in any special way. The question surely has to be the magnitude of this amplification in order to work out the contribution from changes in the sun? -
HumanityRules at 19:55 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
11 Riccardo But what about the "Scattering and absorbing processes in the atmosphere are additive with respect to their effects on SSR" Surely this is also true with respect to the extra energy from the sun? -
Riccardo at 19:54 PM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
RSVP, I thought your question was related to light absorption by molecular vibrations. If you consider the gas as a whole, it will emit as appropiate to its temperature and emissivity. Not much energy, given the low average temperature and low emissivity. A good example is the atmosphere above the troposphere, where there's no convection and the atmosphere is in (almost) purely radiative equilibrium. -
daniel at 19:44 PM on 3 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
To KR #45 "daniel - While it's possible that there are high frequency changes in temperature missed by a particular low-resolution sample set, it's really completely unreasonable to postulate that this indeed is the case based on that evidence." Yep, don't remeber talking much about temperature changes. Mostly about SLR. "If I permit more degrees of freedom in my fitting than are supported by my data, I can draw whatever curve I like - including one that indicates the Earth cycled between absolute zero and plasma temperatures during a 30-day period between samples." Geez KR don't go overstating what I said or nothin. Although maybe I guess you're right, slight short term increases in SLR (not temperature) are about on par with absolute zero to plasma level temperatures (not SLR) aren't they. I'm so glad I've got you around to keep my feet on the ground. Thanks KR ;) "I could also postulate that such temperature swings were driven by invisible pink unicorns, but I don't have samples that actually indicate that. In the universe of possible data fits, a randomly chosen fit is NOT as likely as the simplest one that fits the data. " Uh huh..... unicorns...... got it. I think you may be a little stressed having to strain to understand that I don't dispute the long term linear trend just it's comparison to the short term uptrend. It's called an invalid comparison :) "It's a rudimentary basis of data analysis that you don't over-fit your samples - that falls into the aspects of parsimony, or Occams razor. Given the samples present in the papers you have been referring to," Yes I know you shouldn't "overfit" your samples as you say. You also shpuldm't just assume short term linear trends from such noidy data. It's cute that you know what parsimony is I wonder if you're aware that it doesn't always apply to reality (a concept you claim to have a better grasp of than me). It's also cute when people go on about Occam's razor, a phrase recently popularised by the movie "Contact" but as I j ust said, not always applicable. " it's reasonable to state that there's a linear historic trend passing through those data points, with a later steeper trend passing through the much denser data points of recent records." But not to say that the recent uptrend has been shown to be unusually high given the sparse, noisy data available. "Are there excursions outside that linear trend that don't fall upon the sample points," Eh? Please clarify this rant. "If you take into account the multiple lines of evidence, the many data sets containing samples at different (and overlapping) timepoints along historic record," Yes I know they're claiming the trend extends into the instrumental record. Lucky really. My complaints are perfectly valid and need to be addressed. "the hypothesis of a fairly linear trend for the 1400-1850 period, with a steepening incline after that, is still the most reasonable, parsimonious explanation that fits the data. And with no unicorns..." I agree, there was definitely a long term trend of 1mm/year that overlaps with a few decades of the instrumental record but what were the short term trends in that period. What do you have against unicorns in science! They are just as able to understand your jibberish as I am and any reference to them as "imaginary", "mythological" or "unparsimonious" I take as an ad hominem attack! -
Willis Eschenbach at 19:30 PM on 3 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
Since you objected to my list of non-peer-reviewed Masters and PhD theses, here's a list of working papers cited by the IPCC. Not peer-reviewed studies, not non peer-reviewed Masters theses, not even finished documents, just working papers: Working Group 2, Chapter 1 Hamilton, J.M., 2003a: Climate and the destination choice of German tourists, Working Paper FNU-15 (revised), Centre for Marine and Climate Research, University of Hamburg, 36 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-3-9-2.html Working Group 2, Chapter 2 Heslop-Thomas, C.,W. Bailey, D. Amarakoon, A. Chen, S. Rawlins, D. Chadee, R. Crosbourne, A. Owino, K. Polson, C. Rhoden, R. Stennett and M. Taylor, 2006: Vulnerability to dengue fever in Jamaica. AIACC Working Paper No. 27, Assessment of Impacts and Adaptation to Climate Change in Multiple Regions and Sectors Program, Washington, DC, 40 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-references.html Relevant paragraphs at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-4-4.html and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-4-6-4.html Ionescu, C., R.J.T. Klein, J. Hinkel, K.S. Kavi Kumar and R. Klein, 2005: Towards a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change. NeWater Working Paper 2, 24 pp. Accessed from http://www.newater.info. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-2-4.html Pulhin, J., R.J.J. Peras, R.V.O. Cruz, R.D. Lasco, F. Pulhin and M.A. Tapia, 2006: Vulnerability of communities to climate variability and extremes: the Pantabangan-Carranglan watershed in the Philippines. AIACC Working Paper No. 44, Assessment of Impacts and Adaptation to Climate Change in Multiple Regions and Sectors Program, Washington, DC, 56 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-references.html Relevant paragraphs at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-2-4.html and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch2s2-4-6-4.html Working Group 2, Chapter 5 Toulmin, C., 1986: Livestock losses and post-drought rehabilitation in sub-Saharan Africa: policy options and issues. Livestock Policy Unit Working Paper No. 9, International Livestock Centre for Africa, Addis Ababa.http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch5s5-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch5s5-2.html#5-2-1 (in table 5.1) Working Group 2, Chapter 6 Barros, V., A. Menéndez, C. Natenzon, R.R. Kokot, J.O. Codignotto, M. Re, P. Bronstein, I. Camilloni and Co-authors, 2006: Vulnerability to floods in the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires under future climate change. Working Paper 26. Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC), 36 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch6s6-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch6s6-5-2.html Working Group 2, Chapter 7 Black, R., 2001: Environmental refugees: myth or reality? New Issues in Refugee Research Working Paper 34, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva, 20 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch7s7-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch7s7-4-1.html (in box 7.1) Working Group 2, Chapter 9 Osman-Elasha, B., N. Goutbi, E. Spanger-Siegfried,W. Dougherty,A. Hanafi, S. Zakieldeen, A. Sanjak, H. Abdel Atti and H.M. Elhassan, 2006: Adaptation strategies to increase human resilience against climate variability and change: lessons from the arid regions of Sudan. Working Paper 42, AIACC, 44 pp.http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch9s9-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch9s9-5-1.html (in the first paragraph, as well as in Table 9.2) Ziervogel, G.,A.O. Nyong, B. Osman, C. Conde, S. Cortés and T. Downing, 2006: Climate variability and change: implications for household food security. AIACC Working Paper No. 20, 25 pp. http://www.aiaccproject.org/working_papers/Working Papers/AIACC_WP_20_Ziervogel.pdf. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch9s9-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch9s9-6.html#9-6-1 Working Group 2, Chapter 10 Batima, P., L. Natsagdorj, P. Gombluudev and B. Erdenetsetseg, 2005a: Observed climate change in Mongolia. AIACC Working Paper, 13, 25 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-references.html Relevant paragraphs at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-2-3.html (in table 10.3) and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-2-2.html (in table 10.2) Working Group 2, Chapter 11 Packman, D., D. Ponter and T. Tutua-Nathan, 2001: Maori issues. Climate Change Working Paper, New Zealand Climate Change Office, Ministry for the Environment, Wellington, 18 pp. http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/resources/. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch11s11-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch11s11-4-8.html Working Group 2, Chapter 13 Nagy, G.J.,M. Bidegain, R.M. Caffera, J.J. Lagomarsino,W. Norbis,A. Ponce and G. Sención, 2006b: Adaptive capacity for responding to climate variability and change in estuarine fisheries of the Rio de la Plata. AIACC Working Paper No. 36, 16 pp. http://www.aiaccproject.org/ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-2-5-3.html Nagy, G.J., M. Bidegain, F. Blixen, R.M. Caffera, G. Ferrari, J.J. Lagomarsino, C.H. López,W. Norbis and co-authors, 2006c: Assessing vulnerability to climate variability and change for estuarine waters and coastal fisheries of the Rio de la Plata. AIACC Working Paper No. 22, 44 pp. http://www.aiaccproject.org/ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-4-4.html Orlove, B.S., S. Joshua and L. Tosteson, 1999: The application of seasonal to interannual climate forecasts based on El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events: lessons from Australia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Peru and Zimbabwe. Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics, Working Paper 99-3, Institute of International Studies, University of Califórnia, Berkeley, 67 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-2-5.html Travasso, M.I., G.O. Magrin, W.E. Baethgen, J.P. Castaño, G.R. Rodriguez, J.L. Pires,A. Gimenez, G. Cunha and M. Fernandes, 2006: Adaptation measures for maize and soybean in south eastern South America. AIACC Working Paper No. 28, 38 pp. http://www.aiaccproject.org/working_papers/working_papers.html http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-5-1-2.html Wehbe,M., H. Eakin, R. Seiler,M.Vinocur, C. Ávila and C.Marutto, 2006: Local perspectives on adaptation to climate change: lessons from Mexico and Argentina. AIACC Working Paper No. 39, 39 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-2-5-1.html Working Group 2, Chapter 17 Lasco, R., R. Cruz, J. Pulhin and F. Pulhin, 2006: Tradeoff analysis of adaptation strategies for natural resources, water resources and local institutions in the Philippines. AIACC Working Paper No. 32, International START Secretariat, Washington, District of Columbia, 31 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-2-2.html (in table 17.1) Leary, N., J. and Co-authors, 2006: For Whom the Bell Tolls: Vulnerabilities in a Changing Climate. AIACC Working Paper No. 30, International START Secretariat, Washington, District of Columbia, 31 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-references.html Relevant paragraphs at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-1.html and http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-4-2-1.html Taylor, M., A. Chen, S. Rawlins, C. Heslop-Thomas, A. Amarakoon,W. Bailey, D. Chadee, S. Huntley, C. Rhoden and R. Stennett, 2006: Adapting to dengue risk – what to do? AIACC Working Paper No. 33, International START Secretariat, Washington, District of Columbia, 31 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch17s17-4-2-3.html Working Group 2, Chapter 18 Downing, T.E. and G. Ziervogel, 2005: Food system scenarios: exploring global/local linkages. Working Paper, SEI Poverty and Vulnerability Report. Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, 35 pp http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch18s18-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch18s18-8.html Goklany, I.M., 2000b: Applying the Precautionary Principle to Global Warming. Weidenbaum Center Working Paper, PS 158.Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch18s18-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch18s18-4-1.html Working Group 3, Chapter 5 Riedy, C., 2003: Subsidies that encourage fossil fuel use in Australia. Working paper CR2003/01, Institute for sustainable futures, Sydney,Australia, 39 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch5s5-references.html Relevant paragraph at:http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch5s5-5-3.html Working Group 3, Chapter 7 Delmas, M. and A. Terlaak, 2000: Voluntary agreements for the environment: Innovation and transaction costs. CAVA Working Paper 00/02/13 February. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch7s7-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch7s7-9-2.html Gupta, K., 2002: The urban informal sector and environmental pollution: A theoretical analysis. Working Paper No. 02-006. Center for Environment and Development Economics, University of York, York, UK. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch7s7-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch7s7-1-1.html Next, a list of newspaper and magazine articles cited by the IPCC: Dey, P., 2006: Climate change devastating Latin America frogs. University of Alberta. http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=7247. Butler, A., 2002: Tourism burned: visits to parks down drastically, even away from flames. Rocky Mountain News. July 15, 2002. Kesmodel, D., 2002: Low and dry: Drought chokes off Durango rafting business. Rocky Mountain News, 25 June 2002. Wilgoren, J. and K.R. Roane, 1999: Cold Showers, Rotting Food, the Lights, Then Dancing. New York Times, A1. July 8, 1999. Welch, C., 2006: Sweeping change reshapes Arctic. The Seattle Times. Jan. 1 2006. [Accessed 12.02.07: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/ 2002714404_arctic01main.html] Marris, E., 2005: First tests show flood waters high in bacteria and lead. News@Nature, 437, 301-301. Stiger, R.W., 2001: Alaska DOT deals with permafrost thaws. Better Roads. June, 30-31. [Accessed 12.02.07: http://obr.gcnpublishing.com/articles/brjun01c.htm] Business Week, 2005: A Second Look at Katrina's Cost. Business Week. September 13, 2005. [Accessed 09.02.07: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2005/nf20050913_8975_db082.htm] Associated Press, 2002: Rough year for rafters. September 3, 2002. Colombia Trade News, 2006: Illegal crops damage Colombia’s environmental resources. Colombian Government Trade Bureau. http://www.coltrade.org/ about/envt_index.asp#top. FAO, 2004b: La participación de las comunidades en la gestión forestal es decisiva para reducir los incendios (Involving local communities to prevent and control forest fires). FAO Newsroom. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2004 /48709/index.html. FAO, 2005: Cattle ranching is encroaching on forests in Latin America. FAO Newsroom. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2005/102924/index.html Environment News Service, 2002: Hungry Cambodians at the mercy of climate change. Phnom Penh, 26 November 2002. Accessed 16.05.07: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-26-02.asp. Balint-Kurti, D., 2005: Tin trade fuels Congo War. News24, 07/03/2005. http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Features/0,,2-11-37_1672558,00.html. FAO, 2004: Locust crisis to hit northwest Africa again: situation deteriorating in the Sahel. FAO News Release, 17 September 2004. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2004/50609/. Bowen, N., 2002: Canary in a coalmine. Climbing News, 208, 90-97, 138-139. Sparks, T.H., H. Heyen, O. Braslavska and E. Lehikoinen, 1999: Are European birds migrating earlier? BTO News, 223, 8. Benedick, R., 2001: Striking a new deal on climate change. Science and Technology Online, Fall 2001. http://www.issues.org/18.1/benedick.html Schelling, T.C., 2002: What makes greenhouse sense? Foreign Affairs, May/June COM/ENV/EPOC/IEA/SLT(2005)6 32. http://www.colorado.edu/economics/morey/4545/global/schelling-ghsense.pdf Schelling, T.C., 1997: The cost of combating global warming, facing the tradeoffs. Foreign Affairs, November/December http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/4545/global/schelling-cost.pdf Cowan, J., E. Eidinow, Laura Likely, 2000: A scenario-planning process for the new millennium. Deeper News, 9(1). The Economist, 2000: Sins of the secular missionaries. January 29, 2000. Speth, J.G., 2002: Recycling Environmentalism. Foreign Policy, July/August, pp. 74-76. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2002/07/01/recycling_environmentalism Shashank, J., 2004: Energy conservation in the industrial sector: A special report on energy conservation day. New Delhi, Economic Times. Nippon Steel, 2002: Advanced technology of Nippon Steel contributes to ULSAB-AVC Program. Nippon Steel News, 295, September 2002. Shorrock, T., 2002: Enron’s Asia misadventure. Asia Times 29 January, accessed 02/07/07. ISNA, 2004: From wood to coal in an effort to stop deforestation. Inter Services news agency (IPS), Rome, accessed 02/07/07. IRIN, 2004: Angola: frustration as oil windfall spending neglects the poor. United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks, accessed 02/07/07. Nuclear News, 2005: WNA report forecasts three scenarios for nuclear’s growth. Nuclear News, November 2005: pp. 60-62, 69. Next, a list of press releases cited by the IPCC: Working Group 2, Chapter 5 COPA COGECA, 2003a: Committee of Agricultural Organisations in the European Union General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union, CDP 03 61 1, Press release, Brussels. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch5s5-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch5s5-2.html Working Group 2, Chapter 9 FAO, 2004: Locust crisis to hit northwest Africa again: situation deteriorating in the Sahel. FAO News Release, 17 September 2004. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2004/50609/ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch9s9-references.html Working Group2, Chapter 11 Premier of Victoria, 2006: Ballarat’s future water supplies secured by major Bracks government action plan. Media release, 17 October 2006. http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/newsroom/news_item.asp?id=978. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch11s11-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch11s11-2-5.html Working Group 2 - Cross Chapter Studies COPA COGECA, 2003b: Committee of Agricultural Organisations in the European Union General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union, CDP 03 61 1, Press release, Brussels http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-xccc.pdf Reference at p. 848. Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-xccc.pdf Note: paragraph at p. 846 Working Group 2, Chapter 13 World Bank, 2002a: Desarrollo en riesgo debido a la degradación ambiental: Comunicado de prensa (Development at risk from environmental degradation: News release), No. 2002/112/S. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-2-5-1.html http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-4-2.html Working Group 3, Chapter 4 Snow, T., White House Press Briefing, 2006: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061031-8.html http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061031-8.html# accessed 31 October 2006. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch4s4-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch4s4-2-2.html World Bank, 2005: An open letter to the Catholic Relief Services and bank information centre in response to the report ‘Chad’s Oil: Miracle or Mirage for the poor?’. News release no: 2005/366/AFR, Washington D.C. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch4s4-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch4s4-5-4-2.html Working Group 3, Chapter 5 Power System, 2005: Press release 2005.6.27. Development of High Power and High Energy Density Capacitor (in Japanese)., accessed 31/05/07. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch7s7-references.html Relevant paragraph at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch7s7-9-2-2.html Working Group 3, Chapter 9 Palmer, K. and R. Newell, K. Gillingham, 2004: Retrospective Examination of Demand-side Energy-efficiency Policies, Discussion Papers dp-04-19, Resources for the Future. The point that you seem to be missing in all of this is that people feel, and with good reason, that they've been sold a bill of goods. For years we've been told that the IPCC only considered peer-reviewed science, that they didn't just, in Pachauri's words, "pick up a newspaper article and, based on that, come up with our findings." Now we find out that they are doing exactly that. They are using newspapers, and working papers, and magazine articles, and discussion papers, and press releases, and other non peer-reviewed literature, to try to sell their point of view. As a result, people feel betrayed, and they are angry. But when someone points this out, you're all on about how Masters theses are just fine, and the number of claims from WWF isn't all that great, and other fine excuses. If you were savvy, you'd say, "Hey, we oversold it, our bad, won't happen again". But instead you've circled the wagons, and are trying to defend the indefensible. This was very apparent in Pachauri's response to the Himalaya glacier fiasco. Rather than say "Yes, it was an error", he immediately denounce it as "voodoo science". Indian scientists, whose work he was dissing, were incensed, and rightly so. The Indian Government was so upset by his comments that they set up their own government body, with the Indian Environment Minister saying: “There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science." But heck, keep up the good work, follow Pachauri's lead. All you are doing is further tarnishing the reputation of the IPCC, and you won't hear me complain about that. It has served and over-served its purpose. It has become a fully politicized and typical UN boondoggle. So I'm happy to see you continuing to claim that no important mistakes were made, it just advances my cause. People can look at the length of the lists of working papers and newspaper articles that the IPCC claims are "science" and make up their own minds ... -
RSVP at 19:27 PM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
Riccardo: I didnt quite phrase my question correctly. The concern is not so much how these gases warm or cool, but how the energy of these gases is eliminated from the Earth. -
Riccardo at 19:25 PM on 3 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
"The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as peer reviewed climate science is simply junk science, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence." So, discussing science and peer review with Willis Eschenbach appears to be really pointless. -
RSVP at 19:23 PM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
Riccardo: Thank you for your answer. I assume the ability to absorb IR is equal to the ability to emit IR. If this is true, how then do the gases O2 and N2 generally warm up or cool down? -
Riccardo at 19:12 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
HumanityRules, yes; all else being equal, a change in TSI, i.e. input at TOA, will be proportionally seen at the surface as well. -
HumanityRules at 18:31 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
Riccardo Yep thanks I read that after posting the question. Just to flesh that idea here is more of that quote. "Scattering and absorbing processes in the atmosphere are additive with respect to their effects on SSR at the surface, but may be opposed at the tropopause." I was interested how that fits with an idea further in the review. In 3. How Can We Explain Global Dimming/Brightening? he initially rules out changes in the sun as being responsible for this dimming/brightness changes with "The larger of these two estimates is equivalent to a global average increase of 0.17 W m2 decade1 in energy input to the climate system due to the variable emission from the Sun. These estimates are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the changes detected from surface observations of SSR." It seems in this sentance he is trying to directly compare TOA changes with SSR in order to rule out the changes in the sun as playing any major role in this process. -
Willis Eschenbach at 18:17 PM on 3 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
doug_bostrom at 15:57 PM on 3 July, 2010Pachauri's remarks are irrelevant to your claim, Willis. You brought 'em up secondary to your original remarks, why I don't know because Pachauri's remarks subsequent to the IPCC 2007 synthesis are of course not part of the synthesis.
Pachauri's remarks are central to the question. The IPCC holds itself out as a review of the science, the whole science, and nothing but the science. Pachauri says that very specifically. Which is why the question of peer review is important, because we have been told over and over that the IPCC considers nothing but peer reviewed documents. Not only that, it has an entire procedure that has been applied to keep out non-peer reviewed documents, and even to keep out peer-reviewed documents published after the cutoff date. (They haven't followed their own procedures, and have let things in like the Jesus paper, but that's a separate discussion.) This mania for peer review has infected the entire discussion, with many important ideas being discarded or derided because they are not peer reviewed. I have received this dismissal many times, that my ideas are worthless because they are not peer reviewed. So why should I care what Nepstad says in answer to a question by a reporter? What he said is no more peer reviewed than what I say. If it were, how come nobody can provide us with a citation to the study? I didn't set up that bar, I didn't establish that guideline. I think it's a dumb way to judge what is worthwhile. Peer review is a joke these days. But that's the bar that the IPCC itself set up, and that it has pushed over and over as the reason we should believe the IPCC, so it has to live or die by it. It can't just ignore it when it is inconvenient, as you conveniently advocate. I am not ignoring what Nepstad said. He may or may not be right. I am just pointing out that the IPCC said that its Amazon claims, along with all of its other claims, were based on peer reviewed science. You have not been able to provide such backing for the claim. You say his was the "work intended to be cited" (although we have no evidence of that) ... but his work doesn't contain that claim either. In fact, the claim was altered (to make it more alarmist) during the IPCC review process, and over the objections of a reviewer. So if you think that the claim rests on peer reviewed science, please give us the link to the study and we can discuss it. Finally, the same thing applies to Masters or PhD theses. Yes, as you point out they may well be right ... but they are not peer reviewed. Like I said, I think it's a dumb way to judge science, but you guys proposed it, you guys are the ones who have been pushing it, you guys are the ones who bust what I say for not being peer reviewed, so you have to follow your own rules. -
Riccardo at 17:30 PM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
RSVP, O2 and N2 molecules have no dipole moment and do not absorb IR radiation. -
Riccardo at 17:24 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
HumanityRules, Wild himself explicitly addressed your question: "The decadal changes in SSR found in the dimming/brightening literature are at first sight often unrealistically large from a radiative forcing viewpoint, as, e.g., presented by IPCC [2007]. [...] However, one should be aware that the radiative forcing concept as used in the IPCC reports applies to changes at the tropopause, which cannot be directly compared to changes at the surface." -
RSVP at 17:15 PM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
As the Earth's atmosphere is composed of mainly N2 and O2, it would seem important to know how these gases are known to cool. Is this explained in the book? When you are always hearing about water vapor and CO2 absorbing IR, one is led to assume that the other gases (by contrast) must not do so. Also, for IR transmission, it doesnt seem like this could happen in a very straight line if the medium was an absorber. So I get the impression that 97% of the atmosphere does not readily absorb IR, but I've never seen this actually stated. Is this the case? -
HumanityRules at 17:03 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
My first question is that these changes outlined by Wild seem enormous. In his review I see figures such as -5.1W m-2/decade for the dimming period and 2-6Wm-2/decade for the brightening period. Given that the Hansen (and the IPCC) suggest all greenhouse gases contribute 3W m-2/decade to the present imbalance, and the nett imbalance is around 1 I was wondering if you like to comment on how these studies fit into the overall picture of global warming? -
Doug Bostrom at 16:18 PM on 3 July 2010CO2 is Good for Plants: Another Red Herring in the Climate Change Debate
I believe Armstrong's remarks about Venus are germane to any other claims he may make, GC. Short of some other form of external review, we have to use whatever cues are available, even if those come from the claimant himself. -
HumanityRules at 16:01 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
Wild has produced a review of the subject which might help give a broader picture of the subject. Enjoy.Response: Thanks for the link. Wild's 2009 review features prominently on the examination of global brightening. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:57 PM on 3 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
Pachauri's remarks are irrelevant to your claim, Willis. You brought 'em up secondary to your original remarks, why I don't know because Pachauri's remarks subsequent to the IPCC 2007 synthesis are of course not part of the synthesis. We know the IPCC is quite open about using "grey" literature in the impacts and mitigation sections. Ignoring professional output from agronomists, biologists and a plethora of other professions working for private, governmental and not-for-profits entities with particular skills in impact and mitigation matters would frankly be insane. This is an issue that's been trotted out already so your seemingly impressive list of statistics is already pretty dull as a palette knife for creating works of impressionism. I'm particularly surprised you think a PhD dissertation is some sort of badge of incompetence or unreliability. I'm not sure what your problem with PhD dissertations is. Perhaps your gallery visitors don't know but presumably you are aware that doctoral theses are typically not only subjected to intensive criticism by a doctoral candidate's own dissertation committee but then are exposed to intense scrutiny by others outside of the committee and are almost invariably defended in oral presentation, the "defense." They are more scrupulously reviewed than any journal article you'll likely find. Nice impressionism but you're laying on the paint with a trowel and it's peeling off the canvas before it can dry. I apologize for being insufficiently specific, the particular term that caught my eye was "propaganda pieces." You apparently consider Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Federation to be a trump card in any discussion but that's a sloppy habit and of course is more or less believable depending on your political bent. In point of fact, however, nobody has established that publications by these organizations are axiomatically "propaganda" in the sense that most people understand the word. In fact I suspect that relying on a facile rhetorical crutch equating such publications with "propaganda" is a sign of weakness. It is a fact that advocacy organizations publish work that by -some- definitions of the word may be considered "propaganda." Here's a reasonable definition: "A concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people." So you know what? I think you're right, when the IPCC uses cites from Greenpeace or WWF, in the very loosest sense of the word they may arguably be said to be drawing on fragments of what taken as a whole are propaganda efforts by those organizations. This is not really a good idea from the perspective of an organization that is a lightning rod for political attacks, but on the other hand funding for science is always short, advocacy organizations commission much original work that is valid and useful, the persons authoring this work are (as you've shown) professionals with reputations to protect and so to dismiss all such publications is to ignore a sizable body of work for purely political reasons. How bad is this purported "propganda" problem, what material weight does it carry in the IPCC report? Let's assume for a moment that your source for statistics is correct, though I'm already worried by the confusion over dissertations; if the same lack of discrimination is applied throughout the so-called "audit" you cite I wonder about its utility. Working with the data you've supplied, your "audit" source reveals that about 4/100ths of 1% of IPCC cites originate with Greenpeace, apparently, and some 7/100ths of 1% of IPCC cites are from WWF, apparently all of these concentrated in the WGII and WGIII sections and thus not material to the science describing how anthropogenic global warming is instantiated. This says nothing of course about the utility of those cites, instead just finally gets to the statistic you refused to produce, describing exactly what is meant when you say the ...IPCC relies, as it has done far too often, on WWF and Greenpeace propaganda pieces... Are numbers representing well less than 1/10th of 1% suitable for the term "so often?" I don't know, it's sort of an impressionist thing. By the way, the page from the "audit" site mixing politics with science-- the "freedom" part-- reads as though it's taken straight from GOP consultant Luntz's work, except with a touch of rabid froth. I use the numbers from that site with some compunction; who knows if the politics have bled into the "audit?" When an organization equates folks with a concern for the environment with murderous Stalinists, is that a sign that we should depend on them for impartial judgment? Quoting: "People who claim to be making the world a better place have often delivered misery. The Soviets, for example, said they were building a more equal society. Instead, they murdered tens of millions." Finally, I see that once again you have chosen to ignore what Nepstad-- the fellow who authored the work intended to be cited by IPCC regarding the Amazon-- said of the IPCC's claim in relation to his own work. Maintaining the wrong impression on this matters apparently absolutely key for you but of course you're not Nepsted so you don't really know what you're talking about compared to him. Here's what Nepstad (again, the author of the work in question) said: In sum, the IPCC statement on the Amazon was correct. -
gallopingcamel at 15:43 PM on 3 July 2010CO2 is Good for Plants: Another Red Herring in the Climate Change Debate
doug_bostrom (#74), You love to chide me for being "off subject" but this time you are the offender! The climate of Venus is a fascinating subject, so I hope you know that Bob Armstrong's claim that the high surface temperature on that planet requires an internal heat source is nonsense. -
Riccardo at 15:17 PM on 3 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
Willis Eschenbach, as noted before, the IPCC rules state that non peer review article may be used. Your is only a personal attack against Pachauri and of no much interest for the science. It's a well known and clearly political motivated tactics used way too often by various brands of skeptics. In my views it's unacceptable. -
thingadonta at 14:53 PM on 3 July 2010What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
Of course you fail to mention the good correlation with the PDO and 20th century temperature inflexions (albeit that the PDO doesnt explain the long term upward trend). -
thingadonta at 14:47 PM on 3 July 2010Perth forum on climate change: all the gory details
#27: I'm sorry J Murphy, I dont work in government anymore, and don't keep in touch, but its encouaging to see that at least you might have actually been interested in this source, and not Plimer's. -
Philippe Chantreau at 14:12 PM on 3 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
"They instantly know that one can't believe all they read." I'd say. As in "CO2 sublimates and snows down in Antarctica" or "The Western snowpack is 137% of normal" or "Venus temperature is caused by pressure" and so many more that it renders it downright laughable. One would hope indeed that WUWT readers do not believe everything they read, especially what they read on WUWT. -
johnd at 13:44 PM on 3 July 2010CO2 is Good for Plants: Another Red Herring in the Climate Change Debate
John Russell at 00:05 AM, as long as the transcript is a true reflection of the interviews, it seems that the focus was on what happens to the leaves of the plants rather than the grain or fruit that is normally eaten. These are all the examples mentioned, the only exception was when cassava was mentioned, and some of that is totally misleading which I refer to after these examples:- Dr Ros Gleadow Leaves of plants grown at elevated carbon dioxide have a lot less protein wheat, barley, rice, all of those in probably only 50 to 60 years time will have 15 to 20% less protein in them than they do now. ...... Dr Ros Gleadow In about 50 years time or even 100 years time eucalyptus leaves will have trouble supporting arboreal herbivores like koalas because the phenolic concentration will be too high and the protein level too low. ........ Emeritus Prof. Howard Bradbury If an insect comes and eats the leaf then it immediately gets a nasty taste of bitter hydrogen cyanide so it goes somewhere else. So this is a really great mechanism for protecting the plant. And there's about 2,000 plants that use this mechanism including apples, apricots, peaches. ........ Dr Graham Phillips This is a cassava plant. It is a small one the big ones can get up to 3 metres. Now the leaves can be eaten. They can be thrown into a salad as greens but the most important part of the plant as far as food goes is the root. Now that could be pealed chopped up and cooked. It could be turned into flour or indeed tapioca. Now the reason cassava is so popular around the world is the plant is highly drought tolerant. It requires very little water and can grow in extremely poor soils. ..... The misleading part is this:- NARRATION Before rising carbon dioxide and toxicity levels had been linked, Howard had been spending his retirement coming up with a simple method to remove cyanide from cassava. Emeritus Prof. Howard Bradbury 2004 I worked out the method and here it is 2010 and its not being used anywhere hardly except the Mozambique health department has finally said yeah that's a good method. They're finally adopting it, it's taken them 5 years! The method he claims as his own discovery is basically the traditional method of preparing cassava and has been used wherever cassava has been eaten for as far back as history allows it to be traced. I am amazed that he would lay claim to something that has been part of traditional life for so long. Like the Australian aboriginals have done, any society has, if finding any readily available foods toxic, devise simple methods how to render them safe, or ignore them as a source of food. Our modern day society is no different, but I've never before heard of any expert claiming credit for something that has been such a long established practice. Perhaps new techniques are developed, but the processing of cassava as described in the transcript is not a new technique, far from it. -
Willis Eschenbach at 13:07 PM on 3 July 2010IPCC were wrong about Amazon rainforests
doug_bostrom at 01:16 AM on 3 July, 2010Willis, you may repeat yourself often enough to create some statistics of your own...
I take all of that as meaning that you have no peer reviewed evidence to support the IPCC claim regarding the Amazon. You seem to think that what is at issue is what I say. It is not. It is what the IPCC says. However, let me answer your questions. You say: You said When the IPCC relies, as it has done far too often, on WWF and Greenpeace propaganda pieces, and newspaper articles, and the like... and when asked to back up that remark with statistics more fully describing "far too often" you rejoin with remarks by Pachauri, not an analysis of the IPCC's actual work product, suggesting you have little more than an impression to offer. and JMurphy says: "Pachauri said repeatedly that the IPCC was based 100% on peer reviewed science. As a result, one is too many ... and the Amazon claim is certainly one." Well, since you love to demand citations (especially in front of an adoring crowd at WUWT), perhaps you could do so here and give links to Pachauri's 'repeated' claims ? Then, give the stats which show the "far too often" IPCC reliance on "propaganda pieces", etc - as you have already been asked. Pacharui's claims are important, as they have shaped the high regard in which the IPCC is (in my opinion wrongly) held. And the IPCC has relied on non-peer-reviewed claims far too often, as I said. So hang on, this is only a partial list, but it is long. Regarding Pachauri's repeated claim about how it was all 100% peer reviewed science, we have (emphasis mine): "People can have confidence in the IPCC's conclusions…Given that it is all on the basis of peer-reviewed literature." - Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman, June 2008 and "The IPCC doesn't do any research itself. We only develop our assessments on the basis of peer-reviewed literature." - Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman, June 2007 and "This is based on peer-reviewed literature. That’s the manner in which the IPCC functions. We don’t pick up a newspaper article and, based on that, come up with our findings." - Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman, June 2008 and As IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri recently stated: 'IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment...'" - US Environmental Protection Agency, December 2009 (bottom of PDF's page 7) and "When asked if the discussion paper could be taken into consideration...[Pachauri] said, 'IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.'" - Times of India, November 2009 Regarding the IPCC relying on non-peer-reviewed sources, there are far, far too many for me to list. Let me pick a few. We could start with the very claim we are discussing here, which was based on a WWF paper (non peer-reviewed), which in turn relied on another non peer-reviewed document. Then we have an IPCC citation to my favorite peer reviewed journal: Gwynne, P., 1975: The cooling world. Newsweek, April 28, 64. With respect to climate change in Ontario, the IPCC used the noted journals "Leisure" and "Event Management": Jones, B. and D. Scott, 2007: Implications of climate change to Ontario’s provincial parks. Leisure, (in press) Jones, B., D. Scott and H. Abi Khaled, 2006: Implications of climate change for outdoor event planning: a case study of three special events in Canada’s National Capital region. Event Management, 10, 63-76 With respect to the IPCC's erroneous claims on African agriculture, they were based on Agoumi, A., 2003: Vulnerability of North African countries to climatic changes: adaptation and implementation strategies for climatic change. Developing Perspectives on Climate Change: Issues and Analysis from Developing Countries and Countries with Economies in Transition. IISD/Climate Change Knowledge Network, 14 pp. Again, not peer reviewed. The IPCC claims on Canadian wildfires were based on a couple of newspapers and a tourism publication: Associated Press, 2002: Rough year for rafters. September 3, 2002. Butler, A., 2002: Tourism burned: visits to parks down drastically, even away from flames. Rocky Mountain News. July 15, 2002. BC Stats, 2003: Tourism Sector Monitor – November 2003, British Columbia Ministry of Management Services, Victoria, 11 pp. Want more? Well, of course we have the claim about the Himalayan glacier melt, famously built on a scientist's mis-represented comment to a newspaper. Or we could look at the use of the non peer-reviewed Master's thesis in the IPCC: Shibru, M., 2001: Pastoralism and cattle marketing: a case study of the Borana of southern Ethiopia, Unpublished Masters Thesis, Egerton University. Wahab, H.M., 2005: The impact of geographical information system on environmental development, unpublished MSc Thesis, Faculty of Agriculture, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, 148 pp. Gray, K.N., 1999: The impacts of drought on Yakima Valley irrigated agriculture and Seattle municipal and industrial water supply. Masters Thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 102 pp. Schwörer, D.A., 1997: Bergführer und Klimaänderung: eine Untersuchung im Berninagebiet über mögliche Auswirkungen einer Klimaänderung auf den Bergführerberuf (Mountain guides and climate change: an inquiry into possible effects of climatic change on the mountain guide trade in the Bernina region, Switzerland). Diplomarbeit der philosophisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Bern. That's from just one Working Group. Or, if you would prefer non peer-reviewed PhD theses, we have: Crooks, S., 2004: Solar Influence On Climate. PhD Thesis, University of Oxford. Foster, S.S., 2004: Reconstruction of Solar Irradiance Variations for use in Studies of Global Climate Change: Application of Recent SOHO Observations with Historic Data from the Greenwich Observatory. PhD Thesis, University of Southampton, Faculty of Science, Southampton, 231 p. Oram, D.E., 1999: Trends of Long-Lived Anthropogenic Halocarbons in the Southern Hemisphere and Model Calculations of Global Emissions. PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 249 pp. Eyer, M., 2004: Highly Resolved δ13C Measurements on CO2 in Air from Antarctic Ice Cores. PhD Thesis, University of Bern, 113 pp. Foster, S., 2004: Reconstruction of Solar Irradiance Variations for Use in Studies of Global Climate Change: Application of Recent SOHO Observations with Historic Data from the Greenwich Observatory. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. Driesschaert, E., 2005: Climate Change over the Next Millennia Using LOVECLIM, a New Earth System Model Including Polar Ice Sheets. PhD Thesis, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 214 pp, http://edoc.bib.ucl.ac.be:81/ETD-db/collection/available/BelnUcetd-10172005-185914/ Harder, M., 1996: Dynamik, Rauhigkeit und Alter des Meereises in der Arktis. PhD Thesis, Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany, 124 pp Jiang, Y.D., 2005: The Northward Shift of Climatic Belts in China during the Last 50 Years, and the Possible Future Changes. PhD Thesis, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, China Academy of Science, Beijing, 137 pp. Somot, S., 2005: Modélisation Climatique du Bassin Méditerranéen: Variabilité et Scénarios de Changement Climatique. PhD Thesis, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, 333 pp. Vérant, S., 2004: Etude des Dépressions sur l’Europe de l’Ouest : Climat Actuel et Changement Climatique. PhD thesis ... and that's just the PhD theses from Working Group 1 ... Regarding the use of non peer-reviewed documents from Greenpeace, we have: Aringhoff, R., C. Aubrey, G. Brakmann, and S. Teske, 2003: Solar thermal power 2020, Greenpeace International/European Solar Thermal Power Industry Association, Netherlands ESTIA, 2004: Exploiting the heat from the sun to combat climate change. European Solar Thermal Industry Association and Greenpeace, Solar Thermal Power 2020, UK Greenpeace, 2004: http://www.greenpeace.org.ar/cop10ing/SolarGeneration.pdf accessed 05/06/07 Greenpeace, 2006: Solar generation. K. McDonald (ed.), Greenpeace International, Amsterdam GWEC, 2006: Global wind energy outlook. Global Wind Energy Council, Bruxelles and Greenpeace, Amsterdam, September, 56 pp., accessed 05/06/07 Hoegh-Guldberg, O., H. Hoegh-Guldberg, H. Cesar and A. Timmerman, 2000: Pacific in peril: biological, economic and social impacts of climate change on Pacific coral reefs. Greenpeace, 72 pp. Lazarus, M., L. Greber, J. Hall, C. Bartels, S. Bernow, E. Hansen, P. Raskin, and D. Von Hippel, 1993: Towards a fossil free energy future: the next energy transition. Stockholm Environment Institute, Boston Center, Boston. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam. Wind Force 12, 2005: Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace, http://www.gwec.net/index.php?id=8, accessed 03/07/07 And regarding non peer-reviewed documents from the WWF, the IPCC used: Allianz and World Wildlife Fund, 2006: Climate change and the financial sector: an agenda for action, 59 pp. Austin, G., A. Williams, G. Morris, R. Spalding-Feche, and R. Worthington, 2003: Employment potential of renewable energy in South Africa. Earthlife Africa, Johannesburg and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Denmark, November, 104 pp. Baker, T., 2005: Vulnerability Assessment of the North-East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change, Workshop Project Report, WWF, Godalming, Surrey, 79 pp. Coleman, T., O. Hoegh-Guldberg, D. Karoly, I. Lowe, T. McMichael, C.D. Mitchell, G.I. Pearman, P. Scaife and J. Reynolds, 2004: Climate Change: Solutions for Australia. Australian Climate Group, 35 pp. Dlugolecki, A. and S. Lafeld, 2005: Climate change – agenda for action: the financial sector’s perspective. Allianz Group and WWF, Munich Fritsche, U.R., K. Hünecke, A. Hermann, F. Schulze, and K. Wiegmann, 2006: Sustainability standards for bioenergy. Öko-Institut e.V., Darmstadt, WWF Germany, Frankfurt am Main, November Giannakopoulos, C., M. Bindi, M. Moriondo, P. LeSager and T. Tin, 2005: Climate Change Impacts in the Mediterranean Resulting from a 2oC Global Temperature Rise. WWF report, Gland Switzerland. Hansen, L.J., J.L. Biringer and J.R. Hoffmann, 2003: Buying Time: A User’s Manual for Building Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in Natural Systems. WWF Climate Change Program, Berlin, 246 pp. Lechtenbohmer, S., V. Grimm, D. Mitze, S. Thomas, M. Wissner, 2005: Target 2020: Policies and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. WWF European Policy Office, Wuppertal Malcolm, J.R., C. Liu, L. Miller, T. Allnut and L. Hansen, Eds., 2002a: Habitats at Risk: Global Warming and Species Loss in Globally Significant Terrestrial Ecosystems. WWF World Wide Fund for Nature, Gland, 40 pp. Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp. WWF, 2004: Deforestation threatens the cradle of reef diversity. World Wide Fund for Nature, 2 December 2004. WWF, 2004: Living Planet Report 2004. WWF- World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund), Gland, Switzerland, 44 pp. WWF (World Wildlife Fund), 2005: An overview of glaciers, glacier retreat, and subsequent impacts in Nepal, India and China. World Wildlife Fund, Nepal Programme, 79 pp. Zarsky, L. and K. Gallagher, 2003: Searching for the Holy Grail? Making FDI Work for Sustainable Development. Analytical Paper, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Switzerland I could go on and on, but that will suffice for now. Finally, you have asked for the exact statistics on the use of non-peer reviewed studies in the IPCC report. They are here. -
Marcus at 10:42 AM on 3 July 2010An account of the Watts event in Perth
I'd also like to make a point about the so-called politics behind the switch to Renewable Energy. Certain people are quick to claim that both Global Warming & a greater emphasis on renewable energy are all some kind of "Socialist Conspiracy", yet the history says otherwise. In Germany, it was Helmut Kohl-leader of the Christian Democrats-who kick-started that nation's switch to renewable energy (before Global Warming had reached the general public); in the US, the Federal Government who gave the biggest increase in funding to renewable energy projects was Ronald Reagan; in California, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger-a Republican Governor-who has given a huge boost to the renewable energy industry. Former Queensland Premier-Sir Joh-funded a PV power station for the remote community of Palm Island, but the incoming Goss Government canned the project & went with a nice, big & dirty diesel generator instead. In the UK, it was Margaret Thatcher who first really brought the threat of Global Warming to public attention. Now, as someone who identifies as Center-left, if my decisions on Global Warming & Renewable Energy were strictly political in nature, then I'd tend to reject both-due to "guilt by association". However, though I might not have agreed with their overall politics, I'm quite happy to recognize the good they did in this particular area. -
Doug Bostrom at 10:27 AM on 3 July 2010A Scientific Guide to the 'Skeptics Handbook'
Dr. Pielke is very annoyed to the point of publicly expressing dubious speculations about the honesty of NSF officers because a project of his own to investigate anthropogenic climate change factors was turned down for funding by NSF, unfairly according to Pielke. He's been making quite a stir about the matter so it's no surprise he should turn up on RealClimate promoting alternative anthropogenic climate change attributions. He's waging some kind of campaign, judging by his own words at his blog.
Prev 2314 2315 2316 2317 2318 2319 2320 2321 2322 2323 2324 2325 2326 2327 2328 2329 Next
