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Comments 117101 to 117150:

117101. Mythago at 00:38 AM on 21 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Thank you Megan for an excellent article. Having read the various discussions as I made my way down here to post this reply I couldn't quite avoid seeing some glaring anomalies with the interpretations some people have regarding things like the CO2 plant food and increased temperature = increased rainfall. Definitely worth an article of explanation. Oh and then Marty with his posting where he said: 'The science says so' is not an acceptable argument for the complete re-allocation of society's resources. Firstly because even scientific orthodoxy is not beyond question but also because we must take into consideration many other things such as ethical, economic, political, considerations alongside the scientific knowledge', statement. Well when I read your posting I couldn't help thinking that to not act to stop AGW is hardly 'ethical'. Seems to me that if something is going to destroy the planet then surely it would be 'ethical' to stop doing whatever it was that was causing this to happen? Or am I missing something here? Then you cite 'Economic' considerations. Ooh! Well now when everything has dried up to a crisp and there is nothing to eat or drink then I guess you can always try eating the money because it will have stuff all use for anything else.......unless you get cold at night then you can burn it but watch out for all that carbon your releasing. Finally we come to 'political' considerations. Last time I checked the only reason my politician contacted me was to persuade me to vote for him at the recent general election (UK) promising to deal with all the climate issues in one fell swoop and in one term of office. Immediately after they get elected they cut back on several highly important initiatives to curb climate changing gases because they cost money and they need to save money. Talk about short sighted and blinkered. So don't mention politicians. They don't give a damn until it comes to securing their seat in office and a nice fat salary thank you very much and then they are all over you like a rash promising the Earth. Sorry for being somewhat cynical but when we need to get things sorted to save our lives I despair at the idiots like Watt's and Monckton who deliberately try to deceive people by exploiting their ignorance of science and the lack of support for legitimate science research and interpretation from people in power (aka politicians) and the corporate giants who bumble along with the business as usual model claiming that the people they employ would lose their jobs if controls were put in place and this would harm the economy. Well there will be far less economy let alone jobs or life on the third rock from the sun unless we DO stop AGW or at least reduce it. Sadly that won't happen because there are still too many ignorant people out there who will not listen, cannot listen or don't even come within ear shot of the listening to the truth. Its a lost cause unless the truth gets out there so citizenschallenge posting #35 your posting made excellent sense. I could not agree more. We need to get the info out there before the naysayers destroy the last chance we have.
117102. johnd at 00:25 AM on 21 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        David Horton at 17:37 PM, it's possible Bob Carter might just be promoting the CO2 is plant food line because he is aware of real world FACE wheat trials that have produced results that contradicts much of what you claim. A link to the trial results is in my post above. Results from the first three years of the experiment include increases in biomass, which in agriculture, translates into increases in yield with about a 20% increase in yield because of the elevated CO2.
        Moderator Response: Detailed discussion of CO2's benefits for plant growth should be continued on this other thread, where some comments already exist about FACE trials: CO2 is not a pollutant
117103. johnd at 00:03 AM on 21 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        HumanityRules at 21:04 PM, the real world FACE wheat trials at Horsham produced significant increased yields for 550ppm CO2 against ambient CO2 380ppm, with slightly lower % protein, but still producing more protein per hectare. Growth, yield and photosynthetic responses to elevated CO2in wheat
117104. citizenschallenge at 23:58 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Speaking of our changing hydrologic cycle, lookie what I just found in my ScienceDaily.com update. More unanticipated complications. Dry Regions Becoming Drier: Ocean Salinities Show an Intensified Water Cycle http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100416094050.htm ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2010) — The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases. The surface ocean beneath rainfall-dominated regions has freshened, whereas ocean regions dominated by evaporation are saltier. "While such changes in salinity would be expected at the ocean surface (where about 80 per cent of surface water exchange occurs), sub-surface measurements indicate much broader, warming-driven changes are extending into the deep ocean," Mr Durack said. The paper also confirms that surface warming of the world's oceans over the past 50 years has penetrated into the oceans' interior changing deep-ocean salinity patterns. The study, co-authored by CSIRO scientists Paul Durack and Dr Susan Wijffels..." {"These broad-scale patterns of change are qualitatively consistent with simulations reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."}
117105. dhogaza at 23:33 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Oops, Argus, not Angus (I work with an Angus, sorry, Argus!)
117106. citizenschallenge at 23:33 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Another excellent post, followed by a predictably interesting and informative discussion. Although I'd like to return to Megan Evans original post: "When faced with the prospect of attending a climate skeptic speakers event such as the current Watts Up with the Climate? tour of Australia, anyone who understands climate change science could easily think of a plethora of reasons not to go... " I believe every climate "skeptics" public presentation should (must) be attended by folks who understand the science and who are frustrated at the endlessly rehashing of false arguments and lies. Besides, being there to question assertions made ~ it's a great place for the more proactive among us to hand out our own fliers, pointing out fallacies plus a list of valuable resource links (beginning with Skeptical Science since I believe this is the clearest, most accessible (starter) resource for laypersons who want to focus on understanding the science behind global warming). Scientists such a PhD Abraham are starting to step up by compiling excellent understandable presentations/arguments along with documentation challenging contrarian misrepresentations. Now, the time has come for informed, concerned laypeople to help get that word out. And every AGW "skeptics" public presentation is a new opportunity to teach the poorly informed, that should not be passed up!
117107. dhogaza at 23:27 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Angus ... "Yes, I am aware of the effects of rising sea levels. My question was an entirely different one. From where did you get the information that water "will be in much shorter supply" in a warmer climate?" Along with what others have said, some of the most productive ag land in the US - the interior valleys of California - are dependent on snowpack for irrigation water in spring and summer. Warming has an obvious implication for snowpack...
117108. admrich at 23:09 PM on 20 June 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Quote: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it."[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1] EndQuote. Truly interesting, & so also is - Quote: The blogsphere adores Kruger and Dunning’s (1) ‘99 paper "Unskilled and Unaware of It" (2). Google blog search lists ten blog mentions just in the last month. For example: (3) Perhaps the single academic study most germane to the present election … In short, smart people tend to believe that everyone else "gets it." Incompetent people display both an increasing tendency to overestimate their cognitive abilities and a belief that they are smarter than the majority of those demonstrably sharper. This paper describes everyone’s favorite theory of those they disagree with, that they are hopelessly confused idiots unable to see they are idiots; no point in listening to or reasoning with such fools. However, many psychologists have noted Kruger and Dunning’s main data is better explained by positing simply that we all have noisy estimates of our ability and of task difficulty. For example, Burson, Larrick, and Klayman’s ‘06 paper "Skilled or Unskilled, but Still Unaware of It" (4): We replicated, eliminated, or reversed the association between task performance and judgment accuracy reported by Kruger and Dunning (1999) depending on task difficulty. On easy tasks, where there is a positive bias, the best performers are also the most accurate in estimating their standing, but on difficult tasks, where there is a negative bias, the worst performers are the most accurate. This pattern is consistent with a combination of noisy estimates and overall bias, with no need to invoke differences in metacognitive abilities. In this regard, our findings support Krueger and Mueller’s (2002) reinterpretation of Kruger and Dunning’s (1999) findings. An association between task-related skills and metacognitive insight may indeed exist, and later we offer some additional tests using the current data. However, our analyses indicate that the primary drivers of miscalibration in judging percentile are general inaccuracy due to noise and overall biases that arise from task difficulty. So why does Google blog search finds zero mentions (5) of this refutation? My guess: because under this theory you should listen to those you disagree with instead of writing them off as idiots. Now Kruger and Dunning do have a 2008 followup paper (6), and in their first paper they were able to construct one situation where more able people had lower errors in estimating their ability. Also, Burson et al. saw some weak tendencies like this: We regressed perceived percentile on actual percentile among bottom-half performers and among top half performers. A Chow test confirmed at a marginal level of significance that bottom-half performers were less sensitive to their actual percentile … than were top-half performers. Oddly, none of the dozen papers on this I’ve read pursue the obvious way to settle this question: look at the variance of ability estimates as a function of ability. But however that turns out it seems clear that mostly what is going on is that we all misjudge our ability and task difficulty. EndQuote All Are Unaware (Link) (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect (2) http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf (3) http://insocrateswake.blogspot.com/2008/10/judging-ones-own-competence-or-yikes.html (4) http://sitemaker.umich.edu/kburson/files/bursonlarrickklayman.pdf (5) http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q="Skilled+or+Unskilled,+but+Still+Unaware+of+It" (6) http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~ehrlinger/Self_&_Social_Judgment/Ehrlinger_et_al_2008.pdf
117109. Riccardo at 21:44 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        HumanityRules, no confusion on my part. In presence of a multiple regression, saying that anthropogenic contribution is derived from the model is reductive. What has been found is the relative weight of the various contributions (known a priori) included in the regression. It's not the same thing. As for the 60 years cycle in light of Lean papers, one should have Lean's results and calculate the residuals. You may try to ask her and do it yourself. On my side, I'm not that impressed by the mismatch around 1910 and 1940. To think of a cycle that mismatch should repeat, which apparently it doesn't. A better question would be what is missing (or what is not done appropiately) in Lean's calculations.
117110. Ned at 21:30 PM on 20 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        I assume what Lon is trying to say in this comment is that a temperature anomaly of -0.58 would give no change in the CO2 concentration. As far as I can tell, that's just about the only correct statement he's made here. It's also a sign of the obviously unphysical behavior of Lon's model, since an anomaly of -0.58 would produce an ocean/atmosphere equilibrium regardless of what the CO2 level was at the time -- it could be 100 ppm, 300 ppm, or 1000 ppm. But this is all getting away from the point. Lon, it's been clearly established here that almost all the explanatory power of your model comes from the constant upward trend that's hard-wired into it. You can get more or less similar results by taking temperature anomaly out and plugging in almost anything else -- time, or emissions, or whatever. You can even make a Hocker-style model that predicts CO2 as a function of a series of random numbers ... and it gets the overall trend right. Instead of telling me to make more changes to this or that model, and to try different things, and telling other people that they don't understand math, why don't you try addressing the point of this thread? Here it is, in a nutshell, in case you've forgotten it: (1) Your post at WUWT claimed that "the rise in CO2 is a result of the temperature anomaly" and that "This is the exact opposite of the IPCC model". (2) As discussed repeatedly in this thread, your model actually builds in a linear rising trend in CO2, which is then slightly modified by the temperature anomaly. But almost all the explanatory power of your model comes from the constant trend, and has nothing to do with temperature anomaly. This has been explained both mathematically and visually. (3) As pointed out by Joel Shore at WUWT, and as I repeated here, the idea that there are positive carbon-cycle feedbacks is not news to the IPCC or anyone else in climate science. The small additional CO2 added or removed as a feedback during the ENSO cycle has been discussed in the literature for at least three decades and is covered in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. In other words, not only does your model not contradict the IPCC's findings, it actually reiterates them. (4) This kind of model cannot answer the question of what causes the observed rise in CO2. However, there is a large body of evidence that leads us to conclude that anthropogenic emissions are responsible for the entire observed increase, and that additional anthropogenic CO2 is being taken up from the atmosphere by the oceans. There are other minor points that have been made along the way (like the fact that the actual source of the carbon-cycle feedback during ENSO is mostly from the terrestrial biosphere, not the oceans). But it would be nice if you would just for once address the main point of this thread.
117111. chris1204 at 21:13 PM on 20 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        JMurphy @v 50: This applies to the sceptical side as much as (in some cases more)to the AWG side. Should have read: This applies to the sceptical side as much as (in many cases more than)to the AWG side. Otherwise, I refer you to Argus' posts.
117112. HumanityRules at 21:04 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        23 David Horton I think "CO2 is plant food" was invented 1/2 a billion years ago. Surely every sentient being knows that CO2 is a food source for plants. I think what you are alluding to is that traditionally people haven't considered CO2 in the way they consider your long list of factors because it isn't seen as variable over the different ecosystems of the planet. That's not to say that increasing (or decreasing) CO2 won't have an impact on growth. We should consider what affects the changes in CO2 levels over the past century have on plant growth. I've seen the videos of planets growing faster in higher CO2 environments in the lab but obviously here other factors have been maximized to allow this to occur. Research on satellite data show a greening planet over the past few decades. The authors of this work speculated a link to temperature but it's worth noting that ranges hadn't greatly increased rather vegation had become more dense. It possible to link this with increased CO2 as well. I don't particularly favour either. It strikes me it's worth also considering the impact specifically on crop plants. Agriculture already attempts to maximise growth by controlling the factors you list in your post. Given that this is more akin to the experiments attempted in the lab it's worth considering that specifically agricultural plants might benefit from the extra CO2.
117113. Ned at 20:53 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Poptech is correct that the UAH trend is slightly lower than all the other trends (including the other satellite data set, RSS, which is essentially identical to the surface temperature trends). We had this exact same discussion last month, right down to people misunderstanding Poptech's claim and thinking he was saying that UAH trended negative (see Poptech's comment here, and the ensuing discussion). As I pointed out at the time, it's actually amazing how close the agreement is among the different data sets. Here are the trends, 1979-present for the various temperature data sets (in degrees C/century): Satellite troposphere: UAH +1.3 RSS +1.6 Surface (land/ocean combined): HADCRU: +1.6 GISSTEMP: +1.6 NOAA NCDC: +1.6 Independent analyses (land/ocean combined): Nick Stokes: +1.7 Clear Climate Code: +1.6 Zeke Hausfather: +1.6 I'm not sure why Poptech apparently feels the need to repeat the same discussion we had a month ago. We could probably save time by all just linking to our same comments from the previous thread.
117114. s1ck at 20:34 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        @Argus: evaporation and absolute humidity will rise wherever there is water to evaporate. In very dry areas, this will probably not be the case. Further, according to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, the saturation vapor pressure also rises with temperature (at a rate of ~7% per degree Celsius). As a consequence, relative humidity will remain more or less constant. However, there will be more water vapor in the atmosphere available for heavy showers. After rainfalls, it may take a longer time to achieve the saturation vapor pressure again (until there is sufficient water vapor to form clouds and rain drops). One can expect that there will also be prolonged periods without rain fall, even in relatively humid areas, while the soil may not be able to take up all the water from heavy showers. Things are tricky...
117115. HumanityRules at 20:29 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        #14 John cook I have seen some remarks on the fact that the satellite data tends to exaggerate the highs and lows of the ENSO signals. I think you can see that in Barry's graph in #20. The remark never had an explanation as to why.
        Response: My understanding was the lower troposphere shows more exagerated highs and lows compared to the surface temperature record due to the same reason we expect a tropospheric hot spot - surface warming affects the moist adiabatic lapse rate in such a way that it leads to an amplification of any surface trends. But there may be more to it than that - other commenters, feel free to enlighten us.
        
117116. HumanityRules at 20:13 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        in #79 1930 should read 1940.
117117. HumanityRules at 20:00 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        76 Marcus You'll have to make up your mind on whether you like correlation or not because you we're all over it in post #66. Maybe it's just some correlations? Given your wish to admonish humanity for our ill-deeds I guess it's a shame not more of us aren't pirates.
117118. HumanityRules at 19:57 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        72 Riccardo at 08:28 AM on 20 June, 2010 "HumanityRules, "what she seems to do is develop a model which has reasonable match to HADCRUT then derive the anthropogenic signal from that model." This claim is compleately unfounded. Please stick to what she said in the paper and do not try to make people say what you'd like them say." I can understand your confusion Riccardo, in Lean 2009 the author states the figure I show is derived from the temperature record, the figure is derived from an earlier Lean 2006 paper. In that paper she labels part a) of that graph "an empirical model obtained from multiple regression for the period from 1889 to 2006" If it's my use of the word model that upsets you I'd like to point out that she uses it herself (but not in 2009 I'll admit). You're ignoring the point of my post I think the work Lean does has to be critically assessed for it's ability to identify or dismiss the presence of a 60 year cycle. The overall ability of her empirical model to match the actual temperature record is good but you need to look at the detail when deciding it's usefulness for the 60 year cycle. The features of that possible cycle in the temperature record are the low of 1910 and the high of 1930, I hope you would accept that. You can also see that Leans empirical model (the brown line in a, it's actually clearer in the 2006 paper) fails to match these important time periods. As I stated it flattens out the record. Surely any analysis of this data for the 60 years cycle is going to be comprimised by this?
117119. thingadonta at 19:45 PM on 20 June 2010
        Ocean acidification isn't serious
        "Past history shows us that when CO2 rose sharply, this corresponded with mass extinctions of coral reefs." The mass extinction events you refer to- End Permian, PTEM, End Triassic- occured over tens of thousands to millions of years, at a rate not relevant to human time frames. Corals went extinct, and ocean acidity rose, but it did not rise 'sharply'. We should equally start worrying about continental drift rates and extinction. Past history also shows us that when continents collided, numerous species went extinct, but at a rate not relevant to humans. "The change in seawater pH over the 21st Century is projected to be faster than anytime over the last 800,000 years and will create conditions not seen on Earth for at least 40 million years." This is entirely based on model projections, which are themselves based on dubious assumptions. Past pH in industrial times has been modelled, not measured, therefore the current rate of change in oceanic pH is itself doubtful. A recent paper which measured pH in the last 15 years in the north pacific shows it has experienced an average change of 0.03pH in the last 15 years. I'm not sure this is a rate to which there is concern. The geological record indicates that oceans appear to be strongly buffered, and do not change pH easily. They have apparently not changed pH more than 0.6 in the last 300 M years, presumably because of negative feedbacks/buffering to any rise in C02/other factors. Hundreds of thousands of years of widespread explosive volcanism is generally required to lead to a modest rise in oceanic acidity. I would suggest that most of the research papers on potential ocean acidification are written by biologists and chemists who do not take into account processes outside their own, specialist fields. An illustrative example is, for eg, the question of where all the water in the oceans themselves originally comes from. If you ask some NASA scientists, it comes from comets. These scientists have, incidentally, never studied effects of large cooling magmas in the earth's crust. When granitic magmas cool, they expel water; the Earth's cooling crust in its early history is more than enough to account for all the world's ocean water, a process that still goes on today in eg mountain ranges, although the net water balance of the planet is more or less constant due to water saturated crust also being subducted into subduction zones. The point is, the comets, which are the NASA scientists special field, have nothing to do with the origin of the vastly greater portion of the world's water. The subsurface, and its processes, as usual, are presumed to be stable and unchanging, and therefore ignored. Another illustrative example is when geologists first reported the presence of numerous species of microrganisms feeding on 'dead' rock masses thousands of metres below the surface-these findings were initially totally ignored-how could deep subsurface 'rocks' be relevant to Earth's Biological processes? Now some scientists think that life itself may have originated deep within the earth, from/in association with these deep-dwelling micro-organisms (eg Paul Davies). Also of note, is that these micro-organisms are believed to account for by far the greater mass by weight of biota on earth, they extend well into the earth's crust, and are ore or less everywhere/abundant. Much the same sort of ignorance goes for various ocean acidification theories/projections; buffering procesess in the subsurface, for eg the >100,000km of Mid Oceanic Rifts, which extend down several kilometres of heated, carbonate-enriched rock, where large amounts of carbonic acid are produced/exchanged/ precipitated in the subsurface, are generally totally ignored by biologists and chemists, who think all you have to do to prove ocean acidification is carry out an experiment in a controlled lab with some H20, gases and no real-world earth subsurface processes, ie if you add c02 to the atmosphere, then oceans will experience runaway acidification. Their field and their models do not take into account rates of chemical precipitation /dissolution of eg c02 in the world's subsurface,rates of oceanic mixing, microbiological feedbacks, or any other potential buffering/negative feedback effects, nor the long geological record which indicates that the oceans only change pH significantly on geological timescales, not human timescales. The idea that oceans will acidify markedly over the next century is a result of inaccurate and incomplete modelling, nothing more.
117120. SNRatio at 19:21 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Argus #27: "Yes, I am aware of the effects of rising sea levels. My question was an entirely different one. From where did you get the information that water "will be in much shorter supply" in a warmer climate? " May I suggest that you try and look for answers to that yourself before you ask here? And, then, refute the papers which deal with this?
117121. SNRatio at 19:17 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Argus #25: "Were is the proof that a warmer ocean will produce less rain, and more drought?" That's not happening, and that's not the issue here. More heat produces more evaporation, and more precipitation. The question is where and when? If the distribution does not stay constant, we can have all sorts of effects happening, and IF the variance increases, we can expect more extreme weather, harder rainfalls etc. Unless the total amount increases a lot, we can get more droughts ALONG WITH more precipitation , it could be considered as simply a statistical effect. So, the issue is, does the variance stay constant, or even decrease? That MAY happen, but with a lot more energy transfer, the outcomes could tend to be predominantly in the other direction. Observation is, it HAS become warmer. Question is: Have we got as much, less, or more extreme weather along with that?
117122. Argus at 19:13 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Yes, I am aware of the effects of rising sea levels. My question was an entirely different one. From where did you get the information that water "will be in much shorter supply" in a warmer climate?
117123. Megan Evans at 18:38 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Argus - I know this isn't directly answering your question, but I think its important to consider that even if warmer oceans produced more rain, the sea level rise from increased temperatures will inundate arable land and also displace large numbers of people. If the concern is about producing food to feed people, then extra rain isn't going to help if your crops are under seawater (and if you don't have anywhere to live).
117124. Lon Hocker at 18:14 PM on 20 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        e: Month(n) CO2 = Month(n-1) CO2 + 0.22*(Month(n) Anomaly + 0.58) Plug in the value for current anomaly, and you get Month(n) CO2 = Month(n-1) CO2; no increase of CO2 You need help with your math.
117125. Argus at 18:04 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Some thoughts around the following argument: "The truth is unfortunately not that simple – plants don’t just need food, they need water too – something that will be in much shorter supply with the increased frequencies and lengths of drought that climate change will bring." If the temperatures of the oceans are rising, more water vapour will be transferred to the atmosphere (per day, or whatever). That is physics. The same goes for lakes, if land temperatures rise. Evaporated water has to come down again, hence more rain than today. Wet and warm ground evaporates even more water back to the air, and so on. Were is the proof that a warmer ocean will produce less rain, and more drought?
        Response: What has been observed over the last century is an intensification of the hydrological cycle. Wet areas are getting wetter and drier areas are getting drier. This is because with warmer temperatures, you get evaporation which leads to heavier rainfall but also drying out of drier soils. Doing a post about this has been on my to-do list for a while but I'll move it up the priority list, seeing how popular the 'CO2 is plant food' argument is becoming.
117126. tobyjoyce at 17:57 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        @Marty said "What seems to be lacking is a serious high level public debate on the arguments for and against man-made climate change so that non-experts such as myself can make informed judgements. " Unfortunately, scientific differences cannot be decided by public debate and a vote. Nature is not a democracy! Politicians have little choice but to follow the scientific consensus, and I hope that you can see what that is. Unfortunately, there are powerful vested interests (political and economic) who do not want the full implications of the scientific consensus to be carried through. The public have a right to reject the implications of the scientific consensus, but that leads us to a place where people are preferrring short-term comfort over long-term safety. A comprehensive picture of how doubt in the scientific consensus is a manufactured phenomenon can be found in Oreskes and Conway's book "Merchants of Doubt"
117127. David Horton at 17:37 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        The continuation of the "CO2 is plant food" line, first invented, if I remember correctly, by one of the oil companies, sums up the approach of people like Carter. He must know, surely, at some level of consciousness that this is meaningless. Has he never spoken to a botanist in his university about this? Has he read nothing about it? Every sentient being in the universe must be aware that CO2 is not limiting on plant growth in the real world, where limits are set by water, sunshine, temperature, soil nutrients, soil trace elements, competitors, pests and diseases, and so on. Except in the laboratory conditions of a greenhouse, where all these other factors are supplied in abundance, increasing CO2 can have little if any effect. Even in the greenhouse the effects are minimal and may have unforeseen consequences like increasing toxins. One point of "CO2 is plant food" is presumably to make people think that this is going to lead to a brave new world of giant pumpkins and waving fields of grain, but that is clearly not going to happen, even if other factors are kept constant. And Carter, being Australian, must know that the other factor are not constant as we see increasing crop failures due to record high temperatures and record low rains. And the other point, I guess, is that they are trying to subliminally suggest that it doesn't matter how much CO2 we pump out, it will all get taken up by increased plant growth. But we know, and they know, that this isn't happening because CO2 levels keep rising. Furthermore we know, and they know, that it didn't happen in the past because, wait for it, climate changed in the past. Finally, what on earth would make you think that plants adapted to the CO2 levels of up to a couple of hundred years ago, would have the potential to react to the burning of millions of years worth of previously locked up carbon in a matter of 200 years? So Mr Carter keeps saying "Co2 is a plant food" why? because he believes it adds substance to what he must know is an increasingly weak argument, and because he thinks it makes CO2 sound cuddly and friendly. Every one of the points that Megan records could be analysed in the same way. So why do they keep trotting them out in the absence of new data? It all feels a bit like a gospel meeting where the preacher repeats the same old biblical lines, knowing that his audience will feel comforted by the familiarity, and certainly won't ask questions. An impression, of substance and meaning, will have been created out of material which in real life has neither.
117128. Riccardo at 17:36 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        shawnhet, I think you're missing the central point of what Scafetta did. His model model is about the cycles and does not include the trend. Indeed, Scafetta works with separately detrended data, he does not fit trend and cycles together. If, as I showed, his starting point (the detrended data) is biased, his conclusions are biased as well. Does one need to show a better model or measurement to prove that the one shown in a paper is biased? It could be desirable, but not required; if its very premises are untenable one can not add a few bits to correct it. And given that it is Scafetta that is trying to push an alternative view, it's up to him to prove it. We stand where we were if he fails. "your trend doesn't work, so even if both your and his choice of trends are both *completely* arbitrary, his is *still* better than yours." I'll never get tired to repeat it, I do not have a trend of mine. And yes, they're all unjustified. Being them the basis of the subsequent analysis, the latter stands on shaky grounds.
117129. marty at 17:34 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        I'm glad to see that you are engaging with the sceptical arguments. As someone who has tried to follow this issue I still find myself at a loss to decide which way to jump. What seems to be lacking is a serious high level public debate on the arguments for and against man-made climate change so that non-experts such as myself can make informed judgements. That said however I would still insist that a consensus in science is something that forms around an issue that is by its nature controversial. No consensus is required with respect to Newtonian science since it is about as uncontrovesial as anything in science can be. So even if we accept the theory of man-made global warming it is very much in the nature of a judgement and not a certainty. Science does not deal with certainties but with knowledge of overwhelming probabilities. The place of science in life also needs to be taken into cosideration. How we act in relation to advances in scientific knowledge is not a push-button affair. There is a somewhat Mathusian tone to the pronouncements of many proponents of man-made global warming that perhaps explains some of the resistance to their scientific case. 'The science says so' is not an acceptable argument for the complete re-allocation of society's resources. Firstly because even scientific othodoxy is not beyond question but also because we must take into consideration many other things such as ethical, economic, political, considerations alongside the scientific knowledge. Having said all that I do recommend your site to any sceptics that I come across and it has made me a bit more sceptical about the sceptical science. I still need that public debate though!
117130. tobyjoyce at 17:28 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Ove at Climate Shifts had a brush with Watts & Co. An unpleasant quarter of an hour I think attending sceptic meetings and asking questions is important. However, public debates like Tim Lambert vs. Monckton is not a good idea as it implies a false equivalence between scientists and deniers.
117131. barry1487 at 17:14 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        kdkd, for Poptech's benefit I added trend lines to the graph (and included 1979).
117132. kdkd at 16:52 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        John Cook #14 Broadly your post is correct. However, any difference in trend between the different data sets is not statistically significantly different. The easiest way to estimate this effect is to observe thatthe 95% confidence interval of the correlation coefficient of anomaly against time overlap for all three main data sets. However, as this approach does not correct for autocorrelation (time series property) it's insufficiently conservative. Either way, Poptech's position is silly.
117133. Doug Bostrom at 16:23 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Eschenbach (of WUWT) has just produced another article trying to bury signal in noise, this time having to do with temperature anomalies on the West Antarctic Peninsula. Although there is clearly an upward trend in temperatures as reflected by all datasets, Eschenbach is -extremely- concerned about variances between each set of temperature measurements. As is usual, we are supposed to conclude that nothing can be concluded: "All of which makes it very difficult to come to any conclusions at all … except one. My only real conclusion is that it would be nice if we could get some agreement about one of the most basic data operations in the climate science field, the calculation of area averages of temperatures from the station data, before we start disputing about the larger issues." The review article in Science (Science 328, 1520 (2010); Oscar Schofield, et al) attracting Eschenbach's scorn is concerned with impacts of warming on the ecosystem of the West Antarctic Peninsula. Here are the physical symptoms of warming, as summarized in the article: Changes in the WAP are profound (Fig. 1). Midwinter surface atmospheric temperatures have increased by 6°C (more than five times the global average) in the past 50 years (14, 15). Eighty seven percent of the WAP glaciers are in retreat (16), the ice season has shortened by nearly 90 days, and perennial sea ice is no longer a feature of this environment (17, 18). These changes are accelerating (19, 20). On careful reading, it turns out Eschenbach's quibble with this scenario is not that there is no trend in temperature, rather that he sees it as exaggerated. Doing his own numeric massaging, he finds not a 6 degree C increase but rather "only" 3 to 4 degrees C depending on how he treats his analysis. Note that Eschenbach's own conclusion is that WAP temperatures have risen far faster than the increase in global average. Eschenbach is in significant agreement with the summation of the paper he's criticizing, but you'd be hard pressed to notice the inconvenience by reading his own words because that conclusion is left buried between the lines. This is pretty much classic "How climate skeptics mislead" material. Zero in on whatever defects are available regardless of whether they have explanatory power, ignore the big picture, make sure readers end up lost in a myriad of details that are interesting but not really significant.
117134. barry1487 at 15:51 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        At the outermost, there is a 0.03C/decade difference in trend between satellite and surface temperature trends. On what grounds do you propose this is 'statistically significant', Poptech?
117135. snapple at 15:47 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        As luck would have it, John Costella's "Climategate" analysis is available as a reprint from SPPI (Monckton's group) and posted on Anthony Watts' site. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/21/climategate-analysis/
117136. ginckgo at 15:44 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        oh dear, Poptech confuses difference in temperature with difference in trend.
117137. John Cook at 15:39 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        I think what Poptech is saying (correct me if I'm wrong) is both the satellite and surface data show a warming trend but that the satellite trend is not as strong. This is in large part due to the different ways the data is processed. The RSS satellite trend is warmer than the UAH satellite trend because RSS's adjustments for satellite bias add warming in the tropics while UAH's adjustments add cooling in the tropics. The HadCRUT surface temperature trend is not as strong as the GISS trend because it doesn't include the Arctic regions where warming is strongest. Nevertheless, all these records are broadly consistent and show a statistically significant warming trend over the last few decades.
117138. WheelsOC at 15:37 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Poptech, I'm not the handiest person with plotting but even I know what "trend" means. There is no way you can say that the satellite data to which you linked "trends cooler." It is in fact trending upwards, just as the surface-based measurements are. Even a simple line plotted between end-points shows an extraordinarily similar slope (trend) among the two data sets. What is different is the offset from the x axis, but that's not a trend. Words have meanings, please use yours carefully.
117139. Megan Evans at 14:52 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        NewYorkJ - no, Watts conveniently ignored Menne et al 2010 villabolo - For sure, I'd be more hesitant to follow my own advice it it were Chris Monckton :-) Of course, if he agreed to refrain from name calling it might not be an impossible task.
117140. Marcus at 14:49 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Poptech, you are aware that the anomalies measured by ground-based measurements are based off a 1961-1990 average, wheras the anomalies measured by satellite are based off of a 1979-2000 average? Given that average temperatures were warmer for 1979-2000 than for 1961-1990, then its perfectly reasonable that the size of the temp. anomaly measured by satellites would be smaller. That said, both ground based & satellite temperature measurements are showing a warming trend of +0.14 to +0.17 degrees per decade from 1979-2010 (with only UAH being below +0.16 due to failure to account for diurnal drift). That puts ground & satellite measurements in very close alignment, & utterly debunks Watts' weak arguments. Now, if you're not going to contribute anything *sensible* to this thread, then I might suggest its better to contribute nothing at all!
117141. kdkd at 14:31 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Poptech #9 You're repeating a false assertion. The satellite data shows exactly the same trend over time as the GISS, HADCrut etc. Statistically the trends are indistinguishable. Visually, the graph presented by NewYorkJ in #7 totally debunks your argument in any case. Here is is again: The absolute difference in measured temperature is of no importance, it's the change over time that's the feature of interest. More fodder for the "how climate sceptics mislead" thread here methinks.
        Moderator Response: wonderful, thank you - jb
117142. shawnhet at 14:31 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        Riccardo:"you assume that: 1) i'm supporting the n=4 versione of the trend; 2) i'm a competitor to Scafetta. Neither is true and nothing i said should let you think they are. I esplcitly stated (several times indeed) that the n=4 has no more value and I nowhere tryed an alternative hypothesis. Insisting on this point is, at best, specious. I'll said it again, maybe sooner or later you'll will accept it. I just showed the weakness of Scafetta paper through its arbitrary choice of the trend. Stop. I understand that it's hard to accept the fault one of the skeptics heros, but you know, sometimes even heros might be wrong." Sure he can be wrong and frankly I am quite skeptical of these sorts of linkages, but that doesn't mean that you have demonstrated what you think you have demonstrated. Whether or not Scafetta's choice of exponent is valid or not is dependent on how effective his *complete model* is at reconstructing all the observed temperatures. At this, his model beats your "model" hands down. I am pretty sure that there are many equally effective (to Scafetta's) ways of getting a decent reconstruction of temps. The way to deal with Scafetta's paper would be to show how an alternative reconstruction works just as well or better. Scafetta himself concedes that there are other possible trends to explain the data so I doubt that he considers your objection significant(he mentions it himself). Respectfully, your trend doesn't work, so even if both your and his choice of trends are both *completely* arbitrary, his is *still* better than yours. (I don't want to get into the semantics of the word arbitrary). BTW< just because a choice of parameters may be arbitrary, doesn't mean it won't turn out to be a good predictor of events. Cheers, :)
117143. Doug Bostrom at 14:09 PM on 20 June 2010
        How Jo Nova doesn't get the tropospheric hot spot
        How are those papers "devastating," poptech? Here's the conclusion of John's post: Detecting the tropospheric hot spot is not a test of the greenhouse effect but of the moist adiabatic lapse rate. Data uncertainty and long-term biases mean detection of the hot spot has been difficult. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the hot spot exists. But if you cannot accept this evidence, to be strictly correct, what you are is a moist adiabatic lapse rate skeptic. You've seized an opportunity to highlight some material contradicting McLean and other climate researchers, but I don't see how your argument is "devastating" to John's summary. Can you explain?
117144. kdkd at 13:59 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Poptech #4 Your argument here is invalid and thoroughly discredited. We're not interested in the absolute measurement, but the trend over time. In fact the literature will tell you that you can't make absolute comparisons between different data sources, and have to rely on relative data. So given that, as trends assessable from the satellite and instrumental records are statistically indistinguishable from each other, your position has no merit.
117145. NewYorkJ at 13:58 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        Megan, Did Watts make any reasonable attempt to address the peer-reviewed study that debunked his photo gallery? Poptech, You forgot the baseline adjustment described here. I included the data through 2010 YTD as well. GISS to RSS comparison
        Moderator Response: NO. he did not acknowledge that there was any criticism of his work and didnt even really synthesize it
117146. musubk at 13:38 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        "1) Temp record is unreliable, 2) CO2 effect is saturated, 3) CO2 is plant food, and 4) It’s the sun." So the argument is: 1) There's no warming. 2) There's can't be any warming. 3) The warming that isn't and can't happen is a good thing. 4) The warming that isn't happening is happening because of the sun. How is this not obviously contradictory to them?
117147. snapple at 13:31 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        The Climate Skeptics Party has a list of websites. One link is to John Costella's "Climategate Analysis." http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/websites.html It takes you to this. http://johncostella.webs.com/ But he still has it on his Assassination Science site. http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/
117148. Marcus at 13:05 PM on 20 June 2010
        Astronomical cycles
        Methinks that HumanityRules & John D both need to spend a little time hanging out with the Pastafarians, to see the dangers of the kind of unfounded correlations on which they choose to rely. After all, the Pastas can show a *really* strong inverse correlation between declining number of pirates in the world & the rise in global CO2-it's such a close fit that it *has* to be true! Right? Of course not-not unless you can back it up with (a) a physical explanation of *how* pirates were keeping CO2 levels down; (b) some empirical evidence that backs up this explanation (like showing pirates sucking the CO2 out of the atmosphere) & (c) making sure that the declining number of pirates was the *cause* of rising CO2 levels-instead of the other way around. This is where Scafetta's paper falls apart. With a little statistical gymnastics, he's able to show a correlation between a 60-year alignment of planets & a warming of the climate-what he doesn't give is an explanation of *how* this alignment might be causing the sun to make the Earth warmer or how we might expect these impacts to manifest themselves on the planet's surface. Nor does he try & show how his hypothesis compares to existing paleo-climate data from before 1850 (probably because it increasingly falls apart). The thing is that we already have a very *very* good idea what caused the warming between 1880-1940, & that is the significant rise in sunspot numbers over that period. Now I'm happy to accept the possibility that planetary alignments could be driving this increase in sunspot numbers but, if that were the case, then we should have seen a similar sunspot response during this current PUTATIVE 60-year cycle. Yet we don't see that response from the sun. Indeed, sunspot numbers have been trending downward. The fact is that Scafetta's 60-year "trend" is highly dependent on only focusing on the period from 1850 on, & then only if you rely on HadCRU data, rather than the more reliable GISStemp data (GISStemp shows no cooling trend between 1880 & 1910, the supposed "cooling" trend between 1940-1970 only works because of the relatively big drop off in temperatures around 1943-1945-without it it becomes a warming trend-& 2000-2009 shows a distinct warming of +0.12 degrees for the entire decade-not the cooling that we'd expect if Scafetta was correct). As to John D, a fall in average precipitation is *exactly* what we expect when temperatures warm excessively-the only thing is that you've got CAUSE & EFFECT the wrong way around-just like those who run around claiming that warming is generating the excess CO2 in our atmosphere!
117149. snapple at 12:57 PM on 20 June 2010
        Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
        John B--there is little consensus among denialists except that they all agree that the scientific consensus is wrong. I think that Watts must be down on his luck if the webmaster for the Australian Climate Skeptic political party is affiliated with something called "Assassination "Science." What kind of science is that?
117150. robert way at 12:49 PM on 20 June 2010
        How Jo Nova doesn't get the tropospheric hot spot
        Poptech, notice the word "submitted" on two of those papers... notice how its not "accepted"

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