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marty at 06:51 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
It's quite true that population growth tends to fall naturally but not directly for the reasons you give since you miss out the most important factor - prosperity. Unfortunately in the developing world poverty means that birthrates remain high. I personally find the equating of human lives and carbon a thoroughly abhorrent idea - see in my original post regarding the Malthusian conclusions drawn from the science. However, if you were to make such comparisons, and if you were to seek to reduce population growth in order to reduce carbon emissions then it might be argued that we need a massive industrialisation and development in the developing world as the solution to global warming. -
Doug Bostrom at 06:38 AM on 21 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Is it ironic that Scafetta's hypothetical but unexplained connection between climate and Earth-external ~60 year periodic forcings appears to hinge largely on acceptance of Mann et al's dendrochronology interpretations? See Scafetta's key cite of Long-period Cycles of the Sun's Activity Recorded In Direct Solar Data and Proxies (MG Ogurtsov, YA Nagovitsyn, GE Kocharov, H Jungner - Solar Physics 2002, full-text PDF) If Scafetta had confined himself to making this a review paper and eschewed forming conclusions about actual percentages of attribution it would have been a lot better. -
cynicus at 05:44 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the CO2 lag
DrTom #4, Are you referring to last weeks news that perhaps for every barrel of oil 2900 cubic feet of natural gas is escaping from the well? Given the depth of the wellhead, most methane should dissolve before reaching the surface as described in a previous post about methane venting from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. If the estimates are correct then the amount of methane gas released is staggering. Will this gas ultimately be deposited as clathrate on the bottom of the GOM or will it slowly outgass to the atmosphere? -
Ned at 05:17 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Marty, nobody here has advocated imposing a global dictatorship or eugenics or a forced one-child policy. That's not a really helpful approach to discussion here; you would be better off developing arguments that don't involve the assumption that those who disagree with you are evil. Science is not a democracy. It's also not a dictatorship. Ideally, it's a meritocracy. In the long run, scientific claims that don't provide useful explanations of how the world works will lose out to those that do provide better explanations, though it can take decades (or longer) for this process to work out. That's separate from the question of how a society should respond to what science says. The question "If we double the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere, what consequences should we expect?" is a scientific question. The question "Are those consequences worth trying to avert, and at what price?" is a value judgment, and in a democracy the latter question is absolutely a subject for the democratic process. -
dhogaza at 05:15 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
"'Unfortunately, scientific differences cannot be decided by public debate and a vote. Nature is not a democracy!' Quite true. Nature is not a democracy. But I take it that you would not be in favour of a Green Dictator who would enforce green policies irrespective of people's needs and desires. Or maybe you would! ... As far as political considerations go maybe you might be in favour of some kind of un-elected scientocracy running the world but I certainly wouldn't. " How does Marty get from "scientific differences cannot be decided by public debate and a vote. Nature is not a democracy" to a conclusion that this implies a political dictatorship run by scientists! Marty - please get real. 1, Science is what it is. CO2 is going to do its thing regardless of your political beliefs. 2. The legitimate debate centers around *policy* - what to do about the implications of what science teaches us. Feel free to debate that to your heart's content. If you want to argue that the correct response is to do nothing, well, do so. -
Doug Bostrom at 05:13 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Marty, flamboyant speculations about eugenics and the like are fun rhetoric to write and read but they're not very useful. As we've learned over the past few hundred years, the combination of better education, better health care and better equality between sexes appears to naturally produce a decline in birth rates to more sensible levels. So there's no need for draconian laws such as China substituted for these improvements. We know this already. Your point about the impact of population is well taken, though. Meanwhile, as to the transference of scientific knowledge into the public policy arena, we've already seen numerous successful examples of this. Strong encouragement of vaccination so as to promote "herd immunity" from disease, public sewer and water systems, cases such as these were the upshot of scientific investigation leading to reasonably sound predictions not confirmed until public policy was adjusted to follow scientifically derived recommendations. In some cases (public water and sewer systems) temporary controversy arose as these improvements were implemented because they presented a threat to established commercial interests. Note that vaccination was a new market not posing a threat to existing commercial concerns and thus was embraced with relatively little controversy compared to public health initiatives such as sewer systems. This business of C02 is not really new as a general phenomenon. It happens to be particularly difficult to address as well as controversial because indeed we do have a serious dependency on fossil fuels and as well the commercial incentives for established players to maintain inertia are also very large. -
marty at 04:51 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
In response to my desire to see a public debate on AGW Tobyjoyce says 'Unfortunately, scientific differences cannot be decided by public debate and a vote. Nature is not a democracy!' Quite true. Nature is not a democracy. But I take it that you would not be in favour of a Green Dictator who would enforce green policies irrespective of people's needs and desires. Or maybe you would! Mythago says 'to not act to stop AGW is hardly 'ethical'' Ok. So given that having a child is just about the worst thing that anyone could do for their carbon footprint would you be in favour of some kind of eugenics program or something like China's one child policy? such measures would be highly effective and perfectly in line with the science, but would they be ethical? As far as political considerations go maybe you might be in favour of some kind of un-elected scientocracy running the world but I certainly wouldn't. Unfortunately this is just the kind of high-handed response to legitimate concerns about how the science integrates in with the world of human affairs that makes people go running to the sceptics or just throw their hands up in despair about the whole issue. Even if the science were all black and white - which it isn't - then the relationship between the science and what we, as a society, do about it is not at all black and white. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:49 AM on 21 June 2010Andrew Bolt distorts again
Speaking of leaky journalism, "Africagate," "Amazongate" are officially decommissioned by their publishers, both of whom relied on Jonathan Leake to lead them into credibility-sapping embarrassment. Hopefully the newspapers lead astray will see the pattern. Climbdowns covered here at Real Climate. -
Ned at 04:45 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Argus, as to why there are generally rainforests in the tropics and deserts around 30 N/S ... that's an effect of the Hadley Cells (moist air rising in the equatorial region expands and cools, causing precipitation, while the sinking air at the other end of the Hadley cell is dried out). Warmer climate conditions generally see a wider ITCZ and a poleward expansion of the whole system, so, for example, during the Holocene Optimum much of the Sahara was a little bit wetter, because of this poleward shift. Argus, I too remember discussion of using the a pipeline or canal to the Qattara Depression to generate hydropower and create an inland sea. There's some interesting history of it in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression One obvious issue would be the buildup of salt over time, left behind by the evaporating seawater. -
Jim Eager at 04:31 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Yes, Ian, but that's not exactly a part of the paper that Johnd would want to cite, because quite obviously it does not support his "CO2 is plant food" and higher CO2 concentration will be beneficial talking points, now does it? Quite the opposite, in fact, as it confirms what the climate science community has been saying all along: CO2 fertilization will be for naught in the face of increased heat stress and unpredictable precipitation and/or ground water supply. -
Sustainable2050 at 04:26 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Thanks! What about mr Carter's $ 60 billion figure; is that the true spend on climate research? Regards, Kees van der Leun -
Argus at 04:23 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
s1ck #31 - Thanks for an interesting comment about saturation vapor pressure and relative humidity! And also about dry areas vs humid areas. But why do we have these persistent dry areas? Why is Sahara a desert now (but not 9000 years ago)? And why is there mostly rain forests at similar latitudes around the world (except for the nearby Arabian Peninsula)? Is there anything we can do about it? Maybe there is! I remember reading an article in Nature in the 70's about a proposition to open up a tunnel to flood the Qattara Depression with water from the Mediterranean. It would provide hydropower for decades or longer, and eventually create a large lake (the size comparable to Lake Erie) in the desert. A lot of water would of course evaporate in the heat, creating clouds and rain within a much greater area. I think it sounds like a grand project, which 30-40 years ago did not seem so interesting, maybe, since Libya had so much oil anyway. But now? Reduce oil use, get electric power, improve the local climate, freshen up the Mediterranean. Why not try this? A climate experiment in real life.. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:18 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the CO2 lag
GC, it's a rare and wonderful thing to see a premise so obviously wrong that we can all agree. This one's a bit more complicated but you're smart enough to tell us, what's your specific objection? Further reading here where John covered the lag before, also it's covered here at Real Climate as well as here at New Scientist. Same misunderstanding patiently explained by a bevy of authors. It's been in circulation for at least 5 years now, time to let it die peacefully. -
DrTom at 04:14 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the CO2 lag
Science is never settled; but once in awhile an event occurs which gives us the opportunity to test some of our hypotheses. The Gulf of Mexico disaster is releasing ~2 to ~3 million gallons of oil every 24 hours depending upon who does the estimate. John Kessler at A&M estimates that 40% of the leak is Methane. I think one needs to add 40% to account for the methane; in either case, I believe enough Methane has leaked into the atmosphere in a short enough period of time to generate a blip at best which will be difficult to explain away as non-Anthropogenic. -
gallopingcamel at 03:59 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the CO2 lag
I was with you guys in doubting Hocker's assertion that temperature is driving CO2 concentration in the atmosphere over the short term. Now you are asserting that over the medium term (700,000 years) that CO2 is somehow a significant factor in the Ice Age cycle even though it lags temperature by ~900 years. Give it up, your convoluted arguments don't make sense. -
paulgrace at 03:58 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the CO2 lag
I think there is a general failure on Science's part to provide a clear explanation, to wit, We know: CO2 causes warming; CO2 is really high; and Warming isn't that bad. Therefore science is wrong about something. It's the lag of warming behind CO2 that isn't clear, and that creates misunderstanding and doubt in the larger message. An analogy might be helpful, but find one message and repeat it often and succinctly. A supertanker analogy might make it easier to visualize, and this is not a good one, but I hope a clear explanation could be crafted-- Earth's climate is slow to change, because it is massive, and many inputs drive changes. CO2 is one driver, and a very powerful one. Imagine the climate to be a huge supertanker. CO2 is pushing the engines faster and faster toward a hotter climate. Today, the climate is already measurably more extreme. Science is warning us to pull back the throttles before the ship runs aground. Even if we cut the throttles to zero today, it will take time for the ship to slow, and the longer we wait, the faster the tanker will be going. -
snapple at 03:53 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
NOAA just had a big article about how warm it has been. They discussed each area separately. I put it on my site and dolled it up a bit. Happy Fathers' Day. http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2010/06/noaa-may-global-temperature-is-warmest.html -
shawnhet at 03:42 AM on 21 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Riccardo:"thanks for quoting the entire paragraph quoted just in part by me. Though, I do not understand why you refer to the conclusions and not the premises of which i'm talking about. Apparently you continue to shift your attention to something else. True that toward the end Scafetta extrapolated his curves but still the trend comes before his analysis of the cycles. You should not overlook it because his building would collapse without them." Riccardo, again, respectfully, you are very confused here. I referred to the section I posted last time, because it showed how you were wrong about what Scafetta was doing. You now are moving the goalposts to talk about his premises. It still doesn't mean what you think it means. The fact remains despite the fact that you can (arbitrarily) set n to whatever you want doesn't mean that you will be able to *reproduce* the observed temperature changes of the last 150 years(alone or in combination with some other effect). There is no point IMO with comparing hypothetical trends that do not match the observed records to ones that do (at least potentially). As I have said before, this is apples and oranges. Cheers, :) -
Doug Bostrom at 03:35 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Odd coincidence w/regard to Argus' question and some of the replies, this popped up while I was browsing newspapers. Return of the rainy season in China: Earlier this year, south-east China endured its worst drought in living memory, but in the past week, some places have been inundated with three times the average rain for this period. Weather or climate? Who knows, but it's in keeping w/predictions. Warmer air becomes turgid with moisture, refuses to give it up and then -bam- out it comes when the temperature is finally forced to drop by adiabatic cooling or whatever cause. Oops. Reading further in the article: Southern China experiences flooding almost every summer, but the pattern may be changing. According to the Beijing climate centre, extreme weather events have increased in recent years. It says droughts are becoming longer and rainfall comes in more intense and damaging bursts. China devastated by floods The juxtaposition of the architecture seen in this photo with such a quantity of floodwater suggest that indeed this is an unusual amount of flooding: Floodwater swells past houses in Xiqin township -
cce at 03:17 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the tropospheric hot spot
I compiled this list of papers, with the relevent quotes, that detect enhanced tropical troposphere warming within observations. Two are analysese of radiosonde temperature data, one is based on the thermal wind data, and two are based on the satellite MSU data. "In the tropical upper troposphere, where the predicted amplification of surface trends is largest, there is no significant discrepancy between trends from RICH–RAOBCORE version 1.4 and the range of temperature trends from climate models. This result directly contradicts the conclusions of a recent paper by Douglass et al. (2007)." http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0442/21/18/pdf/i1520-0442-21-18-4587.pdf "Insofar as the vertical distributions shown in Fig. 3 are very close to moist adiabatic, as for example predicted by GCMs (Fig. 6), this suggests a systematic bias in at least one MSU channel that has not been fully removed by either group [RSS & UAH]." http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~stevensherwood/sondeanal.pdf "The observations at the surface and in the troposphere are consistent with climate model simulations. At middle and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, the zonally averaged temperature at the surface increased faster than in the troposphere while at low latitudes of both hemispheres the temperature increased more slowly at the surface than in the troposphere." http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n6/abs/ngeo208.html "We find that tropospheric temperature trends in the tropics are greater than the surface warming and increase with height." http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~qfu/Publications/grl.fu.2005.pdf "At middle and high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, the zonally averaged temperature at the surface increased faster than in the troposphere while at low latitudes of both hemispheres the temperature increased more slowly at the surface than in the troposphere." http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~kostya/Pdf/VinnikovEtAlTempTrends2005JD006392.pdf -
Argus at 03:04 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Re: Moderator's response to my comment - Thank you, I will be an interested reader of a possible future post around rain and drought. Re: SNRatio#28 - More of all extremes, as a result of increasing volumes and greater statistical variance, is an important aspect. I think we have to continue observing and asking questions for quite a while before we know. Re: SNRatio#29 - I thought it was OK here to question, and discuss, claims that were made in the top post... Re: dhogaza - Snowpack is a new word for me (my native language is not English), but I certainly see your point. In my country we have a lot of that, and a lot of hydro-electric power as well... -
Chris Colose at 02:42 AM on 21 June 2010How Jo Nova doesn't get the CO2 lag
Note that to get the magnitude of the glacial-interglacial CO2 feedback, you need other feedback processes such as wind-driven mining of CO2 out of the deep ocean. The solubility feedback itself is relatively weak and somewhat offset by the salinity-gas feedback. See this post and the Sigman/Boyle and Anderson et al. pieces linked inside. -
Riccardo at 02:02 AM on 21 June 2010Astronomical cycles
shawnhet, thanks for quoting the entire paragraph quoted just in part by me. Though, I do not understand why you refer to the conclusions and not the premises of which i'm talking about. Apparently you continue to shift your attention to something else. True that toward the end Scafetta extrapolated his curves but still the trend comes before his analysis of the cycles. You should not overlook it because his building would collapse without them. And you also persist in claiming i'm proposing a different trend. Maybe I should repeat it once more, I do not propose any. On the contrary, I say that no trend can be used without a reason when the results strongly depends on it, let alone extrapolate it. You fell into the mistake that even Scaffeta warned against. HumanityRules, becaause they're relatively small deviations and because they do not repeat cyclically, thus pointing to something that happened or not properly accounted for in those limited time ranges. -
HumanityRules at 01:39 AM on 21 June 2010Astronomical cycles
82 Riccardo "I'm not that impressed by the mismatch" Why? -
shawnhet at 01:29 AM on 21 June 2010Astronomical cycles
Riccardo, "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." Respectfully, it seems that you are the one who doesn't seem to understand what Scafetta has done here. See here: "If the global temperature continues to rise with the ***same acceleration*** observed during the period 1850-2009, in 2100 the global temperature will be little bit less than 1 oC warmer than in 2009. This estimate is about three times smaller than the average projection of the IPCC [2007]. However, the meaning of the quadratic fit forecast should not be mistaken: indeed, alternative fitting functions can be adopted, they would equally well fit the data from 1850 to 2009 but may diverge during the 21st century. The curve depicted in the figure just suggests that if an underlying warming trend continues for the next few decades, ***the cooling phase of the 60-year cycle*** may balance the underlying upward trend. Consequently, the temperature can remain almost stable until 2030-2040. The underlying warming trend can be due to ***both natural and anthropogenic influences***." The acceleration he is talking about is the quadratic trend(ie increasing anthro temp effect) combined with the 60 year cycle allows him to predict, for example, that temps may be flat until 2030-40. You can also see this of Figs 12A&B of the paper, where he has separate lines for the SSCM effect and the quadratic trend which are then combined to make his Forecast 1 line. ""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." Well, you're the one who proposed it ;). BTW, have you tried actually assuming that the only thing operating is quadratic curve to see what the predictions for the temp in 2100 is? If you tried comparing that quadratic trend with the one you proposed here, you might find it a bit harder to say they are all equally arbitrary. Cheers, :) -
Ian Forrester at 00:47 AM on 21 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Johnd, did you read all of the paper you quoted? Here is a comment from page 19:Less response with hotter conditions
What do you think the average temperature will be at global CO2 concentrations of 550 ppm? -
Mythago at 00:38 AM on 21 June 2010Watts 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. -
johnd at 00:25 AM on 21 June 2010Watts 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 -
johnd at 00:03 AM on 21 June 2010Watts 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 -
citizenschallenge at 23:58 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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)."} -
dhogaza at 23:33 PM on 20 June 2010Watts it like at a climate skeptic speakers event?
Oops, Argus, not Angus (I work with an Angus, sorry, Argus!) -
citizenschallenge at 23:33 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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! -
dhogaza at 23:27 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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... -
admrich at 23:09 PM on 20 June 2010The 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 -
Riccardo at 21:44 PM on 20 June 2010Astronomical 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. -
Ned at 21:30 PM on 20 June 2010Is 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. -
chris1204 at 21:13 PM on 20 June 2010Peer 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. -
HumanityRules at 21:04 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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. -
Ned at 20:53 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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. -
s1ck at 20:34 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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... -
HumanityRules at 20:29 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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. -
HumanityRules at 20:13 PM on 20 June 2010Astronomical cycles
in #79 1930 should read 1940. -
HumanityRules at 20:00 PM on 20 June 2010Astronomical 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. -
HumanityRules at 19:57 PM on 20 June 2010Astronomical 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? -
thingadonta at 19:45 PM on 20 June 2010Ocean 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. -
SNRatio at 19:21 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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? -
SNRatio at 19:17 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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? -
Argus at 19:13 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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? -
Megan Evans at 18:38 PM on 20 June 2010Watts 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).
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Lon Hocker at 18:14 PM on 20 June 2010Is 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.
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