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Comments 117201 to 117250:

117201. chris at 19:29 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        CoalGeologist at 16:43 PM on 16 June, 2010 "While the author concedes that peer-review is not perfect, I feel it's important to acknowledge a bit more candidly that the system has the potential to fail, both by generating "false positives" (approving non-deserving papers for publication) as well as "false negatives" (rejecting valid papers for unfair or invalid reasons)." That's an interesting one CoalGeologist: My feeling is that false positives usually don't have a particularily deleterious effect, although in rare cases (outright fraud that leads to a huge amount of wasted time, and badly done, but over-publicised research like the one underlying the MMR jab-autism scare in the UK) they clearly can. The smattering of false positives that dribble into climate-related journals or genetics/evolution journals (to pursue "intelligent design" politcs) and so on that serve political agendas are annoying, but only becasue they tend to promote a huge amount of hot air in non-science outlets like the blogosphere. They don't really affect the scientific process. It's very difficult to pick up outright fraud, but I do think some efforts could be made to intercept the occasional paper that clearly shouldn't have been published and is obviously (even if editors and reviewers don't notice) only submitted to promote non-scientific agenda positions (we could name some of these papers specifically!). I'm not sure that "false negatives" really exist. Of course papers are continuously being rejected from journals, in some cases unfairly, but that's not the end of the road. One simply takes the reviewers comments on board if there's anything useful in them, and submits the paper elsewhere. A paper that is sound will always be publishable somewhere. In fact with the modern emphasis on metrics (impact factors, citation counts etc.) there is a tendency for papers to go down a route which might involve something like: (i) hopeful submission to Nature (quick rejection) (ii) let's try Science (quick rejection) (iii) perhaps we can get it into PNAS (nope) (iv) O.K. we'll send it to the normal "house journal" of our field where it probably should have been submitted in the first place. There is certainly a smattering of very good papers that are undesrvedly rejected from good journals and end up in run of the mill journals. However if these papers are truly important then they will be noticed and their impact will be recognised.
117202. snapple at 19:24 PM on 16 June 2010
        Request for mainstream articles on climate
        Russian scientist Andrei Kapitsa claims that warming causes CO2, not that CO2 causes warming. http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055521000.htm Kapitsa says climate scientists put the cart before the horse. Isn’t he mistaking a feedback for the main event? He is from a prominent science family in Russia. Read about his father Pyotr and brother Sergei on Wikipedia for a start.
117203. snapple at 19:14 PM on 16 June 2010
        Request for mainstream articles on climate
        Here is an article by an old Russian scientist Andrei Kapitsa. He gives the denialist line in Russia and his views are promoted by Russian writers in foreign newspapers--such as India. Senator Inhofe cites Andrei Kapitsa. His father Pytor was very famous. His brother Sergei was a TV science personality. http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055521000.htm Here is another Inhofe adviser, Andrei Illarionov. He is with the Cato Institute and the Institute for Economic Analysis in Russia. He used to have a much better job, adviser to Putin, but supposedly had a falling out because he is such a free market, democracy loving, libertarian fellow. He has been a powerful opponent of the Kyoto Protocol. He also worked for Chernomyrdin, who was a boss of the oil and gas monopolies. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/12/11/a-few-notes-on-climate-change/ If you read Kapitsa and Illarionov, you will see all the denialist themes.
117204. chris at 19:05 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        A couple of people have pointed out that peer review doesn't stop once a paper is published. I would go further and say that peer review starts long before most papers are submitted, and that there is an additional crucial element to publishing scientific papers: (i) The work submitted in a manuscript doesn't flow linearly from bench to paper. In pretty much all cases the work has undergone major elements of peer review before it is submitted to a journal. The work will have likely gone through the hierarchy of peer-review involving presentation at lab meetings, presentation at departmental or faculty seminer series, presentation in poster or platform form at scientific meetings and perhaps also presented to a grant awarding committee. All of these constitute tests of the inherent validity of the work prior to submission, and contribute to polishing of the presentation, identifying errors, inconsistencies or alternative interpretations that might lead to additional experiments and so on, before a manuscript is submitted. So in general most serious scientific work is submitted with the expectation that it will be accepted (even if it may have to undergo revisions acording to referees and editors critiques). (ii) A fundamental element of science and scientific publishing relates to the basic integrity of the scientist and this consitutes a major element of quality control. Basically scientists want to find out stuff and have strong desire to get to the truth (the "truth" often being a rather proximal "truth" that relates to a particular sub-element of a scientific field). When I referee a paper I do this with the expectation that the authors have made a genuine attempt to do careful experiments and to interpret their data faithfully. I might not agree with their methodologies and interpretations, but I never consider that the authors are trying to sneak a paper into press under false pretences [we know from examples of major scientific frauds that this does happen and the (front-line referee-based) peer-review process isn't very good at picking this up]. The latter is interesting, since it's clear that in climate-related science and other areas of political contentiousness (e.g. intelligent design) people do try (and can suceed) to sneak bad science into the scientific literature.
117205. tobyjoyce at 18:54 PM on 16 June 2010
        Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
        @Passing Wind, Its seems you take Monckton at face value - a "public educator" who slips into error occasionally. Certainly, Al Gore is such a person. I think Gore tries to make his presentations based on the best of the available and most recent science. I know he has been accused and found wanting, but his intentions are honourable, and there is solid opinion that his "mistakes" are not mistakes at all. Monckton stands accused of being a dishonourable public educator in that he twists the evidence (even contrary evidence) to suit his point. Monckton makes very slick sales presentations, and he is very good at it. He must rehearse a great deal to attain the fluency he achieves. Here is a case in point. If Abraham was able to check Monckton's presentation against the recent science, then why wasn't Monckton? Keigwin, if he was aksed, would surely have pointed him to more recent studies which modified his 1996 conclusions. At best, Monckton is sloppy and dishonest by grabbing at the first paper which supports his point, without evaluating the range of available evidence and consulting the relevant scientists. Monckton's ignorance of the science is hidden behind the exterior flash of his presenting skills.
117206. MattJ at 18:53 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Rapid correction of such distortion is not good enough: we need to create a powerful disincentive against dissemination of such disinformation, powerful enough to give the media reason to hesitate to spread it. As things are now, they have the opposite: powerful incentive to prostitute themselves to the purveyors of disinformation. As to how to create this disincentive, well, that is the hard part! All my ideas are still very undeveloped, such as bombarding the web-sites of offending media outlets with emails/posts with well-informed protest every time they spread the disinformation. But certainly any such well-informed protest will find articles like this Skeptical Science article very helpful.
117207. Stephen Baines at 18:32 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon, there's no need to repeatedly tell people to review their calculus. What you've done just isn't that complex. But it isn't that transparent either, at least the final form of the derivative isn't. You should be trying to help us understand, rather than making arrogant comments. In any case, the existence of multiple terms doesn't really negate the concerns about your approach. Given that the last 30 years the increase in CO2 has been close to linear, you have still removed the vast majority of the variation in the original data by taking the first derivative (the linear term). I don't see how you can claim to explained the increase in CO2 via temp given that that most of the variation is removed. A statistical approach can only get you so far. Noone disputes that variations in temp should have some influence on the partitioning of CO2 between atmosphere ocean and land, and long term increases in CO2 should have an affect on temp. As others have said, that is one of the bases of the presumed CO2 induced climate feedbacks. Your analysis may have picked up the high frequency variation in CO2 driven by temp, but it ignored the trend that appears to be driving our current climate. Your anlaysis does nothing to negate the real facts in support of a human source for increasing CO2: humans have produced almost double the CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere, the changing stable isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 indicates a plant source, O2 has not also risen (as would be expected if CO2 was coming from a warming ocean) and net flux of CO2 is into the ocean, as indicated by its acidification.
117208. Paul D at 18:21 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Probably the only 'peer' review that actually wins is the proof over time that the science works, or works in the context of it's use. The story of Harrisons clocks to solve the longitude problem is a classic example. Not exactly science, but shows that eventually the correct solution is found. Physics in particular is littered with ideas that were initially rejected then accepted. But the key point is that in Harrisons case the Naval Board accepted his solution as did the scientific community accept the various Physics ideas. What didn't happen: The Naval Board was not disbanded because they were to conservative. The Physics community didn't get their funding cut because they initially rejected an idea. What is clear is that if an idea in science works, then it will be around for hundreds of years, probably thousands. Not because of democracy or because of a political campaign in favour of one theory or another. Peer review in a journal is probably the starting point, but it isn't the final outcome.
117209. Doug Bostrom at 17:37 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Please review your freshman year calculus. I'm probably not the only one to think this remark obnoxious, same as "deal with it" except repeated on this thread so often already as to be boring. Cliches about physicists duly noted, arrogance is actually not a flattering posture.
117210. Lon Hocker at 17:26 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        All: You might be interested to know that I first observed this correlation by integrating the temperature data to model the CO2 value. It's still posted on my site 2BC3.com/warming. I offered no explanation then because I hadn't come up with one! You are right, Willis' explanation does not agree with mine. Stephen Baines: Taking the derivitive promotes the parabolic term to the slope. Please review your freshman year calculus. Think Tailor series: the derivative of X**n is n*X**(n-1). Doug: Thanks for pointing out the C12/C13 data. I'll likely try to make a clearer explanation in a later post in WUWT, but if you buy that there is an equilibrium amount of CO2 in the air related to the ocean temperature, then when the ocean heats AND folks add CO2 to the air, the ocean will release less by the amount that folks add. Not surprisingly the atmosphere will hold CO2 that was added. Thanks all for your comments. I know that I am preaching heresy, but sometimes the "established" science is wrong.
117211. Stephen Baines at 17:02 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        @CoalGeologist Good points. However, I wonder if, with the expansion of scientific ranks since the 60s, the ability of single strong voices to drive the terms of the debate throuh peer review has declined somewhat. It may be that the much larger number of scientists adds another kind of inertia to the system (more people to convince, slower dispersal of ideas), but it is a different one to that typified by the plate tectonics debate....maybe.
117212. chris1204 at 16:51 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Doug @ 17 Chris, you should probably stop now. What a good idea :-)
117213. CoalGeologist at 16:43 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        While the author concedes that peer-review is not perfect, I feel it's important to acknowledge a bit more candidly that the system has the potential to fail, both by generating "false positives" (approving non-deserving papers for publication) as well as "false negatives" (rejecting valid papers for unfair or invalid reasons). The number of false positives and false negatives is not nearly as high as Argus's eyes (all of which seem to be both myopic and jaundiced) might perceive (@#8). But whatever the failure rate might be, it's non-zero. It is these very flaws that are most troubling to many AGW skeptics. Most branches of science can provide their own examples of die-hards clinging to old ideas, while stubbornly resisting new ones. A famous example in geology is the debate over the theory of plate tectonics during the 1960's & 70s. The key point is that the peer review system does not need to be successful 100% of the time in order to yield valid results in the long run. Despite any flaws on a case-by-case basis, 'science' as a whole will eventually reject non-viable hypotheses and faulty data, in favor of better hypotheses and better quality data. It's simply Darwinian selection applied to scientific hypotheses.
117214. Doug Bostrom at 16:40 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Don't journal editors lose their jobs when their journals lose money? No. They lose their jobs if they harm the reputation of the journal, or fail to enlist reviewers or the like. By "journal" we're not speaking of Newsweek. Chris, you should probably stop now.
117215. Doug Bostrom at 16:31 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Chris, many journals in fact do attempt to keep the authors of papers under review unknown to reviewers but it's a tricky thing because of self-cites and the like. Lots of journals don't bother with the attempt. Meanwhile, your unfounded speculations about misconduct by reviewers do not remotely resemble a case that commercial considerations drive reviewer behavior.
117216. Stephen Baines at 16:26 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Argus, you presume that people cannot look past their "own ideas" to see the data for what it says. My experience says otherwise. Generally, the reviewers I have dealt with are more than fair. There have been notable exceptions, but the fact that they stick out in my mind is telling as well-- they are relatively few and far between. The social pressure on scientists to discharge their duty appropriately in peer review (or in editing) is actually quite strong. Nobody wants to be taken for a fool. And vindictivenes also has serious costs. I think Stephan acknowledged that the system isn't perfect, but in the end the proof is in the pudding and there is little doubt it has generated some very useful knowledge. It's certainly less biased than decision making based on the maximization of sales.
117217. Steve L at 16:19 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Rebuttals and commentaries that reveal flaws in earlier papers can drive up citation counts (rather than the original authors getting egg on their face, they can receive a benefit of including a flaw in their analysis). It seems that oftentimes authors intend to leave something incomplete, and assumption unchecked, anything that will give them a chance to re-analyze the same data with a little tweak to show that they're making progress. I hardly ever produce publishable work, so maybe I'm just ignorant, but it seems to me that peer review isn't all that good a spam filter. (Note: my opinion on this is probably coloured by the fact that my field isn't very competitive.)
117218. Chemware at 16:18 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        @Argus Wrong. Otherwise, Einstein's "Jewish Science" would never have got published, and we never would have heard of Relativity. In fact, I would not be reading your post, because it relies on technologies developed from quantum mechanics - one of the weirdest, new and most controversial areas of science ever developed. Even Einstein railed against it ("God does not play dice!"). However, if you do try to publish a paper about how the moon really is made of green cheese, then you had better have some pretty sound evidence why the previous 10,000 or so peer-reviewed papers all got it wrong. Same for climate change.
117219. chris1204 at 16:16 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        PS: Citation analysis is the latest fad - indeed, there are league tables for journals and the frequency with which their articles are cited. So 'no commercial interest?' Don't journal editors lose their jobs when their journals lose money? Mind you, peer review is probably as good a system as any. Just don't turn it into an article of faith
117220. chris1204 at 16:09 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        'The editor of the journal sends the paper to several other scientists. Their job is to independently, and usually anonymously, evaluate my work and to determine whether my experiment was sound and is worthy of being published.' Now you would think reading this that the peer reviewer does not know who the author of the article under review is. This is not so. Moreover: 'First of all, there is no commercial consideration involved in the publication decision—none, zero, zippo, zilch.' Really? Doesn't keeping a rival's work out of the public eye give you a competitive edge when you go hunting for grants? BTW, I didn't think the Ioannides paper was 'strange.'
117221. johnd at 16:06 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        scaddenp at 14:31 PM, Phil, nobody is suggesting the undersea current referred to has just appeared, only it being identified, and being mapped and quantified more recently. No doubt there are many more questions that they will be seeking answers to other than those I posed. It is at about 3500m and some of the water displaced from the northern basins returns to the Antarctic waters. Being warmer than the water that displaced it, there will be a transfer of energy. Strong export of Antarctic Bottom Water east of the Kerguelen plateau
117222. Glenn Tamblyn at 16:04 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Stephen Baines @5 Your comment about the 2 stage nature of peer review is very apt The first stage of peer review is like getting a pass to enter the exam room. Then you have to pass the exam which is the peer review of ALL your scientific colleagues. The entire readership of the journal. Therefore perhaps the best test of the merit of a piece of work is not simply its publication, but the extent to which has subsequently been cited by others, and not in rebuttal. Citations analysis might be a useful tool for examining the importance of published works for & against AGW. And the extent to which AGW Sceptical papers actually gain any traction.
117223. Argus at 15:58 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        To me, the peer review system, as described here, seems to be a system that assures that every new article that gets published, agrees with the present consensus. In other words, new or controversial ideas will have a hard time to get past a band of reviewers who prefer their own ideas.
        Moderator Response: This is a fair comment. It can be difficult to publish something that goes against the grain, challenges a bit shot or a major paradigm, etc. But it isn't impossible. (JB)
117224. OPatrick at 15:51 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        I do wonder about Hulme's "Giving the impression that the IPCC consensus means everyone agrees with everyone else – as I think some well-meaning but uninformed commentaries do (or have a tendency to do)". Are there really commentators implying this, or is it just another example of what seems to be becoming a common 'there are those who exaggerate on both sides of the debate' type argument? I am not convinced that this argument is sound - for example I remember a year or two back when a Greenpeace quote about melting arctic ice was taken out of context to suggest some extreme alarmism. This reverberated around for some time even though it was patently and demonstrably a false accusation. Why would such a weak example need to be so prominently aired if such alarmism was so common? Can anyone find examples of this 'well-meaning but uninformed' commentary? I can't remember coming across any - most of the comments I read tend to be nuanced and if anything overstate the uncertainty.
117225. Tom Dayton at 15:45 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Stephen Baines's reply that the paper richard Hockey cited is "odd" is more polite than I would have replied. Perhaps we can avoid repeating the details of critiques that have been published elsewhere, such as the one by Goodman and Greenland in PLOS (2007). Stephan Lewandowsky certainly is well qualified to reply. (Hi, Stephan! I don't remember if we ever met, or if Frank's frequent mention of you is why I remember you. I left OU in the Fall of 1989.)
117226. Bern at 15:28 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Actually, I think analogising peer review to a spam filter is quite apt. My spam filter gets rid of a lot of dross (one account gets ~40+ messages per day advertising mail-order degrees, fake rolexes, anatomical enhancements, and assorted pharmaceuticals). I check the spam box regularly, looking for false positives. I've found, on average, about one every 6 or 7 months (a false-positive rate of about 1 in about 7000, compared to a negligible false-negative rate - I've flagged messages as spam three times in the 6-year life of that account). On the other hand, the "filtered" email also contains a lot of stuff that, while not actually spam, is still kind of pointless and a waste of my time (do I really need to see another bunch of lolcats?). So while the 'filter' gets rid of the obvious rubbish, it doesn't necessarily only admit pearls of electronic wisdom. Similarly for peer review. Nobody claims that it's perfect (as pointed out in the article, it gets the occasional 'false positive', and also lets some questionable stuff slip through), but it's by far the best system we have for large-scale review of scientific publications. Feel free to suggest a better system - I'm sure you'd receive appropriate accolades if you came up with one that did a better job! @richard.hockey at #3: that paper seems to be referring to problems in medical research, specifically looking at papers publishing results of research that has not been replicated. I'm not sure it's applicable to science in general, but I'm also not at all qualified to make that call! ;-)
117227. Stephen Baines at 15:23 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Richard.Hockey What an odd paper! It's assessment of what constitutes "True" vs "False" is based solely on an uncorrected statistical p-value of 0.05. Of course, p-values involving multiple comparisons are often corrected in a number of ways to make them more conservative, and effect sizes are often taken into account. The author doesn't seem to acknowledge this. Every test that yields a successful p-value is not set in stone and accepted as fact. Scientists are human so personal biases are involved too. The point of peer review is to average out such biases as much as possible. Also every positive result is taken as provisional by anyone with a brain, which generally includes most scientists. This paper ignores the second stage of peer review...the judgement by the larger peer community after publication. Scientists account for the amount of data and the skill of the researchers when making judgements about which papers to focus on. It helps if those papers echo others (which is a less probable event being a conjoined probability function). I wonder if the idea that specific findings meeting the p<0.05 standard are right or wrong is unique to applied/regulatory specific fields such as clinical medicine.
117228. Tom Dayton at 15:17 PM on 16 June 2010
        It's the sun
        climatepatrol, the Earth's energy imbalance is still increasing, which it cannot be doing if the your hypothesis is correct. See the post Climate Time Lag.
117229. chris1204 at 15:13 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Phillipe @ 2 And often psychoactive drugs do not work exactly the way they're supposed to. Same for therapy. We don't pretend otherwise. But we don't howl down psychiatrists who admit this. But some (by no means all or even most) proponents of AGW do behave more like Scientologists than scientists.
117230. Doug Bostrom at 15:10 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Failing any evidence of the existence of draconian censorship, rank editorial misconduct or other significant corruption, obsessing about raw pro versus con personality counts in the pool of IPCC scientific resource talent is definitely a grade above the "Oregon Petition" but hardly seems worth much ink. The objective of the IPCC reports is a reasonable synthesis of the best published thinking on climate and anthropogenic influences on climate, not to produce an opinion poll based on what participants in the IPCC process itself think or believe. A critical review comment can and ideally should be reasonably elaborated, hefty enough to make a usefully airtight argument in its own right but at the end of the day it's not a form of publication. Short of reviews being peer-reviewed themselves, they're (again, ideally) a brand of highly informed opinion. So perhaps we should forget about the existence or nonexistence of dissenting opinions expressed by reviewers, IPCC section authors and editors and instead stick with the relative weight of available instances of substantiated dissent. That is to say, was any published research significantly falsifying the theoretical and observational underpinnings of the apparent effect we're having on climate left out of the IPCC reports? If not, where's the problem?
117231. Bern at 15:03 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        To be honest, I rarely read the opinion pieces in The Australian, or any other Murdoch-owned paper, these days. I kind of know what they're going to say as soon as I read the title or the opening paragraph to find out what the subject is. It is curious, though, that Rupert Murdoch seems to have 'coincidentally' employed so many editors and commentators who just happen to be 'skeptical' about AGW. I guess, though, that they're just pandering to their specific audiences for those outlets. Mr Murdoch himself allegedly has a pro-AGW opinion - "Climate Change poses clear, catastrophic threats". That same article states that Fox & other parts of News Corp are going green(er), using renewables & offsetting emissions. It seems disingenuous (there's that word again!), though, to claim to be 'doing your bit' by offsetting your personal emissions while repeating some of the most blatant 'denialist' distortions to hundreds of millions of others.
117232. climatepatrol at 14:57 PM on 16 June 2010
        It's the sun
        Dear scientists I am not a scientist, just into financial analysis and statistics with a strong intrest into how the sceptical science progress works with regard to AGW. I would like to challenge you with the following hypothesis with regard to the amplitude of solar forcing in the current climate system. Estimations of climate sensitivity based on top-of-atmosphere radiation imbalance, (Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 1923–1930, 2010 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1923/2010/ © Author(s) 2010) is the most recent study that I believe will solve much of the problem about the portion of solar forcing as stored in the present climate memory (soil, cryosphere, oceans, etc.). From the abstract: In this study, the TOA imbalance value of 0.85 W/m2 is used. Note that this imbalance value has large uncertainties. Based on this value, a positive climate feedback with a feedback coefficient ranging from −1.3 to −1.0 W/m2/K is found. The range of feedback coefficient is determined by climate system memory. The longer the memory, the stronger the positive feedback. The estimated time constant of the climate is large (70120 years) mainly owing to the deep ocean heat transport, implying that the system may be not in an equilibrium state under the external forcing during the industrial era. For the doubled-CO2 climate (or 3.7W/m2 forcing), the estimated global warming would be 3.1K if the current estimate Correspondence to: B. Lin (bing.lin@nasa.gov) of 0.85 W/m2 TOA net radiative heating could be confirmed. With accurate long-term measurements of TOA radiation, the analysis method suggested by this study provides a great potential in the estimations of middle-range climate sensitivity. From the results: Coupled ocean-atmosphere GCM simulations (Hansen et al., 2007) show that the climate response for an instantaneous 2×CO2 forcing reaches 60% of the equilibrium response after 100 years and 90% after 1000 years. The former system response corresponds to a time constant of 109 years, which is consistent with current estimates, while the latter indicates another even bigger time constant of the climate system of about 434 years. This longer time scale may be related to thermohaline circulations of the deep ocean, whose physical processes are beyond the scope of current study. It has been discussed that the mainly short-wave radiation originating from direct solar radiation heats the ocean more efficiently than long term radiation from the atmosphere. I don't want to enter into a debagte about that again. So let's assume, the memory for both solar and greenhouse forcing is about the same over time. Solar forcing at the beginning of the industrial area was about 1365.3 W/m2, it then increased steadily to reach about 1366.2 W/m2 in 1960. The 2000 forcing is about 1365.8, which makes it an average forcing of about 1366 W/m2 during those 40 years. This means a sustained natural forcing of about 0.7W/m2 above year 1880 affected the climate system between approx. 1950 - 2005. Therefore, even though we are now in a sustained solar minimum, the memory of the climate system resulting from about +0.7W/m2 solar irradiance is now 60 years old. If, according to AOGCMs, only 60% of the equilibrum response is reached after 100 years for CO2 doubling, I deduce at least the same (if not longer periods) are required for an equilibrium response to solar forcing. Assuming, it is the same, it is safe to assume that at least 40% of the current, estimated radiative imbalance of 0.85W/m2 since 1880 is due to solar forcing. Why? 0.28W response is given after 100 years and later, this leaves a minimum of 0.35W in the memory after 60 years, in 2010. This leaves 0.5W/m2 owing to human forcings, not 0.85W/m2 as "committed" atmospheric warming resulting from human activities for the future. Since, with its logarithmic effect, we reached roughly 1.6W/m2 forcing since the beginning of ia. Subtractingg 0.5W/m2, this leaves 1.1W/m2 to increase temperature of the atmosphere. So with model average beeing S=3°C for 2xCO2eq (3.7W/m2), temperature increase owing to human radiative forces should be roughly +0.9°C from surface to TOA. Even IF this is the case and can be measured soon, it will take 1000 years to reach 90% of the 3°C increase for 2xCO2, remember?
117233. richard.hockey at 14:52 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        A very naive view of peer review. But I guess its the best we have. Have a look at this recent article on PLOS. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by John P. A. Ioannidis. http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124
117234. Philippe Chantreau at 14:37 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        Yes Chris. And often psychoactive drugs do not work exactly the way they're supposed to. Same for therapy. Does that mean we should buy into the propaganda piece against psychiatry that scientologists circulate?
117235. Doug Bostrom at 14:31 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon, you -don't- see a temperature trend in the data you use? Your own paper says "Figure 1 shows a plot of the Ocean Temperature Anomaly from the satellite data shows a general rising trend. Shown along with the temperature data is a simple linear model showing the temperature rise as a linear function of CO2 concentration.
117236. scaddenp at 14:31 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        Johnd. The IPCC WG1 discusses all the anthropogenic gases. N2O is 0.16W/m whereas CO2 is 1.66W/m2. Methane is 0.48W/m2. I fully agree that action is required on ALL. The cold current discovery - no I dont see how this is moving energy from ocean to surface. Are you postulating that this current just appeared in recent years? We have good data to 700m and reasonable data to 2000m. To affect surface temperatures, you have to find the energy flow in there. As to TOA - well I guess the important point here is the nature of radiative balance in terms of it cause.
117237. Stephen Baines at 14:29 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon, you yourself (#52) said above that the linear trend is converted to a constant when you take the derivative of the time series in CO2. There is no slope, just a constant, so no trend over time. Everyone here is agreed that you can't explain away the increase in CO2 using temp if you remove the CO2 trend first. What gives? We're confused. Also, why not try your analysis without taking the derivative first? And how do you reconcile this analysis with change in isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 and observed acidification of the ocean?
117238. chris1204 at 14:24 PM on 16 June 2010
        Peer review vs commercials and spam
        A very starry eyed perspective on peer review. It often doesn't work that way (though that's the way it's supposed to work).
        Moderator Response: chriscanaris it actually usually does work precisely like that. If anything the article underplays how nasty and tough peer review is. Reviewers are ruthless and sciences is a highly competitive profession. (JB)
117239. Doug Bostrom at 14:23 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Come to think of it, I suppose Hocker's in disagreement with Eschenbach, so forget the Grand Unification. Meanwhile there's at least one person here who's going to disagree with Lon's hypothesis because OHC measurements are "wrong", suffering from splicing problems. Berenyi Peter, where are you? Lon, you say a warmer ocean ocean is releasing C02 as a result of an increase in temperature. I take it you disagree with isotope ratios as a means of identifying the provenance of C02? Or do you see the C02 in the ocean as being very poorly mixed?
117240. Philippe Chantreau at 14:22 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        The Executive Summary might be a problem but something must be put together for policy makers, who usually lack scientific understanding in ways that seem "beyond redemption." Joe Barton has demonstrated, in congressional hearings, his cluelessness about continental drift. In the US, the vast majority of lawmakers and politicians are lawyers. Fred Thompson's inane comments on Mars are another case in point. Many other countries are plagued by the same problem. Putting things together so they understand is as difficult as doing it for the general public.
117241. e at 14:22 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon, the mistake you're making is confusing changes in rate with the rate itself. Your calculus is fine, it's your interpretation of that calculus that is in error. Since you have training in physics, I think a nice physical analogy will help illustrate the error: Say you are a skydiver falling at terminal velocity. It should evident that a) you are falling and b) your velocity is constant, so the derivative of your position is a constant. Now, let's say you start moving your arms in and out. As you spread your arms out, your velocity decreases, as you pull them in, your velocity increases. Now, if you differentiate the function of your position (getting velocity), and compare it to the spread of your arms, lo and behold, you'll find a very strong correlation! Does that mean that the motion of your arms is causing you to fall? Of course not! To second some comments made by others, I appreciate that you have come here to take your criticism head on, it is indeed admirable. I hope you have the mental fortitude to step back and evaluate your own claims critically.
117242. scaddenp at 14:19 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon, I can do my calculus thank you. Now if you have an series which contain an oscillating component and a trend, you cant make statements about cause of trend by correlation of something with a differential of the series. McLean tried that. So far all you are talking about is the unremarkable and well discussed carbon feedback cycle as other posters have explained.
117243. Albatross at 14:13 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        DeepClimate has some useful insight into how Dr. Hulme's comments have been misrepresented and distorted. Dr. Hulme is not pleased and has issued a clarification. This is yet another example of how "skeptics" intentionally mislead. As for consensus, let us not forget the poll reported in EOS: For details, for details on the poll please go here
117244. Rob Honeycutt at 14:09 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        johnd said... The misleading part comes about by declaring that these are signs of AGW and dismissing that they may be due to natural warming. I'm sorry but I have to take exception to this. If we look at almost any combination of proxy temp records of the past few thousand to million years I think it becomes obvious that something is extremely different now. I fail to see how such a dramatic change in temp could occur naturally. It "may" be natural but that is an extremely small possibility because if it were natural one would expect that we would be just as dramatically aware of the natural cause. The Siberian Traps have not reasserted themselves last I heard. What we do face is the reality that humans and technology have dramatically changed over the past 150 years.
117245. gallopingcamel at 14:08 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Wow! Great stuff. Nice of Hocker to show up. Also good to note y'all were civil to him. Ned, I usually disagree with you but this time you and caerbannog have my vote.
117246. johnd at 13:59 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        scaddenp at 12:03 PM, Phil, my comments were in response to the title of this thread, and how the thread itself was lead, mislead, into a debate over the magnitude of a symptom, warming, rather than what are the reasons for it, which in itself is neglecting the full picture, a charge made in the lead post against the sceptics generally. Even the statement in the lead post "we see more heat being trapped by carbon dioxide" is misleading as it is accepted that water vapour is directly responsible whilst CO2 and other greenhouse gases are merely the forcing agents and only responsible for a very small part of direct warming. But how much attention is devoted to the other greenhouse gases. Ongoing research is being conducted on nitrous oxide which is supposedly 300 times as potent as CO2 and accounts for about 5% of Australia's national emissions. The rise in the global use of nitrogenous fertilisers traces a similar path to the global temperature rise. Is that coincidence or a factor? Is it misleading to leave it out of any calculations relating CO2 to temperatures? Action required to curb N2O will be different to that required to curb CO2. With regards to your comment about undiscovered energy flows. The recent discovery of a major deep sea current of Antarctic bottom water east of the Kerguelen plateau which deposits cold oxygen-rich water in the deep ocean basins further north must displace an equal quantity of warmer water. Could this be a newly discovered energy flow? How does the displaced energy in the water manifest itself elsewhere? Is this related to the cycles that have been identified in the various oceans, in this case the IOD? Finally your comment about the TOA energy imbalance. What about it? Would the same TOA energy imbalance have been present during each of the previous interglacial periods? Without such an imbalance, warming would not be possible irrespective of the cause.
117247. Joe Blog at 13:52 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        John B at 13:22 PM on 16 June, 2010 Interesting link John B... But id put it to you that what he is claiming is that when people claim "2500(pick a number) IPCC scientists have reached a consensus." Its disingenuous... Because its actually relatively easy to prove this to be false. There may be 2500 contributors... But that doesn't translate to 2500 scientists in total agreement. And it becomes an easy task to prove other wise... thus its disingenuous. Take these comments from Dr. Andrew A. Lacis - NASA GISS On chapter 9 AR4 for example. "There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted." I dont doubt that he believes in AGW... But his comments could be used as proof of dissent... And it would take you 10 seconds on google to find many more examples. And to get lists of contributors.
        Moderator Response: "... IPCC scientists have reached a consensus." Its disingenuous... Because its actually relatively easy to prove this to be false. There may be 2500 contributors... But that doesn't translate to 2500 scientists in total agreement." JB: Reaching a consensus does not = total agreement
117248. Lon Hocker at 13:52 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        doug_bostrom, I'll buy into that if you change "increases" to "changes". Please note that the satellite temperature anomalies are anything but monotonically increasing. The fun part of my analysis is that these bumps correlate to kinks in the CO2 plot. No we're not one step away. The next step is to accept that the rate of change of CO2 correlates nicely with the satellite-measured temperature anomaly. The final step is to agree on why!
117249. chris1204 at 13:50 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Mike Hulme seems to be concerned about the disconnect between 'the consensus' and the 'the sceptics' and the corrosive impact this has on the credibility of climate science in the wider community. In his response (link courtesy of John B @ 8), he writes: 'The point of this bit of our article was to draw attention to the need for a more nuanced understanding of what an IPCC ‘consensus’ is – as I say: “Without a careful explanation about what it means, this drive for consensus can leave the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.” The IPCC consensus does not mean – clearly cannot possibly mean – that every scientist involved in the IPCC process agrees with every single statement in the IPCC! Some scientists involved in the IPCC did not agree with the IPCC’s projections of future sea-level. Giving the impression that the IPCC consensus means everyone agrees with everyone else – as I think some well-meaning but uninformed commentaries do (or have a tendency to do) – is unhelpful; it doesn’t reflect the uncertain, exploratory and sometimes contested nature of scientific knowledge.' Unfortunately, those who point to the uncertainties in any particular line of evidence are then called cherry pickers. Mike Hulme seems to appreciate the complexities. Otherwise, you end up with something akin to the Cold War meme of arguments needing to be 'clearer than truth.'
117250. e at 13:50 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon >You can calculate the Satellite temperature anomaly series from the Mauna Loa CO2 series and visa versa. No, you can calculate the derivative of CO2 levels from temperature anomaly, if you try to integrate back to the absolute CO2 level change, you lose a constant. Again, all you can conclude from this is that temperatures affect the rate at which CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, not a direct correlation to changes in absolute volume.

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