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Comments 117301 to 117350:

117301. 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.)
117302. 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! ;-)
117303. 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.
117304. 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.
117305. 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.
117306. 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?
117307. 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.
117308. 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?
117309. 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
117310. 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?
117311. 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.
117312. 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.
117313. 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?
117314. 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)
117315. 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?
117316. 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.
117317. 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.
117318. 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.
117319. 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
117320. 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.
117321. 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.
117322. 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.
117323. 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
117324. 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!
117325. 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.'
117326. 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.
117327. Doug Bostrom at 13:40 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Making progress here. Between Willis and Hocker it seems that increases of both C02 and surface temperature are accepted as fact, reliably measured. Lots of buy-in to this even in the most revanchist circles, such as WUWT. Does this mean we're only a single step away from a grand reunification of thought?
117328. Stephen Baines at 13:34 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        I must apologize for all my mispellings now and in the future. I'm a truly abysmal typist.
117329. e at 13:28 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon >You lose the constant ... but all the other terms are intact. No, like you said in your previous sentence, all terms move over one place in the power series. This means that a linear function would turn into a constant, just like Ned said it would. By differentiating the CO2 series, what you are doing is comparing temperatures to changes in the rate of CO2 accumulation, not changes in total volume. This makes physical sense, as temperatures surely affect the rate at which various processes can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, so the comparison may have some merit, just not in the way you claim it does.
117330. Marcus at 13:23 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Another thing, I find it hilarious how aggro Mr Bolt gets over the supposed deception of Rudd, given how often this guy ran to the defense of serial liar John Howard. For me, the politics of the people who support the theory of AGW is irrelevant compared to the *science*. After all, the first person I ever remember talking about the dangers of global warming was the noted Tory PM Margaret Thatcher. Given her background in chemistry, I figured she knew whereof she spoke!
117331. John Bruno at 13:22 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Hulme's response is here. I am curious what others think, but I find this defense pretty flaccid. The spirt of the paper was quite critical of the IPCC, this was not merely a neutral review. Second, while Hulme may not have said "the ‘IPCC misleads’ anyone" he did write that "Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous." So the IPCC has not misled but is disingenuous? Third, the point "That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and attribution studies" is false. THAT is the main issue at hand. Hulme writes "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!" Well obviously, but nobody suggested that was the case (hello strawman). But to suggest that only a few dozen out of the many thousands of scientists that worked on AR4 agreed with the key take home message, that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate, or were qualified to do so is silly. (also note Hulme's argument has shifted (we have seen this tactic before too); initially it was that only a few dozen people were qualified to make that inference, but now he is saying not every author agreed).
117332. Marcus at 13:19 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Actually, John B, I think Hulme himself is being extremely pedantic in a bid to shore up the incredibly weak Denialist Argument-& that the denialists are shoring things up still further by misrepresenting his pedantic position!
117333. Paulie200 at 13:19 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Wouldn't it be a little bizarre for scientists in the other two working groups to be talking about "Impacts Adaptation and Vulnerability" (WGII) or "Mitigation" (WGIII) of something they felt doesn't exist in the first place?
        Moderator Response: good point. We call this steppingstone attribution.
117334. Stephen Baines at 13:15 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        johnd. On a more general level...Why prefer some some mysterious and unknown hypothesis over a perfectly legitimate explanation that is consistent with the our preexisting understanding, compatible with the observations and predictive of novel patterns? What scientists would do that? Who even does that in their everyday lives? If my bank account was loosing money and a budget exercise showed that my spending was greater than my income, it would be wishful thinking (not to mention irresponsible) to blame my losses on unpredictable variation in interest rates or some conspiracy on the part of the bankers, or the fickleness of the gods. There is certainly much to learn and I for one am excited to watch how our knowledge of climate develops in the future. But we should't ignore what the evidence is showing us right now in hopes that some ghost in the machine will show up to the party unannounced.
117335. John Bruno at 13:04 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        OK, there are some sites that seem to be somewhat misrepresenting Hulme a bit, mainly by paraphrasing and leaving out the "in the specific field of detection and attribution studies" of the quote, e.g., here
117336. Lon Hocker at 12:54 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        scaddenp See my comment above. Bless, doesn't anyone on this site know any calculus?
117337. John Bruno at 12:50 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        Robert, where did Hulme say he was misrepresented? I think that is interesting. A friend suggested before I post this, I should check in with Hulme. (I didn't) But the quote is from an article that he wrote, not something some reporter reported out of context. I read the paper and I think his point has been fairly represented by Bolt and others. Maybe Hulme can join in and explain himself.
117338. Lon Hocker at 12:45 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Hi there Ned. It's time for you to review your calculus. Differentiating moves all terms over one place in the power series. You lose the constant (in figure 3, that's the starting CO2 concentration), but all the other terms are intact. When I integrate figure 2 to get figure 3, you can see the match is excellent. There is no need, and indeed, no place for any human CO2 contribution. You claim that short term variations in CO2 come from temperature and long term from anthropogenic CO2. Great, data sets are available for CO2,temperature, and the man made contributions. Show me that your model fits the data as well as mine. No hand waving, just do it! If you can't, your model is wrong. Let me repeat myself. You can calculate the Satellite temperature anomaly series from the Mauna Loa CO2 series and visa versa. There is no need or place for an anthropogenic term. I know this contradicts what the IPCC says. Deal with it.
117339. scaddenp at 12:38 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Lon, compare your method to original critique of McLean etal, old news Your methodology differs from this how?
117340. Daved Green at 12:16 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        This whole denial thing is fuelled buy general societies lack of education and interest in science and scientific principles , very intelligent people are taken in by these arguements , the solutions to AGW are seen to be "green" therefore leftwing even communist meaning the issue polarises into left and right politics . After watching Monckton are reading the comments on youtube and denier blogs I despair at as ever getting our act together . Keeep up the good work John and thanks to all the others who post , I read this every day .
117341. Ned at 12:06 PM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        Hello, Lon. Thanks for joining us. In your post at WUWT, you wrote: Using two well accepted data sets, a simple model can be used to show that the rise in CO2 is a result of the temperature anomaly, not the other way around. This is the exact opposite of the IPCC model that claims that rising CO2 causes the temperature anomaly. This is simply wrong. Differentiating the CO2 time series converts the long-term trend in CO2 to a constant in your model. That expressly means that the trend is not dependent on temperature anomaly. The correct interpretation of your model would be that there is a long-term underlying rise in CO2, with short-term variations in that trend being partially correlated with temperature anomaly. This is quite different from your original claim. It's also basically uncontroversial -- despite your suggestion that you have overturned the IPCC model, all you've really done is provide a somewhat crude empirical model of the terrestrial carbon cycle feedbacks that amplify the direct CO2 forcing. As Joel Shore told you, this is discussed in some detail in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. I'm a bit surprised that you still don't seem to understand this. I would think that once people started pointing out these problems, you would have wanted to first make sure you understood them, then posted a clear and unambiguous retraction over at WUWT. Perhaps something like that is in the works?
117342. scaddenp at 12:03 PM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        johnd, that was a pretty rich post to make at this site. How about What happened to evidence for man-made warning and CO2 lead temperature and There is no empirical evidence If we have "natural warming", then what is causing it. Please remember that energy must be conserved so surface temperature increases must imply a flow of energy from some other source. How have we missed it? But then what about TOA energy imbalance? Everything in climate must have a physical causation whether long term climate or tomorrow weather and I dont buy "as yet undiscovered natural energy flows" compared to existing perfectly good theory of climate which matches what we observe.
117343. Chris McGrath at 12:01 PM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        The direct link to Hume's paper is http://www.probeinternational.org/Hulme-Mahony-PiPG%5B1%5D.pdf
117344. Robert Murphy at 11:58 AM on 16 June 2010
        Andrew Bolt distorts again
        It's amazing how quickly the meme has spread in just a few days. In the same way that every "skeptic" knows that Jones said warming stopped in 1995, or that the decline in the "hide the decline" referred to a decline in late 20th century temperatures, this new one will be accepted as Gospel and will be trotted out every time someone mentions consensus in any way. The fact that Hulme has already come out and said he was misrepresented will be ignored.
117345. KR at 11:54 AM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        Ah - correction to my last post, the temperature records and radiative balances indicate global warming. The rates, and much additional evidence (carbon isotopes, deductive reasoning about energy use, ocean pH, paleo evidence about forcings, etc.) point toward AGW.
117346. KR at 11:50 AM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        e - excellent comment, I like that Popper article. Berényi, you might also look at this article on inductive science by Wesley Salmon - he was an accomplished philosopher of science, not to mention a really nice guy. I'll note that purely deductive, self-contained logic is excellent for absolute proofs. However, correct inductive inferences allow you to learn new things, even if you cannot view every case, follow every lead, examine every single example in the observable universe and beyond. That's where new knowledge comes from. I spent several years studying epistemology and the philosophy of science - I'm well aware of the differences, and your tone is quite insulting. Let's step back a bit. The whole skeptic issue with UHI is calling into doubt the temperature record, and hence questioning AGW. While I cannot agree with your criticism of the GHCN data for any number of reasons (not least of which Spencer's data errors and the repeated validations of said data over many variations of location and subset), put that to the side. Even if your critique proves issues with the GHCN data it doesn't invalidate any of the independent temperature records or other evidence indicating AGW. I think all of AGW has been a subtext of this discussion, and I wanted to make that separation explicit. The UHI issue is tied specifically and entirely to the GHCN data and data sets dependent on it - and even Spencer notes that the MSU data are not calibrated using the surface temperatures. The inductive and robust part - The idea of AGW is based on multiple lines of evidence indicating a common conclusion, providing a probablistic (with a tied assumption of a reasonable uniformity of nature and results) inductive support for the idea that our carbon emissions are increasing the radiative greenhouse effect, causing long term climate warming. And as a tie-in, the GHCN data agrees. Supporting premises for GHCN are the (deductive) reasoning for area, UHI, and statistical effects and their correction, repeatable results with multiple subsets, AND each of the dovetailing independent data sets, which provide additional premises for a separate inductive inference that the GHCN data is correct. Induction is NOT perfect by any means. But deduction cannot teach you anything you don't already know.
117347. johnd at 11:47 AM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        What appears to be most misleading is that all the examples shown in the lead post, the independent lines of evidence, the signs of warming, are simply just that, signs of warming, but that is not what should be in dispute. The misleading part comes about by declaring that these are signs of AGW and dismissing that they may be due to natural warming. Where is the evidence that CO2 leads temperature and it is not temperature that leads CO2? Where is the evidence that clouds are temperature dependent and not that temperature is cloud dependent? This question of clouds is vitally important. According to NASA, "The balance between the cooling and warming actions of clouds is very close although, overall, averaging the effects of all the clouds around the globe, cooling predominates", COOLING PREDOMINATES. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Clouds/ We know also that clouds increase over winter, yet are not responsible for the winter. So lets not be misled into the debate as to whether the planet is warming or not, but instead examine the evidence that can prove it is due to man and not natural causes.
117348. Lon Hocker at 11:23 AM on 16 June 2010
        Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
        For those who haven't read my posting, you might do well to read it at WUWT, before commenting. The linear term is not gone, but converted to a constant. I am shocked how few people remember their calculus. I chose Mauna Loa CO2 and Satellite temperatures, because those are the only data source that is not disputed. A different view of the comparison is shown in Figure 3, where the Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations are modeled over the last 30 years using ONLY the satellite temperature data. Basically, Figure 2 is integrated to produce figure 3. There is no residual needing a contribution anthropogenic CO2. There is no missing linear term. Please feel free to make you own model, but I won't buy into it unless it matches the observations of those two very reliable data sets.
117349. moldyfox at 11:08 AM on 16 June 2010
        Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
        The truth is out there guys: FIRST hu?: If I remember from undergrad the 6.4W/m^2 is the difference between the energy Earth receives from the Sun (solar flux 1365W/m^2 minus the CERES global measured flux of reflected sunlight) and that which is emitted back to space as thermal infra-red light (again a flux globally measured by CERES). SECOND: If I were a climatologist (which I am not) before worrying about the +6.4W/m^2 CERES imbalance I would take a look at the latest peer reviewed engineering analysis of the quality of current CERES data from 2009 G. Matthews, “In-flight Spectral Characterization and Calibration Stability Estimates for the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System” Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. Vol 26, Issue 9, pp 1685-1716. This explains how CERES solar wavelength calibration suffers un-directly detectable in-flight contaminant degradation and ultimately is based entirely on a reference radiometer on the ground which itself has never been measured and whose mirrors are >13 years old.
117350. Doug Bostrom at 10:39 AM on 16 June 2010
        How climate skeptics mislead
        e: ...the source of error is different in each of these, and yet they produce essentially the same result. That's exactly what bothers me, but the strange coincidence is much broader than what's being discussed here and now in this thread. In various threads on this site assertions have been made to the effect that GPS systems are insufficiently inaccurate, tide measurements mean nothing, atmospheric temperature measurements are hopelessly flawed, sediment cores are faulty, oceanic temperature measurements are unreliable, C02 measurements are not correct, ice cores are contaminated, radiometers lie to us. Various faults have been pointed out in the data produced by this diverse collection of instruments, noise has been highlighted and generally exaggerated in importance yet again and again we see a disturbing similarity and confirmations of predictable connections and relationships in longitudinal trend lines produced from these data sources. We're supposed to conclude that-- coincidentally-- all data sources connected with climate research are substantially producing bunkum. Paradoxically, many of these measurement systems are somehow still useful for other applications. How likely is that? Another conclusion--more plausible-- might be that these systems are adequately well engineered and operated and that while undoubtedly there are greater or lesser sources of noise infecting data collections they are reasonably useful, with some reinforcement of that notion coming from their mutual consistency, their meta-measurements of various related climate-related subsystems.

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