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HumanityRules at 14:20 PM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Paul W at 00:18 AM on 12 June, 2010 Nice to see another debunk. Maybe that's over stating it. Even Hocker states "I am not wed to the theory I present" It's fair to say that WUWT also posted a Willis Eschenbach article that firmly states 20th century CO2 rise is caused by burning fossil fuels Some people claim, that there’s a human to blame … -
Doug Bostrom at 14:01 PM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Thingadonta you've not explained yourself. Here's a hint: you'll need to provide more detail than the papers you cite as incorrect in order to show why that is so. Another way of saying it is that you'll need to advance our understanding. -
Marcus at 13:55 PM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Here's my point, PW: On all the specific points about Monckton (his lack of citations on slides &/or his mis-citation of slides; his failure to contact the scientists whose work he presents; his misrepresentation of data in slides; his deliberate misinterpretation of the conclusions of these scientists' work & the use of pseudo-science to "debunk" the work of those scientists whose work he can't misrepresent) Abraham's facts actually *do* stand up to close scrutiny. Oh sure a nitpicker-like yourself-might be able to find small technicalities in which Abraham is incorrect, but that's a far cry from the rampant dishonesty displayed by Monckton in his snake-oil salesman show. Yet from the moment you came here, PW, you've assumed-without evidence-that Abraham is being dishonest, yet you seem to assume that Monckton is honest & decent-when *all* the evidence says absolutely otherwise (just look at his recent attack on Abraham if you want proof-honest & rational people don't resort to ad-hominem attack as their first line of defense; & his hypocrisy was totally outstanding!) This proves to me that your claim to be an "impartial observer" in this lacks any real credibility! -
gallopingcamel at 13:40 PM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
If Hocker is right the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is coming out of the oceans in which case there should be no detectable change in the atmospheric C12/C14 ratio. If the additional CO2 is coming from burning fossil fuels as the IPCC claims, the amount of C14 in the atmosphere should be falling. My understanding is that this is the case but I can't remember where I read it. Hopefully BP or some other learned gentleman can set me straight. -
CoalGeologist at 13:31 PM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
GP2 @15 wrote:Actually the pacific ocean is a net co2 sink during el nino due to reduced upwelling of carbon rich deepwater(and the opposite for la nina), the strong correlation is due to land carbon fluxes; enso and oceanic co2 fluxes are anticorrelated:
Thanks for correcting my simplistic notion of what's occurring. On the other hand, I'm not sure you've got it exactly right either. Assuming (!) I understand correctly, your statement would apply not to the entire Pacific Ocean, but only to the equatorial region, which is generally a zone of upwelling. Colder parts of the ocean remain a CO2 sink at all times, and the ocean as a whole remains a net sink. Actually, the equatorial Pacific region remains a net source of atmospheric CO2 even during El Nino events, although at a substantially reduced rate, owing to the lower pCO2 of the warmer surface waters (See diagram below from Feely et al. (1999), who concluded that the sea to air flux of CO2 from the equatorial oceans is 30-80% lower during El Nino periods.) Jones et al. (2001) begin their paper by noting that atmospheric CO2 is observed to increase during El Nino events, and decrease during La Nina events, and that this relationship has been known since the 1970s. Thus, at minimum, we can conclude that some combination of processes brings about this net result, and as you've noted, it's interpreted (AR4-WG1, Parts 5 & 7) to be dominated by terrestrial processes. I think it's safe to say, however, that we don't have the full picture yet. In any case, while I can barely begin to understand the complexity of the CO2 cycle, it's evident that a simple empirical correlation between tropospheric temperatures and CO2 may be an important observation, but sheds little (direct) light on the underlying climate processes.
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Mal Adapted at 12:57 PM on 12 June 2010Request for mainstream articles on climate
I just submitted an article from The Register to John's database. I started following El Reg in the last century, for breaking news in the IT sector, and in the broader scientific arena as well. It has a huge audience. Some years ago one of their staff writers, Andrew Orlowski, started reporting on climate issues from a gleeful denier POV. I've tried to defend science in comments on most of their climate-related articles, but recently I've had comments rejected for no discernible reason. I'm soliciting SkepticalScience regulars to monitor climate-related articles on El Reg, and submit comments in defense of science to counter the denier hordes. As with other denier sites, it's a tough job, but it needs doing. -
thingadonta at 12:52 PM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
re 42 Doug Bostrom "Thingadonta, would you please elaborate on the integration you speak of and how it leads to the conclusion you mention? Failing that, I don't see how the remarks you make about Mann and Weart cannot better be applied to you yourself". The question is one of uncertainties and weaknesses in datasets, and how these lead to 'toxic' effects when attempting to 'average out' data. Exactly the same mathematical fudging cocurred with sub prime mortgages, if you attempt to 'average out' or spread 'risk' by mixing uncertainties/risk with good data/low risk you can just make things more skewed. It's a mathematicians trick to say if you 'average it out' it gives a better picture, uncertainties can multiply in such cases and make the dataset 'toxic'. This is what the recent papers by eg M.Mann do, they mix in weak data and fudge the uncertainties to give a false picture of 'averaging out' the weak and sparse data to make it seem as if the MWP wasnt global. The lack of data for the MWP in the southern hemisphere speaks for itself, you cannot draw the conclusion that it was not global by averaging out the lack of data, or the differential response by different proxies. Mann is well known in his various papers for bunchng (tranching) and treating proxies the same. It gives a false picture. -
Marcus at 12:47 PM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Wow, PW, you're certainly willing to "die in a ditch" to defend Monckton's honor-but you're drawing some massively long bows in claiming that Keigwin's Paper somehow proves Abraham's *entire* presentation wrong. For starters, it's only a *single* paper, & not an especially recent one-other, much better paleo-climate studies have come along to supersede these kinds of earlier studies (just look at the refinement of the original Mann 1998 Hockey Stick). Secondly, Monckton uses Keigwin's 1996 paper to "prove" his point that the Medieval Warm Period was "real, global & warmer than today"-in truth it only proves the first point-namely that the MWP was real (hardly surprising given that the MWP isn't exactly controversial). However, given the limited scope of Keigwin's 1996 paper, it certainly does not prove that the MWP was globally warmer than it is currently-only that it was warmer around the Sargasso sea region. Therefore Monckton was misrepresenting Keigwin's research by using it to back his assertion (a classic denialist trick of comparing apples with oranges)-this fact is further backed by Keigwin's reply to Abraham's e-mail, where he agrees with him that he understands current temperatures-globally-to be warmer than in the MWP. So no, PW, Abraham's claims do *not* fail close scrutiny-wheras Monckton's fail even the most cursory of examinations (as highlighted in Chris's reply at #45). That you're so quick to attack Abraham's credibility on the flimsiest of pretexts, yet apparently have *nothing* to say about Monckton's obviously flagrant misuse-& mislabeling-of data, prove that you're certainly not a true skeptic! -
thingadonta at 12:38 PM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part III – Acid Reflux?
ned 37: Pick any major period of volcanic activity in the geological record, and see how long it takes to disrupt coral ecosystems. -
muoncounter at 12:09 PM on 12 June 2010Websites to monitor the Arctic Sea Ice
There are interesting similarities between sea ice extent and snow extent from the Rutgers Snow Lab mentioned at the bottom of the website list in the body of this article. And I couldn't resist the teaser "if you want to make graphs;" so I made graphs. For each of the following two graphs, I averaged the three months of maximum or minimum snow extent (area) and plotted the corresponding ice extent (one month, September min or March max). The snow data break out Eurasia, North America (Canada/US) and Greenland; I used the total snow area for the Northern Hemisphere. I then calculated the period average and plotted the percentage difference between that average and the snow extent for each year. The snow data are much noisier; for some minimal smoothing, I used a 2 year trailing average.JFM= Jan-Feb-Mar, JAS= July-Aug-Sept Note that both graphs have the same vertical scale; we see some impressive variation in the summer minima. However, the winter change is much smaller (so much for the anecdotal stories that run rampant during the winters: ‘What global warming? Its snowing here!’) The summer data steepens in slope, reminiscent of the logistic trend discussed here. Further, it would seem reasonable to conclude that if the winter snow-covered areas remain consistent while increasingly smaller areas are snow-covered each summer, more freshwater is changing from frozen to liquid back each year. Where does this water go? Increasing sea level? Then why don't we a corresponding up/down signal in sea level? Or could the snowmelt be fueling more precipitation? We observe that each melt season leaves a smaller snow-covered area, but each winter has about the same snow area; there must be more snow falling each winter. Here is a graph showing the growing disparity between winter snowfall and summer snowmelt.
Or maybe global warming actually does result in more snowfall.
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Passing Wind at 11:20 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
michael sweet @ post 48. I have NOT watched all of Abraham's presentation in one sitting. I have concentrated on Abraham's slides 22 to 32 inclusive, which equates to Monckton's St Paul presentation from 32:40 to 37:59. I have transcribed both Abraham and Monckton and compared Monckton's argument with that which Abraham claims Monckton is arguing as well as checking each of Abraham's available emails and citations. I find that Abraham does not correctly express Monckton's argument, causing Abraham to partially attack a strawman. Further, I find that Abraham's evidence regarding the MWP section being discussed is very weak and does not provide support to his argument with anywhere near the certainty Abraham is claiming. Surely the "not enough space for citations" argument should also be extended to the other side? I have never compared the conclusions of a 1996 paper to to that of a 2009 paper by Mann. I am not trying to make a case for Abraham, merely demonstrating Abraham is not making his. michael, If you don't want to listen to logic, that's your decision. Is telling Keigwin that Monckton is using his paper to claim the "current warming is of no concern" when Monckton makes no such claim about it a diligent and fair representation of the argument? Keigwin's paper clearly does support a MWP much warmer than today for the Sargasso sea. Look up Keigwin's website yourself and see if he refutes it. Why not email him and ask him. Is a website quote about the Arctic suitable countering evidence for what happened in the Antarctic? Of course it is not. Yet this is the evidence Abraham provides regarding Noon et al. I'd seem Monckton's presentation before. I though it comparable with its liberal use of facts as Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth". I did side with it slightly more than Gore's because I don't like horror films and I do like happy endings. If you find Monckton loose with facts, where do you stand regarding Al Gore? Sean A. I am only defending Monckton in so far as Abraham has put forward his own "facts", that unfortunately fail close scrutiny. If you think I am sockpuppet, you best start calling me Lord Passing Wind - what a preposterous suggestion. -
Sean A at 10:44 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
doug_bostrom at 15:15 PM on 11 June "Why Inhofe would ignore actual scientists for learning about this topic is a matter of speculation but his home state and its history of connection with the oil industry is a reasonable clue." There's also a lot of coal in OK: "Oklahoma contains the most significant deposits of bituminous coal west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains." Oklahoma Coal This is pure speculation, but Passing Wind's writing style and tone has some resemblance to Christpher Monckton's, and PW is defending Monckton rather vigorously, in a rather detailed way. (Yes, I'm suggesting they could be the same person.) -
michael sweet at 10:26 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
PW: Have you listened to Dr. Abrahams full lecture where he provides much of the text that you are asking for? Dr. Abraham has summarized his information for these postings. For him to post all his correspondence would take up too much space here. I find it quaint that you are citing a 1996 paper and comparing the conclusions to Mann 2009. Do you think that scientists have not advanced their data sets since 1996? Do you think Mann has failed to consider these old conclusions when he reviewed his much larger, more detailed data? Do you think anyone has measured new data in the southern hemisphere since 2003, making current conclusions about southern temperatures during this period more robust? Provide modern papers that show your assertions have merit. If you want me to listen to what you say, you need to provide RECENT citations, say the last 3 or 4 years, not these outdated papers. Otherwise you are just passing wind. -
Passing Wind at 09:45 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
I have put together an in-depth analysis of the emails with Keigwin (see John's reply to comment 12 above), as well as a critique of how well Keigwin supports Abraham's Monckton rebuttal. Here is the link to my post to the "Monckton is wrong" thread at Deltoid. For those not interested in reading the entire posting at deltoid, here's my conclusion: Does Keigwin 1996 support Monckton's claims or not? On the question that IPCC deliberately disappeared the MWP? Of course not - N/A as it predates the hockey stick. On the question of was the MWP real? Keigwin 1996 does claim the existence of the MWP. On the question of was it global? Keigwin 1996 was not a global study - it only covered the Sargasso Sea. On the question of was it warmer than present? Keigwin 1996 indicates the MWP was about a degree or so warmer. So the only points I can score to Abraham regarding Keigwin is that Monckton incorrectly displaying Keigwin's graph of Sargasso Sea temperature as support for his claim the MWP was global. An error Monckton could correct by simply stating his global MWP claim is made up from many global, as well as local reconstructions, like Keigwin 1996, and Esper and Schweingruger 2003. -
NewYorkJ at 09:17 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
"The response from Hocker's defenders was that the ice core records of CO2 must be unreliable." Entirely predictable. "The data is wrong" is kind of a catch-all fallback argument when doctrine is in danger of being shaken. But here's an interesting question I'm throwing out here. Can the amount change in CO2 concentration from temperature feedback be determined precisely? Obviously, almost all of the change is from human activities. Doug's link in #21 indicates the chemical human fingerprint. But perhaps there's a few ppm related to long-term temperature feedbacks as I briefly covered in #19. Can this be determined with reasonable precision, either from observations of the isotope signature, or from short-term temperature-CO2 concentration fluctuations? If so, could that be a reasonable proxy for pre-industrial temperatures? You'd have to account for feedbacks as well. -
Ned at 08:27 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
chris, your comments here are always worth reading but this one is far above and beyond the call of duty. You deserve some kind of a medal for this. (John, if people keep doing this kind of thing we're going to need to set up some kind of Skeptical Science commenter investigative journalism awards ....) -
Ned at 08:19 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
BP writes: Not so interesting, perhaps. Phase relation was messed up. Here is another try, this time against MSU/AMSU Ch. TLT (Lower Troposphere) Brightness Temperature History. OK, that looks more like what one would expect. For a moment there I thought you might have discovered some new unknown CO2 source at the South Pole ... but alas, 'tis not to be. What about the global argon thermometer? => #6 I've been looking for that. I can't find anything anywhere. Was it your own idea, or has someone else suggested this? The closest I've come is people using the O2/Ar ratio to study biological processes in seawater (O2 and Ar have similar temperature/solubility functions). But none of the global databases of atmospheric gases seems to have a time series of Ar. -
Ned at 08:14 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
NewYorkJ, that objection was raised over at WUWT, actually. Several people were upset about the implications for MWP. The response from Hocker's defenders was that the ice core records of CO2 must be unreliable. (Don't blame me, I'm just reporting what they said). -
snapple at 07:55 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
I have read some Russians say this. Inhofe's advised the Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa reportedly claims: “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”... http://www.hinduonnet.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055521000.htm -
Doug Bostrom at 06:53 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Unless I'm missing something there's also the matter of carbon isotopes as a means of fingerprinting the source of recently appearing C02, which Hocker does not address. Isotopes as a tracer of anthropogenic C02 are nicely covered in this article at Real Climate. -
Berényi Péter at 06:30 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
#11 Ned at 03:15 AM on 12 June, 2010 that's interesting Not so interesting, perhaps. Phase relation was messed up. Here is another try, this time against MSU/AMSU Ch. TLT (Lower Troposphere) Brightness Temperature History.
No lag.
Did you use the monthly or annual data?
Annual, last column.
----
What about the global argon thermometer? => #6
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chris at 05:57 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Passing Wind at 14:57 PM on 11 June, 2010” ….you might as well ask for a copy of the correspondence with Schweingruber, and correspondence he may have received regarding Noon et at, and Huang et al.” and…. ”For example: Schweingruber said he has retired and passed him on to Frank. But Abraham does not show even a snippet of an email from Schweingruber. Perhaps, far fetched though it may sound, Schweingruber said, "Monckton is right, but don't quote me, you better ask Frank what he thinks."
O.K. we’ve already done Huang et al in detail, and I dom't mind scanning a few papers while watching World Cup football on TV. So let’s look at Esper and Schweingruber 2004. ONE: You are commenting on Schweingruber who arises in relation to the graph on Monckton's slide (reproduced as Figure 2 in Dr. Abraham's top article). This is the dataset in the lower right-hand corner of Monckton's slide labelled "Esper and Schweingruber (2004)", which he shows to support his assertion that the Medieval Warm Period “was real, was global, and was warmer than the present.” TWO: The first question to explore is what that data actually is. It's easy to determine that Jan Esper and Fritz Schweingruber published one paper together in 2004. This is: Esper, J., and F. H. Schweingruber (2004), Large-scale treeline changes recorded in Siberia Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L06202 abstract That paper doesn’t contain the Figure shown in Monckton’s slide or the data. Esper and Schweingruber (2004) analyze treeline data in Siberia during the period from around 1750 to around 1980. THREE: Clearly Monckton’s Figure labeled “Esper and Schweingruber (2004)” isn’t from Esper and Schweingruber (2004). Might it be from a different paper by these authors? [note that Monckton has mislabeled the data set designated “Huang et al (1998)” at the top left of Figure 2 of the intro article for this thread, so another mislabeling wouldn’t be surprising]. Esper and Schweingruber have published 4 other papers together since 2000. These are: Esper, J; Schweingruber, FH; Winiger, M (2002) 300 years of climatic history for Western Central Asia inferred from tree-rings Holocene12, 267-277. Esper, J; Cook, ER; Schweingruber, FH (2002) Low-frequency signals in long tree-ring chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability Science 295, 2250-2253 Esper, J; Cook, ER; Krusic, PJ; et al. (2003) Tests of the RCS method for preserving low-frequency variability in long tree-ring chronologies Tree-Ring Res. 59 81-98 Neuwirth B, Esper J, Schweingruber FH, Winiger M (2004) Site ecological differences to the climatic forcing of spruce pointer years from the Lötschental, Switzerland. Dendrochronologia 21, 69-78. Perhaps the data is from one of those? Nope it isn’t; we can look at them and establish Monckton's figure doesn't come from any of these papers. FOUR: Even if we can’t locate the source of the data Monckton shows since he’s neglected to cite it properly, can we get a clue what it might be? Obviously we can’t determine whether it’s global, hemispheric or local. But presumably it’s a temperature vs time series (since Monckton is using it as part of a justification for his assertion that the MWP was warmer than now). Actually, it isn’t. The Y-axis has values encompassing the range 260 to 310. The data range from ~ “270” to ~ “305”. I can’t read the Y-axis label, but it’s unlikely to be temperature in Kelvins (-3 oC to 32 oC!?). Anyone have any ideas??? FIVE: O.K. Even if we can’t find the data in the place Monckton is supposed to have sourced it from, nor find it by assuming a citation error and looking more widely, nor determine what is actually being plotted, might we be able to assess what these authors considered their data to say about global temperatures during the MWP and now? The first answer is no, since Esper’s data only relates to extratropical N. hemisphere temperatures. What did they consider their data said about comparison of this region in the MWP and now? We can’t say for sure, regarding Esper and Schweingruber’s joint work, since none of the published papers fully address that. However, if we consider all of Esper’s work of the period (2004-ish) we can do a little better since Esper published a paper in 2004 that directly discusses current (NH extratropical) temperatures and those of the MWP. In this paper it is concluded that:The temperature signal in the ECS reconstruction is shown to be restricted to periods longer than 20 years in duration. After recalibration to take this property into account, annual temperatures up to AD 2000 over extra-tropical NH land areas have probably exceeded by about 0.3degreesC the warmest previous interval over the past 1162 years. This estimate is based on comparing instrumental temperature data available up to AD 2000 with the reconstruction that ends in AD 1992 and does not take into account the mutual uncertainties in those data sets.
Cook ER, Esper J, D'Arrigo RD (2004) Extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere land temperature variability over the past 1000 years. Quat. Sci. Rev. 23, 2063-2074 Likewise in 2005, Esper’s analysis of proxy temperatures in the Alpine regions concluded:”The new central Alpine proxy suggests that summer temperatures during the last decade are unprecedented over the past millennium.”
Buntgen U, Esper J, Frank DC, Nicolussi K, Schmidhalter M (2005) A 1052-year tree-ring proxy for Alpine summer temperatures Climate Dynamics 25, 141-153 So even in 2004/5 Esper's analysis supported the conclusion that in his area of study (N hemisphere extratropics; Alps) current temperatures are warmer now than during the MWP in those regions. More recent analysis reinforces that conclusion. It’s very difficult to justify Monckton’s use of Esper (and Schweingruber’s) papers from 2004/2005 to support the assertion that “the Medieval Warm Period “was real, was global, and was warmer than the present.” Of course we'd really like to know what Monckton's Figure labelled "Esper and Schweingruber (2004)" actually is, and where it came from. Since Monckton is only using it as "eye-candy" to front scientifically-unjustified assertions about the nature of MWP temperatures it’s possible he doesn't know or care. -
NewYorkJ at 05:47 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Here's a possible simplification, which might help the WUWT readers who can't follow the ever-so-fancy math (folks here can point out if it's reasonable or too simplistic). Figures here are ballpark. The temperature change during a big el Nino event like 1998 is around 0.2 C. The additional PPM of concentration from such an event is perhaps 1.5-2 ppm. So the 0.8 C of warming would lead to a 6-8 ppm change. But using WUWT's alternate reality, we can also logically conclude there was negligible temperature change between MWP and LIA periods. 0.8 C leads to a change of 100 ppm of CO2, right? So why only about 5 ppm change of CO2 concentration between these periods? http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.gif -
CoalGeologist at 05:19 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Further to my previous post @#12, and in consideration of the comment by MarkR @#17 that the oceans are, in the long run, a net sink for atmospheric CO2. An increase in surface water temperatures will decrease the rate of uptake of atmospheric CO2. If humans keep cranking it out at the same rate, this would be manifested as a net increase in the accumulation rate in the atmosphere, as indicated by a positive anomaly in Fig. 2. This is discussed in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report in the Summary for Policymakers, section on "Projections of Future Climate Change":-
• Warming tends to reduce land and ocean uptake of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing the fraction of
anthropogenic emissions that remains in the atmosphere.
For the A2 scenario, for example, the climate-carbon
cycle feedback increases the corresponding global
average warming at 2100 by more than 1°C. Assessed
upper ranges for temperature projections are larger
than in the TAR (see Table SPM.3) mainly because
the broader range of models now available suggests
stronger climate-carbon cycle feedbacks. {7.3, 10.5}
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Malachi at 05:17 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
I think a stronger argument could be made if the focus was on the scientists interpretation of their cited work. Getting their opinion on the current state of affairs is only parenthetically related to the science of the cited work. The best example would be if the scientist stated that his particular graph, data, etc did not show what Monckton claims it show. The next best would be if they said that the cited work did agree with Monckton, but they've since learned things that make them doubt their earlier work. The difference would teach us a great deal about Monckton's approach to science. Is he referencing (perhaps debunked) science honestly, or is he (likely willfully) distorting the available science on the subject. -
MarkR at 04:57 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Humans are emitting ~30bn tons/yr. The amount in the atmosphere is going up about ~15bn tons/yr. The pH of the oceans is falling. It takes truly remarkable mental acrobatics to perform and then believe a bit of mathematical sleight of hand and misinterpretation that in one swoop disproves conservation of particle number and the chemistry of carbon in seawater. -
CoalGeologist at 04:25 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
Ned @#13 You are correct that Hocker used troposphere temperatures from satellite data. I should have been more clear. However, tropospheric temperature anomalies are very strongly correlated with SSTs. See: Su and Neelin, Slide #3 -
gp2 at 03:54 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
@Coalgeologist Actually the pacific ocean is a net co2 sink during el nino due to reduced upwelling of carbon rich deepwater(and the opposite for la nina), the strong correlation is due to land carbon fluxes; enso and oceanic co2 fluxes are anticorrelated:
Jones paper
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Ned at 03:46 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
More from CoalGeologist: This indicates that the annual rate of increase of CO2 is itself increasing, which can also be seen by the slight concave upward shape in Figure 1. (I think the goal is to head in the other direction.) Indeed. The increase is actually faster than an exponential trend. -
Ned at 03:41 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
CoalGeologist writes: Given the strong correlation between the CO2 anomaly and ocean surface temperature [...] You might be referring to some other place where this correlation has been established ... but just for the sake of extreme clarity, we should note that Hocker actually used lower troposphere temperature over the oceans, rather than actual sea surface temperatures. He wasn't very clear about that, and a lot of people in the thread over at WUWT make that mistake. -
CoalGeologist at 03:22 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
By "first derivative", we mean the slope. Thus, by subtracting the measured CO2 content at 12 month intervals, we're measuring the annual rate of increase of CO2 per year (approximately 1.5 ppm/y). By normalizing this value using the equation, we generate an average anomaly of "0", over the 50 years of data represented. If the rate of change never varied, all the points would plot at "0". It's evident looking at Figure 2, that the majority of points on the right hand side of the graph fall above "0", while the majority of points plot below "0" on the left. This indicates that the annual rate of increase of CO2 is itself increasing, which can also be seen by the slight concave upward shape in Figure 1. (I think the goal is to head in the other direction.) Given the strong correlation between the CO2 anomaly and ocean surface temperature, it seems to me that deviations from this trend are related to temperature of the ocean water. In other word, when sea temperature goes up, CO2 goes up as well. For example, both CO2 and temperature take a slight jump during the warm El Nino year of 1998. Since CO2 solubility decreases with increasing (water) temperature, this would be expected. Thus, it seems to me that these minor deviations are, indeed, driven by temperature. This relationship is also reinforced by temperature changes slightly leading CO2 (as noted by Paul W @#8) If so, the title of Hocker's post would "technically" be correct for describing short-term trends caused by ENSO and other controls, but would be grossly misleading for describing long-term trends. (I don't see why we'd need to appeal to growth rates in the Amazon basin to explain this relationship, but I haven't checked out the magnitudes of the mass balance, so maybe I don't understand it correctly.) In any case, I suspect that many WUWT readers will learn everything they want to know about this topic by reading the title only. -
Ned at 03:20 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part III – Acid Reflux?
thingadonta writes: Very large volcanic episodes which have released large amounts of c02 compared to contempory human history have not greatly affected either corals, or reef ecosystems. These volcanic episodes indicate that both oceans and coral reefs are resiliant to large scale changes in atmospheric c02 on short time scales. Which particular episodes do you have in mind? -
Ned at 03:15 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
BP, that's interesting. I would have thought that the CO2 data at South Pole would lag the CO2 data at Mauna Loa and thus your line ought to lag the red line on that graph. But it sure looks like it leads it. Did you use the monthly or annual data? Just curious .... -
thingadonta at 03:15 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part III – Acid Reflux?
The geological record seems to indicate that oceans do not significantly alter pH (eg to the level of coral extinction) when large amounts of c02 are released into the atmosphere on very short time scales. Very large volcanic episodes which have released large amounts of c02 compared to contempory human history have not greatly affected either corals, or reef ecosystems. These volcanic episodes indicate that both oceans and coral reefs are resiliant to large scale changes in atmospheric c02 on short time scales. For longer time scales the situation may well be different. (eg >10,000 years). It generally takes tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years of relatively active volcanic activity to signficantly alter ocean chemistry. Coral ecosystmes may collapse on this sort of long time scale, not on the time scale of human c02 emissions of decades to centuries. Part of the reason for this is that the oceans appear to buffer global scale c02 changes with processes (sedimentary, biological, volcanic) not easily reproducible in the laboratory. Most coral reef researchers focus solely on modelled biological processes to modelled chemical changes, that do not take into account the large scale geochemical proceseses that eg occur in the subsurface oceanic environment (eg Mid Oceanic Rifts), and are not indicative of what the oceans actually do in the geological record. The response by some climate researchers to this is to shrug and say 'the distant geological past is not relevent to human history'. (ie only when it is convenient). That is the kind of thinking which results in absurd statements like "17% of coral reefs have already disappeared" and "coral reefs will become eroding structures in about 30 years" in some recent papers. These sort of statements are out by a factor of about 100. Statements such as those given in the papers above of the impending demise of coral ecosystems are not supported by the geological record. -
chris at 03:14 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Passing Wind at 16:12 PM on 11 June, 2010"I am saying with regard to the points I have raised is that Abraham has provided insufficient evidence with regard to Esper and Schweingruber, Keigwin, and Noon et al. "
In fact Passsing Wind, it's Mr Monckton who "has provided insufficient evidence with regard to Esper and Schweingruber". The graph that Monckton shows on his Powerpoint slide labelled "Esper and Schweingruber (2004)" [see Figure 2 of the top article; bottom right hand graph], isn't from Esper and Schweingruber (2004) at all, and neither is it a measure of temperatures, or temperature anomalies. So whatever it is and wherever it came from, it's unlikely to be justifiable as evidence to support Monckton's assertion that the MWP "was real, was global and was warmer than the present". Can anyone identify where this graph comes from (and what it actually shows)? If I have time I'll say a little more about this later. -
Berényi Péter at 03:01 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
I have pulled 1958-2007 atmospheric CO2-curve values (ppmv) derived from flask air samples collected at the South Pole from CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center), computed 3 year moving derivative centered at middle year and overlayed the graph on Fig. 2 from Hocker 2010.
If anything, it should be noted that temperature actually lags CO2 derivative. Or temporal scale has an offset in the Hocker figure.
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Doug Bostrom at 03:01 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
Thingadonta, would you please elaborate on the integration you speak of and how it leads to the conclusion you mention? Failing that, I don't see how the remarks you make about Mann and Weart cannot better be applied to you yourself. -
thingadonta at 02:40 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
re yocta: "data from the Southern Hemisphere are too sparse to draw reliable conclusions about overall temperatures in Medieval time." I couldn't agree more. Data for MWP in the Southern Hemisphere is sparse, which eqautes to "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Moreover, the relative response of proxies to T change needs to be considered, ie: not all proxies are equal, yet they are generally treated that way by non-field based mathematicians such as M. Mann, and non-field based authors such as Spencer Weart. If you integrate the lack of data, the differential proxy response to T changes, and differential preservation and measureability/reliability of proxies through time, the MWP was probably global. People like Spencer Weart and M. Mann (2009 paper)can't understand such a simple thing as limitations of a dataset, they take everything as given, thinking that uncertainties average out in larger datasets. They don't, they just make things worse. -
Alexandre at 02:27 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
The many global temp reconstructions are accurate. No surprises there, after so many published works pointing to the same direction. It´s important to stress that past surface temperature is only a marginal evidence of AGW (despite all the attention the hockey stick has got). EVEN IF the MWP had been warmer than today for whatever reason, it would not disprove all the known atmospheric physics that explain the greenhouse effect and AGW. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:16 AM on 12 June 2010Collective Intelligence and climate change
I should add, the utility of analogy is controlled in part by the intentions or competence of the person forming and conveying an analogy. It is of course possible to -degrade- understanding by use of analogy, which is why Ned's point about their limitations is always worth remembering. Less ambiguity is better and analogies necessarily leave ambiguity hanging in the air. -
Doug Bostrom at 02:10 AM on 12 June 2010Collective Intelligence and climate change
Ned, agreed. There's actually been a lot of research done on the topic of mental models which often necessarily take the form of analogies but are at the end of the day not truly descriptive. A successful analogy improves the utility of our intuitions but does not allow us to actually characterize the subject of that intuition. -
Ned at 02:02 AM on 12 June 2010Collective Intelligence and climate change
Doug, there's a lot of very thought-provoking material in that comment. I see analogies as just one of an array of tools that can sometimes help people understand something they were having difficulty understanding more directly. It's impossible to prove anything by analogy, and offering an analogy as proof is generally unhelpful. But when I am genuinely trying to understand some process but am having trouble following other lines of reasoning, sometimes an analogy will help me over the "hump" of misunderstanding. Ultimately, though, understanding something via analogy isn't necessarily worth a whole lot unless that helps you to subsequently work it out using more direct methods. -
Doug Bostrom at 01:54 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
PW: The only reason to believe Abraham over Monckton is the evidence he provides. Actually, if we were to cut off all further "evidence" gathering at this point, we'd have Monckton on the one hand with an extensive and thoroughly documented history that is not conducive to assigning credence to his opinions, versus Abraham who is for all essential purposes sporting an unblemished record and has identified a number of additional reasons causing us to doubt the utility of Monckton's activities. So your equivocation is simply wrong, plainly so and I'm sure you're aware of that. My conclusion is that you are seeking to cast doubt on Abraham's critique of Monckton and that failing having any factual basis for supporting such doubts you are resorting to your imagination. The problem here is Monckton, not Abraham. It's clear that there are few folks who'd like to shift attention from Monckton to Abraham, to help Monckton recover from a defensive stance but that's an impossible task really because Monckton's credibility is extraordinarily poor when we look at the factual record of his own words, the pattern Monckton himself has meticulously created of his own volition. Abraham suffers no such deficit, he has not created a credibility problem for himself in the way Monckton has. Only one person can improve the reputation of Monckton and that's Monckton himself; others cannot amend Monckton's words for him but he's free to do so at any time. -
Berényi Péter at 01:46 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part III – Acid Reflux?
#34 Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 20:30 PM on 11 June, 2010 which is unheard of in any other soil Terra preta do índio is the self-regenerating anthropogenic black soil of Amazonia (1-2 m deep, 15% organics). It rivals chernozem (чернозём) found in Europe and Canada in both fertility and carbon contents. -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:40 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
To PW... I would highly suggest that you make the attempt to contact those scientists yourself. I think you will find that they are generally VERY busy people but that they will take the time to give short responses to succinct questions. I've done this a few times with success. When I look at the emails that Dr Abraham is getting they seem to be this. I don't think there is a lot to reveal that he's not already shown. In fact, he is including here the full headers to the email and only highlighting the relevant response. Again, I don't think there's a lot more to it. I think your request would be reasonable if there were any indications that Dr Abraham was having to go to strenuous lengths to come up with information that refutes Monckton. In fact, the opposite seems quite true. -
dhogaza at 01:39 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
" Nobody is accusing Abraham is being dishonest, but he may well be quoting out of context and cherry picking" Quote-mining and cherry picking are both dishonest. -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:31 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
If anyone is interesting I found another detailed rebuttal (circa 2008) to a piece by Monckton's on climate sensitivity by Auther Smith from the Alternative Energy Action Network. -
Bernard J. at 00:55 AM on 12 June 2010On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
As of five days ago, Watts himself said during an interview on the Australian ABC's Counterpoint program "we are very close to finishing [the surface stations paper], literally within days". I guess that means he will have submitted about now... Or will he change his mind and hold off until he has sampled 150% of the stations? -
gp2 at 00:44 AM on 12 June 2010Is the long-term trend in CO2 caused by warming of the oceans?
@Paul W take a look at Jones 2001, basically el nino pattern cause a net co2 release from the biosphere particularly over the amazon basin, however the biosphere has been a net absorber over at least the last 2 decades so this is not the cause of long term co2 increase: http://eric.exeter.ac.uk/exeter/bitstream/10036/48597/1/Carbon%20Cycle%20Response%20to%20ENSO.pdf " Climatic changes over land during El Nino events lead to decreased gross primary productivity and increased plant and soil respiration, and hence the terrestrial biosphere becomes a source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Conversely, duringEl Nino events, the ocean becomes a sink of CO 2 because of reduction of equatorial Pacific outgassing a result of decreased upwelling of carbon-rich deep water. During La Nin events the opposite occurs; the land becomes a sink and the ocean a source of CO 2 . -
Marcus at 00:39 AM on 12 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part IV– Medieval Warm Period?
A list of papers summarising the likely forcings contributing to the Medieval Warm Period
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