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johnd at 09:59 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
doug_bostrom at 08:17 AM, thanks for an interesting article. Especially interesting that the article should mention the following:- "It was now evident, in particular, where clouds brought warming and where they made for cooling. Overall, it turned out that clouds tended to cool the planet — strongly enough so that small changes in cloudiness would have a serious feedback on climate.(89)" -
johnd at 09:48 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
doug_bostrom at 08:17 AM, the link below may help illustrate the overlap of weather data and climate modelling. Note that the various forecasts used are grouped as Coupled GCM's, Ensembles, and Statistical, and are identified with each agency that produces each. I personally favour the Japanese Sintex model as being one of the most accurate, often identifying any change in trends well ahead of any of the others. Until May last year they were extremely accurate, correctly forecasting conditions completely opposed to the more recognised agencies that generally had rather more dismal success. They then updated their computer system which, without absolutely any changes to the models or the data being inputted, began throwing up forecasts more in line with other agencies. Even when they ran old data through, the results turned up different to the forecasts produced on the old system, even though the original forecasts were extremely accurate. I think they are still trying to identify as to why this has occurred, but it does then make one wonder if all agencies use similar computing systems, is there some inbuilt logic in the computer itself that will influence how the data is processed. The Fast Break Newsletter -
Berényi Péter at 09:28 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
#31 robhon at 03:00 AM on 5 June, 2010 So, I believe the most accurate terms are AGW believer and AGW denier... for those of us who are NOT researchers That is not so. Whenever some piece of natural science is actually settled, researchers should be able to make it transparent and understandable for anyone outside the field provided she has a firm grasp of some basics like the underlying physics and some inclination to math. If they fail to do so, the science is not settled. It is as simple as that. Moreover, an outsider like this is able to spot inconsistencies, sloppy methods, omissions, circular reasoning and the like. If you don't accept this, there is no way for you to tell crackpot and genuine science apart. There are experts of homeopathy, astrology or parapsychology with their respective huge underlying bodies of knowledge. These are complex fields requiring many years of study and they even claim to do original research. Your approach can be translated to this context as there being genuine homeopathy researchers while anyone else is either a believer or a denier. As they have peer reviewed journals as well, to be a denier is obviously foolish. -
yocta at 09:27 AM on 5 June 2010CO2 is not the only driver of climate
RE#266 theendis far I second KR. Making statements waiting for someone to correct you, in my view is lazy. You say: If N2 and O2 absorb and emit radiation, are they GHG's? I can’t understand why you would ask this question as it demonstates to the reader, an incomplete understanding of the science. All molecules will have absorption/emission spectra, but whether it is relevant to Earth’s radiation budget (and hence if we would label them as greenhouse gases) is dependant on the particular wavelength of light they are active to. The hullaballoo about CO2 is that it is strongly active in the infrared region which is why we are so interested in its properties. See this as a primer on infrared spectroscopy and here on spectroscopy of planets in general and why different solar bodies have different measured temperatures and atmospheric colours. As to the rest of your questions bu they will happily provide references for you to read up on but it's not SS readers' job to answer them directly if you don't first do the homework. You need to go back and read a first year text on Climate Science, or get a one-on-one with an academic at a university. This took me about 40 mins to find good enough reliable web links to explain my points so I sympathise with people's lack of patience with you if you don’t make a demonstrated effort first to understand the existing physics behind that of climate science. -
KR at 08:30 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
doug - thanks for the link! Fascinating reading... I hadn't realized the complexity of the models used. My apologies for inaccuracies, johnd - looks like GCM models have some similarities to short term weather forcasts, but are far more extensive and detailed. I'll repeat, though, that each refinement brings the GCM's closer to matching the actual world behaviors, and makes them more and more useful for looking at the "what-if" scenarios. -
Doug Bostrom at 08:17 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
Johnd, I suspect you made a simple typographical error. Weather forecast outputs are not a part of general circulation model inputs. Meanwhile, GCM's -are- climate models; the full term is "general circulation model of climate." Finally, just to be extra clear for bystanders, climate models do not produce forecasts nor is that the purpose of such models. For the curious, see background information on general circulation models here. -
Riccardo at 08:17 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
johnd, yes, but depending on where you put your zero and on the area sampled you may under or over estimate the total area and hence average ice thickness. -
Dennis at 08:14 AM on 5 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part II – Here Comes the Sun?
Daved Green @12: There's probably no legal standing in the US to sue Monckton over his misquotes of scientists' published work. However, a workable approach would be for someone (John Abraham?) to apply the same thorough analysis to Monckton's US Congressional testimony, and then get that congressional committee (I believe Ed Markey is the chair) to subpoena Monckton to explain (under oath)the disrepancies between his testimony and what the scientists he has cited actually have said. And some of those scientists could be there testifying as well. Monckton would then have to appear before congress the next time he planned to visit the US, or risk defying a congressional subpoena. -
KR at 08:09 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
johnd - when dealing with models, it's really not a black-and-white issue of right/wrong. What's important is the predictive capability of the model, which is a sliding scale; how close is the prediction to the actual outcome? Newtonian physics is "wrong" according to General Relativity - but accurate enough to compute most orbital paths outside of Mercury. Each of these models is 'valid' for the assumptions used - the relationships, the feedbacks, time scales, input values, etc. These assumptions can be shown to be incorrect - if a feedback value is incorrect, or an important relationship neglected, discovering the more accurate value or relationship can lead to abandoning or modifying a model. And if your assumptions are wildly off, your model is as well. These different models all disagree where questions about actual values (current and future research questions!) are still open. If the climate sensitivity is somewhere between 2-4.5 degrees C to a CO2 doubling, then any assumption in that range is in itself valid, and the models predictions will vary. This doesn't mean that the climate sensitivity is therefore 0.1 or 15! The models are close. None of the models are perfect - they are not exactly right on the input assumptions, input conditions, relationships, etc. The only complete model would be a copy of the Earth! But after sufficient testing (multiple runs with historic data compared to present, future predictions checked after a couple of years, etc.), they are close, or they are abandoned. And if they are close, they are useful for decision making. In my opinion (for whatever that's worth) weather predictions are far more likely to be wrong than climate models, given equal accuracy on assumptions - weather is a short term non-linear chaotic system, and the smallest bit of error in starting conditions, or insufficient granularity of the model, will result in the weather departing from the model after a time. Climate, on the other hand, is far less chaotic - long term averaging overrides any short term non-linear variance. And as doug_bostrom said, detailed weather forcasting models have nothing to do with the GCM's - only the long term average measurements are inputs to GCM's. -
johnd at 08:06 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
doug_bostrom at 07:57 AM, doug, which part do you disagree with, that weather data is plugged into GCM's, or that GCM's are plugged into climate models? -
Doug Bostrom at 08:01 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
Johnd, forecasting is not what climate models do. You're probably on top of that but it's an important distinction for folks less up on the topic, frequently the source of confusion. -
Berényi Péter at 07:58 AM on 5 June 2010Robust warming of the global upper ocean
#60 Ken Lambert at 23:46 PM on 26 May, 2010 The mechanism of heat transfer to the oceans from the atmosphere has always been unconvincing You are right. Downwelling can only occur close to the ice edge where sea surface temperature is pretty constant (determined by freezing point of seawater). On top of that water salinity at surface has to be higher than at bottom and/or its potential temperature has to be lower. It is easy to see that with no additional heating from below bottom water becomes saturated sooner or later in both respects. If that happens, circulation is halted. Thermal conductivity of water is rater low (0.58 W m-1 K-1). It means that with 20 K temperature difference between surface and water at a depth of 4000 m heat transfer by conduction is only 3 mW m-2. It takes more than 150 kyear to heat up the abyss by 1 K this way. On the other hand average heat flow from oceanic crust is 100 mW m-1 and at some places it can be as high as 350 mW m-1
For geothermal heating it takes only 5000 years to raise ocean temperature by 1 K. BTW, there is about the order of magnitude correspondence between this figure and alleged ocean turnaround time.
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Doug Bostrom at 07:57 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
After all, weather forecasting provides much of the data that that is plugged into GCM's that end up being plugged into all the climate models. No. -
johnd at 07:46 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
Riccardo at 07:32 AM on 5 June, 2010, I think the same principle still applies. The area represented by a pixel will still be larger as the distance from the focal point increases. -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:32 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
Ha! Maybe, in time, the whole car is going to fold up like George Jetson's car and we'll carry it into our homes like a briefcase and charge it there. :-) -
Riccardo at 07:32 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
johnd, "any error would cause an UNDER estimation, not an OVER estimation." not true, it depends on the projection. For example, you may have a projection that makes the area calculated at, say, 70° correct with opposite bias on the two sides. There's no way to come to any meaningful conclusion without knowing which projection has been used. -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:18 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
Doug, You're right. I hadn't thought about that. It's been a while since I lived in an apartment. A quick google search turns this up though... I wish I had the patent on that thing. -
johnd at 07:13 AM on 5 June 2010Models are unreliable
KR at 23:29 PM on 4 June, 2010, the point I started out to make was that models, be they forecasting the weather or the climate, should be within themselves 100% valid. That is, the combination of assumptions cannot be shown to be incorrect. If they could be then that particular model would be flawed and should not be used. Because each individual model is based on valid assumptions then it has as much chance of being correct as any other individual model. With the IPCC they take the mean as being the most likely outcome. With weather forecasters the process is similar with a number of different models all being run simultaneously with a range of different outcomes. When the forecasters are required to give a forecast for an extended outlook the use their best JUDGEMENT to select the output of whatever model they think at that time to be the most likely to eventuate. As I had mentioned earlier, this at times has resulted in different agencies simultaneously issuing forecasts totally 100% opposing each other. Obviously someones best judgement is different to someone else. They both can't be right, just as all models, be they weather or climate models, cannot all be right. Only one can hope to be right. HOWEVER as does happen with weather forecast models, at times ALL can be wrong. There is no fundemental reason also why all the climate models tracked by IPCC cannot be all wrong. After all, weather forecasting provides much of the data that that is plugged into GCM's that end up being plugged into all the climate models. -
Doug Bostrom at 07:09 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
Rob, for sure when I remove my rose-tinted spectacles the swap idea does have some faults. However looking through neutral density I also realize we've got millions of vehicles owned by folks living in apartments, condos and "townhomes" w/parking arrangements distinctly problematic for retrofit with plug-in chargers. It'll be easy for me to charge, I've got ample 110 and 220 in my attached garage. Yet my brother lives in an apartment with his vehicle parked in a low-density arrangement that looks as though it would be extremely expensive to retrofit with charging infrastructure. Beyond the sheer amount of hardware and labor needed to equip the parking area with chargers, the parking spaces themselves do not closely correlate with the apartment location. Some form of duplicative electric metering would be needed, even if in the form of an integrator in the vehicle that could be read via wireless at the gate or whatever. Or maybe a credit card reader at the charger? What to do? Yet another head-scratcher. Hmmm. -
johnd at 06:34 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
Ned at 02:00 AM on 4 June, 2010, Walt Meier, research scientist at the NSIDC made the following statement is a response to an issue where Steve Goddard wrongly calculated an increase in ice extent due to a problem with the images used. Walt Meier" "The proper way to calculate a comparison of ice coverage is by actually weighting the pixels by their based on the map projection, which is exactly what NSIDC does." This is taken from the article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/ Clearly NSIDC also use pixel counting. If you think about, if weighting was not given to the pixels, any error would cause an UNDER estimation, not an OVER estimation. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:31 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
Doug... I actually saw a TED talk about that same battery swap program. As I remember part of the model is that you wouldn't own the battery in your car. You'd just drive in and a machine would swap out the battery on the underside of the car. The Tesla Model S is apparently built with the battery swap idea in mind. I still think it's a dubious business model with a future unknown like battery technology. Plus, current gas stations are based on a model where we all have to fill up fairly frequently. If you get 100 mile range on a battery that means that over 90% of "refueling" will take place at night in people's homes. -
Ned at 06:07 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
Maybe I missed something. Do we actually know what projection is used for those maps? It doesn't seem to say anything on the website. I was just speculating about polar stereographic, but it could be any azimuthal projection (orthographic, Lambert, ...?) The scale variation would depend on the specific projection parameters. More broadly, what metadata are available describing these data? Have the model results been validated, and if so, what is the structure of the error? I find it a bit disconcerting that the entire community of "skeptics" (here, at WUWT, etc.) seems to have suddenly latched onto this PIPS2 model with little to no examination of its suitability for the purposes to which they are enlisting it. Or perhaps I've missed something, and all these questions have been satisfactorily answered already. -
Doug Bostrom at 06:03 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that charging stations (as an equivalent to a gas station now) will never come to pass in any meaningful way. I was delighted to see that in Israel there's an outfit attempting to launch a business centered around standardized batteries that can be quickly removed and replaced from a vehicle, something I'm sure a lot of us have envisioned. That centralizes the charging arrangement, allows battery depreciation/degradation to be handled in a way friendlier to most pocketbooks. The economics of replacement and profit are relatively easy to handle especially when batteries can be equipped with onboard history to help account for abusive discharge and the like. A further benefit of this approach is that it's highly amenable to robotic assistance. The scheme is sort of the equivalent of the standardized gas refueling receptacle and nozzles we're accustomed to. Unfortunately proprietary considerations will probably cause this approach to fail. I'm really impressed by the Leaf; for my household we could eliminate nearly all of our gasoline consumption using this vehicle, leaving our remaining archaic vehicle largely in the garage. Combined with the reduction of gasoline costs and reasonably affordable price of the car I think I can finish justifying this choice by the additional safety features now missing from our current vehicles. I had a reminder on that just the other day when an oncoming car was pushed into my path in a collision, striking my vehicle w/enough force to deploy the other car's airbags and exposing me to a hell of a bang on the head. A compelling reason to retire a 23 year old vehicle... -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:40 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
To close out this thread I have a companion photo to the opening Laurel and Hardy image...
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Mal Adapted at 04:57 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Gishgallopingcamel:Climate alarmism is constructed out of "Extraordinary Claims" while skeptics are unimpressed with the evidence produced to support them.
This is the argument from ignorance. As summarized by Ned, the claims in support of AGW aren't extraordinary to anyone who is competent in the natural sciences. Given that Ned's three statements are as yet unfalsified, counter-claims are extraordinary prima facie, and thus require extraordinary evidence to support them. -
Riccardo at 04:36 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
Berényi Péter, there are several type of stereographic projections. Before doing any calculations you should know which one is used in that figure. -
Berényi Péter at 03:32 AM on 5 June 2010On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
#40 Ned at 02:00 AM on 4 June, 2010 you cannot simply use a count of pixels to determine ice-covered area Do you want me to recalculate with multiplying pixel area by cos(45°-lat/2)? Inside 70N it does not make much difference. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:00 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Ned and Chris... I believe part of the idea of John's website is to take back the term "skeptic." That term properly belongs within all science because the entire process of science is based in skepticism. There is a larger body of research that suggests that AGW is real and should be considered a serious concern for humans. If you are a researcher in an area of climate change then you are automatically a skeptic. If, like me, you are outside of research and trying to come to a personal opinion then you either believe that larger body of research or you reject or deny that research. So, I believe the most accurate terms are AGW believer and AGW denier... for those of us who are NOT researchers. -
chris at 02:55 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Yes, I agree Ned...it's important to be clear about what we mean, and not to use labels unless we're pretty clear that their meaning is unambiguous. Unfortunately some perfectly good words (like "skeptic") have been battered out of recognition in pursuit of dodgy agendas...so we're forced to keep redefining them whenever we wish to use them meaningfully. -
Ned at 02:38 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Ah, sorry, Chris. You are of course correct. I guess we just need to be able to conduct these conversations without labels for people. It's certainly not appropriate to allow one side to monopolize the term "skeptic". I understand that they don't care for the term "denialist" either. I'd prefer that they don't refer to me as "pro-AGW" (I'm not in favor of cooking the planet, after all) and the term "warmist / warmer" also annoys me. Oh, well. -
chris at 02:26 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Ned at 02:11 AM on 5 June, 2010 Yes O.K. Ned...but I was really trying to recover a sense of meaningful terminology and "reclaim" a proper meaning for the word "skeptic"! So a true skeptic wouldn't claim that (referring to the examples on this thread) "there is no greenhouse effect" or "CO2 is not rising; it fluctuated wildly in the recent past" or "the Earth is cooling, not warming" or "the greenhouse effect disobeys Thermodynamic Laws" , or even your "runaway greenhouse" example. That's not skepticism. It's something else. So it is in the sense of the real meaning of "skeptic" that I said "In any case I don't think anyone on this thread has suggested that "skeptics are the ones making extraordinary claims". By definition a true "skeptic" would be unlikely to make "extraordinary claims" and they did they'd be certain to have some decent supporting evidence. I certainly agree with your general principle. Any skeptic would! -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:23 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Chris... You're totally right. I was just trying to making a point that the situation IS alarming. -
Ned at 02:11 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
chris writes: In any case I don't think anyone on this thread has suggested that "skeptics are the ones making extraordinary claims". Given that they are clearly in the minority here, I guess I can understand why they would leap to that conclusion. Thus, I was very careful in my comment here to use an example of an "extraordinary claim" coming from the opposite side (doubling or tripling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would lead to a runaway greenhouse effect a la Venus!). It would be nice if we could all agree on the general principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" ... but even that seemingly common-sense statement triggered cries of "censorship" in this thread. -
chris at 02:07 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
robhon at 01:59 AM on 5 June, 2010 Actually rob, we do have to be careful with terminology. By common understanding "alarmism" indicates needless or inappropriate alarm. I'm sure gallopingcamel was using it in that sense, and I would suggest that's the sense in which the word should be understood. A prognosis can be truly alarming without being alarmist! Of course we can only determine whether a prognosis is alarming or alarmist by considering specific examples in the light of the evidence. -
Ned at 02:04 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
gallopingcamel, someone is "topsy-turvy" here, but it isn't climate science. I do find it ironic, however, that you use that word "alarmism". The main embodiments of the consensus view of climate -- the IPCC WG1 reports, Spencer Weart's history, basic textbooks, etc. -- are simply realistic, not alarmist. Everything is very clearly documented, and the IPCC generally errs on the side of caution (see, e.g., sea level rise). There is, however, one area where there's no shortage of alarmism. Over and over again I see "skeptics" abandon all shreds of actual skepticism when the subject turns to economics. People who nit-pick over details of peer-reviewed climate science blithely assert that mitigation of climate change would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars, would lead to economic collapse, or would require everyone to return to the Stone Age. (I believe the expression "billions are bound to perish" is still present in one comment that somehow made it through the moderation policy yesterday, despite the inflammatory and alarmist language....) Climate scientists have done the hard work of setting up a process to review and summarize the peer reviewed knowledge of their field every few years. Those summaries tell us convincingly that if we proceed with business-as-usual, a wide variety of adverse consequences are likely to follow. Now, the "economic alarmists" can claim that trying to mitigate those adverse consequences will cost too much. But until they have a similarly convincing mechanism for compiling and explaining the evidence, I see no reason not to ignore them. There's plenty of peer reviewed evidence that we can make a reasonably large dent in our CO2 emissions with current technology. So if you're really concerned about "alarmism" take it up with the people who are claiming that we can't cut back on CO2 emissions without destroying the economy. -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:59 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
gallopingcamel... No. Climate alarmism (I don't totally reject that term because this is a very alarming situation) is constructed from a large body of research science that is all pointing to the same general conclusion. There is an extraordinary amount of evidence that this is real. Thus, it would take something extraordinary to counter that amount of evidence. I keep using the puzzle analogy. Science has pieced together a puzzle, using 150 years of solid research, and that puzzle is 95% complete. We're highly confident what the picture tells us. Deniers try to come along with single pieces here and there saying that the whole puzzle is wrong and they have the "real" answer. Problem is, all those other pieces of the puzzle can't just be discarded. You would have to completely rebuild the puzzle, using the existing pieces, and make them fit the new paradigm. That would be an extraordinary feat!Response: Hey, that's my analogy! I've spent years beating it to death :-) -
JMurphy at 01:58 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
gallopingcamel, perhaps you could list some of those "Extraordinary Claims" made by 'Climate alarmists', and some of the evidence (along with the relevant counter-evidence) that 'skeptics' are 'unimpressed' with. I won't hold my breath, though... -
Jim Eager at 01:47 AM on 5 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part II – Here Comes the Sun?
Bill Walker, it's no surprise that some people cling to their own ignorance like a warm blanket and resist it being pulled away, leaving them exposed to the coldness of reality. -
chris at 01:42 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
gallopingcamel at 01:23 AM on 5 June, 2010 The problem there is one of definition gallopingcamel, your post being a sort of vague list of value-laden descriptors. There are lots of examples on this thread about what is meant by "extraordinary claims" in the context of attempts to overthrow fundamental knowledge (see examples in posts by CBDunkerson, Ned, JMurphy....). You need to do similar and define what you mean by "Extraordinary Claims" as well as "skeptics" and "climate alarmism". Otherwise your post doesn't really have meaning. In any case I don't think anyone on this thread has suggested that "skeptics are the ones making extraordinary claims". -
gallopingcamel at 01:23 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Carl Sagan was known for saying “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. It is a wonderful illustration of the topsy-turvy CAGW world to suggest that the skeptics are the ones making extraordinary claims. Climate alarmism is constructed out of "Extraordinary Claims" while skeptics are unimpressed with the evidence produced to support them. -
Mythago at 01:21 AM on 5 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part II – Here Comes the Sun?
Oh damn. I realised I hadn't made myself quite clear. I was on night shift which meant I was beaten to the punch regarding the article. And the article can be found here for those interested parties: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jun/03/monckton-climate-change -
Mythago at 01:19 AM on 5 June 2010Monckton Chronicles Part II – Here Comes the Sun?
Damn! Someone beat me to the punch. I was also going to mention the George Monbiot article. Well don John. Your turning the tables professionally here. The joys of night shifts. Anyway it fits nicely with the new comments policy idea that was mooted yesterday (Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?). If the sceptics want credibility and to be taken seriously now is the time to get their research peer reviewed. If they can't or won't then that's the end of their arguments. Simple. Looking forward to the future with more enthusiasm. Thanks. -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:15 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
CBDunkerson... Actually, Tesla stopped producing the Roadster this year, making current owners extremely happy as they now own a very limited edition car. I think total produced was in the neighborhood of 1000. Haven't seen the Fisker Karma. Will check it out. The Nissan Leaf is the car I think you're looking for. I think their range in about 100 miles and it's all electric. Personally, I'm hoping to skip the hybrid thing. In my head two wrongs don't make a right. I love the simplicity of an all electric. But I want all electric with some range. The Tesla Model S has, I think, 3 battery set ups for different ranges up to 300+ miles. But I think I'd stick with the 160 mile battery and rent a gas car for those rare long distance trips. Will probably be putting my deposit down on a Model S next month. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that charging stations (as an equivalent to a gas station now) will never come to pass in any meaningful way. In the next decade or so battery technology is going to get a lot better. So much better that every car will have enough battery to take you as far as you want to go before you need to sleep. Hotels and motels will have to have parking with charging stations. -
JMurphy at 01:07 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Ken Lambert wrote :"I detect that the switching of recent discussion to thoughts censoring the non-believers might be motivated by the realization by the owner of this blog that the deeper we go into technical examination of the science, and particularly the bases of the warming imbalances and the quality of the data and measurement accuracies -the greater we understand the uncertainties and weaknesses in the current state climate science." I'm afraid you are detecting, as far as I can see, something which is not only not there but not even anywhere near reality. How many articles are you thinking of that are switching this discussion ? Your use of a word like 'censoring' suggests that you feel victimised directly or indirectly by the deletion of nonsense arguments which anyone feels like posting without the need for any sort of evidence or back-up. Why ? Your use of the term 'non-believers' suggests that you look on global warming as a religion, as opposed to so-called skepticism which you would call...what ? Rational and empirical ? How many religions are based on science ? Your final views about the science betray a lack of awareness (probably deliberate) of both the vast amount of science available on this site and the vast majority of scientific studies which continue to confirm global warming; and betray your lack of awareness of the uncertainties that already exist in climatology and related fields - why else do you think people are continuing to study the subject and bother to bring out more studies ? -
Ned at 01:00 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
In the course of a very interesting post, chriscanaris (or should that be Chris Canaris?) writes: Ken Lambert's comments about the possible impact of the complexities, uncertainties, and weaknesses in climate science resonate strongly with me. My own field requires great tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty. Whenever I have delved more deeply into any issue over the course of my career, I have found myself confronting Socrates' maxim: ‘One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.’ That's interesting. An alternative view, however, is that we do know something. In fact, thanks to the vast expansion of data collection and scientific computing since WWII, we really know quite a lot about the earth system. To be sure, we don't know everything ... but if that were a necessary criterion for action, none of us would get out of bed in the morning. I don't know much about psychiatry, so I can't really say much about the current state of knowledge in your field. But in earth science, I think it would be incredibly wasteful to essentially wave away everything that's been learned since the days of Roger Revelle and decide that the uncertainties are just too large for us to say anything about how the earth system works. The big "ocean heat content debate" is a good example. There is a great deal of uncertainty about the exact trend in OHC over the past half-century, and realistically that will probably never be completely resolved since there's no way to go back in time and collect better data. But there are other areas with much less uncertainty (e.g., sea level rise, as the other Chris points out). The logical response is to base your scientific understanding on the lines of evidence that are most clear. Even if we never measured the temperature of the deep ocean, there would be plenty of lines of evidence in support of AGW. Insofar as the attempts to reconstruct the time evolution of OHC don't contradict those other lines of evidence, I see no reason to reassess our thinking on AGW. If, at some point, someone comes up with a very convincing reconstruction of OHC that shows strong evidence that the oceans have been losing heat since 1970, then I would agree that the conflicting lines of evidence need to be reconciled and one outcome might be ditching AGW. But that's not remotely the situation we find ourselves in. Instead, you (and others) are trying to hold up uncertainty in areas X, Y, and Z as a reason to throw out certainty in areas A, B, and C. We don't do that in other aspects of our daily lives and I see no reason to do it here. -
tobyjoyce at 00:54 AM on 5 June 2010Why does Anthony Watts drive an electric car?
Re: Foregoing discussion on Al Gore Al Gore is doing his best to live up to his principles. but examples of great men failing to live up to their stated principles abound in history. Thomas Jefferson keeping slaves is probebly the most notorious. If someone enunciates something new and forceful, its ok for them to be on a learning curve like the rest of us. -
chris at 00:40 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
chriscanaris at 00:23 AM on 5 June, 2010 I think your comments are on topic, at least in relation to the discussion that has evolved from the "Comment Policy" bit of the top article. Perhaps it is me that is going off topic by developing your point about psychoanalytical paradigms. With great respect to your field, I would suggest that the possibility for embedding "mainstream perspectives" at the expense of alternative theories and approaches is bound to be much stronger in the psychological/neurological sciences and their interface, compared to the physical sciences. In any field with large and fundamental uncertainties like psychiatry (considering more broadly the neurological basis for behaviour and personality), the fact that the uncertainties are large allows for the possibility of real (and probably justifiable) factionalisation of views and therapeutic approaches. You can correct me if you consider that's incorrect, but I would consider the physical sciences (including climate science) to be far less susceptible to this simply because the evidence base and the causal relationships are so much more strongly defined. That doesn't mean that uncertainties don't exist of course. But we should be honest about these uncertainties, and how these impact on our essential understandings of the subject and its sub-subjects... -
Ned at 00:37 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
Ken writes: The strength of this blog is manifest. It sticks to broadly technical arguments and refrains from questioning of motives for posting arguments and avoids the political or personal. Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, Ken then continues: I detect that the switching of recent discussion to thoughts censoring the non-believers might be motivated by the realization by the owner of this blog that [...] Ironically, Ken here engages in exactly the kind of ungenerous speculation about motives that he was previously praising the site for avoiding. I really don't see any suggestion that "non-believers" should be "censored". At the very end of his post, John considers the idea of expecting anyone who is making an extraordinary claim to back that up with extraordinary evidence. This really ought to be common sense, and it's remarkable that we need to debate this at all. If someone wants to dispute plate tectonics, electromagnetism, biological evolution, or other aspects of mainstream science, we should expect them to provide very convincing evidence. It's not sufficient to suggest "Well, there's some uncertainty about geophysical processes in the upper mantle so plate tectonics isn't true." Likewise, mainstream science doesn't offer any support (that I'm aware of) for the idea that doubling or tripling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would lead to a runaway greenhouse effect a la Venus, where temperatures rise high enough to boil away the oceans. If I were to propose such an idea here, I would expect you to demand that I provide not just speculation or hints to back it up, but very serious and direct evidence to support my radical proposal. Personally, I would be embarrassed to be suggesting that asking people to provide concrete evidence when they make extraordinary claims is somehow tantamount to "censorship". If your ideas can't be supported with any convincing evidence, perhaps you should reconsider them? -
chris1204 at 00:23 AM on 5 June 2010Irregular Climate: a new climate podcast
JMurphy @ 5 Copernicus' system was less reliable than the Ptolemaic system which relied on a scheme of in which regression of planetary motion in the heavens was based on cycle and epicycles. Copernicus was further restricted by the dominant paradigm which declared circular motion to be 'perfect.' In fact, Kepler had to break out of this paradigm by proposing elliptical motion thus providing a reliable model which corresponded to then observable data. Copernicus theory was untestable when first proposed. I harbour no delusions that my contributions on this blog reach Copernican heights. I have learnt a great deal from reading John's posts and from responses from 'warmists,' 'lukewarmists,' and 'sceptics' (if you'll pardon my resort to labels). I'd like to see this continue. I'm very comfortable with John's 'warmist' perspective - you have to have a firm working hypothesis to generate robust debate. Moreover, shutting out non mainstream perspectives freezes science. I could best illustrate this by talking about my own field - psychiatry. Fifty years ago, my field was dominated by a psychoanalytical paradigm which has now receded giving way to neurobiological, cognitive, and behavioural perspectives. Psychoanalysis would be on the margins and yet the contributions of its proponents still provide useful insights without which my field would be impoverished. I appreciate my comments might be strictly off topic - however, in any scientific field of endeavour, many schools of thought contend. The minority schools are vital to the integrity of science - otherwise, important questions go unasked. Ken Lambert's comments about the possible impact of the complexities, uncertainties, and weaknesses in climate science resonate strongly with me. My own field requires great tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty. Whenever I have delved more deeply into any issue over the course of my career, I have found myself confronting Socrates' maxim: ‘One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.’ -
Berényi Péter at 00:23 AM on 5 June 2010On temperature and CO2 in the past
#31 Riccardo at 22:58 PM on 4 June, 2010 made me think that you believe that the global temperature is, one way or another, linked to the ocean temperature I do. If that's what you mean by "reflect", I am sorry. However, it is important that "polar amplification" relative to average ocean temperature or average surface temperature are two very different beasts. Using this definition, you can derive it [climate sensitivity] from paleo data exactly No, you can not. F in your equation is not preserved. There is no fossil record of TOA net radiation balance. You can assume one, but as we know this kind of reasoning has its own problems.
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