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Alexandre at 23:22 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
HumanityRules #43 Thanks for pointing it out. I thought this map from the AR4 was based on Parmesan 2003. Actually, it's based on 75 different studies. Research is still much more intense in the Northern Hemisphere, but you can see the change in biological patterns in all continents point to warming, much like the thermometers. -
dhogaza at 22:47 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Leo G:How are humans not natural?
It's called "language". It's a distinction in language that goes back centuries, and everyone knows of the distinction, even if they want to play word games to derail discussion. Here are some dictionary definitions that might be of use:1. the material world, esp. as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities. 2. the natural world as it exists without human beings or civilization. 3. the elements of the natural world, as mountains, trees, animals, or rivers.
Now that the context has been set, perhaps the conversation can go forward without such needless diversions such as questioning the definition of common English words? -
thefrogstar at 22:36 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
I'm glad that this paper was available only untill Wednesday, but it might have been better if it was not made available at all. So. Imagine that I have "derived an index" to describe the weight of annual crops of apples AND oranges that are grown in Somerset. What would the mean and standard error of the mean actually signify when I apply it to this index? You don't like that there are few oranges grown in somerset and you might ge t an n=0 in the data? Thats OK. Just "derive an index" for apples AND pairs instead No. Better still, "derive an index" that describes the date of the first Cuckoo-call (as reported in The Times) AND the date of arrival of the first Swallow that doesn't make make a Summer (an unladen Swallow, of course). Now do some statistics on this index and make a plot with overlapping error bars. C'mon, people. -
Peter Hogarth at 22:32 PM on 14 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Don Gisselbeck at 10:36 AM on 14 April, 2010 Not sure on those specific glaciers! I guess it depends on how much is left after summer as well as how much falls in winter. More snow and more melt are not necessarily exclusive. But have a look at Bolch 2010 which looks at the pretty high glacier loss trends in BC and Alberta (25% loss in glacier area in Alberta 1985-2005, a bit better in BC) -
Marcus at 22:30 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Conservationists-or contrarians-who claim that dealing with climate change is "distracting us" from dealing with other environmental issues clearly have little faith in humanity's ability to multi-task. Last I checked we had the ability to walk & chew gum at the same time. The fact is that one great way to reduce CO2 emissions is to conserve more existing forest, & to grow more trees where possible-this will increase biodiversity, reduce soil & catchment degradation & save many species from extinction-so this is just one example of where tackling climate change dovetails nicely with saving the environment more generally. There are other examples, but this is the most obvious. Of course, most of the contrarians who make these kinds of claims couldn't give two hoots about any other environmental issues-& would happily promote environmental degradation if it boosted the bottom line! -
Peter Hogarth at 22:05 PM on 14 April 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Berényi Péter at 22:28 PM on 8 April, 2010 If you extrapolate your curve backwards in time what happens?.... the curve I fitted to sea level rise is a fit to observed data, rather than an extrapolation. Anyway, first you need to get hold of The latest satellite altimetry data, as Jason 1 data has not been updated on the Boulder site since late 2009. Jason 2 and Envisat altimeters are both currently active. Now do your trend, but extrapolate the trend plus error contributions as well. To emphasise the danger in your treatment of the data, take the Envisat data which starts late 2002. Fit a second order curve to this and extrapolate. Better start building your ark. I suggest that the correct interpretation is that the overall satellite record trend is statistically indistinguishable from a straight line, but we have to remember the errors, consider the tidal data that allows us to look longer term, and extrapolate carefully, taking all known information and driving factors into account. I’m not clever enough to do that, but I can say the trend over past 200 years is accelerating, the indications are that it will continue to do so, and point to the data and peer reviewed analysis to support this statement. -
JMurphy at 18:30 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
HumanityRules, you state that your personal views on biodiversity are 'more pragmatic' : what does that mean ? As for the 'Natural England' report, I did not state it to be a 'report about climate change' but, rather, a pointer as to how climate change will affect species in this country. The web summary may not have mentioned the words 'climate change' but the report certainly does and has a graph (Figure 5 : The most significant threats faced by BAP priority species in 2008) which has climate change as a midway serious threat - below land-use changes but above pollution. It also has a whole section (Species losing their English ‘climate space’) which gives more prominence to climate change. Would you disregard all that or disbelieve it for some reason, or do you think it's all hyperbole ? How does your pragmatism allow you to belittle the threat ? And again (as you have asserted previously with regard to 'catastrophe peddlers'), you blithely reckon that 'conservationists are begin[ning] to suggest that the focus on climate change is a distraction from issues associated with an expanding global human population'. So, again, I ask for back-up and references for those 'conservationists' (on top of the request for the 'catastrophe peddlers'). Instead of making assertions, how about naming names ? -
watchingthedeniers at 15:44 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Just to make it clear Leo, a collapse of key components of our logistical networks (food distribution, medical services, trade) will have profound and devastating effect. This is why the US military, NSA and other American intelligence agencies are taking the issue very seriously: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/08/us-military-declares-war-on-cl.html This is not a green/left/right wing issue. It's a civilizational challenge. -
watchingthedeniers at 15:40 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
@ Leo G post 48 "...How are humans not natural? Unless the bible is right and we were created by an omniscient being, which I doubt, then we must have evolved as all other natural things have for the past 14 billion years. Don't forget that as a species, we have inhabited this planet for approx. 200K years, thus we have survived through at least 2 ice ages, and 2 warming periods..." It may very well that we survive as a species, however the transition period may be difficult. As a species we number <6bn. However, our global civilisation rests on same fragile foundations: a global food supply network; advanced medical technology; sophisticated global logistic network that allows trade etc. As the global financial crises clearly indicated, a disruption to a key component of a sophisticated network can have profound effects. Remember, 70,000 years ago the human population was reduced to a around to >15,000 individuals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory There are also other instances of genetic bottlenecks in evolutionary history, not just for H.Sapiens. This is where the denial movements fails completely to understand what we are saying: civilisation is a precious thing that we should both celebrate and protect. Climate change is a threat to our advanced, industrial civilisation. We want to mitigate the impact and the damage it could cause. Nothing more, nothing less. To draw an analogy: it's like when the Americans ignored all the warning signs that lead to Pearl Harbour; or when the Soviets ignored the massive preponderance of evidene pointing to a massive German invasion. Neither went well. The science supporting climate change is *valuable intelligence* that should be informing our political and economic debates. Instead, we are stuck at the "denial phase". -
Doug Bostrom at 15:30 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Leo, sorry, I have to keep pointing out that we're not mindless like bacteria or a tropical cyclone or a nest of ants. We're of nature but we don't act like nature. Or at least we shouldn't. I'm not a religious person but I think the Bible has some stuff to say about that, something about stewardship which implies a sense of responsibility and thus mindfulness. So we needn't feel guilty unless we have reason. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:24 PM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
And by the way, ahawnhet, you've left hanging the question of how and why-- without encouragement and full information-- free markets will choose non-legacy energy systems that are allowed to be mistaken as more expensive? -- How in the absence of full and transparent accounting for all costs whether that accounting be done voluntarily or otherwise will the free market make the correct choice, the one that is most economically efficient in the long term? -- Knowing of external costs that are presently ignored in pricing, how does the free market adjust the price of legacy energy liberation systems to reflect their true cost? -
Leo G at 15:10 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Marcus - "Though its certain that the planet will recover/survive our irrational acts of vandalism-in evolutionary time-its not as certain that it will recover in sufficient time to save the human civilization, which has a much narrower comfort zone for change than the natural world." How are humans not natural? Unless the bible is right and we were created by an omniscient being, which I doubt, then we must have evolved as all other natural things have for the past 14 billion years. Don't forget that as a species, we have inhabited this planet for approx. 200K years, thus we have survived through at least 2 ice ages, and 2 warming periods. As for the irrational acts of vandalism, why did an inteligence evolve within the species, that has made the actual life for more and more of our breed to be more satisfying and comfortable these last few thousand years? Again, I say a natural evolvolution, as all are, to promote the species that you are associated with. Do you think that Lions and Hyennas get along fine on the Savannah? Not, the lions will, when it is advatageous to them, kill close habitating Hyennas. I wish we could drop this guilt that humans are somehow not natural, therefore bad to nature. Sorry, gotta plead innocent on that charge, Humans are as natural as any virus. :) -
Doug Bostrom at 15:07 PM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Most of the easy stuff has already been done, shawnhet? I'm not so sure about that, if you run the numbers you'll see the EU is choosing to do some of the hard things first, a little prematurely, when they're too expensive. Take photovoltaic systems, for instance. Some EU countries have made the choice to invest in these early, which has helped to build manufacturing capacity but has I think been a poor choice of where the first funds directed to eliminating our fossil fuel habit should go. PV systems are still relatively expensive, dollar per watt, compared to some other technologies that are proven useful and waiting for deployment. For example, the EU like many other places has a substantial requirement for domestic hot water (sorry, one of my favorite grinds) as well as space heating. DHW and space heating systems require low grade heat of the sort not required to do "work" in the sense we're accustomed to. This sort of energy is extremely easy to capture using solar input and it also happens to be relatively easy to store. Because this technology is both very efficient at capturing sunlight and as well requires nothing particularly special in the way of manufacturing capabilities, it is potentially extremely affordable compared to PV systems. N. Europe is not a place where solar heating of water can be accomplished year 'round but nonetheless a substantial portion of energy input to heat water waits to be offset by augmentation of existing systems with solar input. The watt-equivalent contribution this adjustment can make to relieving load from the electric grid comes at about a tenth the price of watts captured via PV systems. Meanwhile, a liter of water heated 10 degrees centigrade does not care whether it was heated by electricity, natural gas or solar radiation, but we obviously should be when confronted with comparative numbers of 10:1. This matter of inverted priorities w/regard to solar energy capture will be noticed, is in fact being noticed now. Given that at the end of the day most water in Europe is ultimately heated via natural gas, we see there is actually a substantial amount of carbon being emitted by the EU that will be relatively easy to eliminate. This is assuming that regulators stimulate the private enterprise needed to produce DHW and space heating solar capture systems at sane production levels and hence prices, instead of the hobbyist level the industry occupies in much of the EU north of Spain and Greece. -
watchingthedeniers at 15:03 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
I think this should put to bed any "controversy" on the warming/solar flare issue: http://wotsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/levy-walks-solar-flares-and-warming/ -
Leo G at 14:56 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Personnal data from my garden -Pear tree in full bloom 15 days earlier then average this spring - Cherry tree in full bloom 4 days earlier then average - apple tree still not even a single bloom, should be in full bloom in 3-4 days, don't think it's gonna make it. Average based on six years of record keeping. O/T - a very good discussion on solar/climate is happening right now on Wuwt. Svalgaard and Scafetta, plus some others I do not recognize http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/12/levy-walks-solar-flares-and-warming/#comments -
shawnhet at 14:16 PM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Doug, whether the trend is slightly downward or flat or slightly rising, the *big picture* is that in order to avoid the hypothetical catastrophe *significant* **reductions** in CO2 will have to be forthcoming. As I have said, those reductions will be increasingly difficult to come by. Most of the easy stuff has already been done. So what? Do you want to keep focusing on efforts that will be increasingly difficult to receive any sort of payout or do you want to focus on the stuff that has a chance to work? Does it make any sense to complain about others stupidity and ignore doing the easy stuff? Cheers, :) -
watchingthedeniers at 13:49 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
@ HumanityRules post 41 "No mention of climate change. It's likely habitat loss is the most significant here not a shift of 10 days in the onset of spring. I think you have mis-labelled this as a report about climate change..." No credible scientist has made such a claim. Habitat loss and extinction over the past few centuries are due to multiple causes (development, deforestation). Climate change is *another* human induced cause of the extinciton etc. Have you *read* the paper and looked at the 25 year intervals. Can you note how that correlates with our understanding of climate change over the past 100 years? This is exactly what was predicted. To claim otherwise is a little disingenuous. And "many conservationists" question climate change? That would be who? Your last statement suggests you are a fan of the Bjorn Lomborg. -
watchingthedeniers at 13:40 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
@ quokka post 11 - thanks mate, exactly what I was looking for. And I'll look out for the new paper JC refers too. -
HumanityRules at 12:49 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
32.Alexandre I have issues with describing these phenology papers as global. The vast majority of this sort of data is NH, more specifically Europe and N. America. For example you describe the Parmesan paper as "analysing phenomena in every continent" when this is their own description "All studies were conducted in temperate Northern Hemisphere, except for 194 species in Costa Rica and 5 species in Antarctica" Global?? -
HumanityRules at 12:33 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
23.Alexandre I prefer Fow News myself! -
HumanityRules at 12:29 PM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
20.JMurphy Interesting report although my personnel views on biodiversity are more pragmatic. This from the web summary. "this Lost life report identifies nearly 500 animals and plants that have become extinct in England – practically all within the last two centuries. It also highlights how habitat loss, inappropriate management, environmental pollution and pressure from non-native species have all played a part in the erosion of England’s biodiversity." No mention of climate change. It's likely habitat loss is the most significant here not a shift of 10 days in the onset of spring. I think you have mis-labelled this as a report about climate change. Many conservationists are begin to suggest that the focus on climate change is a distraction from issues associated with an expanding global human population. Again my personnel views are somewhat different on this issue also. Finally if there is no catastrophe looming then it begs the question why we are arguing about this problem? I'm happy to agree that this is not significant enough a problem to make us reconsider our future ecomonic development for. -
Doug Bostrom at 12:20 PM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
I'd certainly prefer to see steadily declining GHG emissions in the EU, shawnhet, but your highlighting of 2 years' data and further remark on economic activity demonstrates yet again how it is a mistake to build a case on selected datapoints, noisy as they are. Using the data at the link I provided above, you can see that despite numerous swerves in economic activity and massive changes in regional geopolitics, the EU's GHG emissions trend is downward. During this period the EU as well as member states acting independently have introduced a number of aggressive schemes to limit GHG emissions. By so doing, a generous assessment is that they have if nothing else arrested the emissions trend we see in other parts of the world with looser regulations. A more pessimistic interpretation might emphasize the declining curve of reductions; that may be a matter of initial incentives running their course and leading to the steepening curve of effort you alluded to. However, your basic assertion of increasing EU GHG emissions does not have a firm foundation. -
michael sweet at 11:46 AM on 14 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Reference for claim of rotten ice near Canada in previous post: Barber, D. G., R. Galley, M. G. Asplin, R. De Abreu, K.- A. Warner, M. Pucko, M. Gupta, S. Prinsenberg, and S. Julien. 2009. Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009. Geophysical Research Letters 36, L24501, doi:10.1029/2009GL041434. -
michael sweet at 11:43 AM on 14 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
Humanity Rules: Surface temperature is limited over the summer ice by the melting ice itself. The temperature in the past was near zero celcius and continues near zero. It cannot go up until the ice is gone. Even then, the surface temperature is constrained by the cold arctic ocean. It is not suprising that summer temps have risen less than winter. There is more room for change in the winter. It will be interesting to see in the next decade if the summer temperature starts to rise faster now that there is so much less ice. There are reports that the old ice near Canada includes large sections that are rotten (contain much degraded ice). This ice may not be resistant to melt in the summer, depending on the weather. I have seen a variety of predictions when the Arctic is expected to be ice free, ranging from 2013 (!!) to 2070. It seems to me that Dr. Hogarth has adopted a conservative tone for this thread (IMO a good position). These models are in flux as the ice changes from year to year. The next few years data will be interesting to see. -
shawnhet at 11:41 AM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Doug, here are a couple of references laying out the increased emissions from Europe. http://www.eea.europa.eu/pressroom/newsreleases/GHG2006-en http://ecopreneurist.com/2008/04/03/2007-european-carbon-dioxide-emissions-rise-11-carbon-futures-jump-39/ http://www.pbl.nl/en/news/pressreleases/2009/20090625-Global-CO2-emissions_-annual-increase-halved-in-2008.html Very recent numbers are affected by the economic downturn, of course. IAC, a flat rate isn't good enough if the theory is accurate, the recent US rate is pretty comparable to the European one. To prevent the proposed calamity, we would actually need to *reduce* the amount of CO2 emissions. So Europe will have to do *more* if you are right(bearing in mind of course that one of the reasons for EU's low carbon emissions is nuclear power). As I have said, it will be increasingly difficult to get them to do so. Again, far from being contradicted by empirical evidence, my POV is confirmed by it. Cheers, :) -
Tom Dayton at 11:14 AM on 14 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
pdt, in accord with Doug's comment I've responded to you on the Models Are Unreliable thread. -
Tom Dayton at 11:12 AM on 14 April 2010Models are unreliable
(This comment is my response to a comment by pdt on a different thread that is not the right place for this discussion.) pdt wroteIt seems that at least some effects are still not really based upon a fundamental understanding of underlying physics. The effects of clouds are still apparently used as fitting parameters to climate data. The fits to climate data are then used to predict climate over other periods. I don't really have a problem with this in principle, but it does seem that these are not really fully based on fundamental physics and this type of fitting leaves open the possibility of trying to use the fitted parameters outside the region of validity (extrapolation rather than interpolation). Apparently things like clouds are not really understood in enough detail to truly predict climate from fundamental physics.
Doug Bostrom correctly replied "It's...a rare matter of actual significant uncertainty." The answer is in the RealClimate post FAQ on Climate Models, the "Questions" section, "What is the difference between a physics-based model and a statistical model?", "Are climate models just a fit to the trend in global temperature data?", and "What is tuning?" A relevant quote from those: "Thus statistical fits to the observed data are included in the climate model formulation, but these are only used for process-level parameterisations, not for trends in time." Part II of that post then provides more details on parameterizations, including specifics on clouds. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:06 AM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Oops. When I said "productivity figures equal or exceed our own" I implied "our" as the U.S.A., ~4.5% world population. -
Don Gisselbeck at 10:36 AM on 14 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
There has been an increase in snow cover on some NW Montana glaciers since 2007. The Stanton was nearly all bare ice in late Sept 2007 and completely covered with snow (mostly from 2008) the same week of 2009. The Grinnell showed similar improvement in late August. Are these two part of the "90% growing"? The growth is unlikely to continue since we are at 50-60% of normal snow pack this year. (I hope growth continues, it is easier to ski snow than ice.) -
HumanityRules at 10:23 AM on 14 April 2010Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
21.Peter Hogarth Peter I think the concluion from your graphic and my graphic are pretty much the same. The seasonal variation in your plot illustrates the point. The trend line you have plotted is essentially the average temperature. What I'd be interested in is a plot for the year high (or summer/melt seson) and for the year low (or winter temp). It'll probably show very little trend in the summer season (there appears no increase in max temp) and the greatest trend in the winter. Interestingly if you do a similar season plot for ice extent you see the lowest trend in winter and highest downward trend in the summer. The opposite to the temperature. 25.Albatross Maybe my wording was poor. I trust the satellite record shows a 30year downward trend. I also don't think the past two years constitutes a recovery. I think we actually agree on that! I take your point that the graphic I show is for the highest latitudes. But yourself (post #17) and others have pointed out the importance of age/thickness of the the ice and much of the oldest and thickest ice is at these higher latitudes. I just came across a paper which maybe resolves our two positions "The authors speculate that decoupling of the ice thickness-volume relationship resulted from two opposing mechanisms with different latitudinal expressions: a recent quasi-decadal shift in atmospheric circulation patterns associated with the AO’s neutral state facilitated ice thickening at high latitudes while anomalously warm thermal forcing thinned and melted the ice cap at its periphery." -
Doug Bostrom at 10:18 AM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Shawnhet, I'm not sure where you're getting your EU emissions data but what I'm looking at shows an essentially flat total GHG emissions graph. Depending on what member state you view, you may find upward or downward emissions, but if by "European" you mean the EU I'd say the collective effort they're making is working sufficiently to arrest increases in emissions and of course this is just the beginning as far as they're concerned. As we know, that effort includes some powerful nudges from regulators. And guess what? The lights are still on in Europe, productivity figures equal or exceed our own, they're not huddled in mud huts. EU emissions data from the European Environment Agency. Now folks who are really serious about this stuff will point out that the EU has "exported" GHG emissions in various forms, mostly by accident, but one can hardly blame the Europeans for being unable to dictate how other parts of the world square up to their own responsibilities. Lord knows, they've tried their best to urge the rest of us to get our act together. Others may say that confounding factors such as collapsing Eastern economies make the EU emissions scene unrealistic, but at the same time we have some outliers (Italy, Spain) that have more than helped offset those events. In any case the absorption of Eastern states has largely receded into the past, those economies have adopted some habits that considered correlated with improving lifestyles, yet we've still got a flat graph to look at out of Europe. So I think the picture you paint is entirely too simple and is contradicted by empirical evidence. -
shawnhet at 09:52 AM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Doug, feel free to propose a tax increase on fossil fuels, if you want, but I feel that this is clearly a type 1 option(it's not going to work now, and it will be increasingly difficult to make it work in the future). European countries have high fuel taxes along with increasing GH emissions, so I don't think that carbon taxes will work. IAC, it is clearly not an either/or proposition, we don't need to tax carbon emissions further to build nuclear power plants or invest in solar power. We can do both right now and both will be much more effective than your proposal IMO. Cheers, :) -
CoalGeologist at 09:46 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
In reply to Doug Cannon @#34, yes, we should always be 'just a little skeptical of any conclusions', however, in all cases we are obligated to make a sincere effort to gain an unbiased understanding of what those conclusions are. The reason the authors included the horizontal solid black lines and the horizontal dashed line was to enable us to see the longer term trends, rather than be distracted by short-term deviations. The early blooms ~1780 are indeed strange! I'm sure it was the 'talk of the town' in London at the time, particularly so because it occurred in the midst of the so-called "Little Ice Age"! Mann et al. (1998)asserted that temperatures during the last part of the 20th century were the warmest in the past millennium. This conclusion may have been a bit of a "stretch", but at minimum it was "plausible". In either case, I frankly do not understand the obsession about the "hockey stick". If we allow that climate may have varied more in the past than would appear from the hockey stick diagram (ignoring its large error bars), what would this tell us about the validity of AGW? Nothing. In any case, can we not allow the poor hockey stick to rest in peace? Science has moved on. We should too. The National Research Council Study (2006) concluded that: "It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries." The current study is consistent with that conclusion, and as there is no supportable explanation for 20th Century warming other than AGW, it provides yet more support for the theory, particularly with the accuracy of the surface temperature data under vigorous attack from "skeptics". Remember, Flowers have no political agenda (other than to make baby plants!). -
Marcus at 09:30 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Doug Cannon, did you see the margins of error for the data for the 18th & 19th centuries? That alone can explain why the "average" FFI is about as high as in the 1980's. What really matters, in my opinion, is to look at the downward trend in the FFI over the past 70 years, when we know human activity has been changing the composition of the atmosphere. Another point is the supposed resilience of nature to human-induced climate change events. Though its certain that the planet will recover/survive our irrational acts of vandalism-in evolutionary time-its not as certain that it will recover in sufficient time to save the human civilization, which has a much narrower comfort zone for change than the natural world. -
Doug Bostrom at 09:23 AM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Shawnhet, I'd say that if one accepts continued dumping of C02 as a threat and sees #2 and #3 as solutions, they'll not be delivered as long as we continue pretending that fossil fuels are cheaper to use than reality increasingly suggests. Who is going to invest sufficient money in nuclear, wind and photovoltaic systems while the market is setting an unrealistically low price on fossil fuel consumption? To use an analogy that not only is becoming tired but remains disgusting, if I'm allowed to dump my sewage in my neighbor's yard for seemingly for free and am offered the voluntary choice of spending more money to put it in a municipal sewage system, what does human nature tell us will happen? It's not likely I'll do anything, until fecal bacteria begin showing up in my well, that's what. Not enough grownups in the room, that's the problem with C02. See Krugman's recent essay about ways we can begin playing as adults. -
shawnhet at 09:08 AM on 14 April 2010Are we too stupid?
Let's say that we assume that unchecked emission of carbon dioxide will be calamitous. It seems that there are three possible approaches. 1.Current conservation approaches a la Kyoto. Negatives: They emphatically do not work and/because they are too expensive. Not only do some countries currently opt out, countries that have signed on don't do much(if any) better over the long term than countries that have opted out. Last I checked, even the countries with the "greenest" economies (like the Europeans) are still *increasing* their fossil fuel emissions. These approaches will only get more expensive as time goes on, as well. One can assume generally that the easiest, cheapest and hence, most effective changes came first. It follows thusly that as time goes on changes that reduce emissions of fossil fuel will become progressively more and more difficult and expensive, per amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere. A strategy that isn't working now and will become more and more difficult to apply in the future strikes me as a very poor one. Cost: very high. 2.As was raised earlier, we do have at least one possible option with current technology -nuclear power. Negatives. Pollution and security. Compared to 1, though, nuclear works and will continue to work as well or better as now in the future. Cost: moderate. 3. Rely on technological change to solve the problem, see below (solar power is specifically discussed at about 5:40 but the whole talk is useful to put this in context). Negatives: We don't know for sure that new technologies will continue to improve in the future as they have in the past(though it seems pretty likely that they will). Cost: Moderate. http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_announces_singularity_university.html Personally, I would submit that it would be "stupid" to use 1 as our primary response to the hypothetical calamity of AGW, yet that is the one that is *overwhelmingly* being advocated, even though it hasn't worked so far and will continue not to work for the foreseeable future. The "smart" response IMO would be to focus on 2 for the short to medium term and rely on investment in research on option 3 to provide for the long solution, relying on #1 as only a small and relatively unimportant part of the global warming solution. However, I personally think that 1 will continue being the popular response to AGW. This may be because people are stupid or more likely IMO that most folks use the AGW issue for other (political) issues. Cheers, :) -
Doug Bostrom at 09:00 AM on 14 April 2010There's no empirical evidence
Rogerthesurf, the second part of your post-- the section suggesting robust alternative explanations-- is missing. -
Doug Bostrom at 08:57 AM on 14 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Pdt, not to butt in but your remark will be better served and of better service if delivered on the thread Tom suggested. It's dead on topic for that thread and a rare matter of actual significant uncertainty leading to less redundant fat-chewing. Not so much for this one and thus a missed opportunity for better coherency. Models are unreliable -
Rogerthesurf at 08:55 AM on 14 April 2010There's no empirical evidence
This is not empirical evidence of global warming. All you have done is air some empirically unproven theories that may account for the current warming and refused to consider that the same effects may be completely independent of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. -
pdt at 08:43 AM on 14 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
Tom Dayton: "Instead they (climate models) are physical models that incorporate knowledge of fundamental processes." I just read this history of climate models: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm It seems that at least some effects are still not really based upon a fundamental understanding of underlying physics. The effects of clouds are still apparently used as fitting parameters to climate data. The fits to climate data are then used to predict climate over other periods. I don't really have a problem with this in principle, but it does seem that these are not really fully based on fundamental physics and this type of fitting leaves open the possibility of trying to use the fitted parameters outside the region of validity (extrapolation rather than interpolation). Apparently things like clouds are not really understood in enough detail to truly predict climate from fundamental physics. Of course, this is just the impression I got from one source, perhaps it is not really accurate. -
David Horton at 08:33 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Seems to me this is a classic case of ecological complexity being difficult to reconcile with the obvious reality of global warming. Clearly warming temperatures would be expected to lead to earlier flowering times as both germination and development processes were speeded up. Trouble is there are many other factors as well (timing and amount of rainfall, incidence of frosts, cloudiness) which different species will react to in different ways. In addition the British landscape is very much an artificial creation of humans over a long time, and species characteristics have been greatly affected by human activity as well, these are not like, say, native species of flowering plants in an Australian woodland. So all of that would be expected to give considerable variability in species flowering response to global warming, and averaging it all out (with the added modification of an index) would tend to reduce the apparent effects. So I am not surprised that the graph really doesn't show anything clearly. You would be better taking a few species (and the authors do give a couple of examples in hawthorn and blackthorn) which do show a clear response. But of course if you did that the deniers would immediately pretend that these examples weren't significant, "what about the other species?", just as they do with glacier data (which has similar variety of responses depending on geography). But interesting stuff, as more and more data comes in showing that global warming isn't just an ideological game for the right wing shock jocks, and an economic game for oil companies, but has real world consequences which are going to seriously affect a 7 billion strong species dependent on plants for food. -
JMurphy at 08:22 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Doug Cannon, a few years here or there do not prove or disprove anything, as the most recent localised cold Winter should already have told you. Look for trends, especially significant ones, and be aware of the uncertainty range - as you mentioned but seem to have immediately dismissed. There could be many reasons why a year or two around 1780 experienced possible early flowering, one of them perhaps to do with the ENSO. Have you already discounted it ? -
Doug Bostrom at 08:21 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Doug Cannon, we don't live 260 years ago, we live in the present, where we are the dominant species on the planet to the point that geologists are in the middle of a discussion looking as though it'll lead to the naming of a new unit of geological time, the "anthropocene." If you point your browser to Google Scholar and use the search term "phenological evidence of climate change" you'll produce a list somewhat shy of 21,000 items. You'll find a lot of papers with characteristics broadly resembling this abstract: We evaluated spring phenology changes from 1965 to 2001 in northeastern USA utilizing a unique data set from 72 locations with genetically identical lilac plants (Syringa chinensis, clone ldquoRed Rothomagensisrdquo). We also utilized a previously validated lilac-honeysuckle ldquospring indexrdquo model to reconstruct a more complete record of first leaf date (FLD) and first flower date (FFD) for the region from historical weather data. In addition, we examined mid-bloom dates for apple (Malus domestica) and grape (Vitis vinifera) collected at several sites in the region during approximately the same time period. Almost all lilac sites with significant linear trends for FLD or FFD versus year had negative slopes (advanced development). Regression analysis of pooled data for the 72 sites indicated an advance of –0.092 day/year for FFD (P=0.003). The slope for FLD was also negative (–0.048 day/year), but not significant (P=0.234). The simulated data from the ldquospring indexrdquo model, which relies on local daily temperature records, indicated highly significant (P<0.001) negative slopes of –0.210 and –0.123 day/year for FLD and FFD, respectively. Data collected for apple and grape also indicated advance spring development, with slopes for mid-bloom date versus year of –0.20 day/year (P=0.01) and –0.146 (P=0.14), respectively. Collectively, these results indicate an advance in spring phenology ranging from 2 to 8 days for these woody perennials in northeastern USA for the period 1965 to 2001, qualitatively consistent with a warming trend, and consistent with phenology shifts reported for other mid- and high-latitude regions. Climate change and shifts in spring phenology of three horticultural woody perennials in northeastern USA This is happening now, and it's congruent with numerous other predictions regarding anthropogenic climate change. This is another case where we may tease doubt out of a single study in a single field or even many studies in the same field, but once again it turns out be another part of large puzzle, a piece that fits according to prediction and helps to complete the picture we believe will emerge when all parts are present. -
CoalGeologist at 08:11 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
Although we are 'stuck with' the term "Global Warming", climate researchers don't particularly like this term, and for good reason. While there has clearly (i.e. "unequivocally"!) been an increase in globally averaged temperatures over the past century, the absolute magnitude of the change is small, albeit significant in its impact. Long-term warming trends are overprinted locally on annual and decadal scale by weather patterns, ocean circulation, solar variability, changes in stratosperic ozone, and other controls. For this reason, not all geographic locations show the same magnitude of warming at all times. This is why larger scale regional trends over longer time periods are needed to demonstrate the impact of AGW, which is what this study has done. If one becomes too focused on shorter term weather events or local anomalies, it becomes difficult to 'see the orchard for the trees'. In this regard, Argus should take full advantage of his many eyes to consider the scientific evidence, as noted by JMurphy here and here. Moreover, at #30, Geo Guy asked, "Now IF higher levels of atmospheric CO2 was the main driving force of climate change, and since the CO2 content quote is for the entire atmosphere, we should expect to observe similar data from two maritime environments such as the UK and Atlantic Canada, but we don't. To me that suggests there is more at play wrt climate change than simply higher levels of CO2." The answers are: 1) No, we would NOT necessarily expect to observe similar climatic trends at such geographically disparate locations. Therefore, the reported trends in Nova Scotia (assuming they've been accurately recorded and interpreted) neither prove nor disprove AGW, but DO provide an example the risks I mentioned above. and 2) Yes, there is a great deal more at play w.r.t. climate change than simply higher levels of CO2. Anyone wishing to understand the nature of climate change MUST understand the magnitudes of the contributions made by other climate drivers and feedbacks in addition to AGHGs. This represents the very foundation of the theory of AGW. And finally, I note once again that dire warnings about "climate alarmism" are themselves a form of alarmism. "Climate alarmism" may exist, but is in scant evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. -
This just in - the sun affects climate
Hi John - not sure whether you've seen this or not... "Scientists find errors in hypothesis linking solar flares to global temperature" http://www.physorg.com/news189845962.html "The theory of anthropogenic global warming consists of a set of logically interconnected and consistent hypotheses,” Martin Rypdal said. “This means that if a cornerstone hypothesis is proven to be false, the entire theory fails. A corresponding theory of global warming of solar origin does not exist. What does exist is a set of disconnected, mutually inconsistent, ad hoc hypotheses. If one of these is proven to be false, the typical proponent of solar warming will pull another ad hoc hypothesis out of the hat. This has been the strategy of Scafetta and West over the years, and we have no illusion that our paper will put them to silence. However, the only scientifically valid strategy to confront these new hypotheses is to shoot down every new missile as they come in, using the most advanced weapons at hand. We believe that this operation was successfully accomplished with respect to the complexity linking hypothesis, but there will be many more battles to be fought until the issue of the contribution of solar variability to recent global warming is settled.” -
Tom Dayton at 07:39 AM on 14 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
scaddenp, I suggested to nhthinker that this discussion move to the thread Models are Unreliable. -
scaddenp at 07:10 AM on 14 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker, please read the links given to you because you would appear to woefully uninformed as to the nature of the models and there outputs - and I think you will find that the commentators here are extremely well informed about integration. What "embarrassing predictions?" Cites to these embarrassing papers please. Climate model predict 30 year trends as surely you are aware. What climate science certainly does believe is that climate is a physical phenomenon governed by physical laws. Change requires forcing. If you are claiming some natural change, then lets see that natural forcing. Paleoclimate has countless riddles but perhaps you would like to consider how difficult it is to measure global solar, albedo, aerosol, and atmospheric composition from the geological record. -
Doug Cannon at 06:10 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
What was it about the period around 1780 that caused flowers to bloom earlier than in the period around 1980 when the IPPC (and Mann) tells us it was much warmer than anytime in the past several hundred years? Could there be some other blooming reason? How can anyone conclude that this is a "very robust piece of research, and again confirms the reality of AGW." Especially when the authors acknowledge the chance for such a large error in the early data. Shouldn't we be just a little skeptical about any conclusions. -
phinniethewoo at 05:34 AM on 14 April 2010Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
fig1: I can see a unit root there in that plot, with the naked eye -
Tom Dayton at 05:16 AM on 14 April 2010CO2 lags temperature
nhthinker, your topic of the predictive ability of climate models is relevant to the thread Models are unreliable.
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