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Comments 121001 to 121050:

121001. Ned at 00:47 AM on 12 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        nhthinker, it's still not clear to me why or how you think that Barton is being misrepresented in the quote at the top of this thread. John quoted two sentences where Barton is discussing the lag between temperature and CO2 in the ice core records. Barton suggests that the existence of this lag shows that CO2 did not cause the glacial/interglacial changes in temperature ("a rise in carbon dioxide levels could not have caused a rise in temperature if it followed the temperature"). The article at the top of this thread rightly explains that Barton's point is misleading, because in the period Barton is referring to CO2 functioned as a feedback whereas now it's acting as a forcing (more on this in the next comment). You suggested that there was some context being left out, specifically the following: * A preceding sentence and footnote (iv) discussing higher CO2 levels in the Eocene and Oligocene. This is tens of millions of years ago, i.e. two orders of magnitude further back in time than the glacial/interglacial cycles that are the subject of this thread. There are no ice cores that go back that far, and no evidence for any lag. Higher levels of CO2 in the Eocene and Oligocene don't somehow change the wrongness of Barton's discussion of a lag in Pleistocene ice core data. It's a completely different subject. * A footnote (v) to a paper about the lag in the ice cores, and a concluding sentence with an appeal to authority (citing somebody from NAS who Barton says mentioned the lag in congressional testimony). These, likewise, are completely irrelevant -- all they do is provide support for Barton's claim that there was a lag in the ice core records. But nobody thinks that there wasn't a lag in the ice core records. If anybody is making a straw-man argument here, it's Barton himself! So no, I don't see anything in the extended version of the Barton quote that even remotely suggests he is being misrepresented. You will need to be much more specific if you still think there's a problem somewhere there.
121002. nocompromise at 00:42 AM on 12 April 2010
        Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
        I'm having trouble reconciling the values presented in this article vs the CO2 amount measured in: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/global.total.gif and http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html (cited by the CO2 article in wikipedia) They are orders of magnitude different! Am I missing something here?
        Response: What I'm displaying in my carbon cycle graph is the flux of carbon dioxide. What you're looking at in the CDIAC graph is the flux of carbon. To convert carbon to carbon dioxide, you multiply by 3.66 (I explain the process in more detail here - and actually use the CDIAC data from your link). So for example, the CDIAC graph finds that our current rate of CO2 emissions is around 8000 million metric tons of carbon. This is around 8 gigatonnes of carbon which equates to 29 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide.
        
        I opted to use units of carbon dioxide in my carbon cycle graph because I thought it would be less confusing - people relate to carbon dioxide emissions, not the carbon element of the carbon dioxide molecule. I've regretted it ever since because the convention is to use carbon and hence much confusion has ensued. I will update my carbon cycle graphs with units of carbon sometime down the track (when I get the time).
        
121003. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 21:51 PM on 11 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Berényi Péter (...) Galapagos coral reefs are still well and alive. With emphasis on 'still', I suppose. There was indeed large mortality of coral reefs at Galapagos during El Niño 1998. During large extinction events corals are the ones who suffers the most as in e.g. the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event. Just because corals did not become extinct as a class so far in no way precludes that we can not drive them to extinction.
121004. Alexandre at 21:51 PM on 11 April 2010
        The human fingerprint in global warming
        Is Chen 2007 peer-reviewed? In which journal?
121005. Berényi Péter at 20:27 PM on 11 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        I'd recommend reading Biogeosciences (An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union). It has a nice Public Peer-Review & Interactive Public Discussion process and the papers are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, both Discussion Papers (BGD) & Final Revised Papers (BG). In most cases there is also some Supplement. This is how all scientific publication should look like.
121006. James Wight at 17:03 PM on 11 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        This to me goes to show that websites like this one are doing their bit by working on requirement b) “the population is sufficiently enlightened about the facts”.
121007. James Wight at 16:53 PM on 11 April 2010
        Every skeptic argument ever used
        John, I have some more suggestions about your list of arguments. I realize the list is not entirely your own anymore, so some of the things I point out may be other people’s additions that have slipped under the radar. (That’s the danger of allowing anybody to contribute!) In particular, somebody has added an argument with the rather unwieldy title “CO2 emissions/absortion rates from nature are largely unprecise. More unprecise than accounted emissions by humans. We can't be sure if it is all an accounting error.” Maybe this should be shortened to a single sentence like the other arguments? Also, “absortion” should be spelled “absorption” and “unprecise” should be “imprecise”. “Kilimanjaro snow does not melt because of warming” is also a bit unclear. Does it mean that Kilimanjaro snow *isn’t* melting because of warming (an argument that would belong under “Mt Kilimanjaro’s ice loss is due to land use”), or Kilimanjaro snow *wouldn’t* melt if it was warming (which would belong under “It’s not bad”)? Come to think of it, “Glacier melt is natural” itself doesn’t really belong under “Climate’s changed before” either. It seems to me that “Gulf Stream is stable” and “Conveyor belt won’t stop” are essentially the same argument – unless one is meant to refer to ocean conveyor belts generally and the other to the North Atlantic specifically, but that isn’t clear from the articles submitted. Also, I’m not sure what the difference is between “CO2 effect is saturated” and “Saturated Greenhouse Effect”. Does the latter mean that all greenhouse gases are saturated, not just CO2? I think “Freedom of Information requests were ignored” belongs under “Climategate”. And maybe “Corals survived during past periods of high CO2” should go under “It’s not bad”. (Incidentally, do you realise the “It’s not bad” link on the taxonomy page goes to an error message?) I also noticed you’ve separated the last category of arguments into two topics, “It’s too late” and “It’s too hard”. I suggest that “CO2 limits will hurt the poor”, “Famine and disease are a higher priority”, and “CO2 limits take money away from real threats” all belong in the “It’s too hard” category.
        Response: The list of skeptic arguments that I originally set up is like a complex garden that constantly needs pruning and maintenance to keep in order. Then I let everyone else add to it which means it now needs constant weeding also! So I appreciate your periodic proofreading of the skeptic list, helps keep it relatively under control. I've just made the following changes:

        • Shortened the "CO2 emissions/absortion rates from nature are largely unprecise..." argument to "Carbon cycle uncertainty is high"
        • Merged the two Kiliminjaro arguments into one
        • Merged "gulf stream is stable" and "conveyor belt won't stop"
          
        • Merged "co2 is saturated" and "greenhouse is saturated"
        • Recategorised "FOI requests were ignored" under climategate
        • Recategorised coral reef arguments under "it's not bad"
        • Fixed the broken link to the "It's not bad" page
        • BTW, while I was there shuffling things around, I swapped the ordering around so "It's too hard" comes before "It's too late". If you consider the arguments as stages of denial, it makes more chronological sense.

        Thanks again for all the suggestions. This is just as valuable as the proofreading help I've been getting recently. Please feel free to give the list a look over every couple of weeks to see if it needs weeding again :-)
121008. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 06:43 AM on 11 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        embb Geo-engineering is sure to go wrong - and any social engineering is sure to have no negative impact, as if the precautionary principle could only be applied very very selectively. According to the Milinski papers all it takes is letting people discriminate against the ones who defies scientific evidence - much like discrimination against criminals. That can hardly be considered social engineering from a historical perspective. If one finds the consequences of global warming exaggerated, then being in favour of geo-engineering would constitute a contradiction. If one does not accept climate science, the consequences of geo-engineering cannot currently be scientifically calculated. If climate science is correct and the consequences are perceived as dire, then there is no good reason to significantly increase the risks by attempting geo-engineering on top of the problems. That is, unless in an emergency where CO2 reductions alone would not suffice.
121009. Steve L at 04:17 AM on 11 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        BP, I'd like to take issue with your comment @50. Unfortunately I don't have time to do a good job of it, so I'll limit myself to two points. First, this form of argument -- "there's low pH at location or time X and species Y is doing okay there/then" -- is interesting but not convincing. Biochemically harsh environments like tide pools and thermal vents have species that do well in them, too, and there are shellfish in fresh water (pH below 7). One cannot conclude that critters in other environments will be unaffected by changes to pH that are within the range of "location X". For example, the shellfish doing well in fresh water (and low pH) should give us very little comfort that shellfish in the ocean are going to do fine as pH declines. Further, your suggestion that low pH is good because bleaching occurs during El Nino ignores interrelated factors that are important (eg. temperature!). The full suite of environmental parameters and ecological context (including species composition) matters. That brings me to my second point, and I repeat to some extent Riccardo's comment earlier @18. The reduction of pH is a problem because it increases the solubility of carbonate such that it forms bicarbonate which isn't very available to creatures to make their shells. My understanding is that the aragonite (a more highly soluble form of carbonate used in many invertebrate shells) saturation horizon will become shallower in the high latitudes before it changes much in the tropics (despite pH being generally lower in the tropics, in absolute terms). By 2100, the aragonite saturation horizon is projected to go from 120m (current) to 0m in the high North Pacific or Bering Sea, from 730m (current) to 0m in parts of the Southern Ocean, and 2600m (current) to 115m in the North Atlantic. For these kinds of contextual reasons, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (for example) is worried about their production of pink salmon (who feed on pteropods, who make shells of aragonite). What happens in specific coral reef locations may depend greatly on the saturation states of carbonate there, and although pH influences these states, the relationship is not so simple that the other parameters can be ignored. In summary, I think you raise interesting questions, but I don't think you can assume that corals persisting in low pH conditions in "location X" mean that corals in "location Y" will be fine when exposed to similar pH levels. You may also want to check on whether or not your beloved Galapagos corals are expected to be exposed to further decreases in pH.
121010. Doug Bostrom at 03:16 AM on 11 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        Nhthinker, I believe in looking at past events you're failing to recognize or at least keep in mind that what we're doing right now is to inadvertently innovate new processes that we're adding to the normal functioning of the climate. There's a lot to be learned from past events, but trying to strictly analogize between stade-interstade behavior of the climate will necessarily fail to describe what we see happening to the climate today. The researchers who have looked at past behavior of the climate have built a pretty strong case to show how those sequences emerged, how an initial rise in temperature due to solar variations triggered a feedback amplifying that rise. The exact details may still be in play, but at the end of the day it's important to remember, those events happened in the dim past and were triggered and driven by processes different than today. The burp of carbon we're eructating today actually analogizes better with other episodes better characterized as catastrophic in nature, such as periodic eruptions of flood basalt in Eastern Washington.
121011. nhthinker at 01:11 AM on 11 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        You ASSUME that the first and last sentence are about something else entirely. They are not. The entire paragraph is about temperature and CO2 at a macro level not limited to the last century or two. The point is that warming occurs prior to CO2 being any portion of warming trend. If you want to argue that the temperature requires CO2 to elevate which causes further temperature rise and that solar changes are NOT the primary cause of temperature changes, then you really need to explain convincingly what causes the temperature and CO2 levels to STOP their rises at the entry of interglacial periods. If you claim it is just a minor variation in solar changes, then it detracts from your overall argument for the forcing relationship between CO2 and temperature. If the start of the interglacials show anything, it is that once the CO2 reaches a high enough level that it no longer causes any additional rise in temperature. In fact, it would seem to indicate that once CO2 reaches a certain level it actually helps support the reduction of temperature over time. Low level cloud formation is much more correlated to temperature rises than high level cloud formation. GCR is a much better predictor of low level clouds than CO2 levels are.
121012. Tarcisio José D at 23:45 PM on 10 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        RE #5: Now, if climate models that can explain the past, the present and the future (with known shortcomings) are under intense scrutiny, why would anyone trust wrong macroeconomic simulations based on "no disruptions"? This statement is very important because nature is not a static phenomenon. There are many factors involved, and any statement should be accompanied by the epilogue "if other factors remain constant." Seizing the opportunity, watch a new argument to the skeptic. termostato.htm..
121013. embb at 23:08 PM on 10 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        This is a nice summary of the reasoning in Krugmans article: "To the objection that such a policy would be protectionist, a violation of the principles of free trade, one reply is, So? Keeping world markets open is important, but avoiding planetary catastrophe is a lot more important." There is nothing that is more important then avoiding a planetary catastrophe right? You can substitute anything to the phrase "keeping world markets open" and the sentence would be just as right or false. It is also interesting how there is a selective optimism/pessimism bias in all these arguments. Geo-engineering is sure to go wrong - and any social engineering is sure to have no negative impact, as if the precautionary principle could only be applied very very selectively.
121014. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 20:08 PM on 10 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        embb So, basically you say that economic sanctions are the way out of the "tragedy of the commons"? How realistic is that? Any example where sanctions actually worked? Sanctions comes on a scale and they are targeting problems on a scale. 'Oil-for-food' was a clear example of a mismatch between punishment and target. In fact, sanctions probably work more often than not. A counterexample would be something like exposing malpractices in production such as sweatshops or poisonous additives in one country and then sanctions such as taxes or legislation in the country of import were ineffective. As Ned mentions above, China knows very well that such measures works. In fact, I think economic sanctions are working so well that most of the humans in the developing world, particularly the ones with corrupt governments, have been affected unfairly by them.
121015. Ned at 19:42 PM on 10 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        embb, Paul Krugman addresses your point nicely in his essay this past week Building a Green Economy. Scroll down to the section heading "The China Syndrome." If a country imposes anti-pollution costs on its own manufacturers, it can charge a tariff on imports from countries that don't internalize those costs, as long as the tariff is comparable to the cost borne by domestic producers (i.e., the tariff must be imposed fairly). This point is discussed in some detail in a recent World Trade Organization report on climate change. From the Executive Summary: These rules permit, under certain conditions, the use of [border tax adjustments] on imported and exported products. Indeed, border adjustments on internal taxes are a commonly used measure with respect to domestic indirect taxes on the sale and consumption of goods, such as cigarettes or alcohol. The objective of a border tax adjustment is to level the playing field between taxed domestic industries and untaxed foreign competition by ensuring that internal taxes on products are trade neutral. [...] The general approach under WTO rules has been to acknowledge that some degree of trade restriction may be necessary to achieve certain policy objectives, as long as a number of carefully crafted conditions are respected. WTO case law has confirmed that WTO rules do not trump environmental requirements. There's more detail in the body of the report. If you google this subject, you'll find the Chinese government has been arguing strenuously against this, and to some extent business media (e.g., the US Wall Street Journal) have tended to reflect this, claiming that tariffs would be "against WTO rules." But the WTO itself says there's no problem as long as foreign imports are just being charged the same cost that is borne by domestic products.
121016. Ned at 19:19 PM on 10 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        Thanks for posting about this. It's mind-boggling how much work has gone into the EPA's response to the comments. Reading through several of the sections I was surprised how many comments involved quotes from Plimer's book. Then I noticed that they were all from a single individual (11454.1).
121017. Glenn Tamblyn at 19:06 PM on 10 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        Wow Have a look at the level of detail this report goes into. And look at how often the papers cited are seldom from any of the 'usual suspects' who are attacked over climate change. Its strength seems to be the scale of it. It's weekness is the scale of it. Too many people are going to glaze over at the scale of the work here. Suggestion John (in all that spare time you have). Link many of your sceptic argument rebuttals to corresponding entries in the EPA document.
121018. embb at 16:40 PM on 10 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        Jacob:"you are using coal when producing goods exported to country X, so we will put a tax on imports of goods from your country and convince some of our fellows in the EU, OECD, UN, G8, G20 etc. to do the same." So, basically you say that economic sanctions are the way out of the "tragedy of the commons"? How realistic is that? Any example where sanctions actually worked? Are we talking about a trade war against climate offenders?
121019. Doug Bostrom at 15:04 PM on 10 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        Further to Ned's remarks, when we wander off into the weeds of metadiscussion, focusing on style points, picayune gripes about the placement of quotation marks, I'm left to conclude there's no actual argument with the science of the matter in play.
121020. Ned at 09:58 AM on 10 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        I'm not sure why you think this is a straw-man argument, or what difference you think the context makes. The first sentence and reference (iv) are about something else entirely (CO2 levels during the Eocene/Oligocene). That's more or less the argument dealt with on the page Does high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2? although it's talking about different times. In any case, that has nothing to do with the Pleistocene glacial/interglacial cycles Barton refers to in the second and third sentences. John quoted those two sentences in their entirety. the only thing missing is the footnote and the reference to testimony by someone from NAS. So what's your complaint? The footnote is just providing evidence that a lag occurred. But everyone agrees that the lag occurred, in fact since the warming/cooling was started by orbital forcing it would be very strange if there wasn't a lag. The problem with Barton's statement is that during the glacial/interglacial cycling CO2 acted as a feedback whereas now we're adding it directly to the atmosphere so it acts as a forcing. What exactly is your complaint? In what way is Barton being misrepresented? Can you be more specific about what you think is the problem?
121021. nhthinker at 07:49 AM on 10 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        The quote of Barton is taken out of context: the full paragraph was: "Current CO2 levels are around 380 parts per million (ppm); in the past, CO2 levels have exceeded 1,000 ppm [iv]. An article in Science magazine illustrated that a rise in carbon dioxide did not precede a rise in temperatures, but actually lagged behind temperature rises by 200 to 1000 years [v]. A rise in carbon dioxide levels could not have caused a rise in temperature if it followed the temperature. The president of the National Academy of Sciences also testified under oath before the Energy and Commerce Committee on this very issue. " reference [iv]: "Science 22 July 2005: Vol. 309. no. 5734, p. 532 DOI: 10.1126/science.309.5734.532n This Week in Science The Eocene was an extended interval of warm climate that lasted from 55 million years ago (Ma) until 34 Ma, when permanent ice sheets developed in Antarctica. Pagani et al. (p. 600, published online 16 June 2005) present a proxy record of atmospheric CO2 concentration for the middle Eocene to the late Oligocene (~45 to 25 Ma), based on the stable carbon isotopic composition of alkenones, a type of molecule produced by certain marine algae. The levels of CO2 during the Eocene ranged from 1000 to 1500 parts per million (ppm), and then rapidly decreased to modern levels of 200 to 300 ppm by the end of the Oligocene. These data have implications for understanding issues such as the expansion of ice sheets and the development of terrestrial C4 photosynthesis." reference [v]: "Science 12 March 1999: Vol. 283. no. 5408, pp. 1712 - 1714 DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5408.1712 Ice Core Records of Atmospheric CO2 Around the Last Three Glacial Terminations Hubertus Fischer, Martin Wahlen, Jesse Smith, Derek Mastroianni, Bruce Deck Air trapped in bubbles in polar ice cores constitutes an archive for the reconstruction of the global carbon cycle and the relation between greenhouse gases and climate in the past. High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 ± 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations. Despite strongly decreasing temperatures, high carbon dioxide concentrations can be sustained for thousands of years during glaciations; the size of this phase lag is probably connected to the duration of the preceding warm period, which controls the change in land ice coverage and the buildup of the terrestrial biosphere." ---- Barton was correct in the context of his statement. The author of this article produces a strawman based on intentional or accidental overly terse quoting of Barton. It's usually easy to beat up a strawaman. If you have a appropriate quote that indicates a skeptic that claims if a condition was not a cause in some cases that it can't be the cause in any cases, then I would appreciate it if you would provide it.
121022. GFW at 07:03 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Doug, I certainly won't dismiss the possibility, but I'd be skeptical of life in a CO2 clathrate because there's no energy for life to extract. (CO2 and H2O being highly stable, it takes photosynthesis or some other energy source to use them.) Of course if there was also other material present, life could work with that.
121023. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 04:05 AM on 10 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        embb The game participants are states, so any factor that will weaken the position of one participant will simply provide an advantage for the other... Correct, because you are proving why the Nash-equilibrium is stable in the Prisoner's Dilemma. This calls for a strategy to maximize cooperation, as Axelrod did. The protracted conflicts around the world, where 'eye-for-an-eye' is used, shows that this is not a good way to handle such dilemmas. Therefore, perhaps indirect reciprocity between states is a solution: "you are using coal when producing goods exported to country X, so we will put a tax on imports of goods from your country and convince some of our fellows in the EU, OECD, UN, G8, G20 etc. to do the same." Wishful pious thinking is easy. All I have done is to outline proven theories and the findings of experiments that I found are quite powerful. I think the best counterargument must be real world examples of where indirect reciprocity did not work for humans or states.
121024. Doug Bostrom at 03:54 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        BP thanks for that! You are nothing if not a remarkably efficient ferret of fascinating papers. No pools of C02 sloshing about on the ocean floor but imagine that, C02 clathrates. I've seen some sequestration stuff related to manufacturing C02 clathrates but nothing about naturally occurring samples. What I'd like to know is what sort of creatures live in that environment, beneath the seafloor -in- the clathrates. I'd be surprised to learn it was devoid of life.
121025. monckhausen at 03:49 AM on 10 April 2010
        1934 - hottest year on record
        The Germans also appear to keep track of their temperatures well.
121026. Ned at 01:48 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Doug Bostrom wrote: where we may read about naturally occurring pools of liquid C02 in the deep ocean? To which Berényi Péter replied: Here: Submarine venting of liquid carbon dioxide on a Mariana Arc volcano Lupton & al. [...] That's a really fascinating paper and I'm very glad you posted the link to it. Thank you. However, in the interest of accuracy, I'm compelled to point out that there's nothing in there about "pools of liquid CO2 in the deep ocean". They found droplets of liquid CO2 venting from a submarine hydrothermal field. They inferred that there was liquid CO2 beneath the seafloor, capped by a layer of clathrates. The authors note that liquid CO2 is less dense than water at this depth, so the droplets would rise buoyantly for a couple of hundred meters and then disperse. Were a "pool of liquid CO2" to somehow appear on the seafloor there, it would float upward and eventually dissolve. So, not really relevant to the claims about CO2 lakes, but fascinating nonetheless.
121027. michael sweet at 01:32 AM on 10 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        There is a lot of time before November and the US electorate changes quickly. If we have a record hot summer and a category 5 hurricane hits the US there will be a lot more concern about global warming than if the summer is cold. I teach High School and I have a lot of students who say "this winter was cold globaly' because here in Florida it was cold. Their notion of "global" means the weather at their house. California is concerned about warming becasue they are already short of water. Less rain is forcast for the future. People will start to care when their life is affected more than it is now. The question is: how much more?
121028. Riccardo at 01:28 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Berényi Péter, how come that "These creatures are designed to survive El Nino events" but they almost got completely extinct in the last two large El Nino events?
121029. Berényi Péter at 01:13 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        #52 Riccardo at 00:40 AM on 10 April, 2010 for sure, stressing them more won't be of any help next time You miss the point. These creatures are designed to survive El Nino events. When the problem is not too much dissolved CO₂ in water, but lack of nutrients, including carbon dioxide. Solubility of CO₂ drops with increasing temperature (due to El Nino). On the other hand, they are quite happy with upwelling oversaturated La Nina water, regardless of extremely low pH.
121030. Berényi Péter at 01:00 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        #19 doug_bostrom at 07:56 AM on 8 April, 2010 where we may read about naturally occurring pools of liquid C02 in the deep ocean? Here: Submarine venting of liquid carbon dioxide on a Mariana Arc volcano Lupton & al. G³ Volume 7, Number 8 10 August 2006 Q08007, doi:10.1029/2005GC001152 ISSN: 1525-2027
121031. Riccardo at 00:40 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Berényi Péter, it looks a bit weird to claim that the Galapos coral are "well and alive". Alive they are, not so well though. The appearance of new species and the discovering of a specie thought to be extinct say that they are recovering from a deep crisis. They suffered a 97% loss in 1982-83 and a further 99% losses in 1997-98; luckly they're managing to recover. So far so good. But for sure, stressing them more won't be of any help next time.
121032. nautilus_mr at 00:34 AM on 10 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        Wow, I've just spent a couple of hours reading some of the response volumes. These are absolute GOLD. Lucid, balanced, thorough. Volume 1 spells out clearly that the EPA is obliged to carefully consider every available source -so there is no valid charge that they have relied solely on the IPCC and ignored the sceptics. These volumes look like they are among the most comprehensive resources on climate change available. Downloading every volume is one of my best uses of bandwidth for a while!
121033. JMurphy at 00:20 AM on 10 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        To those wondering about historic pH levels, the WIKIPEDIA link provided by Jimbo leads to the following : The Royal Society Based upon current measurements of ocean pH, analysis of CO2 concentration in ice cores, our understanding of the rate of CO2 absorption and retention in the surface oceans, and knowledge of the CaCO3 buffer (Section 2.2.2), it is possible to calculate that the pH of the surface oceans was 0.1 units higher in pre-industrial times (Caldeira & Wickett 2003; Key et al 2004). Link here Which leads to : Caldeira & Wickett and Key et al More : Orr et al Orr et al Supplemental
121034. silence at 23:59 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        FWIW, Rabett Run has been posting a series of the better responses from the EPA response to comments: Part 6: how we know warming isn't a result of increased solar output part 5: The Roger Pielke Jr. flood-related damage meme part 4: why looking at global temperature makes sense Part 3: No, it isn't some solar magnetic or solar wind effects part 2: global warming is not a result of humidity changes Part 1: CO2 concentrations really have risen
121035. nautilus_mr at 23:40 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        Incidentally, I sent the EPA an email asking if there was a time line for responding to the petitions. When I get a reply, I'll let you know (goodness knows how many lunatic emails they have to sift through, so it may take a while).
121036. Berényi Péter at 23:34 PM on 9 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Well guys, I have looked into the acidification issue a bit and found the usual pattern: not even the opposite is true. Variability of Surface Layer CO₂ Parameters in the Western and Central Equatorial Pacific Masao Ishii & al. Global Environmental Change in the Ocean and on Land, Eds., M. Shiyomi et al., pp. 59~V94. © by TERRAPUB, 2004. 1. Eastern equatorial Pacific is particularly interesting 2. It is one of the regions with the lowest alkalinity in oceans (with pH sometimes as low as 7.9) 3. It is a net source of CO₂ to the atmosphere (up to 10¹² kg C year^-1) 4. Dissolved CO₂ in surface waters is highly variable, depending on ENSO phase 5. It is highest during La Nina events, lowest in strong El Nino. On the other hand we know El Nino sometimes has a really devastating effect on coastal ecosystems. La Nina is just the opposite. Galapagos is in the middle of this region, so marine life there has to tolerate the great swings of ENSO. Still, it thrives in La Nina with its high CO₂ concentrations and acidic waters from the deep and suffers when carbon dioxide is low in waters coming from the West Pacific warm pool. As a reality check, let us see a map of average absolute pH values of sea water (as opposed to anomalies): Thank to God, Galapagos coral reefs are still well and alive.
121037. nautilus_mr at 23:33 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        re #7 Jacob, I get what you are saying and thankyou for the references - of those you mention, I have only read Sornette's "Why Stock Markets Crash" - a magnificent book. It seems to me the critical issue is that the inherent properties of the systems to be modelled, the object of study, place fundamental constraints on what models can achieve. I suspect we agree that one cannot use the particular challenges of economic models in order to attack the possibility of reliable climate modelling. - it makes no sense, refusing to eat apples because one has an allergy to oranges!
121038. dhogaza at 22:43 PM on 9 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        RSVP:

        As my (non hybrid) petrol burning vehicle was idling at a red light, I was wondering why the concept of "idle" continues to exist, and why these motors cant simply stop completely as long as the vehicle is at a halt. I'm sure this is technically possible

        Hybrids already do this, and automakers apparently are going to mainstream this. Another trick (in the sense in which engineers and scientists (including Phil Jones) use the word) that's already been deployed is to shut down some of the cylinders while the car is cruising at steady speed on relatively flat terrain.
121039. Alexandre at 22:24 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        nautilus_mr #1 says: the exception being the Chamber of Commerce, which appears to be making an argument for industry self-regulation against EPA intervention Self regulation would be great. But sadly, industry manoeuvers seem to bend towards denialism.
121040. John Cross at 22:23 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        nautilus_mr #1: Good call. I had not gotten around to looking at the petitions yet; am still working my way through the comments. There is a comment by Steve Mcintyre who bases his argument mostly on the assumption that the IPCC document did not pass peer-review (or was inadequately peer-reviewed) and therefor did not meet the EPAs own guidelines and should not be used as a reference. I like John's title and noticed that there was a similarity between the EPA's response and Skeptical Science. However I would call it Skpetical Science on on aspirin. Does the EPA response have its own iPhone App? I think not! John (Cross)
121041. chris at 22:19 PM on 9 April 2010
        Is the science settled?
        fydijkstra at 18:44 PM on 8 April, 2010 Your two examples illustrate the problem with ignoring the science, and then pretending therefore that we don't know what we do know! Craig Loehle hasn't shown what you suggest at all. He showed that if one selects a small sample of poorly appropriate records, and then misunderstands the convention for scaling these to a common date, that one can get into a mess regarding analysis of paleotemperature. You might have noticed that Loehle issued a correction to his first paper, a major blunder of which was misunderstanding that "BP" in paleoanalysis doesn't mean P = present (since the "present" is remorslessely advancing year on year), but refers to 1950 by convention. So even within Loehle's rather deficient analysis, he showed that the MWP might have been around as warm as the mid 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere. His analysis completely misses out the large warming since the mid-20th century. . Since that time we've had an anomalous warming in the NH of around 0.7 oC under conditions that there has been no solar contribution, and the volcanic activity has been quite significant. The evidence (even Loehle's) indicates that were now very likely a good bit warmer than the MWP. But why peruse non-science magazines for your information?; you're bound to misunderstand the nature of scientific knowledge if you don't address the science. If you are interested in paleoproxyanalysis of temperature without recourse to tree ring studies, it makes much more sense to look at the properly peer-reviewed science. This supports the conclusion that if one analyses paleoproxydata, eliminating tree-ring data sets, that the late 20th century and contemporary warming is anomalous in the context of the last millennium and more. And why go to some stuff that someone posted on the web to address the question of warming since the LIA and ocean circulation effects when this can be addressed by looking at the properly peer-reviewed science. This shows that the contribution of “natural oscillations” to the warming of the last 30 years was likely negligible. One can create the impression of uncertainty by basing one’s information on stuff from dodgy sources that are designed to confuse the issue (and that we know are incorrect). But if we’re really interested in these issues one really should address the science.
121042. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 20:56 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        nautilus_mr As people like Mandelbrot pointed out, the position of a market or a key variable in an economy today is greatly influenced by the perceptions and beliefs of the participants within the system -all highly dependent on recent activity within the system. While this is true, it does not limit successfull modeling efforts of economic systems or human behavior in general. For example, I can point you to the publications of Eugene Stanley, Didier Sornette, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and Dirk Helbing, whom are all physicists. As Krugman says:"economists favour beauty over truth" - and I think this is the central problem.
121043. johnd at 20:31 PM on 9 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Berényi Péter @44 and VoxRat @ 46. Sometimes we are fooled into assuming a high degree of accuracy by a high degree of resolution of the measurement in question. Cheap electronic measuring devices are an example. Just because they display units to a resolution of 0.001 unit doesn't necessarily guarantee that they are any more accurate than 1.000 unit. I think many historic reconstructions may not be able to guarantee even that same degree of accuracy. At least with cheap electronic goods there is a standard of known accuracy that they can be calibrated against. With historic reconstructions they are subject to the accuracy of any number of assumptions.
121044. James Wight at 20:27 PM on 9 April 2010
        It's not us
        It seems very strange that the big umbrella arguments (“It’s not happening”, “It’s not us”, etc) are so far down the list. Why don’t all the instances of each sub-argument count towards the tally of its parent?
        Response: Initially when I submitted skeptic articles, I did include the umbrella arguments but I stopped doing it fairly early on - was just a bit tedious and I decided to focus on the specific argument being made. If anything, over time, I've even been dividing sub-arguments into sub-sub-arguments and getting narrower with the focus.
        
        I think I prefer this way - otherwise "It's not happening" and "It's not us" will be #1 and #2 which is a bit too general for my liking.
        
121045. RSVP at 20:22 PM on 9 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        Ned "I'm not sure what the policy relevance of this is, however. Does the fact that AGW won't be worse than a comet slamming into Yucatan mean that we shouldn't bother trying to prevent or reduce the impact of AGW? " As my (non hybrid) petrol burning vehicle was idling at a red light, I was wondering why the concept of "idle" continues to exist, and why these motors cant simply stop completely as long as the vehicle is at a halt. I'm sure this is technically possible. My next thought, of course, was how much more energy it would take for such large scale retooling, and whether on the whole, this would have any benefit to the environment. While this may not be the greatest example, it illustrates the kind of problem I believe we are running into. I am not questioning whether we should bother, rather that one must be very careful in deciding what to actually do, given that almost anything you do do is likely to have a hitch.
121046. embb at 20:20 PM on 9 April 2010
        Are we too stupid?
        Jacob:"I was mostly thinking of societies where public opinion and public policy making is correlated." well, this qualifies as a "pious wish" for me. The game participants are states, so any factor that will weaken the position of one participant will simply provide an advantage for the other - so in effect the social peer pressure can do a LOT of harm, even to the climate.
121047. nautilus_mr at 20:08 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        re: #5 That is a good point. One of the reasons many attempts to model economies and markets fall short is because they employ models in which all the variables are considered independent. As people like Mandelbrot pointed out, the position of a market or a key variable in an economy today is greatly influenced by the perceptions and beliefs of the participants within the system -all highly dependent on recent activity within the system. This means economic models are far less viable than models of physical systems, in which the characteristics and behaviour of the elements in the system do not radically change without notice. There are naturally degrees of certainty about how chemicals interact within a natural system, but there is no sense in which a CO2 molecule will unexpectedly change its behaviour because it suddenly changes its confidence about the behaviour of other molecules. I won't go further, because I realise it may be OT, but just thought it was an interesting point..
121048. batsvensson at 19:38 PM on 9 April 2010
        Ocean acidification: Global warming's evil twin
        "Examination of the mass extinction [...] are consistent with the physiological effects of elevated CO2 concentrations (along with the effects of global warming)." What exactly is your claim?
121049. James Wight at 18:57 PM on 9 April 2010
        CO2 measurements are suspect
        There's a mistake on this page. The video shown in the “Further viewing box” is identical to the first of the two above. Is this box supposed to contain a third video or is it just left over from a previous version of this page?
        Response: Left over from a previous version. I've replaced the 3rd video with a different one - thanks for pointing it out.
        
121050. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 18:36 PM on 9 April 2010
        Skeptical Science on steroids: the EPA response to 300,000 public comments
        Another quick initial peek into the petition of the Chamber of Commerce p.28, indicates a significant cost for small businesses by referring to a study of the Heritage Foundation. In this study it is mentioned that 3 million jobs would be lost by 2029 as direct consequence by referring (ref. 10) to another prior study from the Heritage Foundation as response to the advanced notice of the EPA decision. This latter study used a macroeconomic model to make the projection, where they assume the economy grows without major disruptions including "large oil price shocks, untoward swings in macroeconomic policy, or excessively rapid increases in demand". These assumptions are naturally extremely unrealistic. Furthermore, it just so happens that Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in macroeconomics, last year at the London School of Economics stated that the last 30 years of macroeconomical models are at least useless. For example, during the first semester the economics student is taught that markets are in equilibrium by supply meeting demand. This notion was disproven by Benoit Mandelbrot already back in 1963. Now, if climate models that can explain the past, the present and the future (with known shortcomings) are under intense scrutiny, why would anyone trust wrong macroeconomic simulations based on "no disruptions"? Tit-for-tat.

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