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Comments 121051 to 121100:

121051. Berényi Péter at 05:55 AM on 15 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        #34 doug_bostrom at 03:32 AM on 15 April, 2010 Surely you can better qualify that remark? Do I have to? The LIA is the coldest period during the last eight thousand years. On the other hand, the last decade is claimed to be at least as warm as the Holocene Optimum five thousand years ago. Still, some years in LIA show sea ice extent lower than the lowest recent summer one. Therefore sea ice extent and temperature should not be closely related. Either this or the last decade is not so warm after all.
121052. Riccardo at 05:42 AM on 15 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        This is what i'd call extreme cherry-picking: one day, in one year, in a small portion of the arctic where extreme melting in 2007 did not occur. People could use their time and intelligence more productively.
121053. Alexandre at 05:32 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Karl_from_Wylie Maybe you´d like to take a look at my comment #57 above. To claim that there´s no evidence, one has to at least try to look at the evidence.
121054. Doug Bostrom at 04:07 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Karl_from_Wylie you should take a moment to read some of the comments here that are less flippant than yours. I'd also suggest using Google Scholar w/the search term "phenology climate change." It's worth remembering, we've only got one reputation per login, may as well make 'em last.
121055. JMurphy at 03:53 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Karl_from_Wylie, you seem to have missed this bit, right at the end of the article above : The next step in this research is to see whether the same techniques can be employed on a larger scale, to give a regional or global picture of nature's response to temperature change. It was at the end, so perhaps you didn't get that far ? Ho hum.
121056. Karl_from_Wylie at 03:43 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Please add a section to the "Climate Alarmist" section. If a study shows something is happening in the UK, it must be a world-wide phenomenon. Ha ha.
121057. Doug Bostrom at 03:32 AM on 15 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        Berényi Péter while I can think of all kinds of problems with trying to generalize conclusions from Arctic ice in 1664 versus Arctic ice in the present, you are as usual to be congratulated for actually doing original work on this topic. But your conclusion "sea ice extent and temperature are not closely related" is not up to your usual snuff. Surely you can better qualify that remark?
121058. Doug Bostrom at 03:27 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Actually JohnD you're wrong in saying that plants are decoupled from our calendar. Different organisms take their cues from different things. Some plant and animal behaviors are dominated by temperature, others by photoperiod. Our calendar of course is descriptive of photoperiod so in fact we find that many plants do follow the calendar, or try to. By exerting our imaginations a little bit, we can hypothesize that if plants that are dominated by the calendar attempt to perform in their normal way when the temperature regime they inhabit is no longer appropriate, they'll perform differently. Maybe better, maybe worse, but not the same.
121059. Berényi Péter at 03:12 AM on 15 April 2010
        Arctic Sea Ice (Part 1): Is the Arctic Sea Ice recovering? A reality check
        OK, arctic sea ice extent in 2007 was low. Is it unprecedented? Not quite so. Ice edge in mid July was never 200 km north of Svalbard in recent times. You can check it here and here. And 1664 was deep in the Little Ice Age, winter of 1664/65 being one of the coldest ever in England. Looks like sea ice extent and temperature are not closely related. I have also made a rather boring gif movie using ACSYS historic sea ice data.
121060. johnd at 02:06 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Whilst changes to the timing of plants flowering might be taking place when measured against the calender, being temperature driven, all other related natural activities in the ecosystem will be similarly driven by the same processes rather than by the calender as the article seems to suggest. Anyone who has any knowledge of agriculture knows that the beginning and the ending of a growing season can vary widely, and if allowed, the breeding cycle of livestock will adjust accordingly. But still there are many owners who will try to breed or plant according to the the calender irrespective of how the season is evolving. Animals in the wild respond to the conditions rather than the calender the same as the plants do. Surely humans can do likewise without too much drama.
121061. JMurphy at 01:36 AM on 15 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        Berényi Péter, could you give any links to those 'chronicles' or those old folks' descriptions, please ?
121062. Tom Dayton at 00:39 AM on 15 April 2010
        Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy
        Here's a link to the report from that second inquiry: the Oxburgh Report.
121063. JMurphy at 00:33 AM on 15 April 2010
        Climategate CRU emails suggest conspiracy
        Good to hear that the second enquiry into CRU has (generally) backed them. I know the so-called skeptics will be shouting 'whitewash' again, but they must be ever-so desperate now for something to come out of the final enquiry - not that anything will, of course, but surely the more intelligent of them will be questioning some of their scepticism ? That is, will they be true sceptics or so-called skeptics ?
121064. Berényi Péter at 23:53 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        The thing is here in Central Europe we have chronicles going back to a thousand years and more. This way we don't really need proxies to reconstruct past climate, it is enough to be able to read. Latin, of course, for at that time it was the language of law, science and history. This is how we know fruit trees were blooming in January, 1182. According to Julian calendar of course, because present day Gregorian calendar was not invented yet. So it might have been early February. Anyway, this year we had heavy snow until mid March with not a single bud. And no blooming has ever occurred in living memory as early as described by the old folks.
121065. Alexandre at 23:22 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121066. dhogaza at 22:47 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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?
121067. thefrogstar at 22:36 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121068. Peter Hogarth at 22:32 PM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic 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)
121069. Marcus at 22:30 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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!
121070. Peter Hogarth at 22:05 PM on 14 April 2010
        Visual 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.
121071. JMurphy at 18:30 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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 ?
121072. watchingthedeniers at 15:44 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121073. watchingthedeniers at 15:40 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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".
121074. Doug Bostrom at 15:30 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121075. Doug Bostrom at 15:24 PM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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?
121076. Leo G at 15:10 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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. :)
121077. Doug Bostrom at 15:07 PM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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.
121078. watchingthedeniers at 15:03 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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/
121079. Leo G at 14:56 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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
121080. shawnhet at 14:16 PM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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, :)
121081. watchingthedeniers at 13:49 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121082. watchingthedeniers at 13:40 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121083. HumanityRules at 12:49 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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??
121084. HumanityRules at 12:33 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years
        23.Alexandre I prefer Fow News myself!
121085. HumanityRules at 12:29 PM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121086. Doug Bostrom at 12:20 PM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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.
121087. michael sweet at 11:46 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic 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.
121088. michael sweet at 11:43 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic 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.
121089. shawnhet at 11:41 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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, :)
121090. Tom Dayton at 11:14 AM on 14 April 2010
        CO2 lags temperature
        pdt, in accord with Doug's comment I've responded to you on the Models Are Unreliable thread.
121091. Tom Dayton at 11:12 AM on 14 April 2010
        Models 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 wrote

        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.

        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.
121092. Doug Bostrom at 11:06 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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.
121093. Don Gisselbeck at 10:36 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic 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.)
121094. HumanityRules at 10:23 AM on 14 April 2010
        Arctic 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."
121095. Doug Bostrom at 10:18 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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.
121096. shawnhet at 09:52 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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, :)
121097. CoalGeologist at 09:46 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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!).
121098. Marcus at 09:30 AM on 14 April 2010
        Flowers 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.
121099. Doug Bostrom at 09:23 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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.
121100. shawnhet at 09:08 AM on 14 April 2010
        Are 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, :)

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