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Marcel Bökstedt at 09:54 AM on 11 March 2010Scientists can't even predict weather
I'm not totally convinced about the accuracy of climate prediction, for the following reasons. Weather predictions are based on physics, which we understand reasonably well from a theoretical point of view. It seems to me that the main limiting factor when we predict the weather is not a question about limitations of the model used. The problem is that the model itself depends very sensitively on the initial conditions. My impression is that the limiting factor of climate prediction is different. They is not based on a theoretical understanding of the long term average of the models used to describe weather. It would probably be far too difficult to justify on theoretical grounds that the long term climate are NOT chaotic. That is, I don't believe that the statement above of what "the science says" can be justified by theoretical computations. Correct me if I'm wrong (but I don't think so). However, it might be possible to justify the statements by observations. My impression is that climate prediction is to a large extent based on observations. It is an attempt to systematize the data we have collected. That is of course an excellent method, but it makes the field more similar to biology or geology and less similar to physics. If we had a long series of observations of the global weather, we could inspect the data and check that up to some small uncertainty, climate shows no signs of being "chaotic". What makes me unsure is that we don't have that much assembled observational material. We don't have reliable global observational data for more than a century or so, and if we go back more than a thousand years, its almost all in the grey. The time scale is small compared to the time scale of climate changes. It is not at all clear to me that the series of observations is long enough to produce a reliable theory from available data, in particular to state that climate is "not chaotic". Also, the idea of systematizing a theory from observations must be based on some version of "all situations we encounter are similar to a situation we have seen before, so we can base our predictions on that similarity, and assume that history will repeat itself". We can predict climate change that is similar to climate change we have already seen. But we are (most likely) changing the climate into something we have not seen before, something that is not covered by previous observations - so how can we be sure that our model works in this new situation? If the model were based on theory, that would be an argument in itself, but if the model is based on observations, we should be less confident. The argument cuts two ways of course. If we are discussing the effects of human activities, uncertainties in current climate predictions could as easily underestimate them as overestimate. -
Albatross at 07:54 AM on 11 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Peter @82, You did not specify the months either when you first mentioned the "significance" of the positive trend, nor when you asked me for the link (you are welcome by the way). Not knowing which months you were referring to, I then made a reasonable choice corresponding to the timing of the max. and min. extents, respectively. So they were not "the wrong months", as you claim. Then you provide unsubstantiated claim @82 that the positive trend is stat. sig. in the SH fall. Well, when Ned actually calc. some p-values he found that the positive trend was stat. sig. at 95% level of confidence in May only. Why did you not specify the months in question up front? Anyhow, I agree with what Ned said @84. -
sailrick at 07:49 AM on 11 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
WAG "Is anyone surprised at Watts? Just last week he claimed that an article from 1989 proved global warming was a hoax." No I'm not surprised. Especially after reading about he a D'Aleo concocting charts and making this claim. "NO WARMING TREND IN THE 351-YEAR CENTRAL ENGLAND TEMPERATURE RECORD" Long story short, they skipped the 19th century and only used summer temps. In the 18th century summers were indeed on the cool side. However winters were warmer than usual, so they didn't include them. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/summer-and-smoke/ How can anyone put their faith in Anthony Watts after that? -
mspelto at 02:25 AM on 11 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
For a truly detailed analysis of the years climate was in Antarctica and the implications look at the BAMS state of the climate 2008 report. Take a look at the full report link beginning on page 113. This is a big region and the story is not straight forward BAMS 2008 -
HumanityRules at 01:57 AM on 11 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
This is a great review from 2009 which seems to sum up the present extent of our knowledge on the subject quite nicely. Here's a few points I took from it. 1) There is no warming trend over the continent except for the penninsular. 2) The cooling trend is probably caused by ozone changes but other explanations exist. 3) Apart from the penninsular all trends are very small. 4) There is no climate change signal in the antarctic historical temp data. That signal will only emerge later this century. 5) Climate models predict there should be a signal in the historical data as well as predicting reduced ice extent. The fact that models and observations differ remains unexplained. (I should add this review is very much with the consensus on the arctic data.) -
Tom Dayton at 01:33 AM on 11 March 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
Yes, thanks, Steve, for that link! It explains clearly and thoroughly what I tried to explain in my comment 90 "Gary, you keep arguing that AGW theory requires OLR in the CO2 bands to decrease, while you refuse to allow any detailed qualifiers in that prediction.... [But] the actual prediction is not a short, obligatory phrase of introduction from a paper. The actual predictions are the models' outputs." Much more clearly, the author of ScienceOfDoom wroteFor the authors of the paper to assess the spectral results against theory they needed to know the atmospheric profile of temperature and humidity, as well as changes in the well-studied trace gases like CO2 and methane. Why? Well, the only way to work out the “expected” results – or what the theory predicts – is to solve the radiative transfer equations (RTE) for that vertical profile through the atmosphere.... Now it is important to understand where the temperature profiles came from. They came from model results."
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Ned at 00:59 AM on 11 March 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
Thanks, Steve. That looks like an interesting post. I only had time to skim it now, but I look forward to reading more carefully later. -
HumanityRules at 00:38 AM on 11 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Response to #72 Apologies for the cynisism, I had written something longer but it got lost in the ether. I had alot more to say on the subject such as the whole body of work that links the arctic climate to the ENSO and AAO index variation. This explains many of the observations seen in the region without resorting to global warming. Or the real disagreements about whether the continent is warming up or actually cooling down. The AVHRR data seems to contradict land based measurements. Or the curious fact that the Zhang theory seems to rely on the fact that ice is melting at an increased and decreased rate simultaneously. I don't see in Zhang were he describes increased precipitation as a driving force. For him it's reduced salt rejection which is surely lost once ice extent begins to increase. -
Ned at 00:34 AM on 11 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Berényi Péter writes: "Check April and May." Okay, for April I get a trend that is almost but not quite significant at 95% (p-value 0.06). For May I get a trend that is barely significant (p-value 0.04). That's without any correction for temporal autocorrelation. My guess is that autocorrelation in sea ice extent over time scales >= 1 year is probably relatively slight, though such a correction would probably reduce the trend significance a little. It might be enough to make the May trend non-significant at 95%. If anyone cares, they can do the test. But here's the real point. BP continues: "The finding is robust, begs for an explanation. ... Ozone depletion is a spring phenomenon, most expressed in October, separated from sea ice by 180 degree phase shift. " "An explanation" is exactly what John's post at the top of this thread provides. And the Turner 2009 paper addresses your point about the seasonality of ozone depletion -- although the hole reaches a maximum in austral spring, models and observations show that its effect on circulation in the troposphere is greatest in summer and autumn. Have you actually read Turner 2009? I'm puzzled as to why you would say (paraphrased) "There's a slight increase in Antarctic autumn sea ice extent that needs to be explained" ... when the entire point of this thread and Turner 2009 is "There's a slight increase in Antarctic autumn sea ice extent and here's the explanation." -
Ned at 00:09 AM on 11 March 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
protestant also writes: Also i'd like to point out that "glacier melting" is no evidence to claim that global warming is still happening (NOR that its man made). You're right. If we had no other evidence that fossil fuel combustion produces CO2, and no other evidence that CO2 absorbs infrared radiation, then we wouldn't be able to conclude that anthropogenic greenhouse gases were warming the earth just from measuring glacier retreat alone. Fortunately, we have a great deal of evidence that already resolves these points. The loss of ice from glaciers and polar ice sheets is important for two reasons: (a) as an additional source of confirmation that demonstrates agreement with the many other lines of evidence of climate change, and (b) as an important consequence of climate change that will have large negative impacts on our economy and on social welfare in many countries by increasing sea levels. -
Ned at 00:00 AM on 11 March 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
protestant writes: Its lunacy to claim one can measure the whole Antarctic thickness with a few millimeter accuracy. And even if one could - there is NO CONTEXT for the claimed ice loss. Actually, what GRACE does is measure distortions in the earth's gravity field over broad areas and long periods of time. This can't tell you what the exact elevation of the ice surface at point X was on date Y, but it can give you a very precise estimate of regional-scale, long-term changes in ice mass. You really should make an effort to understand how things work before throwing around accusations of "lunacy". I'm not sure what you mean by "NO CONTEXT". The context is that anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases creates an energy imbalance between the earth and its exoatmospheric environment, in turn producing a net increase in heat content of the climate system. This has resulted in warming of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, a reduction in the mass of ice shelves, and an increase in the rate of ice discharge from the continent into the ocean. As additional context, this is all occurring at a time when the planet is near the "warm" peak of its glacial/interglacial cycle, so rather than, say, moving us from a glacial to an interglacial climate, this anthropogenic warming is moving us from an interglacial climate to a condition the earth has probably not experienced in millions of years. -
CBDunkerson at 23:21 PM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
RSVP, with both the snow and ice coverage the reason that the feedback is positive is the same... because the NET change in both is that they are decreasing. In each case 'skeptics' seem intent on staring only at the tiny area where there is minor growth... while ignoring full scale mass retreat across the entire rest of the planet. The snow and ice cover of the planet is melting. That means more sunlight hits darker surfaces and causes more warming... positive feedback. The fact that a handful of areas still have minuscule growth of snow and ice should NOT be a surprise, but doesn't change the very clear overall trends. -
Berényi Péter at 23:11 PM on 10 March 2010Does record snowfall disprove global warming?
If it counts, you have my full support for regulating soot emissions. Unlike CO2 the stuff is not even good for your health. However, beyond that concern there is a serious scientific one as well. How reliable are climate models? If they are good at hincasting (reproducing the past) with no soot taken into account, they are surely flawed. If soot is responsible for 30% of recent warming, this percentage had to be even more during first half of 20th century. As all the past "anomaly" is attributed to GHGs by models and the fit is good, their effect is overestimated for sure. Using these ill-calibrated models for assessing recent soot contribution is an even more dangerous somersault of logic. -
protestant at 23:08 PM on 10 March 2010Antarctica is gaining ice
To detect a 100km^3 ice mass loss one should be able to measure a 7mm decrease in the ice thickness. And the ice is covered with a 100metres layer of snow, which varies a lot. Its lunacy to claim one can measure the whole Antarctic thickness with a few millimeter accuracy. And even if one could - there is NO CONTEXT for the claimed ice loss. Also i'd like to point out that "glacier melting" is no evidence to claim that global warming is still happening (NOR that its man made). If you take ice out from the freezer to the room temp, it will continue melting even if the room temp stays constant. Same happens now with the glaciers - temperatures rose sharply in the late 1990's and have stayed almost at constant since (even slight cooling both ARGO and UAH show this). -
stevecarsonr at 22:06 PM on 10 March 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
Well, if anyone is still here on this blog.. and makes it through to the end of the comments.. Check out American Thinker – the Difference between a Smoking Gun and a Science Paper -
Berényi Péter at 21:33 PM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
#33 Albatross at 04:41 AM on 10 March, 2010 "Can you elaborate and quantify this generalized statement? Are the trends stat. sig.? If so, at which level of confidence? Also, for which months are you talking about?" Yes I can. You have picked the wrong months (February & September). Check April and May. I have already linked the book that was misquoted in IPCC AR4: Sea Ice: An introduction to its physics, biology, chemistry, and geology,” David Thomas, Editor Chapter 4, pp. 18 Large Scale Characteristics and Variability of the Global Sea Ice Cover by Josefino C. Comiso It says trend is significant for SH autumn. Sure it is.
Figure is Southern Hemisphere sea ice trend by month, both extent & area, 1979-2009. Scale is 106 km2 year-1. Data, as you have indicated, can be downloaded from here.
Freezing around Antarctica starts about three weeks earlier than thirty years ago. The finding is robust, begs for an explanation.
Strong (SH) autumn sea ice trend indicates ozone hole claim might be bogus. Ozone depletion is a spring phenomenon, most expressed in October, separated from sea ice by 180 degree phase shift.
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Peter Hogarth at 20:23 PM on 10 March 2010Does record snowfall disprove global warming?
Berényi Péter at 01:47 AM on 10 March, 2010 First, I’m no expert on Black Carbon! but I follow the debate. I think we have common ground based on recent evidence based research that it is a significant contributor to ice melt, and the estimate of “30% of global warming” is current, and factoring in Black Carbon is a relatively recent development. The large variability in estimates of levels of soot and the estimate of associated forcing effects has also been noted by some workers. The most recent measurement based effort resolves this to an extent and work continues. However to simply multiply 30% by a factor of 5 misrepresents all of this work, and I believe you are more thorough than that! You are correct that we need “background info”, and we also need appropriate context and detail. In posts like this it is difficult to get the balance between general interest and excruciating scientific detail correct. Everyone has different levels of weight of evidence at which the threshold of persuasion operates. To overload all at once can be off-putting! Anyway, wary of the danger of this diverting too far off post and overdoing “soot”, some recent free access papers, links and quotes on this: “Black soot and the survival of Tibetan glaciers” Xu 2009 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/07/0910444106.full.pdf+html Variability and measurements: “BC concentrations of 10 ng g_1 significantly alter the albedo (reflectivity) of a thick snow layer. The visible albedo of deep fresh snow, about 0.9–0.97, is decreased by 0.01 0.04 by a BC amount of 10 ng g_1, thus increasing absorption (1 minus albedo) of visible radiation by 10–100%, depending on the size and shape of snow crystals and on whether the soot is incorporated within snow crystals or externally mixed”. “Black carbon aerosols and the third polar ice cap” Menon 2009 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/26593/2009/acpd-9-26593-2009.pdf “Springtime warming and reduced snow cover from carbonaceous Particles” Flanner 2009 http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/2481/2009/acp-9-2481-2009.pdf “Emissions of black carbon (BC) and organic matter (OM) drive nearly as much reduction in Eurasian springtime snow cover as anthropogenic CO2 in equilibrium climate experiments initialized with pre-industrial conditions” In summary the climate models without aerosols underestimate warming and ice loss in Northern Europe. Higher levels of Black carbon in these areas (compared with North America) and accounting for this in the models helps resolve differences between models and measurements of warming. “In-situ measurements of the mixing state and optical properties of soot with implications for radiative forcing estimates” Moffet 2009 http://www.pnas.org/content/106/29/11872.full.pdf+html “In global models and inferences from atmospheric heating measurements, soot radiative forcing estimates currently differ by a factor of 6, ranging between 0.2–1.2 W/m2, making soot second only to CO2 in terms of global warming potential” “These atmospheric observations help explain the larger values for soot forcing measured by others and will be used to obtain closure in optical property measurements to reduce one of the largest remaining uncertainties in climate change”. -
tobyjoyce at 19:48 PM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Sciencefan (#58) said: Lastly, sea ice extent in the Arctic and in the antarctic are both within 2 standard deviations of satellite records, so what the big deal is, I do not know. Arctic sea ice in September has reduced by over 2 million km^2 since 1980. http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/ -
sailrick at 19:07 PM on 10 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Tony Noerpel "Corporations are not citizens and should not be treated as such. Corporations are only tools of society and if they don’t serve the public good, we have a right to eliminate them or break them up. My own view on ExxonMobil, as a shareholder, is that they should stay out of the political process, let whatever regulation, which needs to happen to meet the requirements of society, happen and then compete fairly with other companies under whatever rules society deems necessary. This is easy because we understand the problem, but given the SCOTUS decision of the Supreme Court it pragmatically may not be solvable." You really hit the nail on the head with that. I've been thinking about the contradiction that corporations have been given the legal status of a person, and yet the Supreme Court says they can donate unlimited funds to political campaigns etc. Now doesn't an individual person have a limit on how much he/she can donate? Am I missing something, or are the corporations having their cake and eating it too? Take away that status of a person, to start with. I don't remember the consitution saying anything about government by and for corporations. Its not new that industrial interests twist our government policies in ways that do not benfit the citizenry. Global warming denialism is just the latest example. Consider hemp. Probably the most useful plant on earth. One that could make a serious contribution to mitigating climate change, if it weren't banned. One acre of hemp would replace about 5 acres of trees in the making of paper, and make a better paper. It could be grown for biomass power, or for biofuels. Its good for the soil, and doesn't need weed killers. Its oil and seeds are highly nutritious. There is a process for building long lasting buildings with a form of "petrified" hemp. A 1300 year old bridge in France made of this material was found in pretty good condition. Plastics can be made from hemp, like the car body that Henry Ford built. It makes excellent clothing, rope, burlap, paints, canvas and lots of other uses. It can grow on marginal land. But DuPont, who had just invented nylon at the same time that a new machine was invented for mass processing of hemp fibers, manuevered the govt to ban hemp. It wasn't just Dupont, but oil companies, Hearst newspapers who owned huge tracts of paper pulp forests, Mellon, Allen Dulles, liquor industry, etc. They made up bogus stories about the dangers of marijuana and launched a huge propaganda program to instill that idea in Americans and policy makers. Other than a breif respite for the WW2 war effort when Victory Hemp was grown, these actions killed the hemp business, not only here but in much of the world. The U.S. stipulated that hemp be eradicated in countries that wanted to trade with us. They got rid of books in the Library of Congress that described the benefits of hemp. Good book called "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer, an effort of about 30 years, spells this all out, as well as telling the fascintating story of the history of hemp. I thought about this as I watched Naomi Oreskes speach, the other day. It goes back even further than the SDI events involving Frederick Seitz, that she mentions. -
sailrick at 18:01 PM on 10 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Arkadiusz Semczyszak "Here you can see that the increase in pCO2 - is a function of temperature." This argument never made sense to me. I'm not a scientist, but common sense says that is wrong. It isn't like we don't know if we are emitting x amount of gigatons of carbon annually into the atmosphere. It is quantifiable. There is no mystery where CO2 is coming from. For that reason, the argument has always seemed absurd to me. Showing that CO2 might have followed warming in some past warming event doesn't really tell me anything about what happens when there are 6 billion people with modern industrialization burning fossil fuels like all get out. And it doesn't seem like very good logic to say that because x happened in the past, y can't happen at another time. And when was the last time on this planet, that a species decided to take the carbon that mother nature has been "sequestering" in the earth, for a period of 65 million years in the case of coal, and putting it all back into the atmosphere and hence the short term carbon cycle in a few hundred years, or a geological nanosecond? Mother natures' sequestering of carbon as coal and oil, just might be one of the main things keeping the carbon cycle in a balance that supports life as we know it. -
RSVP at 17:49 PM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Again. Just as with snowcover in earlier article, increased ice cover is negative feedback for global warming. And I am sure, I will be told in someway (just as before) that yes, it is negative feedback, but no, it is actually positive because of x,y and z. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:39 PM on 10 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel at 15:07 PM on 10 March, 2010 Well, we're plunging into the future at a fixed paced so the outcome will reveal itself in due course. Welcome seque back to Senator Inhofe, thanks. W/regard to a carbon tax, if such is not to be then we need to provide our collective adult with a different whip to apply to our backsides. It's not in our nature to eschew things that appear to be free, even when our inner grownups tell us they are not. Somehow strict accountability needs to brought into this picture or we'll end up going the hard way, with regard to both C02 emissions and progressing past fossil fuels. Senator Inhofe is particularly annoying because he asked for and received a role as a person who will be responsible for the public interest. The public interest is clearly not aligned with ripping through our petroleum resources as quickly as possible, yet he behaves as though it is. Some folks speculate Inhofe is in the pocket of the petroleum industry. Maybe, but perhaps this is just a form of cowardice, of failure of will, of reluctance to be the bearer of bad tidings for fear of being punished. Maybe Inhofe is certain that his constituents must be treated as children, indulged even as they're protected from some ugly truths lest they scream. Whatever the case, I'm certain that he is engaging in absurd, degenerate political theatrics wholly useless for conducting the public's business. -
gallopingcamel at 15:07 PM on 10 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
doug_bostrom, (#133) with regard to "first do no harm", every one of your arguments makes perfect sense to me. Burning fossil fuels at ever higher rates is something our children will blame us for. My take on "first do no harm" is that it is better to do nothing than take action that makes things worse. If John Cook's blog proves anything it is that the climate is poorly understood, so it is hard to be certain what will cause harm. When you tweak complex eco-systems there are usually unintended consequences. As for example when Ethanol was added to most of the gasoline sold in the USA. Will the rising CO2 concentration be harmful or beneficial? As I can't say with certainty that it will be beneficial, I have to side with you. Getting back to Inhofe, he is against any form of carbon tax. The carbon tax reminds me of the old lady who swallowed a fly. To get rid of the fly she swallowed a spider. My fear is that carbon taxes could reduce CO2 emissions but the unintended consequences will be much more serious than the original problem. -
barry1487 at 14:30 PM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
And possibly has conflated different periods, too. -
barry1487 at 14:28 PM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Turner 09 does say something else about temperatures. From the quickfacts pdf helpfully linked above....a. The waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (the largest ocean current on Earth) have warmed more rapidly than the global ocean as a whole.
Not having access to Turner 09, I'm taking a guess - perhaps someone can confirm. The Stieg paper found a positive trend in Antarctic land temperature when the record was extended back to 1957. I'm guessing Turner focuses on trends since the seventies, since when there is a flat or slightly cooling trend - right when the ozone layer started to get depleted over the Antarctic. I also suspect they focused on East Antarctica re this cooling trend. Anyone read the paper? If I'm right, Goddard has mixed up continental ice with sea ice, the ocean temp record and the land record, and regional/continent-wide data. -
Doug Bostrom at 14:03 PM on 10 March 2010Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
woodtom at 12:35 PM on 10 March, 2010 Or "innumeracy" as I've heard the concept called. I think you're quite right, we're adapted to succeed with intuiting small numbers but the quantities and effects we're dealing with here are on a inhuman scale, bigger than their creators. I've mentioned here before that on RC a tractable skeptic and I each did back-of-the-envelope calculations to reveal some idea of how much additional instantaneous power was going into the Arctic ocean during late summer as a result of ice loss. If I remember right I came up with ~80TW, my skeptic friend ~40TW. To put that in proportion, the entire world electrical generation capacity is about 16TW. My skeptic acquaintance and I found a point of agreement on our inability to predict such staggeringly large numbers from what is after all the loss of "only" about 6% of ice cover. "Only" 6% is of course an enormous surface area, multiply that by an additional few tens of watts per square meter absorption and numbers get very big indeed. Our brains don't produce good results dealing with numbers this large, our discrimination becomes mushy, orders of magnitude mix together. Our very largest artifact is so big it's almost incomprehensible. -
James Wight at 13:17 PM on 10 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
I've just added a few extra arguments from Coby Beck's list How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. I hope it isn't too frivolous, but there were some which I have heard contrarians use that I couldn't find on your list (particularly the clouds one).Response: One man's frivolous is another man's dogma so your submissions are very much appreciated. -
4 billion at 12:36 PM on 10 March 2010New observations find underwater Arctic Shelf is perforated and venting methane
Methane emissions from Wetlands etc have dramatically risen in comparison to levels over the last 1000 years, doesn't this show that current temperatures are unprecedented over the period? -
woodtom at 12:35 PM on 10 March 2010Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
I have heard this argument (humans are too insignificant to affect climate) more often than any other over the past few years. I have been thinking much lately that this attitude is an example of numerical illiteracy. The numbers documenting CO2 emissions do not mean something tangible that many people can imagine. And those who do not, or cannot turn very large numbers into something personally meaningful, simply see that Earth as overwhelmingly larger than mankind. Scientists are trained for years in making sense of large numbers. Very few other people are adept at this ability. It is easy for anyone to see how "small" we are as individuals on the vast Earth. But it is not easy to quantify the true dimensions of the atmosphere, the biosphere, communities, and how human activities add up. There is a failure at a personal level to understand the total global impact from summing every small contribution. This is as true for understanding rising CO2 as for anything that results from the actions of populations that now number in the 'billions'. Seems to me that we all could benefit from creative graphical and narrative examples that would illustrate how human sources of CO2 have been increasing the levels in the atmosphere for many years, in sync with economic expansion. Those trying to demonstrate this point need to make the human impact of CO2 emissions tangible. One simplistic example I once used as a comment to someone about this topic is night time photos of North America and Europe from space. These show the enormous networks of lights from communities. It makes the human race appear as quite a significantly large presence. I am sure that far better quantitatively based examples could be composed to get people (and critics) past this misconception. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:44 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Jeff Freymueller at 11:16 AM on 10 March, 2010 ...the glaciers are unpersuaded by this claim and continue to lose mass anyway. Cussed things, glaciers are. Entirely immune to appeals for sympathy and understanding. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:32 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
HumanityRules at 11:14 AM on 10 March, 2010 I worry more about folks being able to compartmentalize different things, a necessary part of understanding complex phenomena. Take a brief glance at a globe and notice that the Arctic is situated in a radically different environment than the Antarctic and is notably different in features. Air and water circulation around each pole is quite different, the average elevation of Antarctica is much higher than the Arctic, there is land at the South Pole, no land at the North Pole, one place is a continent in its own right, the other not; the two extremes have in common latitude from the equator and that's about all. Trying to generalize the behavior of Antarctica to the Arctic is an error. -
Jeff Freymueller at 11:22 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
#72 HumanityRules, the details are really out of my particular expertise but I have known for quite a while that sea ice scientists have predicted drastically different responses for the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. So this is not some story being made up after the fact -- my understanding is that the difference in response was in fact predicted. I am aware of no fundamental difference in response by hemisphere for land ice, predicted or observed. Alaska and Patagonia are doing similar things. Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula, similar. But its different for sea ice. Sometimes the answer is simple, and sometimes it is not. -
Jeff Freymueller at 11:16 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
#58 sciencefan: "I do not see how the Antarctic is melting when the temperature rarely gets of freezing, except on the Antarctic Peninsula and the shore. So how is Antarctic ice melting. (Hint, it has to move to where it is less cold than freezing)." You may already know the answer to this based on your hint, but it is important to note that it is not necessary to melt Antarctic ice in place. All you need to do is have the glacier that the ice is part of dump the ice into the ocean, where it will melt soon enough. The fact that it is usually too cold for ice to melt is often held up as "proof" that Antarctica can't be losing mass, but the glaciers are unpersuaded by this claim and continue to lose mass anyway. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:15 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Berényi Péter at 09:06 AM on 10 March, 2010 Looks like there is presently loss, but it's fun to watch scientific progress go "boink"* Here's a earlier posting on this topic from Real Climate: The Greenland Ice which discusses Johanessen et al plus some other work at the time. The open question at the time had to do with measurements at the margins of the ice sheet, which Johanessen points out was then problematic. The RC writeup looks forward to seeing results from GRACE, still in process in 2006. As it turns out, GRACE helps to refine the budget, tipping the balance of mass trends from positive to negative. *http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/467836393_6d3ca8bca0.jpg -
HumanityRules at 11:14 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
So take home message. Antarctic sea ice - climate is complicated so we can't use arctic sea increases to either prove or disprove global warming. Antarctic land ice - It's simple more energy melts ice proving global warming. Arctic sea ice - It's simple more energy melts ice proving global warming. Do you not worry about the inconsistency here?Response: You don't need to be so cynical, HR :-) We go where the empirical observations take us. In this case, the Southern Ocean is warming at the same time that sea ice is increasing. So obviously this is a complex and counter-intuitive situation (and from a scientific point of view, these are the questions that really fascinate scientists). The long term projections from Turner 2009 is that eventually the warming trend will overcome the increased sea ice production and Antarctic sea ice will eventually decline. -
CBDunkerson at 11:06 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Tadzio, you are presumably referring to John's actual article (rather than subsequent comments) and the bit about less dense water on the surface acting to prevent warmer deep water from welling up. Keep in mind that none of this water just 'stays put'. Currents will carry it out to mix with the rest of the oceans. Indeed, that relatively warm water is brought to the Antarctic deeps from other parts of the globe. Note that even the cold water at the surface is getting warmer (per the first chart in the article)... just not as fast as it would be if these other factors (i.e. ozone driven air circulation, decreased surface water density, et cetera) weren't in play. The oceans as a whole are warming. These other factors are just minor fluctuations around that underlying trend. -
Doug Bostrom at 10:56 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
tadzio at 10:39 AM on 10 March, 2010 Assuming you mean water beneath and proximate to the ice shelves, it's giving up heat to change the phase of water from ice to liquid. Energy is of course conserved in the process so unfortunately this is only a temporary effect. In the long term the Antarctic will not be a reliable means of moderating the temperature of the planet, it's already inadequate as we can see from ocean temperatures. -
Ned at 10:49 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
tadzio writes: So if the warmer water is being kept at the bottom these layers must be getting warmer ? where is all that heat going and whats it doing ? Warmer water kept at the bottom of what? What layers? All which heat? Sorry, but it's not clear whom you are responding to or what the question is. Can you be a bit more specific? -
Daved Green at 10:39 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
So if the warmer water is being kept at the bottom these layers must be getting warmer ? where is all that heat going and whats it doing ? Cheers dave -
Ned at 09:46 AM on 10 March 2010Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Well, you outweigh me a bit; I'm 3,780,000 ladybugs as of this morning. It's been a long day here and I'm a bit addle-brained right now, but I think you're talking about two separate issues. One is the units involved in comparing radiative forcing to gross Australian livestock metabolism, and the other is how to account for changes in radiative forcing over time.* Is that right? If so, I think we've taken care of the first part (units should be consistent on both sides, either comparing watts to watts or watt-days per year to watt-days per year). Then the other question is about radiative forcing and how to handle changes therein over time. If CO2 and everything else were constant, RF would be constant too (and there'd be no need for this website!) Unfortunately CO2 is increasing, so the RF associated with CO2 is likewise increasing over time. Now, I may have screwed up the calculations somewhere, and I'm too tired to re-check this, but apparently when I wrote that original reply to Mizimi I'd calculated that annual increase in RF as 0.03 W/m2 over the whole earth. (I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that I'd made an error somewhere there, but let's assume it's correct). Now, the RF itself doesn't "accumulate" from year to year, though the energy resulting from it does (until the earth comes back into radiative balance with its exoatmospheric environment). But you can still look at the annual increase in RF caused by the annual increase in CO2, and compare the power of that RF increase with some other thing (like Australian sheep metabolism). Of course, I may be confused about what you're saying, or I might be screwing up the calculations. Or I might be suffering from a case of DK effect. But this is how it seems to me. * This is a sentence that has probably never before been composed in all of human history! -
Charlie A at 09:30 AM on 10 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
@Berényi Péter -- See the webpage http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/altimetry-data-and-images/index.html In the download options box, check the Time Series box and the Global Isostatic Adjustment option is enabled. That website probably has the answers to many of your other questions. -
Albatross at 09:27 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Ned @65, you just beat me to it. Just a few more comments. Peter @64. From their abstract: "An increase of 6.4 +/- 0.2 centimeters per year (cm/year) is found in the vast interior areas above 1500 meters, in contrast to previous reports of high elevation balance. Below 1500 meters, the elevation-change rate is –2.0 +/-0.9 cm/year, in qualitative agreement with reported thinning in the ice-sheet margins." The increase (or stability) of snow and ice above the melt line is known: http://www.skepticalscience.com/An-overview-of-Greenland-ice-trends.html What is of concern is the loss of ice below the melt line. Also, the data in the paper you provided are for 1992-2003, whereas the data from GRACE are for the period 2002-2009. Anyhow, I am not sure what this has to do with Antarctic sea ice and the fallacious claims made at WUWT? Your comments regarding Greenland ice loss should probably be posted at the URL provided above. -
Pete Dunkelberg at 09:23 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
USGS says http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/23/usgs-reports-dramatic-retreat-of-ice-shelves-in-southern-antarctic-peninsula/ find a link to a large pdf there. -
Ned at 09:21 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Berényi Péter writes: "Is there a loss?" Yes. See, elsewhere on this site: Accelerating ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland and An overview of Greenland ice trends among other posts and articles. My suggestion would be that, before asking such a relatively basic question, to use the "Search" box on the top left of this page ... -
Charlie A at 09:20 AM on 10 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
@ Berényi Péter "When we are talking about "sea level rise" it is not meant to be relative to some external reference frame but to "average coastal elevation". How this latter quantity is measured?" If one is trying to figure out how much increase in volume in the sea has taken place, for example due to steric expansion and meltwater addition to the oceans, then one wants to reference to the bottom of the ocean. For this, one applies the Global Isostatic Adjustment of about 0.3mm/yr. If one is interested in relative sea level to coastlines, then one must adjust for the local elevation changes of the land. Or if one is just looking at global changes on the average, then one uses sea levels without the glacial rebound or global isostatic adjustment. Using this type of reference, the global mean sea level rate-of-rise is about 0.3mm/yr less. -
Berényi Péter at 09:06 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
#34 doug_bostrom at 04:52 AM on 10 March, 2010 "Easier units on Greenland loss" Is there a loss? Published Online October 20, 2005 Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1115356 Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland Ola M. Johannessen, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Martin W. Miles & Leonid P. BobylevResponse: Ned answers this in the following comment but just to deliver the science on a silver platter, satellite gravity measurements do find that the Greenland interior is in approximate mass balance where mass loss is balanced by increased precipitation. But the edges of Greenland are losing mass. The overall result is that the Greenland ice sheet is losing ice mass (Wouters 2008). More here...
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Pete Dunkelberg at 09:02 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Sciencefan, the ice shelves melt from below. The air temperature has nothing to do with it. The thinning, weakening ice shelves offer less resistance to the great ice sheets (which tend to spread out due to their own weight) and so ice flows faster into the ocean. See “Extensive dynamic thinning on the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets”.Pritchard et al. 2009 in Nature/advance online publication 23 September 2009, and their Map of Antarctica: Red and yellow indicate thinning ice. Note that the "small" West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the major concern along with Greenland. -
Albatross at 08:58 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Peter, I downloaded the data off their FTP server here: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives/index.html Click on the "Get extent and concentration data" hyperlink. -
Jeff Freymueller at 08:54 AM on 10 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
#30 Berényi Péter. No, you don't have to measure the volume of the ice sheet to measure the change in volume of the ice sheet. You just have to measure the change in the gravity field. So your argument is wrong. It is not just supposition, it is hard data. There are accurate explanations of it on this site, too. -
Tadh at 08:33 AM on 10 March 2010Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Ned, Thanks for the quick reply. You certainly gave me a better understanding of what Mizimi did with the metabolic rate, and how it affects the resulting answer. However I am still a bit lost on the radiative forcing. I think I know where I am going wrong. Radiative forcing would need to be changed in the same way metabolic influence would need to be due to the fact both are expressed in watts? But isn’t the radiatve forcing just relative to a set period, not a predictable increase? In order to do RF-Years wouldn’t we have to apply the change from year to year, and not the actual RF number? Thanks! By the way, apparently I weigh approximately 3,995,933 ladybugs. (wiki says .021 grams per ladybug)
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