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Comments 122601 to 122650:

122601. nerndt at 17:18 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        After subscribing to these posts for the past few months, it is clear that too much discussion is focused not on the true science of the problem. "What % of qualified scientists believe this or that?" Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein would all have been extreme minorities but with scientific insight and observation, the vast minority found reason and correct analysis. Much more research into measuring temperatures across both the atmosphere at low, medium and high levels, calculations showing energy gain/loss of solids versus liquis, versus gases must be made to determine where the true energy gains and losses are made. I am a lowly MS in AeroAstro from Stanford and I have strong misgivings about the true science that has been presented on the subject, yet I have little doubt about other scientific phenomena that have been discovered and modeled using engineering principles and equations. When will someone show more valid scientific data instead of roundabout opinions? Basic energy transfer ideals makes me think that most energy gain and loss by the earth is via heat conduction via the land and oceans, and virtually little by means of the atmosphere (i.e. gases). Once steady state occurs (energy coming in from the sun balances energy going out from the atmosphere), balance occurs. Heat retention in air is minimal compared to that of heat retention in liquids and solids. Can someone scientifically comapre those rates and relate them to the conditions of the earth with the energy it is constantly exposed to by the Sun? Mankind seems to always be so confident that they know the truth, until the lack of their knowledge shows them the folly of their ways. Please think about my post before denying keeping it.
122602. yocta at 17:09 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        RE# 3 Geo Guy: I can assure you that over 80% of my colleagues have a serious doubt about the findings of the IPCC. That seems pretty significant, do you have any ideas of which parts or working group of the IPCC that is disagreed on? I too encounter people, although it is almost always the older 'grey'crowd at the office who are the more skeptical of climate science. My PhD student peers when we are not "busy" with our projects debate quite a lot about climate science but we accept the basic science (and some of us are in the Skeptics Society so we know what skeptic means) I would be very interested to see the average age of the scientists who are "climate skeptics". The most famous ones I can think of Plimer, Monkton, and Seitz are pretty old (by my standards at least :P) My old (now very much retired) physics lecturer used to tell us that when he was an undergraduate there was still quite a few of the older respected physicists out there who outrightly rejected Einstien's General Theory of Relativity. I am curious as whether it is the younger scientists (who incidentally have more to lose) entering their careers as the oldies retire that will be the determinate of what improves the consensus in the statistics.
122603. garythompson at 17:07 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        in my humble opinion, AGW proponents do not further their argument by trying to discredit those who question the science just because they do not have a 'climate science degree'. Human Caused Climate Change debate is not like proving F=ma. It is much more complex and the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. When other science was debated in the past such as general/special relativity, Chandrasekhar limit, heisenberg uncertainty principle, etc. the average person had no real world comprehension of these topics and unless one was educated in quantum mechanics, astronomy or cosmology it was difficult to grasp. Few people, even with advanced science degrees, could understand the concepts enough to debate them. Notice that there are no websites dedicated to disproving Pauli's exclusion principle! And it is a sad commentary on our education system that we don't have better math/science education to allow more to understand these theories but it was Einstein who said (paraphrasing) that if you truly understand a topic on a fundamental level you can explain it in simple terms (i.e. E=mc^2). With Climate Science, the language is in temperature, ice, snow, water vapor, IR absorption, sea level, etc. so People have a real world understanding of that and hence anyone with a website and an idea can attempt to debunk it - though many are lacking the science to do that correctly. Climate Science is quite complex and as someone who is learned in the underlying physics of Astronomy/Cosmology with a dose of quantum mechanics and electrical engineering I can appreciate the complexities of this study. And i feel competant enough to read the peer reviewed papers, analyze measured data, compare AGW theories to observations, pose my own questions and draw conclusions. And anyone who understands the underlying physics can and should become educated in the field and seek their own answers through the peer reviewed literature and the observations. I think the Climate Science community should welcome the newfound interest in Climate Science and seek to understand this complex system through the scientific method. The fact that there are large numbers on both sides of this argument should tell us something. And not all can be explained away by politics and association with Coal/Energy sectors. Let's understand this complex system to the point where it can be explained in simple terms and understood by all - because the climate affects everyone.
122604. Doug Bostrom at 16:46 PM on 11 March 2010
        Antarctica is gaining ice
        Geo Guy at 16:23 PM on 11 March, 2010 Many references, but you won't cite any? Not even the one you quoted which I might add without a cite is not cricket, either; the authors I'm sure would appreciate attribution. From your further comment I take it that aggregated data is insufficient but a single year of data is? I don't find your approach persuasive.
122605. LWeisenthal at 16:33 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        >>97.5% of climatologists who were actively publishing papers on climate change responded yes.(Doran 2009). >>What is most interesting about this study was that as the level of active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement that humans are significantly changing global temperatures.<< This plays right into the hands of the "no funding without a cause" crowd of denialists. - Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
122606. Geo Guy at 16:23 PM on 11 March 2010
        Antarctica is gaining ice
        doug_bostrom at 07:12 AM on 10 March, 2010 There are many references to be found on the Internet, linked to valid scientific journals citing the rapid growth in the vast majority of the Antarctic landmass. I will leave it up to you to find them. In response to the author's response to mt comment: Being a geologist that has undertaken many gravity surveys, I am hesitant to make any interpretation based on aggregated data as you have done. It implies that the observed decrease is consistent throughout whereas that is likely not the case. You will get melting on the fringes and accumulation in the center - but the ice forming through the accumulation of the snow in the center is not the same as the ice that is melting on the fringes, which by the way shows a significant increase in ice mass from 2004.5 to 2005.5 suggests something else is happening or the data needs to be reviewed. The other point I will make is that a five year trend analysis, In addition,
122607. Daved Green at 16:18 PM on 11 March 2010
        Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
        Hi ,Thank you CBDunkerson for being a bit more prescient about my question , yes I was wondering about the less saline water keeping the warmer heavier currents at the botttom and if there where any studies as to where these waters are forced to go ? . I guess iam a bit out of my league here most of you guys sound like actual scientist where as iam just nonscientist trying to understand a mutlidisipline problem . also iam scared cuase no one is listening !!! thanx daved
122608. Tom Dayton at 16:14 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        I meant "sociology of science, history of science, and philosophy of science."
122609. Tom Dayton at 16:12 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        gallopingcamel, consensus plays a huge and crucial role in science. It is different from simply voting, but it is consensus nonetheless. That fact rarely is emphasized in introductory classes on science. A short addressing of the role of consensus in science is a few slides in Naomi Oreskes's "Consensus in Science: How Do We Know We're Not Wrong?" More depth on the topic can be gotten from any number of books on sociology, history, and philosophy of science. To avoid duplicating my own comments (which would violate the Comments Policy), I'll just link to some relevant ones: 195, 196, and 197 on the thread There is no consensus. Probably that is the more appropriate thread if you want to discuss the role of consensus in science rather than the OISM petition specifically.
122610. chris1204 at 16:09 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        Folk with medical degrees (such as myself) are certainly not climate scientists. However, we do know something about scientific method, consistency and coherence of conclusions derived from data, validity, reliability, peer review, and the behaviour of complex systems. We also know a bit about lobbying by industrial groups (drug companies) and spend a great deal of time helping patients manage risk. We also know a fair bit about scientific fraud. We have also seen fashions come and go. Ultimately, folks such as myself become part of conversations which may influence the way someone votes (not that I would ever do that in my practice of medicine). My participation in this forum is one such conversation. I imagine a number of other participants on this forum are in a similar position, non climate -scientists, yet interested enough in a hot topic (pun intended) to engage with the issues. Consequently, a survey of what tertiary educated individuals with some background in the sciences might think is of some relevance so long as it is represented as no more than just that.
122611. Geo Guy at 15:51 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        I think that too much effort is being spent trying to disqualify or undermine the different sides to the argument and this post is a good example of this. Every scientist, no matter what background they come from, understand due scientific process and from that understanding alone, they are qualified to reject any statement that they believe was reached at through a faulty process. As for climate scientists themselves - what constitutes being one? Perhaps we can look at the World Meteorological Organization as starters - the UN organization established to facilitate the gathering of meteorological observations and promote the standardization and uniform publication of observation and statistics. It was through the WMO that weather forecasters switched from saying "a good possibility of rain" etc to assigning a probability (ie 60% chance of showers). I bring this point up because the purpose stated when the switch was made was simply that people did not understand phrases like slight chance, strong probability etc but felt a percentage assigned to a forecast was more meaningful. In other words when they say "60% chance of showers, there is no relation whatsoever to true probability from a statistical perspective, but rather they assign a percentage to allow people to better believe their forecast. In the end it has not resulted in better or more accurate forecasting. Instead of questioning the credentials of people on a list, even if 50% were found out to be incorrect, that still leaves a significant number of scientists who disagree with the findings of the IPCC. As a geologist with over 35 years of experience, I can assure you that over 80% of my colleagues have a serious doubt about the findings of the IPCC. In the end I guess we should look to the UN who recently agreed to appoint an independent commission to look into the activities of those scientists who were involved in the published findings of the IPCC reports, even though I have my doubts as I believe it was the way in which the UN established the IPCC in the first place that contributed to the poor scientific process used to generate the IPCC reports.
122612. Mike1637 at 15:39 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        "Science is not a matter of counting heads......" So why do denialists continue to count them? I think as long this keeps happening, it is entirely fair play to continue to shoot this nonsense down in flames.
122613. gallopingcamel at 15:14 PM on 11 March 2010
        Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
        Science is not a matter of counting heads so my advice to AGW Alarmists is to forget about it. The IPCC "scientists" may be heavily outnumbered by Noah Robinson's Myrmidons (>30,000 and counting) but it means nothing except to politicians who think in terms of "votes". The folks who wrote this post need to lighten up; this is something to laugh about.
122614. Doug Bostrom at 14:23 PM on 11 March 2010
        It's not bad
        Vinny Burgoo at 11:37 AM on 11 March, 2010 When assessing the importance of any single component of a population's water supply, it is important to remember that water needs to be available always, and the available quantity required at any given time is bounded by definite lower limits. I've seen a lot of criticism of water supply impacts based on the notion that "only" 20%, 10% or 5% of a given total regional water supply is sourced by glacial and snowpack meltwater. If during certain times of the year the component that is only 20% of an annual supply represents 50% of the instantaneous available flow, the perspective of persons depending on that supply will be rather different than for those of us sitting in our armchairs at safe remove, wondering what the problem is. Not to be repetitious, but tell an engineer that you're going to remove reservoirs supplying 20% of a water utility's capacity and he should not worry because the annual total amount of water passing by his system will remain the same and that engineer will think you crazy. As to the rather arbitrary separation of snow and ice meltwater sources, if as we can expect glacier disappearance is accompanied by more rapid melting of snow the current budgetary components of melt water sources are of less use in predicting future impacts of glacier loss. This hair-splitting about impacts of changes in regional water supplies resulting from warming is at the end of the day not very flattering to so-called skeptics. Rummaging around for minor flaws in citations is not a robust counter-argument.
122615. Lou Grinzo at 13:14 PM on 11 March 2010
        Trenberth can't account for the lack of warming
        Gianfranco: "Travesty" is one of those words a lot of English speakers commonly misuse. In fact, many people use it as a synonym for "pity", but with extreme emphasis. John: Terrific post and explanation, by the way. I think this is a nearly perfect example of the way such wholly accurate and innocent statements can be misconstrued by those looking for a good misconstruing.
122616. Tom Dayton at 12:03 PM on 11 March 2010
        Scientists can't even predict weather
        Marcel Bokstedt, regarding chaos, please also see the Skeptical Science post Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted.
122617. Doug Bostrom at 11:47 AM on 11 March 2010
        Scientists can't even predict weather
        Marcel Bökstedt at 09:54 AM on 11 March, 2010 Be sure to read Weart's retrospectives on the evolution of climate models. Getting the whole story will help clear up a lot of misunderstandings about how climate models function, what it is they're skilled at predicting, how skilled they are: Simple Models of Climate Change General Circulation Models of Climate Pretty fascinating just for the history if nothing else.
122618. Vinny Burgoo at 11:37 AM on 11 March 2010
        It's not bad
        JC: 'I notice Kehrwald 2008 cites the IPCC AR4 as their source so until I track down the IPCC's peer-reviewed source (most likely Barnett 2005), I've removed Kehrwald.' Would that help? Kehrwald et al. offers several contradictory estimates of the number of people in South and East Asia who rely on water from melting glaciers. Would a peer-reviewed source for any of them really confer legitimacy on self-evident nonsense? Kehrwald's largest estimate: 'TP ice fields are a critical resource for one sixth of the world’s population'. 'TP' is 'Tibetan Plateau'. In Kehrwald, 'Tibetan Plateau' has at least three different meanings. Let's assume that this one was 'Himalayas plus Karakorams plus Hindu Kush plus Pamirs plus the Tibetan Plateau proper and the mountains on its western and northern rims'. Are the glaciers in this large region a 'critical resource for one sixth of the world’s population'? Er, no. Does any peer-reviewed literature say that they are? Probably. Does Kehrwald's cited source say that they are? No. The 'one-sixth' claim was attributed to AR4 WG2 Chapter 10, which says nothing of the kind. If not pure invention, it was probably a misattributed mangling of Barnett, which claimed (on very dodgy grounds) that 'more than one-sixth of the Earth’s population [relies] on glaciers and seasonal snow packs for their water supply'. Snow *and* glaciers. Worldwide, not just 'TP'. And note that Barnett's 'one-sixth' didn't include people living on the Gangetic plain. (He got something right.) The only other attributed claim in Kehrwald (750 million seriously affected) comes, it is said, from the Stern Review via WG2 Ch10. Stern did say something like that but its cited sources didn't support it. Things get complicated here, so I won't go further unless you insist. JC: 'I find it interesting that you'd 'remove the whole thing' - do you think the whole issue of threatened water resources for such a large proportion of the population is not worthy of concern?' I find it interesting that you are happy to accept that the water resources of such a large proportion are threatened. Peer-reviewed crap is still crap.
122619. Berényi Péter at 11:18 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
        #84 Ned at 00:34 AM on 11 March, 2010 "Okay, for April I get a trend that is almost but not quite significant" I don't know what you did. Here are the data files for April and May. There are two separate columns in each at end of lines, one for sea ice extent, the other for area. Extent is defined as sea surface covered by at least 15% ice, area is actual ice cover. Trend slope (least square fit), mean & dispersion is calculated for each time series. Null hypothesis: Series is stationary, data points are realizations of independent random variables with normal distribution, mean & dispersion is same as calculated from data. Question: What is the probability (p-value) of slope being not less than calculated for actual data? Answer: April sea ice extent: 0.0295 April sea ice area: 0.009 May sea ice extent: 0.0212 May sea ice area: 0.0088 For sea ice extent null hypothesis is rejected at 95% (actually 97%) confidence level, for area it is 99%, both months. Looks pretty significant. Trend for April sea ice area is +26,060 km² year^-1 (+16% in 30 years). As extent is also increasing, ice covered area gets some (86 W m^-2 average at TOA between 60-70S) sunshine in April, not much (24 W m^-2) in May. Albedo increase is not negligible (up to 10²⁰ J absorbed shortwave is lost compared to that of thirty years ago). "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" Funny. For some reason the ozone hole all but disappeared in 2002. And there is a dip in sea ice area for both April and May in the same year. Right? In this year ozone hole area is just 12 × 10⁶ km², half of last two decade's average, minimum ozone is 155 DU, 50% larger than average. But wait. Ozone hole occurs in Southern Hemisphere spring, so spring 2002 comes later than autumn, same year. One would not fancy precognition of ozone hole conditions by sea ice. Fall after this barely-hole is April-May 2003. Sea ice area is fourth largest on record. Of course it would be somewhat more correct to look at correlation between ozone hole extent & transparency and sea ice extent half a year later, but I would prefer not to re-digitize graphs. A pointer to ordinary data files, anyone?
122620. Riccardo at 10:27 AM on 11 March 2010
        Scientists can't even predict weather
        Marcel Bökstedt, what you say is quite strange given that the physics behind climate models is very similar to that of weather predictions models.
122621. Peter Hogarth at 10:16 AM on 11 March 2010
        Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
        Charlie A at 17:07 PM on 9 March, 2010 Concentrating on the gentle start of rise in sea level from about 1800, this is attributed to warming. A recent paper examines the causes: Anthropogenic forcing dominates sea level rise since 1850 Jevrejeva, Grinsted and Moore 2009 “We show that until 1800 the main drivers of sea level change are volcanic and solar radiative forcings. For the past 200 years sea level rise is mostly associated with anthropogenic factors. Only 4 ± 1.5 cm (25% of total sea level rise) during the 20th century is attributed to natural forcings, the remaining 14 ± 1.5 cm are due to a rapid increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases”.
122622. Marcel Bökstedt at 09:54 AM on 11 March 2010
        Scientists 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.
122623. Albatross at 07:54 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts 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.
122624. sailrick at 07:49 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts 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?
122625. mspelto at 02:25 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts 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
122626. HumanityRules at 01:57 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts 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.)
122627. Tom Dayton at 01:33 AM on 11 March 2010
        Have 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 wrote

        For 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."

122628. Ned at 00:59 AM on 11 March 2010
        Have 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.
122629. HumanityRules at 00:38 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts 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.
122630. Ned at 00:34 AM on 11 March 2010
        Watts 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."
122631. Ned at 00:09 AM on 11 March 2010
        Antarctica 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.
122632. Ned at 00:00 AM on 11 March 2010
        Antarctica 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.
122633. CBDunkerson at 23:21 PM on 10 March 2010
        Watts 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.
122634. Berényi Péter at 23:11 PM on 10 March 2010
        Does 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.
122635. protestant at 23:08 PM on 10 March 2010
        Antarctica 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).
122636. stevecarsonr at 22:06 PM on 10 March 2010
        Have 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
122637. Berényi Péter at 21:33 PM on 10 March 2010
        Watts 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.
122638. Peter Hogarth at 20:23 PM on 10 March 2010
        Does 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”.
122639. tobyjoyce at 19:48 PM on 10 March 2010
        Watts 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/
122640. sailrick at 19:07 PM on 10 March 2010
        Senator 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.
122641. sailrick at 18:01 PM on 10 March 2010
        Senator 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.
122642. RSVP at 17:49 PM on 10 March 2010
        Watts 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.
122643. Doug Bostrom at 15:39 PM on 10 March 2010
        Senator 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.
122644. gallopingcamel at 15:07 PM on 10 March 2010
        Senator 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.
122645. barry1487 at 14:30 PM on 10 March 2010
        Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
        And possibly has conflated different periods, too.
122646. barry1487 at 14:28 PM on 10 March 2010
        Watts 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.
122647. Doug Bostrom at 14:03 PM on 10 March 2010
        Humans 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.
122648. James Wight at 13:17 PM on 10 March 2010
        Every 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.
122649. 4 billion at 12:36 PM on 10 March 2010
        New 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?
122650. woodtom at 12:35 PM on 10 March 2010
        Humans 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.

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