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Doug Bostrom at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel at 02:10 AM on 4 March, 2010 With regard to station dropping being innocuous, You say, "Why can't you see that this is nonsense?", but you have not shown how it is nonsense. How are we to follow your reasoning? This treatment of the net effects of dropped stations A simple model for spatially-weighted temp analysis is described in complete detail. You might find food for argument in steps described by the author. -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:29 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
BerenyiPeter, how is the snow cover over the entire year? Your trick is interesting, how does it play out with other months? I look at your first link and I found this: "Interannual variability of SCA is largest not in winter, when mean SCA is greatest, but in autumn (in absolute terms) or summer (in relative terms)." A little farther down there is this: " Since the early 1920s, and especially since the late 1970s, SCA has declined in spring (Figure 4.2) and summer, but not substantially in winter (Table 4.2) despite winter warming (see Section 3.2.2)." And this: "From 1915 to 2004, North American SCA increased in November, December and January owing to increases in precipitation (Section 3.3.2; Groisman et al., 2004). Decreases in snow cover are mainly confined to the latter half of the 20th century, and are most apparent in the spring period over western North America (Groisman et al., 2004). Shifts towards earlier melt by about eight days since the mid-1960s were also observed in northern Alaska (Stone et al., 2002)." You selectively quote WGI about models. All readers can see your quote above, it is important to note that it is followed immediately by this: "At the same time, the high-latitude response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations is highly variable among climate models (e.g., Holland and Bitz, 2003) and does not show substantial convergence in the latest generation of AOGCMs (Chapman and Walsh, 2007; see also Section 11.8). The possibility of threshold behaviour also contributes to the uncertainty of how the cryosphere may evolve in future climate scenarios." Your 3rd quote is also selective and thus misleading. As for the other 2 links, I recommend to read the full text, where this can be found: "The individual model projections range from reductions of 9 to 17%. The actual reductions are greatest in spring and late autumn/early winter, indicating a shortened snow cover season (ACIA, 2004). The beginning of the snow accumulation season (the end of the snowmelt season) is projected to be later (earlier), and the fractional snow coverage is projected to decrease during the snow season (Hosaka et al., 2005)." Your argument is very reminiscent of a recent WUWT post by the same guy who once defended the possibility of carbonic snow in Antarctica. Tamino took a look at the whole picture: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/cherry-snow/ The same Rutgers data you use shows a yearly decline of 37000sq.km/yr between the late 60s and present time. The decline is strongest in the summer months, which is exactly what the models suggest should happen. Your characterizations of the state of snow cover and model projections were both in error. Models suggest that winter snow cover will not change significantly at first with sme regions experiencing more snow due to more humidity, rendered possible by higher temps. Other seasons, however, will experience decreased cover. That happens to be what the Rutgers data show. Models also suggest a later start of the snow season and earlier melt, with poleward movement of the permafrost. That has also been observed already, and the very links you provided contain the references. You say: "The NH winter snow cover trend is a null measurement. It does contradict to mainstream climate theory." That is false, and the links you gave indicate as much. -
Peter Hogarth at 04:20 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Carrick, additional anthropogenic forcing started (albeit very gently), around 200 years ago. If you have a look at the latest references, (or just skim the abstracts) for example Jevrejeva 2009 "Anthropogenic forcing dominates sea level rise since 1850" (linked above) this may give pause for thought. There is nothing wrong with your definition of "robust". The authors of the summary papers listed above used it (and I used it) to describe sea level rise and recent acceleration rather than the GRACE results. You are correct to suggest that the uncertainties associated with GRACE data are significant, but there has been much recent work to verify or correct the GRACE data, for example using vertical offset data from GPS or altimetry data. This really is a case of "multiple measurements and/or theoretical predictions using different methodologies that still agree". Have a look at the number of different leading organisations involved in "GLOSS" and how measurements are collected and checked. On your last point, I am not aware of any mainstream "dispute" on the sign of mass loss across Greenland as a whole. Could you provide links to recent papers or independently verifiable work that suggests this? I will be open minded. I am aware that there are variations in reported results (as I hope we should both expect), but that's not a "dispute" in my vocabulary. -
Jeff Freymueller at 04:17 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Excellent post! #2 Carrick, where did you get the idea that an acceleration in sea level rise "towards the end of the last century" depends in any way on GRACE? The reported change pre-dates the 2002 launch of GRACE, and GRACE has nothing to do with it. Also, the sign has not been in dispute for Greenland and Antarctica for a few years now, and mass loss has clearly accelerated over the last decade. The late 20th century mass loss rate for Greenland and Antarctica was close to zero, but the present rate is very clearly not zero. Yes, that means that something has changed -- glaciers in both places have sped up and are dumping a LOT of ice into the ocean (the sort of glacier dynamics not accounted for in the IPCC projections of sea level rise). To learn more about the mass trends, and how they don't just depend on one satellite system, you might start at http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Greenlands-ice-loss-accelerating.html -
D Kelly O at 04:05 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Peter: Great post. I have noticed that the University of Colorado - Bolder site has not updated their seal level data since September, 2009. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php Do you happen to know why? I can't seem to find any current data set on mean sea level. -
Gianfranco at 03:56 AM on 4 March 2010Models are unreliable
The link to Hansen 2007 mentioned in figure 3 seems to be not working. Could you please provide current link or cite paper? Many thanks.Response: All fixed, thanks for the heads-up. -
Ned at 03:51 AM on 4 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Riccardo (#106), are you suggesting that the NOAA/GHCN and NASA/GISS data sets are independent? No. NASA GISS uses the data that GHCN provides. You incorrectly blamed Hansen, Schmidt, and GISS for dropping stations, but they have nothing to do with the station network. Riccardo was just pointing that out. As a physicist I understand the importance of preserving every photon to ensure that the "Signal to Noise Ratio" will be as high as possible. Temperature anomalies show a high degree of spatial autocorrelation. Dropping stations doesn't have much effect on the results as long as there are still a sufficent number of stations, because of this autocorrelation. Thus, in the past month we have seen multiple experiments where people looked at the trends for the dropped stations and for the included stations. There's no significant difference. See the links in Doug Bostrom's post above. If you are going to keep insisting that there's a problem, you need to demonstrate it, not just assert it. -
Riccardo at 03:46 AM on 4 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel, i said the the GHCN dataset is not under the responsability of GISS. What I can see, and you reject without any reason, is that the number of stations do not influence the outcome of the analysis. This is a simple fact, easily seen if one has the will to. I do not know any scientist who insist to accumulate more data than useful nor that keep the data from, say, a broken instrument; if something went wrong anyone would through the data away. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:39 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Whoops. Sorry. There actually are other pages to the site. It's just has poor navigation. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:37 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
If you look at the original denier article it's kind of interesting. It's just a one page site with a bunch of ads. I did a whois search and found that www.iceagenow.com is from Domains by Proxy. Not that the article is false but I think the site is just a scam to make money on a hot topic issue with google ads. -
Argus at 03:08 AM on 4 March 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
In #10 doug_bostrom hands us a quote from Dr Mörner, where he appears to be talking about a sudden (impossible) 20 cm fall of the sea level in 1970. Actually he is at the time talking about local changes in the Venice area, not about general sea level. It is, I think, misleading and dishonest to use a quote in this way. Also, it is not 'one man's word against hundreds'. He tells us that he was shocked, as an IPCC reviewer in 1999, to see the chapter on sea level in a forth-coming report. The chapter was written by 33 authors, and not a single one was a sea level specialist! He brought the report up in subsequent meetings in INQUA, where 300-400 experts on sea levels talked it over, and agreed that it was faulty. So it is more like hundreds of experts against 33 amateurs... -
Si at 03:05 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
I think you covered this in 76 but I like the article from Vicky Pope over at the Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090211.html which balances some of your points in 23, 35 and 88. -
angliss at 03:02 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Carrick - One recent study shows by way of satellite laser altimetry that Greenland is losing mass, although due to limitations on the accuracy of the satellite laser altimeter, the study's authors couldn't saw with confidence just how much was being lost, only that the southern parts of Greenland and the lower elevations are thinning significantly (source: Extensive dynamic thinning on the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets", doi: 10.1038/nature08471) The same study also looked at Antarctica and found something interesting - the mass loss from Antarctica is great enough that it does exceed the inherent noise of the laser altimeter, and the loss isn't just from the WAIS - there are parts of the EAIS that are also thinning, even though the EAIS as a whole is stable (not thickening or thinning). These results agree qualitative with a recent GRACE study of Antarctica that found that the same areas of thinning on the WAIS and EAIS that were detected by the laser altimetry study were also shown to be losing significant mass in the GRACE study. (Source: "Accelerated Antarctic ice loss from satellite gravity measurements", doi: 10.1038/ngeo694;) I have a more comprehensive writeup of these two papers here, as well as the two images that show that, eyeballed anyway, the GRACE areas of mass loss correspond to the altimeter areas of significant thinning: http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/12/16/antarctic-ice-sea-level-rise/ -
ike solem at 02:34 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
First, go watch the video again. All of those claims are based on decades of research and thousands of published papers. Most of that effort went into understanding the steady-state system of the atmosphere, oceans, ice bodies, biosphere and land surfaces - and this basic science work was critical. None of it ever mentioned global warming, but it allowed people to understand the global circulation of water and energy in response to solar inputs. Now, we understand this well enough that we could do a decent job of predicting the climate on any Earth-like planet, as long as we knew the atmospheric gas composition, and some other factors (ocean volumes, land mass distributions, biomass, ice sheet volume, etc.). The core disciplines involved were physics, biology and chemistry - which is science. This quote, on the other hand, by "libertarian romantic", is cargo cult science: They're clearly in a position to both understand and critique the computational and statistical methodology that lies at the heart of predictive-based climate research. Actually, you have physics, chemistry and biology at the heart of climate research. Each "Earth Science" discipline involves some mix of the above three, cobbled together mathematically. The lines of evidence for global warming are all based on methods originally developed in those three disciplines, and then applied to data collection, computer modeling, "canary in a coal mine" studies, and paleoclimate studies. Now, as far as getting Fermilab to "doublecheck everything" - would you hire the world's best dentist to do heart surgery? You might ask the dentist to point out any issues with your heart surgeon, but why not ask other heart surgeons? Climate models are radiative transfer & fluid dynamics models at heart. It's the coupling of those two main physical areas that allows one to create a radiative-convective model. This is how you make a weather model, which, if initialized with real-world data, can produce fairly accurate weather forecasts up to about a week or so. However, if you run the model for a very long time, it still produces weather patterns and seasons, but they don't match up, time-wise, with reality. Climate, however, is the average of weather over time - and if you average the model, you get a good fit with climate. However, over long periods of time the ocean and ice sheets and biosphere start playing major roles. Hence, you now need ocean models coupled to biomass models coupled to ice sheet models and so on. Obviously, there are thousands of papers on the development of all these model components - go and look. So, why do you want FermiLab - which works with high-energy particle physics models - to look at climate models? Why not have people who specialize in galactic cosmology modeling go and double-check the FermiLab people, while you're at it? And then climate modelers could go and make sure that aircraft designers aren't messing up their fluid dynamic equations... Or, you could just go read the methods sections in the published literature, where all that has been done, over and over again. -
Carrick at 02:33 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
It's interesting to note that AGW started roughly in 1975-1980, since prior to 1980, AGW CO2 emissions were nearly offset by AGW sulfates. [I always like Hansen's Mode E to illustrate that, but it's a common feature of all of the climate models.] Secondly, there is a significant delay between increase in forcing and sea level rise (certainly that from thermal expansion of the oceans), it could be as much as 30 years, perhaps even more before we see the full impact of AGW climate change from the last 30 years. ... so really little of the sea level rise shown in Figure 1 is attributable to anthropogenic warming (only that part of the ice melt from the anthropogenic component of global warming). Speaking of dowsing, Isaac Newton spent most of his life studying alchemy. I guess we can through away that quack's work too. 8D Regarding the "acceleration in sea level rise", I would dispute how robust GRACE is, given how most of the measurement is from a systematic adjustment to the data. "Robust" is usually reserved for multiple measurements and/or theoretical predictions using different methodologies that still agree. Last I checked the sign of recent the ice-loss/gain in Greenland was in dispute, and as is the long-term effect of climate change on Greenland's ice mass That's not a "robust" result in my vocabulary. -
Si at 02:30 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Another skeptic argument for your list The effect of CO2 is logarithmic, not linear. This of course may well explain the recent lack of warming despite the large rise in CO2. Worth including?Response: Certainly worth including, I've added it. If in doubt, just go ahead and add your argument - they all get moderated anyway. -
Si at 02:20 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Peter, Excellent paper and well worth reading. Their conclusion seems right. There is, of course, lots on tree rings at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/treering.html But this paper is very good and particulalry pertinent to the Yamal tree ring data John cites in arguments 22 and 89 http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/Holocene_v12a.pdf -
gallopingcamel at 02:10 AM on 4 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Riccardo (#106), are you suggesting that the NOAA/GHCN and NASA/GISS data sets are independent? What about HADCRUT and UCAR? OK, I will concede that UAH is independent. As a physicist I understand the importance of preserving every photon to ensure that the "Signal to Noise Ratio" will be as high as possible. In climate science we are trying to filter tiny AGW temperature signals out of much larger natural background (noise) and yet we can afford to discard most of the data? Why can't you see that this is nonsense? Maybe I should have said non-science. -
gallopingcamel at 01:48 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
libertarianromanticideal (@134), IMHO this is way the best blog of its type. A class act like this one attracts some very thoughtful people. Even though I disagree with most of the comments I still get the feeling that it would be fun to meet the debaters over a glass of beer. There is no real debate at "Climate Progress" because Joe Romm blocks posts he does not like. Tim Lambert's "Deltoid" is much better but it seems to appeal to the loony fringe who descend into name calling when challenged. Thank you John Cook! -
Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 00:47 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Another excellent article, thank you to Dr Hogarth and John Cook. I particularly appreciate the explanation of how data is collected, as well as the charts and videos. The NASA 3D view of sea level with El Nino is great (last video). I have read recently how it is likely that the ice in Antarctica and Greenland will add considerably to the sea levels over coming decades, but can't recall the extent to which this is dependent on the rate of continued CO2 emissions. This article has prompted me to go back and check the literature. -
Berényi Péter at 23:46 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#80 Riccardo at 09:00 AM on 2 March, 2010 "i can only suggest to read" OK, I have read the paper + supplement. It does not elaborate on observations inconsistent with warming at all. It just mentions some out of those three thousand with no further comment. However, here is a huge one.
Data from Rutgers snow site
I have just considered Norhern Hemisphere average snow cover for winter months (December-February) and assigned value to year containing mid month (January).
There are data for 44 consecutive years from 1967 to 2010. Long enough to contain some climate signal, right? Well, no linear trend at all. Nope. Flat like truth itself.
However, I could make it scary if I wanted to. Just have to use quadratic fit instead of linear. Projected NH snow cover for year 2100 is 76,440,839 square kilometer, an incredible 70% increase relative to 1967-2010 average. Mexico, Northern Africa and parts of India to be frozen. It is a joke, of course. Shows how shaky extrapolation can get.
Null measurements are the most reliable ones in physics. Electric field in a conductive envelope is measured to be zero. With some math it is a hard proof of inverese square law for Coulomb force.
The NH winter snow cover trend is a null measurement. It does contradict to mainstream climate theory.
From IPCC AR4:
1. WG1 4.2.2.2 Variability and Trends in Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover
"Temperature variations and trends play a significant role in variability and trends of NH SCA, by determining whether precipitation falls as rain or snow"
2. WG1 8.6.3.3 Cryosphere Feedbacks
"A robust feature of the response of climate models to increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases is the poleward retreat of terrestrial snow [...]"
3. WG1 10.3.3.2 Changes in Snow Cover and Frozen Ground
"Snow cover [...] exhibits strong negative correlation with air temperature"
etc.
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Mikemcc at 22:53 PM on 3 March 2010Predicting future sea level rise
Thanks for the response, I e-mailed the authors and got the following back this morning (I haven't been able to look at the paper yet though). Dear Mr McC******, Thank you for your query. You are right that the cited paper discusses only the recent part of the satellite altimetry data shown in Fig. 16. The full data set is discussed in: Cazenave, A. and W. Llovel, 2010: Contemporary sea level rise. Annual Reviews of Marine Science, 2: p. 145-173. There, and in the references therein, you will also find a discussion of the uncertainties in those data. Best regards, Patrick EickemeierResponse: Thanks for following this up and reporting back, much appreciated. -
Peter Hogarth at 22:39 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
John, this is amazing work. Update re argument tree-ring divergence problem? There has been recent work in addressing the “Divergance Problem” in tree ring data. Considering the public scrutiny on this due to the hacked CRU e-mails, and the critical attacks on previous IPCC representations of tree ring data in particular, it is topical and pertinent. I would be interested if others know of parallel or even contradictory work. Divergence pitfalls in tree-ring research (Esper and Frank, 2009) http://www.springerlink.com/content/873486u687j56246/fulltext.pdf Which refers to the following recent key work in its conclusion: Testing for tree-ring divergence in the European Alps (Buntgen 2008) http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rjsw/all%20pdfs/Buntgenetal2008.pdf (Extract from abstract) Tree-ring width chronologies from 40 larch and 24 spruce sites were selected based on their correlation with early (1864–1933) instrumental temperatures to assess their ability of tracking recent (1934–2003) temperature variations. After the tree-ring series of both species were detrended in a manner that allows low-frequency variations to be preserved and scaled against summer temperatures, no unusual late 20th century DP is found. Independent tree-ring width and density evidence for unprecedented late 20th century temperatures with respect to the past millennium further reinforces our results. An excellent resource for anyone interested in evidence of climate change from tree ring data is Buntgens homepage and the following (rather nice) links in particular. The graphs speak volumes. http://www.buentgen.com/graphs.html http://www.buentgen.com/data.html -
CBDunkerson at 22:07 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
libertarianromanticideal, maybe one 'skeptic' in a hundred will cite Lindzen's views... and most of those will have the details wrong or out of date. Polls show that 'GW skepticism' is growing... but discussion shows that this growth is fueled primarily by the arguments which are provably false. Thus, the focus of this site on identifying those arguments and linking to the contradictory facts. As to Lindzen... he has been fighting a rear guard action on global warming denial for more than twenty years and is now reaching his last stand. The one claim he can still make with some small degree of veracity is that we don't know all the details of all possible feedbacks and thus the models could be wrong. This is close enough to 'true' to keep him within the fold of scientific endeavor... but just barely. Extensive data from AIRS and other readings have established the extent of water vapor feedback to a high degree of certainty... and found it to be consistent with what the models have been using for decades. Readings from IceSat, GRACE, and other sources have shown conclusively that the ice albedo feedback effect is progressing more rapidly than all but the most pessimistic models projected. Between them, those two factors constitute most of the positive feedback used in the models. Thus, we have reached the point that strong positive feedbacks are a demonstrated result... Lindzen has maybe a few more years of claiming that there could be errors in the data before the growing list of confirmations push that completely out of the realm of reasonable objection. He has thrown out several hypotheses of implausible counter feedbacks to blunt the warming, but each has been examined, shown to be faulty, and eventually withdrawn. So yes, from a true scientific standpoint Lindzen is the skeptic to consider... but every argument he has made has been strongly refuted (most of them on this site amongst other places) and is just waiting for the evidence against it to become overwhelming. -
Si at 22:04 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Yocta, I would not bother with TL at deltoid, they maintain a certain level of hysteria which is entertaining but does not advance any discussion. They guy is happy to do a bit of dissembling himself (see http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/moncktons_mcluhan_moment.php) -
Si at 21:55 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Here are what I consider are strawmen or your weakest arguments. 12. Al Gore got it wrong. Well he did, and while you acknowledge that I don't think having Al Gore back up AGW is very impressive. 15. Hurricanes. The evidence is that warming does not lead to increases in hurricanes. All the experts agree, and again I think you should note that. 20. Sea level accelerated rise. I think this is a dodgy claim - significant experts would not agree 22. Hockey Stick. Anyone reading Andrew Montford's 'The Hockey Stick Illusion' will feel that yes the Hockey Stick graph is a crock. I think it would be better to say it is not relevant. 41. CO2 not a pollutant - this is an odd one as it is obviously not a pollutant. Mankind might be inconvenienced by a change climate but I think the plants will benefit. 47. Climategate. Again better to fess up than paper over the cracks. Read the Institute of Physics submission to UK Parliament http://www.publications.parliament.uk/.../uc3902.htm They are not at all skeptical about the science just about CRU. 66. MWP. Weak argument. Although evidence is sparse I think there is good enough evidence that it was global. 70. Phil Jones. This is absolutely correct but begs the question if the warming is so insignificant then what is the problem? 78. CO2 being the main driver of climate. No evidence just a presumption. 80. Its not happening - looks like a strawman, but I am not even sure I what it means. Do you think that skeptics say the climate does not change? 83. CO2 is not increasing - sorry, who says this? Strawman argument. 89. Tree rings. This does not adequately cover the point at all. If tree rings in the samples used diverges after 1960s it means that they are highly ineffective proxies before that. You only need one car crash to show you have a faulty car (Toyota). Question - have you left out clouds on purpose or do you feel it is in there as water vapour and albedo effect? Observation: your tone is to support climate change science and AGW whatever the counter argument which as I said before makes it look more like a belief than a 'skeptical about skeptics' argument. -
anil_dabir at 21:45 PM on 3 March 2010What ended the Little Ice Age?
Most of the discussion went over my head. I get stumped when schoolboys ask me: *There were ice ages earlier. *Warming took place and they went away. *There were no contributory factors as we know them - no aerosol sprays, no fossil fuel burning, no automobiles and so on. Why then is there such a to-do about Global Warming now? Shall be grateful if someone can give me a jargon-free explanation which I can communicate to them. -
AndrewY at 21:18 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Not too sure every link can be described as either "pro-AGW" or "skeptic", but I understand why you have done that... Under the "better to geoengineer" section I added a link to My MSc dissertation which examines the prospects for reversing dangerous global warming by directly capturing CO2 from the atmosphere ("dangerous" being defined as >2 degrees above pre-industrial temperature). It contains some back of the envelope estimates which gives some idea of the sheer scale and cost of the operation that would be needed to even reduce the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 150ppm (say from 500ppm to 350ppm), we are talking about capturing and storing over a trillion tonnes of CO2! It is theoretically possible but it would require an enormous global engineering effort, at best it would take many decades to achieve and it would cost many trillions of dollars... it's certainly not an alternative to making emissions cuts (but it may be needed IN ADDITION to severe emissions cuts if climate sensitivity turns out to be at the high of the estimate). Geoengineering solutions that block incoming solar radiation could be potentially as dangerous as AGW and are fraught with political problems (who controls them and who decides at what stage they should be used etc).Response: I will get around to adding Neutral as an option sooner or later.
I saw your paper on capturing CO2 and thought it very interesting. The prospect of capturing 150ppm is an exciting idea and I hope it is a practical proposition. I think it's inevitable that these kinds of solutions are explored in upcoming decades - you better get in at the grass-roots level :-) -
CBDunkerson at 21:16 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
I think the problem Josie is encountering may be that the scroll bar is off the right side of the page. Thus, only the top of the argument list is shown and there is no clear indication that more arguments are available below. I ran into this myself, but was able to get around it using the arrow keys to move up and down through the list.Response: Okay, I see the problem - in Firefox, the dropdown extends beyond the right side of the page. This doesn't happen in Internet Explorer. I'm looking into fixing this right now. I seriously have to stop using IE so exclusively! -
Si at 21:11 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
I am so glad you opened this up for discussion. My basic worry is that by including every skeptical argument you look like you are setting up strawmen only to knock them down which inevitably weakens your case. The one thing you can be sure of is that there is no consensus among skeptics - none. I think a general overview with specific examples would be better. -
Josie at 21:05 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Hey John, It isn't working right. You say: "The parent argument for yours would be there's no correlation between CO2 and temperature". I wanted to put it under that, but it only gave me about 10 arguments to choose from, and none of them was that one. Cheers, JosieResponse: Okay, now that's weird. Are you going to:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/resources.php?a=addargform
And the parent argument only gives you ten or so arguments to choose from? Only thing I can think of is the page hadn't fully loaded - was the 'Submit New Argument' button visible? -
Si at 20:59 PM on 3 March 2010On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
Tom, agreed. Following on from there here are fascinating posts and discussion. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/bump-new-thread-for-station-drop-out-analyses/ http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/a-simple-model-for-spatially-weighted-temp-analysis/ -
Riccardo at 20:34 PM on 3 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel, did i say that stations has not been dropped? No for sure, i said that it has no significant effect on anomalies. Whatever the reason why stations have been dropped the only important thing is that it does not influence the final results. No reason to suspect any dirty business behind it. By the way, the GHCN dataset is not maintained by GISS folks. -
Pierre-Normand at 18:00 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
RSVP at 16:12 PM on 3 March, 2010 The heat content energy in inferred from increasing temperature of the oceans and the troposphere (plus heat capacity of air and water and fusion heat of ice). So, escaping radiations aren't part of it. Neither are escaping radiations part of CO2 forcing. Increase in any GHG forcing results from summing the instantaneous (not accounting for feedbacks) decrease in outgoing radiation from the tropopause with the increase in surface irradiation from the atmosphere. This causes the transient energy imbalance of the Earth+troposphere system while GHG concentrations are increasing and before a new radiative equilibrium can be attained. -
Doug Bostrom at 17:49 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
ike solem at 15:57 PM on 3 March, 2010 This business of whether C02 is or is not a pollutant is a big deal in some quarters. Tagging C02 with a "pollutant" label is going to cause a shift in public perceptions and that's an unaffordable loss for fossil fuel interests. Hence the sudden emergence of "grass roots" web sites and the like, extolling the virtues of gusting in great lungfuls of clean, healthy, natural and purely harmless C02. The proper quantity of fish oil in a fish is naturally occurring and undoubtedly absolutely necessary to the proper functioning of a fish. One thousand gallons of fish oil dumped in a river will impair the function of that river, is thus a pollutant and comes under the purview of the EPA. That's not complicated, and neither is the notion of C02 being a pollutant if its concentration is raised by humans to levels determined to interfere with the proper functioning of the planet. Expect your immediate future to include repeating variations of this argument an astronomical number of times using a multitude of analogies as a man made fog of obfuscation enshrouds this very simple concept. -
Doug Bostrom at 17:36 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Karl_from_Wylie at 15:28 PM on 3 March 2010 Karl, I'm afraid I've lost your plot. I gather you've some issue with IPCC being involved in pushing some sort of cause, but you're not able to supply any details so I've had to tease some meaning out of your words. "Conspiracy" was too strong, so I tried "shadowy" and apparently that won't do either. Perhaps "mysterious" or "unidentified" (come to think of it, I believe I tried that one) will do. You have the last word on this, be my guest. I don't see the relationship of your hypothesis to science but if reading tea leaves is your bag I'm not going to stand in your way. -
libertarianromanticideal at 17:02 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
skepticalscience.com is one of the few blogs out there that's doing it right when it comes to the global warming "debate," i.e., going to the actual research papers. However, while this video is excellent, as well as the other posts knocking the legs out from under people who deny that the climate is getting warmer, I'm wondering -- who, really, are these deniers? Billy Bob living in a trailer park eating mayonnaise sandwiches? There are people who don't believe human ever went to the moon, but nobody really pays that much attention to them let alone puts in a lot of time and effort trying to debunk their arguments (which will never convince the Billy Bob's of the world anyway). So what's the point here -- or rather, what's the big news? The climate is warming? "Everybody" knows that. True, there are influential senators (Inhofe) and media personalities (Glen Beck) who are highly visible deniers, but -- again, really -- how much of a influence are they? Hard to believe that their uninformed opinions are somehow going to turn the tide of thinking on this issue. So, why is skepticalscience.com spending so much time on this? It's not where the real debate is. Recently, Fermilab invited MIT's Richard Lindzen to give a talk at one of their Colloquiums: http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/f.htm Fermilab is interested because climate change is definitely topical but perhaps more importantly they're interested because almost all the research is based on computational-statistical models, and Fermilab has some of the world best experts in computational and statistical modeling in the world. They're clearly in a position to both understand and critique the computational and statistical methodology that lies at the heart of predictive-based climate research. The Colloquium is long -- it clocks in over an hour, which is a long time for an afternoon colloquium, and then there was a 30 Q&A. What might surprise readers of this blog is that Dr. Lindzen agrees with 98% of this video. I'm not an expert, but listening to his talk, he would disagree with almost nothing here: the climate is warming and C02 plays a role. You'd be hard pressed to find a climate scientist or a physicist that would disagree with that. Where might Dr. Lindzen part company with some readers of this blog? Dr. Lindzen is convinced that climate change global alarm is dead wrong because of the lack of evidence for positive feedback in the climate. Anyway, this was an influential talk and it's making it's way around the net and in professional academic circles. I'd like to see skepticalscience.com review this talk. - Cheers, libertarianromanticideal.com -
RSVP at 16:12 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
CBDunkerson at 09:09 AM on 3 March, 2010 Thanks for answering, and I did like your Bic lighter analogy at least in terms of the humor. What I was saying is that the extra heat from CO2 shows up as a warmer atmosphere. Some part of that extra heat (I assume AGW theorists acknowledge this) IS escaping to infinity and some part could be going in "savings" (i.e., the ocean). My question is whether it is possible for that "small portion" of that "difference" could be sufficient to account for all that anomalous energy in your curve? -
ike solem at 15:57 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
The term "pollutant" refers to toxicology, and the first thing you learn in toxicology is that effects are dose-dependent, or concentration-dependent. Paracelsus: "The only difference between poison and medicine is the dose." Fertilizer is a key ingredient for plant growth - but we don't call it a pollutant unless it is dumped into our fresh water supplies - and yes, ingesting ammonium nitrate is unhealthy. The herbicides and pesticides are of course far more toxic than fertilizer. So, this word, "pollutant" isn't really well-defined. Another example is ozone - in the stratosphere, it is a vital shield against ultraviolet radiation, but in cities, it is a dangerous component of automobile smog. So, the classic skeptic argument here is that CO2 is a life-giving fertilizer, a key raw material for plant growth - and that is true, if incomplete. Why? Plants take up atmospheric CO2, and use sunlight to split water into O2 and hydrogen atoms. Those atoms are then essentially attached to the CO2 atoms, while the oxygen atoms are sequentially removed, leaving the energy of sunlight stored in the chemical bonds inside sugar molecules. Refined sugar? Think of it as sunlight trapped within the molecular structure of the sugar molecule in the form of energetic electronic bonds... kind of like stretched rubber bands. Cut them, you release that stored sunlight as heat, light, pressure, muscular contractions, etc. No atmospheric CO2, no plant growth. Doubling CO2 across the planet could make photosynthesis easier, the argument goes - but in the real world, usually it's not the CO2 that is lacking - it's the nitrogen, the phosphate, the trace minerals that get depleted from the farmer's fields, and have to be replaced. You can now see why you can grow crops year after year - for millenia - with no effect on atmospheric CO2 - every year, the plants take the CO2 out of the air, and (with the assistance of animals, fungi & bacteria) it ends up being recycled back into the atmosphere. Hence, biofuels are sustainable at some scale. However, if you're dumping fossil carbon into the atmosphere, then you are adding to the pool (you can measure this in the radiocarbon signature of old fossil fuel carbon). CO2 (at these low levels) has no direct toxic effect (unlike on Pandora, where CO2 must be a few % - not bad on the science, there) - it is an indirect effect of slowing warming & destabilizing the climate. Now, the effects of acid rain are largely secondary as well - it strips nutrients out of the soil and that kills trees - and we call acid rain precursors (high-sulfur coal and diesel fuel) pollutants, don't we? If you can regulate secondary acid rain effects due to their impacts on people, pets, livestock, wildlife, and plants - well, yes, you should also be able to do the same with fossil fuel-sourced CO2. -
Karl_from_Wylie at 15:28 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#129 doug_bostrom Please do a word search and you'll see that "shadowy group" is your choice of words not mine. Either defend your words or choose them better. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:24 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
gallopingcamel at 14:48 PM on 3 March, 2010 CO is a naturally occurring constituent of the atmosphere. Can it be labeled a pollutant? -
Doug Bostrom at 15:23 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Karl_from_Wylie at 15:15 PM on 3 March 2010 I guess I confused you, sorry. It's -your- argument. You have to support it, I don't. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:20 PM on 3 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel at 14:04 PM on 3 March, 2010 Oops, w/regard to dropped stations, as Yogi Berra said "It's deja vu all over again!" I didn't remember I'd already produced the same answer to your durable misapprehension as recently as last night. Gallopingcamel, what is your argument about this? Kvetching about "fancy algorithms" does not really cut it. What have you got? -
Karl_from_Wylie at 15:15 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
. #126 doug_bostrom Please define your "shadowy group" for which you have enmity. Please defend the words you use and don't attribute them to any one else. -
Doug Bostrom at 15:13 PM on 3 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
gallopingcamel at 14:04 PM on 3 March, 2010 You'll need to explain better than these folks why the station drop problem is indefensible: A simple model for spatially-weighted temp analysis False claims proven false Long story short: dropping stations has no deleterious effect on estimating temperature trends. In fact, if anything (though not statistically significant) it -reduces- apparent warming. -
gallopingcamel at 14:48 PM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Getting back to the video at the head of this thread. I am still asking myself whether there is a single respected scientist who could keep a straight face while publicly declaring: "Atmospheric carbon dioxide is a pollutant" -
gallopingcamel at 14:04 PM on 3 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
With regard to the "station drop off problem", you folks are defending the indefensible. Peterson, Schmidt and Hansen at NASA/GISS need to explain why they discard the vast majority of data that is reported to them. NASA told us they were dropping stations years ago but they failed to give a valid reason for so doing. See Peterson & Vose 1997. D'Aleo & Watts brought things up to date since stations are still dropping to this day. GHCN v2 now includes less than 1,000 stations compared to ~6,000 in the 1970s. Riccardo, you don't need any fancy algorithms to count stations; it is not rocket science. I used "gedit" to break the files down to sizes that Open Office Spreadsheet could digest. For Windows users "Wordpad" and "Excel" should work just as well. I broke the GHCN v2 files into individual countries using the fact that the first three digits of the station codes are country codes (e.g. "403" = Canada). After that it is a simple matter to sort by station number and by reporting year. Scoff at my lack of software skills all you like but it does not change the facts. I fail to see how y'all can be so sure the station drop out problem "makes no difference" unless you have access to the full data sets as well as the truncated ones. All the fancy algorithms Zeke can come up with won't help unless he has the data. Ooops! I forgot about the CRU and its ability to fill in the blanks as exposed in the HARRY_READ_ME file: http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt -
angliss at 13:47 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
John - the Venus thing is commenter Bob Armstrong's thing, but he's not the original source for it. He says, and I quote, "Also notable is that the temperature of Venus, commonly cited as what "runaway" warming could do to us, is twice as hot as the sun can possibly heat any object in its orbit. That is, Venus must have some internal source of heat because it is radiating much more energy than it is receiving from the sun." I've disproven this mathematically, but haven't had a chance to write it up as a post at scholarsandrogues.com yet. Too many equations, and I haven't found a good way to create equations for HTML yet. -
Riccardo at 13:03 PM on 3 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Charlie A, the good old iris hypothesis is not supported by Lindzen itself anymore (beyond being contradicted by observations). Having said this, the problem of cloud feedback is a complicated one and can not be treated so easily on the basis of suppositions, local effect, one type of cloud, etc., the overall effect of warming must be addressed. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:46 AM on 3 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Karl_from_Wylie at 10:40 AM on 3 March, 2010 Would you remind me of exactly what you're arguing? You seem to be hypothesizing that a group of hazy identification is seeking to shift money from one place to another: "Please do a google search on "IPCC" and "funding", you'll see their efforts to secure "massive amounts" of funding for their cause." See, what I'm not clear on is who "they" are, and what is their "cause." If I misread what you posted and you're making a different argument, my apologies. I also apologize for assuming that by appearing on a site dedicated to debunking "skeptic" arguments regarding climate science and proceeding to describe a shadowy group seeking to use climate science to obtain funds for a "cause" you cannot identify, you might be a self-described "skeptic" regarding climate science. Perhaps it would be helpful if you restated your position?
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