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Berényi Péter at 23:29 PM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Well, I have looked into the spring insolation issue. NASA has a small fortran program to calculate Insolation at Specified Location, it is called SRLOCAT.FOR and can be downloaded freely. The calendar effect turned out to be pretty large. It is even more interesting that average insolation for a specific month also depends on longitude. At the International Date Line spring can come a full day later east of it than on the other side. However, actual time zone boundaries are rather haphazard, making proper adjustment tricky. It is part of the reason monthly or seasonal averages should be handled with care. Anyway, here is average March insolation for several locations and years: 1967 (80;180) 57.75 W/m^2 (80;-180) 61.76 W/m^2 2008 (80;180) 62.02 W/m^2 (80;-180) 66.16 W/m^2 1967 (70;180) 129.17 W/m^2 (70;-180) 133.28 W/m^2 2008 (70;180) 133.57 W/m^2 (70;-180) 137.74 W/m^2 1967 (60;180) 199.09 W/m^2 (60;-180) 202.95 W/m^2 2008 (60;180) 203.25 W/m^2 (60;-180) 207.13 W/m^2 1967 (50;180) 263.59 W/m^2 (50;-180) 267.01 W/m^2 2008 (50;180) 267.31 W/m^2 (50;-180) 270.74 W/m^2 1967 (40;180) 320.35 W/m^2 (40;-180) 323.21 W/m^2 2008 (40;180) 323.50 W/m^2 (40;-180) 326.36 W/m^2 1967 (30;180) 367.53 W/m^2 (30;-180) 369.74 W/m^2 2008 (30;180) 370.00 W/m^2 (30;-180) 372.20 W/m^2 The closer the Pole, the larger the effect gets (up to than 4+ W/m^2). With retreat of Veneral Equinox, spring insolation increases, by as much as 6 W/m^2 in two hundred years (because 2000 was a leap year unlike a regular turn of century). The 8 hours retreat of equinox in 44 years is responsible for about 1 W/m^2 spurious increase in spring insolation. Also, if sum of snow covered area remains the same, just shifts from Asia to Europe, to Northern America can introduce a spurious trend. GHCN also has this time zone issue. Average longitude of GHCN stations shifted eastward by 52 degrees between 1900 and 2009. If one takes averages by latitudal bands and does not correct for longitudial shift, gets a spurious increase of some 0.5 W/m^2, in this case for autumn. -
Dikran Marsupial at 20:35 PM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Just gone and checked again with Google Scholar and there are a lot more of Morner's papers from the 70s there now than last time I looked, so his Hirsch index is now rather higher than the earlier estimate, I'd say it was in the high teens. However he has very few widely cited papers from the last decade or so. -
RSVP at 20:02 PM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
With Y2K, everything from people losing Social Security to a nuclear holocaust were predicted. Fortunately, the simple passing of time was all that was needed to disprove the most dire predictions. For AGW, while there is no set date, there is a sense on both sides of the argument that "time will tell", and if not, it's just a matter of more time. But this is not true. Climate may be warming, but determining the source of this warming is a very different matter. -
Dikran Marsupial at 19:59 PM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Bob Armstrong @ 9 I wouldn't accept Morners' criticisms without checking them out first. He has made claims against the IPCC in the past that were easily verified as being baseless. I have commented on his claims made to the Telegraph (apparently clarified in the interview) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html Morner says: "One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend"." This isn't actually true, Morner's paper on the satelite evidence makes no mention of the specific claim regarding the single tide gauge; however he does demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the processing of satelite altimetry data (and a fair bit of Dunning-Kruger effect). For instance he doesn't reference the papers that quite clearly explain how the adjustments have been made to the raw data from the instrument. It appears that he is basing his claims on a figure without a verifiable source that is likely to be some sort of calibration plot (and not what he thinks it is). His paper is here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8181(03)00097-3 and is debunked here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2006.08.002 his response is here http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2008.03.002 note Morner STILL doesn't explain the origin of his "raw data" or explain his methodology in a way that would allow his results to be reproduced (I did try and track down his references, but they no longer exist and the closest I could find were not what he claimed them to be). Morner also claims: "When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one"." However one of those 22 is Any Cazenave, who is a sea level specialist (there may well be others), however Booker obviously could be bothered to verify Morner's claims before publishing them. Morner elsewhere claims: "I am a sea-level specialist. There are many good sea-level people in the world, but let's put it this way: There's no one who's beaten me. I took my thesis in 1969, devoted to a large extent to the sea-level problem. From then on, I have launched most of the new theories, in the '70s, '80s, and '90s." http://www.iceagenow.com/Claim_that_sea_Level_is_rising_is_a_total_fraud.htm However his work has received very little attention, his publications give him a Hirsch index of 9 (meaning he has nine publications with more than 9 citations), which is hardly consistent with his claim to be a top sea level specialist. My Hirsch index appears to be about 12 (according to Google Scholar), and I wouldn't claim to be a leading scientist in my own field. In short, one needs to be very skeptical when reading claims of fraud ("perversion"), they are easily made, and sometimes quite easily refuted. -
libertarianromanticideal at 19:40 PM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Hi gallopingcamel Thanks. I spent many years in the trenches of the academy in a research lab. I didn't study environmental science, but I do have first hand experience with how "science" works, from the bottom (i.e., coming up with a testable hypothesis, designing and experiment and/or model (preferably both), analysis, interpretation) to the top, (i.e., finally taking all that data and telling (one hopes) a compelling story about some aspect of how the universe works (grounded in the data), and then putting the work through the hoops, i.e., presenting the work at invited talks, conferences, etc., and then, THEN, submitting the work for publication and dealing with reviewers and editors). It's a BIG DEAL. Anyone who's consistently producing work is a GOOD scientist. The job isn't to be "right." Perhaps only God knows the "truth." It is instead to successfully, creatively, intelligently apply known methods and techniques to the data, draw conclusions grounded in the data, than then present that to the world in the hopes that, in some way, it'll, advance and inspire the thinking of others. The smearing of hard working published scientists (not that anyone in this blog is doing that) announces loud and clear "I have not a clue about how scientific knowledge is produced, and worse, I don't care, I have an agenda to pursue, an axe to grind." - Cheers, Christopher Skyi, http://libertarianromanticideal.com/ -
RSVP at 19:27 PM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
CBDunkerson Referring to the graph you posted here as relates to the question that was never answered... In the graph, there is an orange and a blue region. ( Orange on my screen.) The orange region represents extra heating of atmosphere and land combined. The blue, oceans. Whereas the heat capacity of the atmosphere and land is much lower than that of water, and whereas CO2 imparts heat directly into the atmosphere, it is hard to fathom how 20 times the amount of heat is ending up in the oceans?? In light of the graph, I should re-phrase the analogy I provided above... from "Sort of like a household budget where for years every month you basically spent every penny with zero saving, and then find out you have million dollars in the bank." to "Sort of like a household budget where for years every month you did save a penny or so, and then find out you have million dollars in the bank." "a penny or so" in any case being the orange area. The million dollar is the blue. -
Berényi Péter at 19:01 PM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#147 doug_bostrom at 10:48 AM on 4 March, 2010 "Cherry Snow" I didn't do that, used all available data. Quadratic fit was a joke, as I've indicated (it is also a joke when applied to tide gauge data). However, the fact remains. The less sunshine the less trend you get. Even snowiest month is switching from February to January. It strongly suggests some underlying cause other than "trapping" OLR. Emissivity of snow in thermal IR is excellent. In other words it is snow white in visible, pitch black in IR. It is very effective in cooling itself provided IR can escape freely to space (i.e no cloud cover). Short wave absorptivity of fresh snow is low. But as it is getting dirty, it goes up rapidly. I does not make a difference in deep winter as sun is mainly hiding behind the globe (or clouds). But it is highly relevant in springtime with skyrocketing insolation. My bet is soot (black carbon) and plain dirt, not carbon dioxide. Due to land use change more dust is carried by winds. In fall all agricultural regions of NH called ploughland are turned into artificial wet deserts at the end of growing season. With the occasional drying up of thin upper layer of bare soil, it gets windborne and deposited elsewhere, possibly on snow. Filtering smoke for fluffy carbon particles is entirely possible, not prohibitively expensive and is already done in Europe. Wind erosion of soil can also be mitigated by dividing fields up, planting tree stripes. Both techniques have immediate local benefit, do not need international treaties and heavy government intervention to enforce. Just some public attention. Which is in short supply, should not be diverted by scaremongering. As I have said, the question can be decided by looking at regional NH winter snow cover trends (moisture vs. temperature limited areas close to perimeter). A pointer to literature? Also, it is not entirely true that spring insolation is constant. There is a Gregorian calendar effect, Veneral equinox retreating along calendar year since 1900, a 648 sec/year rate on average until year 2100 when it will be reset. There are full day jumps in leap years. In 2008 spring came more than a day earlier than in 1967. Of course the effect for autumn is the opposite. -
suckfish at 18:37 PM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
30% thermal expansion plus 55% melting land ice equals 85%. What's the other 15%? Is there another source or is it just uncertainty in the figures? -
gallopingcamel at 18:11 PM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
libertarianromanticideal, I never thought of myself as a sycophant but I find myself in awe of your analysis (#143). Richard Lindzen commands respect that most scientists can only dream of. Lindzen lacks the hubris and over-reaching that characterises the IPCC and its acolytes. He admits that he cannot predict whether the global temperatures will rise or fall by 2100. The IPCC on the other hand predicts with 95% confidence that global temperatures will rise by 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 and possibly as much as 7 degrees Celsius. Given that global temperatures have risen by only 0.7 degrees since 1860, the huge temperature rises predicted by the IPCC should have become noticeable by now. BTW, the Fermilab folks are a blast. I got five 500 kW precision power supplies from them as a gift! Spares too! -
libertarianromanticideal at 17:19 PM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Hi CBDunkerson, I think you've probably characterized Dr. Lindzen here. He's certainly fodder for the global alarm contingent, but w/in the academic sphere, the man is highly respected and regarded, as much as any scientist can be w/in his field. There's simply no question about that. Fermilab is not only the institution that's invited him to give talks. These institutions do so because he's an acknowledged expert in the field, and he has something to offer. They wouldn't invite him if they didn't think that. Within the field, his hypotheses and work are not regarded as "reaching [their] last stand." He publishes, he has research grants (try to get one of those!), he trains post-docs, who need 1) an adviser who publishes at a regular rate, with their names on the paper, and who 2) gives them an opportunity to extend the work done in his lab, to present that work at conferences, and -- hopefully -- to publish. The competition for beginning (i.e., associate professor) tenure track academic positions is fierce. If the guy was on some sort of "last stand," post-docs simply would go elsewhere. That's not the case (see: http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/students.html, and http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/students2.pdf). The man is working scientist, he has a working lab which is a publishing factory -- he's doing his job and he's good at it. Period. Additionally, other experts in the field put his ideas to the test. And other researchers put their ideas, theories and hypotheses to the test, and so on. While no one completely agrees with anyone else (they may not even like them), everyone takes everyone's else work and ideas very Very VERY seriously, even if they disagree. They're paid thinkers, all of them. That's their job. If somebody stops "thinking," or they start beating a head horse, their academic research career is over, nobody invites them to talks (because they have nothing new to offer, which is the point of these professional talks), potential post-docs go elsewhere, research grant money dries up, and they stop publishing. This is definitely not Lindzen's situation. In fact, he's done something quite unusual, extremely difficult, and highly valuable. He's one of those rare researchers that is thriving in a minority camp. That's rare and it takes talent. Everyone in his field respects that. You can take that to the bank. Finally, what's the field's current stance on the issue of positive feedback mechanisms in the climate? It's not a closed issue. Copy and paste this in your browser's URL window: "forcing feedback" site:.edu This tells google to search for this keyword phase across all academic domains. You can also do a search across all government domains, e.g., "forcing feedback" site:.gov There's 100's of papers, talks, discussions. And these google searches almost certainty under-estimate the interest in the topic. If it was close to being a closed and decided issue, you would see a very different set of hits. For example, if you instead google this: either "speed of light" site:.edu you'll get 10's of thousands of hits, but ZERO are about anything seriously asking the question, "hummm . ... what effect does the 'either' have on the velocity of light?" The either theory was dis-credited by the the theory of relatively over 100 years ago. All these hits are about how the theory was dis-credited. None of this means Lindzen is "right." It does mean he's highly relevant to the discussions currently ongoing w/in the climate research community. - Cheers, Christopher Skyi, http://libertarianromanticideal.com/ -
Jeff Freymueller at 13:31 PM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
#16, P@J, "Will that [changes in the geoid] have a sigificant effect on what areas are impacted by sea level rise?" Yes, geoid changes do cause regional variations in sea level. These are most important close to where the ice is melting (for example, in Alaska we have estimated geoid changes as larger as 4-5 mm per year from the rapid melting). Geoid changes from possible future large-scale melting in Greenland and Antarctica would affect larger areas (because of the larger size of the ice loads). There are some additional factors that come into play when dealing with the big ice sheets -- global changes in the shape of the earth. Jerry Mitrovica had a recent paper in Science about a year ago that worked this out for West Antarctica. A summary was in Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090205142132.htm -
Riccardo at 11:47 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Berényi Péter, the linear fit is meaningless, look at the residuals (yearly averages, i'd suggest). I would not trust a second order polynomial extrapolation either unless you have good reasons to believe it will follow this law. In other words, your analysis says nothing valuable on what will happen in 2100, let alone "a huge one" or "contradict to mainstream climate theory". It's could be just a statistical trick to make things look "scientific" and i'm sure it could also work in some quarters. But you know, people here tend to believe that real science is much more serious than just this. -
HumanityRules at 11:10 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
The satelite data goes through a correction process. This correction process involves comparison to tidal gauge levels. I wonder do you have a reference for this statement in your article "Most recently, corrected tidal station data from the satellite altimeter period of 1993 to 2010 is in good agreement ". What is the basis of this correction? Has the tidal gauge data been corrected on the basis of satelite data? If both sets of data are being corrected using the other data set isn't it obvious that both will begin to agree with each other? Is the statement throughout this article that both sets of data agree with each other just a product of the correction process? Is it true that uncorrected satelite data shows no trend? Shouldn't this article focus on the data correction process as it is this that is giving us a trend? Finally why put "slowing down" in speech marks, this suggests it didn't happen when in fact from 2004-2009 it did slow down. Also for the sake of balance it would be fair to actually show a link to the reference for this work as you do with others. -
Doug Bostrom at 10:48 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Berényi Péter at 10:26 AM on 4 March, 2010 You'll probably be interested in looking at Tamino's take on this: Cherry Snow He concludes there's no statistical power to conclude models have been upended by aberrant snow cover.Response: You know, what would be great here is if one of you added the argument about snow cover to the list of skeptic arguments. Then as you argue back and forth with URLs, you also add the links to the directory.
Hmm, maybe I should write some code where if someone posts a URL in a comment, it follows up with a reminder: "hey, don't forget to add this to the directory" with a link to the Add Link Form. :-) -
Berényi Péter at 10:26 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Departure from Normal 2009 December 2010 January 2010 February -
Peter Hogarth at 10:10 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
From Peru at 08:41 AM on 4 March, 2010 Links for data series and images: in same order as images...The charts are my basic Excel versions updated to 2010. http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/author_archive/jevrejeva_etal_1700/ http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/author_archive/church_white/ http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries.php http://climate.nasa.gov/blogs/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowBlog&NewsID=239 http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_movies.php http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000300/a000352/index.html I think the website that the third image was from has now updated and changed, but Josh Willis still has a copy on his NASA blog site, which I've linked to. -
Berényi Péter at 10:06 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Re: #144 OK. Do you have data on history of regional distribution of NH winter snow? Lack of snow cover can be due to either low moisture or high temperature. If you are right, NH winter snow cover during the last four decades increased in dry areas while decreased elsewhere by roughly the same amount. This hypothesis can be tested, it is falsifiable in principle. However, this winter has not shown this pattern. There was heavy snow in Western Europe, US, Korea & China. None of them is a desert, get plenty of rain during winter if not snow. -
KLR at 09:31 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Fun! Here they are as an Open Office .ods spreadsheet, complete with a couple of stacked bar graphs for your edification. Feel free to add to your resources if you so desire. There are separate graphs for >100 links and <100; the latter should be broken down into 50-100 and 0-50 for legibility. Yech. Sorting out piles of manure. Off to figure out what an "Infared Iris" is. Wasn't she one of the Super Friends? You know, Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman... -
Si at 09:00 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
CoalGeo, yes that is clear. John talks about accelerated warming in his argument which I think is hard to justify - and not from the link of his you gave compared with your link - see the difference in the graphs? Sorry about the light relief remark - Arno's post had not been deleted when I posted - it was a very long essay on a book he had written! -
From Peru at 08:41 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
John Cook: From where are this beautiful maps and time-series shown in this post?Response: Peter Hogarth mentions that the first one comes from the NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry and the second from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. He has an amazing talent for tracking down sources so perhaps he'll post links... -
From Peru at 08:34 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
John Cook: This Telegraph news: "Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html merits a response (I found it following the links of the "recent claim" above). Here is claimed (full quote): "One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend". So TOPEX-POSEIDON, JASON 1, JASON 2 and ENVISAT are also adjusted for showing a rapid sea level rise, Mr. Nils-Axel Mörner ?! Are all this SATELLITES part of the Global Conspiracy?! Of course, Science and Deniers are both right that the IPCC need to be advised by sea level experts: it grossly UNDER-estimated sea level rise, now at 3.3 mm/yr. -
Steve L at 08:25 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Thank you Peter. I ended up trying to calculate how much water would have to go into the atmosphere to reduce sea level by 1 mm, and I came up with 3.6x10e14 kg. This is about 3% of the amount in the atmosphere so, at least by my careless calculations, changes in water vapour would be pretty negligible compared to the >10 mm annual swings in sea level. -
skagedal at 08:22 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Ok, so repeating some comments I made on Facebook regarding this very cool project: 1. It would be nice if there was a field for language. I'd like to keep track of articles on Swedish press, and what arguments they use, so why not use this tool - but I wouldn't want to clutter the list for non-Swedish readers. 2. I think it also could be useful with a field to classify sources in categories such as "mainstream media" and "blogs", or such. The reason is that if that you're going to cover the whole denialist blogosphere, it's going to get unwieldy, and someone might be interested in just seeing how arguments are used in regular media. But maybe it's better to wait and see how it turns out. Regards, Simon -
Peter Hogarth at 08:13 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Steve L at 07:32 AM on 4 March, 2010 From what I have read you are correct. It can be considered as seasonal exchange of water mass between Ocean and Land storage, which would be driven more by Northern Hemisphere processes as that is where most land is. -
Philippe Chantreau at 07:53 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
In regions where the temperature is already low in the winter, higher temps will bring more precipitation, which will still be in the form of snow as long as the temp is below freezing. Having the average winter temps go from -6C in any location to -2C would constitue a huge increase in temp but would not yield any less snow. In fact there would likely more of it. Spring insolation has not changed with time, it certainly does not explain a trend of higher spring temperatures. The same applies to summer and autumn. In any case, your rendition of model projections and of what is said in the IPCC links you provided is not faithful to the reality of either. The model projections, once again, are in agreement with the data. As for you forcing reflexion, CO2 forcing depends on IR radiation coming from the surface, heated by solar irradiance. I would expect high albedo surfaces to convert much less solar irradiance into IR. I would also expect a surface in darkness most of the day to act somewhat the same, to a lesser extent. -
P@J at 07:51 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
It would be interesting to see how any rise in sea level was offset my shifts in the geoid resulting from mass movement. mass loss from Greenland and Antartica will surely operate faster than geostatic rebound can compensate, resulting in a subtle but measureable shift in the gravitational geoid. Will that have a sigificant effect on what areas are impacted by sea level rise? -
Steve L at 07:32 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
I have a question about Fig 2: What explains the intra-annual variation? It looks like sea level is greatest at the end of nothern hemisphere's autumn. I would guess that melt of snow and ice on land has something to do with it, or perhaps water storage and agriculture. I should google to see if water vapour varies enough to show up. But maybe somebody here can point to a good annual budget for sea level? Thanks. -
Joe at 07:30 AM on 4 March 2010It's methane
The question is not about what's in the atmosphere, but about what humans are responsible for emitting. Maybe there is a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than methane, but what percentage of each those gases are human activities responsible for? Historically(averaging over the past 400,000 years) CO2 is around 240ppmv, and now it is around 385ppmv(60% higher). Methane is historically(over past 1,000 years) around 700ppb and now at 1700ppb(140% higher). The % for CO2 is smaller if we start from the warm period average of around 280ppmv. While the sheer volume of human released carbon dioxide and its warming affects probably are far greater than that of human released methane, humanity seems to have changed the concentration of atmospheric methane much more than that of carbon dioxide. The fact is that changes in agriculture and diet are the easiest way for an individual to lesson his or her environmental impact. Local, organic, and vegetarian diets are a simple highly effective remediation strategy. Disclosure: I am a vegetarian and so strongly biased on this particular issue, but this point cannot be ignored. sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere http://ecen.com/eee55/eee55e/growth_of%20methane_concentration_in_atmosphere.htm -
CoalGeologist at 07:20 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Si, at #48: The goal of the skepticalscience.com site is to inform readers of the scientific evidence for climate change. The links you provided are not helpful in this regard (nor do they provide "light relief"), because the very real decline in Arctic sea ice cover is very difficult to discern. The following graphic shows the trend far more clearly: http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100303_Figure3.png John provides several other helpful links in his post: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-melt-natural-or-man-made.htm The videos are particularly sobering, showing the flushing of old sea ice from the Arctic Ocean. (It's all gone, now, by the way... the old sea ice, that is.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co68_tod0dQ -
macfanpro at 07:11 AM on 4 March 2010It's satellite microwave transmissions
@dchristie64 You are forgetting two things: first, and most important, the inverse square law, as well as the difference between correlation and causation. The first problem, the inverse square law, says that the power of a electromagnetic transmission goes as you double your distance to the transmitter down by the square of it's value. This means that the results you had in the 80's were caused by radio waves orders of magnitude higher that the amount that a person gets from a satellite, due to the massive distance from the satellite. The second omission, the difference between correlation and causation, means that other factors than satellites can cause the mentioned problems, such as global warming and cancer, despite similar timing. The space age was also linked with massive technological advances, which most likely caused the mentioned problems. Sure, the first satellites showed up at around the same time, but that only means that the events are correlated, not that that satellites caused the problems. -
stevecarsonr at 07:08 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
When I read about the idea I was "skeptical" but now I see the actual page with its layout, I'm thinking "really good!". In fact, it almost needs its own home page! Well, added my first link using the form: CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? I'm sure I'll be adding a few more. The challenge will be to keep a good hierarchy of arguments. That's the value of it now. Great job.Response: Thanks, Steve, I had thought your very informative pages would be a welcome resource so if you're adding them in, that's much appreciated (and I believe of much benefit to those perusing the list of arguments). -
Berényi Péter at 07:04 AM on 4 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#142 Philippe Chantreau at 04:29 AM on 4 March, 2010 Philippe, area of snow cover can only increase along the edges, not in the middle of already snow covered regions. At edge of snow temperature should be somewhere around freezing point. If winter snow coverage does not decrease, the line separating regions above and below freezing point can not move North. So NH winter snow coverage is a good (semi)global thermometer. Increased precipitation can not account for stability of winter snow cover, because if temperature is too high, one gets rain, not snow. Spring snow cover is not a very good indicator. In Northern Hemisphere insolation in spring is increasing rapidly, temperature goes up, snow melts. Spring weather is solar driven. One does not have to be an expert to know that much. In winter solar forcing is at its minimum, relative to it CO2 forcing should be more prominent. It is not. For an already cold snow covered landmass there is no other way to get even colder than either by pushing heat poleward or radiating some heat out to space for it is the coldest heat reservoir around (2.7 K). From polar regions, heat can only get out of the system, it has nowhere else to go. CO2 somehow can not trap it. -
Doug Bostrom at 05:39 AM on 4 March 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
Argus at 05:07 AM on 4 March, 2010 Ah, you're right, different interviews. Here's what I referred to: http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf In this interview, Dr. Mörner makes a lot of accusations, statements that seem reckless and would not pass muster via this site's moderation policy. Beyond that, I find the sheer amount of falsity and misconduct Dr. Mörner claims he sees to be unlikely. Dr. Mörner has a distinguished publication record in his field, yet he's sneeringly dismissive of researchers working with methods he's not accustomed to using. I'll hazard a guess about why he's so upset about this matter and sees what can only be described as a fairly vast conspiracy among other scientists. Dr. Mörner is a geologist who likes getting up to his elbows in actual material things out in the field, no bad thing. But as well, he appears to have a fundamental mistrust of numerical methods he believes are "sophisticated" in the pejorative sense of the word. He's not comfortable with remote sensing and he's not comfortable with abstractions. As an example of how Dr. Mörner's seeming lack of insight into disciplines he does not appear to understand leads him into the weeds, he summarizes research conclusions about Greenland's ice volume trend as "falsification." For me, that's where his credibility on this matter flatlines; referring to the already large and growing body of research into Greenland's ice volume condition as "falsification" is not a persuasive argument. -
Si at 05:37 AM on 4 March 2010Every skeptic argument ever used
Nice guest post from Arno - Here are some nice arctic Sea ice graphs for light relief http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_time Aagin, your point about the acceleration of sea ice loss is easily countered. -
Peter Hogarth at 05:09 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
D Kelly O'Day #6 The Colorado data is Topex/Jason 1. Judging from the Jason 1 website there could be temporary technical reasons for a delay in data release. Jason 1 data is also not fully updated on the NOAA site below. Anyway, there are various outlets for the altimeter data http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries.php Gives a choice of all altimeters/most applied corrections, but be aware that GIA correction is not applied. I assume from your gallery of excellent charts that you can deal with netCDF data format? (most of the alternative sources use this). If not there's a free converter app for later versions of Excel (or whatever!). Daisym #12 Yes, Figure 1 is a little deceptive. The Jevrejeva 2008 data extends back to 1700 using best available (admittedly there aren't many, so uncertainty is higher) tidal stations with long records. This shows esentially "flat" long term average until around 1800, then a gently increasing rise up to current levels. I have a chart of this also if there is interest.Response: Here's the Jevrejeva data with uncertainties. For the record, Peter emailed me this graph in his first draft of his article and I edited it out in order to keep the article from getting too long. Shows what I know:
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Argus at 05:07 AM on 4 March 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
Maybe we have heard different interviews. Anyway, I listened to a one-hour telephone (I think) interview on the site: http://itsrainmakingtime.com/2010/nilsaxelmorner/ At about 33 minutes nto the recording he talks for only a minute or so about Venice specifically, mentioning the long range of measurements available. He did not use the temporary drop as an argument. He is also generally very clear about how you must separate local changes (both going up and down), around the world's coast lines, from overall changes in the oceans. He sounds very credible and knowledgeable to me. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:58 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Bob Armstrong at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010 In order to dismiss sea level rise as an issue, from my amateur perspective you need either to show that net climatic C02 sensitivity estimates are substantially incorrect or that ice sheets are not in a rough equilibrium state with their environment in a fixed temperature regime or that a mechanism exists that will substitute for the present rough equilibrium state of ice sheets even as the temperature regime changes. Regarding ice sheets in particular, are they presently of a size that is inconsistent with their current environmental regime? Is there a means for them to maintain their present volume despite a change in their environment? What if the temperature fell? Would ice sheets remain static in size? Failing such a showing, it is prudent to anticipate a rise in sea level not indicated by the historical record. Dr. Mörner does not appear to consider dynamics in his perspective but instead concentrates on past recorded behavior of sea level as it reflects a relatively static environment for ice sheets compared to what predictions of climate change indicate. -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:52 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Bob Armstrong says: "But it appears the obvious conclusion about sea level rise is that it's not a significant problem" Until, of course, comes a massive storm surge. I'm sure that the Dutch engineers are already studying carefully what just happened to France and Portugal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xynthia_(storm) This used to be the one-in-a-century-type of storm, but Lothar, the previous one, was only in 1999. Not that any climatological conclusion could be inferred from that short interval though. As for the "absurd exaggeration thing," it brings us back to this post -
Doug Bostrom at 04:42 AM on 4 March 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
Argus at 03:08 AM on 4 March 2010 Actually the bit I referred to was in connection with Tuvalu. But I could have been more clear. Here's what I should have said more explicitly: It is questionable for Dr. Mörner to cite what is clearly a local drop in sea level, a change unconnected with events elsewhere, in connection with a general argument that global sea level is not subject to change due to AGW. -
Alexandre at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
And it does not hurt to remind that these observations are worse than the IPCC "alarmist" projections. -
daisym at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Visual inspection of the graph at Fig. 1 shows sea level rise essentially the same in the 1800's as in recent years. Much has been said to explain current sea level rise. What can explain sea level rise in the 1800's? -
Bob Armstrong at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
For a view that even less sea level change is going on , and more importantly , the perversion of the IPCC process , listen to the interview with Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner , http://itsrainmakingtime.com/2010/nilsaxelmorner/ . But it appears the obvious conclusion about sea level rise is that it's not a significant problem and Gore's 7m and more horror videos were as absurd exaggerations as the IPCC's glaciers at greater than 6000m melting in 25 years . -
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.
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