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Comments 123001 to 123050:

123001. Steve L at 08:25 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123002. skagedal at 08:22 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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
123003. Peter Hogarth at 08:13 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123004. Philippe Chantreau at 07:53 AM on 4 March 2010
        YouTube 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.
123005. P@J at 07:51 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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?
123006. Steve L at 07:32 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123007. Joe at 07:30 AM on 4 March 2010
        It'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
123008. CoalGeologist at 07:20 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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
123009. macfanpro at 07:11 AM on 4 March 2010
        It'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.
123010. stevecarsonr at 07:08 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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).
123011. Berényi Péter at 07:04 AM on 4 March 2010
        YouTube 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.
123012. Doug Bostrom at 05:39 AM on 4 March 2010
        Sea 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.
123013. Si at 05:37 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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.
123014. Peter Hogarth at 05:09 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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:
        
        
123015. Argus at 05:07 AM on 4 March 2010
        Sea 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.
123016. Doug Bostrom at 04:58 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123017. Philippe Chantreau at 04:52 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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
123018. Doug Bostrom at 04:42 AM on 4 March 2010
        Sea 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.
123019. Alexandre at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
        And it does not hurt to remind that these observations are worse than the IPCC "alarmist" projections.
123020. daisym at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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?
123021. Bob Armstrong at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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 .
123022. Doug Bostrom at 04:34 AM on 4 March 2010
        Senator 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.
123023. Philippe Chantreau at 04:29 AM on 4 March 2010
        YouTube 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.
123024. Peter Hogarth at 04:20 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123025. Jeff Freymueller at 04:17 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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
123026. D Kelly O at 04:05 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123027. Gianfranco at 03:56 AM on 4 March 2010
        Models 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.
123028. Ned at 03:51 AM on 4 March 2010
        Senator 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.
123029. Riccardo at 03:46 AM on 4 March 2010
        Senator 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.
123030. Rob Honeycutt at 03:39 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
        Whoops. Sorry. There actually are other pages to the site. It's just has poor navigation.
123031. Rob Honeycutt at 03:37 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123032. Argus at 03:08 AM on 4 March 2010
        Sea 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...
123033. Si at 03:05 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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.
123034. angliss at 03:02 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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/
123035. ike solem at 02:34 AM on 4 March 2010
        YouTube 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.
123036. Carrick at 02:33 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123037. Si at 02:30 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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.
123038. Si at 02:20 AM on 4 March 2010
        Every 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
123039. gallopingcamel at 02:10 AM on 4 March 2010
        Senator 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.
123040. gallopingcamel at 01:48 AM on 4 March 2010
        YouTube 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!
123041. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 00:47 AM on 4 March 2010
        Visual 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.
123042. Berényi Péter at 23:46 PM on 3 March 2010
        YouTube 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.
123043. Mikemcc at 22:53 PM on 3 March 2010
        Predicting 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 Eickemeier
        Response: Thanks for following this up and reporting back, much appreciated.
123044. Peter Hogarth at 22:39 PM on 3 March 2010
        Every 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
123045. CBDunkerson at 22:07 PM on 3 March 2010
        YouTube 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.
123046. Si at 22:04 PM on 3 March 2010
        Every 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)
123047. Si at 21:55 PM on 3 March 2010
        Every 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.
123048. anil_dabir at 21:45 PM on 3 March 2010
        What 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.
123049. AndrewY at 21:18 PM on 3 March 2010
        Every 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 :-)
123050. CBDunkerson at 21:16 PM on 3 March 2010
        Every 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!

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