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ike solem at 06:18 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
P.S. Feyman also said this: "As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." What does that mean? I once came across a 1940s era geology textbook, which devoted a page, no more, to the "thoroughly discredited notion of plate tectonics." A marketer would say, "Aha! Thus, you must also disbelieve the climate science experts at the IPCC! Gotcha!" Well, no. What you must do is look under the hood - under the shell - to see if there is any real substance, or if it's all just a facade. To do that, you need some familiarity with physics, chemistry, biology, some mathematics - not too much - and then you can follow the arguments and judge for yourself. If you don't do this, at least a little, then you're just listening, jaws agape, to the pronouncements of the high priests - who know how to impress their unwashed masses with mumbo jumbo. -
ike solem at 06:10 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Feynman also said this, most applicable to the tobacco-funded cancer denialists as well as to the petroleum-funded climate denialists: "I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential..." Here we the various front groups financed by fossil fuel interests - they publish papers in fake journals, they hold bogus conferences, they issue press releases - but behind the shell, there's zero substance. Why not? "...there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty - a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid - not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked - to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated." (A good clue to whether this rule is being followed, by the way, is the ease of reconstructing the experimental method from the published paper) "Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can - if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong - to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it." This notion doesn't work with marketing - imagine a car salesman keeping a list of his company's recalls, accidents, and lawsuits on hand for customer inspection. Since the fossil fuel PR lobby consists of clever marketers hired by the CEOs to sell a certain idea, they are of course not going to adhere to this rule, nor will they encourage their pet "experts" to do so, either. Have climate scientists always held to this standard? Nope - sometimes, they've used 'tricks' to push the very real global warming story - such as truncating some tree ring datasets when they diverged from the trend line. Compared to the blatant manipulation of data by denialists, that's fairly minor. Regardless, even if you ignored all tree ring data, you'd still come up with the same basic conclusion: doubling the atmospheric CO2 has a significant effect on climate. Reference: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm -
Tony Noerpel at 05:24 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Hello Bob Armstrong Every text book on climate physics and Earth sciences that I own derive the 33 C number directly from Boltzmann-Kirchoff as per #35 Riccardo above. I recommend Piexoto and Oort Physics of climate, a tough book, but you can handle it. :+) As per radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, we can experiment by removing much of it from the atmosphere and observing how cold the Earth gets. In fact this experiment has been tried 2.35 billion years ago and several times between 750 and 590 million years ago. Both times the Earth froze over solid. The temperature actually got much colder than merely -33 C from present and achieved about -50 degrees C or about 65 C below present. The reason for this is obvious and I'm sure you see it right away. Once the Earth freezes substantially, it becomes a white object and reflects (rather than absorbs) most of the short wave solar radiation. What is really interesting is that the way out of this dilemma, was carbon dioxide emitted by volcanoes into the atmosphere. At these cold temperatures, there was no water vapor in the atmosphere and therefore no silicate rock weathering to extract the carbon dioxide (also of course the rocks were buried under snow and ice anyway). The gas built up until there was enough to raise Earth's temperature sufficient to melt some of the ice back revealing darker water. Then things took off and the Earth became a hot house because of all the excess carbon dioxide. This is really interesting stuff and again I recommend Berner's The Phanerozoic Carbon cycle. This reality defeats several denier arguments in one go (H2O is the strongest greenhouse gas, atmospheric CO2 is saturated, CO2 is not a GHG, CO2 is a weak GHG, and so on). And it is not theory, not modeling, not economics (holy cow*, no) but good old fashion geology and observation. Also, as I am a skeptic in the John Cook sense of the word, i.e., really, I want to point out that there is no evidence that addressing global warming would harm the economy. This is a common false assumption of deniers. So the argument that we should not address AGW because it might hurt the economy is a red herring. Hope this helps. Tony Noerpel *I’m a Yankee fan. I hope you hear Phil Rizzuto’s voice here. :+) -
ike solem at 05:01 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Cloud feedback effects during the course of fossil-fueled global warming are linked to the topics of water vapor feedbacks, the precipitation/evaporation ratios, and again are very height-dependent. This means that clouds are a confounding factor and a source of uncertainty, true enough. The water vapor effect itself is pretty obvious, and is most pronounced in clear-sky conditions. See for example http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1110_051110_warming.html A more robust test was the effect of Pinatubo's cooling aerosols on global water vapor: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/296/5568/727 As a result of the added water vapor, the natural variability found in ocean basins - the fluctuations such as ENSO, NAO, and the AO, and the resulting effects on global wind patterns, etc. - might be amplified, leading to more extreme weather patterns - again, this is due (in mid-latitudes) to factors like the jet stream and dry cold fronts mixing with warm Pacific Ocean air - resulting in "once in 500 years" accumulations of snow. I hope everyone realizes that these "1 in 1000" claims about flooding, drought, etc. are all based on pre-fossil fuel era estimates during the last few centuries - "1 in 10" might be more realistic for future projections. Ref: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;317/5835/233 Wentz et. al 2007 Science "How Much More Rain Will Global Warming Bring?" "Climate models and satellite observations both indicate that the total amount of water in the atmosphere will increase at a rate of 7% per kelvin of surface warming. However, the climate models predict that global precipitation will increase at a much slower rate of 1 to 3% per kelvin. A recent analysis of satellite observations does not support this prediction of a muted response of precipitation to global warming. Rather, the observations suggest that precipitation and total atmospheric water have increased at about the same rate over the past two decades." -
Charlie A at 04:37 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
KR at 03:22 AM on 2 March, 2010 "Charlie A @#55 - interesting article, but the time scale for everything in it is _one year_. Short term is weather, long term is climate; it's an interesting look at seasonal variation, but says nothing at all about long term effects of higher IR retention, water vapor feedback, and the like." You appear to misunderstand the hypothesis. Willis Eschenbach is analyzing changes in the daily pattern of cloud formation that work as a negative feedback. Looking at daily changes for a period of exactly one year is the appropriate interval for evaluating this diurnal change. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/ -
tobyjoyce at 04:31 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
gallopingcamel said "The trouble with the IPCC and AGW Alarmists in general is that they overstate the importance of their evidence and deny all contrary findings. " Er, very poor wording. What does "overstating the evidence" mean. I suppose Darwin overstated the evidence for Evolution, and he did not get everything right. He even believed in blended inheritance, but it did not stop biologists for accepting his theory. Your philosophy of science is pretty old hat. Falsification is a great tool like Occam's Razor to distringuish good from bad science. But scientists never throw out a theory instantaneously when contrary evidence appears. Gravity alone could never explain the orbit of Mercury until Einstein came along, but scientists still used Newton's Laws for centuries. As Thomas Kuhn explains, for long periods a theory will co-exist with contrary evidence until a "paradigm shift" occurs that encompasses old and new theories. Climatology has built up the "climate change" paradigm and it is supported by myriad separate pieces of evidence. It will take a major paradigm shift to change it. -
tobyjoyce at 04:20 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
thingadonta wrote: "You forget Big Eugenics. And Big Communism. And even Big Nazism (an ofshoot of social darwinism and eugenics). These all came from academia. " Eugenics and Nazism were driven by pseudo-scientists like Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Julius Rosenberg, who were not academics, though admittedly its crackpot agenda came from academics. You have to be pretty bitter and twisted to compare the charlatans of eugenics to the geophysicists and oceanographers who make up today's climate scientists. Big Communism had Lysenkoism, where a "friend of Stalin" was able to use superior political clout to dominate a scientific discipline. For "poitical" today we have the media clout utilised by deniers (the friends of Fox News). If you recall, Nazism was accompanied by a massive flight of sceintists from Germany and Europe. Somehow they did not find the alleged utopia of scientism very congenial. Naomi Oreskes has a excellent talk on how the deniers are using "Big Tobacco" tactics, called "The American Denial of Global Warming". Keep a look out for her book on denialism - it will come out later this year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio&eurl=http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?showID=13459 -
ProfMandia at 03:28 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#66: You are invoking the Galileo Gambit. The IPCC 2007 reports are actually quite conservative. Already GHG emissions, ice melt, and sea level rise are at the upper bounds of predictions. The IPCC was not alarming enough, IMO. Despite strong political reasons for them not to endorse, the following countries endorsed the IPCC 2007 reports because the science was undeniable: United States of America - Fossil fuel-based economy, strong lobby efforts opposed to regulating fossil fuel emissions Saudi Arabia - World's largest producer/exporter of oil China - Rapidly industrializing using coal-fired power plants India - Rapidly industrializing using coal-fired power plants The IPCC WGI Report (2007) concluded: “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” 130 countries endorsed the reports, and since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion. -
KR at 03:22 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Charlie A @#55 - interesting article, but the time scale for everything in it is _one year_. Short term is weather, long term is climate; it's an interesting look at seasonal variation, but says nothing at all about long term effects of higher IR retention, water vapor feedback, and the like. Take a look at http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-CO2-a-pollutant.html for a graph of underlying changes. I will note my dissatisfaction with the graph scaling, which makes a 60% rise look like x10, but the point holds - we're changing the baseline energy balance, and that will modify the climate. -
ike solem at 02:37 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
This is a pretty good film which covers the basics - here are a few add-on notes: 1) CO2 at the mid-tropopause has the most effect on global temperatures - much as ozone in the stratosphere has the most effect on surface ultraviolet levels. It's a height-dependent phenomenon: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/1998Q4/211/absorption.gif 2) The difference with water vapor is that it rains out of the atmosphere (half life ~ weeks). CO2 stays in the atmosphere for far longer (half life ~ 100 years) - hence, CO2 is called a forcing, and the increase in water vapor that results from that forcing is called a feedback. This becomes more important when you look at global redistribution of water vapor by the atmospheric circulation. Shifts in precipitation and evaporation are simultaneously creating droughts in the subtropical regions (due to Hadley Cell expansion) and flooding in the jet stream-dominated mid-latitudes (where warm moist air mixes with cold dry fronts). Result: record-breaking droughts in some regions, and record-breaking flooding in others (one in 500 year snowstorms, one in 1000 year floods - these may soon be the norms). 3) So much for CO2 and H2O - what about the temperature data? Here, note that the Triana satellite could have been launched a decade ago, and would have given an unambiguous measurement of the Earth's radiation balance from a suitably distant location (recall the height-dependent radiative transfer issues?). Similar problems arise in efforts to understand how warming is affecting the oceans - and not only does spotty data coverage make it difficult to compare today's deep ocean circulation to that of say, 200 years ago, it also provides skeptics with "doubt" to harp on. I don't see any climate skeptics lobbying for more data collection, though - more proof, if any was needed, that Lindzen & Michaels & friends are pursuing some kind of political or economic agenda, but definitely not a scientific one. 4) The film does a great job explaining how the "canary in the coal mine" approach can be used to get empirical evidence for warming - the loss of sea ice, the change in migratory patterns, unusual insect outbreaks, etc. A few more specific examples include pine beetles in Canada, West Nile virus in North America, malaria in Africa - there are plenty of papers on each topic. In all cases, there are many complicating factors, but this is empirical evidence. Predicting a biological response is far more difficult than predicting a physical temperature increase - but once it happens, it's pretty obvious. If the canary gets sick or dies, something must be going on. What does the skeptic say in response? "Naw, the canary just died of old age, or had a heart attack - now, get down in that mine!" -
gallopingcamel at 00:29 AM on 2 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Charlie A (@55), Thanks for a very interesting link. The trouble with the IPCC and AGW Alarmists in general is that they overstate the importance of their evidence and deny all contrary findings. They could use a little clarity and humility: No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.....Albert Einstein -
Pierre-Normand at 22:48 PM on 1 March 2010Have American Thinker disproven global warming?
Gary's recent comment about wise selection of a time windows seems invalid to me. Climate change as assessed by surface temperatures is one thing, CO2 forcing another. The former is influenced by many different forcings, some cyclical (solar cycles), some intermittent (volcano aerosols), and some monotonic (CO2). Surface temperatures also are modulated by complex and variable coupling processes to oceans and ice. But enhanced greenhouse effect depends little on any of those couplings and other forcings. It results from CO2 concentration increases, and our CO2 emissions are well mixed up to the stratosphere within a year or so, I believe. So, the reason for not trusting the change in spectra from 1997 to 2003 (albeit with minor qualifications) seems ill motivated. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:46 PM on 1 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
Sorry, I have not noticed by Markus admitted to this error. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:41 PM on 1 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
@Marcus "As pointed out elsewhere, if the rise in CO2 concentrations were the result of release from natural carbon sinks, then we would see no change in the ratios of C13 & C12 in atmospheric CO2. Yet we're seeing a marked rise in ratio of C12:C13 in the atmosphere-suggesting that the new CO2 is from a source where there has been significant time for the 13C to decay to 12C-which is definitely true of coal & oil (where its constituent carbon atoms have had *millions* of years to decay from 13C to 12C)." CO2 from the soil has the same ratio of 12C: 13C as fossil coal or petroleum. Can only vary 14C. -
thingadonta at 21:27 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#28 "It happened before with Big Tobacco, it is happening now with Big Oil and Coal" You forget Big Eugenics. And Big Communism. And even Big Nazism (an ofshoot of social darwinism and eugenics). These all came from academia. References: Richard Pipes (Harvard, communism), Weikart (german social darwininsm and eugenics). Strange how the AGW movement never mention these, always only smoking. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:22 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
@Norman Wells "Generally sceptics are in denial in respect of man made global warming, and consequent Climate Change because they do not wish to make the costly changes to Industrial activity and our way of life, that are necessary to counter them ." There are other important causes. And if the reasons behind the current warming is mostly natural and we will spend most a funds of the CCS? And how do we take measures against the transgression of the sea? If AGW theory will be proven based on the dynamic ecology ... And for me, for example, variability p.CO2 determined on ice core - based on population ecology - it is extremely unlikely because practically it is impossible to enter in the Lotka-Volterra Model. -
David Horton at 21:08 PM on 1 March 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
Yes, bravo from me too John, very well deserved for much hard work, and beautifully structured analysis and thought. May there be many more awards. -
RSVP at 21:07 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Whereas science is based on logic, the video is entirely structured on emotional appeal. If the science is so robust, why depend on images of people being swept down flood zones? The part about changes in IR detected by satellite over 30 years is also quite curious. If greenhouse gases are known to have increased as measured on the ground, why does it come as a surprise that there would be an increased absorption at the corresponding wavelengths? This is just another way of measuring the same thing, (i.e., atmospheric concentration levels). And yet, in the video it is presented as evidence as proof that these gases are causing climate change. Why is it OK for alarmists to be so sloppy in their presentations?Response: "If greenhouse gases are known to have increased as measured on the ground, why does it come as a surprise that there would be an increased absorption at the corresponding wavelengths?"
There is no surprise. The main point of Harries 2001 and the other papers that compare satellite measurements of outgoing longwave radiation since the 1970s is that there is a close match between simulated results and observed results. The only surprise is for skeptics who argue that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, that the CO2 effect is saturated, that CO2 effect is weak because it's a trace gas and various other arguments that deny that increasing CO2 also causes an increased greenhouse effect. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 20:53 PM on 1 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
I agree with all, but nowhere (also in the report of the IPCC) found no answer to the question: why at the time of each large volcanic eruption amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases by only circa 0.5 ppm? -
tobyjoyce at 19:26 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
While we are on Al Gore, here is his latest op-ed from the New York Times: http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/27/al-gore-in-new-york-times-we-can%e2%80%99t-wish-away-climate-change/ -
shellinaya at 18:08 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
From Albatross above -- The Richard Alley talk is also great. I put that in a podcast too! This stuff is all out there for the skeptics to watch and listen to. The problem is they don't. -
shellinaya at 18:05 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
There was an entire event with the Center for American Progress at the beginning of February on the topic of the Science of Climate Change. I podcasted about it at Climate Files Radio. The video is on the CAP website. http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2010/02/climatescience.html Chris Fields was part of that presentation too. Some of their initial points about how we know climate change is happening: * Average ground temperatures are going up * Ocean temperatures are going up * Sea ice cover is decreasing * Mountain glaciers and permafrost are melting * Sea level is rising * A lot of plant and animal species are moving * Arctic sea ice is retreating -
Doug Bostrom at 17:49 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Charlie A at 17:03 PM on 1 March, 2010 Eschenbach may be "consistent with" Church & White, but that's not any sort of validation, as Eschenbach's numbers were faulty; the resemblance appears strictly coincidental. Here's the section you're referring to: Eschenbach (2004a, b) quotes (but does not substantiate) a "best estimate" of the rate of rise of 0.07 mm yr-1, apparently based on an analysis of Mitchell et al. (2001) for the period 1977-1998, with the “likely” (but, again, unsubstantiated) range of -1 to 0.5 mm yr-1 based on surrounding gauges and an estimate of ocean thermal expansion." -
Albatross at 17:10 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Hi all, Wow, was not expecting the confusion over such a well thought out video. IMHO it needs some tweaks, but for a lay person I am not sure how it can be causing confusion. There sadly seems to be confusion between the formal definitions and practice of "hypothesis" and "theory", and some misunderstandings about the scientific method. That is, in science one cant prove anything. Those lucky mathematicians, however, can. RealClimate has a post on "The Co2 problem in 6 easy steps". http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/ For those people rolling out the predictable trace gas argument against CO2. Think about this, CO2 concentration is measured in ppmv, while CFC concentrations are measured in ppt (two order of magnitude less than CO2). Now consider that increasing CFCs (in ppt) was and is a critical catalyst in causing the ozone hole in the Stratosphere above Antarctica. The analogy is not perfect, of course, but I hope that is gives some context. Now before someone tries to blame the ozone hole on GCRs (they are responsible for everything you know, sarcasm): Consider this first. http://rabett.blogspot.com/search?q=cosmic+rays (despite the sarcasm the posts are very informative) Also, the latest nail in the coffin (there are simply have too many nails for this coffin) for the CGR hypothesis and cloud cover. Calogovic, J., C. Albert, F. Arnold, J. Beer, L. Desorgher, and E. O. Flueckiger (2010), Sudden cosmic ray decreases: No change of global cloud cover, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L03802, doi:10.1029/2009GL041327. People should also seriously consider Dr. Alley's talk presented at the AGU last year: http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/richard-alley-the-biggest-control-knob-carbon-dioxide-in-earths-climate-history/ And don't get me started on the politicized pseudo science of Eschenbach and Watts. Doug's synthesis @ 56 of the work by Pielke (not a climate scientist), Spencer and Lindzen is spot on. There are no silver bullets here folks. The hypothesis that is put forth by those in denial is that we can dramatically increase GHGs in an incredibly short time and for their to be no negative impact on the biosphere (atmosphere, oceans and cryosphere). Well, empirical evidence and other observational data (across many independent disciplines) are showing, and have been showing that this hypothesis is failing badly. Start praying that climate sensitivity for doubling CO2 is +1.5- 2.0 C. -
Charlie A at 17:03 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
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Doug Bostrom at 16:22 PM on 1 March 2010Skeptical Science housekeeping: Woody Guthrie award, bug-fixes, Facebook and donations
Notionally off-topic but somewhat about housekeeping and probably of interest to many of us here: RIP, ICESat: NASA has stopped trying to restart the primary laser instrument on the ICESat spacecraft, and the seven-year ice-mapping mission has been declared complete, the agency announced Wednesday. Launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket on Jan. 12, 2003, the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite spent more than six years dutifully circling Earth, bouncing laser beams off the planet's surface to gauge the thickness of land and sea ice at high latitudes. The satellite measured the Earth's surface and atmosphere in "unprecedented 3-D detail," said Jay Zwally, the mission project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. ICESat was ultimately limited by the failure of its main instrument, the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System. The last of the GLAS payload's three lasers stopped emitting light on Oct. 11, and NASA has ceased attempts to restart the instrument, according to a statement. Produced at Goddard, GLAS monitored ice by firing laser pulses during observation campaigns lasting several weeks about three times per year. Since launch, the instrument completed 15 campaigns and its three lasers executed more than 1.9 billion laser pulses. GLAS accumulated about 15 months worth of data during the mission, NASA officials said. ICESat mission complete after seven years in orbit -
Doug Bostrom at 16:05 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Charlie A at 14:29 PM on 1 March, 2010 Lindzen, Spencer and Pielke Sr. have all mounted carefully constructed alternative explanations for various phenomena associated AGW and all of these have been found wanting after the serious consideration they deserved. Eschenbach is another matter. He's published a number of articles in E&E but he also is seen as frequently publishing political commentary on AGW. Eschenbach's opening shot (an E&E item on sea level) did not stand up and since then he's been criticized for playing fast and loose with both data and accusations of fraud; all in all he seems like a magnet for controversy as opposed to a productive researcher bent on expanding our envelope of knowledge. Sea-level Rise at tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean islands -
Doug Bostrom at 15:37 PM on 1 March 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
climatejournal at 15:12 PM on 1 March, 2010 Depending on which of his publications you read, Dr. Mörner concludes either that sea level is rising or is not, though of late he seems to have settled on no rise at all. This is at variance with -all- instrumental records, and meanwhile Dr. Mörner does not explain how he reaches these his own disparate conclusions. Let me be careful to point out that I'm not engaging in ad hominem attack but rather am trying to establish context when I refer to Dr. Mörner's publications on dowsing to suggest that he is not necessarily the most reliable source for the final word on scientific matters, though he does in fact have an extensive publication record on less controversial topics. Finally, I find it ironic that Dr. Mörner's title for his essay which is popular in some circles, "The Greatest Lie Ever Told", would be unacceptable in the sort of polite company John Cook has assembled here. -
climatejournal at 15:12 PM on 1 March 2010Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner has studied sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. Recently retired as director of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University, Mörner is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story - Sea Levels Are Not Rising! Read more at http://www.climatejournal.org/climatenews00148.htm -
Charlie A at 14:43 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
Oops I forgot the link to Testing the AGW Hypothesis at http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html Testing the AGW Hypothesis -
johnd at 14:31 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
HumanityRules at 14:07 PM, what goes for the NAO, also applies to the PDO, or IPO, and the IOD, the Indian Ocean Dipole. What makes the IOD research interesting is that some, perhaps much, in relation to Australia at least, of what had originally been attributed to El-Nino may actually have been due to the IOD, make El-Nino somewhat less powerful than currently accepted. -
Charlie A at 14:29 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#49 GallopingCamel "L&C09 accepts the basic premise that CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas but suggests that the forcing co-efficient is about six times lower than the values used in the many Climate Models referenced by the IPCC." I find it interesting that other approaches to using actual measured data to estimate climate sensitivity come out in the same sort of range as L&C09. Will Eschenbach last June put forth a hypothesis about the diurnal cloud formation in the tropics. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/ I'm not positive, but I believe this came out of his work with satellite measured temperatures and from noting how station-keeping and in particular time-of-day of the equatorial crossing affected the measured temperatures. He has recently further expanded this hypothesis to check some of the resulting predictions of climate sensitivity variations with latitude band, and variations with the fraction of ocean at any given latitude. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/sense-and-sensitivity/ He references and compares his values to those calculated by Sherwood Idso using 8 different methods to estimate sensitivity: http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/idso98.htm Finally, there is a relatively unknown paper at palisad.com that uses the annual variation in temperature (12.5C in N. hemisphere, 5 C in SH) to estimated climate sensitivity: http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html . This is a relatively short, easily readable paper that I highly recommend, although I cannot personally say whether or not his argument is error free. It does, however, point to a method of verification that is available today, using existing observations. So we have several different methods, looking at a variety of measured data that come up with estimates of climate sensitivity much lower than the IPCC consensus. ================== Unfortunately, too often, the AGW debate degenerates into strawman arguments, rather than looking at the serious scientific differences that do exist. Lindzen, Eschenbach, Spencer, Pielke (both of them) are examples of sceptics whose ideas should be seriously looked at and challenged. -
HumanityRules at 14:14 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
50.Charlie A at 14:05 PM on 1 March, 2010 "you are ignoring the most significant problem" I'm not ignoring the possibility that seasonal variation maybe manmade or natural or a little bit of both, if that is what you mean. -
HumanityRules at 14:07 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
A little more on the birds and the bees. "The facts we know beyond a doubt about global warming" Anything can be a fact I you wish it to be. The large meta analyses (and this video) suggest changing seasons are a product of global warming. It's interesting that many of the papers that make up the data for this grand analyses and statement often come to a different conclusion. As mentioned above the data is predominantly European (with some N American). When you look at the European papers many link the changes in season timing with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), this is a natural process that introduces variation into the European climate. I could list a whole load of papers here but I suggest you just do a Google Scholar search for "Phenology NAO" yourself. Spring comes earlier when the NAO is positive and later when negative. The problem for separating global warming from NAO is that the NAO index has had a positive trend over the past 30 years. See here So as long as you ignore all other possible explanations for this phenomenon then yes its obvious that global warming has advanced the onset of spring. -
Charlie A at 14:05 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#47 Humanity Rules -- you are ignoring the most significant problem. Are these 30% or 78% or 90% or whatever percentage of indicators show seasonal advance, advancing in response to a natural warming trend ongoing since the end of the last ice age, or are they responding to anthropogenic global warming or even more specifically to anthropogenic global warming in response to anthropogenic CO2. Or put more simply .... are we worried about a natural trend, a natural trend + unknown % additional manmade trend, or shall we blame ALL warming on anthropogenic CO2 ? -
Charlie A at 13:42 PM on 1 March 2010Senator Inhofe's attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
#90 I find it neither comforting nor discomforting. The world and the facts are what they are. The exact details of temperature trends a bit fuzzy, although the overall rising trend over both the last several centuries and the last several decades is very clear. Small differences in trends make a difference only when we get into attribution of the cause of various portions of the rise. Of course, it is based upon small differences in trend, and upon models being unable to match these small differences using the assumed forcing, that we attribute a major portion of recent warming trends to well mixed greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane. And based upon that attribution, we are on the verge of making major policy decisions. -
gallopingcamel at 13:03 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
doug_bostrom (@11) and some subsequent posts, This is tough for me; I find myself agreeing with you! I am not arguing that that solar activity is the main factor affecting global temperature. However, there is a correlation over the last 400 years between the number of sunspots and climate. Svensmark & Friis-Christensen 1997 suggest that terrestrial cosmic ray intensity is high when there are few sunspots leading to more cloudiness. More cloudiness reflects more solar energy leading to lower temperatures. This idea also links long term climate changes to the sun's motion relative to the spiral arms of our galaxy. Like you I have not yet convinced that cosmic rays have a major influence planet wide cloud formation, although I am used to observing this effect in the laboratory (I work with 1 GeV electrons). It is a testable hypothesis so someone may already have the proof or disproof. With regard to Lindzen & Choi 2009, Kevin Trenberth and his associates criticized the paper but I suspect that Richard Lindzen is much more respected among real scientists than the Hockey Team. L&C09 accepts the basic premise that CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas but suggests that the forcing co-efficient is about six times lower than the values used in the many Climate Models referenced by the IPCC. If L&C09 is good science, CO2 is a much smaller contributor to "Global Warming" than the IPCC would have us believe. -
Charlie A at 13:02 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
ProfMandia -- It may be true that no scientists are stating end of the world consequences, but they are reporting truly amazing consequences. You linked to the CSGCRP Impacts in the US. That report tells us that the electrical grid is seeing frequent, severe disturbances related to climate change: "The number of incidents caused by extreme weather has increased tenfold since 1992. The portion of all events that are caused by weather-related phenomena has more than tripled from about 20 percent in the early 1990s to about 65 percent in recent years." See p58 of http://downloads.globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/energy.pdf . I am thankful that scientists have brought to our attention that our electrical grid is failing 20 times more often now than in 1992. I corresponded with the author of the reference for this, and he assures me that he based his info on a peer reviewed article. I consulted the author of that peer reviewed article and found that it was unpublished, but her peers in the research think tank had looked at it and agreed. -
HumanityRules at 12:56 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
"Birds and bees don't have a political agenda, at least we think not." But then the birds and the bees don't write the papers. I have a question about "Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change". Are 90% of data sets showing a response to climate change? They are quoted as saying from >29,000 data sets 90% are moving in a direction consistent with a warming climate. This report is based on data from 80 other papers. These 80 reports are listed in the supplementary data. >28,000 of these data sets come from a single paper,this one, which looks at a large amount of data from Europe. So what did this paper find? "Our results showed that 78% of all leafing, flowering and fruiting records advanced (30% significantly) and only 3% were significantly delayed". Other measures (farmer activity and leaf browning) were more ambiguous, but let’s ignore this So 30% of data sets show a significant trend in the direction expected for warming. How does 30% become 90%? Well the paper in the video only looks at data with significant trends. It throws away 67% of the data from the European study and compares 30% to 3%. So as the video says do 29,000 data sets show 90% are changing in the direction consistent with global warming? Yes if you ignore most of those data sets. No if you look at all the data. I don't know how the NASA paper got published, it's a slight of hand, or maybe this video is just wrongly interrupting the results. Even if we accept what is said in this video what does this mean? Is this a catastrophe? Are birds flying upside down (and into vehicles) and is the land stripped of all life? Spring is coming earlier to Europe (by maybe 7.5 days). This does not induce a great deal of fear in me. Should I be frightened? -
ProfMandia at 12:26 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#29 oracle2world: No scientists are stating end of the world consequences. The issue is that climate change is happening faster than our ability to adapt. This is clearly discussed in the IPCC WGII reports, Global Climate Change – Impacts in the United States (U.S. Global Change Research Program), Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate (CCSP, 2008), among others. Furthermore, emissions, ice melt, and sea-level rise are already occurring faster than the IPCC projections. I also discuss the likely consequences of following a business as usual approach to GHG emissions in my blog post How to Talk to a Conservative about Climate Change v.2. These consequences include: 1) China and India pass the US as economic superpowers 2) Increased immigration 3) Higher food costs 4) Greater government subsidies (higher taxes) 5) Higher insurance rates 6) Increased authoritarian governments 7) Increased terrorism 8) Nuclear proliferation 9) Regional and global wars between countries with nuclear weapons Several high-level US military reports are linked there also. These reports paint a gloomy picture. -
johnd at 12:15 PM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
1077 at 11:50 AM. Certainly the atmosphere is well mixed, but water vapour must rise from the surface to the upper levels in order to complete the water cycle, whilst CO2 must descend to the surface in order to complete its cycle. I understand how and why water vapour rises, but what is it that drives CO2 to the surface in order to sustain both plant and animal life? Whatever it is, the mechanism is not operating efficiently enough as most plants are only existing on a fraction of the CO2 they require for optimum growth. -
1077 at 11:55 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
doug_bostrom #42 Apologies for my error. An engineer should be more careful... but I left engineering so may be I will be excused. I bookmarked the http://www.aip.org/history/climate/ link and, given the few hours you mention, I will get to it some time, probably on another weekend -
1077 at 11:50 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
miekol 37# Much as I agree with the spirit of your post, the analogy you are quoting is faulty. The atmosphere in reality is not stratified but mixed. The mixture is not homogeneous and is highly variable. The small increase of an infinetisimal component can have dramatic effects. In all due respect to ProfMandia #38 his analogy with the currency is a bit silly. A better analogy would be to poisoning a living body: a very small amount of poison may go unnoticed; a larger amount may create discomfort but not kill; there is a certain minimum amount required, depending on the size of the living organism, its nature and the nature of the poison for the effect to be lethal. The fallacy of the CO2 supporters is that they are unable to demonstrate in a conclusive and incontrovertible way that the increase of humanly produced CO2, whatever it is, is indeed lethal under the real, very complex circumstances of the earth atmosphere. The opposite is not demonstrated either though. Read also oracle2world's very good post under #29.Response: I must confess, I have a personal aversion to analogies and metaphors - people seem to spend more time arguing over whether the metaphor fits the physical reality. So I prefer direct discussion of the physical reality. But I'm aware that metaphors can be useful in explaining complex subjects so I will try to overcome my stuffy purism and get on the metaphor bandwagon.
Nevertheless, the question of whether such a tiny amount of CO2 could have such a dramatic effect on climate doesn't need to be addressed by metaphors. The effect has been directly measured by Evans 2006 which looks at the spectrum of downward infrared radiation (eg - infrared energy that is trapped by greenhouse gases and sent back down to the Earth's surface) and quantifies the individual contribution of each greenhouse gas.
Evans 2006 and a number of other papers provide a number of independent lines of evidence that CO2 is trapping heat. Following on from this, a number of papers examining different periods of Earth's history and all find consistent results that our climate is highly sensitive to changes to the planet's energy balance. In other words, when we add heat to the climate, positive feedbacks amplify the warming. Lastly, many, many papers look at the impact of warming temperatures and the result is the net negative impacts of global warming on humanity far outweight the positive benefits.
All the peer-reviewed research conclusively shows that increasing CO2 has strong negative impacts on humanity. It's a complex subject and it's the kind of thing that you can't prove on the back of a napkin - it required a lot of research and data to get to where we are now. But if you take in the full picture of what the peer-review science is telling us, to me the most persuasive element that humans are causing global warming which has negative impacts on humanity is the fact that independent measurements all paint the same picture. -
Doug Bostrom at 11:30 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
1077 at 10:19 AM on 1 March, 2010 You're confusing me with somebody else; I did not write that. miekol at 10:58 AM on 1 March, 2010 You should read this: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/ Takes just a few hours and you'll have a better idea of what's going on. As to thinking of the proportionality of atmospheric constituents, remember that C0 is also found naturally occurring in our air, in tiny amounts. How much of a change in that proportion are we able to tolerate? Remember, the system we inhabit is not engineered, it has not been made with reserve strength. -
Riccardo at 11:25 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
miekol, it's surprising indeed. For this reason it took decades to accept the idea that such a small amount may indeed be important. But unfortunately not always small things have small effect. A few tenth of a micron of aluminium reflects almost all the IR and a tenth of millimiter of black paper absorbs both visible and IR. One has to put the numbers and see what the outcome is. This is what Arrhenius did a century ago. Many were surprised and just a few belived him, not Ångström for sure. But later he turned out to be quite right, anthropogenic emissions were sizable, CO2 was increasing (less than what it should) and the absorption was strong enough to warm the planet. Many things in science are unbelievable, untill you take a closer look. -
ProfMandia at 11:21 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
I meant 99% that is not GHG. -
ProfMandia at 11:18 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
#38 miekol: And the 99% that is not CO2 does NOTHING to stop outgoing LW radiation so it is radiatively "not there". Analogy: You have 99% of your money in a foreign currency that is not accepted nor exchangeable in the country you are in right now. The other 1% is in an accepted currency. Which currency is going to matter now? Which is useless? Bad pun alert: does this make cents? -
1077 at 11:13 AM on 1 March 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
doug_bostrom #10 Back to my analogy with Galileo. Science is not a matter of votes. Politics is... in a democratic society of course. Thus your argument of "one man's word against hundreds" is, on the face of it, inconsistent with your statement earlier today that you did not want to follow me in the "wilderness", which I assumed was the wilderness of human psyche of which politics is the direct result. -
ProfMandia at 11:11 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
oracle2world wrote: Since there is no "definitive" paper SHOWING that GHGs drive anything It begins with: Svante Arrhenius "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground", Philosophical Magazine 1896(41): 237-76 continues with: IPCC WGI (pick any of a number of papers here) and of course, John Cook on this site has shown many papers that continue the "proof", not the least of which is the superb summary in this very recent post. And what does the "other side" have to offer? Nothing that refutes the multiple lines of evidence for AGW nor any substantiated alternative explanation. In fact, it is this last point that is the foundation of this site. John Cook essentially tears down all arguments against the prevailing scientific consensus. As the late Carl Sagan often said, "Extraordinay claims require extraordinary evidence." It is the opinion of most experts that there is extraordinary evidence for AGW. Where is your extraordinary evidence for an alternative argument? -
miekol at 10:58 AM on 1 March 2010YouTube video on the empirical evidence for man-made global warming
As a lay person I just cannot buy into the idea that man made CO2 is the cause of climate change. The climate fluctuated many times long before industrialization. I found the following somewhere on the net, and if its correct. Then to suggest that its man made CO2 is the problem, is laughable.... Imagine walking through 1 km of atmosphere. Let’s walk along that 1,000 metres of air to see what it’s made of. The first 770 meters is Nitrogen. The next 210 meters is Oxygen. That’s 980 meters of the 1 kilometer. 20 meters to go. The next 10 meters is water vapour. 10 meters left. 9 meters is Argon. Just 1 more meter. A few gases make up the first bit of that last meter. The last 38 centimeters of the kilometer is Carbon Dioxide (CO2) - a bit over one foot. 97% of that is produced by nature - vegetation and soils 53%, the oceans 44%. 3% is what human activity puts into the atmosphere. That’s only 11 centimeters out of our journey of one kilometer! About half an inch. And of those 11 millimeters Australia puts in only 1.5% or 0.17 of a millimetre! - less than the thickness of a hair along a kilometer long road.
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