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Comments 124051 to 124100:

124051. Bern at 12:45 PM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        rmbraun123 at #41: Regarding your concern about CO2 & CH4 emitted/breathed out by humans and livestock - they would not be a problem, if the only source of that carbon was biological. If you source your carbon from plants, algae, & other biomass, then that carbon is coming *from* the atmosphere, and you are emitting it back into the atmosphere, so the balance doesn't change. CH4 may be a bit of an issue, as it's a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, but that's not a huge concern compared to the use of fossil carbon, which has been geosequestered for literally hundreds of millions of years, in some cases. Actually, when you look at it, even *that* carbon is sourced from nature, and much will ultimately be returned to nature via volcanic action. The problem, though, is that's a hundred-million-year cycle, and we're taking that material & dumping it back into the atmosphere in a few centuries, when the carbon-storing part of the cycle takes millions of years. So the problem isn't that we're increasing the amount of CO2 in the world. The problem is that a large proportion of it is naturally 'locked up', which we are now liberating. The solution (well, one of them, anyway) is to stop using geo-sequestered carbon to power our economies. I find it amusing that one of the main efforts being supported by governments (particularly in Australia) is about trying to re-sequester the carbon after we've dug it up & burned it...
124052. Dan Pangburn at 12:12 PM on 16 February 2010
        It's the sun
        The paper at the link at post 523 is an engineering analysis using the first law of thermodynamics applied to credible published data. It is very common to look at sunspots in terms of either just the number of them at any time or some time factor relating to a solar cycle. It should be obvious that a short wide solar cycle would have the same influence on planet energy as a tall narrow solar cycle. The way to take both number and time in to account is with the time-integral of sunspot number. I have found lots of papers that considered just sunspot number or just a time factor where they found poor correlation. However, I know of no other papers that considered the time-integral of sunspot number which has excellent correlation with measured temperature anomalies. The ESST for the last 114 years…and counting is defined as 32 year up trends followed by 32 year downtrends in a repeated 64 year cycle of magnitude 0.45 C and peaks in 1941 and 2005. When anomalies from the ESST cycle are combined with the equivalent anomalies from the sunspot time-integral calculation, the result is an excellent prediction of average global temperature anomalies since 1895. There are many ocean currents. PDO, ENSO, AMO, etc. and they are all occurring at the same time. Each of the currents has its own cycle time and phase relation with respect to the other currents. The NET effect of all of these currents since 1895 apparently matches the numerical cycle defined above. Prior to 1895 the phase relation may not have resulted in producing the noted temperatures or possibly the temperature measurements were inaccurate. As stated in the paper, future temperature anomalies depend on future sunspot numbers and future [ESST] behavior neither of which has been confidently predicted. When these can be predicted, then the model will predict future agt. Until then the model, which shows no signs of being wrong since 1895, provides the best estimate. It is certainly better than the IPCC prediction which has failed miserably for years. The perception that the only influence that the sun has on earth’s climate is by total solar radiation (TSI) is apparently wrong. In a separate analysis, I discovered that average global temperature is sensitive to average cloud altitude which determines average cloud temperature and thus the rate at which the clouds and thus the planet radiates energy to space. Others have shown that fewer sunspots correlate with more low level clouds. The overall mechanism sequence is: Fewer sunspots; reduced solar magnetic shielding of earth; increased galactic cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere; increased low-level clouds; lower average cloud altitude; higher average cloud temperature; increased cloud-to-space radiation; lower agt. A rising temperature trend is going to be the conclusion if our knowledge is limited to statistical analysis and a 50 year period. However, if the record had started with best estimates of temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period the statistical trend would be down. The agt downtrend since 2005 was predicted by the model. The important point in all this is not so much what the agt is going to do but that, since agt can be accurately predicted with no need to consider change to the level of any ghg, then change to the level of CO2 or any other ghg has no significant influence on agt.
124053. Eagleeye at 11:54 AM on 16 February 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        What have we learnt from talking about Plimer Monckton's visit and talking about it here ? As a bit of an outsider , 3 things keep many of us from accepting the role of Co2 as a forcing agent of great note. - correspondents are not addressing the evidence of earth history ( Plimer's beef) where are the earth history geologists on this blog? - the dominance of modelling and experimental small talk and testing is insufficient to carry the academics ( tell me i am wrong about who is driving the talk ) into the place of final respect on air flow systems that are extremely complex. ( the theoretical is important and i do appreciate Berenji and Doug's pointed pieces in particular. ) - the dynamics of carbon dioxide buffering would seem to add a level of complexity I can't find you addressing across the blog . Co2 knob and Co2 cycling in seas is interesting but little talk of water and other terrestrial agents for temp changes .Berenji's well made point about the misplaced concreteness allowed to develop around temperature testing is an example of why skepticsm is not abating. Simply - if you want to be convincing , don't rush it. Academia's enthusiasm for change meets with media appetite for change and we have stalemate .Bhttp://fearmongersshop.blogspot.com
124054. Marcus at 11:50 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        My point, RSVP, is that some people who want to retain the Status quo (because its in their own self-interest) massively overstate the cost of reducing CO2 emissions. Here's a case in point-my own CO2 footprint just for household electricity was approximately 12kg per day & I was paying somewhere in the order of $2.80 per day for electricity. Then I replaced my inefficient electric hot water tank with a continuous flow gas system & switched all of my lights to compact fluorescents & through these efficiency measures managed to cut my electricity use to around 6kw/h per day, which cut my daily CO2 emissions to less than 6kg & reduced my electricity bill to around $1.50 per day (in spite of a price hike of nearly 10c/kw-h over that time period). I'm also saving money on light globes, because compact fluorescents last for *years*! So my personal reduction of CO2 emissions-though it carried an initial cost-will almost certainly save me huge amounts of money over the rest of my life. The same goes for driving. I choose to catch a bus to work, because keeping fuel in my car for my daily commute would cost me about $14 per day (let alone the cost of parking, registration, insurance & maintenance). By using the bus or train, I am spending a *maximum* of $8/day (& usually closer to $6/day) & am also cutting my transportation based CO2 emissions. Now, imagine tif *everyone* took these similar measures-think how much our CO2 emissions would be curbed, but without long-term cost to the individual. Indeed, over time these individuals would find themselves financially better off (not to mention less stressed because of less time spent in traffic jams). Other measures exist that will have an equally beneficial impact on CO2 emissions-without carrying a long-term cost burden to society-but still we're told by certain people that we can't do it without "massive social & economic upheaval". My point is that this kind of defeatist mantra is completely & utterly *wrong*, as I've proven via my own personal experiences.
124055. carrot eater at 11:16 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        Bob Armstrong: The actual emissivities and albedos of different materials found on the Earth have been measured, and go into the relevant calculations. You can look them up. You can also look up the absorption spectra of real materials. Over short wavelength ranges, you can sometimes get away with the grey-body approximation. A wavelength range spanning the visible and the far IR is not a short range at all. You will have experienced this yourself. The emissivity of common paints are often in the range 0.9 to 1.0, regardless of whether the paint is white or black. But this emissivity is referring to the IR range. The absorptivities in the visible range are of course dependent on the color, and the wavelength. Again, if you think memories of your physics class are somehow leading you to a simple insight that invalidates an entire field, you are most likely mistaken. As for quantitative algorithms for calculating forcings: There's a good reason why you haven't seen one simply presented. For greenhouse gases, they require much more computation than can be easily presented. It requires the calculation of absorption and emission of radiation throughout the atmosphere, keeping track of spectral detail (since CO2 and water are extremely far from being grey bodies, with specific absorption bands due to vibrational modes).
124056. Nick Palmer at 11:14 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        Thanks Ned
124057. Eagleeye at 11:04 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        Find the critical question of c02 buffering poorly handled in many of your summaries . Where is the Co2 being measured apart from ice cores? I want you to show where in the atmosphere and on the earth it is being measured and monitored ( over time too ) - otherwise the buffering equations and their significance remain in doubt .
124058. Doug Bostrom at 10:06 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        David Horton at 08:59 AM on 16 February, 2010 Cook not Cole, Cook not Cole.... Where did I get "Cole", anyway? Thanks!
        Response: I used to always get mistaken for John Cross so John Cole is a bit out of left field.
124059. chris at 09:53 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Not really HumanityRules. The top article is pretty clear about the nature of the fallacies under discussion and illustrates this with examples. While the top article discusss "presumptive misunderstanding", I wonder whether you might be playing at "wilful misunderstanding"! Perhaps you simply didn't read the article properly, but it's not easy to see how you can have come away with the interpreation that it's about "support the consensus, stupid"! Surely it's about "before presuming that every one else is wrong and you're right, and that the blindingly obvious hasn't occurred to scientists, take an effort to find out what the evidence bring to bear befoe launching into contrary interpretations"...
124060. HumanityRules at 09:44 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        You seem to be conflating asking questions and raising doubts with arrogance and stupidity. If humanity didn't ask questions we wouldn't have science. This appears just another way of saying "support the concensus, stupid" dressed up with some psychobabble (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, honestly!!!)
        Response: I'm a big fan of asking questions. In the example given above, I commend the commenter for asking a good question about whether its appropriate to use CO2 from one location as a proxy for global CO2. Where the comment went pear shaped was when, not yet having an answer, they accused me of manipulation. So my main point is asking questions is a good thing. Investigate, query, learn, fill those gaps in your understanding.
124061. jisabi at 09:38 AM on 16 February 2010
        Why does CO2 lag temperature?
        Thanks Riccardo, I appreciate your help. I understand the mechanisms for glacial termination, but was more curious about glacial onset and CO2 drawdown. From reading a bit further I have come to sort of an understanding (reading principles of paleoclimatology by Thomas Cronin). It seems that CO2 drawdown followed diminished solar forcing for several reasons. 1.) Increased bio-productivity as ocean currents changed 2.) Increased bio-productivity through increased upwelling 3.) Fertilization of oceans from continental dust (mainly Fe), again leading to increased bio-productivity 4.) As well as increased solubility of CO2 in water at cooled temps. I was curious, because the correlation of temp and CO2 are obvious, but I was having a hard time finding a credible answer as to why cooler temps seem to drawdown CO2, I hope I have my head around it somewhat. Thanks again for your help. If I am off base, please let me know what you think. Reading Caillon was helpful for my overall knowledge of the subject.
124062. Marcus at 09:35 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        rmbraun123, you claim that Malthus was wrong, & technology alleviated the problems associated with overpopulation-*wrong*! Take a look at all the high birth rate nations of the world & I'll show you massive, grinding poverty, gross levels of infant mortality, poor health & life expectancy & shortage of education & health care. Then look to all those nations where women gained status, independent wealth & control of their fertility-& were thus able to drive down birth rates-& I will show you countries that have managed to reduce poverty, increase access to health, education & social welfare & boost overall health & happiness. Yes technology played a part, but it was mostly the curbing of population growth which did the trick. So it can be on a global scale. The alternative is a world groaning under the weight of 10 billion people, where access to cheap oil & coal is no longer a given. How long before a mass global die-off occurs under those circumstances-& just how painful do you think that will be compared to government action, now, to limit overpopulation & overconsumption of resources?
124063. Bob Armstrong at 09:13 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        carrot eater , Real materials are much closer to being gray bodies than to emit as black bodies . Furthermore , a flat spectrum , gray , term is orthogonal to the correlations between the spectra of an object and its sources and sinks making it the appropriate first term like extracting the mean as the first term in any series expansion . I see no evidence that anyone here is capable of arguing with actual equations in which case we could work out the transformation of your non-orthogonal equations to my orthogonal . I think the confusion caused by your starting point is a reason why I have never found a complete quantitative algorithm for calculating "forcings" . I repeat , I find the understanding of the physics pathetic on both sides of the debate .
124064. 1077 at 09:08 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        @46 My previous comment labeled "41" was really addressed to "@46". I am obviously not perfect either...
124065. David Horton at 08:59 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        #42 Doug Bostrom write out 100 times "It is John Cook not John Cole". Haven't you done this before?
124066. 1077 at 08:59 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        @ 41 Very clever. But kindly try to make a difference between "being emotional" which in this context I meant as being insulting and irrational with "harboring opinions and inclinations" which in my post are rather obvious to the careful reader... and intended to be so. No, I am not disingenuous but rather honestly confused by the nature of the discussion, barely supported by reliable quantitative evaluations in either direction and very concerned, if not ouright frightened by the potentially dire immediate effects of policies that could be triggered by a false evaluation of the facts. Back to the very real D-K syndrome, let us not forget that it can (and does) work very well in very educated individuals, if not more so. Proof is in the tribulations of the human race ever since its beginings with an increasing propensity toward disastruous outcomes as the level of knowledge has increased. And yes, my late-in-life financial readings do make me more apprehensive of the "idiocy of geniuses" than I was as a technical individual.
124067. chris at 08:58 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        re #41 mrbraun I assume (given your background), that you don't really believe that animals "by the very act of living" produce CO2. It's an odd thing to say! It's also difficult to understand how you consider that a gas diffusing in an atmosphere of gas such that it becomes well mixed is "counter intuitive"! I would have thought that the non-mixing of a gas would be counter-intuitive. Of course one should consider the relevant time scale. CO2 is rather well mixed when considered as a yearly global average, as is easy to see by comparing the CO2 measures at Mauna Loa with the average over the sea surface sites (for example). http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ "Euthanasia" ??? I wonder whether you might be drifting from the Dunning-Kruger effect towards something akin to Godwin's Law!
124068. CBDunkerson at 08:54 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        rmbraun123, first... don't misquote. The phrase "a molecule of air", which you placed in quotation marks, does not appear in the passage you are objecting to. Replace that erroneous representation of what they said with the actual wording and the answer to your question presents itself... "in a given number of molecules of air". Molecules plural, not singular. Air is of course a mixture of different elements and compounds, but we can determine the composition and express it in various ways; percentage by volume, percentage by mass, or (in this case) percentage of molecules. As to technology having prevented the problems of overpopulation... we have a different knowledge of history. Mine includes several famines and plagues which would seem to contradict that view. Technology has certainly helped to keep deaths from overpopulation 'down' in the mere millions, but it is also very obviously a real and growing problem.
124069. chris at 08:47 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        re #47 rmbraun123 "the number of carbon dioxide molecules in a given number of molecules of air" That's quite easy to understand I think. It's essentially the "mole fraction". Take a volume of air. Count the number of molecules therein (the O2, N2, argon, CO2, methane, ozone, CO etc. etc.). Of the total, what is the fraction of CO2? Right now it's about 386 ppm.
124070. 1077 at 08:26 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        BillWalker at 07:42 AM on 16 February, 2010 wrote: "Re #41, rmbraun123 at 07:16 AM on 16 February, 2010 Your questions re CO2 measurements have already been answered in the prior comments. Human population growth is a problem, although due more to consumption of resources and need for energy, food and water than from simple exhalation, but nobody is suggesting extermination! Education, particularly of women, and access to voluntary birth control have been shown to reduce birth rates and would likely be sufficient to stabilize population at a sustainable level." A very worthy Malthusian response, tempered a bit by current political correctness but still Malthus redivivus. He was proven wrong by the technological advances of humanity. So will you be proven wrong in a few hundred years: let's talk about it then... Incidentally, the Chinese tried population limitation. True it was by legislation not by enlightenment of ladies. But the results are very comparable. And the demographics of Russia as well as the worries of the Japanese and Europeans in this respect indicate that your "solution" is unlikely to work. Long live the US immigration policy... if we can get it right.
124071. 1077 at 08:17 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        doug_bostrom at 16:03 PM on 15 February, 2010 Westwell at 14:57 PM on 15 February, 2010 Sorry, fella, that's a dog that won't hunt. Here's are the actual methods employed for measurement: How we measure background CO2 levels on Mauna Loa Pieter Tans and Kirk Thoning, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory I went to the proverbial horse's mouth as you recommended... and I found the following rather puzzling sentence: "the number of carbon dioxide molecules in a given number of molecules of air" Can you please enlighten a poor soul - who studied chemistry and physics quite some time ago - what exactly is "a molecule of air"?
124072. 70rn at 08:15 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        @ 41 Given that this post seems largely to have been made to question whether 'deniers' are actually emotive, I think the answer can be found with in the post itself. Possible action to ameliorate climate change was described as 'enormous economic and social upheaval' as well as 'drastic'. Rather curiously the possibility of action quantifying the effects of co2 apparently needs to be followed by, "Such a demonstration, should help also respond to the question whether euthanasia of a portion of the global population is to be recommended in order to ensure the survival of the rest and if so, what percentage needs to be exterminated." This phrase is seemingly disingenuously placed solely associate any action upon climate change with genocide. This is itself is an exceedingly emotional claim, as well as not an action suggested any known politician. If it was desired to be examined in a rational manner the phrasing along the lines of 'climate change action may cause unintended loss of life (presumably in the third world)' would have been acceptable, though one would need to elucidate further. However the methodology with which this is presented is a. baseless, as no governments or individuals have proposed mass euthanasia and b. unquantified and emotive. As it was provide by an 'experienced financial professional' one has to ask why no specifics were provided. This post was written seemingly as an attempt to be objective and unemotional and yet appears to have heavily utilized their opposites, I can only find this extraordinary. I do not mean this as a personal attack however it appears in this instance that the proof has been provided.
124073. Richard Brenne at 08:12 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        For ten seasons I coached kids from ages 6 to 8 in ski racing. Most skied many dozens of times a season often since they were two, and so they were excellent skiers. At the beginning of their first season of ski racing, because they often hadn't skied with other kids their age who were as experienced as they were, they assumed and many times their parents assumed that they were the best skier their age in our club, in Colorado, or in the world. All it took for them to be convinced otherwise was to be grouped with these other kids and go skiing, and then to finish well back in their first ski races. Because of this empirical evidence they went from sometimes insufferable arrogance to consistent humility quite quickly. Similar processes for adults include going to a rigorous university as an undergraduate, going to graduate school at a major research university, obtaining a PhD, especially in a science, publishing in a scientific or academic journal and thus undergoing peer review, and if in an appropriate field, volunteering and being nominated as an IPCC Report Lead Author or Group Leader. When one has experienced few or none of these things, it is easy for them to suffer the Dunning-Kruger affect in relation to climate change. If this isn't possible, then reading 100 published, peer-reviewed papers on climate science might be ideal, but reading at least 100 posts (and the comment threads) here, at RealClimate and Climate Progress would be a good place to start - and the impressively wise and humble do that before commenting too strongly.
124074. Richard Brenne at 07:51 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Dunning and Kruger's concluding sentences are funny: Although we feel we have done a competent job in making a strong case for this analysis, studying it empirically, and drawing out relevant implications, our thesis leaves us with one haunting worry that we cannot vanquish. That worry is that this article may contain faulty logic, methodological errors, or poor communication. Let us assure our readers that to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly.
124075. BillWalker at 07:42 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Re #37, jimalakirti at 03:40 AM on 16 February, 2010 The problem with using the Bertrand Russell test on the climate debate is in distinguishing the real experts from the phony ones. You have to be willing to take the time to review qualifications and, in some cases, track funding sources. Re #41, rmbraun123 at 07:16 AM on 16 February, 2010 Your questions re CO2 measurements have already been answered in the prior comments. Human population growth is a problem, although due more to consumption of resources and need for energy, food and water than from simple exhalation, but nobody is suggesting extermination! Education, particularly of women, and access to voluntary birth control have been shown to reduce birth rates and would likely be sufficient to stabilize population at a sustainable level.
124076. Doug Bostrom at 07:39 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        rmbraun123 I think you're looking for a response directly from John Cole, but with regard to your observation about the preponderance of arguments it is necessarily a tautology. When one sums up the various lines of scientific inquiry relevant to climate change, there is an overwhelming trend in the direction of support for the basic hypothesis. Researchers attacking this problem from numerous directions are ineluctably lead to the same place because of realities they encounter. Discussions and articles here will necessarily reflect this fact, lacking as we do much of anything in the way of robust arguments against the basic hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change.
124077. 1077 at 07:16 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        I am not a climate scientist but a rather well educated professional, with technical and financial analysis experience. You indicate that “the trend [I assume you mean rate or speed of change] in Mauna Loa CO2 (1.64 ppm per year) is statistically indistinguishable from the trend in global CO2 levels (1.66 ppm per year) rate”. I have no knowledge to make a judgment on this statement so I will have to accept it, at least for the moment. However, the graph implies not only an almost identical rate of change but also an identical absolute value of the starting point of approx 338ppm. Is that correct? And if it is correct, this means that measurements are available for the global level of CO2. If so, why use the measurements at Mauna-Loa and not the global measurements? You also state the question whether the place of sampling is appropriate “when situated near a volcano which are known to emit CO2” but you answer it in a rather incomplete way: Stating that “CO2 mixes well throughout the atmosphere” is rather vague, strictly qualitative and highly counter-intuitive. Counter-intuitive doesn’t of course necessarily mean “wrong”; but it requires further solid substantiation. Can you for example support it with quantitative data? Say by showing the measurement of a CO2 burst at Mauna-Loa (or some other volcano) at a specified point in time and then show the gradient of increase in a sufficient number of locations around the globe so as to support the statement. I started reading your site because human consumption of fossil fuel does evidently produce CO2, and so do animals and humans by the very act of living; not to mention CH4 and other gases. Is the quantity produced negligible compared to natural causes, as those whom you dub “deniers” contend? Or is the amount substantive enough to justify the enormous economic and social upheaval that is being proposed by certain politicians? I am yet to find a conclusive source that demonstrates in a credible quantitative manner one or the other of the contentions. Such a demonstration, should help also respond to the question whether euthanasia of a portion of the global population is to be recommended in order to ensure the survival of the rest and if so, what percentage needs to be exterminated. Simply reducing fuel consumption may or may not suffice as people do breathe. Hence a very serious and reliable quantitative study is necessary before drastic economic steps are taken. Is such a study at all possible with our current means? And if not, does the risk justify the proposed economic measures? Of course, the revelations of data manipulations, crass propaganda movies, apparent negligent sourcing by institutions that should know better, superficial sampling of tree rings etc. do not help. But disregarding all these does not answer my question either. Your website appears to me to be biased in that there is a clear preponderance of global warming arguments. Suppressing emotional comments is reasonable and understandable but one cannot help musing whether such emotion is really preponderant among “deniers”. Could well be, but again I would need quantitative proof to accept the hypothesis. Can you provide it?
124078. Doug Bostrom at 06:55 AM on 16 February 2010
        It's the sun
        Thanks for the amplification, Dan. I don't find the author's argument persuasive. The way it falls apart before the period where his numerical forcing no longer functions with available data versus the target objective offers a hint of the underlying problem. Here's a key remark by Gavin Schmidt relevant to the paper you cite: The potential for self-delusion is significantly enhanced by the fact that climate data generally does have a lot of signal in the decadal band (say between 9 and 15 years). This variability relates to the incidence of volcanic eruptions, ENSO cycles, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) etc. as well as potentially the solar cycle. So another neat trick to convince yourself that you found a solar-climate link is to use a very narrow band pass filter centered around 11 years, to match the rough periodicity of the sun spot cycle, and then show that your 11 year cycle in the data matches the sun spot cycle. Often these correlations mysteriously change phase with time, which is usually described as evidence of the non-linearity of the climate system, but in fact is the expected behaviour when there is no actual coherence. Even if the phase relationship is stable, the amount of variance explained in the original record is usually extremely small. Schmidt on solar forcing The arbitrary choice of a 32 year PDO cycle here is an example of what Schmidt describes. Another problem is that the amount of power from solar variation available is not enough to warm the ocean as much as we've seen happen, so looking to variation to explain the ocean's warming is a non-starter in any case. Meanwhile, an unqualified claim of cessation of warming since 2005 is not really defensible. To support a conclusion that warming has ceased since 2005 you'd first have to explain why five years of data have more statistical power than fifty.
124079. Mizimi at 06:01 AM on 16 February 2010
        Temp record is unreliable
        53# have a look at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/nvst.html which graphs temp against station numbers, you can also access the University of Delware mpeg file which animates the global station numbers form 1950 - 1999. Watch China & the Soviet Union. If you reaslly want to spend the time, go to GISS and check out the temp graphs for stations in the SU...you will find 'most' of them stopped sending data after 1990.
124080. Dan Pangburn at 05:07 AM on 16 February 2010
        It's the sun
        The reference site for sunspot count starts the data at 1700. If you do the conservation of energy assessment, the resulting graph fluctuates about a trend until about 1940 and then the trend rises continuously thereafter. The graph reveals that the trend of radiation energy balance changed in about 1940. The constant (it is actually 6.52E-9, the value 6.36E-9 was a misread) ‘normalizes’ the calculation for the 240 years prior to 1940. Oceans cover about 71% of the earth’s surface. A simple calculation reveals that the heat storage capacity (thermal capacitance) of the oceans to a depth of 700 meters is about 200 times that of everything else on the planet. Thus the average temperature of the oceans is by far the best indicator of whether the planet is actually changing temperature. The data at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/temperature shows that the planet stopped warming in about 2005. The next two ‘why’s relate to a discovery of the research. There are many ocean currents. Temperatures vary along the path of each current. The agencies that report average global temperature (agt) only use the temperature of the part of each current path that happens to be at the surface. Thus the contribution to the agt reports varies even though there is no intrinsic net gain of loss of energy over the entire circuit of each current. There are many different currents of which PDO is only one. The discovery is the net effect of all of the currents and is better identified as Effective Sea Surface Temperature (ESST). So replace all references to PDO with ESST. The discovery in time and magnitude is the ESST which produces the observed match of measured values. The last ‘why’ relates to simply a detailed instruction of how to do the arithmetic.
124081. Dennis at 05:01 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        I describe Dunning-Kruger as the "know enough to be dangerous syndrome" or "ready, fire, aim!" approach to scientific analysis. The references to E-G. Beck are a perfect example. I've seen his name come up from time to time, but almost universally not by trained, established, scientists. Where scientists do raise his name (the realclimate post is one of the longer ones), they dismiss his work very easily and then move on to the next topic. Case closed. Doing a little research I found enough about him to realize that he's a self-published semi-amateur climate scientist (his degree is an MA biology and he retired from teaching high school). That alone is not enough to dismiss his research, but it's also not enough to cite his work as another in a long line of "see! see! the science isn't settled!" type of debate. If Beck wants to be a good scientist, he needs to stop self-publishing his papers and spend some time answer his critics so he can get his work published by those he considers his peers. From what I can tell (perhaps a little too much that it makes me dangerous here) he thinks he's right, everyone else is wrong, and prefers to work against the scientific community rather than with it. What the scientific community needs to do is spend a little more time on the "case closed" aspect of dismissing Beck's work. That will make it easier for interested non-scientists like me to identify the Dunning-Kruger effect coming from people like Beck.
124082. Ned at 04:44 AM on 16 February 2010
        Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
        The net effect of GH ghasses is therefore to reduce the maximum temperaturs that would be otherwise acchieved, Consider the moon,. Its daytime temperature is 105`C. It gets this hot because it hasnt got an atmosphere. Er, sorry, but no. The moon's daytime temperature may average +105C, but its nighttime temperature is around -150C. Thus, the mean temperature of the moon is around -20C. Now, the earth's albedo is higher than that of the moon, so if the atmosphere had no effect (or a cooling effect, as you claim) then the earth should be cooler than the moon. Fortunately for us, water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere raise the earth's mean temperature via a phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect.
124083. Gianfranco at 04:39 AM on 16 February 2010
        Understanding Trenberth's travesty
        With reference to my question 32 above, how about "dismal"?
124084. eio at 04:21 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        I think the biggest misconception is folks confusing "Weather" with "Climate." I like to offer this simple analog: "Weather is to Climate is like Moment is to Time." In geometric parlance, points vs. lines... Or "events" vs. "trends." A co-worker of mine, when hearing an news account of the recent cold weather back East, announced "So much for Global Warming." Several minutes later he was discussing our unseasonably WARM weather here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. "I don't remember it ever being so warm in February..." He exclaimed. To which I replied: "SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL COOLING!!" We both laughed!
124085. Chris G at 04:12 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Karl_from_Wylie at 16:18 PM on 15 February, 2010 Aye, convincing those with a limited understanding is the whole game, isn't it? Many have lamented this; Gavin Schmidt comes to mind. Let's divide the population into two groups: those that have a working understanding of Stephan-Boltzmann, absorption spectra, and statistics (A), and those that don't (B). So far, any model or argument that group B can understand, is also so simplistic that it can be shot down by anyone in group (A), or even just countered with something that isn't really a counter of any substance. That situation leaves the person in group B at the whim of whoever sounds better or their own predispositions. So far, that needle has proven to be a tough one to thread. Unfortunately, I see it as a bit like trying to explain thermodynamics to a child in order to keep them from burning themselves on a hot stove. Even the simplest explanation is not enough to keep them from being skeptical until they touch it.
124086. ConcernedCitizen at 03:53 AM on 16 February 2010
        Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
        @Ricardo At 15 microns the sun produces 180 times as much energy as the earth. It is irrelevant how much energy the sun produces in the visible, it is the energy emmitted by the earth and absorbed by CO2 which is key. Your Siki link states: "Thus heat is easily let in, but is partially trapped by these gasses as it tries to leave. " This isnt true. Visible energy is let in, not heat. The heat of the sun is bloocked by the same GH gasses as block the heat going out. The difference is that thr sun produces far more heat than the earth. The net effect of GH ghasses is therefore to reduce the maximum temperaturs that would be otherwise acchieved, Consider the moon,. Its daytime temperature is 105`C. It gets this hot because it hasnt got an atmosphere.
124087. jimalakirti at 03:40 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        I use the Bertrand Russell test of my competence in technical subjects where I lack expertise: "When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; when [they] are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgement." Bertrand Russell. Just a quick guide for me when I wade into unfamiliar waters. It is also a nicely parsimonious method of deciding which articles one takes the trouble to read.
124088. Suspicious mind at 03:20 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Excuse me for my humanistic over-simplifications here, but it seems to me that the D-K effect manifests in people who believe they are correct while everyone else is grossly misinformed. For D-Kers, there is no intellectual give and take, only efforts to reinforce one's own position while snubbing what might be an intrusion of reality. I think we could all benefit by moving the debate to three areas: Does mankind has the ability to impact climate change going forward? To what extent should governments control its industry and citizenry in terms of greenhouse gas emissions? If climate change is a planetary response to overpopulation and increased industrialization, should we be preparing ourselves to deal with the consequences, which may very well include the planet ridding itself of a large portion of humanity?
124089. Ned at 03:13 AM on 16 February 2010
        Skeptical Science housekeeping: iPhone app, comments and translations
        Actually, that "Recent Comments" thing on the Profile page is odd. Those clearly aren't our own recent comments, and they're not the most recent comments posted by anyone (you can see that list by clicking "RSS Comments" under the "Search" window at the top left). I guess they're a sample of someone's recent comments from an unknown part of the site, where "recent" means an arbitrarily long period of time. :-)
124090. Raybender at 02:54 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        @JonMoseley: You wrote: "The only way one could scientifically come to the conclusion that "CO2 mixes well throughout the atmosphere" (in the context of what you are arguing) is to MEASURE CO2 throughout the world, introduce a significant increase in CO2 into one location, and then MEASURE the rate at which the marked increase in CO2 diffuses throughout the world." You mean like this: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11194 ? AIRS measures CO2 levels in the atmosphere with global coverage (from orbit). As you could see if you followed the link (you won't), levels at the time of measurement vary from 376 to 386 ppmv. Go ahead and compare that variation to the scale of the graph above. So, not only is your comment woefully (willfully?) igorant of basic atmospheric physics (like turbulent mixing of non-condensing gases), it isn't even an objection that survives confrontation with data.
124091. Ned at 02:36 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        CO2 for the past 80 or 90 years has been increasing in the atmosphere at the rate of 2ppm. To double from its current 385 will therefore take almost 200 years The rise in CO2 concentration IS accelerating -- in the 1960s it was increasing at less than 1 ppmv/year; now it's increasing by over 2 ppmv/year. The discussion of "doubling" generally refers to doubling from its preindustrial concentration (i.e., going from 280 ppmv to 560 ppmv), which, if you project the past 50 years' accelerating trend, will happen sometime around 2070. That seems like a long time from now but it's well within the expected lifespan of my own daughter. Doubling from the current concentration would happen a few years after 2100. The oceans are not the source for the rise in atmospheric CO2 -- in fact they're taking up CO2 from the atmosphere. The 2+ ppmv per year increase in atmospheric concentration is only a small portion of what we're emitting. The rest goes into the oceans (where it has the side effect of decreasing the pH). See the work of Takahashi et al. over the past couple of decades, which has amply demonstrated this.
124092. carrot eater at 01:53 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        Bob Armstrong, 105, you've made at least one basic error. Real materials are not grey bodies; their actual emissivities are functions of wavelength. Therefore, the earth's albedo in the visible wavelengths does not set any requirements on the earth's emissivity in the IR wavelength range. This becomes even more important with greenhouse gases, which are very much different from grey bodies. In general, if you think you've applied some introductory level physics and discovered a major flaw in a scientific field, you should probably re-examine.
124093. CBDunkerson at 01:39 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        The Beck paper cited a few times is itself a classic example of this D-K effect. Beck is a high school biology teacher with no background in climate science. In reading about the work of Guy Stewart Callendar (who had been dead 40 years when Beck published) he objected to the fact that Callendar had discarded CO2 readings which he took to be anomalous due to proximity to industry. Beck felt that this was 'cherry picking' of the data and for his report went back to the same sources Callendar had used, but kept in the anomalous readings. The problem of course was that Callendar's results had long since been confirmed by proxy readings and the smooth curve (rather than Beck-like roller coaster swings) of the continuous CO2 records. The results of Beck's paper were provably false before he ever published it... he just wasn't aware of scientific progress in the half century following Callendar's effort. Beck had a partially valid objection... Callendar's selection of data COULD have been incorrect. It was an 'educated guess' on Callendar's part that global CO2 levels did not make wild swings over the course of just a few year. Had Callendar been wrong about that then his conclusion that wild fluctuations were due to local industrial emissions might also have been flawed and his results all wrong. But rather than checking further into subsequent science, which had proved Callendar's 'guess' correct, Beck just assumed that Callendar had it all wrong and proceeded to produce a study that was decades out of date. It would have been a solid rebuttal to Callendar in the 1950s, but in the 2000s it was just a bad joke.
124094. Nick Palmer at 01:01 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        John - I've been arguing with a rabid sceptic/denier on a sceptic website and he came up with the "argument" below CO2 for the past 80 or 90 years has been increasing in the atmosphere at the rate of 2ppm. To double from its current 385 will therefore take almost 200 years His point was based on that if climate sensitivity estimates are that temperature goes up about 3 degrees C per doubling then we have far longer to wait or act (or not be bothered to act)than the IPCC view. This looked like a new denier argument to me that I hadn't seen before. I pointed out that IPCC graphs of projected CO2 levels must take into account increased outgassing of sequestered carbon from the oceans and permafrost as things warm up (which must, if his math about PPM/year stacks up, be much much greater than our emissions). He responded that if the oceans etc were warming due to a natural cycle, or indeed us, then we haven't seen anything like an acceleration in the CO2 ppm/year rate yet. On the face of it, his argument does seem to show that CO2 levels are not rising at a dangerous rate yet. I have my own ides about how to answer this conundrum but what am I missing?
124095. Ned at 00:36 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        Whoops, sorry for misspelling Socolow.
124096. Ned at 00:35 AM on 16 February 2010
        Is CO2 a pollutant?
        Marcus, I agree. I am often struck by the way in which a single comment will combine an absurdly high degree of "skepticism" towards mainstream climate science with a completely speculative assumption about the costs of action to mitigate climate change. There is a lot of peer-reviewed work that's been done on assessing the economic costs and viability of actions to reduce the magnitude and impact of climate change. We could start out with Pacala and Sokolow 2004 and go on from there. But in my experience, very few of the skeptics/contrarians/denialists (whatever term you prefer) are aware of, or interested in discussing, that part of the literature. They tend to just take it for granted that reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions will obviously cost immense sums of money so why bother to even discuss it?
124097. Spencer Weart at 00:22 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Dave Keeling, the originator of the CO2 curve, often known as the Keeling Curve, confronted all these issues. His first clear data came not from Mauna Loa but from Antarctica... you'd think that was pristine, but it turned out to have fluctuation problems thanks to CO2 emitted by generators in the outpost. Keelng's solution was (a) measure CO2 continuously, and look for the flat low points on the curve indicating the "baseline" level when wind wasn't blowing from the generators... or, at Mauna Loa, the volcano vents; and (b) measure at a number of places around the world, again looking for the lowest and steady "baseline" level. For the whole story see my essay at http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Kfunds.htm
124098. Ned at 00:18 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        jpark writes: Is this blog turning into sneer review rather than peer review? Actually, this blog pretty much is the best there is when it comes to discussing the peer reviewed literature on climate change. Go to the archives here and click on any of the more science-y topics and you'll see that John spends a LOT of time reading and discussing the literature. Given the amount of time and effort John donates to this more-or-less thankless task, I think you should probably be able to cope with the occasional post, like this one, which tackles the "meta" question of why exactly some people fall for some of the more absurd claims. For example, comment #4 in this thread (by Westwell) refers to the work of E.G. Beck. Now, everybody with even a passing understanding of the science involved knows that Beck's "CO2 record" is nonsense. Many people elsewhere have written at great length explaining why Beck's claims are nonsense. As I understand it, Steve McIntyre has banned discussion of Beck's work from his climate audit site because he understands that that stuff is nonsense and that hosting discussion of it would just make his blog (and the skeptic cause) look foolish. So ... John Cook could write a carefully documented explanation of why the Keeling CO2 record is right and the Beck CO2 record is wrong. And maybe he will do that someday! But when you get to "skeptic" arguments that are as willfully blind as that, I think the more interesting point is not why they're wrong but why someone would believe them. As I understand it, that's what this thread is about.
124099. Tony O at 00:16 AM on 16 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        Dunning Kruger effect is not the only trap. My global warming education has been entirely by the internet. So I may have heard or even read the latest papers and yet still be stunningly ignorant of the basics. Read a few papers on a subject and a degree of understanding ensues. Paywalls are a problem, I am not paying to read a paper that I will not understand entirely and may not understand at all. Word usage is a problem. Google methane hydrate and read a bit can give a different understanding than Googling methane clathrate and reading a bit. Knowing who to trust is a huge problem, and if you place your trust in a unreliable source the path to truth can be delayed a long time. Even for the trained seeing what you are looking for can be problem. For the untrained it is an immense problem.
124100. Marcus at 23:37 PM on 15 February 2010
        The Dunning-Kruger effect and the climate debate
        jpark, thingadonta did the usual contrarian trick of trying to equate climate science with religious belief, & tried to link climate science to some big bureaucratic conspiracy-both of which he- should know are deletable offenses on this site-as should you. His point was *not* valid because-unlike the Aztecs-our knowledge of the modern climate is based on direct, scientific observation of cause, effect & correlation (amongst other things)-not on the basis of an edict from some priestly caste-no mater how much the contrarians might say otherwise!

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