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Comments 124701 to 124750:

124701. J Bowers at 05:52 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Berényi Péter at 21:45 PM on 30 January, 2010 "Once again. Forget communication & messages, it is not the scientist's field of expertise. Go for truth instead. " Read up on Hugh Hammond Bennett, scientist and 'political player', and how both his scientific endeavour plus ability to play the political game led to solving the Dust Bowl problem of the Great Depression. http://www.soil.ncsu.edu/about/century/hugh.html Pay close attention to the trick he used during a crucial Senate committee in March 1935; something many scientists would be pilloried for today, but then most in the US would also be eating sand today ;)
124702. carrot eater at 05:42 AM on 31 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Philip64: The SPPI report is just a grab-bag of old nonsense. Most of it is based on simple understandings of how anomalies are used, as well as weird conspiracy theories about stations. The conspiracy theory about station-dropoff is easily dismissed by looking an openly published papers from long ago about the sources of the GHCN, and is further discussed here. http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/01/kusi-noaa-nasa/
124703. Riccardo at 04:52 AM on 31 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Philip64, not sure i'll waste my time going through it because, looking at just the table of content, they do not address the only relevant point, the impact on the temperature records. All the rest (111 pages!) is propaganda.
124704. Doug Bostrom at 04:49 AM on 31 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        Berényi Péter at 22:18 PM on 30 January, 2010 "What is more, they would not even promote economic, intellectual & spiritual development in those regions. Glass beads for the natives. " Avast there, you have to spend more time looking, less time thinking! That whole sentence was conjecture, and wrong. You can do better. In point of fact, one of the remarkable benefits of these tiny private solar installations I've described is the gift of reading. In the kind of subsistence economy I'm speaking of, these devices mean the difference between being able to read versus sitting in the dark. They have been a boon to education. And it's a global phenomenon, most visible in Africa but true also for instance in Mongolia or wherever a grid is not present. No, 15W panels are not going to supplant Western style grids. I guess my original point was, the first 15W bring a huge benefit; a little electricity brings a significant fraction of the benefits of electrification and this is particularly visible where a grid has not inculcated huge expectations and waste. Perhaps also as with the example of cellular phones leapfrogging copper telecommunications systems in developing nations, assuming that a Western style grid is a mandatory prerequisite for social progress is something to consider carefully.
124705. Riccardo at 04:47 AM on 31 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000, "Fortunately, the sites with good exposure, though small in number, are reasonably well distributed across the country and, as shown by Vose and Menne [2004], are of sufficient density to obtain a robust estimate of the CONUS average (see their Fig. 7)" They have 71 good stations. In Vose and Menne 2004 they found that the coefficient of determination for both maximum and minimum temperature reaches 95% already with 25 stations. There's no reason for concern.
124706. Doug Bostrom at 04:33 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Berényi Péter at 21:45 PM on 30 January, 2010 "Once again. Forget communication & messages, it is not the scientist's field of expertise. Go for truth instead. " Many scientists have made human communications their primary field of inquiry. Humans of course must be treated as something akin to molecules of gas when it comes to making predictions of aggregate populations, but it is possible to make predictions about human integration of new ideas into existing mental models with a fair degree of confidence Unfortunately, scientific research on communications indicates that conveying truth is not always a simple or easy task, even when the truth being conveyed is not accompanied by controversy and competing attempts to distort understanding. Even when a third party is not waving a brightly colored, distracting blanket and yelling "Hey, look over here!", effectively conveying such things as the difference between weather and climate is fairly challenging. Selecting a means of conveying a concept that is robust against such challenges improves the probability that any given recipient's understanding will be improved. As to ocean heat content, the measurement issues you mention can be resolved easily enough for relatively microscopic amounts of money, sufficient to yield numbers with reasonable confidence. The very little that has been spent on that effort is entirely encouraging.
124707. sbarron2000 at 04:11 AM on 31 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Also, why does Menne 2010 not provide an average temperature in C anomaly chart that compares adjusted and unadjusted good sites and bad sites? Wouldn't that be the easiest way to show whether there is a difference between the two types of sites? Right now it only provides maximum and minimum anomaly comparisons. Which while interesting, and I'm sure you can learn a lot from them, isn't really the standard way which we compare temp anomaly, is it?
124708. sbarron2000 at 04:03 AM on 31 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Riccardo, I agree with you that there is plenty of room for good readings. But are the stations in question in such locations? Because if they're not, then the difference of means adjustment appears to attempt to correct tainted measurements using other tainted measurements. That can't be a good thing, can it? Carrot eater, I'll be the first to admit that I don't fully understand what the difference in means test is doing. I have only glanced at Menne 2009, and would probably need to see the actual calcs to figure out how the test is conducted anyway. My comment is only intended as a way to consider the adjustments that Menne 2010 makes, and its possible effects on its findings. Like, what is the effect of running the difference of means test on data that you know is considered poor, because of the site rating? Like must be done when Menne 2010 seperates the good sites from the bad. Does correcting badly sited temp stations using other badly sited temp stations have some unforseen effects? The same is done to the good sites, and there are way fewer of them. So any influence might have a larger impact with the smaller sample. Just thinking out loud again.
124709. Albatross at 04:01 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Someone has been talking about global thunderstorm activity and global warming. First, it is important to remember that we do not have a long record of reliable global lightning flash data (accuracy ~500 m, detection rate >80%). In N. America there are only about 10 yrs worth of spatially and temporally continuous lightning data (and coverage over the Tundra and Arctic is not great). This is not really long enough to draw any conclusions regarding trends. There are some global lightning networks which use a variety of technologies, but they miss a large portion of the strikes/flashes. There are also remotely sensed lightning data from space, but these can only detect nocturnal lightning. Anyhow, so we still do not have a monitoring system that adequately captures and quantifies global lightning activity. For a thunderstorm to form one requires: 1) Instability; 2) Low-level moisture and 3) A trigger mechanism to lift a "parcel" to its level of free convection (LFC). Note that temperature does not appear explicitly(it is included implicitly in all three though, e.g., increase in instability through differential heating in the vertical, air can hold more WV as temp. goes up, surface heating may be enough alone to lift parcels to their LFC), and that each one of these requirements is alone not a necessary and sufficient condition for a thunderstorm. All three need to be satisfied simultaneously. So, as someone who has some expertise int his area, would argue that lightning is not necessarily the best metric for tracking global warming, and also, that we are really not in a position yet to adequately monitor global lightning activity. There are suggestions that lightning actvity may be increasing over high latitudes of continents in the N. Hemisphere in response ot the warming there, although we do not really have sufficient data yet to speak to trends. Anyhow, my point is that is there is a strong lightning signal to GW, then it will likely be evident in lightning activity over high-latitude continental areas in the N. Hemisphere during the warm season. PS: One must also remember that GW may also result in more lightning activity in some areas, but less activity in others b/c of desertification, for example.
124710. Philippe Chantreau at 03:33 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Keep your hasty judgments to yourself RSVP, my computer is powered by hydro.
124711. Philip64 at 02:41 AM on 31 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Watts and d'Aleo have just published this paper at Robert Ferguson's 'Science and Public Policy Institute'. It's claims are pretty wild. Apparently we can throw all temperature records out the window, because ALL of them are effectively faked. It might be worth addressing these claims in detail, if time can be found. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf
124712. Riccardo at 02:27 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        EdB, unfortunately the hockey stick is stil there, up and running. More on the divergence problem here
124713. EdB at 01:55 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        I'm new here. Can someone explain how the proxy records validate that the Medieval warm period was cooler? I thought McIntyre demolished the Hockey stick(Mann), and the Yamal tree(Briffa)? What other reconstructions are out there that prove it?
        Response: EdB, welcome to Skeptical Science. Just one reminder - please post comments on the relevant page. A search for hockey stick (note the search form in the left margin) would point you towards the hockey stick is broken page. Here, you will learn that since Mann's hockey stick paper in 1999, there have been a number of temperature reconstructions made using a variety of techniques (not just the PCA analysis employed by Mann) from a number of different proxies (eg - stalagmites, ice cores, boreholes, tree rings, etc).
        
        Then if you have any further questions, you can continue the discussion there which is the best place for such a topic.
124714. Marcel Bökstedt at 01:43 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        > Berényi Péter I agree with you that monitoring the global average of the surface temperature is not the best way to measure climate change, and that OHC sounds like a more interesting number. As you say, it might not be so easy to measure this. You might be able to estimate how much heat going in or out at the surface of the ocean, but there might also be unknown heat exchange between the ocean and the underlying rocks - or maybe you can ignore this? Anyhow, you claim that OHC is decreasing. This does not seem to agree with the source cited at http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-ocean-cooling-disprove-global-warming.html. Do you have some reference to back up your claim? I do not understand the relevance of lightening activity - why is there a strong relation between this and global temperature? Even granted this and granted your claim that global lightening activity is constant, why does this measure anything more relevant than surface temperature which we measure directly anyhow, and which we seem to agree is not necessarily the best parameter to monitor.
124715. Riccardo at 01:27 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        RSVP, not sure to represent the thinking of our guest, but it looks like this site is devoted to science more than technology. Although very interesting and important, it's outside the scope of this blog. IMHO.
        Response: My original plan was to begin with a focus on science and as the public debate moved on from the scientific question of what's causing global warming into the question of what to do about it, Skeptical Science would move into that area too. I must confess we're not as far along as I expected to be at this point.
124716. Riccardo at 01:20 AM on 31 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Berényi Péter, you put a lot of different pieces together trying to disprove all of them. Let me pick them one by one and let me not quoting the relevant scientific articles to save time; they can easily be found if you're interested. it looks like you are not much confident with indirect measurement. Although the problem of AGW si definitely a problem of energy imbalance, temperature is one of its manifestation. It is (good old) standard practice in science to use indirect measurements to guess what is not accessible directly. OCH is a good indicator and it has been increasing for decades. Do you want to bet using just a few recent years? Is this a "standad statistical practice"? And why limit to a depth of 750 m? In the end, OCH in not so well characterized as anyone may wish and surface temperature do a good enough job. On this last point, you are missing that most part of the temperature record does not come from land. Indeed throughout the oceans the surface temperature is assumed to be the sea surface temperature and, surprise!, there's no controversy between the various data sets, at least if the "standard statistical practice" applies. Sea level measurements do NOT depend on any particular tide gauge and crustal upward/downward motion is quite well known and often measured. The relation between SLR and temperature is uncertain to the extent the other contribution (other than temperature) can be evaluated. It can be done and, allowing for the uncertainties, the are not contradictory. Please excuse me if i'll be i little harsh in what follow, but too often you sceptics claim to have found the smoking gun, the nail in the coffins, the final word. It just makes apparent your desire to put the discussion to an end. The last "infatuation" for the lightnings is silly. It's not a well characterized technique and, above all, it does not represent the whole water vapour content, even of just the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere. True that water vapour is carried there by strong upward transport in thunderstorms but it's not the whole story, not even the largest part but what is measured is the frequency of the events, not the amount of water vapour carried up in the atmopshere. There are no nails in the coffin here, just one more little piece of information; claiming that it "falsify the models" is absurd and inviting us to "go for truth" is arrogant.
124717. SNRatio at 00:28 AM on 31 January 2010
        The IPCC's 2035 prediction about Himalayan glaciers
        @39 Berényi Péter Peer review only implies that _some_ kind of quality control has been applied. Lots of crap pass through all the time, the basic premise is not that it is correct, but that it could be, and that the bad parts will be contradicted by new work and left behind. This is certainly not good enough, as we have a number of recent examples to demonstrate. In this situation, using results just because they have passed peer review is certainly not very skeptical.
124718. SNRatio at 00:01 AM on 31 January 2010
        The IPCC's 2035 prediction about Himalayan glaciers
        32, @koyaanisqatsi The standard value for the dry adiabatic lapse rate is 9.8 deg C/km. Just compare observed mean surface temperatures vs height in the same regions, and compare to the lapse rate. In warming, the height/melting temperature point would follow approximately that curve, not the lapse rate. Which is why glaciers are very sensitive to temperature, not insensitive as the lapse rate relation would imply. Freezing level is not the only determinant either, for temperature, precipitation and their relationship is not constant, and sublimation may also be important.
124719. MP at 23:16 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Yet another article that fails to stimulate a more informed debate between the main protagonists of the pro and anti AGW camps. Why was Ian Plimer not invited to respond directly to the contents of this article and the subsequent postings? Who knows, we all may learn something from such an exchange of views which could help us to inch forward in creating a broader consensus of the issue of climate change and the most appropriate mitigating measures that should be implemented.
124720. RSVP at 22:26 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Berényi Péter You are definitely speaking in the right direction. I would add that temperature matters as far as total ocean temperature averages. The issue as you say is all about energy, not weather. Weather is but a symptom. The other side of the coin are sustainable energy alternatives, which are played way down at this site. Everybody is waving the flag for change, quantifying the problems, but zero quanitifying when it comes to alternatives.
124721. Berényi Péter at 22:18 PM on 30 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        OK, I see your point. However, small but still expensive solar panels, not produced locally and with no grid or battery backup whatsoever would not change global energy usage patterns. What is more, they would not even promote economic, intellectual & spiritual development in those regions. Glass beads for the natives.
124722. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 21:47 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        The article and the comments are interesting and have opened my eyes a bit more about why such discussions are so difficult. In an internet forum discussion when people do not know each other, we naturally tend to relate most to those with whom we agree. Therefore when an 'alarmist' responds impatiently to a 'skeptic' who is simply trolling or flaming or continually interrupting a discussion with silly throw-away lines, other skeptics react as if the impatient response is directed at all skeptics and 'group offense' is taken. Re scientists and the public, I'm betting that many scientists rarely mix with people of normal intelligence let alone people of low intelligence. When they socialise outside their field it is generally with people of equal or nearly equal intellect, so they aren't that practiced at communicating with the person in the street. Nor should they have to. That's the job of science communicators. Actors like Monckton appeal to emotion not intellect. For many people, emotion is a much more powerful force than reason. I bet most people who attend Monckton's performances don't even remember what his 'arguments' are, but they do remember the force with which he put them and that they agree with him, whatever he said.
124723. Berényi Péter at 21:45 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        doug_bostrom at 12:13 PM on 30 January, 2010 "I wonder if making surface temperature the main communications message regarding climate change is not a fairly big mistake. Surface temperature is a crummy proxy for measuring actual climate change, especially when oceans dominate the scene. We don't live in the ocean, after all, yet oceans are where most of the current energy perturbation is going" It IS a mistake. As you say, average surface temperature is a "crummy proxy". It's NOT just a matter of communication skills, it really is one. There is simply no physical law about "conservation of temperature", temperature budget can neither be measured nor calculated. The very concept does not make sense. Also, surface temperature records suffer from all kinds of biases, trends in global averages ARE controversial. Automatic pattern recognition based data homogenization as it is practiced by climate experts is not a standard statistical procedure. It is NOT used in any other branch of science, and for a reason. OHC (Ocean Heat Contents) is much better. Atmospheric & soil heat content is negligible compared to oceans, most of the stored energy in climate system is heat, because below 30 miles elevation LTH (Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium) holds, and even better, we do have an energy conservation law, so in theory energy budget can be both measured and calculated at TOA (Top of Atmosphere) as the difference between ASR (Absorbed Shortwave Radiation) and OLR (Outgoing Longwave Radiation) fluxes. OHC should follow rather closely the temporal integral of this quantity. Unfortunately measurement is not up to the task yet. The low temporal frequency part of ASR-TOA (which is amplified by integration) is far too noisy to draw any conclusion. On the other hand OHC, at least in the upper 750 m of oceans, if anything, is slightly decreasing right now. There is no known mechanism to transfer and sequester so much extra heat into the abyss (which is not measured) as projected by climate models. Sea level as a proxy to OHC is also problematic. The low temporal frequency part, which determines long term trends, is NOT measured by satellites. It should be calibrated by tide gauges. But they only measure relative elevation changes between sea level and adjacent seashore. As crustal blocks are in continuous vertical motion either up or down comeasurable to sea level changes, the calibration depends on choice of the gauge set to be calibrated against. However, all is not lost. At any one place there is a strong correlation between lightning activity and surface temperatures. You don't even have to be a climate scientist to verify this connection. Global lightning activity can be assessed by measuring Schumann resonance amplitudes at any one spot on the face of earth. And it is measured indeed, since mid 1960s (the effect itself was discovered in 1952). There is NO long term trend detected in Schumann resonance activity. It plainly contradicts current "mainstream" global warming theory. If theory is falsified by measurement, it should be abandoned. It is not a communication issue, just this is how science works. There is NO contradiction between low vs. high climate sensitivity according to Monckton & Plimer as you claim. The very concept of climate "forcing" is flawed. Global climate may be sensitive to some changes (like ice sheet cover, orbital variation or solar UV) while insensitive to others (like CO2). It is not correct to readily covert each forcing to W/m2. They act on different parts of the climate system, can and do have different structural effects. It is certainly not the case that rising carbon dioxide levels have no climatic consequences. The atmosphere should reconfigure itself to accommodate to the changing composition. Even if global integrated heat contents of the system is not going to any definite direction, just fluctuates around an equilibrium level, there still may be transients and regional effects. However, sticking to already falsified models based on the "constant upper troposphere relative humidity principle" (of course there is no law for conservation of RH) is definitely not the way to proceed. This way you don't even have a chance to guess what atmospheric reconfiguration processes might in fact be going on. Once again. Forget communication & messages, it is not the scientist's field of expertise. Go for truth instead.
124724. HumanityRules at 21:41 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        #5 ScaredAmoeba I had a look at http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php but they reference Gerlach 1991. It seems a well referenced estimate. Anybody read Gerlach 1991? It's an EOS paper so only AGU members get access. Is EOS all opinion, news, reviews, no original data? If that's the case does anybody know the reference for Gerlach estimates?
124725. RSVP at 21:34 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        doug_bostrom A better comparison is one who would like to have a coke with ice in the middle of the desert, and the closest thing to water is a mirage at a 100 yards.
124726. Doug Bostrom at 19:11 PM on 30 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        Berenyi Peter at 08:32 AM on 30 January, 2010 That post sort of goes "splat" against reality. "as soon as solar power becomes cheaper than other sources, it would not need government subvention on taxpayers' money.." In the real world situation in Africa I described, there is no other electrical power source and the installations are not paid for by taxation. "Until that time it may make sense (on increased cost, not exactly for the poor) if there is no power grid nearby. " In the real world situation I described, the users are definitively poor by almost any measure, and there is indeed (as I mentioned) no grid whatsoever. "It is not just about solar panels, battery packs are of more concern (and pricey)." In the real world situation I described, these are not sufficient deterrents to stop people from enjoying the benefits of electricity, solar in this case because that's all that's available. "Earth is round, sun is not up all the time. " In the real world situation I described, that is apparently not a problem for the consumers. They do not complain, they simply use the watthours available. You were describing something hypothetical. You are intelligent and a gifted writer, but you spend a lot of time in your imagination. I was actually describing something that has the amazingly wonderful and irreplaceable virtue of existence.
124727. Doug Bostrom at 18:50 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        RSVP at 18:18 PM on 30 January, 2010 "I think hypocrites would be a better term given that every computer that hits this site is ultimately powered by oil. " If I prefer beans but the menu offers only toast, does that make me a hypocrite? If somebody botches a gratuitous insult directed at nobody in particular, am I likely to add them to my list of influentials?
124728. RSVP at 18:18 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        To CoalGeologist You raise some interesting points, but my bias doesnt necessarily coincide with yours, which I find humorous. What I do agree with is that the debate tends to have a psychological component which only addresses this theme through mild (or not so mild) insults. But the debate also has a political cast not unlike the progressive movement that challenged monarchisms going back for the last 300 years or so. The oil companies and deniers are the royalists, and the opposition in fact are the rabble. The problem of course is when you chop off the head of the king, then what? Maybe rabble is too generous. I think hypocrites would be a better term given that every computer that hits this site is ultimately powered by oil.
124729. iskepticaluser at 17:55 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        YES! The communications aspect is critical if public understanding of the climate issue is ever to reach a point that would allow an effective, escalating and lasting price on carbon. Several issues come to mind: 1) the possibility that evidence - no matter how solid, unequivocal and well-presented (by me) - is filtered through preconceptions, value-frames and habits of thought (by others) before it even reaches the stage of conscious evaluation ("The Political Mind" by George Lakoff and "Don't Believe Everything You Think" by Thomas Kida are two references I'm exploring); 2) the question of how compact the AGW narrative could be made for newcomers to the issue: what is the smallest and most defensible set of arguments (lines of evidence) - supporting the conclusion that the threat is real, urgent, and solveable by doing THIS - that would engage enough people to the degree where they would in turn engage others? 3) the possibility (or need?) to address the continuous onslaught of deliberate misrepresentation (and libel?) of climate science and scientists (can the effectiveness of formal rules of evidence and right of cross-examination so evident in the Dover trial a few years back (concerning attempts to introduce creationism into Pennsylvania classrooms) be harnessed? Any ideas on how we can further explore - and act - on this issue? hdmclean@consciousclimate.com
124730. j k purc at 13:12 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        An outstanding article on an important issue, well done! It seems impossible to have a resoned debate if one of the parties is prepared to lie. It is even more difficult if one of the parties repeats the lies of others as if they were fact. Trying to drill down to find the source of the lies adds so much heat to the discussion as to make it an aggresive exchange. This is the model for almost every discussion I have had with deniers, some of whom I love. I am now intrigued as to how these otherwise fine and rational people come to be active in a movement which is so vehemently anti social. I think the appeal of the deniers is essentially emotional and science is apparently piss poor at appealing to emotional motivators. CoalGeologist and stevecarsonr offer excellent examples of combining emotional truth with rational argument, Thank You. I strongly agree that slow and patient is propobably the only way to really address the communication gap. Unfortunately it is difficult resist the temptation of a dismissive reply. I shall try harder, by starting at the beginning and avoiding the arrogance I have displayed in the past. There is no quick fix to this or any other complex problem...damn
124731. stevecarsonr at 12:57 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Jim Eager #24 Even then I am thinking that it would need to be demonstrated that the spatial distribution didn't matter to the climate result. Because albedo of solar insolation at the surface has a high variation, not so for LW flux received. From the billiard ball model it doesn't: heat in=heat out. But how about a 3-d model? I have a dumb question: ------------- I always assumed that the TOA figure for GHG was in relation to the effective SW climate absorbed radiation: E.g. 240W/m^2. Not referenced to 340W/m^2 of solar radiation averaged across the earth's surface prior to albedo effects, and not referenced to S=1367W/m^2. Then in "Radiation and Climate" by Taylor and Vardavas (only can see a few pages online) they compared GHG forcing to 1367W/m^2. Perhaps in a general non-technical way, it was only p9. So then I thought, maybe I have been making the wrong assumption all along. But I cannot find the answer anywhere. Everyone knows the answer. What is it?
124732. Doug Bostrom at 12:13 PM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        MattJ at 20:45 PM on 29 January, 2010 "But here is the real problem: scientists well aware of the threat of AGW have never taken a scientific approach to understanding how the general public forms opinions, and so is outmanouvered by professional deceivers like Monckton every time." Not by climate scientists, of course, but there is quite a bit of research being done into how people think about climate and what sort of mental models they employ in dealing with the topic. Some of the findings are encouraging, some are depressing. Significantly, the research says that differentiating between weather and climate really does continue to be a challenge for laypersons even when discussions on the topic are stripped of all distracting politics and acrimony. Is confusion between climate and weather a problem with listeners, or communicators? Looking at mental models research versus continued poor results with educating the public about climate change, I wonder if making surface temperature the main communications message regarding climate change is not a fairly big mistake. Surface temperature is a crummy proxy for measuring actual climate change, especially when oceans dominate the scene. We don't live in the ocean, after all, yet oceans are where most of the current energy perturbation is going. Look at Dr. Hansen's recent essay on winter cold snaps, how horribly messy it became because he had to deal with separating weather from climate plus natural variability. It may not be possible to convey a thorough understanding of surface temperature before eyes glaze over. Some means of expressing total heat content of the ocean-atmosphere system could well be a better way to go with communications. Calories might be a natural for this; laypeople do have a fairly good understanding of a calorie as a unit of energy. If Hansen had been speaking in his essay of total ocean-atmosphere heat content, none of the weather distraction would be needed and the variability portion would automatically be simpler and easier to convey.
124733. Berényi Péter at 11:37 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        "Greenhouse effect" of water vapor is determined not by column integrated moisture contents, but upper tropospheric specific humidity. There is a strong correlation between global lightning activity and upper troposphere water vapor contents, because it is deep convection in tropical clouds (also generating much lightning) that transports vapor up there. Global lightning activity can be monitored from anywhere on Earth through Schumann resonance amplitude history. Using this indicator, no long term trend is observed in lightning activity. So. There is no strong positive humidity feedback, climate models indicating otherwise are disqualified, climate sensitivity to elevated CO2 levels is low. Q.E.D. You can check it for yourself. $ wget -r -w 10 --random-wait ftp://www.ncedc.org/pub/em/sr/ UCB USGS NCEDC Magnetic Activity and Schumann Resonance http://www.ncedc.org/ncedc/em.intro.html ftp://www.ncedc.org/pub/em/README American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001 LIGHTNING AND CLIMATE: THE WATER VAPOR CONNECTION C. Price and M. Asfur Tel Aviv University, Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Israel http://www.ursi.org/Proceedings/ProcGA02/papers/p1146.pdf 20th International Lightning Detection Conference 21-23 April 2008 - Tucson, Arizona, USA 2nd International Lightning Meteorology Conference 24-25 April 2008 - Tucson, Arizona, USA ABOUT SENSITIVITY OF CLOUD-TO-GROUND LIGHTNING ACTIVITY TO SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE CHANGES AT DIFFERENT TIME SCALES IN THE CITY OF SAO PAULO, BRAZIL O. Pinto Jr. and I.R.C.A. Pinto Brazilian Institute of Space Research ­- INPE São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil http://www.vaisala.com/files/About_sensitivity_of_cloud-to-ground_lightning.pdf "It is also generally expected that global lightning activity tends to increase at climate scale in response to global warming (Williams, 1992). However, at present time there do not appear to be any long term trends in the lightning activity (Price and Asfur, 2006b; Markson, 2007), although many recent studies indicate a high positive correlation between surface air temperature and lightning activity (Williams et al., 2005; Price and Asfur, 2006a; Sekiguchi et al., 2006). The lack of a long term trend in the lightning activity may in part explain why there is no specific reference to future changes in lightning activity in the last IPCC report (IPCC, 2007)"
124734. Riccardo at 11:28 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        stevecarsonr, you are 100% right and, i belive, it's what people try to do in this blog thanks to the high signal to noise ratio maintained by our guest. But although it's the right thing to do, it might not always work. Your reasoning assumes the will to learn and an open mind. Take for example the claim that global warming has stopped. You can explain interannual variability, you can explain the statistics of trend, you can explain the effect of ENSO; but what if they reply "yes, but whatever those nice things say, still the temperature has been flat in the last 5 years"? If they do not have a scientific background you might understand why they say so but you're not going to convince them. If they have s scientific background and you know they may understand those things, you'll not convince them either. In a few words, sometimes is ignorance, sometimes is misleading information, but other times is something else, a sort of psychologic block.
124735. stevecarsonr at 10:58 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        CoalGeologist #19 - (also touching on Steve Sullivan #22): "I don't believe it's possible to understand the scientific issues without understanding the difference between skepticism, which is based on scientific reasoning, and denialism, which is based on ideology" I think it is. Radiative physics is just radiative physics. Statistics is just statistics. A scientific argument can be tested and falsified by the evil and the good - and you don't even need to know their inner motives to assess their science. It might be convenient to put labels on people. But even if it's accurate, your labeling will reduce your efforts. If you want a media friendly sound-bite to help circulate an "explanation" of why many people don't believe your position then labels are a good idea. If you want to analyze the various movements for psychology research, then the labels will be a good starting point. If you want to feel good about why you are right and others are wrong, then labels are a good idea. *But* if you want to win people over they are the worst choice. Who here likes being insulted? Oh, no hands? Who here thinks he or she has a "closed mind"? Oh, no hands? Who here thinks he or she refuses to listen to evidence fairly presented? Incredible, still no one.. Is the microphone working? Ask these questions of any group of people, and what results do you think you will get? Try an experiment ================= Take two groups of people who disagree with you on let's say.. climate science. Lecture the first group on why they are denialists and how they are not even skeptics and how they need to listen to real climate scientists - and then present a little evidence. Take the second group and ask them a few questions about what they know and what they think and pick up on a few points and help them understand that little part better. Present some information they might not of heard of. Tell them "you know a lot of people think that because it's actually quite a complex subject, but here's how some scientists try and explain it.." Compare the 2 groups afterwards. Will group 1 or group 2 have learnt more? Which will be more receptive to consensus climate science? Which will go away and possibly change their mind on a few points? I haven't made any great revelations about psychology and I'm sure it's not really controversial(?). And yet some of you are shaking your heads. My question was only: "do you want to change people's minds?"
124736. Marcus at 10:45 AM on 30 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Dead right Jim. More to the point, if rising CO2 levels were the result of a multi-century flood basalt event, then we should be able to tell its origin from the levels of C-13, C-12 & C-14 in the background CO2. The fact remains that the CO2 being analyzed is increasingly showing the same ratios of Carbon Isotopes as you'd find when you burn coal & oil-which kind of points the finger right at fossil fuels, if you ask me!
124737. Jim Eager at 10:38 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        stevecarsonr @17, I meant a 1W/m^2 forcing at surface. For sure an increase in solar output would have different effcts at TOA, such as warming the stratosphere. But it does not take an increase in solar output to increase solar insolation, orbital configuration will do the same thing locally. It's the climate sensitivity to a forcing at the surface that I was comparing.
124738. Marcus at 10:29 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Hey CoalGeologist-a *very* good summary of Denialism vs Skepticism. The AGW also has its own version of the Denialist-what I call the "true believer": they accept the theory of AGW because someone *tells* them its true-not because they've seen the evidence (on newspaper blogs, the True Believers annoy me almost as much as the Denialists-because their unscientific, argumentative approach is usually counter-productive!) Anyway, by contrast, up until around 2002 I'd always ignored the role of the Sun in global warming (I thought CO2 was the *only* culprit). Then someone told me about this Danish Solar Physicist who had shown that global warming could be attributed to changes in solar activity. Rather than ignore inconvenient evidence against AGW, I actually sought out that paper-& became very well informed about the solar contribution to climate. Of course, the paper also showed that the correlation between solar irradiance & global temperatures fell away sharply in the 1970's-a fact which the person who put me on to the paper seemed to have conveniently missed. My point is that, if someone directs me to anti-AGW papers, I'll happily read them because I want to be fully INFORMED. Denialists & True believers tend only to read that which reinforces their belief, whilst ignoring everything else. Hence Monckton's reliance on ACRIM rather than PMOD solar data.
124739. Riccardo at 10:00 AM on 30 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        Berényi Péter, homogenization of a temperature time serie is not a statistical procedure. If, for example, a sensor is moved downhill you correct for the lapse rate. Homogenization means to take into account all the possible sources of bias one can identify.
124740. Steven Sullivan at 09:59 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        stevecarsonr: "There are a lot of people out there really trying to figure stuff out. But they don't have physics degrees, have never read an undergrad book on radiative physics and have only a very hazy idea of "the scientific method". So pretty much anything can sound authoritative." Leaving aside outright ideological/political denialism, the problem is that a lot of those sincere people go right ahead and label themselves as 'skeptics', when in fact they are either misinformed or incompletely informed -- and are either unaware of that or refuse to consider it. You might be put off by what seemed an arrogant putdown of the sincerely interested, but there's an arrogant lack of self-awareness on the 'skeptic' side.
124741. carrot eater at 09:52 AM on 30 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron: I will refrain from commenting on the new US homogenisation method until I'm sure I understand it. I'll just say it's been updated, so if you haven't, then check out the description. This is yet another Menne et al (2009), this one in Journal of Climate. "Homogenization of Temperature Series via Pairwise Comparisons" In terms of whether there are large areas where there are no surrounding rural stations within a reasonable radius: I don't think you'll be able to find such a region. Anyway, we've seen so many analyses that would show that UHI is not contaminating the overall US mean - datasets that only include rural stations, comparisons of calm and windy nights, etc, etc. There's probably good articles on this site to refer you to other papers on that. Be careful; the station rankings here don't necessarily have anything to do with urban warming. In terms of whether there are enough 'good' sites to correct the 'bad', Menne (2010) shows that nicely. They show good and bad, unadjusted, adjusted only for TOB, and with all adjustments. You can see that the main correction in the 'good' is due to TOB, which does not use neighboring stations. For the most part, the neighbor-based correction takes the 'bad' and makes them converge with the 'good'. So that makes sense.
124742. Riccardo at 09:48 AM on 30 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000, you do not need to be hundreds of miles away from a even a large town to get meaningfull reading. Central Park in New York, for example, is almost free of the UHI effect. There's plenty of room in the west coast or Nevada or whatever to get meaningfull readings.
124743. Ed Davies at 09:39 AM on 30 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        RSVP: "It would be nice to know what the measurement accuracy of these systems have on their own. If, for instance, the Earth's temperature was actually rising 0.10 degree per decade, you would need at least +-.05 degrees to even begin to substantial this." If the results are obtained using many measurements from a each of a large number of instruments then the overall trend can be found to much higher precision than the accuracy of individual instruments (if there's no systematic bias in the errors, of course, which is the whole point of the article). You could easily see a 0.1°C/decade increase using only a few dozen thermometers which only had a resolution of 1°C using one measurement from each for each of the 3652 or so days in a decade.
124744. Riccardo at 09:16 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        It looks like a partial account of the difference between the two composites. Ignoring the acrim gap problem, ignoring the problem of the definition of the maximum of solar cycle 21 (NIMBUS 7 before the start of ACRIM-I), dismiss it like a choice of pro- vs anti- AGW theory and simply state that acrim is "most credible" while pmod "does not represent the most likely interpretation" is clearly a biased interpretation. The ACRIM team itself aknowledge the problems while you, despite your nick (that sounds like advocating one side) do not.
124745. Jesús Rosino at 09:12 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        acrim, I also thought that they may have used the acrim composite. However, it's flase that it is "the most credible compilation". All the intdependent proxies of solar activity have backed up the PMOD composite. In any case, the difference is insignificant. http://www.skepticalscience.com/acrim-pmod-sun-getting-hotter.htm http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/here-comes-the-sun/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/here-comes-the-sun-part-2/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/there-goes-the-sun/ http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/pmod-vs-acrim http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/pmod-vs-acrim-part-2 http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/acrim-vs-pmod
124746. sbarron2000 at 09:03 AM on 30 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Interesting. The "difference in means test" is what we're talking about? That seems like it would work great in an area that had one urbanizing site surrounded by several (up to 10) rural sites. But what happens if 7 of the 10 neighboring sites are also seeing some urbanization? There are a lot of (Figure 1, Menne 2010) in areas that have seen rapid poplation growth over the past 30 years (the entire west coast, Arizona, Nevada, etc.). I wonder how effective the differences in mean test works in states where there has been wide spread population growth. It might make finding neighboring sites that are uneffected by their own gradual urbanization increase difficult. And since it doesn't appear there is any specific correction for that situation, gradual locality warming could go unadjusted. And given that only 71 of the 400+ sites were actually deemed "good," There aren't many good sites correcting for the bad sites differing means. Or maybe I'm totally off base? :-)
124747. CoalGeologist at 09:00 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        re: stevecarsonr (Post #3): Your comment and John's reply, address one of the most difficult and frustrating aspects of the climate change debate. I don't believe it's possible to understand the scientific issues without understanding the difference between skepticism, which is based on scientific reasoning, and denialism, which is based on ideology, yet even using these terms "raises hackles" and causes animosity. But unless one recognizes that denialism is a) real and b) not about scientific evidence, it will be very difficult to ever sort out truth from fiction. I know too many people—decent, intelligent people—who have effectively been sucked down into the vortex of "denialism world", where they give credence to arguments that are not scientifically defensible, and can become fixated on "debunking the myth" of anthropogenic global warming. No matter how sincere their intentions initially were, or are currently are, I do not believe they retain the ability to recognize how biased their approach to the topic has become. One colleague of mine, with the very best of intentions, sent me a copy of Ian Plimer's book as a Christmas gift, hoping that it would help me grasp the truth about climate change. How can I convey to him how biased and misleading the science content is without offending him, which I really don't want to do? I agree that there are many people who are legitimately confused and sincerely want to understand the scientific evidence, which is why I so resent the denialist approach. Denialism doesn't increase understanding. Rather it sews confusion. Worse, it nurtures suspicion and mistrust. The issue here is not about being "smart" or "dumb". Rather it's about the ability to recognize bias. This is often very difficult. Understanding the scientific evidence can be challenging enough but when you add in all the bogus arguments and faulty reasoning of denialism, a topic that starts out as merely “challenging” can quickly become overwhelmingly confusing. A key question is whether we sincerely want to understand the science, or whether we are simply looking for validation of what we would like to be true. It's so easy to do the latter, while believing we are doing the former. I have no other way of explaining “skepticism” among many (although certainly not all!) of my colleagues in the fossil energy industry. Yet how can I possibly say this without alienating the very people I would most like to reach? I don't have an answer.
124748. Berényi Péter at 08:32 AM on 30 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        doug, as soon as solar power becomes cheaper than other sources, it would not need government subvention on taxpayers' money and would replace traditional power plants soon. However, a level playground is a must, otherwise economy would suffer. Until that time it may make sense (on increased cost, not exactly for the poor) if there is no power grid nearby. Otherwise the best investment right now is to R&D, not installation. It is not just about solar panels, battery packs are of more concern (and pricey). Earth is round, sun is not up all the time.
124749. acrim at 08:32 AM on 30 January 2010
        Lessons from the Monckton/Plimer debate
        Re your statement: "As direct measurements of solar activity show solar output decreasing since 1980, I was interested to see where his data came from but the graph was gone before I could locate the reference." He was quoting the findings of the ACRIM Compsite total solar irradiance (TSI) - the most credible compilation of satellite TSI observations, which shows a net upward trend during the past 30+ years. The ACRIM Composite uses the results of satellite experiments published by their science teams without alteration. You are familiar with the PMOD Composite TSI which shows a slight downward trend over the past 30 years of TSI observations. Unfortunately the makers of the PMOD Composite made unjustifiable alterations of the published satellite data to conform it to the approximate predictions of TSI proxy models. Use of the PMOD Composite is useful to the AGW GHG hypothesis because it makes solar variability a less likely competitor of Anthropogenic GHG climate change. However the PMOD does not represent the most likely interpretation of the extant satellite TSI database. For a discussion of this and related topics see the ACRIM website: acrim.com.
124750. Tom Dayton at 07:33 AM on 30 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Thanks for the correction and detail, carrot eater!

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