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Comments 124751 to 124800:

124751. Tom Dayton at 01:51 AM on 29 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        A good rebuttal to D'Aleo and Watts is provided by John Nielsen-Gammon (Prof. of Meteorology at Texas A&M U., and Texas State Climatologist). But that portion of that blog post doesn't start until about one third of the way down; look for the paragraph that starts "Meanwhile," or Find "Watts." Includes a numerical example.
124752. Tom Dayton at 01:32 AM on 29 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Ubique, Ian Plimer is a poor choice to hold up as an "eminent geologist." His opinions on climate are complete nonsense--not just wrong, but really far, far off. Just one of many places you can find detailed rebuttals to his claims is Deltoid.
124753. inthewoods at 01:05 AM on 29 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        John - thanks for the response - the NOAA article was the reference I was looking for. I'm just curious - WUWT seems to have devolved into just a load of total nonsense that is obviously nonsense. ClimateAudit.org seems to still have an air of "trying to be somewhat scientific" (when you weed through all the FOIA and BS email analysis) - I'd love to see a more through take-down of his analytical posts....anything in the works there or just too much work for too little benefit?
124754. Ubique at 23:37 PM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        NewYorkJ(#28 Thank you for that. I am neither a convinced sceptic nor alarmist - just an average guy trying to make sense of all this stuff as I have a professional interest in the application of this science. But it seems that one cannot be neutral in this debate - so at the moment I must err on the sceptic side as I am still asking questions and trying to keep an OPEN mind rather than trying to BROADEN it as John suggested rather tartly in his response to my post. I was thinking of Professor Ian Plimmer when I said eminent geologists, not the author of Geocraft who I would not know from Adam - apologies if I implied the latter. As a result of "Climategate" I am not sure whose information to trust - along with a great many other people on the edge of this issue I would imagine!
124755. Jesús Rosino at 23:33 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        Congratulations, John. I very much liked your article, sounds very natural and it's easy to follow, well fitted to the general audience. It highlights the recurrent skeptical strateggy of arguing with insinuations instead of with actual analysis. It's much quicker and they can produce many more (flawed) arguments, while real scientists spend their time in the (much more time-demanding) real analysis (to be published once the flawed conclussion has already spread out). This is the standard style of Climate Audit, for example. As Winston Churchill said, ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on’. People must learn to discern what the real scope and implications of a discovery is. Eg. "I discovered a handful of trees crowded together in northern Siberia with a divergence problem". Does it prove that all reconstructions of global temperature over the past 1,000 years are wrong? You don't need a leading scientist doing the hard work to know that insinuations don't prove anyting. Exactly the same with poorly-sited weather stations and Anthony Watts' gratuitous insinuations.
124756. Marcus at 22:57 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        Oh get real RSVP, do you honestly think that our researchers are so thick that they haven't considered everything you've mentioned, & account for it in their calculations? What is of concern is the warming which has occurred in the last 60 years, which has been measured by suitably reliable measuring stations. Seriously, I really don't know why you're so keen to make excuses for the "head-in-the-sand" approach taken by the Denialist Cult.
124757. Marcus at 22:54 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        RSVP, if its winter where you are, then why are you surprised that the temperature is -7 degrees? Here in Australia most of the country has had temperatures at least +2 to +3 degrees C above average for the last 3 months (Adelaide temperatures for November were more than 5 degrees above average), & AMSU-A shows global January 2009 temperatures to be more than +0.2 degrees above those of 2009-your little corner of the world clearly doesn't represent the world entire. Also, I don't believe we have 100 years to fix the problem. Satellite & surface temperatures are in agreement-+0.16 degrees per decade since 1979. As we don't know for certain just how had the impacts of future rises are going to be, I think it would be irresponsible to wait 100 years to "double check". If we don't take serious action within the next 20-30 years, I believe it will be too late to avert a truly catastrophic rise in temperatures. The fact is that, had we listened to the scientists 20 years ago, instead of letting the fossil fuel industry have its way, CO2 mitigation would have been a *hell* of a lot cheaper!
124758. RSVP at 22:38 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        yocta This is taken from the site "Temporal Representativeness In addition to difficulties with the correct exposure of instruments, thought has to be given to changes in the long-term exposure of the site. Buildings in close proximity to the instrument enclosure will result in the area of representativeness being reduced. For example, when the instrument enclosure at Sydney was installed in 1788, the instruments were representative of a relatively wide area around Sydney. With subsequent construction of high-rise buildings and freeways, climatic and meteorological conditions only 50m from the site are now significantly different to those at the site. It is important that the station be inspected regularly and any changes in the siting are properly documented." 1788? Aside from the site, what about technology? Was there even a universal standard set of measurements in 1788? I must be going nuts, or is it the CO2?
124759. Riccardo at 21:51 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        HumanityRules, the use of the raw readings of a station to construct a long time serie is a myth, too many things change with time. Indeed, making a reliable time serie is the most difficult part and a lot of effort has been put to make the raw reading reliable over time. There is no way to extract usefull climatic information from raw data. You can get some general idea of the process from the NCDC itself; no mistery, no hiding.
124760. HumanityRules at 21:45 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Update 28/1/10 John could you explain homogenization and interpolation and their relation to raw and adjusted data. because it seems what Watts is complaining about is the interpolation process which he call homogenization. I think!
        Response: Interpolation and homogenization are two different things. The strict definition of interpolation is filling in the gaps between data (as opposed to extrapolation which is extending beyond your data). In the case of surface temperature, it's been observed that there is strong correlation of temperature anomaly between adjacent regions so interpolation into regions where no measurements have been taken can be done with some degree of confidence.
        
        This is also somewhat related to geospatial averaging - Tom Dayton posted a good explanation of that here... 
        
        Homogenization is the process of adjusting the data to remove spurious biases. For example, moving a weather station to a different location, changing the instrument that measures temperature or changing the time of day that the measurements are taken can all impose warming or cooling biases on temperature readings.
124761. yocta at 21:21 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has a nice little page of the requirements for Australia's Automatic Weather Stations , with details including where they are and site requirements. The site lists exactly the things a trained metrologist needs to consider when seeting up any decent temperature monitoring system: Resolution, Repeatability, Response time, Drift, Hysteresis, and Linearity. It is interesting that in all of this that Watts and the WUWT members seem to forget that America is actually not the world. Australia is of pretty comparable surface area wise to America and if the stations here report a similar warming trend... I wait with keen eyes for Watts full analysis!
124762. RSVP at 20:15 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        It is -7C, 9:10 in the morning (daylight "savings"), not a cloud in any direction, the sun shining bright and beautifully. I am suppose believe it is warmer than it should be. "Please Sun, do your thing." The thought of hundreds of bogus weather stations occupies me after seeing this theme now repeated. 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. And I am not talking about termocouple specs or a thermometer's rating. I am talking about the system as a whole (its total accuracy), and how it is set up. (The graphs of figure 2 in the original article were plotting values to within a tenth of a degree, which implies an accuracy of +-.05. Spectacular, but real?) If a pristine mountain peak in the middle of the Pacific makes sense for monitoring CO2, why not apply similar rigor for weather stations? Instead of trying to salvage this data, maybe better to start from scratch. Dont we have 100 years or so to work on this problem? Much cheaper in the end too. Aside from issues of accuracy, another important system parameter is repeatability. Repeatibility that can be guaranteed over many years. If you were to simply take the sum of measurements over time from a set of reliable and repeatable instruments, (even if every sensor was buried in a 1 meter cube of cement), this global checksum would tell you something about global warming, because it is the relative change that matters, not the absolute temperature reading. My last remark. The continental US doesnt exactly seem like the best location on Earth for monitoring global warming.
124763. HumanityRules at 20:11 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        doug_bostrom at 17:07 PM on 27 January, 2010 doug, while being a scientist, it's not really the science of climate change I'm interested in, it's the politics. So no I haven't been clinging to any ideas for years. I keep coming back to John's website because I find it challenging and I try to critically appraise it for that reason. The reason I asked those question. Maybe summed up as is instrument change the only real factor in microsite issues of stations because come the adjustment process there appears to be multiple points at which data is adjusted. The following image is a site that got alot of coverage on skeptic sites, it's Darwin Airport, Australia. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/_graph_cru-darwin7.jpg While there is a big jump in 1940 (maybe location change) there are also many small, positive changes from 1940-1980 giving an apparent trend. What is the justification for these if the Menne 2010 paper has ruled out almost all influence from microsite changes?
124764. HumanityRules at 20:02 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        Congratulations, very prestigious.
124765. inthewoods at 19:47 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        John - I remember reading about a construction of the temperature record using only the sites that WUWT considered "good" - and the conclusion was that the record lined up perfectly with other records. Do you happen to remember the article or have a link?
        Response: I'm just going from memory here so anyone chime in if I get the details slightly wrong. Early in the history of the surfacestations.org project, one of the users John V took the existing ratings and compared the temperature trend from the best weather stations (rating 1 and 2) to the GISS temperature record. The expectation was that the GISS temp would show a warmer trend as it included all those poorly sited stations besetted with microsite influences. Instead, John V found the good weather stations showed a near identical trend:
        
        
        
        While this result was initially met with dismay, Watts rallied and criticised the result, saying it was made with only a small percentage of stations being rated. I believe some time after this, Anthony Watts made the data on station ratings unavailable to prevent any other data analyses comparing good and bad weather stations - but I'm not sure of the timing of this.
        
        The next analysis was by NOAA who also published an analysis comparing only the good stations to the total record (NOAA 2009):
        
        
        
        Again, the trends are near identical (you expect some discrepancy as both records cover slightly different regions). Watts criticised this result as a result of homogenisation (data adjustment) of both the good data and the full dataset. That's why Menne 2010 is interesting in that it uses unadjusted data - this is where the cooling bias is revealed.
        
124766. jpark at 19:01 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        ... I am behind the curve as ever ;-)
124767. jpark at 18:57 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Maybe not yet... quote: I realize all of this isn’t a complete rebuttal to Menne et al 2010, but I want to save that option for more detail for the possibility of placing a comment in The Journal of Geophysical Research. When our paper with the most current data is completed (and hopefully accepted in a journal), we’ll let peer reviewed science do the comparison on data and methods, and we’ll see how it works out. Could I be wrong? I’m prepared for that possibility. But everything I’ve seen so far tells me I’m on the right track.
124768. jpark at 18:52 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Helpful? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/rumours-of-my-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/
        Response: Already updated the article above responding to Watt's latest post, which is a little disappointing but understandable if he's saving his best material for peer review.
124769. Albatross at 16:00 PM on 28 January 2010
        Guest post in Guardian on microsite influences
        John, excellent job. Thanks for agreeing to do the article. Education on the science behind climate change is key to helping the general public come to terms with what is happening with AGW and what is expected to happen as AGW ramps up in coming decades. I hope that they ask you back to speak to other issues, and that you accept. I've being trying to encourage the editor of one of our provincial newspapers to have a regular column for the purpose of educating the public on climate science and meteorology but to no avail.
124770. Tom Dayton at 15:21 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000 asked "I think this is a lot of geospatial averaging of the monthly anomalies and the mean anomaly which goes on prior to actually making our comparisons of temperature anomalies, right? Why was this done? What is the effect of doing it? Would the results be different if you didn't? "Gridding," as geospatial averaging is called, is not just useful. It is essential because we are trying to measure the temperature of the Earth, not of the thermometers. The thermometer manufacturer might be interested in the thermometers themselves in order to assess, oh, say manufacturing quality, so the manufacturer might not care where the thermometers are located. But we use thermometers only as a means to measure the temperature of the Earth's surface. Measuring the temperature of the Earth's surface requires taking a representative sample of the Earth's surface. We do that by dividing the surface into equal sized grid squares and finding a single temperature for each grid square. Then we average all those. The result is an average temperature that equally weights every grid square. In contrast, if we simply averaged all the thermometers regardless of their location, we would have an unrepresentative sample of the Earth's surface. Imagine that on the entire Earth we had only 1,001 thermometers--1,000 in Death Valley but only one at the North Pole. If we simply averaged all 1,001 thermometers' temperatures, the resulting single temperature would be a gross overestimate of the Earth's temperature. It would be nice if our thermometers happened to be distributed completely evenly, because then we could take the shortcut of simply averaging all the thermometers. But in reality, thermometers are very nonuniformly distributed. So we must gather a representative sample of the Earth's surface by computing only a single temperature for each grid square. If one particular grid square happens to have 10 thermometers and another grid square happens to have only 1, then that first grid square's temperature (the average of those 10) probably will be a better estimate of that square's "true" temperature. But its estimate will not be biased in any direction, compared to the square having only a single thermometer.
124771. Doug Bostrom at 15:09 PM on 28 January 2010
        The IPCC's 2035 prediction about Himalayan glaciers
        Philip64 at 22:22 PM on 27 January, 2010 "Where did this IPCC response appear? I would hope in The Sunday Times itself, but given the way that paper is sliding on this issue, I wouldn't be surprised if that was not the case. " Only on the IPCC site itself, as far as I know, and then picked up by ClimateProgress, possibly other sites. It's not stinky enough to be picked up by newspapers.
124772. Doug Bostrom at 15:05 PM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000 at 05:51 AM on 28 January, 2010 "But I'll be interested to see if anyone challenges these findings. " Reputations partially depend on it. I'm sure somebody's scorching a spreadsheet even now, trying to salvage the original hypothesis. It'll be a challenge, though. The basic mechanism at play is a lead pipe cinch. Want to see an actual skeptic? Look no farther than Mennes.
124773. Doug Bostrom at 14:56 PM on 28 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        Berényi Péter at 08:49 AM on 28 January, 2010 "You guys sometimes remind me to jinxes at the end of the nineteenth century preaching doom because of ever increasing traffic and transportation. According to them all the great cities of the world should have been buried under heaps of horse dung long ago." Bah. We're not doomed, we're like roaches. But we don't have to live like insects, either. There's a big difference in population, some 5 billion or a 430% increase since 1900. Expecting to draw a useful conclusion from 110 year old population data is a mistake.
124774. Charlie A at 12:52 PM on 28 January 2010
        The IPCC's 2035 prediction about Himalayan glaciers
        I have found a peer reviewed paper from Geophysical Research Letters that supports the AR4 findings! Indeed, they are a bit more aggressive in their prediction in that they expect the total area of glaciers in all of the Tibetan Plateau to be reduced from 500,000 sq km down to 100,000 sq km by 2030 --- a full 5 years earlier than IPCC. So the IPCC now has a peer reviewed article to use as a reference if IPCC wants to put into ar5 a statement similar to the one in AR4. There are just 2 problems ---- Cruz et al (2007) is actually chap 10, WGII, AR4.; and the area given in the paper for total glacial area in the Tibetan Plateau is laughably incorrect. (See for example the WGMS - world glacier monitoring system -- numbers. See Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources, http://bprc.osu.edu/Icecore/Kehrwald%20et%20al%202008.pdf Key quotes from the article: "The surface area of glaciers across the TP is projected to decrease from 500,000 km2 measured in 1995 to 100,000 km2 in 2030 [Cruz et al., 2007], thereby threatening regional rivers and water resources." "Himalayan glaciers have been retreating more rapidly than glaciers elsewhere in the world [Cruz et al.,2007]." I have not been able to determine how the AR4 500k sq km of Himalayan glaciers became all of Tibetan Plateau in the peer reviewed article. Nor have I been able to determine how the date for reaching 100k sq km was changed to 2030 from 2035. Does anybody have any idea how these changes came about?
124775. canbanjo at 10:36 AM on 28 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        If 2 of the richest countries that have huge areas of desert with the best solar pv potential (USA / Australia) can't even build big pv farms then what hope does africa have?
124776. Marcus at 09:47 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        @17. The only reason temperatures were so much warmer several million years ago is because CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were several times higher than they are today. The entire Quaternary period has been dominated by an average global temperature of 15 degrees C, which seems to be the ideal conditions for human agriculture & civilization. The only way in which we'll see a return of "hot-house Earth" is if (a) solar irradiance increases substantially or (b) we return CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to levels unseen since the Cretaceous Era. Such a scenario would undoubtedly bring an end to human civilization.
124777. NewYorkJ at 09:32 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Ubique (#24), I'm not sure Monte Heib (author of geocraft.com) is an "eminent" geologist. From what I gather, he's intimately tied to the WV coal mining industry. No surprise he wants to push the idea that burning coal is harmless. Scanning his site, I find his writing style to be a bit weird: "Human's did not cause the greenhouse effect, but critics maintain human additions to atmospheric greenhouse gases may cause global temperatures to rise too much." Who are these "critics"? Why not just say "scientists"? Perhaps he sees them more as "critics", since their research has implications for his industry. "Generally understood, but rarely publicized is the fact that 95% of the greenhouse effect is due solely to natural water vapor." Common skeptic fallacy: http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm "Overall, U.S. temperatures show no significant warming trend over the last 100 years (1). This has been well - established but not well - publicized." Interestingly, he then follows with a chart of U.S. mean temperature that shows a strong linear trend through the period of record.
124778. Tony O at 09:27 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Thanks John, A really interesting topic. Very much related is the question of short term climate sensitivity to long term climate sensitivity. Once the slow feed backs are added it would appear the climate can be extremely sensitive to tiny changes in forcing. But it does not follow that it will continue to be as extremely sensitive once the slow feed-backs have run their course. Or have I misread Ruddiman? (always possible)
124779. LucAstro at 09:20 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Great post. A minor flaw I think is to plot the solar TSI curve and then discuss forcing. In the case of solar forcing, one divides the TSI values by four, right? From your first plot, one would infer that the difference between the Maunder Minimum levels and current solar activity is of order 1W/m2, which, if divided by four, would be quite close to the values of solar forcing that you quote, that is: ...between 0.17 W/m2 (Wang 2005) to 0.23 W/m2 (Krivova 2007).
        Response: "In the case of solar forcing, one divides the TSI values by four, right?"
        
        Close. Firstly, yes, to convert the change in Total Solar Irradiance to radiative forcing, you need to divide by four (the difference between the surface area of a disc which is how Earth absorbs sunlight and the surface area of a sphere). But you also need to remove another 30% of this value to take into account the albedo of the Earth.
        
        So Solar Forcing = ΔTSI * 0.7 * 0.25 = ΔTSI * 0.175
        
        Wang 2005 found the change in TSI since the Maunder Minimum was ~ 1 Wm^-2. This translates to a radiative forcing of 0.175 Wm^-2. Similarly, Krivova 2007 finds the increase in the solar total irradiance since the Maunder minimum is 1.3 Wm^-2 which translates to a radiative forcing of 0.2275 Wm^-2.
124780. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 09:15 AM on 28 January 2010
        The chaos of confusing the concepts
        I think some illustrative movies are called for. Experiments. 1. Non-chaotic convection (from above): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhImCA5DsQ0&NR=1 2. Mildly chaotic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbRzeXPuJIo&feature=related 3. Jupiter's weather is both chaotic (f.ex. the red spot) and turbulent (eddies of all sizes): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjU_CJWzAd4&feature=related ----------- Simulations. 1. Non-chaotic Rayleigh-Bènard convection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRjSXBLvIFo 2. Chaotic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yBz4U7Xbmc&feature=related 3. Strong chaos/soft turbulence (but still nice): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGvXK_qb5fY Enjoy!
124781. andrew adams at 09:03 AM on 28 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        Of course it would be profoundly wrong for wealthy industrialised nations to prevent developing countries from expanding their economies and making their people more prosperous. But it is also irresponsible to suggest they continue the increased burning of fossil fuels, given the effect that continuing global warming will have on those countries - rising sea levels in Bangladesh and increased desertification in China for example. Which leads us to a quandry - how can we increase the prosperity of those countries and at the same time ensure they contribute to the neccessary cuts in GHG emissions. It ain't an easy one, but surely those industrialised nations, being responsible for much of the problem and having themselves become wealthy whilst burning fossil fuels with merry abandon have a moral duty to help provide a solution. The kind of global fund mooted at Copenhagen would be a start but it will need other imaginative solutions as well. Now personally I like my comfortable western lifestyle, I enjoy jetting off on foreign holidays and I have no desire to don a hair shirt and live in a yurt. But I don't see how there is a solution (not to mention that we also have to sort out our own GHG emissions) without some pain on our part.
124782. angliss at 08:50 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        I've got a paper at home about a field study that didn't find evidence of the LIA in a fjord off the Antarctic Peninsula. Good stuff, and in my "blog queue." I'll see if I can dig it up and post the link here tonight.
124783. barry1487 at 08:50 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Keep in mind the difference between genuine curiosity and argumentativeness, and remember to keep the peace. The patience here is quite commendable.
124784. Berényi Péter at 08:49 AM on 28 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        doug, the sun is OK, but the key is "more or less efficiency". At the moment it's rather less. Except hydropower, perhaps. However, almost all the easily exploitable sites are already in use and there is also the issue of environmental damage. Which, in this case, does not need rocket science to be demonstrated. If millions of people should be relocated from their homes in a short time frame because of a single industrial project, it stinks. All the other "alternative" energy sources either do considerable damage to their immediate environment or are prohibitively expensive, making government support on taxpayers' money a must. Even with these caveats dismissed alternative energy could only serve a tiny portion of demand. The perfect technology to exploit solar power is of course around for at least 700 million years. The only problem is that plants are not power plants. That is, they were not designed to serve a single purpose or at least this purpose was not to collect solar energy but to make some more plants, similar to them. Of course this end is impossible to achieve without an energy collection and storage system, but they also have many other devices which are not needed for simple power generation. They are much better suited for food production, because we ourselves and our domestic animals are definitely designed to exploit plants. Not just the energy contents, but also a gazillion of raw and prefabricated materials stored in them along with fat and sugar. The long term solution is to build specific molecular machinery to do the twofold job of capturing radiation in some not too flammable/explosive but still energy-rich molecular complex (e.g. sugar) using atmospheric carbon, storing the stuff locally then another module, a fuel cell would transform it back to CO2 while generating electricity as needed. The solar panel itself would be a closely packed matrix of such micron sized modules with appropriate interfaces to the power grid. It is possible. But it becomes economically viable only if such solar panels would not cost more than plain old roof tiles. In order to achieve such a price drop for a macroscopic size intricate, well defined and functional molecular structure, self replicating programmable nanobots (assemblers) are needed as manufacturing devices. A whole lot of them. The technology is in the pipeline, but still needs much work. And I do mean much. Also, molecular nanotechnology has its own grave dangers. In the meantime if one wants to banish carbon based fuels, we are left with nukes. Nature is ruthless. Or you can go back to ax and spit, I'd rather not. The basic raw material for MNT is carbon with its marvelous structure forming capabilities (also exploited by life); conceivably airborne carbon, saving transportation costs this way. Should the technology become mature, carbon dioxide depletion of the atmosphere becomes a real threat. It should be replenished. Using coal, oil and natural gas of course (I am not sure they can be summed up as fossil fuels). Otherwise one is forced to default to limestone, risking ocean alkalinification. You guys sometimes remind me to jinxes at the end of the nineteenth century preaching doom because of ever increasing traffic and transportation. According to them all the great cities of the world should have been buried under heaps of horse dung long ago. If you want to fight for something really beneficial, insist on accounting rules should be changed (there are [flawed] multilateral treaties behind it). Gifts of nature (like a native forest or a clean river) would be registered according to their re-production costs, not production costs as it is practiced now (and which is zero, of course). With the new accounting system the phenomenal economic growth of China during the last few decades would nearly vanish, for example. The reproduction costs of a pleasant environment for people there are prohibitive. It's a loan with a rather high interest rate, missing from the books. Also, alleged "free competition" between European and North American work force and semi-slave labor under communist rule is preposterous. An extra duty should be established on goods coming from countries where workers' rights are not honored, amounting to the difference in extra profits won by oppression. Nothing destroys technological progress more effectively than cheap labor. Who would invest in R&D if productivity is not an issue?
124785. Ubique at 08:34 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Although a little out of date perhaps, this page gives this issue a much wider perspective than a mere 450000 years: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html It is interesting to note that a number of eminent Geologists are sceptics - perhaps because they look at this issue from a wider perspective - tens of millions of years, not just a few thousand. There is also information on the Geocraft site that would seem to suggest that in the past there has been no demonstrable relationship between atmospheric levels of CO2 and the onset of an Ice Age.
        Response: We touch on the past relationship between CO2 and temperature in CO2 was higher in the past. If you really want to broaden your mind on the CO2 relationship with climate, I strongly recommend viewing the excellent lecture by Richard Alley, The biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History.
124786. dhogaza at 07:40 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        Geo Guy needs to talk to some Astronomy Chick, who would make clear that we know where we are in the current milankovich cycle ...
124787. sbarron2000 at 06:31 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Ned at 05:21 AM on 28 January, 2010 Ned writes: "Just curious -- do you expect that the results of such a follow-up study would be different?" If all of Menne's assurances about everything being well-correlated, and his sample sizes being significant, and his calculated temps are correctly independently verified, then no, I don't expect a different result. 40% of 1200 should be a big enough sample size to see how things work. But once the program is set-up, it should be easy enough to run those additional stations through and see what happens. And just at a glance, I wonder about how well represented some "grids" actually are. Texas has 13 sites, Illinois has maybe 30? CA has 40ish, but NM has 3? I couldn't hurt to get some more temp. data to fill in those big blank areas on the map in Figure 1, could it?
124788. angliss at 06:11 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        jpark, you clearly don't get it for some reason. So let me try again, this time with a couple of quotes from my post on the Menne paper at scholarsandrogues.com "Watts says that the new station “may” report higher temperatures. But do we know for certain that it will? Determining what effect the AC unit and shade tree have on the temperature measurement requires an actual analysis of the temperature data from the new thermometer and location. Watts’ white paper has no such analysis." and "[Watts’ based that conclusion entirely on qualitative information known as “metadata” (information that may or may not affect the accuracy of a measurement) rather than on quantitative (mathematical) data analysis. With respect to thermometer measurements, the proximity of the thermometer to a heat source like an AC unit or an electrical transformer is metadata.... The problem is that metadata is a tool to determine if there might be a problem in the real data, but it takes actual data analysis to establish if there’s a problem." If you care to read the rest of it, here's the link: http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/01/25/us-temp-record-reliable/ If you don't understand the importance of the Menne argument after all the explanations other commenters have offered here, after reading what John has written, after reading what I've written, then something else is is preventing you from reaching that understanding. It remains to be seen what that something else is.
124789. sbarron2000 at 05:51 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Right, doug_bostrom. But you have to admit, even Menne says the results are counter-intuitive. If those are the numbers, then there you go. But I'll be interested to see if anyone challenges these findings.
124790. Geo Guy at 05:44 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        One final comment - the Greenland ice sheet is melting at its periphery. In a warming climate, both melting around the margins and precipitation in the interior increase, causing the ice sheet to grow in the middle and shrink at the edges. The added weight of snow accumulation in the center creates pressure forcing the ice to flow out towards the edges. http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010100/a010152/ http://www.co2science.org/articles/V8/N44/C1.php
        Response: A common way that skeptics mislead is by focusing on one narrow piece of data while neglecting the broader picture. Greenland is a classic example of this form of misdirection. The CO2 Science page you link to talks about Greenland gaining ice in the interior - hence they conclude "the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to accumulate mass" and "This finding does not bode well for those who have cried "the ice sheet is shrinking" so vociferously and for so long a time".
        
        However, satellite gravity measurements of the entire Greenland ice sheet find that it's losing ice mass at an accelerating rate - in fact, even faster than the much larger Antarctica.
        
        
124791. NewYorkJ at 05:32 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        "Considering the skeptic aversion towards alarmism," I find so-called "skeptics" to be highly alarmist. Most of them claim that moving away from fossil fuels will result in economic catastrophe - a conclusion not supported by any objective economic studies. As to the topic of this post, possibly avoiding an ice age 50,000 years from now might be a benefit of global warming, assuming human civilization survives that long (but what of the next 100 to 1000 years). I occasionally see skeptics argue this point, in between claiming global warming isn't an immediate problem so there's no need to worry.
124792. Doug Bostrom at 05:31 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000 at 21:16 PM on 27 January, 2010 "If you're open minded, should you be so quick to dismiss skeptical discussions of this paper? I don't see how." This situation unlike many others (such as teasing out glacial mass balance, etc.) is extraordinarily simple. Mennes' paper nicely describes the gross effects that are going to entirely dominate the record. Further scrutiny may refine his result, but it's not going to change the main message.
124793. Geo Guy at 05:30 AM on 28 January 2010
        The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
        One of the criteria needed for an ice age to occur (beyond lower temperatures) is precipitation. As long as the arctic ocean remained frozen year round, the arctic climate was arid with very little annual precipitation. Now with the arctic ice disappearing, we will likely see greater precipitation happening in the northern hemisphere. During the last ice age, a part of the arctic waters remained open, thereby fueling the snow which accumulated as ice. Another point - the cold air patterns that engulfed North America this past winter - dipping as far south as Houston Texas which got snow, followed a similar pattern to the continental glaciers that covered a part of North America some 12,000 years ago. Finally, assuming that the patterns depicted in the temp graph illustrating temps for the past 420,000 years, it would appear that we (the earth) are due a relapse of falling temperatures which could be the initial stages of an ice age.
        Response: "assuming that the patterns depicted in the temp graph illustrating temps for the past 420,000 years, it would appear that we (the earth) are due a relapse of falling temperatures which could be the initial stages of an ice age"
        
        Can I recommend that you find the place in the above article where it says "Our current interglacial began around 11,000 years ago. Could we be on the brink of the end of our interglacial?" then continue reading...
124794. Riccardo at 05:30 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000 #108 "If it's so obvious, Riccardo, why just yesterday did you say..."mathematically (and i'd say logically) the choice of the baseline is totally irrelevant?" It was a joke ... a few weird analogies just to say that the baseline does not matters ...
124795. Riccardo at 05:26 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        "But you lost the voter right there. 2 degrees 5 degrees, what the heck, who cares." Here jpark has a point. Indeed in our ascientific America or Europe or world or whatever, we see how it's diffucult to explain even the basic arithmetics of trend and anomaly. We have some examples in this discussion where we are dealing with supposedly interested and informed people. And Watts knows this very well, he knows that a picture is much more valuable than a graph and that the only thing that matter is to repeat the same claim obsessively.
124796. Doug Bostrom at 05:24 AM on 28 January 2010
        Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
        Berényi Péter "scientists are for doing science, not politics. These guys missed this subtle point, so they deserve their fate." Watts et al are making this all about politics. They highlight whatever defects w/IPCC processes they can, to score political points. At the same time they carefully ignore or downplay those results which are unquestionably dependable, all with an eye toward driving public policy. That's political activity. Surely this is obvious? I also think you underestimate the inability of the average person to compartmentalize the message that Watts is sending; it's not just climate scientists who are going to be dragged down, but epidemiologists, materials researchers, others. This is going to be extraordinarily destructive to public policy outcomes springing from a wide array of fields. I honestly do not understand your remarks about renewable energy being "crap" when just a paragraph later you extol the virtues of the fusion power plant available to us just 1 AU distant. With the exception of geothermal power, renewable energy resources have in common that with more or less efficiency they're all powered by the local fusion plant. As you say, it is dependable and free to the extent we can figure out how to exploit it. W/regard to particular technological choices as substitutes for fossil fuels, I'm fairly convinced that we're going to require a widely heterogeneous mix of resources because of the bulky amount of energy required as well as the contextual sensitivity of particular technologies versus deployment scenarios. I'm frankly amazed at how the same group that is in consensus about climate change fragments into a disorganized rabble of constituencies flogging particular technological hobby horses; lack of pragmatism as well as fond wishes for the financial success of various proprietary systems is a serious hindrance to progress.
124797. jpark at 05:24 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Nope, Ned, def for the science. I am not super familiar with Watts blog or this one here (I like Pielke Jr site tho) and am still learning the basics. There is a lot in the news that makes people like me who are not familiar with the science wonder what it is all about. But I must stop now because I dont think I am adding to the discussion any more - thanks for your patience and the links - will keep reading.
124798. Ned at 05:21 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        sbarron2000 writes: "I like to see a follow-up study that used more than 40% of the available stations, though." Just curious -- do you expect that the results of such a follow-up study would be different? Because my understanding is that the anomalies are generally well-correlated over long distances (hundreds of km). So you should be able to get a good representation of the US from a relatively small number of stations (see, e.g., John V's analysis). Since the 40% are reasonably well-distributed spatially, my guess is that adding more stations won't have a major impact on these findings. I suspect that's the reason why Watts didn't actually follow through on his plans to provide a comprehensive analysis of the trend data when they reached 75%. If he did such an analysis, my guess is it yielded results similar to those shown here.
124799. Ned at 05:15 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        jpark writes: "I agree about the andecdotal evidence, I see the argument in Menne et al and appreciate it but - and I apologise for the repetition because it must be boring to read - if that is the best argument for countering Watts paper then Watts 'wins'. It may be ancedotal but it looks more real than all the trends of Menne et al. Might be an illusion, I dont know, that's why I was hoping I would find more here - that's it really." No offense, but it sounds like what you're looking for is entertainment, rather than actual science. That makes sense, since Watts's blog is basically about entertainment. (Or, to be more precise, entertainment with an ideological agenda....) I do hope you'll take some time to browse through the archives here. I think you'll come to agree that the clown show over at WUWT eventually gets old, but that reading and discussing science on a site like this has a lot more to offer.
124800. sbarron2000 at 05:08 AM on 28 January 2010
        On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
        Thanks for the statistics info, Tom. After doing some research, it seems that if the errors found in the weather station measurements are random, they will be washed out by the averaging, and if they are systematic, they are washed out by using the anomaly chart. I like to see a follow-up study that used more than 40% of the available stations, though. Maybe Watts will do that one himself.

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