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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 124851 to 124900:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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?
  5. 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.
  6. 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 ...
  7. 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?
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.

  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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...
  14. 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 ...
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    I dont find the Menne et al paper to be about anything real - clever maybe but if this is all about how clever you can be with data from thermometers next to air con units then it is really not at all convincing. I totally agree with your point about anecdotes - I just cant see the point of not answering the basic Watts point which is how can you possibly trust the data. Did you read http://sppiblog.org/news/“horrifying-examples-of-deliberate-tampering-with-the-temperature-data” ?
  22. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    jpark - so what you're saying is that the actual science doesn't matter, data doesn't matter, mathematical analysis doesn't matter, only anecdotes do. What you're saying is that the observation that jets leave contrails means that the chemtrail conspiracy is real. What you're saying is that anecdotes about vaccines leading to an increased incidence of autism is more important than all the scientific studies that have actual data showing no link. I can find anecdotes for anything, but data is what matters. Watts' surface station white paper was thoroughly demolished by Menne et al, and nothing you or Watts can say will change that. The only way that Watts has a prayer of recovering is if he does the actual data analysis he's refused to do for years and finds a fatal flaw in the Menne paper.
  23. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Re causes of the LIA, Ruddiman (2003, 2007, 2008) suggests that a draw down of atmospheric CO2 caused by reforestation in Europe and the Americas in the wake of human population decreases due to pandemics also contributed to lower Northern Hemisphere temps.
  24. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Berényi Péter said:
    Even with that in mind the stability of the last 8000 years is absolutely exceptional.
    That is why it is critical that we stop/slowdown the rapid changes we have introduced into the climate by release of greenhouse gases. Mankind is dependent on a stable climate.
  25. Berényi Péter at 04:04 AM on 28 January 2010
    The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Let's make it straight. We are not heading into an ice age, we are in one from several million years ago until right now. As long as we have huge permanent ice sheets in the vicinities of both poles, it is an ice age. The extent of ice sheets, mainly around the arctic may vary. There are transient warming episodes called interglacials when the northern ice sheet contracts to Greenland. We are just in such a phase. You may also notice in figure 2 that during the brief interglacials climate is more stable than otherwise. Even with that in mind the stability of the last 8000 years is absolutely exceptional.
  26. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    ^Don't you understand? The sun is causing Global Warming by cooling and driving us into an Ice Age. Makes perfect sense.
  27. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    American Thinker also regularly proves that their climate/science writers are dumb as stumps when it comes to actual science. I've lost count of the number of times that they talk about Mars' climate as if it has some bearing on the Earth's climate, especially when they say "Mars is warming, so that explains global warming here on Earth" in the same post as they say "the Earth's cooling trend is driven by the sun." Both statements cannot be true.
  28. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    sbarron2000, any error is variation around the mean. The mean is unaffected. Averaging lets those variations cancel each other out--averaging across stations at the same time, and averaging across times (e.g., averaging all the daily measurements to produce a monthly mean, averaging the monthly means to produce a yearly mean). That's what statistics is about. Basic statistics. High school level. Not the least bit debatable.
  29. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Fascinating stuff thank you - but still only one variable in the the overall equation I would suggest.
  30. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Tom, Aren't we actually saying "the asphalt instrument reads 55 degrees F (+/- 2.5 degrees C for a type 5 station), and the distant instrument reads 50 degrees F (+/-0.5 degrees C, for a type 2 station)? And "Tuesday the overall air temperature in that local area is two degrees higher than it was Monday. So the asphalt instrument reads 57 degrees (+/- 2.5 degrees C for a type 5 station) degrees and the remote instrument reads 52 degrees (+/-0.5 degrees C, for a type 2 station)? Given that degree of error, can we be certain we can draw meaningful conclusions from the "consistent" 2 degree temperature difference found over those 2 days at these two sites? I'm not sure that repeating this process several hundred times, then averaging the results with similar stations creates any more meaningful info than can be had on day-to-day basis. I have not read all of Menne 2010, so maybe they address this. But so far, no one else has.
  31. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Not really, Ned but thanks. 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.
  32. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    jpark writes: "There is too much out there saying the data has been fixed and too little documentation and rebuttal of the charges." You have that exactly backwards. Watts only offers anecdotal evidence (look at this photograph!) and forceful assertions (the data are garbage!) But he refuses to actually do any quantitative evaluation of the trends. The paper discussed in this thread provides a study that was specifically designed to test Watts's claims. As it turns out, those claims are wrong. The impact of individual station siting on the temperature trend is minimal, what impact there is is mostly compensated for by the analytical process ... and insofar as poorly sited stations have a bias, they tend to be too warm in the early years and too cool in more recent years, which means they are underestimating the warming trend. I hope this helps.
  33. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Tom, true. But you lost the voter right there. 2 degrees 5 degrees, what the heck, who cares. Oh, ok then, I wont bother! (Only playing devils advocate there - not trying to be rude!)
  34. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Sorry, my first sentence in my previous comment was supposed to be "It makes no difference to the change across time." (I was writing my two comments in parallel and copy-pasted wrong.)
  35. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    I get it now - cheers, should have checked the link. I thought the part from 1611-1880 was from another source.
  36. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    this was good tho' http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/be-alert-but-wary-on-climate-claims-20100126-mw7z.html
  37. Berényi Péter at 02:47 AM on 28 January 2010
    Peer reviewed impacts of global warming
    doug, scientists are for doing science, not politics. These guys missed this subtle point, so they deserve their fate. Otherwise if carbon dioxide were in fact a problem, all this talk about renewable energy is crap. There is not nearly enough to cover the needs of economy. BTW, according to the principle of cui bono, it must be the nuclear lobby that lurkes in the background. For at the moment nuclear energy is the only viable alternative to burning carbon compounds and it makes no carbon dioxide at all. Hydrocarbon industry comes as a second bet, as coal produces twice as much CO2 than oil or methane for the same energy output. Oherwise energy is NOT a limited resource. We have this huge fusion power plant nearby. At its surface the EM radiation power flux is 63 MW/m^2, total power output is 3.85x10^26 W and it can not even be switched off. It is not availability that restricts usage, but lack of technology. We should work on that (informatics of matter, i.e. molecular nanotech) and forget the rest. Or, if it is really urgent, learn to love nuke. Pour taxpayers money into immediate development of thorium breeder reactors. They do not make plutonium (the stuff used in warheads) and would generate a hundred times less nuclear waste than present day models. Thorium reserves last for thousands of years. RSVP, overpopulation is a problem, but earth is not overpopulated that much. The present state would ceartainly not justify austere measures like genocide, mass sterilization, artificial famines (e.g. by biofuel rush), industry restrictions, compulsory vegetarianism, free euthanasia, abolition of constitutional rights, etc. Raising the educational level of girls worldwide should suffice. The overall fertility of educated women is much lower, independent of culture. It costs (taxpayer's) money, but worth it. Does not curtail freedom, makes informed decision possible. Education restricted to boys does not have the same effect.
  38. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    jpark wrote "You say a weather station sitting next to an a/c unit makes no difference - I just find that too hard to swallow." It makes no difference to the anomaly--to the change across time. The instrument on black asphalt might be five degrees hotter than an instrument 50 feet away, but that difference is constant across days. Monday, the asphalt instrument reads 55 degrees F, and the distant instrument reads 50 degrees F. Tuesday the overall air temperature in that local area is two degrees higher than it was Monday. So the asphalt instrument reads 57 degrees and the remote instrument reads 52 degrees. The change across days is 2 degrees regardless of which instrument you use. Both instruments accurately reveal the change in temperature of the ambient air. That consistency of change across time when measured by "nearby" instruments is not an assumption, nor a theoretical prediction. It is an observed fact. Observed over and over again. You personally can observe it by downloading and analyzing the temperature data.
  39. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Tom, thanks. I do understand the idea of trends - I do get it, the penny is dropping. But is that it? If that is the totality of the AGW argument (eg. who cares how poorly sited the temp station is) then it looks like the idea is in big trouble. There is too much out there saying the data has been fixed and too little documentation and rebuttal of the charges. Sorry - am repeating myself.
  40. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    @11 If you click on the link for Solanki's data in the reference the set it self starts in 1611. Yeh im not sure where the 1880 figure comes from either.
  41. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    jpark and others, The "trend" that is temperature change is change across time. That trend is the "slope" of a graph of temperature on one axis and time on the other axis. By definitions of "trend" and "slope." The trend and therefore the slope will be unaffected by moving the entire plot up or down on the y axis (when the y axis is temperature). Moving the entire plot up or down on the y axis is exactly equivalent, by definition, of adding or subtracting a constant to all the temperatures. In other words, adding or subtracting a constant to all the temperatures does not change the trend of temperature across time. All the above is grade-school math. Not smoke and mirrors.
  42. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    -Response: -Not sure what you mean - what is the flaw? Maybe a misunderstanding of my behalf - figure 1 shows solar activity from 1611, but Solankis data dates only back to 1880. Never mind, good post.
  43. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    I have been travelling so had limited time to read and digest but have found the exchange on this page to be especially enlightening - and gosh it appears I am a skeptic, oh dear. sbarron's last point is one I would echo. There is a lot for me to learn but if climate science looks like it is using 'tricks' to make me 'believe' something I will remain skeptical - I need to know that the data/baseline is good so that I can trust the trend it shows. You say a weather station sitting next to an a/c unit makes no difference - I just find that too hard to swallow. And today this: http://sppiblog.org/news/“horrifying-examples-of-deliberate-tampering-with-the-temperature-data” http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf Tho' it is another Watts paper so maybe not welcome.
  44. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    As far as I can tell, the baseline period was chosen because it occupies a period in history that was mostly stable for other, potential contributing climate change factors (solar, NAO, PDO, volcanoes etc etc). I can't vouch for it, but it seems to make sense. IIRC, I have read that it is statistically preferable to choose a stable (no trend/little trend) period as a baseline.
  45. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Riccardo, 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?" And just to clarify, I never said if the baseline changes, the baseline changes. I said if the baseline changes, then a given year's or decade's anomaly from the baseline will likely also change. And as I already said, if we were talking trend lines, I'd agree that the baseline doesn't matter. But we're not talking trend lines, as Marcus was citing a specific temperature anomaly over the "baseline." That baseline was set at 1961-1990. Which also, unfortunately Riccardo, is not pre-industrial, if that is what your last post is intending to imply. Marcus, You must see the significance between whether temperatures in 2000-2009 increased by +0.515 degrees C or only +0.26 degrees C, right? barry, I bet there are statistical reasons for choosing certain baselines. And in the hands of scientists, for the purposes for which they're intended, those baselines work great. But don't you see how Marcus used the enormity of his "facts" to attempt to put down jparks skepticism? As Marcus later admitted in #105, depending on where you set the baseline, the 2000s temp might have only increased by +0.26 degrees C, and not +0.515 degrees C as he argued. So while the scientists haven't done anything wrong in selecting their baseline, and Marcus correctly cited their data, Marcus didn't really provide the whole story in making his argument. I don't mean to pick on Marcus. His post just happens to be a perfect example of why I'm skeptical. Specific information can be highlighted to make a point, but later we learn that the details tell a different story. Heck, that seems to be the exact same trouble the IPCC is having these days. You can make a persuasive argument using only the best facts that support it, but that doesn't make your position true. And while your intentions may have been sincere when you made your argument, when the rest of the facts come out it makes you look disingenuous.
  46. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Don't neglect the fact that some ice age enthusiast like to assert that back in the 1970's the whole climate science community was all behind the belief that we were headed for an ice age. (Cue for them to pull out a dusty copy of Newsweek.) That assertion was debunked by Peterson, et. al. in Sept. 2008 BAMS "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Consensus."
    Response: Been there, debunked that. Interestingly, an ice age was predicted in the 1970s is the 8th most popular skeptic argument, narrowly pipping we're heading into an ice age.
  47. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Hi John Nice. WRT comment 3, the columns are not labeled in the referenced table but they are further up the link. The data goes from 1611 to 2004 both in the figure and at Solanke's web site. I wouldn't call this a big flaw but the figure legend says 1880 to 1978. :) Does the data during the overlap align? Thank you Tony
    Response: The Solanki TSI reconstruction and the PMOD satellite data do overlap after 1978. They show good correlation but I go with the PMOD satellite data as it's always better to use directly measured data over proxy reconstructions if you've got the option. I go into the construction of this graph some more here...
  48. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Fitz, Apparently the likelihood of the Gulf Stream switching off is not high: W.S. Broecker (1999) What If the Conveyor Were to Shut Down? GSA Today 9, 1-7 http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/teaching/Broecker99.html see also discussion here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/gulf-stream-slowdown/ ...and if it did shut down, apparently this wouldn't be able to trigger an ice age: T. Kuhlbrodt et al. (2009) An Integrated Assessment of changes in the thermohaline circulation Climatic Change 96, 489-537 http://www.springerlink.com/content/75233057q541716x/?p=a742b208fb45474cb847ee5ac0b1aa37&pi=3
  49. On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record
    Oh well, we now learn the obvious. If we change the baseline the number changes! I could say I live on the 10th floor of on the first, it's just a change of the baseline. Or I could say that mount Everest is 8000+ m high if I want to impress you, but i could say it's just 1000+ m; it's just a change of baseline again. In the first example the obvious choice of the baseline is ground level, in the second (average) sea level. Guess the obvious choice of the baseline when talking about warming from the pre-industrial era ... they're hiding the rise!!!
  50. The upcoming ice age has been postponed indefinitely
    Arkadiusz Semczyszak writes: But for example, Lindzen has "a different view" about total RF of CO2; see [...] lindzen-choi-model-vs-reality.JPG I wouldn't put much weight on Lindzen & Choi 2009; it has a multitude of serious flaws that have been well documented elsewhere. See here, here, here, and here. Lindzen is one of the very, very few actual climate scientists who doesn't accept the consensus understanding of climate change. The exceptionally poor quality of L&C 2009 ought to tell us something about how weak that contrarian position is. Likewise, the fact that so many self-described "skeptics" were willing to uncritically accept the L&C 2009 paper without a second look is a nice demonstration of how credulous rather than skeptical most of these so-called skeptics are. A genuine skeptic would subject claims on all sides of a question to close examination. In the case of "climate skeptics" however, there's a fascinating combination of extreme, exaggerated skepticism towards mainstream climate science coupled with an utter lack of skepticism towards any paper, no matter how weak, that appears to contradict mainstream climate science. More examples of this phenomenon can be seen in the non-skeptical "skeptic" response to Chylek and to Khilyuk and Chilingar.

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