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Quietman at 09:13 AM on 8 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Philippe There is a large difference between those scientists that do NOT have an agenda making an honest mistake and those "scientists" WITH an agenda being decietful with the evidence and telling lies. Every single anomality can be explained by one of the multitude of climate forcings that cause the various cycles in the climate. The bottom line is where is the proof of AGW? And NO, peer reviewed papers in this particular field have become unreliable and simply unbelievable with their reliance on the CO2 fudge factoring that do not match reality. -
Quietman at 08:17 AM on 7 March 2009Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
glider Please address your comments. How do we know who you are addressing. Who is cherry picking exactly? -
Quietman at 08:11 AM on 7 March 2009Christmas cartoon on melting North Pole
John M. Once you catch up on reading through ALL these threads you will have your answer. Every item mentioned has been denied here at this site by alarmists. See for yourself. -
chris at 05:43 AM on 6 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
re #65, HS, I've referred to 20 papers in posts #7,#13 and #14. 16 of them are based on real world observational evidence (all except Fung, IY; Field, CB; Kurz, WA; Lobell DB); In some cases they assess comparisons of real world observations with models to assess the extent to which current knowledge is reliably represented. Of course addressing future consequences cannot be done other than by extending representations of current and past observational evidence and knowledge into the future, and however one does this one is "modeling". However, in general I've cited papers describing measurements/observations in the real world (16 out of 20) and included some analyses that address future consequences (models).... -
Patrick 027 at 11:00 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
"That might be true (? - something about quantum mechanics) if there were no absorption-line broadenning by doppler and pressure effects"... Actually, any macroscopic material in local thermodynamic equilibrium must have the same emissivity as absorptivity along any path length in any direction at any wavelength; otherwise, I've got some plans for a perpetual motion machine you might be interested in... -
Patrick 027 at 07:08 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
Okay, I skimmed the rest of it. There are some factual points that are true (and some that are true but irrelevant to anything), but the picture they paint is a worthless piece of trash. Forget the science, this is JUNK! -
Patrick 027 at 07:03 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
"Of course there is not a particular basis for arguing that the errors are related precisely that way," Actually they must not be that way; given that there is a correct value, the error range is quite sizable in projected changes. Too big, and yet not big enough. -
Patrick 027 at 07:00 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
Some less trivial errors popping up now, such as this: "Greenhouse gases do not emit energy in the same bandwidth in which they absorb energy and thus emissions from carbon dioxide are not absorbed by carbon dioxide." That might be true (? - something about quantum mechanics) if there were no absorption-line broadenning by doppler and pressure effects, ... BUT IT IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT TRUE in the case of atmospheric greenhouse gases and clouds, etc. Height of tropopause: "10-50Km or 6-30 miles above the surface" - NO WAY! WAY OFF! 10 km is a typical midlatitude value, but it never gets even halfway to 50 km (I think it's somewhere around 15 to 18 km in the tropics - around the 100 mb level - see Holton, chapter 12). 50 km is actually about the height of the stratopause. "Sidebar:" Even absolute errors that are larger than projected changes are tolerable because ... well, you know I'll be taller if I stand on my toes than flat on my feet; you essentially only need to know the dimensions of my feet to calculate the difference (perhaps some feedback from posture changes...). Another way of looking at it - suppose the relative error in change is about the same as the relative error in absolute values. 10 % of 288 K would be HUGE, yet a 10 % error in 3 K is not too bad. Of course there is not a particular basis for arguing that the errors are related precisely that way, but ... Aside from that, I can bet what's coming up - greenhouse effect short-circuited by convection. Okay, but models take that into account! Remember it's tropopause level radiative forcing that tends to be important in driving surface and tropospheric temperatures - which are convectively coupled; this does not mean they don't respond to anything. I'm not going to bother with the link anymore; I'm quite sure there's nothing new there. -
Patrick 027 at 06:41 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
(Thus far, no techical errors) - I haven't varified the temperature calculated for no albedo and no greenhouse effect. Actually though, there is some error if they reduced the albedo to zero, because there is some surface albedo and some backscattering to space from clear air. -
Patrick 027 at 06:38 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
"We should note that devoid of atmosphere Earth would actually be a less-cold -1 °C (272 K) because the first calculation strangely includes 31% reflection of solar radiation by clouds (which obviously could not occur without an atmosphere) while ignoring that clouds add significantly to the greenhouse effect. Granted it's kind of a bizarre to include clouds in one half the calculation and not the other but that is the way it's commonly done, so, for simplicity, just stick with ~33 °C." The reason for including the LW effects and not the SW effects of clouds is because what is being discussed in the effect of greenhouse agents via LW radiation. If we really consider what would actually happen with the removal of all greenhouse agents, including SW effects, then yes, the cooling won't be so great, but it would still be enough to cause dramatic cooling by ice/snow albedo feedback. Thus far, no techical errors, but the distinction between a real greenhouse and a radiative greenhouse, and that greenhouse agents do not 'form a blanket' is rather nit-picky and besides the point. Real greenhouses don't have fabric blankets either - they have glass (or some other generally SW transparent material). I don't cover my self with glass when I get into bed in the winter! What they all have in common is that they slow the flow of heat from hot to cold - by inhibiting convection, reducing thermal conductivity, and/or increasing LW opacity - so that a greater temperature difference (between inside and outside, between my skin and the air in my room, between Earth's average surface temperature and the temperature of a blackbody that would emit the same LW power to space) is required to sustain a rate of heat loss to balance a given heat supply (the sun, my metabolism). -
Patrick 027 at 06:22 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
JunkScience is a place where truth goes to die. I haven't looked at the link, yet. But aside from that, I don't see anything in comment 30 that disagrees with my points or chris's or Philippe's or the host of this website, RealClimate, IPCC, The Weather Channel, Scientific American, James Hansen, Shakira (well actually I don't know what she specifically says on the matter but she did perform for Live Earth and one or more inaugural balls), ... etc. -
HealthySkeptic at 16:30 PM on 4 March 2009The link between hurricanes and global warming
Thanks for the assist Mizimi! -
HealthySkeptic at 16:10 PM on 4 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
#18 Chris, "It's about the real world WA. It's not about model studies in greenhouses and such like. I've cited a load of papers that assess real world effects in posts #7, #13 and #14." If it's not about "model studies" Chris, why do the multitude the papers you studiously proffer in your posts constantly refer to them? -
Quietman at 02:08 AM on 4 March 2009Climate's changed before
David The Nemesis hypothesis, while nothing more than that, has been proposed serveral times in the past. Just because the crazies have picked up on it and made a cult centered around the concept does not invalidate the idea. But it has been largely abandoned by the scientific community. The mention is in the article, not a peer reviewed paper, by the reporter because of it's popular appeal. I don't have access to their paper as I did for the first reference at PLos One. Regardless of knowing the cause of this cyclicity, it does appear to exist. -
HealthySkeptic at 15:45 PM on 3 March 2009Evaporating the water vapor argument
Sorry Chris, Obviously one first needs a sense of humor to make sense of humor. -
HealthySkeptic at 15:32 PM on 3 March 2009Did global warming cause Hurricane Katrina?
As one of the leading researchers in atmospheric science and someone who has been issuing Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts for the past 24 years, I find Prof Gray's article compelling, particularly his concluding remarks'- "One reason may be that the advocates of warming tend to be climate modelers with little observational experience. Many of the modelers are not fully aware of how the real atmosphere and ocean function. They rely more on theory than on observation. The warming theorists -- most of whom, no doubt, earnestly believe that human activity has triggered nature's wrath -- have the ears of the news media. But there is another plausible explanation, supported by decades of physical observation. The spate of recent destructive hurricanes may have little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases and climate change, and everything to do with the Atlantic Ocean's currents." -
HealthySkeptic at 14:37 PM on 3 March 2009Did global warming cause Hurricane Katrina?
Chris, Let me get this straight? Are you suggesting that William H. Gray, professor emeritus in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University is a liar? -
HealthySkeptic at 14:35 PM on 3 March 2009What 1970s science said about global cooling
Chris, Boy, you really don't get out much do you. LOL! If AGW is "essentially undeniable", why are more and more scientists (many who work, or have worked, in climatology or associated fields) questioning the validity of the popular hypothesis you support with such religious fervour? Despite your rhetoric and holier-than-thou claims, there simply IS no clear evidence for AGW. If there was, we wouldn't be having this debate. -
David Horton at 11:01 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
Oh dear Quietman, you can find any kind of pattern you like, looking back at any kind of record (just as you can see apparently meaningful figures in melted cheese on toast), but that doesn't mean they are real or have a single "cause". The mentions of "Nemesis" and "Planet X" and UFO believers should give you some inkling that this stuff is suspect. Of course there are all kinds of causes of extinctions of the tens of thousands of species that have become extinct since life evolved on the planet. Volcanic eruptions might have played a role in some times and places, impact of an asteroid is possible I suppose, but for the vast bulk of species variations in climate are undoubtedly the cause. And for most water-based life forms hot and dry is more of a challenge than cool and wet. Dinosaurs may be an exception, but I doubt it. And then there are all the ocean life forms that have become extinct - not much prospect of asteroids and volcanoes affecting them (changes in temperature and acidity yes). Please, forget about Neanderthals, they are a red herring. You seem to be searching for something, anything, rather than accept that (a) CO2 concentrations are rapidly (in paleontological scales) increasing; (b) we know the physics and chemistry that causes the changes this will bring; and (c) the changes, not in models, but in the real world of glaciers and ice caps, droughts, heat records, storms, changes in species distribution and behavior, are already evident and rapidly accelerating. Talk about "natural timetables deep inside the Earth" is just whistling in the dark. -
Quietman at 08:10 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
Sorry for all the typos, I'm diabetic so my eyesight is blurry after eating. -
Quietman at 08:09 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
So the point is that it is cyclic, regardless of cppling or heating, there is a causitive agent that does not include mankind and cold is much worse than warm (evidenced by our own near extinction at H4 in the neandertal paper). -
Quietman at 08:00 AM on 3 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
CLIMATE SENSITIVITY "The sensitivity of the climate system to a forcing is commonly expressed in terms of the global mean temperature change that would be expected after a time sufficiently long for both the atmosphere and ocean to come to equilibrium with the change in climate forcing. If there were no climate feedbacks, the response of Earth's mean temperature to a forcing of 4 W/m2 (the forcing for a doubled atmospheric CO2) would be an increase of about 1.2 °C (about 2.2 °F). However, the total climate change is affected not only by the immediate direct forcing, but also by climate “feedbacks” that come into play in response to the forcing." "As just mentioned, a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide (from the pre-Industrial value of 280 parts per million) in the global atmosphere causes a forcing of 4 W/m2. The central value of the climate sensitivity to this change is a global average temperature increase of 3 °C (5.4 °F), but with a range from 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C (2.7 to 8.1 °F) (based on climate system models: see section 4). The central value of 3 °C is an amplification by a factor of 2.5 over the direct effect of 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Well-documented climate changes during the history of Earth, especially the changes between the last major ice age (20,000 years ago) and the current warm period, imply that the climate sensitivity is near the 3 °C value. However, the true climate sensitivity remains uncertain, in part because it is difficult to model the effect of feedback. In particular, the magnitude and even the sign of the feedback can differ according to the composition, thickness, and altitude of the clouds, and some studies have suggested a lesser climate sensitivity." Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, pp 6-7, Committee on the Science of Climate Change National Research Council "Climate models calculate outcomes after taking into account the great number of climate variables and the complex interactions inherent in the climate system. Their purpose is the creation of a synthetic reality that can be compared with the observed reality, subject to appropriate averaging of the measurements. Thus, such models can be evaluated through comparison with observations, provided that suitable observations exist. Furthermore, model solutions can be diagnosed to assess contributing causes of particular phenomena. Because climate is uncontrollable (albeit influenceable by humans), the models are the only available experimental laboratory for climate. They also are the appropriate high-end tool for forecasting hypothetical climates in the years and centuries ahead. However, climate models are imperfect. Their simulation skill is limited by uncertainties in their formulation, the limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much complexity as in nature." Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, p 15, Committee on the Science of Climate Change National Research Council Ref: The Real 'Inconvenient Truth' Some facts about greenhouse and global warming - JunkScience.com, Updated August 2007 -
Quietman at 06:54 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
I did not copy the link but I did keep the article: With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years. Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few million years — and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life forms went extinct about 65 million years ago. The Berkeley researchers are physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have analyzed the most exhaustive compendium of fossil records that exists — data that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380 separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in the world’s seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned. Richard Muller and his graduate student, Robert Rohde, are publishing a report on their exhaustive study in the journal Nature today, and in interviews this week, the two men said they have been working on the surprising evidence for about four years. “We’ve tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,” Muller said, “and so far, we’ve failed.” But the cycles are so clear that the evidence “simply jumps out of the data,” said James Kirchner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences on the Berkeley campus who was not involved in the research but who has written a commentary on the report that is also appearing in Nature today. “Their discovery is exciting, it’s unexpected and it’s unexplained,” Kirchner said. And it is certain, he added, to send other scientists in many disciplines seeking explanations for the strange cycles. “Everyone and his brother will be proposing an explanation — and eventually, at least one or two will turn out to be right while all the others will be wrong.” Muller and Rohde conceded that they have puzzled through every conceivable phenomenon in nature in search of an explanation: “We’ve had to think about solar system dynamics, about the causes of comet showers, about how the galaxy works, and how volcanoes work, but nothing explains what we’ve discovered,” Muller said. The evidence of strange extinction cycles that first drew Rohde’s attention emerged from an elaborate computer database he developed from the largest compendium of fossil data ever created. It was a 560-page list of marine organisms developed 14 years ago by the late J. John Sepkoski Jr., a famed paleobiologist at the University of Chicago who died at the age of 50 nearly five years ago. Sepkoski himself had suggested that marine life appeared to have its ups and downs in cycles every 26 million years, but to Rohde and Muller, the longer cycle is strikingly more evident, although they have also seen the suggestion of even longer cycles that seem to recur every 140 million years. Sepkoski’s fossil record of marine life extends back for 540 million years to the time of the great “Cambrian Explosion,” when almost all the ancestral forms of multicellular life emerged, and Muller and Rohde built on it for their computer version. Muller has long been known as an unconventional and imaginative physicist on the Berkeley campus and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It was he, for example, who suggested more than 20 years ago that an undiscovered faraway dwarf star — which he named “Nemesis” — was orbiting the sun and might have steered a huge asteroid into the collision with Earth that drove the dinosaurs to extinction. “I’ve given up on Nemesis,” Muller said this week, “but then I thought there might be two stars somewhere out there, but I’ve given them both up now.” He and Rohde have considered many other possible causes for the 62- million-year cycles, they said. Perhaps, they suggested, there’s an unknown “Planet X” somewhere far out beyond the solar system that’s disturbing the comets in the distant region called the Oort Cloud — where they exist by the millions — to the point that they shower the Earth and cause extinctions in regular cycles. Daniel Whitmire and John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette proposed that idea as a cause of major comet showers in 1985, but no one except UFO believers has ever discovered a sign of it. Or perhaps there’s some kind of “natural timetable” deep inside the Earth that triggers cycles of massive volcanism, Rohde has thought. There’s even a bit of evidence: A huge slab of volcanic basalt known as the Deccan Traps in India has been dated to 65 million years ago — just when the dinosaurs died, he noted. And the similar basaltic Siberian Traps were formed by volcanism about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when the greatest of all mass extinctions drove more than 70 percent of all the world’s marine life to death, Rohde said. The two scientists proposed more far-out ideas in their report in Nature, but only to indicate the possibilities they considered. Muller’s favorite explanation, he said informally, is that the solar system passes through an exceptionally massive arm of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy every 62 million years, and that that increase in galactic gravity might set off a hugely destructive comet shower that would drive cycles of mass extinction on Earth. Rohde, however, prefers periodic surges of volcanism on Earth as the least implausible explanation for the cycles, he said — although it’s only a tentative one, he conceded. Said Muller: “We’re getting frustrated and we need help. All I can say is that we’re confident the cycles exist, and I cannot come up with any possible explanation that won’t turn out to be fascinating. There’s something going on in the fossil record, and we just don’t know what it is.” -
Quietman at 06:45 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
ps This agrees with earlier work done at Berkeley, from a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover" David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Thursday, March 10, 2005 -
Quietman at 06:29 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
David Climate changes ineither direction causes extinction events. But it is a matter of degree. Warming opens up new environments at the same time as it makes existing ines more harsh. What happens is that life follows the environment. If it gets warmer life shifts poleward and colder it shifts towards the equator. This paper might help: Long-Term Cycles in the History of Life: Periodic Biodiversity in the Paleobiology Database Adrian L. Melott* Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, United States of America Abstract Time series analysis of fossil biodiversity of marine invertebrates in the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) shows a significant periodicity at approximately 63 My, in agreement with previous analyses based on the Sepkoski database. I discuss how this result did not appear in a previous analysis of the PBDB. The existence of the 63 My periodicity, despite very different treatment of systematic error in both PBDB and Sepkoski databases strongly argues for consideration of its reality in the fossil record. Cross-spectral analysis of the two datasets finds that a 62 My periodicity coincides in phase by 1.6 My, equivalent to better than the errors in either measurement. Consequently, the two data sets not only contain the same strong periodicity, but its peaks and valleys closely correspond in time. Two other spectral peaks appear in the PBDB analysis, but appear to be artifacts associated with detrending and with the increased interval length. Sampling-standardization procedures implemented by the PBDB collaboration suggest that the signal is not an artifact of sampling bias. Further work should focus on finding the cause of the 62 My periodicity. -
Tuukka Simonen at 21:30 PM on 2 March 2009Svensmark and Friis-Christensen rebut Lockwood's solar paper
Here... At the page 3 there is a graph with words: “It may be the sun: a strong anti-correlation between intensity and radiosonde temperatures over the past 50 years. Source: Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 2007.” He only shows the lower part of the graph you have in this page and forgets that the warming trend as well as volcanoes, ENSO and other stuff have been removed. You can even see parts of the numbers of the upper graph since the image is cut without further photoshopping. :D What a douchebag. -
David Horton at 19:20 PM on 2 March 2009Climate's changed before
"So it seems that the most poleward areas were hit hardest, no?" Well no, the hardest hit were those where a shift in climate to hotter drier times led to environmental conditions that large species couldn't cope with. And in addition on the continents whose geography precluded the formation of refuge areas - which is where Africa, straddling the Equator, comes in - whichever way the climate zones move in Africa you are always left with areas that can support megafauna. I am really not sure why you think that cooling conditions causes extinctions unless you think that this means global warming is a good thing. If that is the case you are going to be sadly disappointed. -
HealthySkeptic at 17:17 PM on 2 March 2009The Mystery of the Vanishing Ocean Heat
Chris, Quibbling over semantics is not the same as pointing out scientific errors. Whether or not the IPCC collected or collated the Hong Kong data is unimportant, they used it in their reports. Simply calling Dr. Nils-Morner a liar does not prove your case. If anything, it detracts from it. You talk about "making an effort to establish reality", yet you use the same tactics as the creationists use to defend their warped view of reality... simply dismissing anything that does not match your AGW paradigm and branding as liars any scientists who disagree with you along the way. Shame indeed! -
HealthySkeptic at 16:54 PM on 2 March 2009Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Chris, LOL! Talk about creative interpretation of the data! Unless there is a clear and continuous upwards trend in a set of data, applying a linear trend to it means absolutely nothing. This sort of misinterpretation is a trap you young players. There is no continuous upwards trend from 2002 to 2007 (which represents 60% of the data). A linear trend of this region is dead flat! If 1998 was such an "anomalous year" why do the values from 2002 to 2007 statistically differ very little from the 1998 value, and how does this fact support a "warming" trend? -
John M. at 22:49 PM on 1 March 2009Christmas cartoon on melting North Pole
Quietman Re: #21 Perhaps you could give specific examples where "AGW alarmists" have engaged in denialism w.r.t. any of the list of items you give in post #19. Otherwise it becomes mere cant on your part, and I'm sure you would not wish to be accused of that. -
chris at 21:35 PM on 1 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
Re #52 Good Quietman, if you were prepared to read other's posts carefully and not jump to erroneous conclusions you could have avoided a whole load of unnecessary "argumenting". The fact that systems in the natural world may or may not reach equilibrium, however one considers it useful to define this (i.e. "equilibrium") for a particular circumstance, doesn't mean that "equilibrium" and "thermodynamics" are not fundamental concepts without which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to understand natural systems. Have a read of my post #29 from all those weeks ago and see if there really is anything there that you really think it's worth arguing about.... -
Quietman at 18:24 PM on 1 March 2009Climate's changed before
David Re: "but did include some giant emu-like birds, and some giant reptiles." Yes I am familar with these and I recall a large carniverous "roo" as well. The reptiles are / were varinids and there are claims made to their survival. South East Asia and the Indian subcontinent still have their large species (elephants, bengals and 8 to 10 meter pythons (with claims to larger). North America and Eurasia definately did not fare well, I agree. South America lost some of it's megafauna but they were not truely giants and many survived (again with rumors of still more). So it seems that the most poleward areas were hit hardest, no? -
Patrick 027 at 06:17 AM on 1 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
"through southwestern WI and the door penininsula " I meant to say southeastern WI. Southwestern WI has it's own beauty - I'd especially recommend the drive from Madison to Dubuque. And if you're in the Madison area, you've gotta go just north through Sauk City and explore the Baraboo range (made of beautiful erosion-resistant Baraboo quartzite) - Devil's Lake, Parfrey's Glenn. See "Roadside Geology of Wisconsin", Dott and Attig. -
Patrick 027 at 06:03 AM on 1 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
"But they are not constants, they are chaotic variables." Please see my comments (and the post itself) here: "Butterflies, tornadoes and climate modelling" http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/butterflies-tornadoes-and-climate-modelling/langswitch_lang/sw (my comments: 50-52,65,73) ---- "This is a part of a "joining of ancient plate boundaries"" It's more complicated than that, though. There were many early collisions to form the Superior province, and then add on to it (Marshfield continent and Penokean orogeny, etc.). The most prominent system of faults underlying Lake Superior (and extending toward Kansas and eastward as well) formed as the Keweenawan rift (extensional), which did later become compressional features, but never actually became subduction zones. But erosion and sedimentation can cover up older features. Part of the reason for the Great Lakes is glacial erosion, although underlying geology certainly influences how much erosion occurs where. And the density of the basalt from the rifting tends to make the land lower than it otherwise would be. And there is the Wisconsin arch (or dome?) and the Michigan basin... the depression of the Michigan basin has tilted strata upwards going away from it; erosionally resistant strata (Silurian dolomite, is it?) can form escarpments, such as the Niagara escarpment. A string of escarpments wraps around the Michigan basin, through southwestern WI and the door penininsula (I think it's all called the Niagara escarpment - not to be confused with the Niagara fault, a much older feature not connected to the falls), and is what Niagara falls plunges over. Niagara falls is between lakes Erie (the shallowest - it's only into looks) and Ontario, so Lakes Michigan and Huron rising a few meters to be above Lake Superior would not reverse the flow of Niagara falls. "The mountains in Vermont are growing again" I hope the sugar maples are growing much faster. -
Patrick 027 at 05:27 AM on 1 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
"In the absence of other information, Mann, et. al.'s word on the subject surely must be given equal weight as McIntyre-McKitrick's statements." or you could look at the actual papers... -
Patrick 027 at 05:26 AM on 1 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
(solar wind): Without a known physical mechanism, you could also look for statistically-robust correlations (as opposed to a one-off match-up) between solar wind and one or more climate-related variables. However, you'd have to compare this to such correlations with TSI to isolate the relationship... in other words, try looking at a component of variations in the solar wind that do not correlate with TSI or other known climate forcings... "Plug any number into the hockey stick and it will always be a hockey stick. " Not so. That may have been the case with McIntyre-McKitrick's work (I don't remember all the details off hand), but not Mann's. In the absence of other information, Mann, et. al.'s word on the subject surely must be given equal weight as McIntyre-McKitrick's statements. Other information: many other studies yeild similar results. Similar but not exact. Maybe that's the problem you see. Other results do not look exactly like a 'hockey stick' - but the importance of the results is that there has been a sharp rise in temperature in the later portion of the 20th century that is anomalous (in combined speed and magnitude) relative to the rest of the record, and late 20th century temperature values are likely the highest for as far back as one can go in these several-century to 2000 year reconstructions (there may have been another peak in warmth earlier in the Holocene but we may have gone above that already, too; at least we are close to it. And not far away from the warmth of the previous interglacial, for that matter. None of which by itself proves that this is anthropogenic and that warming will continue at least until the atmospheric CO2 level (plus other greenhouse gases, minus aerosol cooling, plus variations in solar TSI, etc, weighted by radiative forcing and efficacy, taking into account lag-time and longevity of responses and feedbacks, averaged over internal variability) stops rising. But the paleoclimatic record is not all of the available information). -
Quietman at 02:04 AM on 1 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
Patrick This is the article on Huron. http://www.livescience.com/animals/090224-great-lakes-extremes.html -
Philippe Chantreau at 18:19 PM on 28 February 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Focusing on people? Like "skeptics" focus on Mann and Hansen? You brought up citations by Morano and Spencer, not me. Heck you even throw in Robinson and the OISM, and Beck. Since you showed plenty of "focus" on the persons of Mann and Hansen, why should I think twice about "focusing" on all these funny characters you bring up? Spencer's paper? What paper? A blog post is not a paper. However, it can indicate what the author is capable of. Didn't prove anything eh? Did you prove that solar winds are heating things up? I admit that would be a lot of work, let's bring the goals down: did you describe any kind of vague mechanism that could make that possible? Proof is a strong word. In fact, some would say that science does not provide any such thing. -
David Horton at 16:53 PM on 28 February 2009Climate's changed before
"I was not aware of particularly large mammals in Australia" - no they became extinct some 25,000 years ago. It was mainly mammals, but did include some giant emu-like birds, and some giant reptiles. India I'm not sure about. There were extinctions in South East Asia though, as well as the Americas of course. The equivalent large animals of Africa (elephant, rhino, giraffe, lion etc) all survived for reasons which are debated. I think it is because Africa straddles the equator and climate change therefore always left some refuge areas. -
Quietman at 16:32 PM on 28 February 2009Climate sensitivity is low
chris I was asking if that was the original paper that you referred to. A little testy? -
Quietman at 16:04 PM on 28 February 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
ps The mountains in Vermont are growing again. -
Quietman at 16:01 PM on 28 February 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
Re: "although I think the centers of some of those lakes are actually quite a bit deeper than 200 feet, as I recall (is the deepest point in Lake Superior below sea level?))." This is a part of a "joining of ancient plate boundaries" so it was ancient shoreline and possibly a subduction zone millions of years ago. Yes, I have no doubt that the bottom is below sea level. There is currently an article featured on LiveScience but I can't open the site to get a link. They decided to change their format and screwed their server up royal. I can't even sign in. If it ever comes back online I will post a link for you. The high side of the falls is the american side so the canadian side had to slide under it with the compression from the atlantic and arctic ridges. Erie and Huron would be right on that subducted part of the canadian shield. -
Quietman at 15:52 PM on 28 February 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
Re: "Yes, but the goal posts tend to stay within a particular part of the field when boundary conditions (external forcing) are constant" But they are not constants, they are chaotic variables. -
Quietman at 15:51 PM on 28 February 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
Patrick Re: "And has the lake overflowed, spilling back into Lake Superior (reversing the normal flow)?" Niagara Falls reverse flow? I don't think so. ps It's salt water. The reports says that they have assumed the the salt is carried up with a fresh water current. But you and I both know what "assume" means. -
Quietman at 15:34 PM on 28 February 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
ps The alarmists will always defend the hockey stick but everyone already knows it's flawed. Same issue, piss poor statistical modelling. -
Quietman at 15:32 PM on 28 February 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Patrick Mann's worhas been disproven in the same manner that Spencers paper was. Plug any number into the hockey stick and it will always be a hockey stick. -
Quietman at 15:28 PM on 28 February 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
ps I wasn't changing the subject, just pointing out that your insistance on focusing on people is exactly the tactics that alarmists always use. You personally did not prove anything. You are taking someone elses word. Patrick already showed me what he considers the error in Spencer's argument and I believe him. -
Quietman at 15:24 PM on 28 February 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Yes Philippe, only Sceptics screw up, Alarmists never do. I think the horse has been dead for a while already. -
Philippe Chantreau at 13:03 PM on 28 February 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Are you yrying to change the subjet? You don't seem to get it. Spencer does not even realize that his mathematical argument is moot. He is showing what he believes to be some form of data analysis, that he believes demonstrate something when the effect shown is an inherent property of the mathematical treatment. It does not analyze the data at all, and he has no clue about it. PhD or not, he does not understand what he's doing. That's way beyond anything Mann was ever accused of, real or not. There is no way that something like that would ever make it through peer-review, even if Legates worked on it with buddies of his. The fact remains that Spencer's media communications on attribution of the rise in CO2 are pure fantasy and contradicted by all the available evidence. Spencer has evidently not tried to publish anything about it, he knows better. The fact remains that Spencer and Christy's handling of the UAH/MSU errors was way below anything necessary for the so-called skeptic crowd to scream fraud all over the internet. Yet I don't hear your voice on that. Could that be an example of one-sided skepticism? My questions about Morano still stand. What exactly was the thought process there if any? My questions about the solar wind still stand. I'd love to hear of a possible mechanism with even a vague idea of the resulting heat budget. -
Patrick 027 at 10:50 AM on 28 February 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
"That IS EXACTLY the point I am trying to make. It's always TRYING to reach equilibrium but NEVER CAN because the goal posts keep moving. " Yes, but the goal posts tend to stay within a particular part of the field when boundary conditions (external forcing) are constant - in other words, on time scales longer than internal variability, there is a tendency to be near a definable long-term equilibrium. Saying that the climate system ever reaches equilibrium precisely would be wrong, but it can be a good approximation.
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