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saileshrao at 12:44 PM on 31 December 2017It's methane
Baraliuh @29-31, has there been any resolution to your questions on Animal Agriculture?
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John Hartz at 08:12 AM on 31 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Recommended supplemtal reading about ocean warming...
The oceans hold the story of a planet warming as fossil fuels are burned. Here is what scientists have discovered, in four charts.
The Most Powerful Evidence Climate Scientists Have of Global Warming by Sabrina Shankman & Paul Horn, Inside Climate News, Oct 13, 2017
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Bob Loblaw at 07:25 AM on 31 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Having worked in government research over two+ decades, I can definitely say that the times when I have felt that research outcomes were being suppressed if they did not meet the governing party's political agenda, it was when the political agenda was rejecting climate science, not the other way around.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:20 AM on 31 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
To inject an analogy into all this earth energy balance discussion:
Let's assume I keep all my money in a piggy bank. Everything I receive gets placed in the piggy bank, and all my expense are paid out of the piggy bank.
I want to know if I am gaining or losing money over time. There are two ways to figure this out:
- Track every transaction that adds money to or takes money out of the piggy bank, and add them up to see what the ultimate change is.
- Count the contents of the piggy bank at the start and end of the month, and see if the total is different.
If accurate, both methods will come up with the same result. If either method is error-prone, differences will occur within the margins of error.
In the climate system, the earth-atmosphere as a whole is the energy piggy bank. The ocean is the largest energy store. The only way to add or remove energy from the earth-atmosphere piggy bank is through radiative transfer with space. The sun provides the input, and the earth emits IR radiation.
We can track the imblance in two ways:
- Measure the radiation input and output, using satellites, and add everything up over time to determine the imbalance.
- Pick a start and end time, and measure the temperature changes and heat content of the oceans and atmosphere.
Climatologists are smart. They are doing both. The first shows fingerprints of increased CO2 in the spectral distribution. Error sources in the absolute readings make an exact determination of the imbalance very difficult. The second unequivolcally shows warming/heating. The imbalance must be a net positive addition of energy.
The two methods agree within the margins of error. The combined evidence leaves little room for doubt that increased CO2 has led to a radiative imbalance that is warming the planet.
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factotum at 06:20 AM on 31 December 2017From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation
Skeptical Science asks that you review the comments policy. Thank you.
How to demonstrate to a denier the power of small amounts of stuff. Ask them if they will take .4g g of cyanide. that is to body weight what CO2 is to the atmosphere, or 4 parts in 10,000.
Every year, literally tens of thousands of workers in various industries have exposure to and ingest cyanide, most commonly KCN and NaCN. They do not die because the body can deal with and process it. But to much in a short period of time will kill you.
You can even purchase certain vegetables in the grocery which if not prepared properly or consumed in to large a quantity will kill you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava.
So natural, abailable, and to much can damage you. Just like to much CO2 can damage the current ecosystem which include us. So, the next time an AGW denier goes on and on about how harmless small amounts of anything are, just offer him some cyanide.
https://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/apples.asp
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Tom Dayton at 05:59 AM on 31 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Phillippe, some of the papers in the reference list in this paper by Trenberth et al. might provide that answer, if you feel like digging through them.
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Zippi62 at 05:52 AM on 31 December 2017US government climate report looks at how the oceans are buffering climate change
Of course the oceans are buffering climate change.
Warming one gallon of atmosphere isn't the same as warming one gallon of ocean water. It doesn't take much to warm a gallon of air by 1C.
How much energy does it take to raise the temperature of 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of ocean water by 0.1C versus 321,003,271 cubic miles of atmosphere?
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nigelj at 05:41 AM on 31 December 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
"Hearing that the Trump administration would scrub federal sites of information on climate change or obscure other important research, researchers worked with dozens of coders, archivists, and librarians to preserve data sets and web pages from agencies, like the EPA, NOAA, and NASA"
Astonishing that things have come to this level of anti-science and blatant denial of reality, and blatant censorship of science. This is supposed to be the 21st century, not the medieval period of book burning. The year 2017 will go down in infamy as the dumbest year on record (and almost certainly one of the hottest based on data so far this year)
I feel protest marches and other shows of resistance are probably quite powerful. I dont think its a coincidence that Trumps approval ratings are all down near 30% now, it has to be the cumulative effect of protest, along with the nonsensical, damaging and self promoting things he says on a daily basis.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:13 AM on 31 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Perhaps some who are more knowledgeable than me on radiatve processes can answer this but would we not expect the energy imbalance to be too small to measure until equilibrium has been reached? The Harries studies show the TOA radiation changes that would be expected with the changes in trace gas concentrations.
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nigelj at 05:07 AM on 31 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Zippi62 @23
"Climate science doesn't base their findings on Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick Graph". Do they?"
No they dont, because it was only one early study and of average quality. The IPCC reports mostly do not to rely on single isolated studies, because that would obviously be sub optimal. I would have my doubts myself.
The IPCC rely on multiple studies whenever they can, and this is why a lot of research is done, like double entry book keeping in accounting it helps identify errors in research and improve research.
We have about 10 other more recent and thorough studies on the medieval warm period, that find very similar results and similar shaped hockey stricks to Manns original study, for example by Briffa, Esper and many others. Refer medieval warm period on wikipedia for lists of published research. The studies all take different approaches to researching the issues.
You think this is some giant conspiracy? If so,that is where we part company completely and irrevocably. I live in the real world (which is hard enough) not the Brietbart fantasy world.
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nigelj at 04:45 AM on 31 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Gail @ 25
"And it too is plainly not neutral, having an obvious vested interest in scaremongering calculated to ease the path of political expansionism."
Just adding to Eclectics accurate comments, no government wants the climate change problem, because it obviously is another problem to deal with, and will cost them money. Notice governments are generally measured and restrained in their tone discussing climate issues and stick to the findings of the IPCC reports, rather than the more extreme possible scenarious of some research on very high rates of sea level rise etc.
Of course none of us want to see excessive government power either. The carbon tax and dividend idea has the strength of being revenue neutral, and not increasing government spending.
Emotive and ideological fears about role of government must not stand in the way of commonsense solutions like renewable energy and carbon taxes.
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Aaron Davis at 03:40 AM on 31 December 2017CO2 limits won't cool the planet
MA Rodger @26
Albedo is something I have data for [Kukla_and_Robinson_1980 table 2]. I've calculated the average albedo from
- 60N to 82N during the months FebMar 64.0% and AugSep 35.1% and from
- 60S to 70S FM 21.3% AS 64.2%
While the Cold months (in the dark mostly have high Albedo about the same from North to South, the Warm months have actually higher albedo in the North (35 vs 21%). Since this is also when CO2 is low due to plant uptake in the North compared with the South where CO2 is at baseline changes onlt 1 ppm, a higher Nothern albedo would move the temperature in the same lower direction as the lower Northern CO2. So, if anything albedo and CO2 combination, should overstate the seasonal effect over CO2 alone.
I am not familiar with how you arrived at the 9e18 Joules corresponding to 15 ppm change in CO2 figure. It is quite low compared to the total annual global heat accumulation figure I've been using (12.5e21 Joules per year). If that's all we would get out of all the cost and effort to reduce CO2 over the next 5-10 years by 15 ppm, it appears you would agree it's hardly worth the effort.
If the variations in the amount of energy reaching the ground (insolation) varies over periods more than a year, the analysis should still be good, as I am comparing differences over the same year, but that is something I'd like to verify as well. The idea here is not to get a 15 ppm sensitivity. It's hard enough to justify the utility of the low confidence ECS analysis. My point here is to support the principle hypothesis of this section "CO2 limits won't cool the planet", which I gather from your remarks you agree with, to at least some extent.
I appreciate your interest and share your objective to seek the truth.
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MA Rodger at 23:02 PM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Gail @338,
Echoing the message @339, you are certainly setting out some very bold assertions. Evidence can always be questioned but not ad nauseam and evidence certainly it should not be subjected to defenestration.
♥ "Antarctic ice expanding, sea level been rising since long before CO2 did,"
Levels of antarctic ice (even Sea Ice Extent remains effectively unknown for almost all the period over which CO2 levels have been rising, increasing CO2 levels having been significant from about 1800.
Global sea level is considered essentially flat over the previous three millennia following the final vestiges of Ice Age melt and evidence of the wobbly beginnings of the present rise are evident from about 1800.
♥"ocean heat only superficially known, no significant change in surface temps for nearly two decades"
The OHC over recent decades is understood far more than "superficially" and even if the "surface" mentioned continues to refer to oceans, there is a significant rise in SSTs over the last decade or two. (The addition of the adjective "statistical" would yield a different answer, but I would not be guided by the answer given by Jones to Harrabin in 2010, which was a very poor answer in my opinion. Answer B should not be "Yes,..." but "What a very stupid question.")
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Eclectic at 22:40 PM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Gail @338 , where on Earth (or some alternative planet?) have you been getting your Fake Scientific News from? WUWT? Or somewhere even crazier than WUWT?
"No significant change in surface temps for nearly two decades"??!! (Actually there's one wacko site which has claimed no significant warming for about 50 years!) On real planet Earth, the ice is still melting at hundreds of cubic miles per year, and the sea level rise is accelerating, plants and animals are changing location & habits . . . and the surface temperature has presented us with the four hottest years on record ( 2014 / 2015 / 2016 /2017 ) .
No significant sanity at WUWT . . . only total "imbalance" ;-)
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Eclectic at 22:24 PM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Gail @25 , the governments of Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France . . . thru to Zambia . . . are plainly not on "the path of political expansionism".
All these governments have plenty of other problems on their plate — they don't want to have to grapple with fresh problems like AGW. They all heartily wish they had 20 times fewer problems to grapple with ( Gail, your own common sense should tell you that!! ). They put some investment into science, as a matter of duty . . . and rather reluctantly in the case of climate-related science.
Reluctantly because [as Nigelj correctly states ] governments would rather the whole climate problem just went away. But most governments (with one or two exceptions which you may not have noticed) have the honesty to at least make some token effort to counter the global warming problem. That includes funding some climate research — but they are certainly not wanting to push or encourage "bad news results". Quite the contrary. They would prefer only "good news" . . . but alas there's not much of that to be found.
Gail, where did you read such a looney idea as "expansionism"? Have you been frequenting such insane websites as WhatsUpWithThat? Please, give up such websites, and return to the real world.
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JohnSeers at 21:57 PM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
@Zippi62 23
"That's based upon a poll of a few thousand people."
A few thousand people? That sounds like a comprehensive poll then.
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Gail at 21:00 PM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
eclectic @337
But all of that circumstantial evidence can be questioned. Antarctic ice expanding, sea level been rising since long before CO2 did, ocean heat only superficially known, no significant change in surface temps for nearly two decades. Whereas a direct measurent of an imbalance would be unanswerable. -
Gail at 19:49 PM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
@nigelj @ 22
Government spends orders of magnitude more on climate science than everyone else put together. And it too is plainly not neutral, having an obvious vested interest in scaremongering calculated to ease the path of political expansionism. Hence the credibiliy crisis being addressed by the red-team/blue-team initiative.
All in all this is a very thorny problem the layman faces here - potential catastrophe intertwined with trust issues.Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering snipped.
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MA Rodger at 19:17 PM on 30 December 2017CO2 limits won't cool the planet
Aaron Davis @25,
If you are minded to continue with this farce, you may find this web utility from NASA useful. It will show you that over the period of reduced arctic CO2 which would impact the region perhaps 9e18j, your grand analysis would in "removing confounding effects," fails to tackle some 2,700e18j of confounding insolation. While this value will be reduced due to albedo (which itself will not be consistent for the comparisons you attempt), it might be worth noting that it will not just be the average insolation over the period 1979-2017 confounding your analysis but even the variation in insolation over the period 1979-2017 will have greater magnitude than the effect you attempt to analyse.
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Eclectic at 18:36 PM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Zippi @23 , there is no need for you to be incensed or even consensed — for now Breitbart has just discovered that Roy Moore himself was born in Kenya in 1947 and lived the first 40 years of his life there. And all the teenage girls he molested (consensually) were Kenya-born as well. Since in Kenya the legal Age of Consent is 12 for girls, then it follows that Moore had done nothing unlawful.
71% of Alabama Republicans were already aware of that fact, Zippi — so you and Breitbart are well behind the times.
Alternative facts are so very useful. Especially against CO2 science.
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Zippi62 at 14:33 PM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
" ... The Fox Newsification of America ... "?
" ... 71% of Alabama Republicans believed the allegations were false ... "?
Does the writer (Dana) really know 450,000 republicans (650,000 voted for Roy Moore), who knew the allegations were false? C'mon! That's based upon a poll of a few thousand people.
Climate science doesn't base their findings on Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick Graph". Do they? His graph surely made it into the UN IPCC's Policymaking recommendations even though it wasn't "consensus" science information.
Are we talking political science or climate science?
I like the idea of a RED TEAM/BLUE TEAM forum. It surely wasn't the choice of James Hansen, Al Gore, or Michael Mann over the past 30 years. The science was "settled" to them.
I find this article to be based upon arrogant assumptions, just as is 'climate sensitivity to raised CO2 levels'. There is no consensus on the ideal CO2 level of our atmosphere.
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeeing snipped.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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David Kirtley at 12:20 PM on 30 December 2017From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation
Digby @4 "Am I correct in thinking that the change in delta value is caused by the burning of fossil fuels? "
Yes. Think of the pre-industrial atmosphere which had a δ13C of -6.5‰, now start burning coal, oil and gas, which has a δ13C of about -25‰. Over time we are adding more and more carbon which is "lighter", i.e. has less and less 13C as compared to 12C. Hence, the δ13C of atmospheric CO2 has shifted lower to about -8.5‰ currently.
"how do you compute the contribution of the latter, given the former?"
I'm not sure if you can make this computaion. (At least I don't know how to do it!) I don't know if there is a way to say, okay, a decrease in delta values from -6.5 to -8.5 over 200 years = x amount of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
The reasoning is more along these lines: knowing that the delta values are decreasing, when normally they are stable at -6.5‰, tells us that more of the carbon in atmospheric CO2 is coming from a "lighter" source. We know that the biosphere contains lighter carbon. (See Part 1 where I go over this.) And fossil fuels are also lighter because they ultimately come from plant material. The biosphere is constantly exchanging carbon with the atmosphere, as plants live, grow, die and decay, but we don't see any major changes which would account for the drop in delta values. However, we have been consistently digging up and burning fossil fuels for the past ~200 years. Perhaps that's it. ;)
Check out this NOAA link for more. And if you have more time check out the entire series on isotopes. I can't recommend it enough!
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chriskoz at 11:54 AM on 30 December 2017From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation
Digby Scorgie@4,
As jbpawley noted above, it's not easy to compute the balance of FF carbon in atmosphere from δ-value if you don't know the isotopic preference of carbon sinks such as ocean & biosphere. As we can see from e.g. annual cycles of keeling curve, about 4-5 times more carbon is exchanged between biosphere and atmosphere, comapared to what is added to the system from FF. CISRO graph in the article is a measure of a strong correlation (pretty amazing BTW) rather than the carbon balance.
There are other methods for measuring the amount of FF carbon in the atmosphere. For example by checking Declining oxygen concentration because adding 1 mole of C into atmosphere by burning FF must take 1 mole of oxygen (O2) from it. Other processes involving O fluxes (photosynthesis vs. respiration) are in balance. So you can calculate from the graph therein how much C (that burnes to Co2) and H (that burns to H2O) have been burned. 100% of H2O was taken by ocean, while only some 50% was taken by ocean & biosphere. Knowing all of that, and if you know the proportion of C & H in FF we burned (we do), then you can confirm quantitatively how much CO2 increase to expect from a given O2 decline.
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:28 AM on 30 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
About Canadian temperatures: that would qualify as weather rather than climate, but deserves sonme substantiation anyway. Parts of Canada experienced negative anomalies, but, since we are talking about sea ice and polar bear, the entire Arctic Ocean coast of Canada saw positive anomalies:
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:21 AM on 30 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
I note that Zippi62 conveniently fails to address the blatant flasehoods already pointed and instead attempts to distract by changing the subject. Fine, let's talk.
How far above aveage the sea ice extent is plainly visible on the NSIDC map and does not serve your argument at all. It does, however, show the depth of your denial.
Your IPCC source, which is over 20 years old, does not show anything remotely similar to a "peak" in 1979. It shows a positive anomaly barely reaching 200,000 sq. km. A cursory examination of the record shows that such an anomaly does qualify as "well within normal variability." The graph shows that the current interdecile range is wider than such a variation. Look more closely at your sources. The numbers on the axis do have some meaning.
In depth research has been conducted on historical levels of sea ice. One of the most comprehensive studies is that of Leonid Polyak and his team from Ohio State University, who concluded that the ice loss we are currently witnessing was unmatched for the time duration they could explore (several thousand years).
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602193423.htm
The current data shows a steep downward trend for every month. The trend is most pronounced for the summer months, when sea ice is at its lowest. Reality does not care one bit about the sincerity of your doubt. Arctic sea ice is nowhere near safe.
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nigelj at 09:15 AM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Gail @21, yes I agree we should look at funders of science and vested interests.
IMO fossil fuel companies who fund research are a huge problem, because if you do research for them that finds we do actually have a climate problem, how likely is it you would get further research contracts? I would say not likely, so theres going to be subtle pressure to minimise the climate problem.
In comparison government grants for climate research seem more neutral to me. Governments just dont care what your research finds, If anything governments would rather the whole climate problem just went away.
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Digby Scorgie at 08:31 AM on 30 December 2017From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation
Am I correct in thinking that the change in delta value is caused by the burning of fossil fuels? If so, how do you compute the contribution of the latter, given the former?
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jbpawley at 08:16 AM on 30 December 2017From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation
Surely there is a more direct response to this question, arising from two facts: 1) Although the delta-C13 number for carbon fuels is different from that of atmospherica CO2, but not very different. 2) There is a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, so adding more carbon from fuel combustion can only make a small change. Presumably, someone has compared the actual change over the last 200 years (from the ice core) with the amount of fuel burned so far and the delta-C13 of that fuel (although this may not be possible as long as we don't know how much of each isotope goes into the ocean and how fast the limestone is weathering etc.).
Finally, the fact that the Ozzie plot seems to be relativley free from "noise" should make anyone more confident that it actually measures something important.
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Eclectic at 08:12 AM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Gail @336 , the essential point is that the planet's ice is melting, the sea level is rising, the ocean and atmosphere are warming.
So it is plainly obvious the imbalance exists. Which is at the heart of your question, is it not?
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Gail at 07:52 AM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Nigelj @20
Fake science. The key issue to look for where the funder of a science has a vested interest it coming to a consensus around a particular finding. As with fake news, it's not just about what they DO tell the public and DO look nto, but what they DON'T.
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Gail at 07:16 AM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
TD, thanks a most useful article. Trenberth there says "...the planetary imbalance at TOA is too small to measure directly from satellite". Which directly answers my question.
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Zippi62 at 07:10 AM on 30 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
2 parts of the Arctic are above normal. Alaska and NE North Atlantic sea basin. Residual El Nino ocean warming is the most probable cause.
60%of the Polar Bears of the Arctic Region live in Canada and Canada has been very cold since November.
I sincerely doubt the polar bears are currently in any danger of losing Arctic Sea Ice any time soon. The current "record" of Sea Ice Extent only goes back to 1974. Sea Ice Extent was at its peak in 1979. Chapter 7, page 224 of the 1990 UN IPCC Report shows the graph.
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_07.pdf
The 1930s and 1940s were also a rough time for polar bears, but there is barely any REAL record of Sea Ice Extent. Getting caught up in the Arctic Ice Melt misinformation trail isn't moving any understanding of the Arctic Region forward. Arctic Sea Ice Extent seems to be pretty safe for now.
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Philippe Chantreau at 06:39 AM on 30 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
This is precious. TPohlman mocks the use of the word denier as "a pejorative within the Code on this site."
Zippi62: "Sea ice extent is currently well within normal variability."
NSIDC: "Arctic sea ice extent for November 2017 averaged 9.46 million square kilometers (3.65 million square miles), the third lowest in the 1979 to 2017 satellite record." Examination of the graph shows that it is well below both interquartile range and interdecile range for November. How far can we be from "well within normal variability"?
Zippi62:"It started to freeze early this year and has a lot of very cold air to force a deeper freeze (more multi year ice."
NSIDC: "November air temperatures at 925 hPa (about 3,000 feet above sea level) were above average over essentially all of the Arctic Ocean, with prominent warm spots (more than 6 degrees Celsius, or 11 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1981 to 2010 average) over the Chukchi Sea and north of Svalbard."
Perhaps TPohlman can propose a different word to include within the "Code" for this kind of contributors. As for myself, I'm a big advocate of concise and simple language so I think denier is appropriate.
And lastly, when this pattern manifests over and over and over again, patience for it runs even thinner than peanut butter...
As for Polar bear diet, no article I have found to date suggests that fish is an important part of their diet. It is not exactly easy for polar bears to catch fish. However, all isotope based studies I have found so far show they almost exclusively find their sustenance from the marine food web. The variations in organic contaminants according to the trophic level of their main food soure is especially interesting. They have only recently started to learn to extract food from land based sources and they are mostly opportunistic about it but also not very smart. One study showed no significant intake of readily available fruit, something that other bears would not pass. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of years of maritime meat eating can't be easily erased.
TPohlman seems to trust Stirling. Interestingly, Stirling has been the subject of extensive persional attacks from a certain part of the blogosphere, perhaps after refuting a very poor piece involving the infamous trio Soon-Baliunas-Legates.
Nonetheless, Stirling and Iverson certainly have more of a claim to polar bear expertise than Crockford. The study referenced below shows that ringed seals and harp seals are the main staples, the abstract does not mention fish. It has a interesting list of references.
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nigelj at 04:45 AM on 30 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Gail @19
"Including fake science of course., where motivated or campaigning reasoning can be presented as honest objectivity"
You mean like the anti vaxxers pseudo science, and campaigning?
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Tom Dayton at 04:33 AM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Gail, the most recent account of measured global energy (im)balance that I know of is Trenberth, Fasullo, von Schuckmann, and Cheng, Insights Into Earth's Energy Imbalance from Multiple Sources, 2016.
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Aaron Davis at 02:23 AM on 30 December 2017CO2 limits won't cool the planet
I have written the following email to support@remss.com. Perhaps by next week I can resolve this issue. I thank you for your interest.
Greetings,
I am trying to quantify the effect of the 3.5% swing in CO2 concentrations in high Northern latitudes relative to high Southern latitudes. The data I have access to are monthly anomaly data where apparently the effect I am seeking: monthly temperature swings have been removed.
Unfortunately, I do not have access to the referenced ftp site. Could you please provide the average monthly (12 data points) temperature for both the 60/82.5 band and the -70/-60 latitude bands. This would be 24 data points, one for each month in the two bands.
Very sincerely yours,
Aaron DavisThe set of 12 month means for 1979 to 1998 are included in the netCDF files available on the ftp server (ftp.remss.com/msu).
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Gail at 01:27 AM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
MAR @333
I'm assuming planetary warming necessarily means an energy imbalance. Correct ?
And you seem to be confirming what I have read elsewhere, namely that current satellite measuremen technology cannot yet tell us what the imbalance actually is in absolute units per unit time. They seem confident only that the outgoing heat is decreasing, but can't quantify in absolute terms, only the relative wobbles you mention.
Moderator Response:[TD] See Trenberth's energy budget diagram, which appears in many places such as this post. Wikipedia has a good article. More technical is a rebuttal to the misinterpretation of a Trenberth quote; read the Intermediate tabbed pane, then watch the video, then read the Advanced tabbed pane.
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David Kirtley at 01:05 AM on 30 December 2017From the eMail Bag: Carbon Isotopes, Part 2: The Delta Notation
Digby@1 Yes, "some people" might say that such small changes can't tell us anything. It is the same kind of thinking that argues that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the small increase of that due to human emissions, is too small to matter. Here is the SkS rebuttal dealing with that: How substances in trace amounts can cause large effects.
The examples shown in that rebuttal show that small changes can have large consequences. In our everyday lives, most people can't notice such small changes. But scientists know the importance of these changes and so have devised ways to measure them.
Beyond telling "some people" these facts and examples, I'm not sure what else can be said. For "some people" their gut feelings about things trump the evidence shining before their eyes.
For me, the evidence shown in the CSIRO graph (figure 3) is compelling proof that something is different with the atmosphere's CO2. For most of the last millennium, the delta value was constant at -6.5‰; only in the last ~200 years have we seen a change with those values growing more and more negative. Yes, these are very small changes over time. But these changes are like fingerprints and blood drops at a crime scene: if you know what to look for they contain a wealth of information.
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MA Rodger at 00:05 AM on 30 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Gail @331,
I think I should correct the comment @332. The climate forcing is of the order of 2 to 3 watts per square metre. The imbalance will be less as the planetary warming means more radiation to space and thus a smaller imbalance, roughly 1 watt per sq metre.
The imbalance can be measured by satellites but while the satellite measurements are good at measuring the wobbles in the incoming & outgoing radiation, they are very poor (so far) at giving accurate net values or good long-term trends, this due to calibration problems. However, we do have good measures of Ocean Heat Content which is where most of the energy ends up and OHC measurements are the exact opposite accuracy-wise.
So if we say the change in Ocean Heat Content is very roughly 0.77 watt per metre squared (as quoted for Ocean Heat Content in the Intermediate version of the OP) and say that a quantity of energy very roughly about 5% of the ΔOHC would be used to warm the atmosphere, we can calculate that the atmosphere would be warming at about 0.19ºC per decade. This is a little above the actual measured rate of warming of 0.175ºC per decade which has remained remarkably constant over the last few decades (as this graph demonstrates - usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment')
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Eclectic at 23:53 PM on 29 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
Gail @331 , you will have to explain what you mean by a "relative measurement". That's a very odd term !
In absolute terms, the energy imbalance [i.e. rate of energy gain by the planet] is in the region of 2.0 - 3.0 watts per square meter (if I recall the figure correctly! ). That is, gain averaging "per square meter" planet-wide 24 hours per day 365 days per year. Doesn't sound much — equal to a small LED bulb — but do your math and multiply by 510 million square kilometers planet-wide year after year . . . and you can see why hundreds of cubic miles of ice are melting, the sea level is rising on an accelerating path, plants & animals are changing behavior and location, and the ocean is warming (also causing a rapid temperature rise in the thin planetary layer we call "the surface").
The speed of warming is something you should educate yourself about (you will best look at more appropriate threads & articles on this SkepticalScience website). As a heads-up, the ballpark figure for warming to an equilibrium . . . is that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 produces eventually around 3.0 more likely 3.5 degreesC surface temperature rise. How much of that we get now depends on how quickly we stop adding CO2 to the air.
Of course, for your own lifetime and the lifetimes of your grandchildren, you will more immediately be concerned with the "transient" [= short-term] speed of planetary response. Already we have had around a 1 degreeC rise in little more than a century — so it's going on at a galloping speed.
But do please pursue the matter on more appropriate threads. This particular thread is more about the mechanism of global warming & its connection/causation by human industrial activity — and both those points have been determined beyond all doubt (though there's always a "Flat-Earther" who likes to argue against all the evidence ;-)
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MA Rodger at 23:34 PM on 29 December 2017CO2 limits won't cool the planet
Aaron Davis @23,
I am failing to grasp what you say in your first paragraph.
One point that can be cleared up by me. The Latitude quoted in my graphic @22 should of course be 52N and not 54N. Interestingly, BEST give data with an identical latitude of 52.24N for both Irkutsk and London although in the latter case, this latitude is representitive of a UK value which they substitute for a London value. (My intention at first was to graph BEST data rather than the Wikithing stuff.)
However directly addressing your first paragraph, I am not sure what you mean by your 'smoothed out differences,' why locations at 52.3N or 51.5N or there-abouts would 'not be especially relevant,' or what you meant by "correction you identified." (Perhaps I should also mention here your use of RSS that involves significantly different latitude ranges for the two poles.)
Concerning the rest of your comment @23, I set out @17 six serious errors in your grand analysis, factors you suggested @18 were "maybe not so serious" and you now @23 ask for clarity in what I "claim."
Of the six serious errors set ou @17, four address your method and of these three as existential in argumentation terms. That is, there are three reasons why no signal of the phenomenon you seek will be identified within the data you use. Using the numbering @17 for reference, these are (3) The data you use are anomalies and thus have had the signal you look for removed, as explained @19. (2) The differences between the regions being analysed will provide noise that will entirely swamp any signal were it present, an exemplar demonstration of this provided @22. (1) The signal would be minute and smaller than the measurement accuracy of the data you use. I suggested @17 "less than 0.001ºC, perhaps". The 'perhaps' was me wondering if it were better another zero would be added. Your misuse @18 of ECS (with values 2 to 7) yielding your estimate of "should be between -0.07 and -0.245oC" was flagged in the Response @18. If ECS were used to give a ball-park figure for this a phenomenon, it should be noted that perhaps 4% of the warming involved in ECS occurs in the first year of a forcing, and that the 15ppm cycle is effectively operating for just 2 months prior to the measurement period. So for ECS=3, the response would be 3 x 0.0375 x 0.04 /6 = 0.00075ºC.
Perhaps we can put this 15ppm dip in context by considering the size of the forcing and its impact prior to the measurement period. Such a dip in CO2 over +70N (the Arctic Ocean) would provide 9e18j. Over this same period the Arctic Sea Ice Volume experiences a melt of ice requiring 4,500e18j (+/-600e18j to 2sd) - the melt values from PIOMAS 1979-2017. Or simply in terms of heating an isolated atmosphere, the 9e18j would provide a 0.06ºC increase but with losses to space, to the surface and to lower latitudes due to atmospheric circulation, you would need another zero or two.
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Gail at 21:46 PM on 29 December 2017There's no empirical evidence
The basic notion of greenhouse warming, and that man is adding CO2, are both widely recognised. The real question is surely How Much How Soon ?
The article says a creeping energy imbalance has been noted, but is this just a relative measurement, or have we actually measured, in absolute terms, the energy imbalance? And if so, what does that amount of added energy mean in terms of degrees warming per unit of time ?
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Gail at 20:35 PM on 29 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Fake ideas from ANY source are a threat. Including fake science of course., where motivated or campaigning reasoning can be presented as honest objectivity, in a similar way as fake news is.
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nigelj at 18:13 PM on 29 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
"To the north, Arctic sea ice reached a record low wintertime maximum (this year) extent as, incredibly, temperature instruments in Alaska malfunctioned due to the surging warmth."
www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/28/climate-change-2017-warmest-year-extreme-weather
But no, Susan Crockford says nothing going on here, and it can't possibly affect bisophere and polar bears. There just comes a point where people are clearly in denial, and simply loose all credibility.
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nigelj at 14:50 PM on 29 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
Zippi@62, fair enough, polar bears do sometimes eat fish when they get lucky. I didnt say they never ate fish. But I doubt they would capture enough in the arctic region to be of much use. Remember it's the arctic bears we are all talking about.
I don't know why death of polar bears would be poorly understood. Old age, disease, hunting surely? There is some research suggesting it has been due to lack of seals related to climate change in one sub population.
Habitat loss and changes in food sources have been important causes in the extinction or decline of many species. I haven't seen any convincing reasons why polar bears are going to be immune to this, as the climate continues to warm and reduce sea ice extent.
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Zippi62 at 14:17 PM on 29 December 2017How blogs convey and distort scientific information about polar bears and Arctic sea ice
Polar bears eat fish. - Bing Image Search
60% of polar bears live in Canada, which is NOT part of the Arctic Ice terrain. - " ... They are found in Canada (home to roughly 60% of the world's polar bears), the U.S. (Alaska), Greenland, Russia, and Norway (the Svalbard archipelago).
The polar bear Range States have identified 19 populations of polar bears living in four different sea ice regions across the Arctic. ... " - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bearI'm surprised that you didn't read your own article thoroughly.
The death of polar bears in the wild is poorly understood. They live longer in captivity (according to WIKI.
Moderator Response:[BW] Properly embedded links. Please use the "Insert" tab of the comments box to do this yourself. Thanks!
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nigelj at 13:29 PM on 29 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
Pluvial @17
"which will probably end our dominance of world economics and politics, another good thing, and maybe what Trumpism, supported by many reasonable people, is wisely trying to accomplish."
It is hard to reconcile this statement with Trumps efforts to increase military spending, and hold other countries almost to ransom by threatening to remove financial aid and other benefits if they disagree with trump over anything, and attempts to rewrite trade polices brutally in ways that favour america more (most economists say america already benefits more than most from free trade) and generally bully and threaten.
Or maybe this shows how we all have different interpretations of dominance!
Maybe you mean America is giving up moral leadership? Or giving up promoting multi party international agreements and trying to spread democracy? Or just becoming isolationist as it was prior to the 1940's.
I do agree that some sort of bottom up revolution is likely. And a better understanding of logically flawed arguments and identifying poor quality information sources will probably happen. But not before a lot of damage is done.
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Zippi62 at 13:26 PM on 29 December 2017US government climate report looks at how the oceans are buffering climate change
I should rephrase that : Why do we look for deep ocean heat today, when our current ocean surface warming trend is less than what it was between 1911 and 1941?
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Zippi62 at 12:59 PM on 29 December 2017US government climate report looks at how the oceans are buffering climate change
1911 to 1941 GLOBAL SST was +0.64C while 1941 to 1989 GLOBAL SST was +0.003C. Now we have a 1989 to 2017 GLOBAL SST increase of +0.451C.
Why do we continue to look for heat in the oceans, when our past says we have "NATURAL" warming of the same or higher magnitude on top of the ocean as we did at the turn of the last century?
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PluviAL at 12:51 PM on 29 December 2017Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
max574, I think your valid points are good. The problem with the proposal as offered is precisely who would control it. Neutral parties can be drastically biased one way or another. Look a Jim Crow Laws, and all separate but equal ideas; completely bogus, according to the supreme court.
However, something needs to be done: My graduate level study of this very topic suggests that rather than try to impose something from the top down, content can be self-validating from the bottom top up. As far back as the late 70s, it was clear this problem was growing, now it is exploding in our faces, and it could easily destabilize our democracy, by exploiting errors in its design. This is what oligarchs in Russia have done, and together with ours, what we see now being done to the US.
My feeling is that this is a catharsis, the inoculation suggested. The USA will be fine and that our institutions will prevail, but we must learn from this hard punch, which will probably end our dominance of world economics and politics, another good thing, and maybe what Trumpism, supported by many reasonable people, is wisely trying to accomplish. Nevertheless, creating a bottom up clearing process has tremendous value, as technological bandwidth is proving to be boundless, but the mental limitations of human cognition, although amazing, are very limited by comparison.
I want to work on this concept but must finish my work on the other subject I have been warned not to talk about. If someone wants my graduate materials on the subject, I can copy them for you, look me up at my broken website, Pluvinergy.com. I will tell you the fatal flaw on the work, which when understood makes this a viable idea.
Sorry if this is inproper, and pleaes delete if so. Thanks
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