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Comments 16301 to 16350:

16301. MA Rodger at 19:33 PM on 31 December 2017
       CO2 limits won't cool the planet
       

       Aaron Davis @27,

       I assume you have not carried out even the most simplistic of calculations to support you assertion "So, if anything albedo and CO2 combination, should overstate the seasonal effect over CO2 alone." If you had, you would have noticed that, while the impact of surface albedo will accentuate your elusive little CO2 effect, if you calculated it properly even for that pair of two-month-periods, you would see that during the periods and zones in question, insolation & albedo are far bigger effects than your teeny weeny dip in CO2. The insolation works against the CO2 effect and is about 100 x bigger (+13Wm^-2 compared with -0.14Wm^-2). The Surface Albedo effect is bigger still being about 300 x teeny weeny CO2 effect but additional to it. So the combination of Insolation and Surface Albedo sits 200 x bigger than the teeny weeny effect you attempt to measure (-27Wm^-2). Of course the atmospheric albedo is still to be accounted as has the imbalances in preceeding months. And there is still a whole pile of other factors beyond solar energy input.

       I must stress that the reason your teeny weeny CO2 effect is so insignificant is not because CO2 forcing is insignificant or even that 15ppm CO2 is entirely insignificant. It is because the 15ppm CO2 dip you attempt to measure is only operating for a couple of months before you attempt to measure its impact.

       The 9e18j value you ask about reflects the size of the zone impacted by the dip and its accumulative impact by the time of your temperature measurement. It is not a global figure. Why would it be? (The annual global forcing from -15ppm ΔCO2 would today amount to 2,250e18j, an effect that is far from insignificant.) That you apparently see some notion mirroring your own denialism in my comments is entirely illusory on your part.

16302. Gail at 19:19 PM on 31 December 2017
       Fake news is a threat to humanity, but scientists may have a solution
       

       He who pays the reseacher calls the tune.  No sensible layman would trust tobacco-funded research into smoking would they ?     No,  because the motives of a science's funder can easily skew and disguise results to advance the funder's vested interest,  cleverly highlighting or hiding various aspects as needed.
       Moderators - Yes, your rule is that political comments are not allowed. But, as it happens, most climate science is politically funded.  So you have thus ruled out any fundamental discussion of the actual practice of climate science, its motives and adherence to the scientific method.   
       I  think that is Unskeptical Science, and urge you to reconsider.

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16303. Aanthanur at 19:13 PM on 31 December 2017
       97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
       

       "We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)."

       no you do not determine that level. because according to you data, there would have been a 87% consensus and not 97%.

        

       because you then change the consensus position to include unquantified statements.

        

       "To simplify the analysis, ratings were consolidated into three groups: endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 1–3 in table 2)"

        

       so people, carefull when you use that study as a source, the study shows that 97% of published studies state that human activity cause some warming.

        

       the paper does not show that 97% of the scientific literature on climate change support the conclusion that human activity cause MOST of the warming since mid 20th century, as is falsely claimed in the paper.

       how did this pass peer review?

16304. Eclectic at 17:49 PM on 31 December 2017
       Video: How not to panic about Global Warming
       

       Quite right, Pluto.   A study of history, shows that if you wish to solve a social or environmental problem . . . then you should not even lift a finger until other people have done their bit first.

       It worked for the Good Samaritan.  It also worked for George Washington & the Founding Fathers — they were successful because they did nothing at all and simply waited for the others to move first.  After all, any other way of doing things would be so unfair.  

16305. NorrisM at 15:16 PM on 31 December 2017
       There's no empirical evidence
       

       Bob Loblaw @ 343

       Everyone agrees that additional levels of CO2 are causing global warming.  The question always comes down to how much warming.

       So does this not again bring us back to how good the GCMs are at predicting what impact this increased CO2 will have on future temperatures, even assuming that all of the observed warming since 1970 is attributable to CO2 emissions? 

       The models predict that we are not going to make a 2C limit for the period from 1870 to 2100 without serious cuts in CO2 well before that time.   

       But if you look at the "ballpark" .8C increase in the last 150 years that works out to around .05C per decade.  At this rate, 100 years from now (not 1870) we will add a further .5C representing a total of 1.3C since 1870.

       So we have to go back to the climate models to get to the 4-6C increases which are in the IPCC Fifth Assessment.  I may have these numbers wrong but you get my point.

       Perhaps someone can provide me with a calculation of the observed decadal increase from 1950 onwards, or, for that matter, even from 1975 to date.  

       Moderator Response:

       [TD] It is very clear that warming has accelerated over the last 150 years. Right off the bat, you must account for the pause in warming between about 1940 and 1970, which was due to huge dumping of reflective aerosols into the atmosphere. Ignoring that by averaging from 1850 onward seriously reduces the temperature increase rate estimate so it is unrepresentative of warming before that dumping and since that dumping was drastically reduced.

16306. Pluto at 14:43 PM on 31 December 2017
       Video: How not to panic about Global Warming
       

       Do the AGW supporting political celebrities actually believe what they are preaching?

       By now, most of us are familiar with the lavish, jet-setting lifestyles of the super rich politians who are pushing the agenda of the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) community. These include both Clintons, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. While telling us "We the People" that we must reduce our carbon emissions or all kinds of catastrophies will happen, they seem to have no problem whatsoever in bouncing around the world (for both business aned pleasure) in their private jets or Air Force One. Most of us would call that hypocrisy on steroids, and I certainly would not argue that point, but there is another aspect to this that I find even more disturbing. These political celebs know full well that their money and influence won't save them from the disasters they describe, yet their personal lifestyles seem to indicate no concern at all. This leaves open the question of whether they personally believe in AGW, or if they know something the rest of us don't, and realize this threat is fictitious.

       Along these lines, there is another point that should be addressed. Back in the early 1990s, the Cold War ended along with the jobs of thousands upon thousands of defense scientists. By then, global warming was already considered to be a serious threat. These displaced scientists could have been put to work at better understanding the climate change situation and finding solutions, possibly in terms of cleaner burning fuels or more efficient engines, motors, and generators. But this didn't happen. Instead, the "peace dividend" went into helping the former Soviet scientists, bailing out failed financial institutions, and getting involved in every skirmish in the Middle East. Most of the high-profile politicians involved in making these decisions were also on the AGW bandwagon. What baffles me is that they continued with that "business as usual" attitude even though the lives and well-being of themselves and their own families were in as much danger from AGW as everyone else's. So what happened? Did they simply not care or did they realize the AGW threat was non-existent?

       The best way to not panic about global warming is to recognize that the very political celebrities that are promoting it are also the ones who, by their actions, seem the least worried about it. These include both Clintons, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. While telling us "We the People" that we must reduce our carbon emissions or all kinds of catastrophies will happen, they seem to have no problem whatsoever in keeping their "fuelish" lifestyle by bouncing around the world (for both business aned pleasure) in their private jets or Air Force One. Most of us would call that hypocrisy on steroids, but there is another aspect to this that I find even more disturbing. These political celebs know full well that their money and influence won't save them from the disasters they describe, yet their personal and professional lifestyles seem to indicate no concern at all.

       During the early 1990s, a period often remembered as the "end of the cold war" thousands of defense scientists lost their jobs, including me. At the time, AGW was already considered a threat by many, and the IPCC warned of various disasters occurring if we don't reduce our coarbon emissions by the year 2000. At this point, truly concerned AGW believing politians would have helped direct the "peace dividend" funds (ie. savings resulting from the defense cutbacks) to rehire at least some of these former defense scientists so that they could help find solutions or mitigate the coming crisis. This did not happen, however. Instead, the "peace dividend" went into helping the former Soviet scientists, bailing out failed financial institutions, and getting involved in every skirmish in the Middle East. Most of the high-profile politicians involved in making these decisions were also on the AGW bandwagon. What baffles me is that they continued with that "business as usual" attitude even though the lives and well-being of themselves and their own families were in as much danger from AGW as everyone else's. So what happened? Did they simply not care or did they realize the AGW threat was non-existent?

       So, as I see it, if the AGW celebs aren't worried about it, why should I be?

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16307. saileshrao at 14:40 PM on 31 December 2017
       It's methane
       

       Baraliuh @29-31, here's a recent Nature article showing the enormous carbon sequestration potential of grasslands returning to native forests: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25138.epdf

16308. saileshrao at 12:44 PM on 31 December 2017
       It's methane
       

       Baraliuh @29-31, has there been any resolution to your questions on Animal Agriculture?

16309. John Hartz at 08:12 AM on 31 December 2017
       There'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

16310. Bob Loblaw at 07:25 AM on 31 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16311. Bob Loblaw at 07:20 AM on 31 December 2017
       There'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:

       1. 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.
       2. 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:

       1. Measure the radiation input and output, using satellites, and add everything up over time to determine the imbalance.
       2. 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.

16312. factotum at 06:20 AM on 31 December 2017
       From 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

16313. Tom Dayton at 05:59 AM on 31 December 2017
       There'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.

16314. Zippi62 at 05:52 AM on 31 December 2017
       US 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?

16315. nigelj at 05:41 AM on 31 December 2017
       2017 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.

16316. Philippe Chantreau at 05:13 AM on 31 December 2017
       There'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.

16317. nigelj at 05:07 AM on 31 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16318. nigelj at 04:45 AM on 31 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16319. Aaron Davis at 03:40 AM on 31 December 2017
       CO2 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.

16320. MA Rodger at 23:02 PM on 30 December 2017
       There'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.")

       

16321. Eclectic at 22:40 PM on 30 December 2017
       There'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"  ;-)

16322. Eclectic at 22:24 PM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16323. JohnSeers at 21:57 PM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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. 

16324. Gail at 21:00 PM on 30 December 2017
       There'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.   

16325. Gail at 19:49 PM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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.

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16326. MA Rodger at 19:17 PM on 30 December 2017
       CO2 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.

16327. Eclectic at 18:36 PM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16328. Zippi62 at 14:33 PM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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.

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16329. David Kirtley at 12:20 PM on 30 December 2017
       From 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!

16330. chriskoz at 11:54 AM on 30 December 2017
       From 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.

16331. Philippe Chantreau at 11:28 AM on 30 December 2017
       How 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:

       www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201711

16332. Philippe Chantreau at 11:21 AM on 30 December 2017
       How 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.

16333. nigelj at 09:15 AM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16334. Digby Scorgie at 08:31 AM on 30 December 2017
       From 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?

16335. jbpawley at 08:16 AM on 30 December 2017
       From 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.

16336. Eclectic at 08:12 AM on 30 December 2017
       There'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?

16337. Gail at 07:52 AM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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.

16338. Gail at 07:16 AM on 30 December 2017
       There'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.

16339. Zippi62 at 07:10 AM on 30 December 2017
       How 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.

16340. Philippe Chantreau at 06:39 AM on 30 December 2017
       How 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.

       onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/07-1050.1/abstract

16341. nigelj at 04:45 AM on 30 December 2017
       Fake 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?

16342. Tom Dayton at 04:33 AM on 30 December 2017
       There'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.

16343. Aaron Davis at 02:23 AM on 30 December 2017
       CO2 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 Davis

       The set of 12 month means for 1979 to 1998 are included in the netCDF files available on the ftp server (ftp.remss.com/msu).

16344. Gail at 01:27 AM on 30 December 2017
       There'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.

16345. David Kirtley at 01:05 AM on 30 December 2017
       From 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.

16346. MA Rodger at 00:05 AM on 30 December 2017
       There'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')

16347. Eclectic at 23:53 PM on 29 December 2017
       There'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  ;-)  

16348. MA Rodger at 23:34 PM on 29 December 2017
       CO2 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.

16349. Gail at 21:46 PM on 29 December 2017
       There'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 ?

16350. Gail at 20:35 PM on 29 December 2017
       Fake 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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