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

Recent Comments

Comments 19701 to 19750:

ubrew12 at 01:53 AM on 12 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

Evan@12: I've had occasion to think in terms of analogies, lately (trying to convince a non-technically-trained friend how to look differently at Giaever's many mistakes). For example Giaever claims that a 1 C change in global temperature over a century is just a 0.3% change, in absolute terms (Kelvin). To him that looks 'amazingly stable'. To my friend, all he really sees is 'Nobel Prize in Physics'. So I mentioned to my friend that a mere 1% wiggle, in absolute terms, takes Earth from the holocene optimum to the middle of the last ice age. I'm not sure that worked, however. So I'm thinking of trying this analogy: "Suppose you were walking near the Empire State Building and a chunk of concrete fell on your head. During the lawsuit, Empire's lawyers exclaim 'Little did you know, but we have a solid-state scale under the entire building, and when we look at the weight the day before your accident, and the day after, the change is only 0.0001%!! Aha, this number is so close to zero, it must be zero. Ergo, you were hit by some other building. QED!' "

Evan at 00:31 AM on 12 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

ubrew12, some good thoughts for analogies: wrist, waist, beach, waves, bobbing ... lots to work with.

What about the analogy that others have used where we note that our bodies can be exposed to temperatures that vary up and down by 10's of degrees, but if our body temperature rises by 1=2C, we are in trouble. It's not quite the same as comparing one physical situation to another (e.g., tide vs. wave height, or wrist to waist diameter), as much as it suggests that there are cases where a 1-2C temperature difference is huge, and for our body temperatures, a 4C rise means death. Again, it's not a 1:1 analogy in terms of physics, but it is an anology that suggests that how we interpret temperature changes is not as simple as what kind of daily weather extremes we can tolerate.

Thanks for the analogy fodder ubrew12. Comments help.

MartinJB at 00:12 AM on 12 June 2017

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23

I find it very difficult to compare cited costs of different climate change mitigation efforts. Let's just take the $100 trillion over 100 years cost cited by too, above.

Is that just the US or the whole world?
Is that incremental costs above previous commitments (like the oft-misused 0.2c benefit) or inclusive of those previous commitments?
Is that additional to what would be spent on BAU infrastructure or is the incremental cost substantially less as the amount that would be spent on infrastructure is already in the $10s of trillions?

I'm pretty sure that most of the time people cite costs, they don't know themselves what they're actually talking about. So, who has read really good studies about costs that lay things out in a genuinely useful manner? Does anyone have good sources? Thanks!

Cheers,

MartinJB

too at 23:17 PM on 11 June 2017

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23

Look, there needs to be some objectivity brought to this topic. The Paris climate agreement does nothing to impact climate change. Dropping a projected rise of say 2 degrees in the next century by 0.2 degrees is essentially the same as doing nothing. The question is really, should we spend $100 trillion dollars over the next century to essentially do nothing or use that $100 trillion dollars differently? With $100 trillion dollars we could, for example, construct a sunsheild at the L1 Lagranian point at a cost of a mere $5 trillion. We could also probably solve most of the world's problems and mitigate any rise in temperature.

The argument therefore is not a sociopathic argument, it is an economic argument. One can believe in climate change and also believe that the Paris agreement is not the right way to attack the problem.

(snip)

Climate Change is a One Trick Pony - http://bit.ly/2rcI0Ja

There are No Climate Change Deniers http://bit.ly/2rfrHXp

Solar Change Deniers - http://bit.ly/2qVnhEA

Moderator Response:

[RH] This is not a platform to advertise your blog.

ubrew12 at 22:57 PM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

nigelj@9 said: "the... warping of space time analogy for general relativity..." I agree that analogies are useful ways to explain phenomena remote to one's personal experience. I have an analogy for Evan he might use in a future post: "A dedicated surfer finally pulled together the funding to take an epic surfing surfari all over the world. To save money, however, he was mostly roughing it. At a remote beach in South Australia, he pitched his tent just beyond the beach break and hurridly paddled out. It was everything he had imagined. After several hours, a local paddled out and mentioned that in the time our traveler had been out, the tide had raised the sea level by 1 foot. "One foot!," exclaims our tourist, "Why, that's nothing! You and I are going to be bobbing up and down by 20 feet in the next few minutes!" It's only after our surfer paddles back in, and observes the damage to his tent and supplies, that he appreciates the difference between 'seasonal change' and 'climate change'.

I thought up this analogy after an old surfing buddy of mine, who has since become an ardent climate skeptic, emailed me the 30' talk of Dr Ivar Giaever. There, Dr Giaever give his audience the claim that a 1 C change in global temperature, over a century, was 'nothing' compared to the seasonal change occuring in a singe year in his New England backyard.

Cherrypicking on top of cherrypicking is not uncommon in the skeptic universe. About 9' into his talk, Giaever reliably trots out the '17 years of no warming after 1998' myth that inspired Evan's analogy in this article. He excitedly points out the flat trendline that followed that enormous Christmas banquet. Look closely and you can see that cherrypicking his start date is only the second cherrypick needed to make his point. He has also cherrypicked his temperature survey to be RSS, the ONLY survey that will give him what he wants (no warming), because, all the others, apparently, were compiled by communists.

jgnfld at 17:15 PM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

After reading Rahmstorf, Foster, and Cahill (2017) link I wrote up a Monte Carlo program to look at the same GISS annual 1972-2000 data from a slightly different perspective: Given a trend and random variation around that trend, how many significant findings would one expect to see if one intentionally started (cherrypicked) at a start value within certain ranges from the trend line. All distributions are generated randomly using the parameters from the GISS data (trend=.017/yr, s.d.=.1033), it is only that this analysis binned and studied start value ranges individually (i.e. cherrypicked them) rather than allowing the start value to occur randomly and normally as standard regression assumptions would dictate. Series lengths of 14 to 20 years were examined.

The resulting graph looks as follows:

R graphic of Monte Carlo cherrypicking analysis

Nothing at all surprising in the results. The left hand column of values shows the significance probabilities resulting from using the whole distribution. Cherrypicking start values well below the trend line greatly increases the likelihood if seeing a significant result. Cherrypicking high start values greatly decreases the likelihood. Longer series are less subject to cherypicking the initial value than are shorter series. In particular, choosing a start value equal to the 1998 el Nino deviation showed that one would then expect to see findings of significance in a 17 year series about 84% of the time. That is, the denier claim that a period with no warming this long is a significant observation is false. It may be an interesting observation to explore further with ever more detailed models, but it in no way shows global warming has "stopped".

Moderator Response:

[RH] Fixed image width. Please keep images limited to 500px.

nigelj at 11:22 AM on 11 June 2017

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23

Moderator, perhaps the use of the term retard is a bit blunt and inflammatory, but I think Chriskoz final paragraph is 100% correct. It is not really political, and is a very good hypothesis that describes Trump's psychological behaviour.

nigelj at 11:00 AM on 11 June 2017

Reflections on the politics of climate change

OPOF @27, agree totally with that. Trump does act like a spoilt child at times. Immaturity is a big part of the problem. What's worse is society is now at risk of creating a generation of spolit grown up narcissists.

Having said that I kind of like many of todays young people and it doesn't have to be that way.

Ridicule has it's place, commonly known as satire! But criticising Trumps hair and his so called tiny hands makes me cringe, and is too petty and personal. Good satire is a bit more subtle.

But Trump has been very rude and many people see it as payback, and it's the same with the media, he has spent years viciously attacking them beyond what they genuinely deserve, and they see it as payback time, and who can blame them?

But I'm being rhetorical. Theres no need to really go down to his level and personalise everytrhing in a nasty way.

nigelj at 10:51 AM on 11 June 2017

Reflections on the politics of climate change

OPOF @27, yeah fair enough.

I think the power and brilliance of the American Constitution is that it leaves "the pursuit of happiness" undefined. The idea appears to be to escape the heavy social and political structures of Europe, so any attempt to define happiness would be just more government dictat.

However its was probably generally interpreted to mean the things you say, and unfortunately over time it has been interpreted to justify any activity at all no matter how damaging this might be to self, other people or the country as a whole. Perhaps this reflects weakening of unspoken community rules and religious ideas, and a replacement code of informal community values is still evolving. The crimnal law can control some forms of harm, but we also need cultural understandings and informal values as well.

And so the constitution is heavy on rights, but a bit light on responsibilities.

I think people should decide and pursue their own freedoms as they define them, provided they do not significantly impinge on the health or safety of others. To me this is the main message distilled down to one sentence, but it could probably be worded better. It would be good if the constitution had something along those lines.

chriskoz at 09:46 AM on 11 June 2017

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23

nigelj@1,

T-man is a sociopatic retard in every aspect of his life and all his dealings. It's been pointed out that his vocabulary, even general cognitive skills are at 6th grader level. One of my colleagues maintains that T-man is even worse that an adolescent: he's like a spolied child ravaging a candy store. Well, chatting recently with 13y old children (7th graders) of my friend, I must admit those youngsters would feel offended if compared to T-man: they happened to be very eloquent, surprisingly mature people, understanding our world at large and our challenges, including climate change mitigation. So, it might be that we give T-man too much credit by even describing his immaturity as that of 6th grader, perhaps more accurate would be to describe him as a spoiled child, a brat in a candy store.

So T-man's characterisation in the feature article:

"utterly delusional, deeply cynical, or profoundly ignorant"
[my emphasis: it should be "and"]

is accurate. And it has been known before his election to WH. It concerns every and all his actions, starting from extorting $1b from Uncle Sam 20y ago, and ending on pussygate.

His latest action (iresponsible walkaway from Paris accord) is just a confirmation of his standard modus operandi. If his party were pro-Paris, and they offered him tons of rewards to stay there, he would have done it. He would have done everything to have candy store for himself. Unfortunately, climate change mitigation is a difficult business, at a level way beyond his understanding, and there is no immediate reward for engagement in it, and it's difficult to setup a candy store on this path to lure him in.

Moderator Response:

[PS] this is getting extremely marginal for tone and very political.

Richard15720 at 09:08 AM on 11 June 2017

Less than half of published scientists endorse global warming

Are there any statistics about CO2 caused by forrest fires all over the earth? If so, does that information seperate forrest fire contrfibutions ffrom human contributions?

nigelj at 09:05 AM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

Evan @ 8, yeah I totally agree about a couple of different levels of analogies for people with different levels of interest in climate change. For example, the blanket analogy is a good simple greenhouse gas analogy, but there are more complex ones that can be illuminating as well. I suggest your articles could discuss both levels of analogy for whatever issue within the same article.

I know some people say analogies dont work, or don't convince, but I strongly feel they have a place. For example I recall reading a popular book on relativity and quantum physics using the bending or warping of space time analogy for general relativity. Frankly I didn't do enough advanced maths to fully understand these general relativity theories, and it can only really be decribed with maths ultimately, but how many people have the time to study that? So there is no alternative but an analogy! The terms bending or warping are as near as you can get to whats going on in a way that gives some level of insight.

nigelj at 07:44 AM on 11 June 2017

2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23

Great comments, and I agree with your overall assessment of Trump.

Is it socipathy? Well probably yes. Trump does not exactly display and great empathy or sense of genuine mercy or concern for others. The only time I see some empathy or mercy is when it happens to make Trump look good, because his shows of empathy or sympathy are very erratic and contradictory, and are not backed up with cogent policies.

I don't understand how Trump can possibly conclude that everyone is laughing at America, over America joining the Paris Accord. Sure America had signed up to join the Paris Accord and made cutbacks to emissions, but so have other countries and more determined ones with tougher rules than America, so its hard to see why they would be laughing at America. Trumps claims are deviod of any sense at all, and seem to be paranoia.

Even if some twisted people thought it made America look weak who cares about them? I admired America for joining, and I would think the vast majority would given most countries are behind the Paris Accord. You can only please the majority, you will never impress everyone.

America has a powerful economy and military and many fine institutions, and is obviously strong, but doesn't need to keep proving it every single day. America makes itself look stupid, weak, panicky and selfish with unprincipled foreign policies and erratic behaviour. Perhaps Trump is deliberately erratic to try to scare people, but this approach will weaken America in the long run as people see through the charade.

Ironically other countries may be laughing at America all right, but its because of Trumps dubious, erratic and incomprehensible leadership.

Moderator Response:

[JH] Re your second point, be sure to check out the Toon of the Week in tomorrow's edition of the Weekly Digest.

Evan at 07:13 AM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

nigelj@6. Thanks for your input. I am likely to leave the Christmas Dinner analogy as is, but will take your input into consideration to try to simplify future analogies. In other words, for each topic, there may be several analogies that need to be formulated, at different levels of detail, similar to the SkS method of writing Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced rebuttals. To reach the maximum number of people, we need multiple approaches, and I appreciate input about the point at which an analogy gets too long and complicated.

nigelj at 06:45 AM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

Driving by @5, yeah true. We work a lot in our daily lives on a combination of reason and a great deal of intuition or gut feelings. It would not be practical to deeply analyse everything especially if we are under threat and quick decisions are needed.

Gut feelings can be wrong of course, but its sometimes all we have.

However I was reading this a few weeks age from Science Daily. Gut feelings are more than just a hunch in terms of reactions to people. They are reliable in certain situations:

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080305144210.htm

It appears gut feelings are reliable or appropriate for some things and not others, which of course complicates the picture.

However even science often starts with little more than an intuition, which is sort of a gut feeling. The difference is science them rigorously tests those intuitions. This is where the general public (and politicians) get lazy they aren't prepared to rigourously logically test their gut feelings or intuitions.

nigelj at 06:26 AM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

Evan @3, most of your analogies have been good, but for me your xmas dinner analogy was just too long and complicated. I feel the purpose of an analogy is to take complicated stuff and make it simple, and most are short sentences or words or a simple sequence of events. You took the pause idea and actually made it more complcated for me. Of course this is just my opinion.

The ocean heat content wrist / waist anaology above is very clever and maybe a better analogy, although its probably still more of a clever read, and preaching to the converted.

The seasons analogy above works much better for me, and takes a familiar and simple aspect of climate and builds on that.

I got plenty out of the rest of your article, and its bang on. The pause is a huge issue that has been discussed a lot, and the reasons for it seem quite complicated. As far as I can understand it is a lot to do with cyclical ocean processes, but with a low point in the sunspot cycle adding to that. Frankly I dont think its 100% understood, so that makes any analogy even harder.

But the pause is certainly at least 75% understood in my opinion.The el nino cycle can affect things for about ten years and is a powerful cycle. So hopefully people can understand that a long term warming trend from greenhouse gases will look sort of like like an upaward tilted sine wave graph as a result of el nino etc. There are other ocean cycles of about 20 years but they are a bit weaker. Theres a lot going on summed up as short term noise in the context of century long timescales. The denialists know this, but twist these issues to create as much doubt as possible

Tom Curtis at 04:58 AM on 11 June 2017

It's the sun

anticorncob6 @1239, if you use an offset (eg, SSN - the mean value of the SSN over a given interval) or normalized sunspot number (eg, (SSN - mean value)/standard deviation), you can get negative values. Integrating will hten allow negative slopes. Clearly if you allow yourself to do that, however, you can potentially generate an infinite number of curves with different values and/or different shapes. Therefore unless you clearly lay out how you did it, and justify the steps - it is always an invalid approach when integrating.

That is particularly the case when you use different offsets, which has clearly been done in this case. In particular, the graph of the comparison with the Southern Annular Mode (bottom left) shows a negative slope for the "sunspot integral" from about 1870 to 1930. Equally clearly, in comparing with global sea ice (bottom right), the "negative sunspot integral" is near flat over the same interval. Clearly a different baseline has been adopted in the two cases, and likely in others as well.

To make it worse, the comparison with global sea ice has clearly been tuned to get that effect. The markings on the y-axis of values from -1 to 1 indicate that these are normalized values, but the "negative sunspot integral" for half of the record is an effectively flat line with a high value. That would not be possible with an integration of the SSN offset by the mean value of the series. Ergo they have chosen some different offset for the reason that it gives that shape to the graph.

As the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics as used by climate change deniers.

anticorncob6 at 04:33 AM on 11 June 2017

It's the sun

Sorry if this has already been brought up (I think I can be forgiven for not wanting to read through 1238 comments) but can someone please respond to this? I'm arguing with a denier on Youtube right now.

https://i1.wp.com/s24.postimg.org/bu2hwxlut/Sunspot_Integral_Climate_Wind_Ice.png

To me it seems they're looking at accumulated sunspots (is that what they mean by "integral"?) and if that's the case the graph can never decrease, but it does. Sometime seems off but I want to be precise.

DrivingBy at 03:25 AM on 11 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

Logic and science work only for the study of nature, they are not how people work. They're also unpopular with most people, who are both uwilling and also unable to apply them to most issues. That works out well in general, because most issues (how to attract a mate, raise children, etc) aren't logic problems. If we ask people who were promoted as tribal leaders to suspend the normal way of doing things (noise, persuation, charm) and be nerds, we can expect a chilly reception at best.

Only when people believe there's something in it for them, their identity group or same cause they adhere to (Gaia, Jesus, USA, their investments etc) will they suspend looking for ways to reinforce what they already believe and even attempt to follow the foreign thought process of observation, testing and deduction.

But climate is not an obvious process you can demonstrate on a tabletop, so it will again come to whether a pol will listen to the wizards who interpret heirogyphics. They'd sooner swim through a sewage pipe than slog through the neccessary background to verify the science themselves.

Rob Honeycutt at 03:18 AM on 11 June 2017

Climate's changed before

too @550... Pretty much every point you've stated here is fundamentally incorrect.

1) Many solutions, in addition to wind and solar, are discussed to address climate change. Nuclear, CCS, efficiency, tidal, geothermal, hydro are all solutions which are being actively worked on and are being actively implemented.

2) Researchers provide a wide variety of temperature reconstructions for past temperature. There are numberous local and regional records, and there are a great many multiproxy reconstructions as well. Just because something is "inferred" does not mean that it is wrong. That would be a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because you don't have absolute precisions doesn't mean you can't trust the information you do have.

3) What we do know about CO2 concentrations is, they are rising. There is no question about that fact. We know how much we extract and burn in terms of fossil fuels. We know concentrations are rising due to human contributions. There is very high confidence on this fact.

4) If you actually were to spend any time reading scientific research or listen to what scientists actually say, you would realize that uncertainties are core to the message that they present.

I suspect that your entire comment is posted here mostly as a means to drive traffic to your personal climate denial blog.

too at 01:57 AM on 11 June 2017

Climate's changed before

Look, the main issue in general is that no other solutions to today's climate change are ever discussed other than replacing fossil fuels with wind and power. Added to this are the uncertainties of today's climate science. Specifically:

Science cannot provide an average temperature change for the history of the world or accurately determine the rapidty of temperature changes during specific periods because these are all based on inferred evidence and those models could be incorrect.
Science cannot accurately measure the CO2 produced year-over-year from such things as ocean-atmospheric exchange, plant and animal respiration, soil respiration and decomposition or determine if these things are increasing or decreasing. These are solely an approximation based upon a model that could be incorrect. And, even a slightly incorrect approximation or model could have a tremendous effect considering that these natural processes produce orders of magnitude more CO2 than burning fossil fuels.

It is incorrect of climate scientists to claim certainty with so much uncertainty present. It is also incorrect to only ever talk about replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar when a tremendous number of other, alternative solutions are available.

https://theobjectiveobserverblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/one-trick-pony/

Moderator Response:

[PS] As pointed out earlier, the link is to misinformation not supporting evidence. Until you can figure out what is true, there is little point coming here to demonstrate poor critical thinking.

When you make a claim (like scientist claim certainty), then provide a link to the science that supports that claim. Nothing is easier to disprove than a strawman. Further strawman arguments will be summarily deleted.

One Planet Only Forever at 00:39 AM on 11 June 2017

Reflections on the politics of climate change

nigelj,

Further clarification. Entertainment that Ridicules the Ridiculous things done by 'people who grow up mere children' does not harm such a grown-up Mere Child.

That type of entertainment can help raise awareness of the better (rationally justified) understanding of things and reduce the magnitude of Unjustifiable Winning by Grown-up Mere Children. It can also help many people who still have some growing-up to do to understand how best to develop/change their ways of thinking and acting.

To be most effective such ridiculing enetertainment should stick to the ridiculous statements and actions, not stoop to "unjustified image attacks" like making fun of the colour or syle of a person's hair.

HK at 23:55 PM on 10 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

If you want to make the point that short-term noise doesn’t negate the long-term climate trend, maybe the best analogy is daily temperatures vs. the seasons. Just as manmade GHGs now are the main global climate forcing on a decadal to century time scale, the shifting distribution of insolation is the main seasonal forcing. Clearly that doesn’t mean that every day during the spring is warmer than the previous one – a few colder days doesn’t mean that the coming summer is cancelled.

To test this pretty obvious concept, I checked the average daily temperatures at my local weather station here in south-eastern Norway from March 1 to May 31 this year. It turned out that of these 92 successive days, only 45 were warmer than the previous one while 45 were colder and 2 the same, and there was nearly no warming the first three weeks of April. The long "hiatus" in April didn’t prevent the overall temperature to rise about 15^oC from early March to late May.

This shows that as long as the underlying forcing keeps on increasing, the warming will continue despite some ups and downs that are mostly caused by redistribution of heat within the climate system.

Hank11198 at 22:18 PM on 10 June 2017

The day after withdrawing from Paris, Trump declared a flooding disaster in Missouri

ubrew12 I have seen this exact same graph or something similar but the one's I've seen have always been in C. I think I can figure out how to insert a picture.

Well I guess not. I have one on my hard drive but didn't see how to browse to it.

Evan at 15:03 PM on 10 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

nigelj@1 and ubrew12@2. I like your suggestions to focus on the oceans as well, and the idea of wrist vs. waist is interesting. I think what you are both saying as well is that most people simply don't think about the temperature of the ocean. The reason for focusing on the body weight is that I felt this is something that all people understand, and intuitively people differentiate between signal and noise, even though they don't know that's what they're doing.

Using the wrist/waist reference takes the analogy in a different direction, but one that is equally important. For this direction (informing people that the temperature of the oceans is also important) others have used sea level rise in the 20th century as an indication that ocean temperature is rising, just like mercury in a thermometer rises (expands) as it warms.

Eclectic at 14:02 PM on 10 June 2017

Throwing Down The Gauntlet

Too @25 , the reference you give to "theobjectiveobserverblog.wordpress" is not worth reading.

The blog article is a complete waste of readers' time.

It consists of a mixture of puerile "butthurt" and tired old foolish sophistries, combined with a determined effort to avoid looking at the real physical world and the real mechanisms which are causing the current extraordinary rapid (and anthropogenic) global warming.

Theobjectiveobserver is highly un-objective and highly foolish in his observations.

Science-denier; climate-change-denier; logic-denier etc.; call him whatever . . . so long as we call a spade a spade!!

too at 13:40 PM on 10 June 2017

There is no consensus

Just because there is consensus doesn't automatically mean that the view is correct. Historically, scientific consensus has not only been proven to be wrong, but spectacularly wrong...time and time again.

https://theobjectiveobserverblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/there-are-no-climate-change-deniers/

Moderator Response:

[PS] This sloganeering without a scrap of support. If you want to dispute, pick a point, back your argument with references/data. If you are taken in by the nonsense in link presented, then I strongly recommend you read here and here.

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.

ubrew12 at 13:39 PM on 10 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

To extend your Christmas dinner analogy, suppose you went to your doctor and he asked if you were gaining weight. 'No', you say brightly, 'I measure the circumference of my left wrist each day, and it has remained the same since last Christmas'. 'Perhaps you should measure your waist instead', says doc. 'My waist is covered in clothing', you retort, 'that's too difficult'. Your doctor measures your waist and reports unhappily that, despite the evidence of your wrist, you never really stopped expanding since last Christmas (this analogy communicates that evidence of global warming is more accurately determined by sampling the ocean than the air, even if it requires more work).

One Planet Only Forever at 12:48 PM on 10 June 2017

Reflections on the politics of climate change

nigelj,

I agree there is nothing wrong, and lots of merit, in people doing what they enjoy, as you say "... some pleasure, fashion, and amusements", as long as the actions do not create a negative effect for Others (no entertainment or amuzement at the expense of someone else).

What I will add that when the USA Constitution was written the "pursuit of happiness" was generally understood to be the pursuit of the requirements of an enjoyable life which can be understood to be: clean air, clean water, decent nutritious food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, a variety of amuzement and entertainment, hobbies, sport, ...

The current belief in the minds of many people, not just in the USA, seems to be that Happiness is 'believing and doing whatever makes You Happy' without being restrained by "rational consideration of distant motives" (ignorant regarding the understanding that a 'personally desired' activity harms Others - future generations are Others).

Bob Loblaw at 10:18 AM on 10 June 2017

Humidity is falling

Redrum:

Have you asked yourself what the "relative" in "relative humidity" is relative to? That is the answer to your question. It is not an absolute measure of water vapour: it is a ratio (or %) of the absolute measure of water vapour to some other quantity.

That other quantity is the "saturation humidity", and saturation humidity increases with increasing temperature. If the absolute humidity remains constant, relative humidity will decrease as temperature increases, so relative humidity is not a particularly good indicator of the actual water vapour content of the air. You need to also have knowledge of the air temperature to fill out the relationship.

As an analogy, telling me that you spend 20% of your total income on housing tells me little if I don't know what your income is. If your income goes up or down, the % will change even if the actual $ you spend on housing does not.

Wikipedia has a good page on relative humidity. It also has a more general page on vapour pressure, which includes an explanation of the concept of saturation. (They call it equilibrium.) Also check out wikipedia's Humidity page. "Specific humidity" is only one of several measures of humidity that avodi the "relative" conundrum.

Fake skeptics will call attention to relative humidity, which will go down if the absolute humidity is not rising as fast as the saturation humidity does with rising temperatures. They are the ones that are misleading.

All of this will be discussed in any decent introductory meteorology text.

Daniel Bailey at 09:02 AM on 10 June 2017

Humidity is falling

The atmospheric composition of water vapor has increased by about 5% since 1970 (Trenberth & Fasullo, 2009; pp 317). As a result, the atmosphere now holds the equivalent of an extra volume of Lake Erie in it, spread throughout.

Redrum at 08:58 AM on 10 June 2017

Humidity is falling

Hello,
I have a small question about the relative and specific humidity - why do these researches take on specific humidity, and what is it's relation to relative humidity? Sceptics say that relative humidity is falling globally, and we are manipulating by showing the specific humidity graphs.

nigelj at 08:17 AM on 10 June 2017

SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause

Good article, but the weight loss analogy is rather complicated and convoluted. The more technical explanation in the article following this was fine and easy to follow. I don't think the temperature trend and so called pause is an issue that suggests a good, simple, useful analogy.

I think instead your technical explanation was enough. Most people would grasp that you can have one longer term trend modulated by other shorter term trends. There is also the issue that there was no pause in ocean temperatures.

The problem was more one of scale. The denialists distorted things to make an approximately 8 year pause sound like a very long pause of 17 years by cherry picking 1998 as a starting point and cherry picking what temperature data they used. I think the public would have have some intuitive insight that 17 years looks suspicious, but 8 years or so is not unexpected.

You are right to call the denislists out on this dubious sort of interpretation. It's basically an exaggeration fallacy.

Nicko at 07:32 AM on 10 June 2017

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

This does not seem a good explanation for how greenhouse theory is not at odds with the second law of thermodynamics. A body will lose heat at a rate relative to the surrounding temperature. If it is much colder and your body loses heat quickly you feel cold. The blanket does slow the transfer of heat from your warm body to the cold atmosphere, making you feel warmer, or more correctly less cold. You do not actually get hotter just colder slower, whereas greenhouse theory States the earth gets hotter, not colder slower.

Moderator Response:

[PS] This is the longest thread at Sks and it seems to be because people have simultaneously have a very poor grasp of thermodynamics and a great reluctance to improve it. Science of Doom have an excellent series on the textbook basics as well as good article on Second Law. But please be clear that if you are going to insist on a description of thermodynamics that is not in accordance with experimental results, then this is not site for you.

nigelj at 07:15 AM on 10 June 2017

Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate

Engineer Jim @2

I think when you claim the Paris Accord etc is about wealth redistribution, you are reacting a little bit emotively. There is assistance for poor countries and I would see this as more of a pragmatic sort of thing that can be defended on a logical basis. It should also be noted that while you are right poor countries will like this, plenty of rich countries are prepared to participate as well, and its basically the USA now on the outside being paranoid about it.

I do myself have concerns about the economic philosophies, and I'm not saying you are wrong to voice such concerns, but I don't think it invalidates the Accord as a whole, and is not a sensibe reason to just walk away. The treaty is largely voluntary, and this includes any assistance America gives poor countries, so America can ignore some of these if it really feels it must for whatever reason.

Trumps actions leaving the Acccord appear more just a rejection of any form of Accord, and looks like points scoring against anything Obama did. There is no other conclusion I can draw especially when you look at the full picture of Trumps actions on everything.

In any event helping other countries strengthens them economically, and this has some benefits for America. It all churns back into the global economy.

Yes wind and solar use some rare earth metals just like computers, phones and a thousand other devices today, but I dont hear you say abandon these and go back to the past.

All power generation technologies have downsides. Hydro power completely alters landscapes, and often requires shifting entire communities and China would be a good example. Coal power releases serious particulate emissions. Nuclear energy has both benefits and risks.

You haven't really provided any real evidence that renewable energy has more problems than anything else.

I dont see that windmills using metals is any worse overall than buildings being built of metals. Steel and aluminium are abundant.

Electirc cars largely rely on lithium and this can be recycled. However theres not much lithium in the batteries and this is not a pressing concern to recycle lithium.

Rare eath metals can obviously be recycled.

Its a tough issue because all resources can be depleted and oil certainly wont last forever. However metals can actually be recycled.

No doubt some of the factories processing rare eath metals or lithium cause pollution, especially factories in developing countries with governments with poor regulatory standards or weak court systems. However surely the solution to this is better quality institutions, as opposed to abandoning using those metals?

too at 03:04 AM on 10 June 2017

Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?

So, if I understand what you are saying about this being a cycle. If human population growth completely stopped and remained constant as well as every other CO2 producer/source (all remain constant) and at the same time every square inch of the Earth became covered in lush vegetation, increasing the amount of photosynthesis occuring by a factor of 100 let's say, according to your "cycle" theory, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would never decrease? I think that is pretty much incorrect. Yes it is a cycle, but the amount in the atmosphere depends on how much is being put into the atmosphere (sources) and how much is being taken out of the atmosphere (sinks). So...you're incorrect.

John Hartz at 00:25 AM on 10 June 2017

Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate

[JH] Suggested supplemental reading:

Hawaii rebels against Trump with a law to uphold the spirit of the Paris climate accord by Kurtis Lee, Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2017

Engineer Jim at 23:10 PM on 9 June 2017

Pittsburgh and Paris join over 200 cities and states rejecting Trump on climate

The basic premise of the Paris accord was noble and good. Reducing man-made pollution is good at any time. The unenforcibility and politically driven wealth redistribution aspects of the treaty is a typical piece of UN work. In their minds it is OK to get the US taxpayer to pay for their expense accounts and to pay for the actions required of smaller nations under a global treaty. No wonder the other countries all signed! Read the text of the treaty before complaining. Its sickening. Can't blame Trump for bagging it!

"Climate change" is a political talking point. It creates a focus on only air pollution and neglects all other forms of environmental pollution. Do the readers of this blog really believe that alternative energy is pollution free? Wind and solar consume a huge amount of not only metals, but exotic metals, kills zillions of birds, requires sophisticated metallurgy and manufacturing, and creates a blight on the landscape. As an example, the rare earths required to make the technologies work are principally mined in China without any type of environmental control creating massive damage to local water aquifers and the environment in general. How about the massive consumption of metals for electric cars? That is localized pollution, but its in someone else's back yard. Guess that is OK? Out of sight, out of mind. No carbon footprint?

Possibly it is time for a re-calibration of the debate to a more balanced total global pollution footprint discussion? Air, water, land?

Moderator Response:

[JH] Vacuous sloganeering 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.

[PS] Looks like someone is getting their information about what is in Paris accord from rather biased sources. Could try reading it instead. Also, developed world emissions have created the problem so good luck getting agreement to fix without developed world paying for it.

Eclectic at 21:37 PM on 9 June 2017

There is no consensus

Sorry, Rikoshaprl @754 , but the link you supply mentions the main "leading climatologist" as Richard Lindzen — an ex-climatologist who was so unscientific, that he caused major embarrassment to his colleagues at M.I.T. when he was there. And the other climatologists your article (at yournewswire) links to, are little better! Lindzen makes a triple fail, because his own climate predictions are now a full degree Celsius below the present day global surface temperature. That is a colossal error by Lindzen. And Lindzen still seems to think there has been hardly any warming, despite all the evidence to the contrary! Lindzen is severely out of touch with reality. And his third fail, is that he appears to hold a religious-based belief that Jehovah would prevent a global warming of more than the slightest amount. Completely unscientific attitude there, as I am sure you must agree. Among genuine climatologists, Lindzen is a laughing stock.

Now to the Cook study itself. Rikoshaprl, it appears you have not read the Cook paper. If you had read it, then you would see that the second part of the paper consists of questioning the authors of those papers — and here, the authors themselves rate their own papers at around 97% support of the consensus figure found in the first section of the study [i.e. also 97%]

Sorry, Rikoshaprl, but you haven't a leg to stand on.

Perhaps you can inform us of how you came to make such a complete mistake of the real situation. For your own benefit, you should do some reading about what is actually happening in the field of climate science — and you can learn a great deal, right here at Skepticalscience.

Avoid foolish propaganda sites such as Yournewswire. They will misinform you and lead you to embarrass yourself, hugely !!

rikoshaprl at 20:32 PM on 9 June 2017

There is no consensus

A paper by five leading climatologists published in the journal Science and Education found only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate studies examined in Cook’s study explicitly stated mankind has caused most of the warming since 1950 — meaning the actual consensus is 0.3 percent, not 97%. http://yournewswire.com/mit-scientist-global-warming-propaganda/

Moderator Response:

[DB] In this venue, participants cite credible sources. In this case, if you wish to cite a published study, then furnish a link to the actual study, and not to some news article that may or may not be misrepresenting the paper.

Please read this venue's Comments Policy to familiarize yourself with this venue's permitted rules of engagement. Thanks!

Digby Scorgie at 12:19 PM on 9 June 2017

Analysis: Meeting Paris pledges would prevent at least 1C of global warming

All right, Mr Moderator, I'll try to express myself more circumspectly: In view of Bjorn Lomborg's reputation, I don't think any weight should be placed on his 2015 paper.

John Hartz at 11:56 AM on 9 June 2017

Analysis: Meeting Paris pledges would prevent at least 1C of global warming

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