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curiousd at 06:40 AM on 16 May 2017Science of Climate Change online class starting next week on Coursera
I have had an exciting time, nearly a month, collaborating with David Archer in updating his "Modtran Infrared Light in the Atmosphere." I am grateful to David Archer for this opportunity. I thank the folks who contributed their feedback on this site.
We are finished updating the website for now. There is a difficult issue that remains to simmer, but do check out what has been done to date.
Some of the new results:
1. The underlying Planck distribution has been extended to encompass 2 wn to 2200 wn.
2. Now if one calls up the U.S. Standard Atmosphere, no GHG, T offset by minus 33.2 degrees to produce a surface at 255 K, whereas you used to obtain 225 w/msqd, you now obtain 233 watts/meter sqd. If you use the Stefan Boltzmann law and the emissivity of 0.98 you ger 234 watts/ meter sqd.
3. The clear sky OLR obtained by using the default GHG used to be 260 watts / meter squared. It is now 267 watts/ meter sqd. I assume an observor distance of 70 km. If the emissivity were changed to 1 from 0.98 one would obtain an OLR of 272 watts per meter sqd. The AIRS spectrometer obtains 274 wattsper meter sqd.
It is difficult for me to deduce what AIRS uses for emissivity; in actuality the Earth surfaceemissivity is a function of wave number.
4. A "Freon Scale button" has been added.
5. Now if you look downward from the Earth Surface you obtain an OLR for U.S. Standard of 382.14 watts/ meter sqd. If you use Stefan Boltzmann law assumimg emissivity one you get 391 watts/ per meter squared. Dividing 382.14/391= 0.97. This is a natural procedure a user would go through to determine the assumed emissivity of the program, if that user felt it unlikely that he/she would understand the contents of the "Show Raw Model Output" button. The procedure gives 0.97 instead of 0.98 probably because even the window between 2 wn and 2200 wn has a termination error.
The procedure described in the previous paragraph, using the old version of "Modtran Infrared Light in the Atmosphere," would yield an emissivity of 0.92, which is impossibly small.
6. The incident insolation for the Tropical setting lies between 300 watts per meter sqd and 320 watts / meter sqd. (Petty, p. 4.) This should equal the upward thermal IR power, which now is 297 watts/ meter sqd, and would convert to 306 watts per meter sqd if the emissivity were changed to one.
There is one unresolved issue. What is the best way to create a reasonable altitude versus temperature plot in the chart to the right of the plot of intensity versus wavelength? Previously the shape of such plots, given a large temperature offset of the surface, were quite complex, and based on a model that is lost in the mists of time. We believe we have some idea of a means toward creating realistic plots for positive temperature offsets, but not negative offsets. Therefore, for reasons of consistency and simplicity the assumption made for now is that both the surface and the temperature of the atmosphere are given the same offset. Changing the stratosphere temperature in this manner is more than questionable, but a suitable alternative is not obvious to us.
This issue is found in other packages. SpectralCalc simply goes to the opposite extreme so that the Earth surface offset is decoupled from the temperature of the atmosphere, and if this procedure results in a abrupt temperature discontinuity so be it.
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Russell8621 at 06:24 AM on 16 May 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
The Dilbert strip behind this furor:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2017/05/why-science-journals-arent-published-in.html
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dudo39 at 01:50 AM on 16 May 2017SkS Analogy 3 - The Greenhouse Effect is Like a Cloudy Night
KR, thats precisely my point: statisctics do not provide a solution.
As to P K Dick's quote, I may add that believing does not explain a thing in science
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Susan Anderson at 01:33 AM on 16 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
"failure is an important part of innovation" (from Brookings)
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Susan Anderson at 00:49 AM on 16 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Thanks for the update and good sourcing. I appreciate the frustration with inaction and stubborn political and media resistance to facing facts, which I share. Thanks particularly for the Brookings summary.
In general, as soon as someone starts to say something along the lines of "nofink works, so why do anyfink" I tune out. It's a failure to acknowledge the problem, which is life threatening not just in the lifetimes of younger people, but in my view within the next 20 years give or take a few.
That means, even if its not working - and particularly if the only objective is that it has not been demonstrated to work yet - we need to keep trying.
Life is not something we have a choice to refuse by proxy. Proxy refusals are pretty much evasive bunk.
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Tom Curtis at 00:39 AM on 16 May 2017Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks
karly @19:
"Nobody, ... , can produce one paper (peer-reviewed or not) that shows, unequivocally, that a reduction in CO2 lowers global temperature."
Actually, here is one by Arrhenius in 1898. He writes:
"We may now inquire how great must the variation of the carbonic acid in the atmosphere be to cause a given change of the temperature. The answer may be found by interpolation in Table VII. To facilitate such an inquiry, we may make a simple observation. If the quantity of carbonic acid decreases from 1 to 0.67, the fall of temperature is nearly the same as the increase of temperature if this quantity augments to 1.5. And to get a new increase of this order of magnitude (3°.4), it will be necessary to alter the quantity of carbonic acid till it reaches a value nearly midway between 2 and 2.5. Thus if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression. This rule--which naturally holds good only in the part investigated--will be useful for the following summary estimations."
Here is another by Richard Tol a century later. He writes:
"This paper demonstrates that there is a robust statistical relationship between the records of the global mean surface air temperature and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide over the period 1870–1991. As such, the enhanced greenhouse effect is a plausible explanation for the observed global warming. Long term natural variability is another prime candidate for explaining the temperature rise of the last century. Analysis of natural variability from paleo-reconstructions, however, shows that human activity is so much more likely an explanation that the earlier conclusion is not refuted. But, even if one believes in large natural climatic variability, the odds are invariably in favour of the enhanced greenhouse effect. The above conclusions hold for a range of statistical models, including one that is capable of describing the stabilization of the global mean temperature from the 1940s to the 1970s onwards. This model is also shown to be otherwise statistically adequate. The estimated climate sensitivity is about 3.8 °C with a standard deviation of 0.9 °C, but depends slightly on which model is preferred and how much natural variability is allowed."
Wasn't so hard, was it.
Of course you will now reject both examples by equivocating on "unequivocal". Neither paper equivocates on their results, but you will reinterpret "show, unequivocally" to mean "provide definitive proof"; which in turn will turn out to mean that you require mathematical proof, at least for something you are disinclined to believe.
That game is, of course, massively uninteresting for those who really want their beliefs to be guided by evidence.
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Eclectic at 22:38 PM on 15 May 2017Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks
Karly, nobody can produce one paper (peer-reviewed or not) that shows, unequivocally, that a reduction in solar output lowers global temperature.
Yet the planet is "highly likely" to cool if the sun's output reduces.
Some things simply do not need to be investigated via a scientific paper — unless one is aiming to win an Ig Nobel Prize.
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karly at 22:27 PM on 15 May 2017Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks
I've been here before, so don't bother with the deluge of abuse. Simply provide one paprer (only one) that proves your point. Reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere lowers global temperatures.
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karly at 22:11 PM on 15 May 2017Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks
I can produce dozens of articles (peer-reviewed, if you insist), showing that vaccination is effective. Nobody, NOBODY, can produce one paper (peer-reviewed or not) that shows, unequivocally, that a reduction in CO2 lowers global temperature.
Moderator Response:[JH] The use of all-caps constitutes shouting and is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Please read the policy and adhere to it.
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ubrew12 at 18:05 PM on 15 May 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #19
Language matters, especially when you're trying to inform the public, who may not understand the physical underpinnings of Climate Change. For example, when they hear "Did Global Warming 'pause' during the 2000s?" they assume, even without reading further, that this was of some debate in the informed community. So, the denier claim, that there was a 'pause', is validated even from just the title. The uninformed public may not realize that any planet for whom 93% of the mass affected by Global Warming is ocean water, water that has shown only an acceleration of warming in the 2000s, cannot have sustained, in any way, a 'pause' in Global Warming. Yes, there was a 'pause' in Atmospheric warming, and it is worthy of study and debate. But there was never any indication of any 'pause' in Global Warming, at all. We all know that, the author of the 'Atlantic' article knows that, and in the interest of brevity we go along with a nomenclature that has got to be making the deniers very happy. The uninformed public doesn't know that the Atmosphere is just 1% of the 'globe' in 'global warming', and they are taking titles like that at face value, unfortunately. How do you spend that much time and words battling over a 'pause' in Global Warming, for a decade during which Global Warming accelerated? By misplacing the Earth, it would seem.
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sauerj at 13:29 PM on 15 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Linked below is a very good, indepth podcast on carbon pricing policy & related subjects. It's very much worth the 40mins to listen to it! It is an open interview of two very knowledgeable & articulate people on the economics & global politics concerning climate action policies. Some of this addresses the faults of the past carbon pricing "1.0" attempts, and, looking forward, some of the reasons for a brighter outlook for a carbon tax with today's growing political & commercial voices, what they call carbon pricing "2.0". This podcast was posted on the CCL FB page a few days ago.
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chriskoz at 13:11 PM on 15 May 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #19
nigelj@1,
The technique you're probably asking for, to determine and quanify the so called recent "slowdown" in AGW temp signal is called "change-point analysis", which does piece-wise linear function fitting to the data in order to get the optimal linear model. You obviously have to demonstrate that changes in your model be statistically significant to avoid overfitting.
Stefan from RC has done it as described here and concluded there was no statistically signifficant change in temp signal derivative since ~1970, putting to bed any serious claims of "slowdown" or "hiatus". Also, Tamino nicely explained the statistics behind this method here.Note that Stefan's article comes from Dec 2014, which is before latest monster ElNino pushed surface temps higher. Tamino's blog comes from Apr 2015: so when ElNino in question just started.
Of course, science deniers' claims have nothing to do with reality or statistical methods, so they'll continue to bang their silly "it's stopped warming..." talk no matter what.
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sauerj at 08:22 AM on 15 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Sorry! The %GDP numbers in my @5 above are wrong concerning on how much $100/UStonCO2 would be in %GDP. I mistakenly used global 40bn UStonsCO2 (wrong) & divided by $18tr US GDP (right) to calculate the incorrect 22% value. If using the correct 7.4bn UStonsCO2 & dividing by $18tr US GDP, the correct percentage is 4.1% for the 100/USton CO2 RNCFD tax rate.
Presently, energy costs are 8.8% of GDP (LINK). Therefore, the 4.1% is ~50% of current GDP energy costs. If current RE uninstalled technologies are equal to uninstalled carbon technologies (based on recent internet articles I have seen), then this $100 RNCFD tax would therefore make carbon technoloiges 50% more than RE's (12.9% GDP vs 8.8% GDP).
A 50% increase in energy cost is a fairly significant driving force so to economically justify investment infusion for R/D, RE commerical ventures, and justify both transition & conservation projects (both in the private & public sectors). If $100 RNCFD tax rate does not result in fast enough transition & reduction in discretionary consumption, then the $100 RNCFD tax rate could be increased so to accentuate the economic driving force.
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 15 May 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #19
I could never understand what all the fuss was about from the climate denialists over the so called pause. I'm not a climate scientist, but I'm well educated, and I recall the early IPCC reports said there would be occasional periods of about 10 years where temperatures slowed, or even declined, due to short term natural variation like el nino / la nina etc. This was in the general media as well, so nobody interested in climate can plead ignorance.
We had about 10 years of flat temperatures, entirely in line with these predictions, so I could never understand what all the fuss was about from the climate denialists.
The denialists claimed there was a 15 plus year pause, but this is a distorted, fake claim simply using the peak of the 1998 el nino as a starting point. You have to use a running trend line (or whatever the correct term is) in which case the so called pause was about 10 years or less.
I do admit temperatures were getting close to the outer limit of error bars in climate models, and another few years would have raised serious questions of what was going on, but then we had high temperatures of the last few years, which ended the pause. So the pause was within expectations and climate theory.
There may be more pauses as well, then the fools can start their chanting again, "global warming stopped in 2027 / 2047 / etc, etc.
I have read various explanations that the pause never happened, it was statistically insignificant, and / or over estimated, etc. This is true scientifically, but from a public perception point of view its probably better to acknowledge that temperatures slowed for a few years from about 2002 - 2010 (depending on what data you look at) and this is obvious looking at any temperature graph. There was a slowdown, or whatever you want to call it.
The climate denialists blew the whole thing out of proportion, probably deliberately to cause confusion and doubt. Well it's clear to me global warming has definitely not stopped. The longer term temperature trend from approx. 1900 is just looking relentless now.
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Miguelito at 03:15 AM on 15 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Gingerbaker and Richard:
Evidence suggests carbon taxes work in British Columbia, Canada.
Some targeted policies are required (fugitive emissions from wellsites and gas-infrastructure, for example), but there's little that says a carbon tax won't work as a main tool at tackling CO2 emissions.
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HK at 01:08 AM on 15 May 2017Industrial-era ocean heat uptake has doubled since 1997
Science of Doom made a simple ocean model to test what impact a certain short wave forcing (solar) and an equal long wave forcing (infrared) had on the ocean temperature. The result was an almost identical warming from both types of forcings from the surface down to a depth of 100 metres. So, infrared back radiation can indeed warm the oceans below the skin layer, if "warming" means "raising the temperature above what it would otherwise be".
Another, and for me even more convincing argument that this must be true is a simple budget of the surface energy fluxes:
If the average surface temperature of the oceans is 290 K (17°C) and the emissivity is 0.95, the heat loss by radiation is 0.95 * 5.67*10-8 * 2904 = 381 watts/m2. If evaporation and sensible heat is included, the total heat loss increases to about 500 watts/m2.
That’s a huge problem for the "back radiation deniers" as the direct solar forcing is only 168 watts/m2 according to this source, or about 1/3 of the value required to maintain the present surface temperature. Where do the missing ~330 watts/m2 come from if not from the long wave back radiation? -
Paul D at 19:06 PM on 14 May 2017Electric Cars are the Missing Link to a Zero Carbon Energy Grid
Some good news regarding grid scale energy storage developments in the UK. A while ago the Pumped Heat Energy Storage company Isentropic went into administration having come close to designing the first grid scale unit that was to be tested at a UK sub station.
Isentropic is now a part of a research facility of Newcastle University, which is frankly brilliant news because Isentropics technology offered excellent scalable levels of storage, with low costs and low losses.
The sub station unit is currently being commissioned and will start operations this summer! -
william5331 at 15:50 PM on 14 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
The only system I can see that would be effective is what James Hansen suggests. A small tax on carbon coming out of the ground or across your boarder increasing by some pre set increment each year. Every cent of the money collected given in equal proportion to each individual tax payer by virtually free electronic transfer. If someone doesn't have a digital bank account, too bad. Sending checks is expensive. Use the IRD data bank and sent the money to the same account that they send refunds to.
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citizenschallenge at 13:02 PM on 14 May 2017Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks
KR 17 - why do folks always leave out the part about Curry's dependence on personal attacks? - Her articles consistently insinuate that scientists are dishonest, she often suggests motives that show serious respected scientists in the worst possible light.
Judith Curry does her "science communication" by malicious one-sided rhetoric. Tippy toeing around that doesn't help anyone. Why not confront it, case in point:
"¶1 A look behind the curtain of John Bates’ facade - The John Bates Affair" - A citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal. "Climate scientists versus climate data" - John Bates, posted on February 4, 2017 at Curry's ClimateEtc
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2017/03/1-behind-curtain-of-bates-facade.html
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KR at 11:04 AM on 14 May 2017SkS Analogy 3 - The Greenhouse Effect is Like a Cloudy Night
dudo39 - Your claim that "Statistics do not provide solutions: they may indicate how to express an educated guess or opinion [neither one is a fact]" is quite incorrect.
Statistics in science state that the evidence points to a particular result with some uncertainties due to measurements, predictability, available observations, etc. That's not expressing an opinion, your opinion won't change the evidence one bit.
To quote Philip K. Dick, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Evidence is not opinion, and not a guess.
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KR at 10:57 AM on 14 May 2017Study: to beat science denial, inoculate against misinformers' tricks
Haze - Short answer on Curry's blog. She asserts almost nothing quantifiable or testable, implies doubt by emphasizing uncertainties despite their small levels, and basically gives a certain class of climate denialists and 'lukewarmers' a space to claim that the science isn't solid.
Again, nothing testable, nothing solid, just handwaving, implications of nefarious actions on the part of the body of climate scientists, and assertions of doubt. It's a denial site.
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KR at 10:52 AM on 14 May 2017Industrial-era ocean heat uptake has doubled since 1997
Yes, infrared radiation penetrates about a millimeter into the ocean. And in doing so, warms the suface 'skin' of the ocean, held fairly stable by surface tension, and in doing so lessens the amount of heat the oceans release to the air. Given the stable skin, only heat conduction can allow that energy to cross the interface to warm the air by conduction or evaporation, and that conduction is directly related to the temperature difference on opposite sides of the skin layer.
Infrared doesn't directly 'warm' the oceans past that millimeter, the input is from SW radiation - but it slows their loss of energy, and more energy means the oceans warm.
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jgnfld at 08:15 AM on 14 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
@7 Exactly. And to take it one step further, at which point does the expectation of a fair coin exceed 50-50 once you start from a long run?
Answer: Always. The long term expectation of a fair coin will ALWAYS be biased to at least some degree into the infinite future by starting from a run and counting that cherrypicked run into the total.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:19 AM on 14 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
To tie jgnfld's comment 5 to the coin toss example, what most of the pseudo-skeptic fake Galileo's tend to do wtih their naive or misleading analyses is to wait for the random toss of the fair coin to come up with four heads in a row. Then they try to argue that there is a trend from heads to tails when they include those four tosses at the start of a longer sequence.
Thus, HHHHTHTT is used as "evidence" that the coin is changing its behaviour away from heads. As long as you are patient (or dishonest) enough, you will eventually find that HHHH sequence to start with.
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nigelj at 07:15 AM on 14 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
The criticism of carbon taxes from some people doesn't make sense, and is just angry rhetoric. Carbon taxes are the most workable option in my opinion. They would reduce use of fossil fuels, and also provide funds that could be rebates to the public, or subsidies for renewable energy construction, or a combination of both.
Reduction in fossil fuel use would then become an incentive to build renewable energy, but a rather slow incentive. You would actually also need legislation forcing provision of renewable energy.
Carbon taxes are consumption taxes, and these are very common and workable. For example we have had petrol and diesal taxes to fund roads for as far back as I can remember, and no problem. We have tobacco taxes as an incentive to reduce use, and to subsidise healthcare, and this has worked quite well. A carbon tax used to fund renewable energy is fundamentally no different in principle. Where do you think China gets its subsidies on renewable energy from, if its not some form of tax somewhere?
Of course a tax is politically difficult in some countries, but not everyone is as partisan as America. If a carbon tax is correct, the public as a majority will generally accept it even if somewhat reluctantly, just as we have mostly accepted tobacco taxes and petrol taxes and road user charges. Your problem in America (and plenty of other countries, mine to some extent) is your so called politicians ignore the public, and are basically slaves to narrow business interests. Until the public stands up to this you are going nowehere environmentally. Standing up to lobby groups and corporations is not socialism! Taxation is not socialism. Corporates have a good and bad side like anything.
I agree privatised electricty can be problematic, and freemarket ideologies can become fanatical and irrational if pushed to absurd extremes, but simply having a public utility will obviously not automatically solve the climate issue, or provide cheap power. You would still have to mandate that it build only renewable energy, and/ or have carbon taxes to push people in the right direction.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:10 AM on 14 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Tom:
Art may be thinking of Watt's surface stations project, but his comment focused almost entirely on an erroneous description/understanding of radiation shields.
The purpose of the radiation shield is to get the best measurement possible (within budget or practicality) of the air temperature at a specific height above a specific point.
- That air temperature may vary horizontally, depending on the variability of the surface conditions.
- That air temperature will always vary vertically, because that is the temperature gradient along which thermal energy is transported. I have measured several degrees difference between heights of 0.5m and 2m - for example at night with light winds and a strong inversion due to surface radiative cooling (IR losses). Roughly, the temperature gradient is proportional to the logarithm of height (z) - i.e. T = A*ln(z)+ a constant. (Note: this is a very simplified version of the full math.)
The question of effects on local surface variation are related to the question of whether or not the temperature we measure is representative of the temperature of the region. That is an entirely different question from "can we measure air temperature accurately?" I know from experience that it is possible to measure air temperature accurately enough to easily detect vertical differences in temperature of a few hundredths of a degree per metre.
One reason routine meteorological air temperatures are measured at a height of 1.5-2m is so that they average over some area. Rule of thumb: 2m height will react to 100-200m upwind surface conditions. That's why upwind surface conditions are a factor. We could avoid that by measuring close to the surface, but then we are risking very local effects: think of the surface temperature difference between a concrete sidewalk and wet grass on a sunny summer afternoon. That's what Watt's group tried to look at. Fall et al is an OK paper, but Watt's hasn't a clue about the physics.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:55 AM on 14 May 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19
The 'leadership of the moment' in the USA deliberately trying to gain competitive economic advantages by acting less responsibly needs to be addressed.
It is established international policy that when the leadership of a region is failing to act responsibly the international community collectively strives to Correct the Behaviour or Minimize the Damage done, including efforts to unseat the damaging undeserving leadership.
In this case, a deliberate desire by the 'leaders of the moment' in the USA to try to Win by getting away with behaving less responsibly should be addressed by carefully targeted trade sanctions (surgically impacting the wealthy people hoping to gain most by the attempt to be less responsible). This approach has been applied to North Korea and many other nations. It now appears to be required regarding the current irreponsible and damaging leadership of the USA and its intensely negative action plans.
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Richard Stephens at 06:21 AM on 14 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
No, No, No. Taxing carbon does nothing to solve the problem ... it simply displaces it. Renewable energy is the only solution, but low oil pricing will defeat it. Don't tax carbon; tax oil imports! #TaxImportedOil
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sauerj at 05:47 AM on 14 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Thank you SkS on publishing this good update on the CCL organization!
Eclectic @2, very good points. I'll tag along: The wikipedia article on Carbon Tax also gives a good summary, global history, aspects of effective policies & list of endorsements. My Summary: Most of the global C-tax policies have not been nearly as effective as they could be, because they fail to meet the obvious requirements of an effective tax policy. For a C-Tax to be effective, it must be: a) comprehensive (on all FF's, at their source point, proportional to their CO2 footprint), b) have significant impact (at least 10% of GDP, CCL's $100/USton would be 22% of US GDP), c) do not subsidize impacted industries either directly or via tax deductions, which is likely reason the efficacy of most global C-taxes has not lived up to their full potential (subsidizing impacted industries is simply moving money in a circle; of course, the result falls short), and d) the tax must be progressive (i.e. all revenue must be returned to the citizens, and none to industry). On the latter point, only citizens should receive the dividend. They ultimately are the source of the markets. So, in terms of pure capitalistic economic principles, they should be the only sector to receive the dividend. In other words, no specific industry sector by itself is intrinsically endowed w/ capitalistic value except for those that serve basic human survival needs, which are typically publicly funded (water, education, civic order & security, etc). CCL's proposed policy covers these publicly funded sectors by stating that the citizen dividend would be taxed like any other income; this covers the sustinence of these intrinscially valuable sectors. To return the dividends to today's status-quo industries (and I would argue that such industries are already & invisibly subsidized today because the external or social cost of their processes is not included in their product costs), is to capitalistally circumvent the optimum cost vs value trajectory of the economy in a non-sustainable and, thus, injust direction (we would all agree on that statement).
I would agree that subsidizes may likely be necessary to aid in transitioning public utilities. That can still happen as a separate policy. CCL's proposal is, of course, not meant to be an exclusive, do-it-all policy solution. But subsidizing much beyond transitioning public utilities, I believe, would be less effective than RNCFD (revenue neutral carbon fee & dividend), because when subsidizing renewable processes, the selection of which processes to subsidize is limited to the presently known technologies and futhermore is easily politically influenced, resulting in less than optimum solution pathways versus the more effective use of free-market competition & ever organic human ingenuity to discover & develop ever new & better solutions. Instead, let the competitive force of the free-market drive the re-direction of investments away from the carbon-laden & thus less profitable industries, and toward the increasingly more profitable sustainable industries, thus driving the development of optimum R/D endeavors and the resulting commercial solutions.
In the industry that I work in (corn wetmilling for starch & syrup products), I can affirm to everyone that if there was a $100/USton tax, that the plants where I work would immediately implement 100% cogeneration using CCGT technology, thereby cutting our sizable carbon footprint in half (because with a proper C-tax, energy cost would go hand-in-hand with the processes carbon footprint). I believe my anecdotal story would be representative of what would happen all up & down the economy resulting in significant carbon reductions. However, if this transition was fueled instead by regulations or subsidy programs (which are also more administratively burdensome than RNCFD), who's to say if the ultimate & economically viable pathway to the highest degree of carbon emission reductions is, instead, a gradual phase-out of the entire corn wetmilling industry, or at the least, a complete shake-up of our product line. Because the policies of subsidies & regulations do not comprehensively result in "loading" the entire economy with the true cost of FF's (agriculture, other raw ingredients, shipping, packaging, etc, etc ... i.e. but only impact those processes that the subsidies are only directed to), industries like mine would still be partially subsidized (as they fully are now), due to not applying the full & comprehensive extent of carbon's future external costs into our process economics. This makes these other policies less effective in driving the optimum economic sustainable trajectory. On the other hand, RNCFD, by its nature in touching the whole economy, would most effectively force the economy toward optimum solutions and thus maximum carbon emission reductions.
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BaerbelW at 05:02 AM on 14 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Gingerbaker - have you checked out the REMI-study commissioned by CCE in 2013? Here is the link to the summary from where you can get to the full report:
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dudo39 at 04:31 AM on 14 May 2017SkS Analogy 3 - The Greenhouse Effect is Like a Cloudy Night
michael sweet, it is not a matter of "understanding how to read", its is a metter of having sufficient knowledge and understanding on the subject matter before even attempting to solve a problem or get some answers.
Statistics do not provide solutions: they may indicate how to express an educated guess or opinion [neither one is a fact].
So, it appears to be quite evident that when it comes to what is the net effect of water vapor, the fat lady has not sung as yet.
Yes indeed, we have to make the best decision we can with the information we have, which to me, it does not mean to make facts out of opinions to justify the decision.
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Gingerbaker at 02:38 AM on 14 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
"Both approaches, used in parallel, seem most appropriate (don't you think?)"
First of all, I do not think both approaches would be available. At least in the U.S., enormous political capital would need to be spent to pass a carbon tax, and I think it is nearly certain that RE subsidies would be on the chopping block as the Republican price for any agreement.
I don't think that is surprising - incredibly, it is difficult to find staunch supporters of subsidies now even on the environmentalist side. I am constantly amazed at the libertarian bent of people interested in this issue. Do they think we should not spend government's money to give preference to RE? They are obsessed with phasing out RE subsidies, are constantly comparing costs of RE vs fossil fuels as if Keynesian economic theory should inform us on this issue. There is a theology about the free market at work here, which is gobsmackingly obtuse imho considering what we know about political corruption and its track record re RE these past thirty years.
Yet, we do know a few things. We know that every single penny spent on a RE subsidy actually builds the only thing that we truly need to solve AGW - RE infrastructure built and deployed. We know that with any of the zillion proposed carbon tax schema, there is zero guarantee that a dime will be spent actually building that infrastructure. We know from years of past experience with carbon taxes in place around the world, that, for the most part, they have been huge failures and do not result in new RE being built any faster than in places where there are not any carbon taxes. They are not even evaluated by that calculus.
Yes, a carbon tax seems like a good idea in a general, hazy Econ 101 sort of way And everyone seems to think a good idea, even if no one actually knows how it might actually work. But, if we spend more than five seconds thinking about it, carbon taxes do not hold up to scrutiny. Worse, they appear to me to be a guaranteed way to make people despise environmentalism. No one, in any schema I have seen, is going to be rebated exactly what they have paid. In most scenarios, despite initial promises, it turns out that half the people will be paying in more than they will be rebated. Combine that with a steady drumbeat in the anti-environmentalist echo chamber, and we are going to see the carbon tax as the most despised boondoggle ever devised. With zero results to show for it. The public is going hate us. There lies doom.
I'll tell you what we DO have evidence of success for: government mandates and subsidies. China is actually accomplishing their part in solving AGW. They don't have any need for the vaguaries of a carbon tax - a mixture of mandates and subsidies is building RE more successfully than the total grand sum of free marketeerism has accomplished over the past three decades.
I would also like to point out to you that twice in your reply to me you have couched the issue of carbon taxes only in relation to "private investors". The majority of electric utilities in the U.S., however, are publicly-owned co-ops or nonprofits. And a giant question that nobody addresses is to what extent should the electric sector remain in public hands? How can we justify the idea of a for-profit paradigm when sun and wind are free and the total expenditure for a brand new RE system would cost us only about seven years of current U.S. fossil fuel spending - which could be payed off in less than a decade while the longevity of RE systems looks to be 0.5 to 1.5 century?
Please note that a carbon tax is antithetical to providing RE power at the lowest possible cost. By making FF more (regressively, btw) expensive, we provide no incentive to keep RE prices low - quite the opposite.
We have an opportunity to build ourselves an egalitarian energy system which could deliver energy at such low cost to us we really could take the meters off the wall. Instead, we are doing everything we can, it seems, to transfer our public utility system into private hands, and set ourselves up for paying maximum prices for energy forever. We really can do so much better than that.
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citizenschallenge at 22:55 PM on 13 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
Dikran valuable article, quite informative, in fact mind-boggling. It helps an uninitiated, such as myself, appreciate the depth of cumulative complexity. It also underscores the reason real experts have spent decades and life times dedicated to studying this. It'll make a handy reference. Thank you for taking the time to tackle the near impossible task of explaining statistical significance to dummies. :- )
peter
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Eclectic at 22:09 PM on 13 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Gingerbaker : surely the mechanisms of carbon tax and targeted subsidies are so very different, that in asking which is more "effective", you are trying to make an apples & oranges comparison. You would need to carefully define an agreed definition of "effective" — particularly in relation to short medium and long-term time scale. Additionally, the two approaches are not exclusive (and probably a good case could be made for using both together, to differing degrees at different locations around the world, according to physical circumstances and perhaps political/cultural circumstances as well).
There is a further difficulty, in that a competent carbon tax system has not had much of a trial so far : and thus it is premature to judge effectiveness. Common sense and general economist opinion both indicate that a carefully constructed carbon tax (with or without "dividend") would be reasonably efficacious — provided that it is politically "locked in" and gradually from a low base ramped up at a rate which is well-understood and gives private investors the full certainty they need in order to make their plans for construction of facilities (and phasing out of old plant).
Direct intervention with RE constructions gives the benefit of moving things faster, but needs to be well flagged/publicised to give private investors ample time to make their own best plans to integrate into the future national infrastructure.
Both approaches, used in parallel, seem most appropriate (don't you think?) .
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Gingerbaker at 18:56 PM on 13 May 2017Citizens’ Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally
Is there a shred of evidence - a single shred - which shows that any carbon tax has been more effective than targeted subsidies at actually getting new RE infrastructure built?
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jgnfld at 13:21 PM on 13 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
Another point w.r.t. significance that is often misused (naively or deceitfully) is examining a series then cherrypicking a local min or local max as the start point for a supposedly "new" and "independent" analysis. This can drastically bias the raw probabilities given by various stats procedures.
By picking a local min in a descending series we can see false "recoveries" in, for example, ice extent records. Alternatively, by picking a local max in an ascending series we can see false "pauses"--or even "cooling periods"--in, for example, temp records. In both cases the reported probabilities have little to do with the actual probabilities when corrected for the cherrypicks.
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Tom Curtis at 11:48 AM on 13 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
The comments by Bob Loblaw @3, and Mammal_E @1 show how important it is to be clear in what you are testing. If we are testing to see if a coin shows heads (or tails) on both sides, the most reliable statistical test is to look at one side, then look at the other.
If we want to test to see if it is weighted to favour one side over the other, and absent precise measuring devices, the best test is to flip it repeatedly to see if there is a bias in the results. In this instance a two tailed test is appropriate because we do not know whether it is biased towards heads or tails, but we would not test against the probability of a particular sequence of heads or tails, but a particular frequency of heads or tails given that a weighted coin will not always turn up the lighter side.
If we want to test to see if an umpire, or group of umpires are cheating in favour of a particular team in the coin toss, we would use a single tail test against the actual sequence of calls by the captain of the team. The test will be against the probability of that sequence turning up given the number of sequence calls (ie, the number of call sequences by all captains in the competition).
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Tom Curtis at 11:31 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Bob Loblaw @10, I think Art Vandalay was trying to allude to Watt's surface stations project. The idea is that introduction of a cement slab or other artificial structure to the immediate vicinity of a meteorological station will contaminate the trend information. While direct IR absorption by the thermometer does not have any impact on that, it is certainly possible that such degradation of the site might have an effect. Indeed, the effect was quantified in Fall et al (2011). They state in the abstract:
"This initial study examines temperature differences among different levels of siting quality without controlling for other factors such as instrument type. Temperature trend estimates vary according to site classification, with poor siting leading to an overestimate of minimum temperature trends and an underestimate of maximum temperature trends, resulting in particular in a substantial difference in estimates of the diurnal temperature range trends. The opposite‐signed differences of maximum and minimum temperature trends are similar in magnitude, so that the overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications. Homogeneity adjustments tend to reduce trend differences, but statistically significant differences remain for all but average temperature trends. Comparison of observed temperatures with NARR [NorthAmerican Regional Reanalysis] shows that the most poorly sited stations are warmer compared to NARR than are other stations, and a major portion of this bias is associated with the siting classification rather than the geographical distribution of stations. According to the best‐sited has no century‐scale trend."
It should be noted that for the primary point of comparison with satellite data, ie, daily mean temperatures, the "... overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications".
You have shown that Art Vandalay was wrong in assuming site degradation would effect thermometers by IR radiation to any significant degree, but it does effect local air temperature which is measured at the site.
Finally, I will note that homogeneity adjustments in the surface temperature record are conceptually equivalent to the adjustments made to the satellite record to ensure consistency between the records from different satellites. The major difference is that in the surface record, the adjustment is not checked against the records of one or two other satellites, but against multiple nearby thermometer records, making the adjustment far more reliable.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:43 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Art Vandelay's description of the effects of a radiation shield is not correct. In addition to eliminating the heating effect of the sun, you also want to eliminate the normal surface IR imbalance.
Under most conditions, IR is a net loss by the surface - the surface emits more than it receives from the sky. This might be close to zero with low overcast, but with clear skies the net loss will be well over 100 W/m2. Overall, net IR cools the surface. We do not want this effect on our air temperature measurement.
The thermometer has an energy balance. If we look at the gain or loss of energy by the thermometer, there are three terms. The sum of the three tells you whether the thermometer is losing or gaining energy.
- Net radiation (solar + IR)
- Thermal heat gain/loss with the air
- Evaporative loss to the air (water evaporates from the surface of the thermometer, consuming latent energy which cools the thermometer).
You need to end up as close as possible to net radiation = zero, so you want solar gain = 0 and net IR = 0. You need to keep the thermometer dry to eliminate evaporative cooling. Then the thermal gain/loss depends on whether the thermometer is warmer, cooler, or the same temperature as the air. If warmer, the thermometer will lose energy to the air and cool. If cooler, it will gain enery from the air and warm. At balance, the thermometer is equal to air temperature and neither cools nor warms, which is what we want. Now we have a measurement of air temperature.
The temperature is then referred to as "dry bulb temnperature". Why? Because if we add water to the mix, we add evaporative cooling. With evaporative cooling the thermometer cools below air temperature, until the heat gain from the now-warmer air exactly balances the rate of heat loss by evaporation, and a stable temperature is reached. That temperature is called the "wet bulb temperature", and it is a fundamental way of measuring the humidity of the air (in combination with the dry bulb temperature).
Even if net radiation is not exactly zero, ventilation using a fan reduces its effects. Big thermometers are worse than small thermometers. In fact, if you use a fine-wire thermocouple (diameter typically 0.001"), then you don't even need a radiation shield or ventilation. Such thermocouples are not particularly robust, though.
Art's speculation about LWR variables contaminating climate data is off base, as far as radiation shields are concerned, because the radiation shield isolates the thermometer from the surrounding net IR fluxes, just as it isolates it from the solar fluxes.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:18 AM on 13 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
Yes, but the sequences HHHT, or THHT are both equally unlikely, too - in fact any single sequence of four tosses has the same probability of 0.0625 (with a fair coin).That's how we figured out 0.0625 - there are 16 different sequences of four tosses, each with equal probability (1/16), all equally "extreme".
If you had a coin that constantly repeated the sequence THHT, then even though you get 50% heads and 50% tails over a long period of time, you would still be playing in a rigged game. If you bet on the basis that each toss was independent/random, then the person that rigged the coin and knew the pattern would be able to take your money.
Four heads in a row or four tails in a row gets our attention because we see a pattern - and our brains think that pattern is significant, even though it is quite possible with a fair coin. Because we see a pattern, we think it is more significant than it really is.
...which is why we should use statistics.
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HK at 07:25 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Nigelj #7:
"The "law of large numbers" would probably cancel out some of the biases in the surface record, because of so many thermometers."
Indeed! Tamino demonstrated that point very clearly in his blog post Warts and All six years ago. There is an impressive correlation between the temperature trends in five large gridboxes in Europe when using raw data only!
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michael sweet at 07:09 AM on 13 May 2017SkS Analogy 3 - The Greenhouse Effect is Like a Cloudy Night
Dudo39,
I am sorry, I thought that you understood how to read a scientific report.
It is very rare for a scientist to make a definitive statement as you request. There is always the possibility that new data will be uncovered that results in something unexpected, even though that possibility is very low. Instead, scientists often speak in terms of probabilities. In the Climate field, lay people have objected to numerical descriptions of data (for example saying there is a 95% chance something will happen) so the terms likely (>66%), very likely (>90%) and extremely likely (>95%) are used (IPCC definations).
It is difficult to get an exact value for cloud feedback so research continues on this topic. In simple terms, for clouds the data indicate that clouds are not a large negative feedback. It is most likely that clouds are a small positive feedback. Clouds will not prevent overheating caused by AGW. Clouds might make warming worse. A scientist would not make absolute claims about clouds because the research is not yet done.
Many things in life are not definite. If I go for a drive in my car I might not come back. We have to make the best decision we can with the information we have.
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chriskoz at 06:45 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Kevin@5, knaugle@4,
Indeed. The noise of the linear regression residual (be it random or red noise of ElNino signal) - in fact linear regression itself does not represent the data variability across th etimespan shown -is not the subject of this OP. The subject is the biases from imprecise modeling of TLT temperature. When TLT is partially contaminated with TLS (and stratosaphere temp is supposed to fall) then we have a trouble obtaining accurate ands unbiased TLT data. That bias (and bias from satelite drift and trouble combining data from differrent sateltes) is a bigger problem than whether random noise and ElNino red noise. Thermometers place in Stephenson boxes don't suffer from orbital decay if the boxess stand steady.
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nigelj at 06:38 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Art Vandelay mentions that the sun screens around thermometers can still radiate lw radiation, and I think he is also referring to the urban heat island effect?
I thought these things were well known uncertainties and dealt with, and also relatively small biases. I thought the raw data was adjusted to ensure these sorts of things didn't bias temperatures upwards? Am I right? They are easy enough things to quantify, more so than problems with satellites.
In comparison the satellite data seems to be full of controversies about possible biases and uncertainties, from what I read over at RC, so are more of an unknown quantity.
It's also important to realise problems with sun shading for thermometers would either be constant over the decades, so unlikely to distort an actual changing temperature trend, or if the sun shades have been improved, this would obviously improve the accuracy of the trend. Neither would cause a warming bias to the trend.
The "law of large numbers" would probably cancel out some of the biases in the surface record, because of so many thermometers.
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william5331 at 06:19 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
If anything the warming is greater than we measure. Sound strange? We should be estimating how much warmer the earth is compared to where we should be if we were slowly sliding into a glacial as we should have been. Apparently the interglacial most similar to our present one in terms of the Milankovitch cycle is the one that occured 400,000 years ago.
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Dikran Marsupial at 04:48 AM on 13 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
Mammal_E indeed, good point.
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Mammal_E at 02:19 AM on 13 May 2017What Does Statistically Significant Actually Mean?
"The probability of a test statistic at least as extreme as that observed is called the "p-value". In this case, there is no more extreme result than four heads in a row if you only flip the coin four times, so the p-value is just the probability of getting four heads in four flips"
— Not quite. There is another equally extreme outcome (4 tails) which should be considered to generate a 2-tailed p-value — the probability of getting FOUR OF THE SAME RESULT (4 heads OR 4 tails) in four flips = 0.0625+0.0625 = 0.125. Now, a result of 4 tails might not rouse suspicion (because it works against the other team's interests), but that is not really relevant to the test of whether the coin is fair. -
dudo39 at 00:35 AM on 13 May 2017SkS Analogy 3 - The Greenhouse Effect is Like a Cloudy Night
michael sweet, I stated "The link does not give a definitive statement....": which word don't you understand?
Your statement is iffy and indefinite....
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Kevin C at 00:07 AM on 13 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
Knaugle: I'm afraid that's not a very good indication of the uncertainty in the temperature estimates. The uncertainty given by the temperature plotter is a measure of the 'wiggliness', or more precisely the deviation from linearity. So what it is actually telling you is that the satellite data are more wiggly.
While uncorrelated errors in the data would contribute to wiggliness, so can other things, and worse the long term biases of the kind which might be present in the MSU data may not. So for example a simple drift over time won't show up in the uncertainty at all, but will lead to a substantially wrong trend.
What you can infer from the larger uncertainty in the trend tool is that the satellite data are more strongly influenced by El Nino. Which also reduces their usefulness in detecting long-term trends (unless you do an analysis to remove the impact of El Nino), however this has nothing to do with errors in the dataset. -
knaugle at 23:40 PM on 12 May 2017More errors identified in contrarian climate scientists' temperature estimates
It's true that there are errors everywhere in measured data. But not all errors are equal. Is it just scatter? or bias? or what? Kevin Cowtan's page at Univ. York is interesting in that it shows at least the scatter part of each of the main data sets.
University of York, Temperature Plotter
Note that the nominal uncertainty of the warming rate calculated by the HadCrut4 and GISTEMP data for the past 30 years is ±0.06 °C/decade, whereas the uncertainty of the RSS 3.3 TLT set is ±0.09 °C/decade and UAH 6.0 TLT is ±0.11 °C/decade. While the satellites are showing lower warming rates, it also appears they are struggling to achieve a consistent measurement as it is.
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