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Comments 26551 to 26600:

26551. Jim Eager at 06:58 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Philip64, Genoa's rant is nothing more than argument from incredulity and alleged anecdote, both logical fallicies, and offers nothing what so ever in the way of verifiable evidence. Frankly, there is nothing there to believe or disbelieve.

26552. Andy Skuce at 05:54 AM on 6 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Here is a blog post and a link to a paywalled paper (which I can't access) that asserts the opposite of what I assumed above. According to this, the IPCC GWP estimate would be appropriate for short term biogenic methane but not for fossil methane, which should be higher.

       But it's from 2010, so it may be out of date now.

       Added: Doh! The footnote to the table I posted said that the fossil methane should have a GWP of 1 or 2 higher. So, I was wrong. Apologies for posting first and doing the due diligence later. I will correct my original comment when I have a moment, later.

26553. Phil at 05:40 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Looking at the article referenced by ryland @7, I found this statement

       Arctic sea ice is up by at least a third after a cool summer in 2013. “It would suggest that sea ice is more resilient perhaps,” says Rachel Tilling, University College London.” – The Guardian, July 2015

       If you follow the link provided by WUWT to The Guardian here you will see that the quote WUWT provide is not from Tilling at all, but is in fact from the main body of the article. Tilling goes on to place this "resilience" in context:

       Tilling said: “You see Arctic sea ice as dwindling and in decline, but then there is a cold year and you get some of the ice back. It shows there is hope for Arctic sea ice,if you can turn the clock back to colder temperatures, which would need huge reductions in carbon emissions.”

       (my emphasis)

       But this slopiness appears to be a prevalent feature of WUWT.

26554. Andy Skuce at 05:11 AM on 6 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       The questions about whether we should treat methane emissions from fast biogenic parts of the carbon cycle differently from emissions of fossil methane are interesting. I would have expected this to have been addressed in the literature, but I haven't found much. Admittedly, I haven't looked very hard. 

       Note: Much of the following was off the top of my head and is incorrect. I have struck through the wrong bits. See later posts for more correct inffromation

       By my calculations, the GWPs of biogenic methane from agriculture should be reduced by 2.75 compared to fossil methane releases. Basically, the biogenic methane removes  2.75 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere while it is kicking around as 1 kg of methane. (GWPs are measured according to mass, not moles. If you combust 1kg of methane you get 2.75 kg of CO2.) Fossil methane adds new carbon to short-term cycles.

       This would mean that the 20 year GWP for biogenic and fossil methane for 20 years should be 83.25 and 86 respectively. Here's the graph for methane from AR5:

       

       The GWP curve asymptotes (if that's a verb) towards 2.75, as it would for methane introduced from fossil fuel, the 2.75 representing the residual CO2. If the methane were instead sourced biogenically, in effect replacing CO2 for a short while with CH4, then we should shift the incremental GWP line down by 2.75 so it asymptotes towards zero, since once essentially all of the biogenic methane in the pulse is back to CO2, we are back where we started from.

       And here's the table

       

       For 100 years the methane GWP should be 31.25 (bio) and 34 (fossil). For very long time periods it would be ~zero and ~2.75.

       It's possible that I have miscalculated and misunderstood matters here. I can't find any mention of this in the IPCC reports, which raises a red flag that it's likely me who has the wrong end of the stick. The standard emissions accounting treats both kinds of methane equally.

       Still, even if I'm right, biogenic methane is still ~90% ~93% as bad as fossil methane, using the conventional and somewhat arbitrary 100-year timeline. Considering that methane emissions of all kinds are really hard to measure precisely, this discrepancy may not matter. Also, the GWP used for reporting for methane is currently 25, lagging the latest research, so we are nowhere near using the "correct" number. 

       What this boils down to is that anthropogenic methane of all kinds is a significant contributor to the climate crisis over human timeframes and we should take reasonable steps to reduce it. Perhaps biogenic anthro methane is a little less bad than that sourced from fossil anthro methane, but it's still a problem and the GWPs the policy makers are currently using are still too low.

       However, as Tom, Ray Pierrehumbert and many others have pointed out, the priority has to be reducing the long-lasting emissions of CO2.

       Still, reducing beef and dairy consumption would help reduce our short-term impact on the atmosphere and our longer-term impact on the environment generally, while being good for our health, so why not do it?

26555. Philip64 at 05:05 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       @Ryland 10.

       You write: "I am appalled that any scientist or indeed anyone, who questions the perceived wisdom of the modellers is excoriated and may well be dismissed from their position."

       I'm sorry but your indignation is as unconvincing as it is unmerited. If this was really happening we would have actually heard about it by now. But in 15 years of following this subject quite closely I can't remember a single instance of someone losing their job in a significant scientific institution or failing to secure one becauser of their views about climate change or any aspect of it. If they had, they would have nothing to lose by coming forward and citing chapter and verse.  So where are they? And yet we hear this feeble mantra wheeled out regularly without any supporting examples. The simple fact is: the claim of academic suppresion is a fallacious and fictitious notion used to explain the almost complete absence of peer-reviewed science supporting the various (and mutually contradictory) contrarian positions - such as the ones set out by Genoa.

       Real scientists, retired or otherwise, know that general views on broad subjects are irrelevent to careers in science. What matters is research and publication, usually in a very narrow field (unless you happen to be Albert Einstein or someone of that stature). Generally speaking, the more surprising the conclusions, the better.

       In short, I don't believe Genoa's claims. They're as incredible as his fulminations about cherry picked data points, and just as divorced from reality. 

26556. dcpetterson at 05:03 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Regarding frequent reference above to claims from WUWT that global warming "stopped" or "paused" or "slowed" or whaever beginning 1998 or so...

       Most of the articles at WUWT regarding this were written by Chris Monckton, who proclaims whenever RSS releases its monthly data, "No global warming for xxx months!" and provides a graph to prove it. Put aside 1) the reality of regression to the mean, as has already been mentioned above, and 2) Mockton's flatline of "no temperature increase" is at a point significantly higher than the current temperature trendline over the last century (which means some natural phenomenon, unexamined by Monckton, created a sudden climate discontinuity that raised global temperatures far above the current ~1 C warming that most climate scientists accept).

       This means, if one were to accept the Monckton/WUWT thesis that there has been no warming since c. 1998, then one would also have to accept not only that regression to the men doesn't happen, but also that the world is significantly warmer than any dataset currently shows, and that this sudden discontinuous leap was caused by a phenomenon no one has even hinted at, no one understands, and even Monckton hasn't acknowledged.

       But as I said, put that aside. The biggest problem I see with the Monckton/WUWT thesis is that the date of when the "pause" started keeps changing. If you examine Monckon's graphs over the last couple of years, you'll see his start date keeps creeping forward in time. (I have documented this elsewhere, in an article where I also steal a graph or two from SkS.) Whatever physical process started the "pause" keeps altering its starting point somewhere in the past. Mockton doesn't adequately explain how this happens.

       The alteration of "pause" start date indicates the "pause" itself is nor more than a statistical oddity, not a reflection of any physical reality or actual physical process. It also indicates the denier meme about a "pause" is based on an intentional and clumsy bit of fraud.

26557. Tom Curtis at 03:34 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       MA Rodger @21, what is missing from your comment is the record of adjustments made to the UAH dataset since that 1990 press release:

       

       Of course, we are not onto version 6.  Aparently ryland is of the opinion that a reference that is 22 years out of date (dating from that first adjustment) is suitable.  Of course that it is so dated must be carefully kept from the intended audience of the CFACT/WUWT article.

       I submit, by the way, that ryland's challenge to you implicitly requires the same standard of himself.  That is, if he questions your right to rebut the article without "... you yourself [having] checked the references given in WUWT" and established that the"... peer reviewed papers cited by WUWT scientifically inferior to those cited by SkS or RealClimate", then he is not entitled to link to the article as worthy of discussion without having himself checked all the references and endorsed them as being up to scratch.  Sauce for the goose, as they say.

       And on that standard, he has clearly attempted to mislead the reades at SkS as to the quality of the articles to be found on WUWT - endorsing them as being worthy of consideration and well referenced when they are based on references that are out of date, non-peer reviewed, out of context and (at the very best) outlier positions.

       If we apply the expectation that he checks the articles he puts up, and stands by the quality of their argument and/or references we can perhaps get rid of his endless, mendacious repetitions that he is "merely putting it forward as a point of view supported by appropriate references to the peer reviewed literature", when we all know he is using them as stalking horses for opinions he agrees with but is not prepared to defend with any integrity.

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Tweaked image size.

26558. One Planet Only Forever at 02:42 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       The popularity of claims made by the producers of unsubstantiated nonsense and gossip is indeed part of the challenge of getting leaders who can tend to allow their decisions to be swayed by popular opinion to act contrary to the rank ranks of the supporters of undeservingly popular and wealthy people.

       Science will always stuggle to be as popular as appealing gossip and nonsense claims that many people are inclined to like to hear because they suit their self-interest.

26559. Joel_Huberman at 00:43 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Eclectic @20.

       I have a climate denier friend who references Judith Curry's web site far more often than WUWT. Based on my limited reading at both sites, I think that Curry's site may outrank WUWT as "the best of a bad bunch."

26560. MA Rodger at 00:15 AM on 6 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Ryland @13.

       I didn't miss your closing comment @7. You ask of me @13 “Have you yourself checked the references given in WUWT? Are peer reviewed papers cited by WUWT scientifically inferior to those cited by SkS or RealClimate? If so why?” If you can point me at these “peer reviewed papers cited by WUWT”, that would be helpful. I'm not sure I see any. The first bold assertion is certainly not supported by such references.

       I particularly like the third reference, quoting NASA. This is of course a link to a cutting from that well-known scientific journal The Canberra Times from the April Fools Day 1990 edition. Anyone with half a wit would find that there is a better reference to the quote which turns out to be our old friends Spencer and Christy, dear old Woy having been a NASA man until he left to go to join his chum Christy in 2001. I don't think the passage of time has been very kind to their findings presented in that paper.

26561. Eclectic at 22:36 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Tom, reading between the lines of Genoa's @9 comments, does give me the strong impression that he is a technician rather than a scientist in the proper sense of the word.

       Not that there is anything wrong with being a skilled technician in a narrow field : but it is certainly a pity that there seems to be a concomitant lack of that broad outlook on the physical universe, and a lack of that logical and dispassionate appreciation of reality (so requisite in a true scientist).
       Especially in the climate change field, where the physical signs are so obvious!
       
       
       
       The WUWT website is indeed an interesting case in point. Years ago, WUWT was halfway reasonable in its propaganda campaign against the findings of mainstream science. Well, perhaps not quite halfway. And even then, it was the "best" of a bad bunch. However, in recent years it has detereiorated markedly : and nowadays, sadly it rates as moronically desperate. Even more sadly, it still rates as the best of a bad bunch.
       Will WUWT still exist in 10 years? I certaiinly hope so, because its entertainment value (as an example of human folly) will doubtless be accompanied by continuing writhing and twisting as it metamorphoses through the many varying levels of denial of reality. Fascinating in its way : yet not worth a site visit more than every month or two.
       
       
        
26562. bozzza at 22:24 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       @ 15, in ten years you'll be too busy securing the border from those who know you killed the world.

26563. michael sweet at 22:09 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       I always think of Arhennius when I read a screed like Genoa writes.  In 1896 Arhennius calculated (with  a pencil) the magnitude of the AGW effect.  He was within a factor of two of what has been measured in the 120 years since then.  He predicted that warming would be greater over land than water, greater at high latitude than low latitude, greater at night than during the day, greater in the winter than in the summer and greater in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Suthern.  All these porjections have been shown correct by data in recent decades.

       If it is so hard to project climate decades in advance, how did Arhennius do so well?  I would have thought that scientists today would have more understanding than Arhennius.  Another recent critical poster claimed we needed to wait another 20 yerars to see if scientists are correct.  What is wrong with using the forecasts from 120 years ago to show that the globe is warming as projected?

26564. Tom Curtis at 21:18 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       ryland @7, the CFACT article posted at WUWT is critiquing the science of the IPCC.  Therefore the correct comparison as to references is between that article (with its one, often misrepresented reference per point) to the IPCC reports with their literally hundreds of references.  Given that, the curious thing is that you are not outraged by CFACT and WUWT for cherry picking outliers from the scientific literature and treating them as overriding the vast majority of the scientific literature, while keeping that contrary literature carefully out of sight and refusing to discuss the relevant issues.

       Your view appears to be that public discourse is intellectually primary to scientific research, no matter how transparently that public discourse misrepresents the actual research.

        

       As one example of the sort of misrepresentation indulged in in the CFACT article, consider the quotation:

       '“Global sea level is less sensitive to high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations than previously thought.”

       – Stanford, Geology, August, 2015'

       Here is the full quote from the Stanford article:

       "To understand the isotopic composition of Pliocene ice, Winnick and Caves began in the present day using well-established relationships between temperature and the geochemical fingerprint. By combining this modern relationship with estimates of ancient Pliocene surface temperatures, they were able to better refine the fingerprint of the Antarctic ice millions of years ago. In re-thinking this critical assumption, and by extending their analysis to incorporate ice sheet models, Winnick and Caves recalculated the global sea level of the Pliocene and found that it was 30 to 44 feet (9 to 13.5 meters) higher, significantly lower than the previous estimate.

       “Our results are tentatively good news,” Winnick said. “They suggest that global sea level is less sensitive to high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations than previously thought. In particular, we argue that this is due to the stability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which might be more resilient than previous studies have suggested.” However, a rise in global sea level by up to 44 feet (13.5 meters) is still enough to inundate Miami, New Orleans and New York City, and threaten large portions of San Francisco, Winnick cautioned."

       (My emphasis)

       A long term sea level rise of 9-13.5 meters is not good news.  Nor is it consistent with the message the CFACT article tries to sell with regard to sea level.  Further, as the Stanford article goes on to indicate, the finding has no bearing on sea level rises over the next few centuries, the timescale of interest to the CFACT claims.  There is no question, therefore, that the article is quoted out of context.

       Like the creationists before them, AGW deniers never have a shortage of "references".  They need only take articles out of context, misreport their significance, shepherd a few articles through the peer review process with the aid of unscrupulous friendly editors, and establish "speciality journals" where 'peer' review is entirely restricted to other deniers.  Given this, merely counting the number of references in a popular piece is irrelevant unless are prepared to commit yourself to verifying that the references are from genuine peer reviewed sources (not specialty denier magazines), that they are quote in context and not misrepresented, and that they fairly represent the literature rather than being cherry picked outliers.

       Unless, of course, your only point is that we should stand in awe of the unscrupulous propoganda by CFACT and WUWT.

26565. Tom Curtis at 20:53 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       genoa @9 says:

       "I have several colleagues who find the warmist "data" amusing but we would never speak out against this junk science because of the career repercussions." 

       If we are to take his ravings at face value, and I see no particular reason to do so, this amounts to a confession that he and his colleaques put career advancement above scientific integrity.  Yet on the basis of this we are supposed to take his unsupported word that those scientists he disagrees with are similarly ethically challenged.

       @14 he says:

       "Worst of all, when long periods such at the period post 1998 don't adhere to the models, real scientists would admit that the models are inadequate and that suggests they don't really understand the underlying processes being modelled."

       He thereby commits himself to the view that the trend for any system from localized high points will be the same as the trend from any other point.  Absent this commitment, the expectation is that the trend from such localized peaks will be less than that from other points.  There is a name for this phenomenon.  It is called "regression to the mean".

       Given his clear commitment to the idea that regression to the mean is an invalid concept, we can conclude either that he does not have the scientific expertise he claims (likely), that he is prepared to dishonestly ignore what he knows for his political diatribe, or that his political views so bias his understanding that he cannot find fault with denier cherry picking.

       Finally, it is evident that his contribution is sloganeering of the worst sort.  Perhaps he would like to raise specific detailed criticisms rather than these wild rants that so clearly show his political bias, and render very dubious his claim to scientific expertise.

26566. genoa at 20:41 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Moderator

       Thanks for the censorship.

       In reply to your assertion that AGW models are physical and not statistical I would only say that a single die is also physical but only an idiot such as yourself would argue their primary analytic focus is not statistical.

       Thanks for the "privilege" of briefly visiting your joke site and joke discipline.

       See you in 10 years when your religion is dead.

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Moderation complaints are off-topic and thus against policy. Please review the commenting policy page.

26567. genoa at 20:32 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Eclectic

       Like most warmists what you call science is simply choosing the data sets you prefer (I won't even go into the cat fights I've read between alleged warmist analysts over what data sources are credible), transformed and filtered the way you prefer and weighted in the way you prefer to provide a model which, over hundreds of runs, pumps out a performance range you like. Then you pick a date you prefer to identify a trend you prefer and call other date picking "cherry picking".

       Hence a date from 1998 looks like a flat or reduced trend and other dates before that can be chosen to identify a warming trend- if you so wish. I would not call that science or even prediction.

       Worst of all, when long periods such at the period post 1998 don't adhere to the models, real scientists would admit that the models are inadequate and that suggests they don't really understand the underlying processes being modelled. Nope, in climate "science" there is always another "probable" process to bolt onto the models in an ad hoc way. Anything, anything at all to make the data fit. I believe the latest "bolt on" obvious explanation is that the heat is in the deep ocean areas. Perfectly obvious old chap- except it wasn't obvious until the models failed and another excuse had to be invented. Oh and we have no data for that assertion, but it's perfectly obvious that that's the process that's missing. And so it goes, on and on and on and on.

       You do know that the yield equations for the first Bikini nuclear test underestimated by a factor of 3 and led to widespread fallout and evacuation of pacific islands. Even now, yield estimation of nuclear weapons is a very tough problem yet it is several orders of magnitude less complex than a climate projected 100 years ahead.

       Really, what you call a science is just tea leaves, graphs and pick-my-preferred-starting-point-for-the-system-under-observation.

       Then pretend you know more about hugely complex processes working on massive scales than nuclear physicists know about much simpler processes and thereafter leap into nonscientific arguments about "prevention" etc. in order to distract from the "science"

       Basically another 10 years of model massaging and the public and politicians will have had enough. At that point, real scientists will again be able to enter the debate without being stoned to death for being a heretic to the faith and people like Hanson and Mann will be preserved in history as classic examples of what happens- even to science- when it is overpoliticised and turned into a new McArthyism.

       The real damage however will be to science itself. People will and rightly so have much less faith in science and scientists and that is most definitely a bad thing. We already fight crazy anti innoculation loons and this will only add ammunition to the anti-science crowd.

       Moderator Response:

       [Rob P] - "Hence a date from 1998 looks like a flat or reduced trend"

       The 'eyecrometer' has been found to be a wholly unreliable scientific measuring instrument. This is where statistics comes into play. Only one data set, but Karl et al (2015) found global mean surface temperature warmed at the same rate from 2000-2014 as it did from 1950-1999. Other data sets will come into line in due course as the planet continues to warm.

       

26568. ryland at 20:09 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       @12  you clearly missed my closing comment which, to refresh your memory, was "Which report is the more credible is, of course debatable, but the WUWT piece is supported by references to published literature and IPCC reports whereas the refutations in the WSJ are not."  That comment clearly shows I am not "repeating their error filled nonsense" merely putting it forward as a point of view supported by appropriate references to the peer reviewed literature.  Have you yourself checked the references given in WUWT?  Are peer reviewed papers cited by WUWT scientifically inferior to those cited by SkS or RealClimate?  If so why?  And I think some of your remarks are verging on ad homs which I thought were verboten here

26569. MA Rodger at 18:59 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Ryland @7.

       Do get a grip. All you are saying here is that the Wattsupia web site presents the same garbage to the world that the GWPF do. If you do not yet even recognise that there is a profound difference between scientific discussion and the error-filled nonsense presented both by Watts and his chums and by GWPF, then you really should start looking. It might save you making a fool of yourself repeating their error-filled nonsense. Unlike the science, Watts and Co don't don't give a monkeys who they make fools of.

26570. Eclectic at 18:23 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Genoa @9 : genoa, you seem to have lost touch with reality.

       Worldwide temperatures are rising, sea-levels are rising, and the world's ice is generally [with the possible exception of East Antarctica] melting away. And yet you have a focus on "statistical masturbation" ~ rather than looking at the real world.

       Get real, man. Please exit your mathematical rabbit hole.

       The real world is the actual test for what's going on ~ and since your mathturbation disagrees with the real world, then, quite clearly, you are in the wrong.

26571. ryland at 16:56 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       @9 Your comment "I have several colleagues who find the warmist "data" amusing but we would never speak out against this junk science because of the career repercussions" is extremely disturbing.  As an ex-scientist. now retired, I am appalled that any scientist or indeed anyone, who questions the perceived wisdom of the modellers is excoriated and may well be dismissed from their position.  Science  conducted by intimidation and haranguing and threats isn't science.  It is more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition where heretics were tortured until they recanted.  Here we have eminent professors who attack those that disagree with their views claiming that Ridley and Peiser are obfuscating.  No they're not, they're putting forward a different point of view.  That is not obfuscation but scientific discourse.  The paper by Zwalley et al that states  the Antarctic is gaining ice, is dismissed as an isolated paper that has numerous uncertainties and is contradicted by many other observations.   None of these many observations are specified.  Significantly there is no mention of the comment on Antarctic ice  by Dr Eric Steig, a  Climate Scientist  with many publications on Antarctica.He comments at RealClimate “I think the evidence that the current retreat of Antarctic glaciers is owing to anthropogenic global warming is weak. The literature is mixed on this, about 50% of experts agree with me on this.”  Dr Steig can hardly be described as a denier  so why no mention of his view? 

       Moderator Response:

       [Rob P] - The Zwally et al (2015) paper does contradict a whole bunch of research on the Antarctic ice sheet. Very difficult to reconcile with Holocene sea level change too. It is only one paper, so care must be taken not to develop single study syndrome. Science will get to the bottom of it.

26572. genoa at 16:18 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       The name of this site suggests skeptical minds but instead is simply a play pen for statistical masturbation committed to an ideology.

       I model complex fluid flows and can tell you three things [1] There is absolutely no doubt that the force and temperatures I measure in my lab are agreed upon as valid and real [2] There is no doubt that my ability to model flow is quite limited and these are systems that are orders of magnitude more simple than a planetary climate.  [3] If I was stupid enough to model complex flow around a propeller a thousand times (as many climate models do) and take statistical averages I would actually have the guts to admit I do not know anything worthwhile about the processes involved and leave it at that until I had better analytic techniques.

       In the mantime I read junk science from climate modellers who cannot even agree on a valid, workable data set that has not been adjusted, transformed, filtered to suit their arguments. That is not science. It's a joke.

       Second, any "sciience" that needs this number of runs to determine confidence limits simply means the "science" has no predictive value worth having.  The stability of the models are a joke.

       The fact that many scientists go along with this politicised joke merely reflects the involvement of government and research funding priorities. Contrary to popular opinion, scientists do not die in a ditch, abandon their jobs, mortgages or family financial health to fight against an ideological mob with pitchforks.

       I have several colleagues who find the warmist "data" amusing but we would never speak out against this junk science because of the career repercussions.

       Meanwhile I'm sure you will enjoy looking at statistical tea leaves for a while to come.

       Moderator Response:

       [PS] 

       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.

       It particular, you appear to be asserting some very tired denier talking points as if they were true with no supporting evidence at all. This is pure sloganeering and suggests and extremely low level of knowledge of the basic science. Present either data or references to support your arguments in future or your comment will be deleted. Conformance with the comments policy in not optional.

       I would further point out that AGW is not founded on computation models. The models are physical not statistical. I suggest  you actually read the IPCC WG1 so you can make more informed commentary.

26573. ryland at 14:30 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       My final comment is not factually correct.  There are some references given in the WSJ refutation piece.

26574. ryland at 14:25 PM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Coincidentally there is a discussion in WUWT disagrees with several of the points raised here. (See here).  The specific items discussed in WUWT are that:

       1      Global temperatures are lower than models predict

       2      Sea level is rising only 1-3mm per year

       3      The polar bear population is now about 5x that in the 1960s

       4       Extreme weather is historically normal

       The discussions of each appear to be appropriately referenced.

       I am aware that WUWT is anathema to most who comment here but it is one of the most, if not the most, widely read climate blog site. Consequently a lot more readers get their information from WUWT than from other such sites and in this instance will get an entirely different perception on global warming than will readers here.  Although  overall there are, probably, more readers of the WSJ in total than readers of WUWT but the percentage of these WSJ readers interested in climate matters is unknown. 

       Which report is the more credible is, of course debatable, but the WUWT piece is supported by references to published literature and IPCC reports whereas the refutations in the WSJ are not.

       Moderator Response:

       [Rob P] Sea level is currently rising at 3.32mm per year.

       

       And the climate models are doing are reasonable job of matching the observations - when adjusted forcings are used (to account for increased volcanic aerosols for instance). As in Schmidt et al (2014).

       

26575. Tom Curtis at 12:25 PM on 5 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Trevor_S @63, I refer you to Clark Williams-Derry's response to the claims about dog food.  In short, the claims made in New Scientist are based on underestimate SUV impacts 80% if you just consider onroad energy costs.  It is far worse than that because Robert and Brenda Vale claim to include emobdied energy of manufacture as well (not included in the above calculation).  Further it includes only energy costs in the estimate, not the ecological footprint from pollution, including carbon pollution, thereby significantly biasing the comparison in favour of SUVs.  

       Worse, the Vale's do not take into account that pets primarily eat waste products - ie the cuts of meat that humans will not eat.  From that and the fact that pet food expenditure in the US is just 1% of that spent on humans, the additional ecological footprint of pets to that of humans alone is negligible.  That is, if we eliminated pets and pet foods, there would be no reduction in the number of live stock in the combined human/pet food chain.

       To conclude in the words of Clark William-Derry:

       "Let’s be clear — I’m not claiming that we should ignore the environmental impact of dogs. That’s one of reasons that I, personally, am reluctant to own one! But I think that making an empirical claim without doing solid research does a grave disservice to public discourse. Being wrong can have consequences — including, potentially, encouraging people to make the wrong choices, even if their heart is in exactly the right place.

       So I say to the folks who made the original claim: Bad Researchers! Fur Shame!!! And to the rest of you: let’s consider the “dogs are worse than SUVs” meme debunked: buried in the back yard, put to sleep, and whatever other bad dog pun comes to mind." 

26576. MA Rodger at 10:00 AM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

        

       For those who can cope, the offending WSJ nonsense-filled garbage is available outside a paywall here. And those who remember that the GWPF (Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy) include within their number both Benney and Matt will not be surprised by any misguided nonsense from the pair of them. Dogs bark. Bears misbehave in woods. Benney & Matt have a problem with denial. 

26577. Trevor_S at 09:55 AM on 5 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       The other thing of note is that we have to eat, we do not have to fly (aside from the very self important) for example and we can cycle, or use renewanle energy (in Austrialia everyone is offered the option and very few take it up) but we still have to eat.  

       Cut out lamb and beef, substitute those meals for vegan meals and that's a great start. Often overlooked are meat eating pets, vast CO2e emisions from owning a large dog for example, about the same as an SUV

       abcnews.go.com/Technology/pet-dogs-damaging-environment-suvs/story?id=9402234

       so own one, or the other but not both.

        

         

26578. michael sweet at 09:25 AM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       When I search for this article on the internet I find no reference to the WSJ publishing it.  It is too bad that WSJ refuses to present the mainstream scientific opinion to its customers.

26579. ryland at 07:58 AM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Apologies I sent this before I saw your correction @ 2

26580. ryland at 07:57 AM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       @1  Your comment "It is tragic when a media source that really should strive to ensure its readers are well aware of what is going on"  is entirely correct but does it encompass contributions such as those by Bjorn Lomborg currently being published in the Australian (see here) to "ensure its readers are well aware of what is going on"?.  Or do such contributions  and indeed the Australian itself, fall into your category "rather than being a populist gossip rag, resorts to publishing misleading information because it suits some short-term unsustainable damaging objectives a few wealthy and powerful people"?

26581. One Planet Only Forever at 07:48 AM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Correction in my comment:

       Replace "populist gossip rag" (which I now understand should have been Capitalized) with "popularity pursing gossip rag".

26582. One Planet Only Forever at 07:39 AM on 5 December 2015
       Scientists' open letter to the Wall Street Journal re: Ridley and Peiser
       

       Some Main Stream Media sources provide more helpful infromation for their readers, if readers actually want to better understand what is going on.

       The NYTimes article "Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change" , is just one recent example.

       It is tragic when a media source that really should strive to ensure its readers are well aware of what is going on, rather than being a populist gossip rag, resorts to publishing misleading information because it suits some short-term unsustainable damaging objectives a few wealthy and powerful people.

26583. billev at 07:27 AM on 5 December 2015
       Study drives a sixth nail into the global warming ‘pause’ myth
       

       The NOAA Temperature record starting in 1880 shows pauses in warming from 1880 until 1910 and from the mid 1940's until the mid 1970's and from 2002 until the present.  This appears to be a pattern of alternating periods of warming and pauses in warming with each period about 30 years long.  If this pattern continues through the current century then this century will experience only 40 years of warming.

26584. reuns at 04:38 AM on 5 December 2015
       Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
       

       look at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/glossary/soi.shtml
       the SOI could be decreasing in mean value.
       
       what if the present warming is enough to let the ocean stay in a negative Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) state, resulting in much more atmospheric heat absorbed by the deep ocean layers, and thus a much slower atmospheric warming ?

       this way, we would attain the +2°C in 2100 and the global warming would have much less negative effects, letting enough time for people and nature to adapt.
       
       that's an hypothesis that looks cool if true, and because everybody thinks SOI is quite random (even if it is supposed to cancel out itself on longer periods), there is no fundamental obstruction to the hypothesis that what we are seeing today is an adjustment of SOI's mean-value to a negative index.

       Moderator Response:

       [Rob P] A negative Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) persistently below -8 typically suggests a more El Nino-like state in the tropical Pacific Ocean. During El Nino, the subtropical cell and the subtropical gyres spin down. This corresponds to reduced poleward transport of warm tropical surface water and reduced Ekman pumping (convergence & downward transport of surface water) in the subtropical gyres.
       
       This is the opposite of what you have suggested.  

       

26585. Jim Eager at 01:30 AM on 5 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Saleshrao wrote: "our continued enslavement and exploitation of animals."

       Ah, now we get to the root of saleshrao's argument. It's not about climate at all.

26586. One Planet Only Forever at 01:17 AM on 5 December 2015
       Uncertainty is Exxon's friend, but it's not ours
       

       Adding to my previous comment, there is another difference between a person who legitimately identifies an uncertainty and a person who tries to raise unjustified doubts.

       A person legitimately raising an uncertainty will accept an explanation that clarifies that the claimed uncertainty is not valid or justified (including when new reseach focused on addressing the uncertainty is developed, such as the better understanding that the mention of a warming haitus was regarding the rate of warming when measured up to 1998 vs. a slower rate after 1998, and that even that is no longer valid because of more recent research and the most recent very warm years).

       A person trying to raise doubt will continue to make an unjustified claim after they have been provided with an expalantaion of why the claim is not justified. Doubt raisers will continue to try to abuse the false claim for as long as their research indicates it is having the desired result (in public opinion and actions of leadership that is swayed by 'popularity' rather than 'understanding and the responsibility to develop a lasting better future for all'). Also, doubt raisers will not make mention of any new research related to a false claim they are trying to 'milk' benefit from.

       The deliberate raisers of unjustifiable doubt are clearly 'unhelpful to the advancement of humanity to a lasting better future for all'. They clearly need to be identified and be generally understood to be the trouble-makers that they are. Hopefully legal procedings will not be required to effectively block the success of such people because it is known that illigitimate wealth and power can and do distort the legal process, keeping it from effectively limiting the pursuits of wealthy powerful people.

        

26587. OnceJolly at 00:52 AM on 5 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       saleshrao @58: " The missing biomass must have been metabolized, which works out to 4.69 Gt.  Assuming that half the biomass is carbon, this is 2.35 GtC or 8.62 Gt CO2, which is pretty close to the Calverd estimate."

       Not everything that is metabolished is respired; some of that carbon will be incorporated in the mass of the fauna. In any case, Smil makes reference to a peer-reviewed estimate of respiration by <a href="http://www.biogeosciences.net/4/215/2007/bg-4-215-2007.pdf">Prairie and Duarte (2007)</a>, which estimates livestock respiration at 1.5GtC (5.5 GtCO2). Smil argues that their underlying estimates of animal mass are inflated. These figures (and the FAO's own estimate of 3.2 GtCO2) were available when Goodland and Anhang were conducting their analysis.

26588. One Planet Only Forever at 00:45 AM on 5 December 2015
       Uncertainty is Exxon's friend, but it's not ours
       

       It may be better to say that what the Exxon executive did was attempt to 'raise doubts' about the changes required by the developing understanding of the climate change impacts caused by human burning of fossil fuels.

       There is a significant difference between 'identifying uncertainty' and 'raising doubt'.

       Identifying valid uncertainty needs something to be shown to deserve to be considered an uncertainty requiring clarification of understanding. It requires a decent degree of understanding to be the basis for identifying the ucertainty.

       Raising doubt simply requires a willingness of an audience to accept a claim, and such claims do not even require an understanding of the actual facts of the matter, just an understanding of how to influence the beliefs of people (the science of marketing).

       The people who actually better understand an issue yet deliberately try to raise unjustified doubts about it deserve to be considered to be criminals (people who wilfully did something that they could understand was unacceptable) or perhaps be given the benefit of the doubt and be considered to be lower level criminals who did something unacceptable but did not have the ability to understand its unacceptability (A person in a position of leadership should not be able to claim they belong in this second category unless they give up their position and any wealth they got that they obviously did not deserve to get ... and agree to develop the change of mind that is required for them to qualify to be in such powerful positions of responsibility for the welfare of others before they take on another leadership role).

26589. OnceJolly at 23:47 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       saleshrao @57 & 58,

       Calverd (2005) is a one-page editoral from someone with no expertise in carbon accounting who makes no claims about disequilbrium between respiration and photosynthesis. Furthermore, he doesn't provide a value of 8.77 GTon...this is from Goodland and Anhang, who apply his 21 percent figure to the WRI's estimate of total GHG emissions for the year 2000, rather than (as Calverd actually does) the 21 percent of CO2 from the combination of fossil fuel combusion and  respiration of humans and livestock. Despite not using the FAO's own estimate of respiration, they further inflate this figure by 12 percent (for after period increases in livestock tonnage) and 10 percent (for alleged undercounting of animals by the FAO, though there is no indication that Calverd's actually uses these estimates to obtain his own figure).

       My understanding is that no one is making the equilbrium assumption that you're asserting. The degradation of surface and soil carbon sequestion is included in the land use category of greenhouse accounting. Goodland and Anhang provide no evidence that there were 10.8 Gton of *net* CO2 emissions missing from the GHG inventories in 2000 that can be attributed to land use and land use change due to livestock. In a follow-up  to their original World Watch article, when asked how previous GHG inventories missed 22 GTon of CO2e, Robert Goodland writes: "“If respired GHGs are counted as a proxy for foregone carbon absorption, then most of the 22 billion tons of emissions that we claim were previously not counted can be understood as a potential carbon sink rather than an actual carbon source.”" 

26590. MA Rodger at 23:26 PM on 4 December 2015
       Murry Salby finds CO2 rise is natural
       

        

       Dikran Marsupial @22.

       How does Salby get that data? I think we can safely conclude that the green CO2 data presented variously by Salby (your Figure 2) is a short slice of a genuine atmospheric CO2 record (presumably MLO) but after it has been passed through a Fourier analysis & stripped of unwanted frequencies. Thus he gets a nice clear sine-type wobble.

       We also know that the majority of the blue trace, the "lion's share" he tells us, is global temperature so if it is derived from actual data, it will have been likewise filtered through a Fourier analysis and also shifted a few months because of the lag between temperature & CO2 that Salby helpfully illustrates at 22:00 (although it is less than the 10 months he states in his talk).

       Mind, as Salby is at best entirely untrustworthy in these presentations of his, being in error at almost every turn (and so untrustworthy and error-prone that it is very difficult not to consider his talk as an insincere pack of lies), it might be a simpler task to answer InnocentSmithReturns by pointing out "specifically where he (Salby) goes right in this presentation."

26591. RedBaron at 20:53 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @saileshrao #57

       That brings up an important point. Just because there are unsustainable foods in our marketplace does not mean we have to stop producing those foods, all it means is we need to change the production methods. The overgrazing you mentioned and the environmental harm it creates, supports less animals, not more. Certainly overgrazing creates desertification, and that adds to AGW, and reduces yields from that land. ie less animal production, not more. The key is education. There are alternative intensive models of production to almost every form of intensive agriculture that actually yield more food per acre, not less. Most of them include animal husbandry too.

       Rice was mentioned earlier as another source of AGW. Certainly intensification of rice production in the green revolution increased yields, but at a cost to the environment. More modern forms of rice intensification though like SRI, yield even more that the old antiquated green revolution intensification, but without the environmental harm.

       In a post earlier #52 #56 I had  to clarify the difference between the standard intensification of animal husbandry which uses CAFOs and has an associated negative impact on the environment and climate, and more modern forms of animal husbandry intensification like MIRG which can actually regenerate the environment and help mitigate AGW.

       Even though most current intensive rice production does in fact add to AGW at least somewhat, no one would say everyone needs to stop eating rice. It is a silly fallacious argument. Claiming everyone needs to stop eating meat is equally silly. And so is the fallacious argument that all intensive agriculture must end because it is a source of AGW. And so is the argument that our current antiquated forms of green revolution intensification must be done to meet demand of a growing population. They are all lunatic fringe arguments that use poor logic skills and often unreasonable misleading statistics as well. One, animal husbandry, is being rightfully debunked right here in this thread.

       Yes, intensive agriculture is required to meet worldwide demand. But there are alternative forms of intensification that yield more, reduce emissions, and increase profits for almost every major food crop.

       Typically the major things preventing this change to new modern ecologically sound systems include education, subsidies for competing antiquated systems to keep them economically viable, misguided onerous regulations, and occasionally but not often infrastucture changes are needed.

26592. saileshrao at 20:10 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       OnceJolly @51,
       
       Also with respect to Calverd's "faulty calculations," the IPCC AR5 WG3 CH11 land use block diagram (Fig 11.9, page 836) confirms that the breathing contribution of livestock is around 8.77 Gt CO2.
       
       The annual net dry matter biomass input to the livestock sector is 7.27 Gt, while the net dry matter biomass output is 0.4 Gt and the waste stream is 2.18 Gt. The missing biomass must have been metabolized, which works out to 4.69 Gt. Assuming that half the biomass is carbon, this is 2.35 GtC or 8.62 Gt CO2, which is pretty close to the Calverd estimate.

26593. saileshrao at 19:53 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       OnceJolly @51:

       Vaclav Smil is making the assumption that livestock production is in equilibrium with the environment, similar to Ray Pierrehumbert making the assumption that the methane concentration is decaying exponentially in the atmosphere.
       
       I invite Vaclav Smil to accompany me to Rajasthan, India, on my upcoming field trip later this month as we work with people to reverse the expansion of the Thar desert. I would be happy to show him how livestock production is decidedly not in equilibrium with the environment as livestock production has been rapidly desertifying pasturelands through overgrazing. Annually, the UNCCD reports that 30 million acres of land gets desertified mainly through livestock overgrazing, but this CO2 emissions is counted as part of the human contributed 11.6 GtC red arrow in the IPCC carbon cycle block diagram (insert diagram from IPCC AR5 WG1 CH6), accompanied by the caption, "Total Respiration and Fire".
       
       This post by Dana Nuccitelli and the comments have illustrated many of the numerous forms of denial (FLICC) that were discussed in the excellent EdX course: Making Sense of Climate Denial, but directed towards our continued enslavement and exploitation of animals. Vaclav Smil is not a land carbon expert and therefore, using his statement to justify that livestock breathing is part of the "natural carbon cycle," could fall under the "False Experts" category of denial, discussed in the course.

26594. RedBaron at 12:16 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @scaddenp #53 In ref to my post #52

       I was specifically refering to Managed Intensive Rotation Grazing, not other forms of agricultural intensification. MIRG

26595. scaddenp at 12:15 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Reason_4, if you mean that CH4 from ruminants is different from CH4 from say fugitive natural gas, then I agree with you. The methane counts as greenhouse forcing until is oxidized, after that it is no different from CO2 from respiration. Fugitive gas by comparison is adding net new carbon into the atmosphere, first as CH4 and then as CO2.

26596. Jim Eager at 12:02 PM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Saileshrao, thank you for the link to Barnosky's PNAS paper on prehistoric megafauna, I will look at it tomorrow.

       And thanks to OnceJolly for the quote from the Smil book that says pretty much the same thing I said: livestock respiration adds no new CO2 to the atmosphere.

26597. scaddenp at 11:51 AM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       RedBaron - are you actually claiming that the total amount of soil organic carbon has increased this century due to intensification of agriculture and expansion of farmland into natural vegetation? Or are you just claiming grazing is better for retaining SOC than say crop tillage?

26598. RedBaron at 10:46 AM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @ scaddenp #49 

       Not at all, just the opposite conclusion should be drawn from those studies. In the soil you can simplify it and think of it this way. There are basically 2 pools of carbon in the soil, an active fraction and a stable fraction. The active fraction of the carbon pool in soils can safely be largely ignored as a cause of AGW as it will return to the atmosphere anyway and then back to the active fraction again via photosynthesis and so on as a relatively short term cycle. It is only temporarily stored and thus not part of the long term carbon cycle. The stabilized organic matter fraction is however part of the long term carbon cycle and is much more important to calculating AGW.

       Intensive grazing effects this rapidly cycleing fraction both by increasing live biomass production and by increasing the rate of decay BOTH. This actually increases the quantity of carbon leaving the active fraction and turns into stable humus that can no longer decay and is stable for thousands of years unless disturbed.

       Remember the only part of soil carbon that actually is important to AGW is the stable fraction. By increasing the rate of decay, that small % that get sequestered into the soil after all the processes of decay are finished also increases. It speeds up the whole system, and the system as a whole is a net sink of carbon into the soil. So that part of the system speeds up as well. The more biologically active a soil is, the more long term stable carbon is sequestered... Unless one disturbs that soil with a plow or other means of course.

26599. OnceJolly at 10:35 AM on 4 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       saileshrao @50:

       From Vaclav Smil's book, "Should We Eat Meat? Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory"

       "On the other hand, Goodland and Anhang (2009) argued that CO2 from livestock respiration is an overlooked source of the gas and that overall greenhouse gas emissions attributable to livestock should be much higher, accounting for no less than half of the total. Unfortuanately, they accepted some faulty calculations by Calverd (2005) who concluded that farm animals generate about 21% of all CO2 attributable to human activities."

       and

       "In any case, CO2 emissions from livestock metabolism are not, much like those from human respiration, considered as anthropogenic sources of a greenhouse gas. They result from the metabolism of phytomass that aborbed the gas from the atmosphere and that will again sequester it once it will have been respired and are thus a part of relatively rapid sub-cycle of the global carbon cycle that does not result in any significant net addition to atmospheric CO2 burden."

26600. KeenOn350 at 10:22 AM on 4 December 2015
       New research finds that global warming is intensifying wildfires
       

       Typo needs fixing - in quote from the summary - 

       2014 was the second longest  largest in

        

       DaveW

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