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

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Comments 28051 to 28100:

  1. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30B

    Any plans to post any response to or summary of the Hansen et al. paper on sea level rise and related issues that just became public?


    rs has a nice summary on his blog: robertscribbler.com/2015/07/24/warning-from-scientists-halt-fossil-fuel-burning-fast-or-age-of-superstorms-3-20-feet-of-sea-level-rise-is-coming-soon/

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] It's a draft paper subject to open review. If individual members of the SkS all-volunteer author team want to comment on it, they are certainly free to do so. 

  2. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    @12, all quibbles are welcome here. Seeing as I've been telling the internet for quite a long time now that 'Science is consensus and it starts with nomenclature' I'd better get my nomenclature right... it might give me half a chance, cheers!

  3. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    In Australia, Climate Change denial does pay. Australia is one of the world's largest coal exporters, a significant proportion of it's power generation comes from coal, and coal products are an important component the national income that underpins Australia's wealth. As a result, attitudes towards climate change follows party lines, with one party, Labor, promoting it as a serious issue and the other, Liberal/National Party, while giving it token support, take a "lukewarmer" position. This is the reason that the Government has implemented it's clayton's climate change policy, "Direct Action" and has attacked the climate advisory bodies, climate change funding arrangements for developing needed technologies, and promoted many climate change deniers to important positions upon it's economic advisory bodies.

    The reason for this is actually quite simple. One of the main Liberal/National party policy think tanks is the Institute of Public Affairs (the IPA). It is Australia's equivalent of the George C Marshall Institute. The IPA, along with other Liberal Party policy think tanks like the Menzies Research Centre and the H. R. Nicholls Society, all actively promote Climate Change denial. Scientists like climate change deniers, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter are attached to the IPA, providing advice related to climate change policy. Plimer is also an important member of the Mining Council of Australia, having been it's chairman, and he influences it's political stance. Gina Reinhart, Australia's wealthiest person, who made her money from huge mining projects, is also related to the IPA. She funded a Christopher Monkton speaking tour of Australia, at the height of the ETS/Carbon Tax debate when Labor tried to introduce an ETS. The IPA is also an important source of climate change denial material and underpins the political stance of Murdoch media outlets who reach around 83% of the Australian population, where right wing commentators like Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, and Piers Ackereman, and right wing shock jocks like Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, disseminate IPA inspired climate change denial material to their readers and listeners.

    Also, the IPA, through it's journal, provides climate change material to its readers, and it's latest effort comes in the form of a book called "Climate Change - the Facts 2014" with contributions from Ian Plimer, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Nigel Lawson, Bill Kininmonth, Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, Garth Paltridge, Richard Tol, Brian Fisher, Bob Carter, Donna Laframboise, Anthony Watts, Alan Moran amongst others and other climate change deniers. Also, this book seems to form the basis of Matt Ridley's latest essay in June's Quadrant magazine "How the Climate Wars Undermine Science", where John Cook's Consensus Project is discredited, (in their eyes), by referring to it as being biased and unrepresentative.

    Now I don't know about you, but, I don't think that climate change deniers are being marginalised in Australia. If anything, they are still pre-eminent due to the IPA's political and media reach. Trying to take effective action to tackle climate change in Australia has already seen the toppling of two prime minsters and a leader of the Liberal Party who did think that the issue was important. It will be a significant issue in the next election but whether the electorate will embrace it, after a fear campaign related to the hip pocket nerve and xenophobic fears related to asylum seekers, is questionable.

    While it is easier to have a debate with like minded people; what is happening in Australia, while the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian do present material properly conveying the 97% consensus; demonstrates why climate change advocates need to be more engaged with the climate change deniers from the IPA, the Murdoch press, and the right wing shock jock community, because, at the moment the denier/lukewarmer argument is still pre-eminent and not getting it's proper voice with Australia's public.

  4. It cooled mid-century

    Here's an updated version of the 'Radiative Forcing since 1750' chart. There is even a section that shows the forcing in 1950 relative to 1750. It is NOT negative. Though I strongly suspect that since reconstruction of past aerosol concentrations and their effects on radiative forcing going back to 1750 is highly controversial and involves a lot of errors.

    Either way, the IPCC's AR5 version of that chart does not seem to support the notion that aerosols exerted enoguh negative forcing to contribute to a slight cooling trend.

  5. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Just to say that I managed to get the Mail to change the wording of the article from "decades" to "years". You can see some of my correspondence on Jim Hunts blog. A small victory perhaps!

  6. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Tom/Bozzza - There are so many areas of apparent misunderstanding on the Mail's part it's hard to know where to begin when demanding a correction.

    A simple "letter to the editor" most certainly won't cut the mustard! Perhaps a set of graphs in print plus Andy's video online might go some way towards setting the bitterly twisted record straight?

    After listening to Radio 4 last night it seemed sensible to try and set the record straight for the BBC as well:

    Inside the BBC’s Arctic Sea Ice Science

    Not as far off track as the Mail, but far too much emphasis on a "WHOPPING 41% [increase] on the previous year!" for my taste, I'm afraid.

  7. Models are unreliable

    dvaytw: Climate Lab Book has a comparison that is updated frequently.

  8. Models are unreliable

    I'm looking for a good graphic showing where the surface temperature models with the latest observed temperatures added.   Anyone know of one?

  9. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30B

    It seems the UK is moving in the opposite direction by reducing subsidies on renewables Perhaps this is a reflection on David Cameron's comment  that "polices that increased household bills are green crap

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] I presume your comment is in response to one of the articles listed in the OP. Which one?

  10. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30B

    I've been saying for a few years now that US coal was being killed off by economic forces. A Washington Post article seems to confirm this. New Obama administration EPA regulations which would sharply cut back on coal power are about to go into effect and the GOP had been promising all out war to block them... only to discover that most states are already on track to meet the requirements without any regulatory pressure at all. Natural gas, wind, and solar have been decimating US coal. Coal plants are being shut down en masse... years before end of life. That has changed investments in those plants into losses... which in turn has virtually eliminated investment in and development of new coal plants. More than 70% of the new US electricity deployed so far this year has been renewable.

    Natural gas isn't as cheap for the rest of the world, but wind and solar are and will soon be having a similar impact world wide. Even China and India are now looking at reducing their plans for coal, and that change will only accelerate as wind and solar costs continue to fall. Coal is dying.

  11. Lomborg: a detailed citation analysis

    Huh! The LNP govs did not give up on this pathetic effort and they want to place Lomborg in Flinders Uni now. Hold your breath about the "Australian pride". Will see if FU (or yet another education institution before the project collapses) accepts the lure of $4m govt grant...

  12. Climate's changed before

    Tom @490, ah that's helpful, thank you. I had not realised that albedo changes had such substantial historic effects on past climates. I will read Hansen's paper. 

    It is reassuring to know that we need to reach c 950 ppm before Antarctica warms by 10C above pre-industrial, because that's about 183 years away (assuming a linear 3 ppm annual rise in CO2) and human energy use will presumably have moved off fossil fuels sometime well before then. At least I hope so.

  13. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    bozzza@10,

    This thread (where, interestingly in your comment therein, you've coiled a term 'clever country') is the appropriate place to talk about Lomborg. Your upbringing of Lomborg & 'clever country' here does not make any sense & I would not be surprised if it was deleted.

  14. Climate's changed before

    Jutland @488, you are correct that orbital forcings only kick of the variation between glacial and interglacial; and also that CO2 forcing is a major driver of the temperature change.  It is, however, not the major driver.  Rather, albedo effects from changes in sea ice extent, growth of ice sheets and reduction in forest cover.  Hansen quantifies the differences in his well known paper, Target Atmospheric CO2, saying:

    "Climate forcing in the LGM equilibrium state due to the slow-feedback ice age surface properties, i.e., increased ice area, different vegetation distribution, and continental shelf exposure, was -3.5 ± 1 W/m2relative to the Holocene. Additional forcing due to reduced amounts of long-lived GHGs (CO2, CH4, N2O), including the indirect effects of CH4 on tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapor (fig. S1) was -3 ± 0.5 W/m2. Global forcing due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit is a negligible fraction of 1 W/m2(fig. S2). The total 6.5 W/m2forcing and global surface temperature change of 5 ± 1°C relative to the Holocene yield an empirical sensitivity ~¾ ± ¼ °C per W/m2forcing, i.e., a Charney sensitivity of 3 ± 1 °C for the 4 W/m2forcing of doubled CO2. This empirical fast-feedback climate sensitivity allows water vapor, clouds, aerosols, sea ice, and all other fast feedbacks that exist in the real world to respond naturally to global climate change."

    6.5 W/m^2 is the equivalent to the forcing of a 3.4-fold increase in CO2 concentration.  In otherwords, we should expect a 10 C increase in Antarctic temperatures with an increase of CO2 from 280 ppmv to 952 ppmv.  That, of course, is just the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) which does not include the impacts of long term feedbacks such as the melting of ice sheets.  Including those will result in higher temperatures, but only after the course of many centuries.  What is more, if we are sensible and end all CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations will fall significantly so that we will never experience the Earth System response to the peak CO2 levels. 

  15. Climate's changed before

    Fig 5.03

    Apologies, here's the image correctly linked

    Jutland

  16. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    anticorncon6, yes the article is suggesting that global warming deniers are getting less common. This is backed up by surveys. There is an old saying that new scientific paradigms are never 'accepted'... it's just that all of their detractors eventually die out. We're seeing the same thing with global warming... disbelief of the physics is disproportionately found amongst the elderly.

    As to when they will finally die out completely... I'd say that we will continue to have global warming deniers until the fossil fuel interests funding the disinformation campaign lose their financial clout. Then the new moneyed interests will tell the deniers that they all believed in global warming all along, and so shall it be. Should be less than twenty years before the start of the 'great conversion'.

  17. NOAA State of the Climate report: Which seven records were broken in 2014?

    The graphic discussed @1 to 3 came from this NOAA web page and, as the caption there now reads, the graphic's datum should have read (and now does read) "1993 average" not the un-corrected "1993-2013 average" as in the post above.

  18. Climate's changed before

    I find this particular image in AR5 WG1, figure 5.03 about climate over the past 800,000 years, a bit scary:

    Its purpose is to demonstrate the correlation between past climates and insolation changes, which is why it shows precession, obliquity and eccentricity. But these orbital factors only kick off each period of heating, it's clear that CO2 does most of the work in raising temperatures, and it is the correlation between CO2 and temperatue in the diagram which is what interests me.

    CO2 has each time risen from about 200 ppm to about 280 ppm, or thereabouts, which is roughly a 40% rise. What I find worrying is that this 40% CO2 rise seems to correlate consistently with a rise in Antarctic temperature of about 10C. That is a large effect. (And it's just 40%; a doubling of CO2 would be even larger.)

    Anthopogenic CO2 is now 40% above pre-industrial levels (280 ppm up to 400 ppm) so does that mean we already have 10C locked in for the polar regions?

  19. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    bozza @8, just a quibble. Technically, volume = area x thickness... and area = extent x concentration.

    There usually isn't a big difference between area and extent because the average concentration is relatively near 100%. However, sometimes, such as right now, you get large swaths of ocean covered with low concentration broken up ice and thus the actual surface area of the ice is significantly less than the extent of ocean with ice.

  20. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Jim Hunt @2, perhaps you need to say it with pictures, given that the lawyer is so mathematically challenged.  Ie, sea ice volume anomaly (what the article should have been talking about):

     

    And sea ice extent anomaly (what the article in fact talked about):

    From these it is clear that the 2014 arctic sea ice volume is lower than that of any year prior to 2008, and the 2013 sea ice extent lower than that of any year prior to 2007.

    Put another way, for the daily mail "decades" means nine years or less.

    Of course, that particular mathematical incompetence may well pass muster with a fact checker who does not know (apparently) that 1/x * x = 1, or that the final value in a time series does not always lie on the trend line.

  21. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    The global warming denier hides as the global warming negotiator,... hence Bjorn Lomborg still being offered University status at Flinders University to spruik his idea that fossil fuels should be allowed to warm our kids earth by 3 degrees instead of 2... 

    He doesn't deny global warming, you must understand, ..just asks why fossil fuels shouldn't be allowed a bit more breathing room to continue making profits for a little bit more!

    (Like an ear worm he will make you sing along if given airplay!!)

    The global warming denier is Abbott hiding as, of course- this is politics, the negotiator! Wow, strategy and stuff.... just watch Holloywood and vote for whatever...cool, yeh! Beer is in the fridge and we've got hotdogs yay!

  22. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    If Lomborg gets the gig at Flinders University will that increase or decrease the good communication of climate science?

    More to the point, if Lomborg gets the gig at Flinders University will that be the last straw for the once allegedly 'clever country',... ?

  23. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    First, yes, extent decreased since 1979, but the paper is about volume (which is extent x thickness). Second, the 41% increase is with regards to the 2012 mega-record low, which was 80% lower than 1979, off the top of my head. Third, this is a pure lie: “the northern ice-cap INCREASED by a staggering 41 per cent in 2013 and, despite a modest shortage last year, is bigger than at any time for decades.” It’s not an ice cap, and the Arctic sea ice pack isn’t bigger than at any time for decades.

  24. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    bozzza @7. Have you followed the link and read the comments? If so, what do you fail to understand?

  25. anticorncob6 at 14:22 PM on 24 July 2015
    Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    Is this article actually suggesting that global warming deniers are getting less common? I find that difficult to believe. I've always believed that, until global warming gets so bad that nobody can ignore it or dismiss it as a natural cycle or an illusion, we will always have global warming deniers.

    With all the recent news about climate change, I'd say that AGW deniers are getting angrier and more aggresive because of it, and are not struggling to stay in denial at all.

  26. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    @2, ..what?

  27. CO2 lags temperature

    TGU,

     You are talking about the uncertainty principle where there is never enough measurement to satisfy all consumers of science. Science, in the end, is about consensus and it starts with nomenclature.

     Do you know what 'error value' is?

  28. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    I predict more interest in formula-e and TESLA stocks...

  29. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    Irreversible rapid climate change and ocean acidification is under way, largely due to past greenhouse gas emissions by technological systems using fossil fuels. That is the stark reality regardless of what people believe. Policies that aim to reduce the rate of emissions as rapidly as possible are to be welcomed even though all that will do is slow down global warming slightly. It can not stop the increase in warming and the associated deleterious consequences. The wiset thing to do is to follow the lead of the Netherlands, London and New York in carrying out works to cope with the sea level rise. There are many activities that can be embraced to aid adapting to climate change and ocean acidification given wider understanding of physical reality rather than the hype of those who stand to lose financially if remedial actions are undertaken.

  30. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    Unfortunately, how do you influence people like Rupert Murdoch whose media outlets constantly promote anti-Climate Change messages and right wing think tanks that drive the anti-Climate Change policies and arguments of neoconservative politicians? They seem to believe and actively argue that Climate Change is bunk and is a part of some huge conspiracy. Unfortunately, although their numbers are small, they have a much greater influence upon the general public view because of their media reach, their ability to dominate the political debate, and their ability to distort and confuse the scientific message. For these people, it would take one of the major ice sheets in Greenland or West Antarctica to slip into the ocean and significantly increase the sea level in a short period of time. It seems the prospect of an ice free Arctic doesn't phase them, and the many photos of widespread glacier retreat over the last 30 years also doesn't convince them. They just trot out another cherry picked counter example. In fact, with some of them, even a sudden rise in sea level due to an ice sheet slipping into the sea wouldn't convince them, and even if it did, they would plead ignorance and say: "Oh we didn't know".

    These people have a much greater influence than their numbers would suggest because of their wealth and the powerful vested interests that back them. It is due to them that the 97% scientific consensus related to Climate Change is not matched in the public view. With honest reporting in the popular media, then the consensus between the two would be much closer. How you achieve balanced reporting to the wider public that reflects the scientific consensus is the problem.

    In short, while the scientific argument is clear, the problem is to overcome the political argument which can be summarise as follows:

    Climate Change Denial by a Few Powerful Vested Interests + Political Ideology => Public Confusion => Polarised Politics => No Political Consensus => No Effective Action to Minimise the Impact of Climate Change.

  31. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Strange, I had posted a couple questions here about a current story, it seems to have been deleted, what gives?

    Moderator Response:

    [RH] Your comments (along with mine) were deleted for being off-topic for the thread you posted on. Please refer to the SkS commenting policy page.

  32. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Jim Hunt@5:  Sorry, I'm from the US

  33. CO2 lags temperature

    "How can this be refuted when all we have is relatively miniscule time slices of human impact to compare?"

    Well the usual way - decades of hard work doing measurements and examining the evidence.

    A couple of things to consider. The natural glacial cycle is driven by regular cycles in the earth's orbital parameters. The change in solar radiation at around 65N is tightly correlated with the glacial cycle because of feedbacks in albedo and GHGs that ensue. Eg see Hansen and Sato 2012. 

    The maximum milankovich forcing per century at 65N at 0.25W/m2. Compare that 1.66W/m2 from CO2 alone operating not just at one region of the earth but over the whole globe. If the natural cycle was dominant, then we would be cooling slowly now.

    Secondly, the orbital cycle have been around a long time but they can only induce the glacial cycle when global temperatures are low enough for the albedo feedback to cut in. The last time we had 400ppm CO2 in atmosphere was in the Pliocene and there were no glacial cycles then.

  34. Glenn Tamblyn at 06:34 AM on 24 July 2015
    CO2 lags temperature

    TGU

    Try a simple calculation. CO2 concentrations vary over a glacial cycle between around 180 to 280 parts per million (ppm). The fastest rate of change is during the warming phase when they vary by that much over perhaps 10,000 years. Thats 1 ppm/century.

    Today CO2 levels are rising at around 1 ppm every 22 weeks!

  35. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Ubrew - Thanks for your input, and quite so! We're currently formally pursuing the "Daily Mail Comment" via the official channels.

    Are you by any chance from the UK, and if so are you willing and able to complain also?

  36. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Also note the IPCC report (p4) is talking about an 'annual mean' in ice extent, while the 'staggering 41 per cent' increase is referring to the summer minimum volume (the most sensitive time of year).

  37. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    Jim Hunt@1: From your link: "The Readers’ Editor is a lawyer... I have looked into the matter with care... IPCC report (p4 notes). ‘The annual mean Arctic sea-ice extent decreased...4.1% per decade'...[therefore] between 1979 and 2012, the shrinkage of the ice-cap couldn’t have been more than 12 per cent... the 41 per cent increase in the ice-cap reported by the UCL study must presumably mean that it’s bigger than in 1979"  Besides the fact that IPCC is talking about 'extent', while the Daily Mail is reporting on 'volume', percent declines are always lower than percent increases.  If ice declines from 7 (10km3) to 5 (103 km3) in a single year, that's only a 29% decrease.  If it increases the following year back to 7 (103 km3), thats a 40% increase.

    Also a general note: the Daily Mail reportage on this article has the proper provision: "the volume of ice jumped by 41 per cent in 2013, relative to the previous year", while the Daily Mail Opinion does not: "INCREASED by a staggering 41 per cent in 2013... bigger than at any time for decades"

  38. Global warming deniers are an endangered species

    I wonder if there'll be a telethon... 'Save the Climate Change Deniers! These special creatures are rapidly vanishing from the Earth as rising temperatures and melting ice make their natural habitat increasingly unsustainable. 'Skeptics', as they are also affectionately known, need an environment of ignorance and doubt in order to thrive. The increasing obviousness of global climate change is having a devastating impact on 'skeptic' populations all over the world. Please help us save these rare organisms, before it's too late!"

  39. CO2 lags temperature

    TGU, we are "in another peak cycle"... otherwise known as an interglacial. The current interglacial began about eleven thousand years ago when CO2 levels rose to ~280 ppm (from a low of ~180 ppm during the previous glaciation). They then stayed at about that level (+/- 15 ppm) for thousands of years... until, starting around 1850, they began growing at a rate orders of magnitude faster than anything in the Vostok chart above. We are now at 400 ppm.

    In short, we were at the peak of a natural cycle which plays out every ~100,000 years... and then in ~150 years humans drove up the atmospheric CO2 level by an amount greater than the entire range of variation over the course of that natural cycle, with more still to come. That's how we know that we aren't "just" at the peak of the natural cycle... we started there, but are now far far above the range that cycle has ever experienced.

  40. Glaciers are growing

    Aerosols were likely the biggest contributor to glacial retreat in Europe from 1850 to 1910. Aerosol loading in the Himalayas due to Indian, European and African fossil fuel consumption are likely the largest contributors to glacial retreat in the Himalayas. There are uncertainties if aerosols from China make their way into the Himalayas.

    Aerosols reduce albedo and increase the skin temperature. This same effect, surface darkening effect (SDE), is also leading to a reduction in boreal forest snowpack accumulation (video). It is also having an effect on the Sierra Nevadas in California. The Himalayas is the largest reserve of ice outside of the polar regions. Anthropogenic aerosol forcing is largest contributor to this glacial retreat – not anthropogenic GHG forcing. There are many uncertainties regarding the role of aerosols in global warming; it is also the largest source of uncertainty regarding anthropogenic radiative forcing (IPCC chart).

  41. The Great Unknown at 02:12 AM on 24 July 2015
    CO2 lags temperature

    Looking at the Temp and CO2 chart, the striking thing to me is the regularity of the events and the peaks.  Seems hard to refute that we AREN'T just in another peak cycle.  How can this be refuted when all we have is relatively miniscule time slices of human impact to compare?  Empircally incompatible.

  42. The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example

    It seems that you and I have been thinking along remarkably similar lines John, except that I set the Daily Mail's official complaints procedure in motion yesterday. I received a reply from The Mail's legal eagles today:

    http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2015/07/an-inconvenient-truth-about-the-mails-climate-coverage/#comment-210847

    A packet of peanuts for the first person to spot the minor arithmetical error.

  43. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A

    Regarding the new CPOM paper on CryoSat-2 Arctic sea ice volume measurements, I'm afraid I have taken exception to both the Daily Mail and the Guardian's coverage:

    An Inconvenient Truth About The Mail’s Climate Coverage

    Whilst searching [Rachel Tilling's] paper for the word “ice” returns lots of results a search for the word “cap” returns zero results, just like “recovery”.

    not to mention:


    I have already lodged an official complaint about the antics of The Daily Mail’s imaginary time machine. If you would like to do as well then here is the appropriate form to fill in:

    http://dailymail.co.uk/readerseditor

  44. michael sweet at 20:35 PM on 23 July 2015
    2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A

    Defined here: An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict.

    Black swans can simply be rare events or they may indicate that the system is about to shift to a new normal.

  45. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A

    comment from the Artctic sea ice volume rebounds article:

    By Bart R (Canada)
    on July 21st, 2015
    On the whole, I agree with Neven.

    It is an excellent article.

    Terms like ‘recover’ however, when discussing complex systems seem inherently untrustworthy. The world’s climate is rapidly changing, and the Arctic is integral to the whole. “Recover” is as impossible as being rained on by the same raindrop twice.

    More to the point, Black Swan behaviour is always a ‘recovery’ in its second phase; it’s the third phase where the system begins to seek new states.

    It is as appropriate to conclude from the ‘recovery’ of 2013-2014 that the Arctic system has had its second major destabilization in under two decades, and that all bets may be off for projecting where it next lands.

    While we can expect the Arctic to more frequently visit some states it had not exhibited in the past under a Chaos Theoretical framing, we can’t know properly what those will be. Hansen’s argument of shut down of the Conveyor is no less likely than an El Padre-dominated climate with temperature highs at the poles unseen in 2.4 million years.

    Five years of satellite feed is not enough to draw conclusions from of the scale this article contemplates.

    Does anyone know what "Black Swan Behaviour" is ?

  46. Arctic sea ice has recovered

    Si Senor, am doing that now!

    Keenly watching the Arctic sea extent graphs dipping down toward 2 standard deviations again, however... I don't like the angle on that graphology...

     

    Tieing the two sources together(...without having finished reading the article yet because I'm a betting man..) I am glad to be empowered by the knowledge that whilst 3 metre plus ice recovered in a big way in 2013 it fell back again in 2014.

     

    This is exactly what I needed, thanx!!! Are we witnessing disintegration? I won't be sleeping for approximately 7 days I'm telling you now!! 

  47. The oceans are warming faster than climate models predicted

    I just watched a European public channel where they claimed that the current uptake of the oceans - and within the equalisation of the heating - could soon have an end and fire back. Are you aware of any studies that would be indicating this?

    Sorry for being lazy now doing my own research. But nevertheless, I think this is an issue of importance concerning surface temperatures sky rocketing again (the 'hiatus' which has actually never happened).


    Thanks, folks.

  48. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A

    Thanks for continuing this service.  Don't let it overwhelm, there's plenty of information out there.  

    The first link to "Arctic sea ice volume rebounds, but not recovering" is not working (the second, lower link is working properly).  

    For anyone interested, here's this weeks listing of 'Climate Change News' by Mary Ellen Harte at Huffington Post (good source for news/links).

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] Glitch fixed. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

  49. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A

    "I therefore now have the time to produce the Weekly News Summary."

    Huray!!

  50. 2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A

    Digital hugs to you and your wife! I am german and have no idea what the boob tube is (just looked it up .. I have none). I think you are right about the ABC .. But if 2 or 1 times is less work or fits better your life, that's fine too! (and 0 is fine too, because we first of all need to be sustainable privately .. it might also be a changing scheme, depending on your and your wifes time: I am happy with anything I get ..)

    I found this website here, when I was deeply irritated by denial arguments on a sustainability forum, and I was very happy! Since this news roundup appeared, SkS has become my major site: I get here background science, gish gallop analysis (I never would be able to research myself), and context and news (your brilliant work) and tons of material and graphics I can link to, when needed and recently even a MOOC: digital hugs to the whole SkS team! I donate to SkS and I too (independently) recently took some  decision which will enable me to donate more to SkS (and others).

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