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

Recent Comments

Comments 28151 to 28200:

bozzza at 12:34 PM on 1 August 2015

Climate pledge puts China on course to peak emissions as early as 2027

@4, don't worry about the 'trouble-makers': they are allowed to exist only under condition.

Markets are meant to be robust, thus the existence of said 'trouble-makers' is for mutual benefit and when it isn't they have nothing to hide behind. Saying all that means they won't disappear of course: it's called synergy! Thus things take time is all.

bozzza at 12:22 PM on 1 August 2015

Climate models are even more accurate than you thought

Scientific method relies on critique: as does any method, else it would cease to be called method.

Rolf Jander at 11:26 AM on 1 August 2015

Climate models are even more accurate than you thought

Unfortunatly a study by climate scientists that says their models are good will only be met with derision. Any talk of adjusting data, no matter how nessesary will be called "fudging the data"

r.pauli at 06:19 AM on 1 August 2015

10 Things We Learnt From Reddit About Understanding Climate Change

great post - be sure to read the comments at the Reddit link. One disturbing comment:

"–]Klaus_OberauerProfessor of Cognitive Psychology | University of Zurich

Actually, I don't think of the internet as a catalysator of social progress. There is social progress on many fronts, in particular in the direction of increasing tolerance and inclusiveness of society, but that trend has begun long before the internet (think of the civil rights movement in the 1960es, the fight for women's rights to vote going back to the early 20th century). The internet has the potential to make other people's suffering available easily to everyone, but it also involves the potential of ignoring everything that's inconvenient to a person because there is such a huge amount of information to choose from that everyone can live in a tailor-made information environment consisting only of convenient, self-confirming information (e.g., reading only those news sites that match one's ideology). Hard to say how these potentials pan out on balance."

MA Rodger at 23:33 PM on 31 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

CBDunkerson @9.

As you say, the July figures will show all but the June figures are also quite telling. July usually gives the lowest PIOMAS anomaly (and July 2015 is but a few days wait away), but the big drops in the anomaly occur during May-June. This year that drop was a meaty 1,200 cu km but July 2015 remains 2,500 cu km behind July 2012 which just too much to catch up. So on that score, I cannot see 2015 Arctic SIV overtaking 2012. As of July 2015, PIOMAS SIV remains the 6th lowest on record but I would expect it to drop below 2014 into 5th spot by September.

CBDunkerson at 21:49 PM on 31 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

Tom, to clarify... I'm primarily looking at the ice volume record. Both extent and volume hit minimums in 2012, but in some years those have not been linked. Thus, while I agree that it is very unlikely the extent record will be broken this year, I am less certain about the volume record. If NRL is accurate then about half the multi-year ice has already been wiped out and the remaining half seems fairly exposed. That could lead to a steep drop in volume even while extent stays relatively 'high' due to widely spread chunks of thin broken up ice. It'll be easier to see how likely a volume minimum is once the PIOMAS results for July come out.

michael sweet at 05:42 AM on 31 July 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #31B

Tamino has a review of a paper by Cowtan et al 2015. Cowtan et al find that the comparison between modeled temperature and measured temeprature increase has been done incorrectly in the past. When properly corrected, 38% of the differrence between modeled and measured temeprature increase is eliminated. Joining Cowtan are a group of stellar researchers. The basis of their update is common sense once they point out the problem, although they say actually doing the comparison correctly took a lot of work. This paper will be interesting to discuss. The deniers will freak out at this conclusion.

wili at 02:00 AM on 31 July 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #31B

Nice coverage, as always. Just to continue my past record of volunteering your voluntary staff to do yet more work for free '-): There has been quite a lot of discussion in the papers and on blogs about the recent Hansen et al. paper on slr and related issues. Any chance of a synopsis or a collection of related articles and sources? If you want, I could get you started with a few...

Moderator Response:

[JH] Sorry, but i do not have the time to inventory articles about Hansen's draft paper.

Alexandre at 01:25 AM on 31 July 2015

10 Things We Learnt From Reddit About Understanding Climate Change

Great post. People always have more pressing concerns, and this diverts the needed attention from this huge, long term problem.

The takeaway message for me here is keeping it simple and respectful. Inoculating the warning about denying propaganda sounds useful, too.

Tom Curtis at 01:18 AM on 31 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

CBDunkerson @7, here are the ARCUS sea ice extent predictions as of July:

Only two lie below the 2012 record, while one matches that record. Of those three, one (from Wadhams) is frankly absurd. I suspect that the 5 million km^2 median prediction may be a bit conservative, but I would be surprised at values below 4 million km^2. I think it would require near perfect melt conditions plus high winds for at least the next month to match the 2012 record, something I don't think at all probable. If I were to make a prediction, I would split the difference between Gavin Cawley's statistical prediction and Wu and Grumbine's model based prediction, and call it at 4.65 km^2

CBDunkerson at 22:20 PM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

I'm actually surprised by the "won't break records" call. Neven's probably right that we won't see a new record low this year, but that doesn't seem anything like a sure thing to me.

Cryosphere Today is showing ice area only around 0.26 million sq km higher than for this point in 2012... and if anything, ice thickness maps seem to indicate that volume loss may have been even more pronounced. Indeed, the only remaining large mass of thick ice on the NRL map seems potentially vulnerable to getting wiped out.

Tom Curtis at 20:41 PM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

Bozza, here are the 100% values by year for MA Rodger's graph @5:

So, 100% in 1983 equals 16.11 million km^2 (15.5 * 1.0395), while in 2015, 100% equals 14.37 million km^2 (15.5 * 0.927)

MA Rodger at 18:55 PM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

bozzza @4.

Do bear in mind that the 100% of Winter SIE being divvied up in this graphic has been shrinking through the decades. 2015 was 10% below the average at the start of the time period in this graphic.

Winter Arctic Ice Age

bozzza at 16:22 PM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

..are there any time-series graphs on multi-year ice?

bozzza at 16:20 PM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

I don't like the idea of sine waves forming around the lower 2 standard deviations from the norm... but if multi-year ice is coming back I have to accept the fact.

bozzza at 16:13 PM on 30 July 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30B

That peabody stock seems to have fallen in half at faster than regular intervals: i.e. faster than exponential!

bjchip at 10:26 AM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

One does have to also consider the amount of wood being turned into soot up there though. Might see a strong second half.

Jim Hunt at 03:43 AM on 30 July 2015

2015 Arctic melting season won't break records, but could wipe the 'recovery'

The SkS magnifying glass on the University of Bremen concentration map suggests that there will be an "ice free" passage along the Northern Sea Route by now. Here's a video derived from the higher resolution AMSR2 imagery from the University of Hamburg that suggests that is indeed now the case:

https://youtu.be/i4Z_pGre3oA

ryland at 17:22 PM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

This comment by Yvette Cooper, one of the four candidates for leader of the UK Labour Party published in today's Independent is, I think, appropriate for this thread. On the subject of climate change she said “It is a serious threat to our world and to social progress and the Tories are taking us backwards. They don't believe in global leadership on climate change and their new minister [Amber Rudd, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary] has bought into conspiracy theories that action to stop climate change can be ‘cover for anti-growth, anti-capitalist, proto-socialism’. This sort of nonsense will be the norm if Labour keeps losing elections and condemns future generations to a Tory future. David Cameron’s hug-a-husky but scrap a wind farm’ hypocrisy is setting us back years.”

Moderator Response:

Sarah changed to Yvette as per request.

Jim Hunt at 16:46 PM on 29 July 2015

The Daily Mail and Telegraph get it wrong on Arctic sea ice, again

Thanks for linking to our article that highlighted some the Daily Mail's errors in their appallingly inaccurate editorial last week. We've returned the favour in our official response to their equally ludicrous "correction" of the grossest of those errors:

"Mail Makes 1000% Arctic Mistake"

We hereby call on the Daily Mail to provide us with a fair opportunity to reply to this egregious inaccuracy and a number of others in the same article.

sidd at 08:17 AM on 29 July 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30D

Was it quite necessary to include two links to Revkin ?

Moderator Response:

[JH] Yes, it was.

LarryM at 07:57 AM on 29 July 2015

The Daily Mail and Telegraph get it wrong on Arctic sea ice, again

Two of my favorite SkS climate graphics nicely illustrate the absurdity of cherry picking short-term time periods to obscure obvious long-term trends, and they deserve to be highlighted here. I think both were created by Dana.

First, the Arctic Sea Ice Escalator animated gif combines humor, sarcasm, and cold hard data to illustrate the accelerating decline of Arctic sea ice:

And of course there's the wildly popular original Escalator showing the surface temperature record:

The Escalator

Rob Painting at 05:56 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

No! I am SpartaCook!

blink937 at 03:44 AM on 29 July 2015

CRU tampered with temperature data

"Independent Climate Change Email Review". That title in itself is laughable. The UEA funded the review themselves, how is that independent? Basically they paid someone to review themselves and found nothing wrong, sounds totally legit.

(snip)

Moderator Response:

[RH] 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.

Unsubstantiated accusations deleted.

Rob Honeycutt at 03:12 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

No! I am Sparti... er, John Cook! :-)

CBDunkerson at 02:59 AM on 29 July 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30B

Correction to #1 above. Coal is not just dying. Coal is on it's death bed and life support is failing.

Heard of Peabody Energy? Largest coal company in the world? 2011 share price: $73. Today's low share price: $0.99. It's literally a penny stock.

The collapse of investor support for coal is nearly complete. The, directly linked, collapse of political support for coal is already well underway. We've passed the tipping point... all the political benefits which have been propping up coal for decades will now shortly be withdrawn and replaced by impediments. That will transition coal cost competitiveness from 'barely hanging on' to 'completely hopeless'. The US is ahead of the curve on this, but the rest of the world will follow much sooner than most projections of future coal use have suggested. I'll be surprised if coal use isn't falling world wide by 2020.

Too soon to call when petroleum will follow suit. Probably all down to when electric car batteries become cost competitive.

CBDunkerson at 02:29 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

Let's assume that Wadhams really did say everything claimed without any qualifiers or exceptions. We would then be talking about a single person, with a single conspiracy, having nothing to do with the actual science. The 'skeptic' rush to highlight this as a counter to their many conspiracy theories, in and of itself, is a perfect demonstration of just how absurdly pathetic their position is.

ryland at 02:20 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

And BTW your comment "Does it affect the substance of the science on climate change? No, of course not." is expressing very similar sentiments to those in the comment I made "But even if he did make the remarks does it really make that much difference to the debate on Climate Change?" Perhaps that had escaped your attention as indeed it did mine until I re-read the comments.

ryland at 01:52 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

KR Yes I did read the text

I don't recall I said I believed anything. What I stated was that Professor Wadhams may have made the claims he now denies or the Times is being extremely foolhardy in publishing the piece. I cannot see where this is expressing a belief one way or another,. And would you point out where I showed any willingness to believe conspiratorial thinking as I said "and even if he did" which is a long way from saying "he did".

KR at 01:20 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

ryland - As an addendum, I find your willingness to believe conspiratorial thinking on the part of a single climate researcher quite interesting in contrast with your comments on the "Recurrent Fury" thread - where you spent quite some time arguing about (non-existent) ethical issues in an apparent attempt to denigrate a paper on climate denialist conspiratorial thinking. Most curious.

KR at 01:13 AM on 29 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

ryland - Did you actually read the linked text? Because Wadham bracketed what he characterizes a brief suspicion (one prompted by the reporter) with statements that the climate researchers deaths were clearly coincidence, context that the Times did not include. And he stated he "...did not make any of the statements enclosed in quotation marks by the reporter." Out of context characterizations, with manufactured quotes???

I view the Times article, and the denial blogosphere fuss about it, simply as a Tu quoque fallacy - an attempt to distract from the well recognized and currently well publicized conspiracy ideation of climate denialists. Does it affect the substance of the science on climate change? No, of course not. Does it reflect poorly on the journalistic integrity of the Times? Yes, yes it does, and if Wadhams statement holds up the Times may be liable.

BBHY at 21:09 PM on 28 July 2015

2015 SkS Weekly Digest #30

The fossil fuel industry has profits in the billions and reserves worth trillions, so they have great incentive to push denial and doubt about climate science.

Scientists are smart people. If they were driven by greed, they would probably be bankers or lawyers or some other more lucrative occupation. They are scientists because they quest for knkowledge, not riches.

The idea that fossil fuel industry funded people are telling us the truth and scientists are lying conspiritorists is beyond crazy.

Tom Curtis at 20:32 PM on 28 July 2015

Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain

bozza @19, there is a coriolis effect in the NH just as in the SH, and vice versa. What causes that effect to have different consequences in the SH than in the NH is the different distributions of land and water; which also has other consequences on climate independent of the coriolis effect. So if you want to reduce it to a simple formula; the NH polar regions are warmer than the SH polar regions because the Arctic is water surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is land surrounded by water. Differences in distribution of land and water also explains the more southerly location of the tropical zone, and the slower loss of temperature with latitude in the SH temperate zone relative to the NH temperate zone.

That said, it is a mistake to reduce things to that level of simplicity. When you do, deniers swoop in and pick out a minor factor claiming it was "ignored by climate scientists" and that "it is the real cause". And although those claims are rubbish, depending for their rhetorical effectiveness on people not having had those other factors discussed before hand, by oversimplifying the scientific story we are just setting people up for those pseudoscientists.

Kevin C at 15:48 PM on 28 July 2015

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

What Tom said - I'm doing 60+ hours most weeks counting crystallography + climate stuff, plus domestic duties.

Also I can't update the applet page here - only the data. Updating the applet needs an intervention from the (also over-stretched) technical people. The version of the applet on my York page is more up to date - it has some tooltips and auto-updating. I don't think I've updated the links though - sorry.

Karl krig is the gridded data from the Karl 2015 paper fed through the C&W version 1 kriging calculation from our paper - i.e. infllling the blended data. I let the calculation work out the kriging range for itself - given that the Karl maps are smoothed, this is slightly overestimated (IIRC 850km - 750 is more realistic). However infilling the blended data rather than infilling separately will also underestimate the trend because part of the Arctic will be filled in from SSTs. I don't know which effect will be bigger, so for now it's just a best guess on what the global Karl data will look like.

ryland at 15:10 PM on 28 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

KR @6 In the link you gave regarding Professor Wadhams this comment is made:

"A spokesperson for The Times said: “We have a recording of Professor Wadhams making these statements. Another newspaper [the Telegraph] subsequently reported that he had made similar comments to their journalist. We stand by the story.”

In view of the wiilingness to sue news outlets at what seems to be the drop of a hat, it would seem Professot Wadhams may have made the claims he now denies or that the Times is being extremely foolhardy in publishing the piece. But even if he did make the remarks does it really make that much difference to the debate on Climate Change?

bozzza at 14:25 PM on 28 July 2015

Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain

So, arriving at a simple answer, coriolis effect explains why the nothern hemisphere is warmer than the southern!!?

Tom Curtis at 09:46 AM on 28 July 2015

The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator

s_gordon_b @86, I agree that it would be nice if it were spelled out explicitly. Having said that, everything produced on SkS is done by volunteers who are not paid for their contribution, and certainly not paid for their time producing material for SkS. (This may or may not apply to pieces published for the Guardian, although if Dana is paid for those pieces, I suspect it is a pittance.) Further, many of the contributors are very busy, having a lot of other demands on their time. Given the volunteer nature of the excercise, we are not entitled to any further expectation on their time. If Kevin C (who I know to be very busy), does not have time to update the post - then that is just how it is. We should just continue to appreciate that he has made so much time available free for out benefit as it is.

So, if he hasn't the time for the update, you can always indicate that you "think this is what the data refers to", but that the volunteers have not had the time to clarrify as yet - linking to this post if need be.

Tom Curtis at 09:37 AM on 28 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

I have just been emailed by Scott Gates (who I do not remember, and certainly have had no correspondence with under that name) making scurrilous accusations relating to Lubos Motl's accusations. I consider his accusations libelous, and will not repost them, but I will post my response:

"I don't know you from a bar of soap, and do not appreciate being mail bombed with your scurrilous and false accusations.
The facts are:
1) John Cook used the pseudonym "Lubos Motl" only on a private forum, where all other members were aware that it was a pseudonym. Ergo it was no more identity theft than using somebodies name to perform a parody, or manufacturing fake quotes in somebodies name in a cartoon (as is regularly done by Josh in cartoons published on WUWT). If any pseudoskeptic has a problem with the practice, they should first take it up with Anthony Watts and Josh.
2) The use of the pseudonym was not in anyway related to the 97% consensus paper, nor in Recursive Fury or Recurrent Fury (the follow on papers to the Moonlanding paper by Lewandowsky). Nor has it been used as data for any published scientific paper by John Cook. This point is made in an update to the link you provide on the story.
3) The non-accidental uses of the pseudonym was intended for research that was not published. For that research, the posts were used under a different pseudonym not associated with any person known (and certainly not with any well known scientists, a category that does not include Motl). It is less than ideal to use manufactured samples in research of that category because of the possibility of unconscious biases being introduced to the writing style. It does not, however, constitute scientific fraud unless the fact that the examples of "pseudoskeptic arguments" were written by non-pseudoskeptics is concealed in the published work. It is an arguable point as to whether failure to explicitly acknowledge the manufactured samples in the published work constitutes fraud, but there is no doubt that explicitly mentioning it is best practice. These same points apply also to manufactured examples of "consensus" arguments by people who accept the consensus, even if writing in their own name; because again, the contrived situation may lead to subtle biases in the samples (perhaps making the arguments more cogent than is typical of pro-consensus comments). (I should note that the use of non-manufactured samples also raises ethical issues relating to consent, so despite the issues discussed in this paragraph, the use of manufactured samples, properly acknowledged as such, may in fact be the best scientific practice for this type of research once all considerations are taken into account.)
4) Regardless of the considerations in (4), to my certain knowledge, John Cook has not intentionally practiced scientific fraud in any of his research, published or unpublished. Suggesting otherwise constitutes libel, and is considerably more unethical than anything John Cook has done."

The link provided, and mentioned in point (2) above, was to WUWT.

John Hartz at 08:57 AM on 28 July 2015

Conspiracy theories about Skeptical Science

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