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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.

Suggested suplemental reading:

Melting Arctic sea ice could be disrupting the oceans’ circulation—with major consequences by Chelsea Harvey, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, June 29, 2015

knaugle at 03:34 AM on 30 June 2015

Irreversible loss of world's ice cover should spur leaders into action, say scientists

There is an interesting page, Paul Ward's "Cool Antarctica" that makes an interesting read related to this:

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/global_warming.php

Under the discussion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet [and its apparent slow collapse] is the statement:

"The end result of this is the possibility that we have already been committed to a rise in global sea levels by 3m or more over the coming centuries."

Moderator Response:

[JH] Link activated.

Rob Honeycutt at 02:44 AM on 30 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B

Philippe... Here's some information from IPCC AR4 about aviation where they break it down into relative radiative forcing. The figures seem to agree with what I said above with 2015 projections for aviation having a contribution of about 5% of total anthropogenic radiative forcing.

Some folks will try to slip in the 2-3% CO2 emissions figure to make it seems smaller, but the net total effect is in the range of 5% or so.

PhilippeChantreau at 02:22 AM on 30 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B

Rob, can you elaborate or point me to a source for aircraft emissions having an effect double their value? Are you talking about CO2 or the ensemble of CO2 and particulates? Does that include the effect of contrails? I would have thought that CO2 emitted closer to the surface, where the IR emitted, would have had more effect.

FrankTrades at 02:22 AM on 30 June 2015

Irreversible loss of world's ice cover should spur leaders into action, say scientists

Assuming the obvious, that global warming will cause direct melting of polar ice caps, let's look at the RATE of sea level increase since the mid-1800s. Google the data with this search: Battery NOAA Sea Level. That give a long-tern look at data. The chart will show a strict linear trend of increase, not the least bit influenced by the world population increase from 1 billion to 7 billion since the beginning of that data measurement. Given that burning of hydrocarbons MUST have increased at least an order of magnitude in that time, the data completely mitigate against any conclusion that there has been influence of man on sea level rise and thus global warming.

Mean Sea Level Trend 8518750 The Battery, New York

Moderator Response:

[TD] Your comment is off topic for this thread. Please place further comments on this topic on the thread "How Much Is Sea Level Rising?" Please actually read that post before you comment, instead of making a comment that clearly is refuted in the post. For example, in that post note the greater than linear increase in sea level when measured away from plate boundaries and areas of isostatic rebound, and when measured globally instead of at one location. (Shocking to some is the fact that Manhattan is not the entirety of the world.) Also note that your crude speculation about CO2 rise is unnecessary, because it has been measured.

Rob Honeycutt at 02:04 AM on 30 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B

Wili... Currently aviation accounts for about 2-3% of global CO2 emissions, but their effect is about double that because the emissions are primarily released at altitude. Aviation is still a growing industry, but they're also not a denial-driven industry like the FF industry. The entire aviation industry is actively working on more efficient aircraft, alternative fuels, as well as alternative propultion systems. And as anyone who flies can attest (with much grumbling), they're clearly trying to get as many human bodies into the smallest possible aircraft as possible. :-)

Surface transportation will continue to be the bigger nut to crack since it accounts for 30% of CO2 emissions.

wili at 01:06 AM on 30 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B

The eco-village piece points out that the good people at Findhorn fail to meet sustainable footprint levels mostly because they faly at levels normal for Westerners. I too have noticed that reducing or eliminating flying on quizzes like that at myfootprint.org dramatically reduces one's footprint.

It would be great to see more info on the contributions of flying toward climate change. Is there something about where the emissions are injected into the atmosphere (mostly much higher than most other sources) that changes the profile. Or is it just the large amount of energy and so fuel it takes to accelerate a large metal object to about 600mph away from earth's gravitational center?

I don't really mean to further burden the mods on this, but if other commenters have any insights or links on this, I would appreciate it.

Glenn Tamblyn at 23:34 PM on 29 June 2015

It's the sun

As a first approximation, that you would get a nice peak in the sunspot power series at the solar cycle frequency is a bit of a no-brainer - like duh man!

Expecting that the temperature data would show a similar correlation is based on assuming a raft of physical realtionships that ae actually unphysical. Starting with the fact that most energy exchange in the climate system is into and out of the oceans which have huge thermal mass and massively damp down any frequency responses to something like solar variations.

So not what are you missing. What are you expecting and are your expectations reasonable; thermodynamically reasonable?

bozzza at 16:18 PM on 29 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly Digest #25

@3, while you have a point about birth control you are also saying he has no right to talk about climate change as a market failure.

One of the biggest themes of the bible was market failure due to human failure and you are trying to make people forget that point.

ancient_nerd at 16:17 PM on 29 June 2015

It's the sun

I tried a fourier analysis of the solar incidence and temperature data. The idea was that there would be big peaks in the spectra at the frequency of the sunspot cycle. I used a 121 year period where the SATIRE-T2 and NOAA anomaly sets overlap. A nice big peak showed up at just the right spot with the Solar Data. However, with the temperature data, the spectral components were almost missing entirely. They were actually low points in the noise floor.

Any idea what I could be missing?

Rob Honeycutt at 12:12 PM on 29 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly Digest #25

Paraquat... This is a lot more than just "nice." As John said, it's potentially game changing. He couching this as a global moral issue, which it is. And not only that, he's primarly speaking to many millions of people whom have previously been uninvolved, or at least dispassionate about, climate change.

The Pope knows his audience. I'm excited he's taking on climate change and will happily allow him to tend his flock as he sees best.

John Hartz at 11:58 AM on 29 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly Digest #25

Paraquat: Pope Francis is using his moral authority to convince world leaders to commit to taking meaningful action on mitigating manmade climate change when they meet in Paris in December. This is a significant and potentially a "game-changing" initiative.

Paraquat at 09:43 AM on 29 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly Digest #25

This sudden lovefest with the Pope has me scratching my head. Yes, it's nice that he agrees that AGW is real - that's better than denial. But if the Pope wants some real action to solve the problem instead of just spouting some nice words, he can use his power as the head of the Catholic church to lift the Papal ban on birth control. Doing so would instantly improve the lives of millions of Catholics and is as much a human rights issue as it is an environmental issue.

Stephen Baines at 09:01 AM on 29 June 2015

It's not us

That is an excellent graphic! Have to remember that for class. Thanks Tom D.

Tom Dayton at 08:36 AM on 29 June 2015

It's not us

Excellent dynamic graphic at Bloomberg, showing natural versus anthropogenic forcings.

John Hartz at 05:52 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Moderation Comment:

We are investigating whether or not Superposition and Henchman21 are sockpuppets. Until we complete our investion, please do not repond to any posts made by either Superposition and Henchman21.

Moderator Response:

[DB] Henchman21 is confirmed as a sock puppet of SuperPosition. Both user id's have had their posting rights rescinded.

Petr Glad at 05:20 AM on 29 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B

destruction (treating) flue gas emissions and the Future power engineering
http://www.etenergycorp.com/
Global warming, power generation, and pollution
https://sites.google.com/site/environmentalfrompg1/home/apvrvv
Site "scisyhp-physics - PG-1"
https://sites.google.com/site/scisyhpphysicspg1/

Moderator Response:

[JH] Your post is too cryptic to ascertain why you have posted the links to three separate websites. Please explain the points you want to make in a new post. Thank you.

MA Rodger at 02:57 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Henchman21 @185.

Why do you say the quote(s) do(es)n't "say that variable RE can supply a baseload"? Is the 'RE' being mentioned not variable enough for you? Or is there some part of 'baseload' that you consider isn't supplied by providing "100% renewable elecrticity"? Do explain.

Moderator Response:

[JH] We have noted the similarity between Henchm21's postings and those of Superpoition. If there is only one person behind these two user names, the penalty of banishment will be imposed per the SkS Comments Policy. We have zero tolerence for sock puppetry.

Henchman21 at 01:49 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

RH.

Happily but I am concerned at the disparity.

IPCC carries many non peer reviewed reports without objection... If Leo Smith MA is wrong then it should be for factual inaccuracy rather than by result. I hope you agree.

Moderator Response:

[RH] I highly suggest you read through the commenting policy for this site. As a moderator here I'm asking you to move on from this track of the discussion, not perpetuate it.

Henchman21 at 01:34 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

183

Incidentally, your quote does not say that variable RE can supply a baseload.

Henchman21 at 01:17 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

MA Roger 183

A master of arts isn't good enough now? Since when?

There's a few people on SKS with MAs who may take exception to that view.

By all means criticise the content but to attack the credentials and the person as a mechanism of slighting the paper should be beneath you.

Moderator Response:

[RH] Please accept the fact that the Leo Smith piece is a very weak citation and move on. We trust you can find stronger citations to support your arguments.

MA Rodger at 00:50 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Henchman21 @180 & michael sweet @181.
That Leo Smith thesis has been addressed already up-thread having been introduced by SuperPosition @129. It didn't get a good reception. Indeed, it was introduced elsewhere on SkS back in 2012 but failed even to arrive at this thread. Myself, I don't think Leo Smith, MA. is at all worth citing on this issue.

SuperPosition @179.
Spinning reserve operates over a period of minutes. Base load applies to periods of hours. Your confusion does you no credit.
Your objections about paywalls would be taken more seriously if you were attentive to the papers when initially provided.
The abstract of the Elliston et al (2013) paper kicks off with the quote:-

Least cost options are presented for supplying the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) with 100% renewable electricity using wind, photovoltaics, concentrating solar thermal (CST) with storage, hydroelectricity and biofuelled gas turbines.

I would have thought that would satisfy your yearning to answer your question @176 "has anyone got any citations that back up the contention that variable RE generators are baseload supplies?"
If not, perhaps Elliston et al (2012) would do it.

This research demonstrates that 100% renewable electricity in the NEM, at the current reliability standard, would have been technically feasible for the year 2010 given some particular renewable energy generation mixes including high levels of variable resources such as wind and solar.

Henchman21 at 00:45 AM on 29 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Michael Sweet 181....... Your wild claims

Calm down. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Please reference all your claims and we can go from there.

Moderator Response:

[RH] You're a little late to the conversation. Michael Sweet has already cited his references.

michael sweet at 23:08 PM on 28 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Henchman21,

Your link is to a white paper by Leo Smith who has a MA in electrical sciences. Most of his references are to Wikipedia. It is not peer reviewed, it is just a blog post. In additon, it is dated 2012 and the cost of RE has plummetted since then. At SkS we prefer to have peer reviewed papers.

Can you find peer reviewed material to support your wild claim?

Henchman21 at 22:14 PM on 28 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

SuperPosition 179. That is completely correct, to be fair the article does not specify variable RE, however it must be a given that most RE is of the variable variety so at best the strapline is misleading.

There is an excellent explanation of the reasons behind this in Limitations of 'Renewable' Energy by Leo Smith MA (Electrical sciences)

I don't necessarily agree with all (or strength) of the final conclusions but the core text is sound.

Daniel Bailey at 21:11 PM on 28 June 2015

Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

In order for subaerial volcanoes to warm the ocean, they would have to be erupting on orders of magnitude larger than observed. This also would be affecting the acidification of the ocean, which we know is derived from human FF usages. Per Gerlach 2011:

"To create more than 35 gigatons per year of volcanic CO2 would require that magma across the globe be produced in amounts exceeding 850 cubic kilometers per year, even for magma hypothetically containing 1.5-weight-percent CO2. It is implausible that this much magma production—more than 40 times the annual midocean ridge magma supply—is going unnoticed, on land or beneath the sea. Besides, the release of more than 35 gigatons per year of volcanic CO2 into the ocean would overwhelm the observed acid-buffering capacity of seawater and contradict seawater’s role as a major sink for atmospheric CO2 [Walker, 1983; Khatiwala et al., 2009]. In short, the belief that volcanic CO2exceeds anthropogenic CO2 implies either unbelievable volumes of magma production or unbelievable concentrations of magmatic CO2. These dilemmas and their related problematic implications corroborate the observational evidence that volcanoes emit far less CO2 than human activities.
It is informative to calculate volcanic analogs that elucidate the size of humanity’s carbon footprint by scaling up volcanism to the hypothetical intensity required to generate CO2 emissions at anthropogenic levels. For example, using the 2010 ACM factor of 135 (Figure 1) to scale up features of present-day volcanism, Kilauea volcano scales up to the equivalent of 135 Kilauea volcanoes; scaling up all active subaerial volcanoes evokes a landscape with the equivalent of about 9500 active present-day volcanoes [Siebert et al., 2010]. Similarly, the seafloor mid-ocean ridge system scales up to the equivalent of 135 such systems. Of particular interest, though, is the roughly 4 cubic kilometers per year of current global volcanic magma production [Crisp, 1984], which would scale up to about 540 cubic kilometers per year. This significantly exceeds the estimated average magma output rates of continental flood basalt volcanism [Self, 2010], which range from about 10 to 100 cubic kilometers per year. Thus, annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions may already exceed the annual CO2 emissions of several continental flood basalt eruptions, consistent with the findings of Self et al. [2005]."

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php

Tom Curtis further unpacks this topic very clearly in a comment here.

It's not subaerial volcanoes.

MA Rodger at 19:47 PM on 28 June 2015

Welcome to Skeptical Science

versuvian7 @1.

I have a response to your third question on a more appropriate thread here.

MA Rodger at 19:45 PM on 28 June 2015

Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate

vesuvian7 @here

An estimate of the heat content of the earth was reported by Dickson & Fanelli (2004) thus:-

It has been estimated that the total heat content of the Earth, reckoned above an assumed average surface temperature of 15 °C, is of the order of 12.6 x 1024 MJ, and that of the crust is of the order of 5.4 x 1021 MJ (Armstead, 1983).

This seems perhaps low to me but the original reference isn't apparent on-line to check. Taking the 12.6e24 figure, I reckon that amount of heat would raise the oceans by 2,100ºC.

Your question about how big a fissure would be required to heat the oceans 1ºF in 100 years is not really answerable. Rather, let's stick with how much rock would need to erupt into the oceans with the heat content equal to the task. (Adding in the fissure size required with your time limit of 100 years would embroil you in some serious modeling and a mass of assumptions, so I wouldn't expect anything sensible on that score.)

If lava has a heat capacity one fifth that of water and arrives at a temperature of, say 1,800 °F, and if the oceans are 360 million sq km and 4km deep, then you'd need 4 million cu km of the stuff which is indeed rather a lot. Krakatoa ejected 25 cu km. Supervolcanoes are classified as those ejecting more than 1,000 cu km (VEI>8) with the largest estimated as "well over 15,000 km³" (see Wiki here). So I reckon that demonstrates that the actual heat coming out from volcanoes has not been a significant player in global climate for billions of years.

The earth's store of internal energy is remarkably constant. The temperature gradient through the crust has even been used in attempts to provide a record of past surface temperature.

SuperPosition at 18:50 PM on 28 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Michael Sweet 177:: Here is a list of over 100 articles that referenced Budichak et al. 2103 (linked above). Many of them will contain the information you claim you want. The first one is Elliston et al 2013 , also linked above, which provides all the information you have asked for.

I'm sorry Michael, but I looked and none of the ones I looked at say what you say they do. All you have done is google something and hoped that, statistically, one of those sites behind a paywall must concur with your view. That is not how it works.

The one you specifically describe, Elliston et al 2013 does not say that or anything like it - perhaps you misread it, do you have a quote in context?

Since you have linked nothing but an outdated Wikipedia article from 2010 and a Der Speigel rag.

You have repeatedly made this claim and ignore the IPCC [144] et al which I posted - what is your problem with the IPCC? The IPCC is a trusted body that works to high standards, if you disagree with them then you should explain why you think that they are wrong. The two Der Speigel articles are also in world press/AP stories - whereas your rebuttal to the news was a RE trade magazine that supports the industry and even then it specifically did not say what you say it does.

IPCC Glossary::

❝Load (electrical): The demand for electricity by (thousands to millions)
power users at the same moment aggregated and raised by the losses in
transport and delivery, and to be supplied by the integrated power supply
system....//.... Base load is power continuously demanded over the period.❞

A generator that only provides power intermittantly cannot supply the base load unless (a) it is only a minor component of your grid (b) you use spinning reserve (c) you use a method of storage and no grid operator has plans for this.

Tristan at 09:05 AM on 28 June 2015

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Hi vesuvian and welcome to skeptical science.

Please allow me to be frank: You're not going to be able to figure out 1 and 2 by yourself even with the data (which is pretty easy to find at the GHCN and RSS websites).

If you're keen to learn more about climate science, here is a really good place to start, it contains a good primer on temperature data (incl adjustments and raw data) and adresses heat coming from the earth's interior.

John Hartz at 09:00 AM on 28 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26A

@Treesong2: The correct links have been inserted. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Rob Painting at 08:59 AM on 28 June 2015

Cracking the mystery of the corrosive ocean

Treesong - true, it's not clear in this post, but my interpretation is that the upper North Atlantic Ocean became denser as a result of surface warming and thus higher evaporation, leaving behind saltier, denser, water in the upper ocean. Eventually, the gradual warming in the deep ocean and the increased salinity (density) in the upper ocean reached a critical point whereupon the surface water began to sink. This denser surface water displaced the corrosive deep water - causing it to spill over the sill into the rest of the ocean.

Treesong2 at 08:31 AM on 28 June 2015

Cracking the mystery of the corrosive ocean

I don't understand the physics here. Most heat enters the ocean from above, so how can the deep ocean become warmer than the top? Unless the world cools, of course, but in that case I'd expect the oceans to shrink rather than overflow the bathtub. It's not like the isolated north Atlantic could be affected by a La Niña-like circulation.

Does it have something to do with the relative densities of sea water and soda water?

One Planet Only Forever at 08:24 AM on 28 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25B

Knaugle @ 9.

You may benefit from reviewing the SkS detailed presentation regarding Satellite Data here. There is a significant amount of manipulation of information required to produce 'satellite temperature data'. That is basis for suggesting it is like reconstructive surgery. It appears to be far more complex and prone to fault than the required adjustments of surface temperature data. For one thing, the weather balloon data of the upper atmosphere temperatures that can be used to correlate the satellite data manipulations with are rather sparse.

Satellite data may eventually become more reliable. However, the Free Mass Open Online Course (indicated at the top right of the home page), includes a very good presentation explaining why the surface temperature will show warming due to increased CO2 while the higher atmosphere will have less warming as the increased CO2 keeps more heat at the surface.

I hope that helps.

Treesong2 at 08:21 AM on 28 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26A

The link in the Alaskan wildfire section is to a Bloomberg piece on attribution of AGW, not to Mooney's article.

vesuvian7 at 07:46 AM on 28 June 2015

Welcome to Skeptical Science

I'm looking for some links. Hopefully someone here can help me.

1. I'm hearing a lot of fuss about satelite data diverging from other climate data sets. (https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/how-giss-temperatures-are-diverging-from-rss/) I'm assuming that these are public data sets. Can someone point me to where I could download them? I'm assuming they're a few hundred gigs or so of text when uncompressed?

2. I've also heard that there was a recent change of normalization procedures that deniers are saying increased warming, but this site seems to claim made no difference. Can someone point me to data sets that I can examine and decide? A few pointers of where to start looking would be appreciated too.

3. There's been a lot of study of the sun, the oceans, and glaciers. Is anybody aware of a study quantifying the amount of heat contained in the Earth's core? Hypothetically speaking, how big of a fizzure would need to open in the ocean floor to warm the oceans 1 degree farenheit over 100 years? Is there even enough energy in the earth's core to do that? My gut says that someone's thought of this and studied it ad-nauseum. I'm just curious what they found. Can someone point me to their research?

Thank you!

Moderator Response:

[Rob P] - The oceans are warming from the top down - see the image below adapted from the IPCC AR5. Granted not a lot of readers understand oceanography, but geothermal heating as a possible cause would require some crazy kind of physics to match the observations - buoyancy considerations for instance.

[TD] In addition to the link One Planet Only Forever gave you regarding satellite data, see climate statistician Tamino's recent post of balloon data, "Desperate for a Pause."

For the "recent change of normalization" see the SkS post "What You Need to Know About the NOAA Global Warming Faux Pause Paper."

See "Underground Temperatures Control Climate."

wili at 06:14 AM on 28 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26A

Good article on the 6 heatwaves hitting the planet, but already a bit out of date: The Pakistan heatwave has now far exceed the "nearly 700 reported in that article; latest reports have over 1200.www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/pakistan-heatwave-death-toll-climbs-1200-150627153012878.html

John Hartz at 00:34 AM on 28 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Moderation Comment

Superposition coninues to blatantly violate the SkS Comments Policy's prohibition of excessive repetition. Consequently his/her future comments on this thread will be summarily deleted.

michael sweet at 22:02 PM on 27 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Superposition,

Here is a list of over 100 articles that referenced Budichak et al. 2103 (linked above). Many of them will contain the information you claim you want. The first one is Elliston et al 2013 , also linked above, which provides all the information you have asked for. Since I have posted this information before and you have not read or responded to the information contained in them, why should I expect you to read them now?

Since you have linked nothing but an outdated Wikipedia article from 2010 and a Der Speigel rag, why do you require me to provide peer reviewed data? If you have nothing peer reviewed to contribute to the discusssion you need to stop wasting everyone elses time.

Since you are obviously just a troll I will no longer post any responses to you.

Moderator Response:

[RH] Let's try to keep the tone in check. Thx.

SuperPosition at 20:28 PM on 27 June 2015

Renewables can't provide baseload power

Any attempt to turn this thread into a discussion of nuclear options instead RE issues will be deleted. Posts must be on topic or they will be removed.

Can we agree that we are discussing the myth that largescale Variable RE sources by themselves are compatable with baseload requirements?

If so then pursuant to this, comparisons with genuine baseload suppliers such as low carbon CCS- CCGT/OCGT gas, nuclear, hydro or biofuels are inevitable and have been made elsewhere on this thread without comment from any moderator.

Even fusion has been discussed at length - not a peep. So I don't mean to pester, but is one rule for all really too much to expect?

Back to the subject, has anyone got any citations that back up the contention that variable RE generators are baseload supplies?

Accepting that they would require the addittion of grid storage and grid restructuring, is anyone aware of any costs applied to this - I cannot find a single country with that plan in the pipeline.

If that is the case then surely it should be revisited as an idea, no?

Moderator Response:

[DB] Moderation complaints and off-topic snipped.

Rob Honeycutt at 06:25 AM on 27 June 2015

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

Oh, and you're right. It was three years ago, not two! Amazing.

KR at 06:14 AM on 27 June 2015

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

Rob Honeycutt - An excellent, and very amusing, point.

Rob Honeycutt at 06:12 AM on 27 June 2015

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

MA Rogers... A tad ironic being that one of the latest conspiracy theories about Cook13 is that Environmental Research Letters was created for the purpose of publishing the 97% Consensus paper.

michael sweet at 04:23 AM on 27 June 2015

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #25B

Knaugle,

I think that you have a point. However, I do not think that real scientists can do anything about Spencer and Christy misleading the public. The people in congress who invited them to testify got what they wanted.

Surveys indicate that most people now think that warming is real and a little more than half of people realize that humans are at fault for the increasing temperature. As Alaska burns, California drys up, Pakistan and India drop dead and a new temperature record is set this year more people will realize that AGW really is a problem. Hopefully they will identify the problem and ask for solutions sonner rather than later.

I teach High School. Over the past 8 years I have seen a dramatic decrease in skeptics in my classes. Hopefully we will soon see a dramatic increase in those who insist on action.

MA Rodger at 03:40 AM on 27 June 2015

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

Rob Honeycutt @68.

The appearance of an ebullient Evan Jones to claim (in the present tense) credit for (actually) an almost three-year-old comment may be down to a new outlet appearing for the publication of atmospheric science. It is called The Open Atmospheric Society and according to this web-page the founder is a chap called Anthony Willard Watts which should make papers written by Anthony Willard Watts a lot easier to get published.

http://theoas.org/

http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/19/skeptics-found-scientific-society-to-escape-journals-that-keep-out-dissenters/

Tom Curtis at 03:31 AM on 27 June 2015

The Carbon Brief Interview: Christiana Figueres

Evidently Micawber @3 does not know the meaning of the word "rant".

Nor does he know the role of peer review in science. Peer review is a means whereby published papers are screened by a panel of people with relevant expertise to see that they do not contain any obvious fraud, unphysical assumptions or blunders of analysis. Normally peer reviewers are helpful, and will try to point out ways in which the paper can be improved, but the fact that a paper has been peer reviewed is only an imprimature of those three basic criteria. That means of course, that peer reviewed papers can contain fraud, unphysical assumptions or blunders of analysis but they will not be obvious frauds, unphysical assumptions or blunders. At least, they will not be obvious if the peer reviewed process worked.

Given this low standard of the imprimature of peer review, you have to wonder what it says about a paper when they seek to avoid proper peer review, either by publication in a low impact journal with no history of publication in the field, or as in this case by publication in a "journal" whose business model requires not properly peer reviewing papers as doing so will reduce the number of publication fees recieved. The reasonable assumption is that if a paper is not published with proper peer review, in the author's estimate it would not pass peer review, and hence (at least subconsiously) in the author's estimate it contains fraud or unphysical assumptions or outright blunders of analysis.

And Matthew's 2015 includes blunders applenty. Blunder's such as treating a warming trend dating back only to Oct 2013 as being somehow representative of climate change (ie of change in long term statistical averages), or of treating purely regional temperature anomalies as being indicative of crossing global target temperature levels. Or blunders (at best) such as saying climate models "confuse heat with temperature", or do not include "density temperature-salinity function[s]", "Clausius-Clapeyron evaporation", "vertical tropical cells" or "wind-driven surface currents". Even more astounding as a blunder is the claim that climate studies do not include the "infra-red GHG heat trap", ie, the greenhouse effect.

These examples are just from the abstract alone. I pointed out that Matthew's claims about what was and was not included in climate studies were false without specifically enumerating them. Indeed, while I have expanded on that, I have still not enumerated them as there are plenty more in the body of the paper, some as astonishing as the claim that "Climate studies ... do not include ...[the] infra-red GHG heat trap". But once a paper starts claiming that climate studies ignore the greenhouse effect, do we really need to take it seriously anymore?

Micawber evidently thinks so but the world is too full of crackpot ideas to trouble ourselve wading through them in hopes of finding a gem of wisdom. I don't have enough time to read peer reviewed science as it is. Nobody does! So I am not going to lose that time in the hopes that somebody who accuses climate scientists of ignoring the greenhouse effect may also have said something sensible.

So, when Micawber asks me "What are your qualifications for being so dismissive?", the answer is very simple. I have a brain, and I use it! It would be nice if he did likewise.

Moderator Response:

[JH] Please keep it civil!

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