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Comments 29351 to 29400:

29351. Postkey at 07:58 AM on 30 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       These are the 4 basic 'mistakes'!

       1. To assume surface exitance, a potential energy flux in a vacuum to a radiation sink at 0 deg K, is a real energy flux.

       2. To misuse Mie theory to claim that clouds forward scatter when in reality the light becomes diffused.

       3. To claim black body surface IR causes a planet's Lapse Rate temperature gradient, when it is caused by gravity.

       4. To completely cock up aerosol optical physics by assuming van der Hulst's lumped parameterisation indicated a real physical process. In reality, there are two optical processes and the sign of the Aerosol Indirect Effect is reversed. It is in fact the real AGW and explains Milankovitch amplification at the end of ice ages.

       Point 4 has messed up Astrophysics as well.

29352. KR at 02:18 AM on 30 May 2015
       Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
       

       The effective thermal IR emissivity of the Earth to space, assuming a balance of 240 W/m2 incoming and outgoing and a surface temperature of ~15C, is about 0.614; that is 61% as effective a radiator as a theoretic black-body. 

       Varying temperatures are effectively emissivity increases (incorporated in that value), as a warmer region will contribute more outgoing energy (based on the Stephan-Boltzmann equation and the nonlinear T⁴ relationship) than equally cooler regions will decrease it, radiating more total energy than a thermally homogenous Earth would. 

29353. KR at 02:06 AM on 30 May 2015
       Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
       

       Tom Curtis - That's an excellent summary of relative energy magnitudes. I'll add that anthropogenic waste heat (link here), another source bandied about sans evaluation as a primary driver of climate, represents a contribution of perhaps 0.028 W/m². That's 1/4^th of geothermal contributions, 1/100^th the contributed energy of post-Industrial CO2 emissions, and an even tinier and less significant fraction of the total greenhouse effect. 

       Numbers are oh so important. 

29354. ryland at 01:08 AM on 30 May 2015
       Scientists discuss how strongly a warming Arctic is implicated in extreme weather
       

       Unfortunately the plight of the Arctic appears to be even more dire due to the Obama administration sanctioning Shell to drill for oil and gas in the region

29355. Tom Curtis at 23:46 PM on 29 May 2015
       Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
       

       CBDunkerson @32:

       1)  essentially the greenhouse effect comes from condensing and non-condensing gases.  The non-condensing gases (CO2, CH4, NO2, O3, etc) have concentrations that do not primarilly depend on GMST, although they are influenced by them.  Of them only CO2 and CH4 had appreciable effects in the 1980s, ie, the time period covered by Schmidt et al, and in that period CH4 represented only 1% of the total greenhouse effect.  As the vast majority of that 1% came from anthropogenic emissions from 1750-1980, I decided it was easier to just ignore it, and fold it and the other minor non-condensing greenhouse gases in with the condensing gases.

       The vast majority of the "greenhouse feedback" represent the greenhouse effect from water vapour and clouds.  These are the condensing greenhouse gases, where temperature very tightly controlls concentration.  As a result, there presense in the atmosphere is always a feedback on other energy sources plus the CO2 greenhouse effect.  In particular, absent the solar energy input, the greenhouse feedback would be zero; and absent the CO2 greenhouse effect, it would be substantially less (Lacis et al, 2010).  I put it as a seperate item because its behaviour is so different at temperature consistent with solar input.

       It is, of course, not intended to indicate feedbacks only from the greenhouse effect, or all feedbacks from the greenhouse effect.

       2)  I thought I had already clarrified this point in the paragraph starting, "The most important thing...".  In all cases the temperature response to a given factor is:

       T = (j*/σ)^0.25, where j* is the energy input in W/m^ and σ is the Stefan-Boltzman constant 

       For j*= 0.09 W/m^2, T = 35.49 ^oK

       For j* = 240 W/m^2, T = 255.06 ^oK

       But for j* = 240.09, T = 255.09 ^oK

       The crux is that the relationship between energ input and temperature is far from linear, so any energy input with a big impact at low temperatures has negligible impact at high temperatures.

       3)  No.  Values are effectively for 2010 in that I used the IPCC AR5 value for total greenhouse effect.  As such, these values include an anthropogenic forcing larger than any of the non-solar energy impacts.

       The two major sources of inaccuracy in determining the GMST from a given energy input are the assumption that the Earth is a black body (emissivity = 1), and the assumption that the Earth has a constant temperature at all locations.  (I mentioned these briefly among the missing factors.)  Of these, the fact that the Earth's emissivity is slightly less than 1 will increase the GMST by about 2 to 8 ^oK depending by how much the emissivity is overstated.  Probably closer to 2 than 8, but absent a global radiation budget model I cannot determine the exact value.  

       In contrast, unequal temperatures (which certainly exist) will reduce the estimated GMST.  In an extreme case where the Earth has a permanently sunlit hemisphere, and a permanently dark hemisphere with constant temperature in each hemisphere, but no energy shared between hemispheres so that the dark hemisphere is much cooler than the sunlit hemisphere, the GMST would fall to 181.31 ^oK, a drop of 108.33 ^oK.  That is an interesting case in that it approximates to conditions on the Moon.  It also shows how large an effect unequal temperatures can have.  The Earth certainly has unequal surface temperatures, and they are even unequal at the tropopause from which most IR radiation escapes.  Therefore this reduction in expected temperature certainly is a factor.  However, again without a complex and accurate model, it is impossible to determine how much of a factor.  Indeed, in this case you would need a full climate model, as temperature variation also varies with time of day and season.

       Given these two significant, and opposite effect factors which cannot easilly be determined, it is surprising the above calculations are as accurate as they are.  Certainly the minor inaccuracy is nothing to be concerned about against that backdrop.  In fact, the errors in calculated values from observed values are less than the range of errors between different estimates of the observed values.

29356. Postkey at 23:45 PM on 29 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       Thanks, for all of your replies.

29357. PhilippeChantreau at 23:27 PM on 29 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       Postkey, how shallI say this? The quote you gave is a pile of idiotic nonsense. The radiative physics of the greenhouse effect do not violate the laws of thermodynamics. They predict how much infra red radiation must reach the surface, and that can be measured. It has been measured and is the subject of numerous science papers. It is measured in real time at a variety of locations. It has been measured in the Arctic during the winter, which precludes any other IR source than the atmosphere. The person you quote may not be an egineer, because they normally know better. Saying one "comes from engineering" is rather vague. 

       There is no perpetual motion machine in the atmosphere, those who try to argue such idiocy do not understand the physics. SkS has entire threads about the subject. Search the site.

       The conspiracy theory mentioning Sagan's name is complete bullocks, as he never had anything to do with the climate part of NASA. Without being more specific, it is not possible to answer about Sagan's alleged "mistakes." Considering how incompetent that telegraph person seems to be, the "mistakes"  accusations are likely based on incomprehension of physics. I would caution you that trying to engage someone like this will likely be a complete waste of time. You can see indications of that through the 2nd law thread on SkS.

29358. BBHY at 22:36 PM on 29 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       I am in full agreement with the ad-hominem rule on this site. Let's have at least one place on the Internet where the discussion doesn't descend into name calling and personal attacks.

       But I would say this; While we need more politicians to embrace the science, I am almost glad that Jeb denies climate science because I truly want to support a pro-climate candidate yet I have many other reasons why I would still not be able to support Jeb.

29359. CBDunkerson at 22:11 PM on 29 May 2015
       Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
       

       Tom, a few questions from a layman;

       1. Where are the other greenhouse gases? In the 'CO2' line (CO2 equivalent?) or lumped in with 'Greenhouse Feedbacks'? I know most of them have little impact, but water vapor at least is significant.
       2. The degree Kelvin figures don't add (i.e. 35.49 Geothermal and 18.74 Tidal, but only 36.17 Geothermal & Tidal combined). I assume this is because each degree of temperature increase requires more 'incoming energy' than the last (i.e. diminishing returns due to increasing outgoing energy). Correct?
       3. The computed energy & temperature are higher than the observed values. Is this due to the 'Greenhouse Feedbacks' line projecting future impacts?
29360. Phil at 20:43 PM on 29 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       Postkey @925

       The section you quote is essentially a conspiracy theory: that errors in physics originally made by Sagan have been continually supressed.

       It is worth noting that there have, in the past, been a number of scientific papers published that have challenged or questioned the accepted model of climate change; these include papers by Richard Lindzen, Christy and Spencer, Murray Salby and Gerlich and Tscheuschner. This provides us with evidence of the absense of a conspiracy: the scientific community is perfectly willing to publish a variety of views on Climate Change, even if further examination shows these papers to be wrong, unlikely or implausible.

       Thus, had Sagan actually made "4 basic mistakes", and these were hushed up "in the Cold War Space race", there is no way that these mistakes would not have found their way into the scientific literature today. The fame  of any scientist able to disprove todays consensus on Climate change would be immense (if only for the amount of physics they would actually have to overturn in order to do so).

       A brief viewing of the on-line biographies of Carl Sagan and James Hansen shows almost no intersection; Sagan was an advisor to the NASA space program in the 1970's, whilst Hansen was employed at GISS (which is a division of NASA, but not the one Sagan was advising)
       .

       It is worth noting that Sagan is perhaps an easy target; as a science communicator and educator it is often necessary to simplify the science (It is for that reason , for example, that grossly inaccurate "pictures" of the atom persist today for educational purposes). Thus his public pronouncements may have been less rigourous. But as Michael Sweet mentions above, the development of climate science does not spring from Sagan.

29361. michael sweet at 19:53 PM on 29 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       Postkey:

       In 1896 Arhennius reviewed the basic claculations for AGW and closely estimated the amount of warming we woud see by today.  He also predicted it would warm more at night  than day, more in winter than summer, more in the Northern Hemisphere, more in the Arctic and more over land than over sea.  How could Sagen have made a mistake that affected Arhennius 60 years earlier?

       If Sagen had acutally made a mistake, the contributor argues that the scientists who work for Exxon, BP, and Shell are too stupid to recognize that mistake and correct it.  Obviously, these companies have scientists who review all the AGW data and correct errors that hurt their story.    Do you really think that Exxon cannot find any scientists who could expose a simple mistake?  The IPCC report is approved by all the countries in the world.  The summary is approved line by line.  Exxon, Saudi Arabia and other interested fossil fuel companies have lawers there for the entire discussion.

29362. uncletimrob at 19:02 PM on 29 May 2015
       Spoiled ballots, spoiled views: an election snapshot from Powys, Wales, UK
       

       I'm personally not anti or pro windpower as I really don't have enough information to base my opinion on, and have never lived near a turbine.  I have however some friends in Victoria, Australia who do live near aturbine and say that they are quite noisy.  Are they?  Genuine question from one who wants to know. I'm also aware of the "turbine" syndrome that in some cases seems to appear merely at the mention of a turbine .....

29363. Postkey at 18:49 PM on 29 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11633745/Fossil-industry-faces-a-perfect-political-and-technological-storm.html#comment-2051149797

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Your post should have been deleted as a "link only" post, which is against the SkS posting policy. Being that others have already jumped in and explain the materials, we'll let this one stand. 

       If you wish to continue posting please review the comments policy.

29364. Postkey at 18:46 PM on 29 May 2015
       Models are unreliable
       

       This is what a regular contributor to the Telegraph web site has to say.

       " . . . the IPCC pseudoscience is based upon 54 years' teaching of incorrect physics.
       It all came from Carl Sagan who made 4 basic mistakes but was supported in the Cold War Space Race.
       Atmospheric Science then invented spurious physics which it uses to justify the Perpetual motion machine in the models but there is zero experimental proof.
       I come from engineering where heat transfer has 90 years of experimental and theoretical proof. it's easy to see where Hansen et al went wrong but they were mentored by Sagan."

       Did Sagan make 4 basic mistakes?

       Thanks.

29365. Tom Curtis at 14:46 PM on 29 May 2015
       Heat from the Earth’s interior does not control climate
       

       I prepared the following in response to a post by Nick on another thread.  The contents of that post relevant to this topic have since been (deservedly) deleted, but as it has been an intention of mine to determine and post this list at sometime, here are nearly all energy sources that contribute to the Earth's Global Means Surface Temperature (GMST):

       Heating Source	W/m^2	0K
       Solar	240	255.06
       Cosmic Background Radiation	3.13E-6	2.73
       Starlight	6.91E-6	3.32
       Cosmic Rays	3.2E-6	2.74
       Meteorites	2.27E-8	0.80
       Combined off planet sources	240	255.06
       Geothermal	0.09	35.49
       Tidal	0.01	18.74
       Geothermal &Tidal	0.1	36.17
       Total Energy Sources	240.1	255.09
       CO2	30.21	151.93
       Greenhouse Feedbacks	128.79	218.31
       Total Greenhouse	159	230.12
       Total	399.1	289.65
       Observed Surface Energy	398
       Observed Surface Temperature		287.15

        The most important factor not shown is albedo, which is included within the solar value for convenience.  I have also ignored industrial waste heat, and the effects of emissivity (which increases the effective temperature) and uneven surface temperatures (which decrease it).  Also not shown is seismic energy.  The reason it is missing is that the vast majority of seismic energy is dissipate as heat deep within the Earth's surface, where it contributes to geothermal energy.  Including it as a seperate item would have merely been double counting.  Likewise, volcanic energy is included with geothermal energy, and so not shown as a seperate item.

       The most important thing to notice is that the smaller items on the list are almost completely irrelevant.  Based on caculations above, for example, we can determine that if the Earth floated far from any sun in galactic space, it would still maintain a surface temperature of around 36-37 ^oK.  That represents the combined energy effects of geothermal heat (35.5 ^oK by itself), the cosmic background radiation, starlight, and cosmic rays.  Assuming it orbited a dark star, providing the the further effects of tides and meteors, that would raise the temperature to 37-38 ^oK.  But adding all these factors to the effect of sunlight would only raise the GMST by 0.03 ^oK, significantly less than the observational error of the Earths absolute GMST.  Their contribution becomes even less when the greenhouse effect is also included.

       The second most important thing to notice is that, despite their inclusion on the table, the greenhouse effect does not represent an additional source of energy.  That is because for every joule returned to the Earth's surface by the greenhouse effect, an additional joule leaves the Earth's surface by means of radiation, increase convection or increased evaporation or transpiration.  The greenhouse effect only makes the existing energy sources more efficient at heating the surface by recycling the energy.  In that way, greenhouse gases act like blankets (an analogy which is exactly correct with reference to the thermodynamics, although completely inaccurate with regard to mechanism).  The values shown for the greenhouse effect on the table, therefore, are best understood as the amount of additional energy from other sources that the Earth's surface would need to maintain the same GMST without a greenhouse effect.

       Finally, every now and again, somebody will pop up and insist that geothermal energy or some other equally obscure source of heating is the primary driver of GMST.  Such theories fail absolutely once the relative energy inputs are calculated (something they never do).  The theories are complete drivel on the same level as those of Flat Earth Society.

       Sources:  

       Solar and Total GHE -  IPCC AR5 Fig 2-11

       CO2 proportion of GHE - Schmidt et al (2010)

       Cosmic Background Radiation - Calculated from temperature

       Starlight and Cosmic Rays - Bowen et al (1933)

       Meteorites - Lovel, Geophysics II, p. 452

       Geothermal and Tidal - Skeptical Science

       Observed Surface Energy - IPCC AR5 Fig 2-11

       Observed absolute GMST - IPCC AR5 Fig 9-08

29366. ubrew12 at 10:47 AM on 29 May 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #22A
       

       The second link is broken (on China's CO2 emissions dropping).  It ends in 'dr' and I think should end in 'drop'.

       Moderator Response:

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

29367. SchatziesEarthProject at 09:15 AM on 29 May 2015
       Richard Tol accidentally confirms the 97% global warming consensus
       

       CBDunkerson @10: "You've got to wonder what keeps them going... even when their own best spin proves them wrong they still just keep right on believing the nonsense." 
       
       What keeps them going (And I don't think that they believe the "nonsense" for a second. In fact, they may understand the horrific reality better than most which is why they "exist") is that every time they publish their gibberish, it gets cited, re-cited, referred to as truth, ad infinitum. Which, of course, is their sole intent. Their consumer/audience remains people like Marc Morano who just made Tol's ridiculous Fox News article (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/28/climate-change-and-truth-mr-obama-97-percent-experts-do-not-agree-with.html) his website's headline.
       
       It doesn't matter that it's jumbled up drivel. Most Climate Depot readers will just look at the title and feel relieved that all is well in their little world, without knowing the backstory or the reality of the situation. As long as there is a market for Tol and his ilk's phony "research," it will keep getting pumped out. I'm so grateful for SkS. 

29368. bozzza at 09:01 AM on 29 May 2015
       CO2 measurements are suspect
       

       @25, heat is the last form of energy... it is not a physical object like CO2 therefore they obey completely different rules!

29369. JCH at 08:56 AM on 29 May 2015
       Sea level is rising fast – and it seems to be speeding up
       

       I keep looking for these result to show up on the Colorado Sea Level Research Group website. 

       So far this is it.

29370. nick12197 at 07:25 AM on 29 May 2015
       CO2 measurements are suspect
       

       humanity can take spot CO2 measurements but this assumes homogeneous concentrations, which are not always true. The Committee has often spoken and said, on gases, most of Earth's heat is internal, the reason similar temperatures are found a certain distance below the surface no matter where they are taken. Under Antarctica or along the equator will have similar temperatures at a certain depth (I think it’s fairly shallow, also) Sunlight and surface heat causes daily weather and seasons, of course, but this cycle is on top of the underlying base, natural heat. This is what controls climate, says The Committee.
       Greater CO2 and heat cause greater evaporation, more rainfall and both carbon dioxide and rainfall encourage plant growth which consumes the CO2 to produces oxygen. The equilibrium of oxygen and CO2 has been reached long ago and fluctuates along a very narrow band too small to have climate effect. This they say, is because of the principal atmospheric gas, nitrogen, which as we know, dominates.
       They say CO2 emissions caused by human activity are insufficient to alter the equilibrium; the plant response to increased rain and carbon dioxide is very efficient. The proportion remains well inside the narrow band that does not affect weather.
       Earth climate is affected by the magnetosphere and the planet's molten iron core, from which heat dissipates. Most of Earth's surface is ocean; heat reaches the seafloor, where we do not and cannot measure temperatures. This affects sea water temperatures and currents, much more sensitive to small changes. (liquids much denser than gases) These are the causes of the erratic weather patterns we have felt on Earth, attributed erroneously to manmade global warming.

       Moderator Response:

       Welcome to Sks. Please take the time to study the comments policy on this site. When you make a claim that is contrary to well known facts, then you should provide link to the sources of your information. Whatever your "committee" is, it's source of information is laughably and grossly wrong. Please dont waste people's time by commenting on an article you obviously havent bothered to read.

       For the point of this article, note the linked video showing the variation of CO2 both vertically and horizontally. Note also this image which demonstrably show no such assumption of uniformity is made. You might like to also note the OCO-2 satellite which continuously measures CO2 concentration.

       I suggest you take time to read some of the climate myth articles to become better informed before commenting further. And note that the extra heating from CO2 is around 100x greater than the total geothermal heat flux.

       Offtopic comment has been deleted but a commentator has helpfully provided you with more information. See here

29371. CBDunkerson at 22:45 PM on 28 May 2015
       CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming
       

       jd_germany, assuming we are talking about the 'cosmic ray hypothesis' which holds that 'a decrease in cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere could lead to decreased cloud formation and thus increased solar radiation reaching the surface' (there are others) then there would be no change in the 'greenhouse effect' and we wouldn't expect to see the cooling of the upper atmosphere (i.e. stratosphere) which is characteristic of greenhouse warming (yet, we do).

       Similarly, if global warming were being driven by increased solar radiation (introduced by cosmic rays or otherwise) then we would expect to see the greatest warming increases during the day (we don't), in summer (nope), and near the equator (wrong again).

       In short, this 'hypothesis' is sort of the opposite of scientific progress... multiple lines of evidence all converge to show that it is false.

29372. CBDunkerson at 22:15 PM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       Interestingly, recent polls show that even 48% of Republicans favor taking actions to combat global warming... but virtually every GOP politician at the national level still denies that we can do anything about it. The problem is that the half of GOP voters who reject reality are much more vocal, and determined to do nothing about global warming.

29373. jd_germany at 17:45 PM on 28 May 2015
       CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming
       

       Quick question: What would the cosmic ray hypothesis say about the effect on upper atmosphere temperature change?

29374. bozzza at 16:34 PM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       More advanced thinking could only ever be done by a few individuals anyway- by definition-  thus we can now see emotion was always able to inspire or crush the individual. The only difference in higher thinking abilities between us and the people of eons ago is education gained via through eons of lesser and lesser non-descript method toward matters.

       The elite and the proles depend on a bright spark from the masses who number 90%: then it all changes and the next revolution of thought and/or action is awaited upon.

       Emotional IQ comes down to panic control: pilots and so forth concentrate on such skill sets whereas most don't. Those who succeed in any endevour can control panic to a greater degree than those that don't.

29375. RM at 14:04 PM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       I know something about influences, I was raised in a SDA home and it does take much time and thought to rid oneself of the dogma, however I find myself today as a devout libertarian and skeptical of all claims. My motto is "show me, don't tell me".

29376. PhilippeChantreau at 13:40 PM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       RM,

       "what motivates a life long EPA/enviro to publish this"

       Barred some sort of material reward, most likely an emotional reaction to something that happened to him. I suspect that might have been the case also for J. Curry. We are emotional beings. It served us well for the few million years during which the species lived in natural conditions. For more advanced thinking, emotions have to be more carefully managed and one has to always keep in mind that they can affect our judgment to the point of rendering it inoperative. They can also be useful.

       Other things have profound influences on us. The initial conditionings applied to young people duting their formative years make an indelible mark. I have read articles by religiously raised geologists who could never shake their early conditioning from a rather fundamentalist church, and lived in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. They were having to deal with geological time scales on one hand, while the conviction had been drilled in them at a young age that the Earth was 6000 years old, a conviction that carried a high emotional charge. Humans are best equipped and worst equipped to investigate reality...

29377. RM at 11:06 AM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       Interesting, wonder what motivates a life long EPA/enviro to publish this?

29378. Tom Dayton at 10:56 AM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       Alan Carlin is a PhD economist, though he does have a Bachelor's in physics.  His contentions are straight from the denialist's playbook, including the disproof of CO2 as a global warming cause because temperatures decreased in the six years from 2002 to 2008 (he claimed), CO2 rise follows temperature rise, . . . .  DeSmogBlog has a profile.

29379. RM at 10:36 AM on 28 May 2015
       Memo to Jeb Bush: denying human-caused global warming is ignorant
       

       Slightly OT but does anyone know about Dr Alan Carlin's book Environmentalism Gone Mad? Apparently he is a 38 yr vet at the EPA and a Sierra Club chapter chairman, an aquaintance said I should read, is he legit?

29380. shoyemore at 04:49 AM on 28 May 2015
       Spoiled ballots, spoiled views: an election snapshot from Powys, Wales, UK
       

       JIm Hunt #11

       Well done to you !

       Amber Rudd is not levelling the playing pitch - wind installations have to have community support, but fracking can be pushed through against any opposition. I hope Labour, the Lib Dems (if they can get over their shocking electoral defeats) and the Greens are on their toes to expose what a travesty that is.

       You are obviously more experienced at this than I am, but I find it dispiriting to see wind developers at war with local communities much like we see the fracking companies. Did the environmetnal movement not learn anything when it was organising communites to oppose pollution and nuclear power?

29381. Jim Hunt at 23:34 PM on 27 May 2015
       Spoiled ballots, spoiled views: an election snapshot from Powys, Wales, UK
       

       shoyemore - s/Gilbert/Garrett/g!
       
       What about the situation (as in Totnes) where part of the community is strongly in favour of said wind farms, whereas another part is strongly opposed? From a technical point of view wind "farms" are much to be preferred to large scale solar PV "farms" (IMHO!).
       
       I agree with your final sentiment. Less GBAU media PR please!
       
       We did at least manage to get a smaller community wind project past the planners & NIMBYs down here in South Devon : http://econnexus.org/tag/sbces/

       
       All this may be moot however. If you can believe what you read in The Telegraph:
       
       

       No more on shore wind farm schemes will be given the go ahead unless they have the support of local people, the new Energy secretary has said.

       Amber Rudd, who was appointed last week in the post-election reshuffle, said the new powers would be in next week’s Queen’s Speech.

       Miss Rudd also disclosed that the new Conservative Government would try to speed up extraction of shale gas and loosen rules so it could be extracted from under national parks.

29382. Kevin C at 20:40 PM on 27 May 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       Actually, I think the 1890 Ellis paper is not open access? It's a beautiful period piece. I've attached the first couple of paras below:

       The maximum and minimum readings of air temperature which appear in the Greenwich Observations are those of the maximum and minimum thermometers on the revolving stand, and refer to the civil day from midnight to midnight. When the Greenwich maximum and minimum temperatures mere first communicated to the Royal Meteorological Society for insertion in the Meteorological Records, in the table giving results for London stations, they were supplied as thus tabulated for the Greenwich volume, and as indeed previously also appearing in the Weekly Return of the Registrar General. But on this arrangement, the separate daily readings were not comparable with those of the other London stations, since the latter were tabulated. according to the plan adopted by the Society based for stations termed ”Climatological.” In consequence of which the Greenwich values, since the beginning of the year l886, have, at the request of the Society, been supplied according to the climatological plan, that is to say the reading of the maximum thermometer for the twenty-four hours ending 9h. a.m. is entered to the preceding civil day, and the reading of the minimum to the same civil day.

       Without consideration of the matter it might be supposed that, with values tabulated according to the two methods described, the monthly means of the maximum and minimum readings would, on the average, be similar on both systems. But on making the necessary comparison, a perceptible difference, almost always the same direction, was found to exist, not only between the means of the maximum readings, but also between the means of the minimum readings. This, it appeared to me, might have sufficient interest for the Fellows of the Royal Meteorological Society to make it desirable to communicate to the Society the results of a comparison made for the four years 1886 to 1889. The differences found to exist between the two sets of means are given in Table I., from which Table II. is formed showing the differences in the mean temperature of the different months thereby produced, as derived from the mean of the maximum and minimum readings.

29383. KeefeandAmanda at 20:03 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       The article above mentions Steinman, Mann, and Miller (2015), but does not explicitly mention what I think is one of their most interesting contributions to the idea of multidecadal *internal* (rather than external) variability, which is the multidecadal NMO, which is more general than either the AMO or the PMO and thus I think should be the focus rather than either the AMO or PMO. (The PMO and NMO are explained further below.) The article links to the abstract of the paper (which requires payment to read), but does not link to that summary Mann wrote which contains a nice graph of the NMO for all to see. See here
       http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/02/climate-oscillations-and-the-global-warming-faux-pause/
       for a good summary by Mann, this summary found also at the Huffington Post and Ecowatch sites. This article giving a nice graph of the NMO, and here is a link to the graph:
       http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-02-12-Sci15FigHuffPost.png

       As for the PMO and NMO: Mann says, "We focused on the Northern Hemisphere and the role played by two climate oscillations known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or "AMO" (a term I coined back in 2000, as recounted in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars) and the so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation or "PDO" (we a use a slightly different term-Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation or "PMO" to refer to the longer-term features of this apparent oscillation). The oscillation in Northern Hemisphere average temperatures (which we term the Northern Hemisphere Multidecadal Oscillation or "NMO") is found to result from a combination of the AMO and PMO.

       Here is a very recent study the article above did not mention, A. Dai, Fyfe, Xie, and X. Dai (2015):
       "Decadal modulation of global surface temperature by internal climate variability"
       http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n6/full/nclimate2605.html
       This article below contains quotes from the authors:
       "Scripps Study Explains Recent Pause in Global Warming"
       http://timesofsandiego.com/tech/2015/04/18/scripps-study-explains-recent-pause-in-global-warming/
       Quotes:
       "A National Science Foundation-supported study co-authored by Shang-Ping Xie, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, attributes nearly the entire difference between observations and simulations to a climate cycle known as the Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO)........"The new study extends this earlier modeling study by relying on observations that go back to 1920," said Xie, "We show that over nearly 100 years, the observed deviations in global mean temperature from the anthropogenically forced climate response are nearly all due to IPO."....... "Recent history suggests that the IPO could reverse course soon. Should that happen, we may see accelerated global warming rates in the coming decades," said Dai."

29384. Kevin C at 19:07 PM on 27 May 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       However, as I noted in my email, the Denial101x tool is primarily a teaching tool, and I had to make a lot of simplifications to make both the downloads, and the calculations fast enough. Many stations have been omitted, and all have been reduced to annual data, which introduces its own bias. It is useful for demonstration purposes and some preliminary analysis, but for serious research you need to be using something like Clear Climate Code, or at the very least the SkS tool.

       Here are some more resources:

       A map of all stations with and without adjustments over the past 40 years (corresponding roughly to the period of dominant human warming):

       

       The green crosses overlay the red ones, so here is a huge version of the same map for more detailed investigation.

       Note that there is a general split in the need for adjustments between more/less stable and developed countries, as you would expect, with one very obvious exception: the US. The reasons are of course well known - the volunteer network and the resulting issues with Tobs and the introduction of MMTS.

       Here's a nice comparison by Zeke Hausfather on the skill of the NOAA and Berkeley algorithms for reconstructing synthetic US data with realistic errors. The NOAA method does a great job in the US, however on the basis of my own work I think that over the rest of the world, while NOAA method generally improves things, the Berkeley adjustments are more robust. It is not clear whether this is just because Berkeley have more stations - we'll find out with the switch to GHCNv4.

       

        

       Finally, here are some resources from the Denial101x bonus material:

       • Ellis, W. (1890). On the difference produced in the mean temperature derived from daily maximum and minimum readings, as depending on the time at which the thermometers are read. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 16(76), 213-220. Link to abstract
       • Menne, M. J., Williams Jr, C. N., & Vose, R. S. (2009). The US Historical Climatology Network monthly temperature data, version 2. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 90(7), 993-1007. Link to PDF
       • Böhm, R., Jones, P. D., Hiebl, J., Frank, D., Brunetti, M., & Maugeri, M. (2010). The early instrumental warm-bias: a solution for long central European temperature series 1760–2007. Climatic Change, 101(1-2), 41-67. Link to PDF
       • Brunet, M., Asin, J., Sigró, J., Bañón, M., García, F., Aguilar, E., ... & Jones, P. (2011). The minimization of the screen bias from ancient Western Mediterranean air temperature records: an exploratory statistical analysis. International Journal of Climatology, 31(12), 1879-1895. Link to paper
29385. shoyemore at 19:02 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       _rand15_

       I worked for many years with material scientists in a commercial lab, and I learned never to let statistics and nice mathematical constructs trump physics, no matter how simple, well-fitting and tractable the models seemed.

       "All models are wrong, but some are useful" (George Box) and "Let models be simple, but not too simple" (Einstein) are good precepts to the modeller or analyst.

29386. shoyemore at 17:06 PM on 27 May 2015
       Spoiled ballots, spoiled views: an election snapshot from Powys, Wales, UK
       

       JIm #8,

       I am familiar with Gilbert Hardin and The Tragedy of the Commons, and it is a great quote. But from a practical point of view you are not going to win the hearts and minds of middle-of-the-roaders by equating their concerns with individual selfishness and greed. 

       Scoring an own goal for the NIMBYs when the match is just starting is not going to get you a win.

       Wind farms around the world are well supported locally when the community feels ownership and sees a benefit from the siting of the turbines. I want to see more wind farms just like you do, but I wonder if the wind energy companies should put more emphasis on the communities which will host them, and less on media PR.

29387. KR at 13:38 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       WRyan - Climate models are boundary condition solutions, where expected variation is contained within the range of possibilities. As a result, they do not predict exact trajectories of a particular set of initial conditions. We can expect the weather to vary within the range of climate model ensembles, if the predictions are good, but there is no way, really, to project exactly how internal variations like El Nino, volcanoes, the PDO, etc will track within that range.

       Climate is about averages and ranges, not about predicting whether it will rain in Buffalo NY on May 9th twenty years from now. For short term solutions, weather models take very specific starting conditions and see how they might develop - with a useful range of about a week. But we can still predict that summers will be warmer than winters, and that 30 years from now average global temperatures will have risen something like 0.48C (0.16C/decade) +/- variations if nothing changes.

29388. scaddenp at 13:30 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       Wryan - in the short term, the temperature record is dominated by internal variability - ENSO in particular. This is chaotic behaviour that defies prediction even a few months in advance. Models have no skill at decadal level prediction because of this. Noone can tell you when PDO will switch from -ve to +ve. It is also extremely unclear what effect a warming world will have on ENSO, if any. However, the range of behaviour is bound by the long-term energy balance and this is what emerges from climate models.

29389. scaddenp at 13:22 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       Extracting a 66yt periodicy from 160 years of data is extremely fraught. And yes, I am pretty sure you will get around same value from output of climate models over same period since its source 1940s temperature depression.

       Beware Von Neumann's elephant: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

       You havent provided details but fitting 2 sines and a quadratic sounds like 9 parameters to me. (contant, linear and quadratic terms for the quadratic; amplitude, phase, and frequency for each sine).

       I dont doubt that ocean cycles provide pseudo-periodic signal to the decadal noise in climate signal and that this is part of "slow down" - a series of La nina's while PDO negative. While interesting in terms of understanding causes of internal variability, they dont say much about climate.

       As I understand it, it is not clear whether AMO index represents ocean noise or whether it is forced.

29390. Leto at 12:32 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       _rand15_ @ 9

       "so whatever the reason for it, I'm confident it's really there."

       What does that even mean? You are describing a shape, nothing more, nothing less. The shape you are decribing is really the shape that it is?

29391. WRyan at 12:08 PM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       For the shorter term predictions, is the problem with the accuracy and precision of the data or is it a problem with the precision of the climate models?

29392. _rand15_ at 10:28 AM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       @scaddenp: "You might also like to run EXACTLY the same curve-fitting analysis, (quadratic and 2 sine) but with say monthly Dow-Jones average and see how good the fit is."

       That would be interesting, wouldn't it?  I recall from many years ago that someone published an analysis of extinctions (of species) that purported to identify a particular periodicity.  I think it was around 55 million years, if memory serves.  The method was fairly complex, and of course the data was pretty sketchy.

       Some years later, someone else tried repeating the work, and found that when fed any pseudo data that looked roughly like the real ones, even data with some other periodicity, that the original method always cranked out that 55 million year periodicity.  Somehow the method just baked it in.  I remember reading the second paper with a lot of enjoyment.

       In this case, it's easy to show in several ways that there's a lot of power at the 66-year period, so whatever the reason for it, I'm confident it's really there.  Is it "real", in the sense that somehow heat actually is sloshing around in the oceans with that period?  II would seem to be generically plausible.  ENSO has heat sloshing around with periods of a year or a few years.  The PDO and AMO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) seem to be accepted phenomena, and they are generally speaking the right kind of thing (whatever may be driving them).  The current indices of the PDO don't correlate too closely with the temperature anomaly record.  The AMO correlates better, if I recall correctly from looking at it last year. (Actually, these indices are arrived at by subtracting off some version of the temperature trend from the data, then doing some variation of a principal component analysis.  So using them to support the idea of a long-period heat sloshing may seem like a bit of circular reasoning, but at least I'm not the only one).

29393. Tom Curtis at 10:22 AM on 27 May 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       daveburton @60, I had forgotten about that promise, so thankyou for reminding me.  I will try to follow through shortly.  In the meantime, Kevin C has published his far more usefull temperature tool.  There is a brief introduction to the temperature tool here.  The only thing my spreadsheet will hopefully add to the tool is the unadjusted ocean data, but we know their impacts already from Zeke Hausfather's graphs.

29394. _rand15_ at 10:08 AM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       
       @scaddenp: "This style of curve-fitting is common. Nicola Scafetta has published on this many times. The trouble is with quadratic and two sine curves you can fit any time series well.... Unless you have a physical basis for the curve, what are we to make of it?"

       
       Yes, of course.  Not only that, but the data are too noisy to be able to discriminate between variations on the theme, or even between very different models.  Yet you can't necessarily fit just any time series with two sine waves (plus a slow, nearly DC component, in this case).  This analysis didn't show me that the data *is* caused by a couple of sine waves.  It's in no way adequate for that.  It just showed that many of the really pronounced features of the temperature record can be reduced to just a few.  That's usually worthwhile.

       As for physical causes, I don't know about that (I'll add: "yet").  It would be better to know.  I'm a physicist and engineer, I always want physical causes.  You know, it's something like the tides.  The causes are well known - the modification in the Earth's iso-gravitational contours caused by the sun and the moon, approximated by a dipole moment - but the way in which they combine over time, together with the detailed shapes of the ocean basins and local undersea topography and weather lead to very complex details of the time series at any given point.  The details of all this may not really be known, but the general picture still gives us quite a bit of understanding even so. 

       Maybe existing climate models actually crank out a 66-year oscillation.  That would be interesting to know about, although I don't at the moment.

29395. scaddenp at 09:28 AM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       You might also like to run EXACTLY the same curve-fitting analysis, (quadratic and 2 sine) but with say monthly Dow-Jones average and see how good the fit is.

29396. scaddenp at 09:14 AM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       This style of curve-fitting is common. Nicola Scafetta has published on this many times. The trouble is with quadratic and two sine curves you can fit any time series well. See here for more statistical discussion and specifically on Scafetta here. Unless you have a physical basis for the curve, what are we to make of it?

       Of course you can do curve fitting with the actual physical factors (eg Schmidt and Benestad, which was a counter to another Scafetta wild claim). Compare that with yours for same period. If you want to postulate some "undiscovered natural cycle", then where is the heat coming from (ie your proposal must respect conservation of energy), and what is your explanation for the measured forcings have so little effect if you think the natural cycle is important?

       If you insist on curve fitting, then a better way to do it, is use part of the data set for training (eg first 1/2 to 3/4) and then see how well it predicts the rest of the dataset, or do it in reverse.

29397. _rand15_ at 07:46 AM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       I've read many discussions of the supposed slowdown or hiatus, including (of course) Tamino's posts.  But no one I've read has discussed it in the rather different way I've been analyzing it.  I'm in the middle of writing it up, but in short, if you look at the longest temperature record, the one from 1850 to present (e.g., HADCRUT4), you can see a number of features including a 30-year rise from about 1910 through 1940 and a 30-year flat period from about 1940 to 1970.  I find that you can reproduce the entire 160+ year record surprisingly well with the sum of a smooth trend (e.g., quadratic fit), a 66.5-year sine wave, and a 21.3-year sine wave.  Except for frequencies with period less than about 10 years, and so excluding  ENSO and volcanos, this simple sum reproduces all the main features of the data.  BTW, there is no trace of the sunspot cycle that I can find in the HADCRUT4 data.

       A slowdown since around year 2000 is clear in this reconstruction, being the destructive interference of the sine waves combining with the trend, and is just ending. 

       Now, this may be only numerology, but the components are so few and so simple that the approach is attractive.  One set of causes - two ongoing oscillations continuing for more than 150 years - interacting with a smooth, simple, concave upwards temperature trend.  No need to invoke unpredictable variations in ENSO, no need to bring in special cases for other features, no mystery about the halt in warming between 1940 and 1970.

       As to what these two sinusoids represent, that remains to be seen.  But note that a current of only 1 km/day over a size typical of ocean basins would give times in the right ballpark.  And you would think that the oceans would have to be involved in oscillations with such long periods.  

29398. John Mason at 07:11 AM on 27 May 2015
       Spoiled ballots, spoiled views: an election snapshot from Powys, Wales, UK
       

       That's a darned good quote, Jim! Michael - thanks for the link!

29399. mdenison at 05:38 AM on 27 May 2015
       Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming
       

       1. You make no mention of the change in forcing due to the reduction in CFC emissions. The impact of this on the rate of increase in anthropogenic forcings can be seen in the GISS forcing data. I would have expected an effect on the warming rate as large as those you report. Were you unable to find relevant literature that considered CFC's as a cause.

       2. I also think that in making sense of the slowdown it is important to consider views like Taminos. I view from his pieces is that there is no slowdown unless you compare the trend using short time periods (15 years) instead of decent intervals of 30 years. With short intervals the apparant differences are meaningless due to inherent uncertainty and we must conclude that warming continues at the same pace.
       
       A key point in making sense of the slowdown is that it is an illusion we inflict on ourselves by trying to see a pattern in short term data. If there has been a slowdown since 2000 we need to wait another 15 years to have a reasonable chance of detecting it. Past experience should warn us that the most likely explanation is that we seeing just another step of the down escalator. The explanations given above being reasons these steps can appear but they are not explanations of a real slowdown.

29400. Jim Hunt at 05:31 AM on 27 May 2015
       Spoiled ballots, spoiled views: an election snapshot from Powys, Wales, UK
       

       shoyemore - Just down the road from me in sunny South Devon there were plans for a twin turbine, community owned wind farm near Totnes. Here's what happened at the District Council planning meeting:

       https://youtu.be/wZuENb3_Xlw
       
       To quote a local Parish Counciller:

       Industrial devices provide to all the opponents of the turbines both their immediate surroundings and their enviable standard of living. Their televisions, toasters and hair dryers may not be crude designs, but we can be sure they've all been made somewhere over the horizon, out of sight. The electricity to activate these industrial devices also comes from power stations, over the horizon, out of sight. Some people here like it that way, defending their Arcadian idyll, none of whose practical comforts have been made anywhere near their green acres. Other people, I'm glad to say, see an opportunity to contribute back to the common good by using our local natural asset, abundant wind, to fuel the most benign and graceful technology ever devised to generate electric power.

       In 1968 Garrett Hardin published an influential and now classic article entitled "The Tragedy of the Commons". This is the phenomenon that individual selfishness and greed in exploiting an asset common to all mankind eventually destroys that asset. We see this happening now in our exhaustion, over a few generations, of fossil fuel accumulated over millions of years. Now, the opponents of wind turbines are adding a further, bitter twist to this tragedy by opposing exploitation of an inexhaustible natural asset, the wind passing over our land.

       In case you're wondering, the NIMBYs won the day.
       

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