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One Planet Only Forever at 02:14 AM on 24 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Bozza,
My MBA and life experience has helped me understand that what many refer to as 'market-forces' are just artificial motivations of human attitudes and actions based on a set of artificial rules put in place by humans. And the current rules have been significantly developed through the influence of people who knowingly will pursue unacceptable ways of personally benefiting as much as they are able to get away with.
References to 'government interference' come from a perspective of someone inclined to believe that all people free to do as they please will naturally produce a lasting constantly improving better future for all. The actual facts of the matter clearly contradict that belief. Potential profitability and popularity of actions that can be understood to be unacceptable leads many people to fight for 'freedom from any and all restrictions'. And those pushing for such freedom are also very likely to be the ones wanting more rules and enforcement, but only selectively applied and focused on the things they do not personally like others to have the freedom to do. Their main purpose for such actions and policy is to protect their opportunity to get away with unacceptable pursuits of personal benefit because they are 'deemed to not be illegal or their actions are selectively not monitored and penalized'. They will even use their influence to promote the waging of war (in other nations), to 'protect their personal interests and deaires'. -
funglestrumpet at 00:51 AM on 24 May 2015Seeds of Time - preserving food resources in a hot future climate
With the Cold War slowly coming out of hibernation, I hope these vaults have some warming provision to ensure that the conditions remain above freezing point for those seeds that would be susceptible to a nuclear winter should the worst come to the worst.
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bozzza at 22:21 PM on 23 May 2015Climate's changed before
Dear Roamernz,
Have you ever heard of joining issues? It means you are dealing with a complex system you are defeated by !! Luckily there are other people to take care of you!!!
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michael sweet at 21:34 PM on 23 May 2015Climate's changed before
RoamerNZ,
You have forgotten that as little as 5 years ago the deniers consistently said that it was not warming. It is only when warming became obvious to everyone that they have shifted their argument to "it has warmed before".
In addition to Tristans points, you need to consider that the currrent warming was predicted 120 years ago by Arhennius. How could this rapid warming be natural when it was predicted decades in advance? The globe was actually cooling when Arhennius predicted warming and correctly estimated the amount of warming we would get. Try to inform yourself about the data. When you do not know what the facts are it is easy to be confused.
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bozzza at 21:20 PM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Of course, yet what I am saying is business being business means shennanigans must played in order to secure the advantage of meaningful fact....I am referring to the rich maintaining their share and if they are entrepreneural it is shades of grey as to whether they deserve respect or not because let us face facts: market forces- however diluted by government interference- are charged with supplying goods and services to the largest of degrees....!!
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Tristan at 21:16 PM on 23 May 2015Climate's changed before
RoamerNZ, if, as you say, you are a layperson, why would you trust your own interpretation of the facts more than you'd trust the interpretations of those who spend their lives reading and performing climate science?
Why would you assume that your commentary contains insight that they haven't examined themselves?
When you say 'there is absolutely no way to prove this', are you informing climate scientists of something? Have you read, and understood, many paleoclimatology papers?
Why do you think we don't understand what causes the planet to warm and cool? It's not just a mysterious variable that wiggles up and down every so often. Climate has physical causes and physicial constraints. Our expectation that the world will keep warming is not because we look at the wiggle and say 'It's gonna keep wiggling up', it's because, physically speaking, it is actually impossible for the world to not keep warming, given current conditions. -
Roamernz at 18:30 PM on 23 May 2015Climate's changed before
there are many learned fellows on this site much more educated about this issue than a layman like me.. But there are some basic issues that I have an "issue" with (and let's face it unless laymen like me are convinced either way there won't be any action anywhere. It's great to see all the point scoring and technical data etc.. But (I am in the skeptical camp for now).. There are some irrefutable facts .. Things are heating up.. And.. It's happened many times before. There are also a lot of emotional stuff being thrown around.
Things have heated before.. scary camp say "yes but this time it's much faster" there is absolutely no way to prove this as we are only talking about less than a 200 years.. And many many times we can see shifts from hot to cold millions perhaps billions of years ago.. But no way we can prove the speed of that heating or cooling within only 100 years or so. Perhaps it is a rapid increase that then wane off .. A natural occurrence .. Can we really do something about it.. Unlikely.. Even if we could .. How? We can't stop the entire world from its day to day use in the next 10 years .. Let alone in the next 100.. So it is what it is. Between humans, volcanoes.. Farting sheep and cows, Position to the sun and how many plants grow at any given time on the planet.. It's probably fair to say whatever is about to happen .. Will happen anyway..
even IF.. Humans were totally responsible (which simply .. We aren't) there is no way.. No way at all .. ever.. You will be able to stop 8 billion people doing whatever they are doing.
so let's agree it's happening.. It's happened before slower or faster ..it will still happen .. Wether due to us or nature and universe or all of the above .. we can't stop it no matter what! Let's just ride it out the best we can.
Moderator Response:[Rob P] - See the No.1 climate myth on Skeptical Science - Climate's changed before.
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dcpetterson at 16:24 PM on 23 May 2015The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming
I hope this is a good thread for this. If not, feel free to delete this comment, (I know that is a dumb thing to say, because moderators always have that freedom!)
I looked at the graphs from wattsupwiththat, and I realized, in order to keep the "pause" going, denialists have to keep changing the starting date of the faux pause.
In March of 2014, they said global warming stopped in Augist of 1996. By April of 2015, they said global warming stopped in December of 1996. They had to change the start date, because even in the cherry-picked dataset they use (RSS), the Earth keeps warming.
The whole "pause" idea is a fraud.
I wrote a blog post about what I saw. If someone with better math skills than I have would falsify it, that would be useful.
The blog post is here.
If my post is nonsense, I would not be offended to learn that.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:41 PM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
bozzza,
People who think outside of the norms of a society, people who see things from a novel perspective, are indeed the sparks of ingenuity. However, the people mentioned in the article, the likes of Christy and the ones who invite him to speak, are almost certain to be aware of the deliberate deceptions they create and disseminate.
These are not "outsiders" unaware of what the mainstream is aware of or thinking about explanations for all the observations/information available from a different perspective. These are people who are fully aware of vast amounts of information who deliberate focus on bits of information and deliberately try to create claims that will sound convincing to someone who is willing to be easily impressed, someone inclined to want to hear and believe the fantastical unbelievable tall tales they tell.
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rockytom at 12:42 PM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
I would like to know how much one of these congressional committee hearings cost the U.S. taxpayer considering all costs,i.e., salaries of congressmen, senators, and their staffs, witnesses salaries and expenses and the expenses for everyone and everything associated with these hearings. House republicans have voted to kill "Obamacare" over 60 times. Cost? Astronomical! These hearings that pay deniers to lie must stop. There are penalties for lying to congress and they should be inforced. The U.S. taxpayers have got to stop sending these idiots to Washington who call these witnesses.
BTW, the 97% of climate scientists who support anthropogenic global warming should be updated to 99.9%. One would be hard pressed to find 3% of climate scientists who do not support AGW. 0.1% maybe.
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SkepticalinCanada at 12:17 PM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
@7 &15. I believe that the people to whom you are referring actually better fit the checklist criteria for psychopathy - often compared to the DSM IV diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder, but many practitioners distinguish psychopathy separately. But, since we're into labels, despite his past and his credentials, I prefer to call Christy a "scientist" or simply a denier, as a truly skeptical scientist would not be uttering such antiscientific nonsense.
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bozzza at 11:53 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
As for sociopaths: I can't really argue towards their usefulness(who would want to) yet they do say the genius of the human species is in accepting the mentaly ill within society as(going back to de bonos lateral thinking definition of allowing yourself to be wrong) they still provide ideas of which we can all learn from. If the imagined elite and the proles make up 10% then the masses make up 90% and it is a spark from the masses on which we all depend, generally speaking.
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bozzza at 11:44 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Computer Hackers are the perfect analogy because it has long been argued they wear different coloured hats... I'm just doing an Ed De Bono and allowing myself to be wrong: sure it's immoral to lie but greed justifies many things and on that count I don't think it's stretching the bow all that far to suggest it as completely probable.
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nigelj at 10:38 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Bozzza @ 12. You argue the fraudulent sceptics force everyone to produce rigorous science. This is like arguing that computer hackers serve a good purpose, or that bank robbers serve a good purpose by forcing banks to have better security, so its not a great argument. Lying or being misleading just doesn't seem justified to me. What if both sides played the same silly game? As far as I can tell the IPCC are very upfront and play by the rules.
Sometimes I wonder if some of these sceptical characters are just sociopaths. Can you really argue such people serve a good purpose?
There is also is a big difference between sceptical characters like Lindzen who have some reasonable contribution and characters like Christopher Moncton who are pretty much dishonest, in my opinion. But it is loudmouths like Moncton who sometimes have an effect on politicians, sadly to say.
The main issue is science is complex and very intricate and a easy target for cheap or misleading scepticism. We cant allow the sceptics to get away with that. When politicians pay too much attention to the sceptics they are often listening to misleading fanatics with all sorts of weird agendas or personality issues. These people can't make it in the mainstream, so set up shop as resentful, opinionated people happy to be completely dishonest.
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villabolo at 04:38 AM on 23 May 2015Seeds of Time - preserving food resources in a hot future climate
Can the same be done to preserve animal cells?
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Firgoose at 04:35 AM on 23 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
It's interesting that, while the trends cannot match, the local features (peaks and troughs) of the temperature anomaly graph have rather a good eyeballed match with the PDO index for the period. The NH seems to be an especially good match. I wonder whether a "corrected" temperature anomaly graph would show anything of use.
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Tom Dayton at 01:17 AM on 23 May 2015Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
Science of Doom has a good series on weather versus climate, and related topics.
Moderator Response:[DB] TWFYSYWDI has recused themselves from further participation in this venue for a variety of multiple infractions of the Commenting Guidelines of this forum, not the least of which being in a line of sock puppet fake accounts (a serial-sock).
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bozzza at 01:06 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
... think about it this way: who says all these seeming fraudulent skeptics aren't just playing games to force the real science to get on with the job of providing certainty in the market place?
Moderator Response:[DB] Font format shifted from all-bold to normal.
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bozzza at 01:03 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
@2, It's just pause-button politics. The captains of todays industry know the paradigm is changing but to what exactly: details matter don't they? They all need to retool and get back to enjoying their superior market share positions that they enjoy today so it really is quite understandable.
Stagnation is close to death so that ensures change happens when two political forces oppose each other.
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bozzza at 00:52 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
@7, Politics is tribal: did you miss the youtube video where Mike Tyson is telling 50 cent not to go into boxing as a promoter because he had no idea how tribal it was and that the red and blue corner represented Democrats versus Republicans and it went back to when the Irish street gangs fought ,... I dunno,... yadda yadda ... and that instead of everyone getting hurt it was your man against theirs sort of thing but, yeh, it was pretty funny!??!
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bozzza at 00:47 AM on 23 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Consumer Power: the Governator called it when he said Governments don't lead i.e. DIVESTMENT!!
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MA Rodger at 23:50 PM on 22 May 2015Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
I'm sure that repeating a comment word-for-word, even one that has been zapped by the moderators; that is still contravenes the SkS Comments Policy in that "Comments should avoid excessive repetition." The humour content aside, and the efforts of this deluded troll are droll, I think the chicken entrails have spoken @115.
Moderator Response:[TD] Quite correct. Excessive repetition is banned, because the comments are for discussion. Supporting discussion requires as well that the commenter actually read the original post and material that other commenters point them to, think about those, and respond to them in specifics. It is telling that This Will Frighten You so You Will Delete It has never mentioned "boundary conditions." Obviously he or she has not read the Intermediate tabbed pane of this post. Nor has he or she bothered to use the Search field at the top left of the page to search for "weather," else he or she would have found (and of course truly read) The Difference Between Weather and Climate. There is even a video about Weather Vs Climate that he or she would have seen this week if taking the (free!) Denial 101x course.
There are even easy analogies in several comments by various people on several threads, such as why it is possible to predict accurately how high the tide line will be on a beach (climate), despite the difficulty of predicting precisely how high on the beach an individual wave will come in exactly 10 minutes 51 seconds from now (weather more than 5 days from now), compared to the relative ease of predicting how high up the beach will come this wave that already is racing up the beach (weather within 5 days from now). TWFYSYWD could have read those, asked for clarification, or even challenged those analogies, all of which would have been fine.
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BBHY at 22:35 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Climate hawks need to either find a way to make progress on this issue dispite the politics, or find a way to alter the politics. Otherwise progress is going to continue to be blocked by the politics.
Nothing is certain, but history gives us a strong prediction that the next president will be an "R" type.
Looking back over the past 150 years, there were only two instances when two Dems were elected consecutively. Truman followed FDR, but Truman was able to run as an incumbent due to FDR dying in office. Johnson followed JFK but again he ran as an incumbent for the same reason.
Otherwise, the history of presidents alternates R-D-R-D-R-D. George HW Bush broke the pattern for the Repubs when he followed Reagan. Gore nearly broke the pattern, even won the popular vote, but W still became the next president.
So, if 150 years of history continues to guide the future, then we will need to figure out how to make climate progress with an R-type president after 2016.
The other alternative is get enough people involved in climate action to break the long established pattern.
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chriskoz at 21:20 PM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
Art@8,Perhaps.The primary fingerprint of ozone in in the stratosphere.
The stratospheric cooling trend as presented by Figure 4 of (Sherwood 2015), that I reproduced above, is only -0.55 K/decade at 50 hPa : ~ twice smaller than reported before. Note sudden reversal of cooling trend from mid-90s until today in tropics and NH - stratosphere started warming there despite steadily increasing CO2. How much of that signal can be attributted to ozone depletion and then its subsequent recovery following Montreal - on top of the obvious cooling from CO2 - is hard to say. Certainly the radiosonde data at 50hPa doesw not seem to be precise enough to allow any conclusions.
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MA Rodger at 19:26 PM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
Tom Curtis @3.
The data relevant to the comment of This-Will-Frighten-You-so-You-Will-Deny-It @2&4, the places "where people actually live" - this is surely the land component of HadCRUT4 = CRUTEM4. On that count, the relevant average temperature rise is somewhat higher than the HadCRUT4 average and since the 1960s, well over twice the value of the increase denied @2.
Of course, the temperature increase that mainly drives the 'hotspot' is the one increasing ocean evaporation. The relevant HadSST3 data set shows not much more that 0.3ºC tropical warming over that period.
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uncletimrob at 17:54 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Some of these people are frankly sociopathic. They are so focussed on their agenda that rational thought and considering alternatives is completely foreign. I've worked with several people like this and every time I've just given up arguing with them - it's not worth the angst because they KNOW they are right, and nothing that I or anyone else can do will change that because they ARE right. Yeah right!
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Chris Snow at 17:42 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
It would be good if the Democrats and Republicans had to select three new expert witnesses each time. After a short while, the Republicans would run out of experts to ask.
Here in the UK, there are so few potential sceptic expert witnesses that when in January 2014, the House of Commons select committee on energy and climate change met to discuss the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in a similar format, the sceptic side had to jet in two of its witnesses, Richard Lindzen and Donna Laframboise from the US and Canada respectively. The other witness was Nic Lewis.
So in the UK at least, I'd say that the 97% figure for the consensus is, if anything, a low end estimate. I'm struggling to think of a single UK-based climate scientist who disputes the basis consensus. Even Nic Lewis's estimates for climate sensitivity are within the range of the IPCC's, albeit at the lower end.
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shoyemore at 17:28 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Next year is a Presidential election year in the US, and the election of a Republican President would open many doors for scientists who have conservative leanings.
There are also high-profile jobs as science advisers and officials in the Administration.
Positioning oneself as a working scientist who can speak authoritatively on matters improtant to the political bosses would be no drawback to your career. Of course, that is exactly what deniers accuse the majority of climate scientists of doing.
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Art Vandelay at 15:17 PM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
Perhaps it's showing a fingerprint of Antarctic ozone depletion, which at mid alitudes results in LT warming.
Ozone recovery is also expected to partly offset warming until mid-century.
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chriskoz at 14:15 PM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
[PS]@4,
By "cooling phenomenon" This@4 likely meant slower warming of SH as seen on the blue line of Fig2. His description of Fig.2 is certainly misleading - careful visual examination, as well as proper statistical analysis, reveal statistically signifficant warming rather than "cooling". I haven't found a specific thread directly addressing that issue. But the footnote to the stab The southern hemisphere hasn't warmed as much clearly explains it.
Moderator Response:[PS] Pretty sure he means mid-century period of cooling in NH. (not seen in SH as not so affected by aerosols.
Anyway, TWFYSYWDI comprehension of comments policy is as bad as his comprehension of science if that is possible so I doubt he/she will be with us much longer.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:07 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Rob,
Though "making them important (and the money that allows them to gather to support their activity)" may be part of their motivation, I believe a more significant consideration is that they, like too many others, do not care what 'history' or 'legacy' they leave.
They are almost certainly doing what they are doing out of self-interest. They probably do not even care if during their lifetime their deliberate actions get exposed as unacceptable behaviour there was no doubt they knew was unacceptable. And they are very unlikely to care what people think after they are done with their time in this existence.
The success of people with that type of attitude is a seious problem, and always has been. It is very difficult, but not impossible, to change the attitude and mind of someone who has chosen that course of action in their life. The continued efforts to improve the understanding of what is going on is ultimately the best way to win over those type of people.
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chriskoz at 13:46 PM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
This@4,
...NH graph has a different y-scale than the SH (an extremely poor and generally misleading graphing practice) so I misread it
(my emphasis)
The differences in scales on Fig.2 have to do with the bandwidth of data - i.e. data variability in SH case was smaller than in other cases, hence tha scaling of y-coord became smaller. Adjusting the y-scale to fit the data is a standard practice in most graphic software packages, so likely the software package used to generate Fig.2 did it automaticaly. You may want to opine that such standard is "extremely poor" and "misleading" but most of graphic artists and software engineers (including myself) do not take your opinion seriously.
This post is about te hot spot in troposphere. You want to derail the discussion to other topics (e.g. your baseless claim that CO2 increase is tied to hemispheric location, whereas in fact CO2 is well mixed gas), but I won't respond to those unrelated distractions. If you want to have serious discussion, find the appropriate thread for it or if you cannot find one, follow mod's suggestion.
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Art Vandelay at 13:39 PM on 22 May 2015Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
Tom Curtis@52
Thanks for that detailed explanation, and particularly the explanation of accounting methods employed. It all makes much more sense to me now.
My Geologist friend had a slightly different take on it, and not unexpectedly employed a different accounting method. Although he deemed the assertion that "human breathing causes atmospheric CO2" to be largely spurious, he also added that it's more relevant to examine changes to the biomass itself, and specifically the ratio of photosynthetic to non-photosynthetic biomass due to human population over a given timeframe. He thought that human activities such as deforestation through logging and burning were likely to be more influential on changes to atmospheric CO2 than human respiration itself - leaving aside the impacts of fossil fuel burning.
Endeavouring to research further for myself, I found a paper that calculated atmospheric CO2 from human activities alone to represent 25% of total emissions; mostly the result of biomass depletion through deforestation, which depletes the photosynthetic pool. This highlights the fact that population itself will be a hindrance to efforts to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere in the coming decades, regardless of the emission scenario we eventually achieve, and future radical geo-engineering solutions are perhaps not out of the question.
As an aside, CO2 from human respiration can be estimated with simple math, and works out to account for about 9% of global emissions – which admittedly looks like a big number in isolation.
Which brings us back to the original skeptic’s assertion that “breathing causes CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere”.
Rather than dismiss it as a myth, I regard it as an interesting claim that’s worthy of some examination, even if irrelevant in the discussion of (CAGW) climate change.
Personally, if I was going to take a skeptic ’s position, I would assert that the current human population, and associated activities required to sustain it, will add CO2 to the atmosphere, with or without fossil fuel combustion.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:38 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
Think how important his position makes him. How many second rate scientistists get trotted out repeatedly to testify before Congress? If Christy were to accept the overwhelming body of scientific research, then he's just one tiny researcher in a sea of hard working scientists. As far as I can see, his contrarian position is the only thing that makes him important.
Same works for people like Watts. He has to maintain his position regardless of evidence to the contrary, because that's all that makes him important.
What an awful position to be in. All the nickle and dime deniers will eventually disappear in their anonymity. People like Christy are writing themselves into history, and ultimately history is not going to look back kindly.
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nigelj at 13:00 PM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
The article makes plenty of sense to me, so why do people like Christie go on making these misleading arguments? They are not reasoned scepticism, which we need, they are pretty dishonest.
Perhaps he is an attention seeker, or has some grudge against the climate community, yet these people are in effect sabotaging the debate and putting the entire planet at risk. It's simply preposterous.
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bozzza at 11:12 AM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
"This hotspot in the tropical troposphere is not specific to the increased greenhouse effect resulting from industrial carbon dioxide emissions. It would, for example, also be expected in a hypothetical scenario where warming was due to increased solar output."
(the second bullet point)
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This Will Frighten You so You Will Delete It at 10:49 AM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
Tom Curtis, the three graphs shown above clearly show that temperatures in both the Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere (SH) have risen by less than 0.4 degree since 1960, which is more than 50 years ago.
I failed to notice that the NH graph has a different y-scale than the SH (an extremely poor and generally misleading graphing practice) so I misread it. It shows that NH temperatures have risen by about 0.6 degrees in the past 55 years.
I don't know how to average two readings of 0.4 and one reading of 0.6 because I don't know how much territory the "Tropics" covers, but I know for sure the resulting average is far below the 0.765 degree you quoted. Are you suggesting that the graphs in this article are full of errors?
According to these graphs, Northern Hemisphere temperatures were clearly on a strong downward path during the period 1960-1975. This was, of course, a period of very rapid increase for CO2 emissions in the Northern Hemisphere.
The SH, which did not experience so much CO2 increase during this period, did not cool.
Thank you for drawing my attention back to the graph so I would have a second opportunity to notice this interesting cooling phenomenon.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please see here for mid century cooling. Anyone wishing to respond to that point, then please do so on that thread. Reading the caption on the figure will tell you how much territory the tropic on the graph represents.
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barry1487 at 09:56 AM on 22 May 2015My Research with Steve
I remember when your monicker first popped up by way of climate blogs linking to yours. Great to have seen intermittent snapshots from there to here. Congratulations on your first lead authorship, and good on ya for contributing to the sum of knowledge!
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Tom Curtis at 08:21 AM on 22 May 2015Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
@113, I do not believe such gross misrepresentation of the claims in the IPCC should be allowed to stand. Whether they were made due to deceit or stupidity, it does not matter. More than enough has been discussed above that the author of the post should now understand the distinction between predicting precise values and predicting statistical spreads (means and standard deviations) and should no longer be confusing weather and climate. Given that, he is clearly now only sloganeering. He is also clearly not worth discussing issues with.
Moderator Response:[PS] I agree on all counts. Comprehension of the comments policy at this site also appears to be problem.
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Tom Curtis at 08:10 AM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
@2, the trend from mid 1965 on HadCRUT4 is 0.153 C/decade, for a total warming of 0.765 over the last 50 years, nearly double the increase that you claim. That you took the lower figure for the tropics only, which we expect to be lower, is no surprise.
Upvotes indicate a belief that the post is of particularly good quality, either because of the quality of the data presented and/or the quality of the argument. Downvotes, conversely, indicate that the post is considered of particularly poor quality due to inaccurate or misleading data and/or specious argument. I have downvoted your post for that reason. I am sure the other downvote (at time of writing) is also for that reason. Your attempt to coopt the thumbs up/down mechanism for specious rhetorical purposes is not appreciated.
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Tom Curtis at 07:59 AM on 22 May 2015Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
Art Vandelay @51, there a couple of reasons to treat photosynthesis as the primary process (so that the CO2 is treated as initially coming from the atmosphere). First, historically that is what happened. Ie, before there were multicellular animals, there was photosynthesis, and indeed multicellular animals only became possible because of the existence of photosynthetic plants (or microbes) on which to feed. Second, food consumption can be treated as a flow of energy from low entropy to high entropy. As such the conversion from the lowest entropy energy supply generally available on Earth (sunlight) to the next lowest entropy source of energy generally available (sugars in plants) is the primary process. So, thermodynamically photosynthesis (and hence extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere) is primary.
However, these are not reasons directly related to the accounting of carbon flows. For that purpose we can take several approaches. The simplest approach, and the one in fact used by climate scientists, is to ignore churning. That is, to only take account of change of carbon in biomass reservoirs. If we account for carbon in that way, the human respiration is closely balanced by photosynthesis absorbing almost the same amount of Carbon. As this is just churning, it is ignored, and the only thing that is accounted for is the slight increase in carbon storage in humans due to increasing population and obesity.
Alternatively, you could consider human respiration as a relevant emission, but only if you consider all photosynthesis a relevant sequestration.
Looking at the IPCC graph I posted @42, we can either consider net land flux (=4.3 GtC per annum sequestered), or we can consider the two fluxes seperately, and say there are 118.7 GtC per annum emitted and 123 GtC per annum sequestered. It makes no difference in the end. What you cannot do is consider treat the total respiration as emissions, but consider only excess photosynthesis as sequestration, which is what the denier argument rebutted above tries to do. That is similar to their similar dishonesty in suggesting anthropogenic emissions are very small because they are only 4.3% of total emissions because they are only 4.3% of total CO2 flux into the atmosphere while ignoring that the natural components of that flux are almost exactly balanced by natural fluxes from the atmosphere so that the net increase is entirely due to anthropogenic emissions.
These figures are for the entire terrestial biosphere, but the same point applies to human respiration and the photsynthesis of the carbon content of human food. Further, because that photosynthesis is a continuous process (as is the respiration), the two components almost exactly balance at any point of time, and certainly the time averaged processes do.
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This Will Frighten You so You Will Delete It at 07:52 AM on 22 May 2015Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
KR, you quote the IPCC as saying "The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days." However, "when weather is averaged over space and time, the fact that the globe is warming emerges clearly..."
This means the climatologists fully understand that predicting weather beyond a few days with a computer model is exactly as effective as predicting it with, say, chicken entrails.
Knowing this, they go ahead and consult their entrails, examining them carefully to learn what the weather might be like in 50 years, if only entrails had predictive value. But since they know this is silly, they don’t stop there. They go on to examine the entrails of a million chickens.
They average the results of the million chicken-entrails predictions together and, voila, pronounce the result “scientific.”
It is amazing what nonsense people will allow themselves to believe.
Moderator Response:[PS] You are simply ignoring the points made to you, and continuing with worn-out sloganeering, strawmen, and argumentative language. If you are not prepared to read the actual science with view to understanding, then you are in no position to comment on it. Commentators here have attempted to explain the difference between weather and climate what is predictable or not, but apparently to no avail.
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This Will Frighten You so You Will Delete It at 07:43 AM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
I'm more fascinated with the blue lines in the bottom three graphs than the red lines. The blue lines show that the planet (at least the part of it where people actually live) has warmed by less than 0.4 degree in the past 50 years.
Does that surprise anyone here? Let's take a vote. Upvote this post if you are NOT surprised. Downvote if you ARE surprised, because based on all the rhetoric you naturally expected to see a "hockey stick."
And if you do not think people should be allowed to know this, then cast your vote by deleting this post.
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.
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Tristan at 06:21 AM on 22 May 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #21A
Congrats to Dikran Marsupial, whose tash received a positive review at Salon.com. ;)
Moderator Response:Edited to add link
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KR at 04:38 AM on 22 May 2015Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
TWFYSYWDI - Let's add some context, shall we? IPCC AR4, FAQ 1.2, :
"What is the relationship between climate and weather?
[...] The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days. Projecting changes in climate (i.e., long-term average weather) due to changes in atmospheric composition or other factors is a very different and much more manageable issue. [...] ...when weather is averaged over space and time, the fact that the globe is warming emerges clearly from the data."
Which is exactly what climate models are used for, projecting averages. You are conflating weather with climate - and based on this, appear not to have actually read the opening post.
Moderator Response:[TD] When TWFYSYWDI persists in pushing the same "points" without incorporating any of the original posts or the responding comments, or the external resources that responders are pointing to, those comments by TWFYSYWDI's are being deleted.
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michael sweet at 03:27 AM on 22 May 2015Congress manufactures doubt and denial in climate change hearing
President Obama made strong references to AGW in the graduation speach atthe Coast Guard Academy. Los Angeles Times report.
Hopefully the public will support action.
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dcpetterson at 00:00 AM on 22 May 2015Hotspot Found Again: Warming of the Tropical Troposphere Confirms Climate Model Prediction
Very clear summary of a very technical paper. Thank you.
And yes, it is not surprising to find the models once more got it right. The track record of the current models is pretty stunning. It is only shocking in a sad sort of way, in that it is a sobering reminder of the dire conditions we are causing.
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Concerned at 16:17 PM on 21 May 2015Why the 97 per cent consensus on climate change still gets challenged
Thank you all for your comments. I understand now that the number of undecided (or X) opinions is small, so X has minimal impact on the 97% conclusion. Thanks for the calculations, Tom Curtis.
I read the paper more carefully while composing a response to an AGW denier troll, whose post was deleted (thanks, Moderator) while I was writing. Now I understand where the numbers come from and how the opinion categories were defined. I also note some confusion in the presentation, as I'll describe below.
In the analysis of abstracts, by "(4a) No position" the authors meant what I was calling "irrelevant" and by "(4b) Uncertain" the authors meant what I was calling "considered but undecided", or X. I think the abstract part of the presentation would have been cleaner if category 4 had consisted of only 4b, so every one of the seven categories was an opinion of sorts on AGW. I think category 4a should have been renamed and set aside. Separation of 4 into 4a and 4b reflects the process used for a second phase refinement of the abstract analysis, but it makes the presentation harder to follow.
In the case of the self assessment emails, the situation is further clouded by defining category 4 as: "Neutral: paper doesn't address or mention issue of what's causing global warming." This is evidently a rewording of category 4a, but the word "neutral," which could express an opinion, and the phrase "doesn't address or mention" are not the same thing. Thus, in the self-assessments, there is no explicit mention of category 4b, uncertain / considered but undecided / X, but I think there should have been.
Anyway, all is good with me now. I agree with the 97% for the abstracts, possibly corrected to 96% for for the self assessments.
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Art Vandelay at 10:32 AM on 21 May 2015Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
Hi Tom, thanks for the explanation and clearing up the definition of biomass.
My background is in engineering, not geology, so I'm by no means an expert on atmospheric CO2 exchange.
There's is however one part of your explanation that doesn't make sense to me: -
"So, we add the human carbon input, which comes from food and all of which comes initially from the atmosphere. You then have a cycle in which the ouput (human respiration) is very slightly less than the input (human consumption of CO2 indirectly drawn from the atmosphere).
I don't understand why CO2 initially comes from the atmosphere. I would have thought it correct to say that CO2 in the atmosphere initially comes from biomass (respiration) or an external input such as vulcanism, and that the atmosphere is the transport media in the system.
Rather than take the thread OT I'll consult with a geologist friend of mine in the next day of so to get a better understanding of why the atmosphere is regarded as the starting point in the cycle.
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Tom Curtis at 08:59 AM on 21 May 2015Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
Art Vandelay @49, biomass is the total mass in animal and plant and microbial matter. It does not include CO2 in the atmosphere or oceans, nor soil carbon in the form of humus. This, it is not the total mass of carbon within the carbon cycle and can change over time.
As to human respiration, you can look at it several ways.
You can consider just humans and their respiration, in which case yes human respiration increases atmospheric CO2. Such a view however is transparently incomplete for it does not account for where the human carbon comes from in the first place. It in effect treats human biology as an ex nihilo creator of carbon.
So, we add the human carbon input, which comes from food and all of which comes initially from the atmosphere. You then have a cycle in which the ouput (human respiration) is very slightly less than the input (human consumption of CO2 indirectly drawn from the atmosphere). It is very slightly less because the total mass of humans in increasing through population growth in the third world and obesity growth in the first.
You can then look at how the food is produced, and look at effects on total biomass from human food production. If you do, it is probable that the entire process of human food production reduces biomass, mostly by deforestation. However, when you do that you are no longer looking at emissions from human respiration alone, but emissions from human respiration plus human food production. More importantly, the emissions from human food production are already accounted for by estimates of emissions from LUC. So, looking at that does not find a form of emissions that were not previously accounted for.
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