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Comments 31601 to 31650:

31601. Tom Curtis at 09:19 AM on 9 February 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6B
       

       amhartley @5, what proportion those 43,000 people are paying extra to have the carbon emissions from their flight offset?  It seems to me that without that information, any accusations of inconsistency are making large assumptions - that the attendees are being condemned not because of what they have done but because of what the deniers want them to have done.  Certainly they have form in that regard, having made similar complaints about attendance of the AGU, while totally ignoring the stunning "green" credentials of the Moscone center where the AGU was held.

31602. amhartley at 07:13 AM on 9 February 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6B
       

       Glad to see talk of optimism for the Paris talks. I do wonder, though, why, acc to Tom Miles (Reuters) today, 20,000 delegates, that many guests, & 3,000 journalists need to attend.

       A question I often see from climate science deniers is, if the climate scientists & the pols who believe their message really subscribe to the idea that climate change is real & will hurt many people, then, they would curb their own carbon footprints.

       When I see that 43,000 people will attend the meetings in Paris, flying in from far-flung locales, I am forced to wonder the same thing. Split over 195 countries, that's 220 attendees per country (on average). Are all these people truly needed & helpful?

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Would the flights to and from Paris occur if there was no meeting in Paris?

31603. scaddenp at 06:09 AM on 9 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       Glenn, I think the question remains whether the anomaly for the station is calculated against the adjusted or unadjusted mean for that that station. Adjustment will surely change that mean value.

31604. John Hartz at 05:14 AM on 9 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       bjchip:

       As Rob Painting has pointed out in a Moderator's Comment to #19 frenchie, Jochem Marotske & Piers Forseter have publicly responded to Nic Lewis's critque of Marotzke & Forster (2015). Their response is in the form of a guest post on the Ed Hawkins' blog, Climate Lab Book.

31605. wili at 04:23 AM on 9 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Thanks for that, MA. But am I reading your chart and statement right? At a given temperature increase, does water expand more under conditions of higher pressure than under conditions of lower pressure??

       That seems rather...counterintuitive! Am I missing or misinterpeting something?

31606. Quick at 02:24 AM on 9 February 2015
       CO2 lags temperature
       

       @Rob, Glen, Philippe, and Tom.

       Thank you, gentlemen! My physics is a bit rusty, so at cursory glance this paper seemed to have some meat, but alas, my instincts prove correct. I knew some of you would have the proper resources readily available. Time to go educate 2 persistent skeptics. Thanks again!

31607. Glenn Tamblyn at 21:53 PM on 8 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       davidsanger

       "If one is going to compare adjusted temperature anomalies to unadjusted temperature anomalies, ought not the unadjsuted temperature anomalies be calculated relative to the unadjusted mean temperature? Otherwise you are calculating an anomaly by comparing an unadjusted temperature to an adjusted mean.

       Or am I missing something?"

       Yep.

       Anomalies aren't calculated relative to a mean, at least not a global mean. For each station the anomaly for any reading from that station is calculated relative to a baseline average for that station. Then these anomalies are averaged (with an area weighting) to give the global mean.

       Averaging stations to get a mean then calculating anomalies as differences in the mean is highly vulnerable to issues with station availability. local station biases etc. By basing the analysis on comparisons of a station against it's own base line, many local biases cancel out. You get a more robust result.

31608. MA Rodger at 20:33 PM on 8 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       daveburton @28.

       I'm so sorry. I didn't realise we were playing troll rules. Forgive me while I chase any potential strawman from the scene.

       You do not accuse NOAA of error, directly. You do say you are not sure if NOAA are correct or in error. So to be pedantic, you either accuse them of potentially being in error or you have no knowledge in the matter. Yet evidently you do consider the NOAA adjustment of raw temperature data to be an issue, something people are apparently "tryng to defend." This brings much emphasis to the likelihood of you knowing what you are about and also that you strongly countenance an NOAA error to exist. You may hide behind a figleaf of remaining doubt assumed by you for sake of argumentation, but your position is evident. Your position accuses NOAA of error.

       You do say you see evidence to support suspicions of wrong doing, of the NOAA being "up to no good" and, as you link to such a comment from here, the location is of no consequence.

       I stand by every syllable of my quote that you present @28.

       As to your "point," I am not sure what you are about.

       The alleged "misconception that NOAA's adjustments made a negligible difference," is surely unfounded. Kevin Cowtan is quoted by me @27 and it is plain to all but you that any "negligable difference" being ascribed to these NOAA adjustements applies to "the last 50 years." Why then do you persist with this "misconception" nonsense by arguing that the "difference" over the last 115 years is not "negligible"? Is this because you want to conflate a non-negligible adjustment with your accusations of error and wrong-doing?

       Moderator Response:

       To better understand what David Burton is attemtping to accomplish on this comment thread, go to: http://www.sealevel.info/Cowtan_unintentionally_vindicates_Booker.html 

31609. daveburton at 14:39 PM on 8 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       RH/moderator, thank you for fixing it, and please accept my apology; I'll trim/shrink to 500px in the future.
       
       

       davidsanger, I'm sorry, I don't understand your question.
       
       

       Tom Curtis, I don't think it is reasonable for you to characterize starting at the beginning and ending at the end as "arbitrary." I do agree that it would be better to do a regression fit, rather than just using the endpoints, but to do that properly that would require all 228 data points, and digitizing just 48 of them was tedious enough.

       If you want to digitize the rest, please do so. You can start where I left off; I've posted a link to all the relevant files.

       When you're done, I don't think you should use a linear fit, though. It looks curved to me. I think a quadratic fit would better capture the trend.

       To me it looks like the endpoints on the "adjustments" graph are roughly on what would be the quadratic-fit curve. So I think if you do all that work you'll get about the same result. (I've written some Perl code for doing quadratic fits, though; I'd be happy to share it, if you want it.)

       The unadjusted temperature curve (for the denominator when calculating the percentage by which adjustments increased reporting) is more complex. It has about three inflection points (around 1925, 1955 & 1995), so a 5th degree polynomial would be needed to fit it, or a spline.

       Tom, you also say, "My other points remain unaddressed." I guess you're talking about your argument that it is reasonable to discuss only the warming added by adjustments made to temperature measurements taken during the last 50 years, rather than the full 114. But I thought I did rebut that adequately, when I showed that that was the period for which the adjustments contributed the smallest percentage of warming.

       For the ten 70-year periods, the amount by which the adjustments increased the global land surface temperature warming varied from 18.9% to over 700%, and for the full 114 years it was 35%.

       Remember the question being addressed in this discussion: was Dr. Cowtan right or wrong when he argued that suspicion about NOAA's adjustments could be dismissed because they resulted in an inconsequential difference in the result? So why, then, if you want to answer that question, would you examine only the period for which those adjustments made the least difference?

       That's like a student arguing that, because he only got 7.5% wrong on one of his quizes, he should get an "A" in the course, even though on most of the quizes he got over 30% wrong.

        

       MA Rodger, I agree with your first three sentences. But then you rebutted an "accusation" that you think I made: an "accusation that the adjustments are poorly founded (with heavy hints of conspiracy wafting about to boot)."
       
       Where do you think I made that accusation? Please quote it.

       When you rebut something that someone hasn't actually said, it's called a "strawman." As I said to Tom Curtis @20, "My point wasn't about motives. I was simply addressing the misconception that NOAA's adjustments made a negligible difference in the reported result. They don't. They make a big difference."

       I acknowledge that I have complained (mostly elsewhere) rather bitterly about the habit of the currators of the temperature data at NASA & NOAA of blocking the archiving of data and documents, by various means. I think that's suspicious-looking. But, in truth, I don't know whether the adjustments are right or wrong, and that wasn't my point. My point was simply that the adjustments are far from negligible, so trying to defend them on grounds of supposed negligibility doesn't work.
       
       

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] You are now skating on the thin ice of excessive repetition which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. 

31610. Chris G at 14:12 PM on 8 February 2015
       The Most Terrifying Papers I Read Last Year
       

       JJA, 

       I don't really separate the two.  I think that, historically, whenever people have a choice between starving and raiding, they raid every time.  I don't know if you would consider the unrest in the Middle East as raiding, but it certainly is violence between groups of people.  

       In my mind, there is a connection between the Russian heat wave of 2010, their failed harvest, their ban on wheat exports, the rising food prices in the Middle East (where the Russians sell most of their wheat), and the food price riots/unrest in Tunisia where the "Arab Spring" started.  Others will think it is a thin thread.

       I've also had an opportunity to speak with agricultural biologists from Syria; they are experiencing a dramatic decline in rain, making it difficult to get good yields.  I suspect the unrest/violence in the region is causally related to declining ability to feed the population.  Unfortunately, violence in the region multiplies the problem of trying to grow food.

       Here is something from the World Food Programme along these lines.

       Basically, the way I see it, heat waves and changes in precipitation patterns will make it more difficult to grow food.  Food prices increase.  Food is not something that you can go without; so, areas where food costs rise see declines in standards of living.  Enough of a decline leads to civil unrest, civil unrest exacerbates the food security problem, and you get what biologists might call an overcorrection in population density.

       Glenn, 

       This will not happen everywhere at once.  Areas where food cost is a small fraction of income will be stable far longer than areas where food costs are a large portion of income.  Personally, I think we are already seeing the start of the trouble with rising population and crop yield instability.

31611. Mal Adapted at 13:07 PM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Cooper13:

       There is no 'deep sea pressure' mechanism that limits thermal expansion due to temperature rises I am aware of; I'd have to look up in a CRC handbook or something to see if there is any substantial variation in the coefficient of thermal expansion for water vs. pressure which might imply 'deep water' warming would have a lower or higher rate of expansion with heating

       It appears that the thermal expansion coefficient of seawater does vary with depth. 

       Also, according to the IPCC:

       Water at higher temperature or under greater pressure (i.e., at greater depth) expands more for a given heat input, so the global average expansion is affected by the distribution of heat within the ocean.

31612. frenchie at 12:16 PM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       agh, no, I'm wrong. 

31613. Tom Curtis at 11:59 AM on 8 February 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6B
       

       Glenn @3, first, that is a good point about the Renewable Energy Target, so if there is a spill, and if Turnbull becomes PM, that is one climate positive.  I remain dubious on both of the conditionals, however.  While there is no doubt Turnbull is the most electable, and probably the most competent alternative Liberal Party PM, the fact is the National Party (the Liberal Parties coallition partner, for non-Australians) are making very strong noises to the effect that they would rather split the coallition than have Turnbull as PM.  That, IMO, would be enough to spook the Liberals against Turnbull, many of whom have been saying quite recently that they would not have Turnbull as PM under any circumstances.  In effect, the coallition of factions within the Liberal Party that Abbott put together to roll Turnbull in the first place is still strong enough to keep Turnbull out, especially with the threat of a split coallition to sway the undecides.

31614. Glenn Tamblyn at 11:31 AM on 8 February 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6B
       

       The process involves 2 stages. The party has to have a vote on whether to have a 'spill' - declaring the senior positions vacant. Then they select the candidates to refill those positions.

       The spill will be voted on on Tuesday but is unclear whether it will succeed. It looks like it will be a secret ballot which might help more back-bench MP's to be a bit braver. But it isn't certain to succeed.

       However if the spill does pass then the odds are stronger that Abbott will be out. The likely successor right now is Malcolm Turnbull as PM and July Bishop as Deputy. Turnbull is a firm believer in Global Warming  - he even crossed the floor to vote for the Labor global warming packge. I don't know Bishop's position - I have never heard her speak on the subject but I suspect she is middle of the road.

       So if Turnbull gets in, that is a positive. However he isn't a dictator and can only go so far on carbon pricing etc when a large part of his party are opposed.

       But he might be able to end the attacks on the Renewable Energy Target (RET) which has been under attack. This has been effective at boosting installations of renewbles both private scale and small utility scale. They new projects have been in limbo since Abbott came to power.

       I suspect if he does get in he will take some modest steps then try to build a constituency for more and stronger action both with the public and within the Liberal Party to take that to the next election.

31615. Tom Curtis at 09:38 AM on 8 February 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6B
       

       chriskoz @1, IMO climate change policies had very little to do with the Queensland result, and the ALP is unlikely to move significantly to curtail Qld's coal industry.  They will move to prevent dumping of dredge spill on the Great Barier Reef which should slow slightly the expansion of the port at Gladstone, and therefore slightly slow some new coal projects.  They may also limit fracking on the Darling Downs.  I would not expect any more from them.

       The actual reasons Newman got dumped was a percieved (and actual) arrogance, particularly in this determination to privatize all of Qld's publicly owned enterprises despite his consultation process clearly indicating that Queenslanders were against it.

       Further, I would not hold my breath waiting for Abbott to be dumped by the Liberal party and any knew prime minister (if he is) will pursue policies inspired by climate denial just as much as Abbott out of necessity to maintain the coalition agreement.  In some respects the political news in Australia is good news (IMO), but not as regards climate.

31616. Tom Curtis at 09:27 AM on 8 February 2015
       CO2 lags temperature
       

       Quick @456, the first thing to note is that the article is published by Scientific Research Publishing, number 405 on Jeffrey Beal's list of Predatory Publishers.  That means that despite the appearance the publisher attempts to give, the article is not in fact peer reviewed.  Rather, the article was published on the basis of a very careful peer review of money recieved from the authors to pay for posting it on an internet site (there is no associated print version).

       Turning to the paper itself, the core of the paper is found in their equation 2.  For the simplest rebutal, it is only necessary to note that the first term on the right hand side of the equation is b^α, where "b is the scaling factor determined by the planet’s given surface temperature Ts in degrees Kelvin (for Earth Ts = 288.2 K)".

       In simple terms, that means that their equation does not determine the Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST).  Rather, it requires an arbitrary value to inflate the temperature to whatever value that happens to be.  Indeed, as b is arbitrary, raising it to the power of alpha is a needless complication, and simply represent camouflage for the arbitrary nature of the term.  Further, as b > 1 for Earth, and >> 1 for Venus, that makes it plain that without this fudge factor, solar radiation plus pressure underpredicts the GMST.  Consequently, despite this being purportedly a refutation of the greenhouse effect, they need a greenhouse effect to make their theory work.

       The actual value of their fudge factor is 1.093 raised to the power of (γ-1)/γ, where γ is c_p/c_v, ie, the heat capacity under constant pressure divided by the heat capacity under constant volume.  In air, on Earth, c_p/c_v = 1.4.  Therefore, b is raised to the power of (approx) 0.286, so that the combined fudge factor is approximately 1.026.  

       Clearly that is not enough to account for the greenhouse effect, so they introduce the Earth's angle of precession,ψ, into the denominator of their middle term in a rather complex equation, reducing the denominator by a factor of 0.88, according to their claim (I have not done the maths).  Introducing this factor represents, in effect, a claim that tilting an effectively spherical body will increase the amount of sunlight it will intercept by 13.6%.  It might be supposed that their is some justification for this in that the Earth is an oblate spheroid - but it is simply not that oblate.  More importantly, they include no equation for the oblateness of the sphere in the equation, thus treating all planetary objects as having the same, very large oblateness.  As the introduction of the angle of precession cannot be justified in terms of the actual oblateness of the Earth, it is consequently just another fudge factor to account surreptitously for the greenhouse effect.  This fudge factor raises the zero greenhouse effect value for GMST from 255.8 K to 264.1 K, or an inflation by a factor of 1.03.  Including the first fudge factor raises the non-greenhouse GMST according to their model to 271 K.  That is, they predict a GMST 17 K below the actual value.  Despite this, in their figure 2 they show the surface temperature at 288 K, which strongly suggest their line in that graph was not calculated using equation 2, contrary to their claim.

       You may think I am ignoring the bulk of the paper in this critique.  The rest of the paper, however, simply plugs values into equation 2.  That is, it assumes there is not greenhouse effect to prove that CO2 has no significant effect on planetary atmospheres.

       I do agree with one decision by the authors of this paper.  If I had such a dogs breakfast as this paper, I would certainly not submit it to a proper journal for peer review either.  But neither would I submit it to the vanity press, for this paper can only deflate the reputations of its authors - however useful it may be as propaganda.

31617. chriskoz at 09:24 AM on 8 February 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6B
       

       "One of the world's worst climate villains [Tony Abbott] could soon be booted from office"

       Well, the backbenchers and Tony's own colleagues in LNP party, are fearing for their own sake, after the recent spectacular fall of that party in state of QLD:

       Queensland state election, 2015

       where their leader Campbell Newman, QLD premier, another big hard core climate science denier and coal mining proponent [see e.g. here], often refered in coments here as the man who destroyed PV industry in QLD, lost his seat is disgracefully retiring from politics. The swing against LNP in those election, some 15% state-wide, reached an unprecedented level of 20% in Brisbane districts. At the moment they are counting votes because clear majority in the new parliament did not emerge but I'm sure we'll see the change of government for ALP which is far more likely to secure the required minority support. That outcome would be unthinkable before the election when ALP held just 7 seats in 89-strong parliament.

       I don't how much of that swing in QLD public mind can be attributed to science denial by the former ruling LNP party, or to mishandling of other policy issues by LNP. But the particular results indicate the biggest swing was against the disgraced leader Newman. No wonder federal LNP start fearing of their future election time and hanging their fears on science denying leader. I doubt the imminent (and long overdue) leadership change in LNP will result in signifficant policy shifts. But at least Malcolm Turnbull, the main candidate for PM job, does not deny the science.

31618. PhilippeChantreau at 09:11 AM on 8 February 2015
       CO2 lags temperature
       

       I haven't read the whole thing and only perused for a preliminary inspection. The paper has all the hallmarks of pseudo-science. The journal is definitely low impact. It does, however, details its review process, accessible through a few links. The list of citations of the paper includes ridiculous stuff like the Landscheidt piece in E&E, as well as the Robinson and Soon thing and an Soon/Baliunas/Robinson piece. The authors cite themselves on multiple occasions, several of these cites are books instead of peer-reviewed papers. In light of all this, I'm sure many will decide there are better uses for their time than reading and analyzing the piece to then explain where it goes wrong.

31619. Glenn Tamblyn at 08:46 AM on 8 February 2015
       CO2 lags temperature
       

       Quick

       From the introduction to the paper, discussing what they claim the standard model of the GH effect says -  "In particular, it assumes that the heat transfer in atmosphere occurs exclusively by radiation."

       Megafail right there.

       All the climate models include the basic physics that most heat transfer within the lower atmosphere is through conduction and evapotranspiration.

       What radiative exchange controls is the external energy balance with space. Ultimately setting the balance temperature for the mid troposphere at around 5 km up. The lapse rate then propogates  a temperature profile from that down to the surface.

31620. frenchie at 08:08 AM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Many thanks for the link in Mod's response to post 15. 

       I'm in same boat as bjchip, trying to defend science against knuckleheads, but not really qualified to understand half the issues.  But reading the paper...  I think even a layman can spot what CA is trying to pull. 

       Their criticism isn't relevant to the question of model accuracy.  It's about the next section, where the authors investigates "contributions of radiative forcing, climate feedback and ocean heat uptake" to the runs.

       So even if they were right (which they probably aren't)  -  their criticism is completely irrelevant to the question of models being accurate.

       Is that right?  I'm hoping someone who understands this stuff better than me (I'm a carpenter), will be generous enough with their time, to take 5 minutes and verify... please?

       Moderator Response:

       [Rob P] - Haven't been following the latest storm in a teacup, but Marotzke & Forster's reply is up at Ed Hawkins' blog - Climate Lab Book.

31621. bjchip at 07:39 AM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Rob -  I agree... peer review does that...  in the science.    I do expect that there will be official and reasoned critiques in the journals and over the next year it will be all sorted... and defended...  and if at the end of that time Lewis hasn't submitted, I'll be safe to ignore him... then.   It will still be out there, but I will be able to respond by asking why he didn't submit the critique.    That is then...    

       However, in the blogs and forums where I push back at the foolishness today, there is no distinction.   If it is published on some blog it is credible to the credulous fools who buy the propaganda of the likes of CEI or the lying not-quite-a-Lord.  In most cases I can do the take-down myself.  This one is different.  

       OhSweetMath -  Yes exactly  

       " But is it true? And if so, what does it mean mean for the paper as a whole?"

       I am reading now, both the paper (thanks for that link)  and the source reference by Forster that Lewis appears to claim makes the logic circular.  For me this is apt to take several weeks.   I am not a statistician, amateur or otherwise. I have to wade through it all by brute force.   

       I am not yet clearly seeing the "circular logic" claimed, and until/unless I can understand that I can't argue against it, or worse, possibly decide that it is correct, or more likely and even worse, deciding it is correct in error.   

       Part of the reason SkS exists is to make sure that people like me don't have to do that all by ourselves.  I am relying on one of the statements of the moderator above...   

       When a formal rebuttal is needed, we will do so either by updating an existing, or by posting a new SkS article

       I am not taking Lewis' word for it, but I am not able to simply ignore the critique in the arguments I get into, nor willing to just discard it because of its source.  

       If I can see errors myself and I usually do (I don't come here hat in hand all that often), I will hurl it away with great force.    Reading it however, it appears that the context is enough... if it is correct.  

       When I say this paper unusable it is in the context of the arguments I am commonly engaged in, not in the context of the science.    Context matters.     

       I want to thank you all for helping as you have.   Glad to be able to look at the paper itself.  Cautiously optimistic that someone with better tools than I have can help me understand better.  

       Thanks BJ

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] You are correct, the Lewis critique of the Marotzke paper has gone viral in Deniersville.

31622. Rob Painting at 06:05 AM on 8 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       Indus56 - Agreed. A 2 degree limit will not save the world's coral reefs for instance. Coral will still exist, but the grand structures they have built, and which harbour an estimated one million marine species, will not. 

31623. Rob Honeycutt at 05:00 AM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       bjchip...  Fundamental rule: Peer review trumps blog post. 

       The CA people think they have a legitimate challenge to the research then they need to get a response through peer review, preferably in the original journal the papers was published in. (And they know this.)

31624. Rob Honeycutt at 04:52 AM on 8 February 2015
       CO2 lags temperature
       

       It looks to me like these authors have been trying to promote this strange idea of adiabatic causes for warming for a long time, and have been repeatedly debunked. 

       http://wah-realitycheck.blogspot.com/2008/09/khilyuk-and-chilingar.html

       They even make the completely bizarre claim that increased methane concentrations would result in greater cooling. It's rather loopy stuff they're promoting.

31625. OSweetMrMath at 04:50 AM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       bjchip,

       So on the one hand, we have a peer-reviewed, published paper. On the other hand, we have someone yelling on the Internet.

       Your claim is even though you can't even understand the yelling person, their mere existence is sufficient to nullify the paper. What's the rule here? The winner is the person who yells last? The winner is the person who yells loudest? If you don't require the criticism to be at least understandable, then you are giving up scientific thinking as a criterion for evaluating the argument.

       But let's go ahead and evaluate the argument. Nic Lewis says "As is now evident, Marotzke’s equation (3) involves regressing ΔT on a linear function of itself. This circularity fundamentally invalidates the regression model assumptions." Well, that certainly sounds bad. But is it true? And if so, what does it mean mean for the paper as a whole?

       Your response here is to complain that Marotzke's paper isn't freely available. Perhaps if it were, you could read it and determine whether Lewis has a valid criticism. This is exactly backward. Lewis is criticizing the paper. It is his responsibility to present enough of Marotzke's argument to show where it fails. You are unlikely to find Lewis's full argument against Marotzke in Lewis's post.

       Lewis has no interest in presenting a full argument. A well established denier tactic is to pluck a single statement out of a paper and then proceed to attack this statement with no context. The implication is always that if this statement is incorrect, the entire paper is invalid. By not addressing the paper as a whole, the denier doesn't have to substantiate the invalidity of the paper.

       And by pulling the statement out of context, it becomes much easier to loudly attack it. Having set a low goal of challenging a single statement, taken by itself and out of context, the denier doesn't even try to succeed at that goal. All they do is make a lot of noise about that statement, leading the reader to conclude that if there's so much objectionable about the statement, it must be incorrect.

       When you declare Marotzke's paper unusable, you give Nic Lewis far more power and credit than he deserves.

31626. Quick at 03:58 AM on 8 February 2015
       CO2 lags temperature
       

       Has this study been debunked on any other thread?

       http://file.scirp.org/Html/4-4700320_51443.htm

31627. ryland at 03:55 AM on 8 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       JH Fair Comment.  I'm not picking holes in the piece per se rather commenting on what, to me, seem rather optimistic hopes that most humans will put self interest anything other than first.  And I do stand by my comment that even suggesting it may be too late to avoid unpleasant consequences of higher global temperatures, could well be counterproductive.  From his post @11 it seems One Planet Only Forever may be the author of the piece as in that post my belief that self interest comes first for many, or even most, humans.  I agree wth the comments of OPOF regarding the antipathy many have to the loss of personal benfits but I would also note that many in the developing world want to get their share of  the benefits they consider cheap energy has brought the developed world.  This is a continuing refrain at the global meetings discussing climate change and one that is hard to effectively counter.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Thanks for the clarification. The OP is a guest post and its author may not be monitoring this comment thread. That is why I chose to come to her defense in a general sort of way.

31628. One Planet Only Forever at 02:17 AM on 8 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       indus56, Others on this comment string have already shared your concern about the 2 C limit so you are not alone.

       Prior to the Copenhagan meeting in 2009 there was a range of 'suggested limits' with a 1.5 C increase being considered to be a target temperature increase limit. That limit seems to have been generally thought to result in reasonable predictability of the regional consequences and reasonably limit the severity of the consequences.

       In Copenhagen the global leaders had to admit the science indicated that the lack of reduction of impacts by the 'global most fortunate biggest benefiters from burning of fossil fuels' had made limiting impacts to 1.5 C a pointless objective. Rather than fuel the disingenuous but popular argument that 'its too late so why bother', they set a 2 C limit. In Paris they need to actually state how much hydrocarbon needs to stay in the ground and establish a system that will ensure that the best global energy benefit to humanity is obtained from the limited amount of impact allowed.

       There is definitely a need to focus on limiting the human impacts without requiring absolute proof in advance of the exact consequences of not limiting them. A recent article in Nature "Climate policy: Ditch the 2 °C warming goal" presents the case for expanding the focus onto other ways of monitoring human impacts such as warming of the oceans.
       It also suggests that clearer global commitments to real actions such as limiting how much buried hydrocarbons can be burned is more meaningful than a global declaration about a limit of impact to a 2 C increase, even if the basis for the limit is a 2 C increase.

       Essentially, the problem comes down to this. The current global economy has developed vast amounts of undeserved impressions of wealth. It has also made many of the 'most fortunate' addicted to benefiting from the unsustainable and damaging burning. There is tremendous wealth, profitability and popularity opposed to the required change, because many of the current 'most fortunate' are simply undeserving of the type of life they can get away with enjoying and are uwilling to give up any of their potential to enjoy their life in the way they hope to get away with.

       I understand that what I have presented is confrontational, especially to those who want to believe that they should not have to give up any personal benefit, enjoyment, convenience, comfort or excess. However, I believe it is one of the best explanations of what can be seen to be going on. And the best actions against that damaging attitude are the continued efforts to improve the collective understanding of what is going on in the hopes that the majority of humanity will actually care about more than just themselves and their 'maximum possible enjoyment of their life any way they can get away with'.

       Some people will never be convionced to care. They need to be excluded from any discussions about what needs to be done. They are the ones whose actions need to be 'forced to be changed against their will'.

31629. bjchip at 01:42 AM on 8 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       I actively defend the models in a variety of places, and this looks to become a useful addition to the science, but we can't use it while that critique is out there, unanswered.    

       If Lewis is wrong about the datasets used, wrong about the circularity, then we can use it.  

       I don't have access to the original paper, I don't know for certain what Lewis is on about in his critique, so I am asking for a little help here...

       ...because this isn't something I'd want to ask Forster or Marotzke cold.  

       That'd just be rude.  

       I think they're probably right and I really want to refer to it, but at the same time I really want to know how to respond to the people who just point at that critique.     

       I can and will continue to defend the model's quite excellent performance with many other things I have learned from Tamino and at Realclimate and here... but this paper looks real good and it isn't currently usable.    

       Moderator Response:

       [DB] "I don't have access to the original paper"

       An accessible copy of the full paper can be found here.

31630. indus56 at 01:00 AM on 8 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       Am I alone if feeling a slight annoyance that we run the numbers for a 2 degree C limit, but not for, say, one degree? My understanding is that 2 degrees was adopted as a politically pragmatic threshold rather than having any particular scientific significance. What the 2 degree calculations seem to offer us is the illusion that we can burn another 20% of the planet's coal reserves (or oil, in other scenarios) before acting. 

31631. MA Rodger at 19:33 PM on 7 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       From the posted U-Tube, Kevin Cowtan tells us:-

       "Adjusted data do show a little less warming but only about 10% less over the last over tha last 50 years. And remember this is land-only daya. Two-thirds of the planet is ocean which isn't affected by the weather station adjustment. If we consider the whole planet, the NOAA adjustments make only about 3% difference to the amount of warming over the last 50 years."

       @23 daveburton tells us he calculates this last 50-year land temperature' figure as 7.5%. It appears there is a level of agreement for the  last 50 years and we can move on.

       daveburton @23 stresses the 35% figure for the 115-year record. This is far higher than for the last 50-year period. Indeed @23 we are told that a whopping 89% of the global land warming 1900-70 appears only within the adjusted data.

       What I therefore find bizarre in this accusation that the adjustments are poorly founded (with heavy hints of conspiracy wafting about to boot) is that climatology has busted a gut trying to explain the early twentieth century temperature record. If the adjustments were as dodgy as suggested by daveburton, why has nobody struggling to explain the adjusted land temperature figures broken ranks and used an alternative adjustment methodology?

       I would hazard a guess at least one reason. The early twentieth century SST data would look like they came from a different planet and be very difficult to explain if the NOAA adjustments (and all the others which reach the same conclusion) were truly in gross error.

31632. ryland at 18:20 PM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       The chances of the "unburnable" fossil fuels remaining unburnt seem very slim indeed. Can you really imagine the scenario "The new research paints a stark picture of the compromises in fuel use necessary in a climate-constrained world. The researchers say it raises the question of how we divvy up the winners and losers, and that's one we should all now be asking of our policymakers playing out in real life?. Just look at the current geopolitical shennanigans over the price of oil and the resultant exultation from consumers. No wondering about their reaction to cheaper fossil fuel. Now try and imagine the public's reaction to oil at $300 a barrel and a 120% increase in power bills and a serious depletion of government largesse due to lack of revenue in countries affected by restrictions on mining and exporting fossil fuels. I also wonder about the advisability of comments such as that from Professor Watson former IPCC Chair and UK governmemt chief scientific adviser "..the world is now most likely committed to an increase in surface temperature of 3C-5C compared to pre-industrial times." The reaction to that by many may well be one of a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and an "oh well there's nothing we can do about it now so why change" attitude. This doesn't seem a desirable outcome at all. Instead of dire warnings about burning fossil fuels why not put forward a few positive suggestions for alternatives that do not damage the consumer's hip pocket? If the global public can't be convinced that they will not be worse off, then there is no way the long term exploration for and exploitation of, fossil fuels will be significantly reduced. The author's also state "..the research could feed into negotiations as a starting point for wider conversations about historical responsibility, equity and potential compensation mechanisms". As I mentioned above, just look at the conversations OPEC are currently not having about the price of oil and the impact of their actions on revenue in oil exporting countries like Russia and Venezuela. Realistically, pious hopes that " research could feed into negotiations" may well be just that.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] An accross-the-board, in-depth analysis of all facets of the energy/climate future of the type that you suggest would require a team of experts to do the work. A summary of the analytic process and its results would result in either a major report, or a book. In other words, you cannot expect a single article to cover all facets of an extremely complex subject.

31633. bjchip at 17:46 PM on 7 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Thanks for that OSweetMrMath...

       I don't trust climateaudit apart from as a negative indicator, but I have to find actual problems in what they say.    The fact that they are publishing to a blog and not submitting a comment to Nature is suspect, but I need to understand how they are wrong if in fact they are wrong.    As long as there isn't a detailed takedown of the climateaudit comment the original work remains nullified as an argument.   

       One error would be this:

       But aerosol levels have changed little over the last 35 years

       Right... tell it to the Chinese.

       But what the heck is this?   I don't see circularity here unless Marotzke is diagnosing a term that Forster already included.  Which appears to be what is being claimed.    The original paper is behind a paywall and that is not working well for us.

       Marotzke states that this equation suggests a regression modelAs is now evident, Marotzke’s equation (3) involves regressing ΔT on a linear function of itself. This circularity fundamentally invalidates the regression model assumptions.

       I can't begin... even if I had the time. The original paper is needed to address that question.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Why is it incumbent on you to find actual problems in what is posted on Climateaudit? When you do have an "actual problem" identified, what do you to with it? I ask the questions because your requests for assistance could be a cover for promoting Climateaudit. Over the years, we have encountered many commenters who are pretending to be something they are not.

       I have retracted the above because I have been convinced that bjchip is honestly seeking assistance from us.

31634. Tristan at 15:45 PM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       If you remove fossil fuel subsidies, adopt a useful carbon pricing scheme (ie, not an ETS) and subsidise renewable energy to the same tune that fossil fuels were getting, I get the feeling that a lot of that 80% won't be economically appealing.

31635. Tom Curtis at 13:33 PM on 7 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       daveburton @24, thankyou for the efforts at digitizing.  I notice that while the difference over 115 years between 1900 and 2014 is, by your digitization, 0.3 C, or 35% of the 0.86 C unadjusted increase; the 111 year difference (second value on the graph) is approximately 0.23 C.  That represents a 23% reduction in the adjustment.  The following value shows an increase in adjustment so the decrease is not monotonic.  Surely you are not going to argue that a 23% difference (30% using your preferred method of calculating percentages) is insignificant.  If you are not going to make that argument, however, my point about the sensitivity to end points if you do not use the linear trend to calculate the difference is proven.  Indeed, it appears that you have added about 30% to the reported adjustment by, what is afterall, an arbitrary choice of endpoint.

       My other points remain unaddressed.

31636. OSweetMrMath at 12:43 PM on 7 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       bjchip,

       I read the paper at Nature, and then I read the climateaudit post until I got bored. It didn't seem to be responsive to the basic claims of the paper, just throwing up a bunch of noise leading to a meaningless dismissal of Marotzke. The substance of the criticism isn't much more than the quote, "The statistical methods used in the paper are so bad as to merit use in a class on how not to do applied statistics." which is a good insult but not an informed criticism. 

       My reason for rejecting climateaudit is that it's inherently untrustworthy, as has been well demonstrated. Nature deserves more credibility a priori than climateaudit ever will.

31637. davidsanger at 11:35 AM on 7 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       If one is going to compare adjusted temperature anomalies to unadjusted temperature anomalies, ought not the unadjsuted temperature anomalies be calculated relative to the unadjusted mean temperature?  Otherwise you are calculating an anomaly by comparing an unadjusted temperature to an adjusted mean.

       Or am I missing something?

31638. daveburton at 09:42 AM on 7 February 2015
       Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory
       

       This is the Excel-generated plot of adj-unadj (adjusted minus unadjusted temperatures) for the 24 years which I digitized.

       Because I digitized only 20% of the years it's obviously incomplete, and because the years I digitized aren't quite evenly spaced the horizontal spacing of the plotted points isn't quite right, and because it's manually digitized from a screencap of a graph it's not completely accurate, but it's a better reflection of NOAA's global land surface temperature adjustments than "the difference between raw and final USHCN temperatures" (U.S. only) which Tom Curtis posted:
       

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Adjusted image size. Please try to keep images to 500px width.

31639. One Planet Only Forever at 08:02 AM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       It is important to note that the indicated amount of stuff that can be allowed to be burned was not only based on the dangerously high 2 C temperature increase, it was based on a 50:50 chance of a 2 C increase from the amout of burned stuff.

       Structures are not designed with a 50:50 chance of staying up. And vehicle brake systems are not designed to have a 50:50 chance of working when you push the brake pedal. The discussion should be about what is allowed with a 'higher level of certainty that significant problems will not occur'. That would be something better than a 95% level of certainty, something closer to the certainty that human burning of fossil fuels has to be curtailed rapidly in spite of its potential popularity and profitability.

31640. One Planet Only Forever at 07:55 AM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       One thing that defiintely should be done right now is a global ban on the burning of the petroleum coke waste that is created when poor grade crude like the stuff in the Alberta Oil Sands is upgraded to a refinable material. That stuff is worse than coal and yet wealthy people are able to profit from it being burned.

       And one thing that is seldom mentioned is the potential future value of unburned buried hydrocarbons. There is the possibility that in the future, thousands or millions of years from now, there could be a really beneficial use for these resources.

       The clear problem is the current marketplace cerated by humans which erroneously relies on popularity and profitability. That system clearly has shown no interest in developing a sutainable better future. The required change of human development will require changes to the motivations of the marketplace. That will only happen through responsible leadership.

       Responsible leadership toward a sustainable better future for everyone has clearly been lacking. It has definitely been possible for irresponsible pursuers of what hey want to create popular support for, and increase the profitability of, damaging activity that cannot be sustained.

       One effective challenge to every defender of getting away with benefiting from burning buried non-renewable hydrocarbons is to demand proof from them that the future generations clearly benefit from the activity they want to benefit from. Ask them to show what they have done to ensure the future generations will definitely have a better life and prove it will actually benefit distant future generations. Even just ask them waht they think future generations will have to do when the non-renewable resources they want to benefit from burning up become even difficult to benefit from.

31641. bjchip at 07:51 AM on 7 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       I have a need for an answer to the attack on the paper from climateaudit.  

       That relies on SOMEONE someone taking up some defense of the paper from this particular attack and I note that they also attack the peer-review process at Nature.    I do not think that ignoring this is going to help. 

       In calling attention to that attack I  *have*  to consider that it may even be accurate...  any given paper might be in error without throwing any doubt on the overall science.  We all take a false position when we pretend to be perfect.  

       I do NOT not have the tools to determine WTF they are saying and I can't simply "reject" a statistical argument I do not understand.  

       No matter that I agree with  the conclusion of the original paper,  I can't use it in argument anywhere if that argument on climateaudit stands unanswered.    

       What I am asking is that someone who has the tools to understand, read over that attack and respond appropriately, here or elsewhere.    Please.    

       You know who I am and how to reach me.  If you have any doubt whatsoever, just e-mail me.    

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] The use of "all caps" is akin to shouting and is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.

31642. knaugle at 06:51 AM on 7 February 2015
       It hasn't warmed since 1998
       

       May need updating?  2014 now warmest year on record in several temperature databases.

31643. HK at 06:26 AM on 7 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Cooper & Wili:
       I don’t know how deep sea pressure impacts (possibly limits) thermal expansion, but the temperature certainly does. Some time ago I made this graph showing how 1^oC of warming causes more and more expansion as the initial temperature of water rises.

       

       Note how the rate of expansion increases 3-fold from 0^oC to 10^oC and more than 5-fold from 0^oC to 25^oC. It’s also worth noting that the heat capacity of water is close to 4.2 J/g/K all the way from 0^oC and 100^oC, so the energy it takes to heat a certain amount of water by 1^oC doesn’t change much with temperature.

31644. Rob Honeycutt at 06:12 AM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       TomR @4...  Methane contributions certainly have been considered and are thought they will likely not have a major impact this century.

       Peter Sinclair has a very good series of videos with researchers discussing this very issue, called the "Methane Bomb Squad." You should definitely check it out.

31645. TomR at 05:48 AM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       I agree that 2C is way too disastrous. We probably have already crossed it since I don't think the permafrost and methane clathrate contributions have been included although they are virtually certain to have a major impact this century.

       At least some carbon appears likely to stay in the ground with New York, Scotland, Wales, and some European countries banning fracking. Also, there has been a major cut-back in exploration for more carbons. Granted, some of the cut-back is due to low oil prices, but I think some is because of the realization by industry that their reserves will be unsellable. The electric power companies are certainly running scared of PV solar. China may have peaked on coal imports. Improved battery technology with the titanium dioxide anode to the lithium ion battery may dramatically cut the cost and eliminate range anxiety. Fossil fuel cars may soon be fossils. Let's do all we can to make it a reality.

31646. gregcharles at 05:47 AM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       I hear the term carbon budget a lot lately, but I don't fully understand how it's calculated. I assume it would be related to climate sensitivity, or actually the climate sensitivity specifically for the effects of doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere on global mean surface temperatures. This is currently estimated to be 1.5C to 4.5C. So to compute a carbon budget, we'd look at current CO2 levels (~400 ppm) and pre-industrial values (~280 ppm), pick a reasonable climate sensitvity value like 3C, and plug them into a formula?

31647. Alexandre at 04:19 AM on 7 February 2015
       Meeting two degree climate target means 80 per cent of world's coal is unburnable, study says
       

       I haven't seen any believable hint that any carbon will stay underground unexplored. Quite the opposite: new frontiers like fracking, Arctic oil, tar sand oil and deepwater drilling suggest that we'll burn even more than all presently known reserves.

       I would love to be proven wrong. Please someone help me out here.

31648. wili at 04:06 AM on 7 February 2015
       Katharine Hayhoe's climate elevator pitch
       

       I think people are missing her point (as I hear it, at least).

       You can't get people to the science (or Logos and Ethos) if you don't first make some connection on the value/emotional (Pathos) level.

       Once people have a reason to care, or perhaps to not feel as threatened, then and in many cases only then will they be able to pay attention to stats like 97% agreement among climate scientists (Authority) and the absorption spectrum of CO2 (Science).

       It is easy for most of us to overlook just how powerfully our critical abilities in any situation are tied up to our emotional reactions.

31649. wili at 03:56 AM on 7 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Thanks for the insights, Cooper. I do certainly know that thermal expansion isn't the only contributor to slr, but so far it is the largest single contributor (vs glacier melt, GIS, Antarctica and changes in terrestrial storage). I suppose increased evaporation rates and total humidity in the atmosphere (which is increasing) has to be figured in, too--over the long term, but also as a factor in year-to-year varability.

       But I still would have thought that, if more heat has been going into the oceans in the last 15 years than previously, there would be some notable increase in the rate of slr over the same period. I can't imagine that ice sheet loss has been decelerating over the same period in a way that would mask the thermal expansion.

       "the land-ice losses and sea-ice losses relative to their absorbed heat-of-fusion; once this ice is gone, that reservoir for absorbing heat and limiting warming simply disappears"

       I think this is an important point, and I'm sure someone has figured out exactly (or at least approximately) how much energy has been going in to melting all that ice. It makes me wonder just how fast the Arctic Ocean will heat up once it's (mostly) free of ice and recieving solar radiation 24/7 for weeks.

31650. Tom Dayton at 03:17 AM on 7 February 2015
       Claims that climate models overestimate warming are 'unfounded', study shows
       

       Sir Harry, a professional statistician who has published climate science peer reviewed papers goes by the name Tamino on his blog, which is outstanding.

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