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Comments 31701 to 31750:
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JohnMashey at 08:43 AM on 15 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
shoyemore: yes, P, P & P is cheaper and people will get the idea, but the new book is more than a supplement, as a lot of research has happened over the last decade, and I think many issues have been resolved pretty well. People might also try Bill's Tyndall Lecture @ AGU2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TOTsmqgmL8
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Tom Curtis at 06:36 AM on 15 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
william @44, if you read that you probably also read the related discussion that pointed out that moderation complaints are always off topic and therefore prohibited by the comments policy. Further, it has been standard practise that moderation complaints have been prohibited at SkS for as long as I have been reading the site. If I remember correctly, that was explicitly stated in the original comments policy and the failure to explicitly state it in the updated comments policy is simply an oversight. It think that oversight should be quickly corrected but whether it is or not has no bearing on whether or not the long standing practise of moderation on this site prohibits moderation complaints.
Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you.
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michael sweet at 06:06 AM on 15 January 2015The Antarctic ice sheet is a sleeping giant, beginning to stir
After reading the paper I read this reference which estimates the sea level rise in the USA as about 1.3 times the global average from melting in the WAIS. Affects from Greenland are also not uniform and might be lower in the USA since Greenland is close to the USA.
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william11409 at 05:19 AM on 15 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
JH at 43. I seem to recall you made this point "BTW, moderation complaints are prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Therefore, you are now skating on a new area of thn (sic) ice". to some one else and later admitted at that time no such prohibition exists. As a consequence I read the policy and also cannot find the prohibition to which you refer. Clearly I must be mistaken as no doubt that prohibition is now in place will you assist?
Moderator Response:[JH] See Tom Curtis's response to your querry. He saw your post before I did.
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Jim Eager at 05:16 AM on 15 January 2015The Antarctic ice sheet is a sleeping giant, beginning to stir
Wili, from the paper (free download):
"The time to reach this collapsed state is 200 to 500 years. This may be further accelerated if calving-face instability is a factor in the retreat. "
However, it is my understanding that once the calving face recedes back behind the grounding line and over the retrograde bedrock slope beyond, thus exposing the underside of the ice sheet to intrusion by the sea, then complete collapse will be inevitable, as it would take a reduction in global mean temperature well below pre-industrial level to halt it.
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michael sweet at 05:01 AM on 15 January 2015The Antarctic ice sheet is a sleeping giant, beginning to stir
Dr. Abraham,
Thank you for your update on this interesting topic. This is the first I have heard that the uneven distribution of melt water may be significant to planning.
If there was say 1 meter of sea level rise globally from melting in the great ice sheets, approximately how much extra might there be in the Northern Hemisphere? 5 cm? 10 cm? 25cm? Obviously it depends on a lot of factors but can you suggest a ballpark figure. Can you suggest a paper I could read that reviews this topic?
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MA Rodger at 04:23 AM on 15 January 2015Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
Christy also cherry-picks the period 2002-2014 for his trend analysis. Any start date 1999-2006 yields a higher central figure. They only deceipt Christy managed to resist is rounding the trend (0.047ºC/decade) down and more correctly rounds it properly up to a "rate of 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade."
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ubrew12 at 03:30 AM on 15 January 2015The Antarctic ice sheet is a sleeping giant, beginning to stir
wili@1: I don't envy the problem glaciologists have before them. As I point out to people, the reason communities set explosives to cause avalanches in the Spring in the Alps and Rockies is not because the resulting avalanche will do less damage, but simply because it gives them the chance to predict when the avalanche will occur, so they can warn people. Otherwise they pretty much have no idea. A similar problem awaits those trying to predict the kinetics of ice flow at the WAIS and in Greenland.
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wili at 02:14 AM on 15 January 2015The Antarctic ice sheet is a sleeping giant, beginning to stir
"no further acceleration of climate change and only modest extrapolations of the current increasing mass loss rate are necessary for the system to eventually collapse ... resulting in 1-3 m of sea-level rise"
Wow. Is that eventually, or in this century. I note that the original paper's abstract includes the point: "sea-level rise above the ∼1 m expected by 2100 is possible if ice sheet response begins to exceed present rates"
And is there ANY chance that the ice sheet response will NOT exceed present rates? Isn't it CERTAIN to accelerate?
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howardlee at 02:04 AM on 15 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
Joel - I stand corrected! Thanks for pointing that out.
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Joel_Huberman at 01:43 AM on 15 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
This is a fascinating essay. Thanks! I have one correction to make, however. The sentence, "That methane is gradually oxidized to CO2 at rates of about 540 million tonnes per year", is misleading. The rate of methane oxidation is proportional to the concentration of methane and is best expressed in terms of methane molecular half-life in the atmosphere (about 12 years, I believe) rather than in tonnes of atmospheric methane oxidized per year. The figure you quote comes from a discussion of current atmospheric methane levels, which are more than twice those shown in the ice core measurements for the current interglacial (third figure in the essay). Consequently, the figure you quote is probably more than twice the rate at which methane oxidation was occurring during the pre-industrial era.
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Tom Curtis at 00:46 AM on 15 January 2015Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
dvaytw @96, interesting link.
It tells me that NewsMax (which I had never heard of before) is an unabashed propoganda site. Quoting Monckton, and using his propaganda terms ("the great pause") as though they were a common term among scientists (as opposed to never having been used by scientists, SFAIK) makes that clear. It also manages to suggest that a measurement of the average across the lower tropopheric temperatures (sort of) refutes the results of surface measurements - as though humans actually live floating two or three kilometers in the air rather than with their feet firmly on the ground.
Roy Spencer's blog post is better, both because it avoids the propaganda excesses of the NewsMax piece, and because it is clear that they are talking about the Satellite record only (although they do not bother to clariffy what that means). It remains disappointing, however, for it fails to mention the ovious fact that lower tropospheric temperatures are far more strongly influenced by ENSO than are surface temperatures. Therefore it is not surprising that while the ENSO neutral 2014 topped the El Nino influenced 1998 and 2010 in the surface record, it did not do so in the sattelite record. Disappointingly it trys to suggest an El Nino influence on the 2014 temperatures due to ENSO features durring December, entirely failing to mention the 6 month lag between ENSO events and their peak temperature influence.
Finally, Christy and Spencer make a big point about the close values of 2014 with 2005 (4th warmest) and 2013 (5th warmest). The clearly mention that there is only a 0.01 C difference between 2005 and 2014, and a 0.02 C difference between 2013 and 2014. The odd thing is that on their own figures, the later is actually a 0.03 C difference. Worse, the actual annual mean for 2014 using their monthly figures is 0.275, which should have been rounded up, not down as they do. The actual differences, rounded to three significant figures are 0.013 C for 2005, and 0.039 C for 2013. Via a non-standard rounding and a simple reporting error, they have virtually halved the reported difference between 2013 and 2014. I suspect that as a result, 2014 is statistically warmer than 2013. Unfortunately I do not know their stated measurement error.
Moderator Response:[JH] NewsMax is the Fox News of wire service jounalism.
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dvaytw at 20:46 PM on 14 January 2015Examining Dr. John Christy's Global Warming Skepticism
Surprise surprise, Christy is saying bucking the trend on 2014 as the warmest year:
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MA Rodger at 20:32 PM on 14 January 2015It's not us
Further to #80.
There is no Figure 9 in the Trenberth et al (2009) as linked in the advanced level rebuttal. There is a Figure 9 in Treberth et al (2013) "Earth's Energy Imbalance." This figure (presently eluding me on line) plots but a wiggly line 2000-to date showing incoming, outgoing and net radiation, this last compared with El Nino. So the important bit of that Figure 9 is the net value as per the graph below (as shown at the SkS post that this discussion initially began) but with a more recent wobble added on to the end of the trace.
Sadly dvaytw, there is no "clincher" here as the data only starts in 2000. (Mind, OHC does a good job of clinching the "AGW has paused" delusion.)
Which brings me to a follow-on. If the Hansen Figure 1C uses OHC to 'create' a graph 1880-date as could be interpreted from the advanced level post, is that any more strange than Trenberth using satellite data to 'create' such a graph - both are achronistical. Of course Hansen et al uses land temperature for the earliest part of his analysis and adds in SST there after (as the caption says). Trenberth et al (2013) presents a similar graph 1850-to-date (their Figure 1) and both papers then compare these results with OHC data.
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chriskoz at 20:01 PM on 14 January 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #3A
Ralph Keeling could have been more precise about 400 milestone on his curve (inherited from Charles). Notably, that the mean value (running average - second last column on this data) is just about to reach 400 (between Jan & Feb 2015). So, we can now officially say that MaunaLoa has breached 400, biosphere breathing cycles not withstanding.
It follows that at least next 1/2y (until and including July 2015) will be above 400. Aug 2015 may yet drop below 400 as the last august in history. With the d-ppm rate of 2.1/y, we will witness Sept 2016 being the last month at or just a fraction below 400 (see this picture). Thereafter, 399.99 number is just a history never to return (for us, mortals). So, if you visit Hawai this or next northern winter, you still have a chance to get an ampule of "pre-Anthropocene air" (they are likely to define 400 limit as symbolic separation of Anthropocene from past Holocene), it's going to have big collector's value.
Ralph of course knows those numbers and trends better than I do.
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dvaytw at 18:16 PM on 14 January 2015It's not us
I scanned to find a remark on this issue in the comments, but so far haven't seen any. Unless I'm mis-reading something, in the advanced version of this article, the graph labeled thus:
"Figure 9: TOA Radiation (Trenberth 2009)"
Should actually be:
"Figure 1c from Hansen et al (2005) "Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications".
The caption for Figure 1 in that paper runs as follows:-
Fig. 1. (A) Forcings used to drive global climate simulations. (B) Simulated and observed temperature change. Before 1900, the observed curve is based on observations at meteorological stations and the model is sampled at the same points, whereas after 1900 the observations include sea surface temperatures for the ocean area, and the model is the true global mean. (C) Net radiation at the top of the atmosphere in the climate simulations. Five climate simulations are carried out that differ only in initial conditions.
This information was provided to me by MA Rodger in another thread.
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dvaytw at 17:44 PM on 14 January 2015Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
MA Rodger, thanks. But it seems there's some mis-labeling (or else mis-reading on my part) in "The Human Fingerprint in Global Warming", then, as that graph is labeled:
"Figure 9: TOA Radiation (Trenberth 2009)"
I also wonder if there is a nice graph for the satellite data from the top of the atmosphere. This point (satellite confirmation of heat accumulation) has always seemed like a clincher to me because it clearly belies the "pause" talking-point in a way that all the nuanced responses about oceans and aerosols and volcanic eruptions and inadequate temperature arrays doesn't. For that reason, a nice visual would be nice in underscoring it, but I can't find anything but charts incomprehensible to the climate-challenged such as myself in Trenberth 2009.
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wili at 10:58 AM on 14 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
"about 37 billion tons of carbon was captured and sequestered from the atmosphere at that time"
Isn't that about what we emitted last year...in one year?
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wili at 09:28 AM on 14 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
Well, we've learned one thing: How to kill a vibrant planet in just a few decades.
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scaddenp at 08:12 AM on 14 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
William, I would note that your understanding of the rights to Free speech and what would constitute a violation seem a little exagerratedbut XKCD says it best.
Are you still claiming Drapela and Carter (for example) misinformation is "putting it out for discussion"?
Got examples of deniers expressing their arguments to fellow climate scientists at a conference?
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Tom Curtis at 06:24 AM on 14 January 2015It's the sun
TonyMo @1093 says:
"The key to the truth is a characteristic of the temperature graph, which can be seen in any temperature record from around the world, and that is the falling temperature from the late 40’s to the early 80’s, which, according to the IPCC, was due to post WW” industrial pollution pumping tons of aerosols into the atmosphere, probably augmented by the hundreds of atmospheric tests of nuclear devices carried out during the same period."
(My emphasis)
Really? Any temperature record at all?
The Australian temperature seems to have risen more or less continuously since the 1930s. Perhaps we use a different sun donw under?
Indeed, speaking of "down under" more generally, ie, the Southern Hemisphere, it is interesting to compare the running thirty year trends of temperature with the running 30 year trends of TSI (normalized to show the same overal variance):
The year shown is the start year of each thirty year trend. From that we can see that while the trend was just negative in the years 1937 to 1939, from 1940 it goes positive and rises sharply to a peak prior to 1970. It does not show the pattern TonyMo claims at all.
It is even more informative to compare the temperature trends with the TSI trends. They in fact show almost no correlations (R squared = 0.027), both because of the timing of change in overall trends differ and because of the residual solar cycle (due to using a 30 year rather than a 33 year mean). That of course raises the question as to why is the temperature response to much larger variation in the solar cycle so small when the variations in mean TSI is supposed to have driven the large temperature increase over the twentieth century.
Of course, one of the interesting things about using the SH is that aerosol pollution has a regionaly effect, and is primarilly produced in the NH. That is, SH temperature variation has a relatively reduced impact from sulfates compared to the NH.
In summary, the data cleary refutes TonyMo's claims, both in detail and as to his general conclusions. It only remains to see if he has the integrity to admit that, and to admit that the Sun is not a major driver of twentieth century temperature changes.
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shoyemore at 05:38 AM on 14 January 2015Just when did humans first start affecting the climate?
Plows, Plagues and Petroleum by William Ruddiman is an earlier version of his work, and it is worth searching for some of his Scientific American articles (at least one!) on Google.
I am sure the above book supplants his earlier work, but it is still pricey, and P, P & P is available on Kindle.
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MA Rodger at 02:26 AM on 14 January 2015Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
dvaytw @268.
You present Figure 1c from Hansen et al (2005) "Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications". (Trenberth did not co-author.) The caption for Figure 1 in that paper runs as follows:-
Fig. 1. (A) Forcings used to drive global climate simulations. (B) Simulated and observed temperature change. Before 1900, the observed curve is based on observations at meteorological stations and the model is sampled at the same points, whereas after 1900 the observations include sea surface temperatures for the ocean area, and the model is the true global mean. (C) Net radiation at the top of the atmosphere in the climate simulations. Five climate simulations are carried out that differ only in initial conditions.
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dvaytw at 01:18 AM on 14 January 2015Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
Can anyone briefly explain to me how Trenberth's graph goes back to the late 19th century, if he's using satellite measurements from the TOA that have only been taken in recent decades:
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Ochiudo at 01:03 AM on 14 January 2015The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
Great resource! It's a pity that it's only available in PDF format, an .epub or .mobi version would be greatly appreciated!
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billthefrog at 23:04 PM on 13 January 2015Corrosive Seawater, Not Low pH, Implicated As Cause of Oyster Deaths
Rob,
In your moderator response to Stephen Baines and Doug Mackie (#37) on the recent pHraud thread, you wrote a comment (dated 11th Jan) stating that
" ... you (and Stephen) make a good point that either manner of calcification is impeded by the decline in carbonate ion abundance. Still, it gives me a opportunity to write about coral calcification & OA."
So the obvious question is "what the hell took you so long?" ;)
More seriously, in your "before and after" photo in Fig 1, would I be correct in thinking that the "after" exhibit is possessed of the characteristic reduced C13 ratio associated with a biogenic carbon burp?
Cheers Bill F
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Ger at 20:51 PM on 13 January 2015Not pHraud but pHoolishness
@18, The trick of Chemistry is called entropy. Which reaction will occur depends on the entropy of the mixture, its temperature but will always strive to get S>0.
Would that help as an answer why some reactions are "preferred" over others?
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Nick Stokes at 17:22 PM on 13 January 2015Corrosive Seawater, Not Low pH, Implicated As Cause of Oyster Deaths
I see I didn't use the right method for links. The acidification calculator is here
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Nick Stokes at 17:15 PM on 13 January 2015Corrosive Seawater, Not Low pH, Implicated As Cause of Oyster Deaths
I don't think the headline here helps. The sea-water isn't corrosive, it just has reduced carbonate, which makes it harder to gain and hold solid CaCO3. But the paper seems to attack strawmen. I don't think anyone thought pH or CO2 were the direct agents. But in normal seawater, both are directly linked to carbonate. There are just two dof in the equilibrium. One thing that remains fixed as CO2 is added is total alkalinity, and so adding CO2 necessarily reduces pH and CO2.
You might be able to separate the link by varying TA artificially, but I can't see the point.
There is a gadget to demonstrate the linkage here.
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - As the Barton et al (2012) paper linked to in the blog post states:
"We report results from an oyster hatchery on the Oregon coast, where intake waters experienced variable carbonate chemistry (aragonite saturation state , 0.8 to . 3.2; pH , 7.6 to . 8.2) in the early summer of 2009."
So the hatcheries were, at times, taking in seawater that was undersaturated with respect to aragonite and therefore physically corrosive to the larval oyster. The changing seawater chemistry would likely have had detrimental effects on the oyster larvae well before the water became corrosive to them.
I don't understand your claim about the paper attacking strawmen. The only way to disentangle the physical mechanisms through which marine calcification is affected by ocean acidification is to conduct experiments to elucidate these details. Relying on general, untested, assumptions isn't science.
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william11409 at 16:31 PM on 13 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
billthefrog. Unfortunately I may well be banned if I reply to your comment as you can see from the Moderator's conmment at 40. I'm not sure why my replying to comments is viewed as "skating on thin ice for stating my position multiple times" as my replies necessitate a re-statement of what I said previously. I would however point out to you that I gave a reference to the BBC in my reply at 32.
Moderator Response:[JH] This discussion has been exhausted and exhausting for everyone particpating in it. Please move on.
BTW, moderation complaints are prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Therefore, you are now skating on a new area of thn ice.
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billthefrog at 10:31 AM on 13 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
@ William
The Telegraph blog by Brendan O’Neill that you linked in #24 appears to be little more than a blatant attempt at misdirection. Should anyone care to look, the Green Party has Climate Change located very prominently in their Values Statement. (Near the top RHS of the linked page, if it isn't prominent enough for some. ;))
As action on Climate Change is so central to their core values, someone reporting the fact that, given the opportunity, the Greens would wish to remove obstacles to this agenda is tantamount to making a statement of the bleedin' obvious. In fact, it would have been seriously noteworthy if the Green Party did NOT have a statement to this effect. (The clue, afterall, is in the name of the party!)
In his blog, O'Neill correctly states that this understandable wish to remove Climate Change deniers from positions of influence in Government is contained within the Green's 10 point flood response action plan. For whatever reason, O'Neill chooses to characterise this as follows..." at the very top of the plan is the proposal that all senior advisers who do not accept the “findings of climate scientists” should be ditched, thrown out of office, expelled from public life effectively. "
Some people (no names, no pack drill) will obviously accept anything they read in a blog such as O'Neill's as Holy Scripture, just as long as it agrees with their own prejudices. However, as anyone prepared to exercise a modicum of genuine scepticism can easily see (here), the statement of intent to remove deniers from positions wherein they can block progress is actually number 3 on the 10 point list - not "at the very top". Leaving aside O'Neill's hollow rhetoric, unless the numbering in the action plan has recently been revised, it would appear that he finds counting all the way to 3 somewhat challenging. (Point number 9 is also worth looking at, as it is in a similar vein.)
With an unwitting irony that will be apparent to many SkS readers, O'Neill proceeds to make comparisons with McCarthyism. Considering that Michael Mann is central to the OP (and is mentioned by name no fewer than 4 times in William's comments) this presents a serendipitous symmetry. Whilst he was still Attorney General in Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli attracted just such a comparison with his politically motivated witch hunt of Michael Mann.
Perhaps William may care to share his views on Cuccinelli's tactics viz-a-viz Mann's period at the University of Virginia? -
DSL at 07:35 AM on 13 January 2015Things I thought were obvious!
Indeed, if you're willing to ask a question like that, then you should ask, "How many people are alive today as a result of the development of a fossil energy-based economy, an economy that is inherently unsustainable?"
Moderator Response:[PS] fixed text
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DSL at 07:33 AM on 13 January 2015Things I thought were obvious!
Adrian, probably a tiny fraction of the amount of food that is wasted by middle class culture that has blossomed as a result of the cheap, widely-available, and heavily-subsidized emergence of fossil energy.
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adrian smits at 06:54 AM on 13 January 2015Things I thought were obvious!
I wonder how many people on earth are alive today because of the extra carbon dioxide in the air causing increases in crop yeilds and thereby less famine?
Moderator Response:[JH] Please cite the source of your sweeping claim that extra carbon dioxide in the air has caused increases in crop yield and thereby less famine.
[PS] And any further discussion of this claim should be done on the "CO2 is plant food" myth article
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John Hartz at 06:54 AM on 13 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
Moderator's Comment
William:
You have stated your points multiple times on this comment thread. You are therefore skating on the thin ice of excessive repetition which is prohibited the SkS Comments Policy. If you wish to keep this dialogue moving forward. it's time for you to move on to new points.
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Tom Dayton at 06:34 AM on 13 January 2015It's the sun
TonyMo, at the top of this page, click the "Intermediate" tab. After you read that tabbed pane, click the "Advanced" tab and read that tabbed pane.
Several researchers have tried different durations of lag between solar input to Earth and Earth's temperature, and they all have found nothing like what you claim.
In addition, there are other aspects of warming that are incompatible with your assertion. For example, in the Advanced tabbed pane, read the sections "Inability to Explain Empirical Observations" and "Conservation of Energy."
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scaddenp at 06:30 AM on 13 January 2015It's the sun
TonyMo. Your description of TSI reconstruction doesnt match the graph above nor more recent reconstructions (more). "began oscillating"?? Solar physics and sunspot observation would suggest the 11 yr oscillation has persisted much much longer than that. Perhaps you should provide a link to the graph that you are looking at?
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Daniel Bailey at 05:50 AM on 13 January 2015It's the sun
@ TonyMo
What part of "the CEAMT is not a global record" is not understood by you? -
william11409 at 02:56 AM on 13 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
One Planet Only Forever@37 and 38. Not entirely sure why you comment on Professional and Trade Certification. However if, as it seems, you are applying it to politicians, as far as I know there is no certification saying they are qualifiied politicians. Certainly many Ministers are not qualified in the areas their Ministry covers. And as there isn't a special qualification for politicians, the views and likes and dislikes of UK Greens politicians are no more valid and deserve no more attention than those of politicians in any other party except, of course, the party that is in power.
Moderator Am I allowed to ask if you are you able and/or willing to advise what happened to my comment at 34?
Moderator Response:[JH] Your comment was deleted by another moderator. He has not yet specified the reason for doing so. I presume he will do so when he sees this exchange.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:11 AM on 13 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
William, I forgot to include that Professions and Trades actually have an initial period of training and evaluation that must be successfully completed before a person is considered to be eligible to do the work. All that the Green Party seem to be doing is trying to at least have some minimal assessment of competence of a leader in an important role. The popularity of 'arguments against requiring people in positions of leadership to be legitmately evaluated regarding their competency' needs some serious evaluation. Nothing good can be expected to develop if that type of thinking can be popular.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:03 AM on 13 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
William,
Your position would appear to extend to a belief that there is no need for any Professional certification or Trade Skill certrification. That would be patently absurd, yet it does appear to be what you are arguing to defend, the freedom of people to do important things regardless of any legitimate assessment of their ability to responsibly and competently do those tasks. Professions and Trades workers are constantly monitored regarding how competentaly and responsibly they are doing their work. And anyone found to be lacking is helped to do better. And anyone unable to or reluctant to be helped to do the work well has their certification credentials cancelled.
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TonyMo at 23:16 PM on 12 January 2015It's the sun
The scaling of the graphs is disguising the true facts. ‘Oh really’ I hear you say! Yes really I say to you.
The key to the truth is a characteristic of the temperature graph, which can be seen in any temperature record from around the world, and that is the falling temperature from the late 40’s to the early 80’s, which, according to the IPCC, was due to post WW” industrial pollution pumping tons of aerosols into the atmosphere, probably augmented by the hundreds of atmospheric tests of nuclear devices carried out during the same period. This pollution was reduced by changes in global legislation in the early 1980’s.
Now, according to the reconstructions of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), solar irradiance began to increase in the late 1980’s and using Central England Annual Mean Temperature (CEAMT) data available from the Met Office, it can be seen that temperature began increasing at the same time. Both parameters continued to the late 1940’s when TSI continued to increase but CEAMT began to fall.
TSI stabilised in the mid to late 50’s and began oscillating in the 11 year Schwabe cycles, so when the atmospheric pollution was reduced during the 80’s, CEAMT began to rapidly rise playing ‘catch up’ with TSI, a rapid rise which caused so much concern and was the birth of Global Warming. However, had the ‘man made’ period of falling temperatures not occurred CEAMT would most likely to have continued rising until the 60’s when it would of levelled out and stabilised with TSI.
Further connection with the sun can be achieved by not only comparing the CEAMT data with TSI but from 1929, with England Annual Hours of Sunshine (Sunshine being when a minimum of 120W/m2 can be measured on the surface.) where you will find a very unexpected level of correlation.
All this data is freely available from the Net and the Met office and can easily be graphed in Excel – give it a try.
Good luck. TonyMo -
william11409 at 23:13 PM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
Tom Curtis @34 and MA Rodger@35. Thanks for your comments unfortunately I can't erespond as the post "William @34" mentioned by Tom Curtis (also at 34) has disappeared and I din't keep a record. Of ourse not having kept a record I have no idea why my comment at 34 was deleted but I'm sure it was for a very good reason or pehaps it was a glitch in the system. However, I do wonder why it wasn't deleted before both of you replied at the new 34 and 35.
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MA Rodger at 21:51 PM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
It is strange that william tries to make out that the attacks on Mann are equivalent to the attack by Natalie Bennett on denialism in UK politics. The two situations are so very different.
Mann is expressly discussing attacks on "individual scientists." Bennett attacks "any cabinet ministers or senior governmental advisers." so definitely not just one person.
And individual scientists do not have any collective responsibility yet cabinet government does. As for the advisors, the point has been made already that government probably shouldn't be taking scientific advice from people who holds fantasy views on climate, or anything else for that matter.
Chief Veterinary Officer, Nigel Gibbens will be expected to give advice on diseases spread by rising temperatures, now and into the future. Thus his beliefs are directly relevant.
Unlike scientists, politicians often do their best to be all things to all men. My own MP, Mr Burns, a Tory back-bencher, does a reasonable job sitting on the fence on climate although with significant symptoms to suggest he is actually in deep climate denial. And that is very common within the right-wing of the UK Tory party. Owen Paterson, the then-cabinet minister Bennett was particularly aiming at, addressing the denialist GWPF after he had left cabinet was still speaking with a level of ambiguity.
"Despite all this, I remain open-minded to the possibility that climate change may one day turn dangerous."
Without the present coalition partners, that denialist Tory right wing would have far more influence in a Tory UK government. Yet when the UK goes to the polls in May this year, will any of the soon-to-be-elected Tory MPs be telling their electorate "Vote for me. I'm a climate change denier."?
So the two situations are actually back-to-front. Mann was discussing being attacked surreptitiously for his explicit scientific message. Bennett was explicitly attacking what are political views held surreptitiously.
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Tom Curtis at 21:39 PM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
william @34:
First, as a matter of logic, the Greens' opinion is only an attempt "to muzzle those that do not agree with their view" if they are quite happy for a minister to be a denier, so long as they do not communicate that fact with anybody. I think you will find that is not their position, and it is certainly not their stated position. If, from the Green's point of view, the key issue is belief rather than commentary, it is not an attempt to restrict commentary but to ensure that relevant ministers and advisers are actually aware of what the problem is, and its urgency; and consequently can be counted on to assess the possible impact of, and appropriate response to, global warming as it impacts their portfolio.
Second, Ministers do not set policy without reference to cabinet, nor cabinet without reference to the party room. The idea that you can split of some office or ministry and say that the members of that ministery do not have any influence on climate change related policies is absurd.
Third, I think there are some areas in which you can look at a persons beliefs and deduce from them that if they hold that belief, than any competence or accuracy of belief they may show in other areas is entirely accidental. Thus, if I discover that somebody genuinely believes in a flat earth, I know that their beliefs are not guided by evidence. Even on other topics where they appear to be evidence guided, I know that there is some trigger which in them will result in entirely evidence free beliefs. I don't know what that trigger is, so it is from my perspective, entirely a matter of good fortune that they do not have similarly evidence free beliefs on child care, or AIDS, or immunizations, or whatever - and nor do I know that whatever the significant factor is will not be triggered in the future.
So, as a rule of thumb, I would be very happy with a requirement that no flat earthers be appointed to ministerial or senior government advisory positions. This in no way represents an attempt to limit anybodies speach about flat eartherism. It does represent a desire to have competent, and reliably competent ministers and advisors. It is on a par with some other desiderata of mine, ie,
- That ministers be able to follow basic arithmetic (algebra preferably, but I am realistic enough to know that standard would never be enforced);
- That ministers be able to sting grammatical sentences together;
- That ministers be able to follow a syllogism (probably also too much to ask given various encumbents around the world);
- That ministers have a basic understanding of economics.
The list does extend a bit, but you get the point.
Given the above, the simple fact is that some forms of climate change denial are on a par with flat earthism in terms of intellectual merit. Most importantly of these are, any view that denies there is a greenhouse effect, and any view that denies human responsibility for the recent increases in CO2 concentration. So, IMO, any person believing either of these thereby shows they are incompetent to be either ministers or senior government advisors. The UK Green's may take a different, more stringent view of this competance test than I do - and if they do, that is their right, and their right to express it.
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Tom Curtis at 18:12 PM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
william @32, the fact of the matter is that climate change denial is a sign of incompetence. It is particularly a sign of incompetence in a minister of state who is, as part of their office, supposed to seek the best advice on a subject and act on that advice. A minister who is a climate change denier, by the fact that they are a denier, rejects the best advice on the topic, ie, that from the IPCC and therefore is incompetent.
When you have a minister of defence rejecting defence department advice based on the advise of a medium, people would call for their sacking. There is no free speach issue involved in that. We don't want ministers who prefer private, idiosyncratic and crackpot advise over that of relevant experts. It is the same with climate science. End of story.
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william11409 at 17:40 PM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
John Hartz Here is the policy document from the UK Greens as reported by the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26187711)
A policy document released by the party said: "Get rid of any cabinet ministers or senior governmental advisers who refuse to accept the scientific consensus on climate change or who won't take the risks to the UK seriously."
Phil@28 This is also from the BBC report
Ms Bennett added: "It's an insult to flood victims that we have an Environment Secretary (Owen Paterson) who is a denier of the reality of climate change and we also can't have anyone in the cabinet who is denying the realities that we're facing with climate change.
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william11409 at 16:56 PM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
John Hartz. Your sincere hope is realised. Newspapers of choice are The Independent and Guardian.
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Jim Eager at 10:02 AM on 12 January 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #2B
Aldo Rebelo, Brazil's new minister of science, technology and innovation, sounds like he's channeling fellow old-school Marxist Martin Durkin, producer of the infamous The Great Global Warming Swindle. Can't have the glorious worker and peasant proletariat..., I mean humanity blamed for global warming, can we.
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John Hartz at 09:51 AM on 12 January 2015Climate Deniers Employ Predatory Tactics in Fight Against Facts: Scientist
Phil: The Telegraph article that william links to is strong on rhetoric and light on documentation and quotes. Regardless, I sincerely hope that william does not exclusively rely on the Telegraph for information about politics in the UK.
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