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scaddenp at 07:16 AM on 29 June 2014It's too hard
jetfuel.
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Bob Loblaw at 06:05 AM on 29 June 2014CO2 has a short residence time
Below-surface carbon in forest can be quite complex. I say "below-surface" because there is not only roots, but also carbon in other soil micro-organisms, plus carbon from decaying roots, etc., as well as the carbon that is carried into the soil from surface litter and such.
Roots do decay over periods of years to centuries, depending on size (and what forect type you are talking about). Tree trunks and branches fall to the forest floor, and then slowly rot - but the more persistent carbon compounds produced will work their way into the soil.
In tropical forests, soil carbon and surface litter are rapidly decayed, so soil carbon content is low - root mass will be the dominant store. In the boreal forest, soild carbon often exceeds (per hectare) the carbon stored in trees above ground, due to cooler temperatures and slow decay rates.
Fire obviously returns carbon rapidly back to the atmosphere, as biomass is burned. Removal of above-ground mass (burning, logging, etc.) will often lead to a rapid drop in soil carbon, as the soil is exposed to sunlight and warmer temperatures. The loss of soil carbon often exceeds the uptake by new growth, so a rapidly-growing forest in a recently-disturbed area can still be a source of carbon (loss to atmosphere), not a sink.
Turning lumber into houses and such does represent a moderate-term carbon sink. Carbon budget models of the forest will account for these factors, such as the Canadian Carbon Budget Model.
I'm most familiar with the dynamics of boreal forests. One major study from 20 years ago was the BOREAS project. A Google search for "BOREAS soil carbon" gives megahits.
Forests do represent major carbon storage, and that is where some of the carbon from burning fossil fuels is going, but by and large they do not represent a long-term permanent sink.
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ubrew12 at 05:19 AM on 29 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B
The article in 'Study sheds light on why people help future generations' is interesting in what it implies about effective action to curb AGW: a global enforcement effort, perhaps even a precursor to 'one world government'. Altruism across generations is almost impossible to achieve if the perception is that the pain of altruism is not being equally shared. Hence, the actions of the 'Risky Business Report' crew is a hopeful development. Since 2008, its been apparent that we have 'one world capitalism' already, and also that this capitalism is almost entirely 'crony' in character (the subsequent 'rescue effort' following the Market meltdown has almost comically benefitted the top 1%). In effect, Wallstreet owns Washington. If enough in Wallstreet and Washington can be convinced (by Bloomberg, Steyer, Paulson, etc) of the seriousness of AGW, perhaps these 'Master of the Universe' can impose serious business and 'other' penalties globally in such a way that everyone becomes convinced that nobody is getting out of the pain of solving AGW. While it may be absurd to cheer the possible development of a global crony-capitalist state, I now feel the greater threat is AGW itself. That Boston Globe article suggests effective action on AGW may be impossible without a globally imposed solution: altruism across generations will fail without it.
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PhilippeChantreau at 03:34 AM on 29 June 2014It's too hard
I don't know how mods have not yet lost patience with Jetfuel. I read only the first few lines of this last post and already found "an article that I read" without reference to said article. That's followed by rethoric so pityful it's normally found in electoral bullsh&$t fests: "sequestration killing jobs by the thousands." Really? Where is the evidence that carbon sequestration (a method not widely implemented on an industrial scale) is "killing" jobs by the thousands? I did not even bother reading the rest, the value to be expected of it was clearly announced by the opening statements. I'm underwhelmed.
Moderator Response:[PS] Indeed. jetfuel continues with sloganeering, posting misinformation and continuing to state conclusion based on cherry-pciking despite this being pointed out. Jetfuel has shown no interest in engaging with science when commentators have pointed out issues out. Continued violations of comments policy have been noted.
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shoyemore at 01:35 AM on 29 June 2014Summer reading for the climate crowd
You might enjoy this early piece of cli-fi from the classic series The Twilight Zone, which first aired in 1961.
"Respectfuly submitted by all the thermometer-watchers at The Twilight Zone".
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kmalpede at 00:25 AM on 29 June 2014Summer reading for the climate crowd
"Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingslover is a terrific climate change novel; she is also a biologist, and very much in tune with the poor in Appalacia. It's just a wonderful, important book with the disrupted migration of the Monarch butterflies as initiating events. Another beautifully written novel is "All That Is Solid Melts into Air", a first novel by Irishman Darrough McKeon--about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. And, if anyone is in New York, Oct. 2-Oct 26, check out the world premiere (finally) of my play "Extreme Whether" at Theater for the New City: it's about the attacks on climate scientists and several (including Jim Hansen, Radley Horton, Jennifer Francis) are speaking post-play. www.theaterthreecollaborative.org for details.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 21:56 PM on 28 June 2014It's too hard
As a general observation about sequestration technologies, it is important to ensure that the perfect doesn't become the enemy of the good. Sequestration techniques don't need to provide 'permanent' storage. Just storage for long enough to blunt the sharp edge of the impacts and allow slower natural sequestration methods to work.
As with all these things it comes down to scale and energy. What scale of infrastructure do we need and how much energy will it take?
Storing carbon as CO2 in something like Carbon Capture & Storage schemes requires huge infrastructure and some energy but at least we don't need the energy involved in changing the chemistry of what we are storing.
Other approaches might convert CO2 into some more inert form such as carbonate rocks or something giving potentially better sequestration but essentially there is a huge energy cost for the chemistry involved. This would be at least partially reversing the energetics of the original combustion of the fossil fuels.
As a general principal we should strive to harness the natural energy flows available within the climate system itself to aid us in this.
One area that I have always thought was ripe for some 'bright spark in a white lab coat' was how to kill two birds with one stone.
A major form of geoengineering being considered is injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to provide artificial cooling - there are companies looking at how to do this injection right now.
This opens up a possibility. Vast quantities of extremely small particles of 'something' injected into the air. So an absolutely enormous surface area available for a potential chemical reaction 'of some sort'. The CO2 we want to remove is located right next-door to these particles.
And some really nifty other resources that could contribute to some clever chemical reactions - Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen.
And the secret ingredient - energy - to drive any reactions. Its called sunlight. Really there is a wonderful chemical factory up there waiting for us to employ it.
This chemistry needs to do several things:
- Capture carbon in a form that can be returned to the surface, probably in precipitation and ultimately drained to the ocean.
- Be sufficiently chemically stable that it doesn't re-enter the short-term carbon-cycle and just get outgassed from the ocean again. It needs to stay sequestered from the carbon cycle for many decades if not a century or two.
- It cannot be (unduly) damaging to the environment, including contributing to Ocean Acidification. No point sequestering carbon if it kills off forests, pteropods or moles for example.
- It cannot be (unduly) damaging to human health. A carbon sequestration technique that increased deaths from Asthma 100 fold for example is probably a non-starter.
The basic chemistry of CO2/H2O -> Carbonic Acid -> Weathering cycle -> Carbonates seems a simplistic approach to this that probably doesn't work or someone would have thought of it already.
But surely there is some other answer in the chemists toolbox. After all this is carbon we are talking about. I.e, Organic Chemistry, i.e. gazillions of compounds and reactions.
The surface area of any volume of aerosols that we inject into the atmosphere constitutes a vast and precious resource.
But I'm no chemist so I have no idea what this chemistry might be. :-(
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Tom Curtis at 19:49 PM on 28 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Kevin C @12, certainly the paper would have been classified as endorsing AGW by the Cook et al (2013). It finds >50% of recent warming to be due to CO2 emissions.
Although this attempt to apply standard concepts from another discipline has not been successful, several major advances in science have been made by porting concepts and/or mathematical techniques from one discipline to another. The authors should not be faulted for that attempt in itself, but only for attempting to apply their technique to the wrong quantity (emissions rather than concentration). Applied to concentration, the results may or may not be usefull, but that can only be known after the attempt.
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Tom Curtis at 19:43 PM on 28 June 2014It's too hard
Kevin C @33, pumping deep ocean water to the surface will in fact draw down excess CO2, but only by limiting the extent to which the ocean will further draw down CO2 once we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. It does rapidly now what the ocean will do gradually over the next several hundred years. That may be a net gain overall. However, equilibriating the deep ocean will only draw CO2 concentrations down to 25-30% of total emissions (Archer), or to 45 to 55% of the net increase to a given date. I have severe doubts as to how economical this method of "carbon sequestration" would be. Essentially you need to produce enough waste heat to generate current flows several times larger than that of the overturning circulation to be effective.
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Tom Curtis at 19:24 PM on 28 June 2014It's too hard
David Newell, response here.
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Tom Curtis at 19:22 PM on 28 June 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
David Newell has returned to his theme elsewhere; this time inventing his own units and arguing from the invented units that his method must work. Such an argument certainly obviates the need for empirical investigation, and takes his views straight into the realms of pseudo-science. I am indirectly responding to that post here so as to keep all the rebutals of his views readilly available. I have a dim view of people who, having been rebutted, fade into the woodwork for a month or two, only to ressurect essentially the same arguments on a new thread without a link. Such people give the appearance of wanting to avoid prior rebutals simply by ignoring them.
Essentially, as described above, David Newell proposes pumping large quantities of sea water to be sprayed over highly alkaline soils as a means of carbon sequestration. He presents various arguments showing possible upper limits on the level of sequestration, most of which have no bearing on the actual sequestration process and hence are irrelevant (as discussed by me above). On this occassion, instead of rehashing old ground, I looked at what the scientific literature says about wetting alkaline soils. Xie et al (2008) made a comprehensive analysis of the ability of alkaline soils to absorb CO2 with increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. They found that alkaline soils did indeed absorb more CO2 with increased CO2 concentration, but that:
"As water was the reaction medium for this CO2 absorption, we had expected high soil water content to enhance this process. The results proved the opposite. Increase in soil water content did not enhance the CO2 absorption of the sterilized soil, but lowered it (Fig. 6)."
(My emphasis)
The most important fact about David Newell's proposed geoengineering project is that the net CO2 reduction is that acheived in the equilibrium state, ie, after the excess water has evaporated, and the pumped water has pooled and been absorbed into the soil. Therefore, his proposal stripped of bells and whistles is to reduce atmospheric CO2 content by wetting alkaline soils.
Unfortunately, wetting alkaline soils reduces their ability to absorb CO2. That means, all else being equal, wetting a large amount of alkaline soil will increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere as the CO2 currently absorbed by the dry soil is ejected due to the wetting. Newells' proposed project appears to be worse than useless.
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Kevin C at 18:34 PM on 28 June 2014It's too hard
Interesting idea. The size of the deep ocean reservoir is big enough that it could buy us a few decades.
Probably the cheapest method of doing it would be by heating deep ocean water to make it rise rather than pumping e.g. by dumping thousands of unshielded breeder reactor cores off the side of a ship.
How many would it take? No idea, but my first wild-assed guess is that it is going to be at least thousands of times the power output of the human race.
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Kevin C at 17:44 PM on 28 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Actually, as a co-author of this comment paper, my impression of the original paper is completely different from the interpretation which is emerging here.
I don't have the impression that Chen et al are contrarians. They may be, and there may be extrinsic evidence to support that, but at this point my assumption is not.
I suspect this was a well intentioned but misguided attempt to apply a new method to testing the ideas of climate science. I suspect they though their results were supporting the consensus position.
I also think that, while wrong, the work is not completely without value. The elasticity calculation would have given a plausible result had they given it the right inputs. While it adds nothing to the science, it may have had some value in explaining the science in terms which would have been immediately familiar to economists.
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davidnewell at 13:38 PM on 28 June 2014It's too hard
Perhaps someone would deign to advise my questing mind as to why it is that discourse about this possible (at least partial) answer to the CO2 problem cannot be elicited?
Yes, pumping ocean water over a 6,000 foot "head" is far from trivial: but "It's all downhill from there.."
thank you.
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chriskoz at 09:27 AM on 28 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
This whole concept of " ‘elasticity’ of temperature to CO2" is so counterintuitive that I simply dforgotten it overnight and must have reread this article to recall thisd morning what the fuzz is about.
In more broad context, it's amazing how the contrarians while seeking the alternative science explanation, come up with convoluted explanations defying or trying to workaround simple basic physics we've grown with since primary school. I remember enjoying the first climate science course by David Archer, that fit so nicely into and reminded me my long-rusted physics. Yet contrarian explanations, including this one here, or any others e.g. by Dick Lindzen or Judith Curry require strange mental excercises, including forgetting the world we are living in and grasping some abstract ideas like "stadium vawe" or "cosmic rays".
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ubrew12 at 08:31 AM on 28 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Once again, the trend in modern rightwing culture to assume economics (read 'free market capitalism') is bigger than government and even Physics. How did Chen forget the Physics in his AGW study? Simple: Physics can say nothing about a Physical problem once Economics has entered the ring. Put that together with this: Hank Paulson gave a wonderful argument for taking AGW seriously the other day. But what bothers is that Paulson is a banker, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and former Treasury Secretary. So, to recap: after 120 years of Scientific warnings go unheeded, AGW is now 'official' in the eye's of our conservatives because a Banker says so?
Where is Lewis Carroll when you need him.
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knaugle at 02:11 AM on 28 June 2014CERN CLOUD experiment proved cosmic rays are causing global warming
For a recent example where this experiment is in fact cited by a climate denier, check out the Letters to the Editor of the Lynchburg, VA News and Advance on 06/26/2014 (2nd Paragraph):
It is sadly amazing how such things take a life of their own. However the letter did send me looking for what the experment was doing. As is often the case, some folk put words into scientists' mouths without first asking them.
Moderator Response:[JH] Activated link.
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Paul Pukite at 23:35 PM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Anyone that has ever graded exams or homework assignments knows how much harder it is to figure out why someone screwed up than did something correct.
You deserve medals for debunking this dreck, including Beenstock et al.
We don't use methods that are intended to "learn" human-behavioral game theory trends (economics, finance) on problems that obey hard physical laws (earth sciences).
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longjohn119 at 23:09 PM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
This is what happens when you try to mix psuedo-science (Economics) with real Science ..... You end up with the equivelent of an Alchemist trying to turn lead into gold ....
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CBDunkerson at 21:40 PM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Actually, the oven temperature analogy should be even worse... a decreasing rate of CO2 emissions isn't the equivalent of turning down the oven temperature... it is the same as decreasing the rate at which you are turning it up.
Their analysis also ignored ~98% of the warming to focus on atmospheric temperatures, assumed that temperature changes would occur instantly rather than time being required for heat to build up in the climate system and for feedbacks to play out, and (looking at the paper itself) they actually calculated wildly different 'elasticity' values for different parts of the planet... which in and of itself invalidates their entire hypothesis given the well mixed nature of CO2 in the atmosphere.
I was wondering if some actually useful results could be obtained if this sort of analysis was done properly (like the RSS satellite temperature data eventually coming out of the original wildly inaccurate UAH results), but there haven't been any instances of decreasing total atmospheric CO2 levels from which to calculate the 'elasticity' value. Further, if we succeed in switching to non-fossil fuels the correlation between economic activity and CO2 emissions will be broken... and thus decreasing atmospheric CO2 levels at that point couldn't be tested against economic activity either.
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Trevor_S at 14:33 PM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Good article...
"We a physics-based equation"
might be a typo ?
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grindupBaker at 14:01 PM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
In Figure 2 the unibox model is a bit below HadCRUT4 ~1990-1999 then it catches up but Cowtan & Way estimate ~0.09 higher at 2010 so if that turns out to be correct then the unibox model would stay a bit below Cowtan & Way krigified ~1990-2010 in which case I would muse about whether a slight warming effect started ~1990 that isn't in the unibox model. Also, I wonder whether coefficient r2 could sub for DNA in a paternity suit.
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Andy Skuce at 06:12 AM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
I think some dry humour was intended in the title and that it shouldn't be taken at face value.
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Zeke Hausfather at 04:58 AM on 27 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
The figure in the post is somewhat out-of-date. The difference between GHCN v3.2.2 raw and adjusted is shown here: LINK
Changes in version 3.2 significantly increased the rate of breakpoint detection in the PHA, leading to an increase in the number of corrected inhomogenities.
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened link that was breaking page format.
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DSL at 04:28 AM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
I agree with Lou, Mark. That's a right proper rebuttal, and congratulations most definitely, but the headline is a little loose.
"New Study Surprisingly Finds Physics More Useful Than Economics in Understanding Atmospheric Physics." -
Lou Grinzo at 03:25 AM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
Huh? In no way does properly applied science "trump economics" by showing that a single, laughably bad misuse of statistical technique gives predictably bad results.
Can we please stop broadbrushing like this?
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Tom Curtis at 02:25 AM on 27 June 2014CO2 has a short residence time
Ashby @145, according to Melin et al (2009), root systems apparently account for only 20% of the biomass of a tree (citing Hakilla, 1989). Further, for Norway Spruce, 4.6% of the subterainian biomass decomposes per year, so that 50% is lost in 15 years, and 95% in 64 years. That is faster than the 3.8% of soil carbon respired to the atmosphere each year (see diagram in main article), but not sufficiently so as to expect a large increase in the soil reservoir from reforestation relative to the increase in the vegetation reservoir from the growth of the trees.
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Dikran Marsupial at 02:16 AM on 27 June 2014CO2 has a short residence time
Ashby, there are fungi and bacteria in the soil that break down the roots of dead trees as well. I suspect how fast this happens depends on the moisture and oxygen availability. If this were not true, we would be digging up the roots of dead trees everytime we dig a hole in the ground, which is not the case.
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Ashby at 01:56 AM on 27 June 2014CO2 has a short residence time
"Biological uptake (with the exception of fossil fuel formation) is carbon neutral: Every tree that grows will eventually die and decompose, thereby releasing CO2. "
I can see how that would be true for the portion of a tree above ground (assuming the wood isn't used to make a house or something that locks up the wood for 100+ years), but my impression is that the roots are probably as large a carbon sink as the above ground tree and that the smallest tendrils will constantly grow and die back and essentially become part of the soil, fixing their carbon for a long time. Do you have a paper that supports your assertion that trees/plants are carbon neutral? (Preferably one that actually measures the carbon fixing of below ground material over time.) It seems unlikely to be carbon neutral.
This paper argues that organic carbon stored in forest soils are a reservoir roughly the same size as the atmosphere, so we aren't talking about a small effect. http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/389859/Principles-and-Processes-of-Carbon-Sequestration-by-Trees.pdf
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wili at 01:50 AM on 27 June 2014New Skeptical Science study finds physics trumps economics, suggests global warming is man-made
At first I thought the title was an Onion headline! Do we really have to prove that basic physics is a bit more reliable than economics when it comes to predicting global warming??!! Apparently so!
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CBDunkerson at 22:48 PM on 26 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
KR, the 'skeptic' insistence on using faulty data is a widespread phenomenon;
'Mann should have factored in the erroneous tree ring proxy data after the divergence period!'
'There were other tree ring data sets near Yamal which were not selected for sensitivity to temperature changes and thus show wildly innacurate results if improperly used as temperature proxies... those should have been factored in to temperature anomaly data series!'
'The XBT network had problems with some buoys incorrectly determining depth and thus skewed temperature results... those incorrect values should be included in ocean temperature change analysis!'
'Guy Callendar excluded CO2 readings taken outside sources of major emissions from his analysis of atmospheric CO2 changes over time! Fraud! The massively inflated local readings must be included!'
Et cetera. The same crazy argument comes up over and over again. If we just include enough provably erroneous data this whole global warming thing would go away.
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tt_tiara at 20:45 PM on 26 June 2014The History of Climate Science
I needed an explaination for the dynamics of the interglacials and found it here. Thanks...
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Kevin C at 19:51 PM on 26 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
Note that the biggest upward adjustment appears to be - you guessed it - 1998. i.e. the adjustments have contributed to the apparent hiatus. That's partly an optical illusion due to 1998 being an extremum, but Zeke's land-only graph with differences here suggests that it is genuine.
It may be worth a look to see where the differences are combing from geographically, and see what a comparison with the more complete Berkeley and Hadley data show.
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bratisla at 18:36 PM on 26 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
The reemergence of this meme was to be expected : the argument "there is a pause" cannot be held out anymore, so they have to attack the record or say "it's natural variability because of El Nino".
Goddard chose the former, because he is deep entrenched in conspiration theorism. Expect other sites to choose the later (for example Curry).
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TScanlon at 18:35 PM on 26 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
Nice one, Dana. Added this as a rebuttal to both articles in rbutr. Onr of the others added is from Monbiot who wrote about Booker's inability to get anything right.
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Philip Shehan at 14:02 PM on 26 June 2014The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Thank you Dikran Marsupial and KR.
KR, I saw your comment at Jo Nova and replied there before proceeding here.
If you read the whole thread, you will see that I had my suspicions that autocorrelation was the source of the problem.
I also looked at your links to your previous discussion on Jo Nova.
I too had a sense of déjà vu as you put the arguments about statistical significance and the usual replies. In fact those from "The Griss" were a cut and paste job of the kinds of tirades of abuse he indulges in.
Odd that we have not crossed paths on this before but you like me are probably only an occasional contributor over there. Very nice to have some back up though. It can be very lonely trying to discuss science in a civil manner with the “skeptics” and it requires a very thick skin.
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wili at 10:31 AM on 26 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26A
Another important study out this week:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v510/n7506/full/nature13456.html
And an article on it:
LINKIn short, Greenland, like WAIS, is much closer to a major tipping point than we had thought.
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened link.
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Tom Curtis at 10:08 AM on 26 June 2014Resources and links documenting Tol's 24 errors
I just noticed that the "24 errors" PDF reproduces the number 17904 three times in succession in table 1, column 4, each time corresponding to a different percentage. Presumably the second to occurences are errors that you may want to correct.
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KR at 04:37 AM on 26 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
As I once commented on a contrarian site, in a blog post decrying temperature corrections:
It could be argued that it’s better to look at raw temperature data than data with these various adjustments for known biases. It could also be argued that it’s worth not cleaning the dust and oil off the lenses of your telescope when looking at the stars. I consider these statements roughly equivalent, and (IMO) would have to disagree.
The blog authors were, predictably, displeased by that comment. When the corrections are removing errors, and increasing the accuracy of your data, the contrarian preference for raw data is a choice for inaccuracy. And decrying those corrections says "conspiracy theorist" in large type.
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dmcnaugh15 at 03:47 AM on 26 June 2014Global warming conspiracy theorist zombies devour Telegraph and Fox News brains
Thank you for this post. A climate denying friend of mine recently submitted to me the telegraph article, as evidence against global warming. With a quick google search, it was clear that Tony Heller and Christopher Booker were fringe, anti-science bloggers, but I didn't have a good direct argument against the evidence they submitted. This post helped with that. Thumbs up guys!
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John Hartz at 01:42 AM on 26 June 2014Why we care about the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming
ubrew12 @#2:
Paul Krugman's take on Henry Paulson Jr.'s New York Times Op-ed, The Coming Climate Crash is instructive:
"Given the state of U.S. politics today, climate action is entirely dependent on Democrats, With a Democrat in the White House, we got some movement through executive action; if Democrats eventually regain the House, there could be more. If Paulson believes that he can support Republicans while still pushing for climate action, he’s just delusional."
The Loneliness of the Non-Crazy Republican by Paul Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal, New York Times, June 22, 2014
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KR at 01:05 AM on 26 June 2014The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Philip Shehan - I've added a comment on the JN thread to that regard. And noted to Vic Gallus that I've told him this before, only to be ignored.
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KR at 00:29 AM on 26 June 2014The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Philip Shehan - The difference is indeed, as Dikran points out, due to autocorrelation. The assumptions made in a basic ordinary least squares fit (OLS) such as in MicroSoft Office are of data with uncorrelated white noise, where there is no memory, where each successive value will have a variation defined only by the probability distribution function of that white noise.
Climate, on the other hand, demonstrates considerable autocorrelation, which could be considered as memory or inertia, wherein a warm(cold) month is quite likely to be followed by another warm(cold) month - due to limits on how fast the climate energy content can change. This means that noise or short term variation deviating from the underlying trend can take some time to return to that underlying trend - and not just randomly flip to the opposite value, bracketing the trend.
Therefore determining the trend under autocorrelation requires more data, meaning a higher trend uncertainty for any series than would be seen with white noise. The more autocorrelation is present, the higher the uncertainty, as it becomes less clear whether a deviation is due to some underlying trend change or to a persistent variation.
Again, as Dikran notes, the methods section of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 describe how the autocorrelation of temperature data is computed and (as described on the calculator page) applied in the SkS trend calculator.
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kmalpede at 00:25 AM on 26 June 2014Why we care about the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming
In New York, Oct. 2-Oct 26, Theater Three Collaborative will be producing a play "Extreme Whether" that tells the story of the attacks on American climate scientists, in an engaging fictional way. Can art help? I'm not so sure.
It feels more and more to me that Naomi Klein is correct. The deniers understand that free-market capitalsim may be at stake here, and are perfectly willing to sacrifice a liveable climate for $.
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JARWillis at 22:28 PM on 25 June 2014Why we care about the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming
This is all very well and of course important, but only underlines how ludicrous it is to quibble about the exact scale of the overwhelming scientific consensus telling us we have to act now to mitigate a terrible risk.
Sensible people hit the brake before they hit the wall, even when they are unsure what they have seen is a wall. And especially when they have a car full of children. To deliberately undermine attempts to protect against risks at either of these scales is beyond my comprehension.
Ask these quibblers at what level of consensus they would join the general call for action.
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Dikran Marsupial at 20:14 PM on 25 June 2014The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
I suspect at least part of the problem is that the SkS trend calculator correctly takes the autocorrelation of the data into account instead of performing ordinary least squares without this correction. This makes the error bars wider to reflect the fact that there is less information in an autocorrelated time-series than there is in an uncorrelated time series of the same length.
Note the trend calculator gives the following note: "Data: (For definitions and equations see the methods section of Foster and Rahmstorf, 2011)", so if Vic really wants to know what is causing the difference, he should probably start by reading the paper that explains how it works.
See also section titled "Uncertainty increases with autocorrelation" above
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MA Rodger at 19:35 PM on 25 June 2014New study improves measurements of the warming oceans
Terranova @1&4.
Further to the previous commenters, if you read the paper's abstract and understand its implications, you would note the error in OHC measurement being discussed amounts to "a global average of ~0.01°–0.025°C, ~1–2.5 × 1022 J," values which are large but a factor of 10 smaller than the rise in OHC that has been recorded in recent years.
Thus you are wrong when you say @1 "In fact, the study shows the uncertainty in temperature measurements in either direction and at different depths and different latitudes. They ... do not infer ... that the oceans are warming." Or do you consider that the authors of the paper are ignorant of the size of increase in OHC?
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Philip Shehan at 19:26 PM on 25 June 2014The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
I often use Kevin C’s trend calculator when discussing statistical significance on “skeptic” blogs.
This regularly attracts comments boiling down to the assertion that anything appearing on SkS must be rubbish, although I give reasons as to why I find it credible.
On Jo Nova’s blog Vic G Gallus has provided an argument which is thoughtful and backed by calculations. His argument is that the confidence limits returned by the trend calculator are too large.
I would very much like Kevin’s opinion on this.
Vic has said that he is happy for me to put his case .
Here are some of Vic’s points:
For the GISS data from 2000 using a free product on the web ZunZun (you can use Excel if you have the ToolPack or just type the equations in yourself.) For the function y=Mx+C
C = -1.3189290142200617E+01
std err: 1.90197E+01
t-stat: -3.02426E+00
p-stat: 2.87675E-03
95% confidence intervals: [-2.17979E+01, -4.58064E+00]
M = 6.8552826863844353E-03
std err: 4.72102E-06
t-stat: 3.15506E+00
p-stat: 1.89629E-03
95% confidence intervals: [2.56634E-03, 1.11442E-02]Coefficient Covariance Matrix
[ 1.34458894e+03 -6.69891142e-01]
[ -6.69891142e-01 3.33749638e-04]0.07±0.04 °C/decade and not 0.07 ±0.15 °C/decade (FFS)
Using GISS data from 1999, it comes out to be 0.097 ±0.04 °C/decade. I checked the coefficient using Excel and it was 0.097.
A comment from me:
Vic,
I had a suspicion of one possible cause of the differences in the error margin output but thought it would take some time to check on so left it until now, but alas when I go to your links, the first fails and the second is not helpful.
So I will pose this thought:
Looking at the output figures in your post and the blurb on microsoft toolpack:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214076
I notice that standard error is mentioned.
The algorithm I am using outputs the error margin as 2 standard deviations, (2σ).
This is the usual marker of “statistical significance”
Note that standard error is smaller than the standard deviation. So a standard error of 0.04 would convert to a 2 sigma value of greater than 0.08.
This would save you from being kicked to death by skeptics who would be outraged at the suggestion that their beloved pause was in fact statistically significant warming, and your GISS value since 1999 of
0.097 ±0.04 °C/decade (one standard error)
would be compatible with that of Kevin C’s algorithm:
Trend: 0.099 ±0.138 °C/decade (2σ)
Vic replies:
Look at the output.
The standard error is stated and it is less than the standard deviation. The latter is not stated but the 95% confidence intervals which equate to 2xSD are.
I have calculated this by putting the equations into Excel as well ( I do not have the ToolPack). The 10-15 year linear regressions for a number of examples and they were in the range 0.04-0.08.
The entire thread begins here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/weekend-unthreaded-39/#comment-1493093
Looking forward to a response from Kevin.
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ubrew12 at 16:20 PM on 25 June 2014Why we care about the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming
"[Convincing conservatives that AGW is serious]... can be achieved with informed messages... coming from sources that conservatives can trust." Think about that: 'that conservatives can trust'. This clearly does not include scientists. We need to ask 'why' it doesn't, because this is a serious problem moving forward. Science denial can doom a nation for a century or more. Consider Asia between the 18th and 20th centuries. The truth may be inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as Admiral Perry steaming into Tokyo Harbor, or the indignities that culminated in the Boxer rebellion. Paulson's article is welcome, but he's a Banker who oversaw the finance system bailout of 2008. Is he really 'what it takes' for a conservative to change his mind on climate? For some of us, since 2008, bankers have got credibility issues of their own when speaking on Finance, much less Climate.
A deep suspicion of Science has been growing in Western Nations for several decades. It's conclusions conflict with unrestrained commerce on several fronts, not just on Climate, and a concerted effort undertaken to paint Scientists as untrustworthy. Religion has often been enlisted to support this effort. We need to keep in mind that Asia learned its lessons of the past, and will gleefully surpass us if we discourage the Science-minded among us.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:29 PM on 25 June 2014An externally-valid approach to consensus messaging
mancan18,
I fully support striving to help others better understand of the basics. However, some of those people may challenge the basics about CO2 because they are aware of the "lack of significant warming of the global average surface temperatures since 1998 even though CO2 has continued to increase". That is when you need to be prepared to explain the added points I mentioned. There are many good presentations of those added points in the artricles posted on this site.
There are also discussions about the "sensitivity" of the global average surface temperature to increasing CO2 levels, how much impact a doubling of the CO2 levels would create. Some people may prefer to believe that no more warming will occur even if signifcant amounts of additional CO2 are released because the increased CO2 since 1998 has not increased the annual global average surface temperature. I know that the averages of each decade continue to go up. And I know many other good explanations for the observed global average temperatures in 1998 and since then. What I shared should help you explain why what they prefer to believe is unbelievable.
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