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John Hartz at 22:40 PM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
As documented in a recent Time magazine article*, there is a growing green energy revolution already underway in the U.S. in the absence of either a ntional "cap and trade" system, or a national carbon tax. The belief that the imposition of either option will not accelerate what's already happening in the energy marketplace is a tad disingenuous in my opinion.
*The Green Revolution Is Here by Michael Grunwald, TIME, June 5, 2014
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John Hartz at 22:15 PM on 14 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
MThompson: You state:
Climates are defined by an ensemble of chaotic processes. Temperature is simply a measure of one aspect of these processes. Chaos, as the name implies, is not controllable.
First, please document the sources that you have used to arrive at your assertions.
Second, please review the SkS Glossry for the definitions of "climate" and "temperature." The definitions contained in the SkS Glossary are taken directly from the IPCC and are the commonly accepted defitions used by climate scientists throughout the world.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 18:52 PM on 14 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
MThompson
" Climates are defined by an ensemble of chaotic processes".
There are some important insights around this that limit the extent of the 'chaos'.
Let me use an analogy.
I have a swimming pool in my garden. The average water level of the pool is set by how much water is in the pool. From time to time my family like to use the pool. Various people get in and out and the displacement of their bodies varies the water level somewhat. And they like splashing around making lots of waves.
If I examine the water level in my pool it is extremely chaotic. But it is a bounded chaos. A wave that is higher here can only occur because a trough there is lower. The average of this chaos is actually tightly constrained by how much water is in the pool.
The seeming chaos is actually a small amount of variation around a baseline that is extremely non-chaotic.
That baseline (how much water is in the pool) is Climate. The bounded chaos (the waves on the top) is Weather.
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Steve Bloom at 17:35 PM on 14 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
I believe the main significance of the geothermal heat paper is that there will be a bit more water under the glaciers in the warmer areas. That could act to reduce friction and thus increase flow. The last sentence of the papers says just that:
"Our results further suggest that the subglacial water system of Thwaites Glacier may be responding to heterogeneous and temporally variable basal melting driven by the evolution of rift-associated volcanism and support the hypothesis that both heterogeneous geothermal flux and local magmatic processes could be critical factors in determining the future behavior of the WAIS."
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dana1981 at 15:29 PM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
Trevor - same comment as me @5. I don't follow what you're saying.
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dana1981 at 15:28 PM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
dhugalf @1 - I don't follow your argument. As Chris G notes, a carbon tax will rise fossil fuel energy costs. Hence consumers will shift their purchasing decisions toward low-carbon alternatives. Those who fund and invest in energy projects won't put their money into technologies that are assured of becoming more expensive every year.
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Chris G at 13:45 PM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
Trevor, this article does move past the minutia of the science. Rest assured there will be resistance to any plan put forth by anyone.
There are three broad alternatives for mitigation: regulations, cap and trade, and carbon tax. Regulation and cap&trade place limits on production and would complicated to administer, and lead to energy price spikes during high energy demand years, and limited incentive to reduce CO2 production on low demand years. In contrast, a gradually increasing, revenue-neutral tax&rebate plan applies a constant and predictable pressure on the market.
OK, what's your plan?
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Chris G at 13:38 PM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
Dhugalf@1,
The cost of energy feeds into everything. A tax on CO2 emissions raises the cost of getting energy from fossil fuels relative to getting energy from other sources.
When electric companies need to increase or replace infrastructure, and they can predict a rising cost of fossil fuel use, why would that not affect their decision about what to build?
When consumers are buying goods, the goods produced with less fossil fuel will be cheaper than those produced with less. Why would people not choose to buy the less expensive goods?
Without the dividend, the government would get to choose which renewables to subsidize. Representatives from regions which have uranium will propose nuclear, those from windy regions will propose wind, and those from deserts will propose solar. Do you really trust politicians to choose the most cost effective combination?
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Trevor_S at 11:26 AM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
I see mentioned on occasion that the site is about the Science of AGW/ACC or whatever moniker you wish to use and yet from time to time an economic piece comes up in dealing with mitigation.
I completly disagree with the aproach of a CO2e emissions tax being anything but smoke and mirrors, ultimately futile and bad policy to persue (it doesn't even begin to consider embeded emissions fo example). Does anyone think the newly announced US reductions (tiny as they are) will still be in place if a GOP candidate becomes the POTUS ? I refer you to the Australian federal election outcome last year for some idea of what will happen if you don't drag the people along first. Just not sure if this site is the appropriate place for me to engage in those discussions if the constraints mentioned in the first paragraph are in place ?
It would be good to move the debate past bickering over the miutae of the science and into discussing mitigation (or not)
Moderator Response:[PS] Your point is made but runs close to edge of politics. Please note our comments policy and make sure you comply
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dhugalf at 10:36 AM on 14 June 2014In charts: how a revenue neutral carbon tax cuts emissions, creates jobs, grows the economy
Okay, but how does this put pressure on anyone to change?
Seems like zero gain for a bunch of effort.
The point of a carbon price is to push consumer demand for change by increasing prices faster than resource scarcity does... This fails to deliver that.
The side benefit is to use revenue to encourage renewable energy adoption.... This fails to deliver that.
So why bother?
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grindupBaker at 10:21 AM on 14 June 2014Scientists in focus – Lyman and Johnson explore the rapidly warming oceans
@Austrartsua #1 If I take 0.00016 as a rough estimate of average ocean thermal expansion coefficient weighted by more warming in upper half, then I compute 0.111 mm SLR per Zettajoule, so 1.52 mm/yr 2000-2012 then 2.82 mm SLR for 2013. However, Dr. Trenberth mentions that ice melt gives ~50x as much SLR bang for the heating buck as thermal expansion. I compute ice melt would yield 9.18 mm SLR per Zettajoule, which is 83x my thermal expansion estimate. Of course, the heat must reach the ice to accomplish this. Peter Sinclair mentioned 624 Gt/yr global ice melt now in some video (I had previously thought it was 300-400) which would be 1.72 mm SLR. My point is that ice melt is now approximately half of the SLR signal and will increase to an overwhelming proportion over the next several decades and centuries so attempting to measure OHC increase by SLR increase will become increasingly problematic and unneccessary in my opinion, it's better just to stay with the actual measurements, especially if the people who control the money eventually start dumping lots more CTDs in the oceans.
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MThompson at 21:24 PM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
In continuation of the insightful comments 2, 4,5, 5 and 7, If we can warm the globe by accident then we can most certainly cool it on purpose. The fundamental question is: “Should we?” There have been a number of proposals made over the years to reduce global warming by reducing the sunlight that arrives at the surface of the planet. The real problem is that even if we can all agree on and return to the “correct” global temperature that is no guarantee that we will achieve a specific climate. Climates are defined by an ensemble of chaotic processes. Temperature is simply a measure of one aspect of these processes. Chaos, as the name implies, is not controllable.
As for cooling the sea enough to halt collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet, that concept is not well thought-out. The seawater beneath the ice shelf is hot, perhaps a few degrees centigrade. Any ice re-formed beneath that is by congelation, where heat is lost through the overbearing ice to the atmosphere above. Transport of heat through a thick layer of insulating ice is a slow process, and reducing the temperature of the ocean even slower. Furthermore, active volcanoes recently discovered in the Thwaites glacier basin are significant sources of heat that will resist any amount of ocean cooling. The only practical approach to save the ice sheet is to increase snowfall from above and force the water back out to sea. Artificial snow making on a continental scale will require a huge amount of energy. What would we choose: nuclear or wind?P.S. Thanks to commenters 7 and 8 for references. I willendeavor to educate myself, time permitting.
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MA Rodger at 19:54 PM on 13 June 2014Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain
Response @4&5.
The cherry-picked number,Δ(Arctic Sea Ice Volume maximum 2007 & 2014), described as "a very small amount, far less than 1000 cubic km (PIOMAS)" is 750 km3, which over a seven year period and in the units used in the graph @5 represents a trend of -1.07 (1000 km3/Decade). It isn't a very ripe cherry.
The comparison presented @4, that of Arctic Sea Ice loss being allegedly not "on the order of 'three times as much as' in recent data," it is a comparison with Antarctic Sea Ice gain. Antarctic Sea Ice Volumes are not as well understood as their northern equivalents, but Holland et al (2014) suggest an Antarctic Sea Ice Volume trend of +0.3 (1000 km3/Decade) for 1992-2010. Ironically, that is about a third the size of the cherry-picked measure of ice loss in the Arctic.
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Kevin C at 18:00 PM on 13 June 2014Scientists in focus – Lyman and Johnson explore the rapidly warming oceans
Actually, I think Austrartsua's question arises from a more basic problem, arising from a lack of clarity on our part. When we say more heat has been going into the oceans, what we are actually saying is that a greater proportion has been going into the ocean.
Because the oceans already take up the vast bulk of the heat, a significant drop in the amount of heat being taken up by the atmosphere leads to a negligible increase in the amount of heart taken up by the oceans. Thus we would not expect to see a change in the rate of sea level rise.
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Tom Curtis at 14:25 PM on 13 June 2014Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain
Jetfuel @4, let me see...
1) Use of short time span for comparison? Only eight years of a 30 plus year record used. Check!
2) Use of previous record breaking year as start point for comparison? 2007 record year used. Check!
Well, your certainly playing from the denier play sheet for bad science.
Trying to turn an April PIOMAS which is less than the trend value into evidence that the trend is reducing certainly shows gumption, but surely you must know that such unethical distortions of the facts will get called on this site:
Moderator Response:[PS] Jetfuel, please ackowledge that you understand Tom's point. If you dont understand, then more explanation is likely to be offered. If we get a "look, squirrel" instead, then your posts will be deleted.
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scaddenp at 14:02 PM on 13 June 2014Scientists in focus – Lyman and Johnson explore the rapidly warming oceans
See here. For breakdown on the components to sealevel rise, see here.
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austrartsua at 13:54 PM on 13 June 2014Scientists in focus – Lyman and Johnson explore the rapidly warming oceans
If all this extra heat is going into the oceans, shouldn't we expect to see accelerated rates of sea level rise? Has this been happening?
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - Sea level rise over the last two decades shows that the so-called 'pause'; is non-existent. Cazenave et al (2014) demonstrates that, once you allow for the effects of year-to-year variability of water mass storage on land, sea level has risen at a near-steady rate through the 1990's (3.1mm per year) and 2000's (3.3mm per year).
Acceleration is not evident for this period because sea level rise increased quickly during the early 2000's, slowed between 2004-2008, and has sped up again since then. This likely due to the observed global dimming during the early to middle 2000's.
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chriskoz at 13:43 PM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
Whoever follows tha fate of CT in Aus shuld read that:
Taxing the truth on carbon pricing
Several swifties have been pulled on the electorate by both sides, but one of the more amazing is the idea that the Coalition will in fact scrap the carbon tax. A surprising number of people from both sides seem to believe that.
As a simple fact: the government intends to maintain a carbon tax – it's just being disguised in general revenue.
The $2.5 billion for the vague "direct action" spend is raised by taxation, not being printing plastic notes.
I'd add my personal $.02 to that: the only difference is that the money raised by "direct action" goes into the pockets of the moguls who support the current government, rather than to the pockets of the general public as Jim Hansen envisaged ideal CT should work.
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jetfuel at 13:00 PM on 13 June 2014Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain
The data presented above is outdated by a few years. The combined anomoly of NH and SH sea ice is trending upward since 2007. As electric rates have risen 40% over the last 7 years, justification has thinned more than the ice has.
However, the Arctic ice volume 2014 peak is lower than the 2007 peak, but by a very small amount, far less than 1000 cubic km (PIOMAS). I'm not seeing the Arctic sea ice decrease on the order of 'three times as much as' in recent data. Things are different than in July 2012. This year has seen the remaining Arctic ice exceed seven other recent years just since April 22nd (Charctic), due to slow spring 2014 melt and the remaining Arctic ice is only 5.4% less than this time in 1994. As a comparison, 1994 was a very cold winter as I moved from S. Fla to Indiana at the start of that deadly winter. The temp at my apartment hit -44F without the wind chill on MLK day. I considered the possibility that the cold air over the great plains that day contracted the U.S. such as to have caused the Oakland earthquake that same day. As I recently have read about ocean volume thermal expansion due to surface temp increase, it might not have been so far fetched a thought.
Moderator Response:[PS] This moderator is struggling to decide whether you actually cant understand that cherrypicking and short trends are not science or whether you are trolling. You have been called on this before.
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scaddenp at 11:34 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
Review of carbon-neutral cement in Nature. Steel remains a much tougher problem.
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scaddenp at 11:17 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
We are talking long time frames here. If we reduce greenhouse gases, we eventually cool the climate and eventually cool the ocean.
Vaughan and Spouge 2002 put risk of collapse in 200 years at 5% though Katz and Wooster 2010 put it higher. Neither are assuming linear dynamics that I can see. Coping with 4m of extra SLR over 5 centuries is obviously easier than coping with that over 2 centuries, but I am not aware of papers that suggest you could that in 1 century.
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wili at 10:42 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
MT @#2: I believe Monbiot in his book "Heat" discusses ways to make concrete without generate the enormous amounts of CO2 that it usually creates. Is that what you were thinking of?
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wili at 10:39 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
scaddenp, no, no rider on that one. It's unstoppable. It's in the process of sliding off the continent. Even if we could 'cool the climate' somehow (which we can't), we certainly can't cool the oceans (nor stop a glacier already in freefall from sliding into the sea). It is warm ocean water that is undermining the glacier (helped along a bit by some geo-thermal warming from below. )
Good question on how muc it changes slr by 2100. Not a lot of clear info on that that I could find. It certainly means that we can be even less sure than before about when the tipping point will come that will shift this monster into rapid-disintegration mode. The estimate of 200 years or more was based on the current rate continued linearly into the future. But things are very UN-likely to proceed linearly, since the processes at work are feedbacks.
But perhaps I misunderstood something about your brief post. If so, please do elaborate on your intended meaning.
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scaddenp at 09:05 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
"disintegration of the west Antarctic ice sheet is now unstoppable" I am fairly sure there should be a rider on that like "unstoppable unless we can cool the climate". In terms of cost though, it would depend on how fast it melted. At this stage, I dont think it changes estimates of sealevel rise by 2100 that much.
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jenna at 03:20 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
@chriskoz
Re; Gavin Schmidt's promotion. It's funny how there has been no official announcement at RealClimate.org though the news has been in the blogosphere since the beggining of the week.
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MThompson at 01:41 AM on 13 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
Regarding “Obama on Obama …”, it is to be understood that the U.S. as one of the top emitters of greenhouse gas, must take a leadership position and encourage the rest of the world to follow. President Obama’s plan is to reduce CO2 emission by 30 percent by 2030 and, if the rest of the world follows his lead, there might be measurable decrease in atmospheric CO2 by then. It is concerning that such reduction may not have a large effect on the net global temperature increase by 2100. There must be an incremental approach, and more aggressive targets must be established. One of the confounding factors is that since the disintegration of the west Antarctic ice sheet is now unstoppable, a large amount of energy will be required to relocate populations at risk of being submerged. Much of our infrastructure relies on production and transportation of concrete and steel. Is anyone aware of CO2 budget estimates for relocating a large fraction of the world’s population? Please share it here. Also, interesting would be proposals for low CO2 infrastructure that would certainly mitigate the damage of relocation.
Moderator Response:[JH] Good questions. Have you done any Google searches on this matter? If so, what have you found to date?
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chriskoz at 20:35 PM on 12 June 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
gavin from RC is stepping into the shoes of Jim Hansen
This news can not be missed by any climate science blogger, so a must read for everybody here.
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scaddenp at 08:10 AM on 12 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
Saw the Watt's headline. Skeptical about the vast body of scientific evidence and not in the slightest skeptical about a misreading of a paper. Or just ordinary clutching of any "its not us" straw.
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John Hartz at 00:21 AM on 12 June 2014Resources and links documenting Tol's 24 errors
MA Rodgers is spot on! Within the world of academia, Tol's draft paper has verey little value and does not merit being published in any reputable scientific journal.
As evidenced by his responses to valid criticisms of his paper, Tol does not appear to care about how his paper fares in academia.
What then is the value of Tol's paper?
That question can only be answered within the context of the seemingly never-ending propaganda war being waged by the Climate Denial Spin Machine.
The value of Tol's paper is that it provides fodder for climate deiers to use in their rentlentless vendetta against Cook el (2013).
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DSL at 23:07 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
I imagine the paid opinion-shapers are picking up on the word "elevated" and turning it from a spatial reference into a temporal reference. I don't have the stomach right now to go look.
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michael sweet at 22:31 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
This calculation was posted at RealClimate by Meow:
"Alright, let’s do some basic physics. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, geothermal flux of 200 mW/m^2 over the entire Thwaites catchment, and also that all of that heat goes into melting the overlying ice (as opposed to, say, heating it to the melting point). The Thwaites catchment has an area of ~189,000 km^2. Water ice has a heat of fusion of 333.55 kJ/kg. A 200 mW (=0.2 J/s) flux is 6.3 MJ/yr (0.2*3600*24*365). That flux will, thus, melt 18.9 kg of ice/yr. Since the flux is distributed over a m^2, the melt rate will be 18.9 kg/m^2/yr, or 3.6 Gt/yr for the entire catchment.
The actual melt rate for the Thwaites, exclusive of calving, is ~70 Gt/yr (Depoorter et al, doi:10.1038/nature12567, http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~lenae101/pubs/Depoorter2013.pdf , at Fig. 1)."
So, even assuming a geothermal flux almost 2x that in Schroeder, and that all of it melts ice, geothermal flux contributes, at most, 3.6/70=5.1% of Thwaites’s meltwater, and probably much less"
There are some other informed comments about this paper. It appears that the estimated heat flux is 2-4 times higher than average in this area. I remember having seen a calculation of the effects of a volcanic erruption in Antarctia several years ago (sorry no cite). It also melted a km3 or 2 of ice, no big deal in the long run. Keep in mind how big the basin is and how thick the ice is.
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MA Rodger at 21:50 PM on 11 June 2014Resources and links documenting Tol's 24 errors
Towards the end of the post, the link to the "full list of 24 errors identified by the experts reviewers at ERL" also provides links to the Tol's paper as sent to ERL and a later draft. Although there will be changes in the paper evemtually published in Energy Policy, it is very helpful to understanding the nature of Tol (2014). I was not happy discussing a paper in so much detail when, bar the odd quote, it is entirely hidden behind a paywall.
Now seeing the nature of the beast, I find it incredible. From its incompatible title to its strange list of Acknowledgements (a list that includes Dana Nuccitelli, "Willard" and in the draft version "wottsupwiththatblog.") I have to say, this is not a publishable paper.
As far as the 24 errors are concerned, Tol may take an embattled win on one or more of them and a few would end up as score draws, but the majority of the criticisms of Tol (2014) seem well founded and also include fundamental problems for Tol (2014).
But the most fundamental question for Tol is "What is Tol (2014) trying to say"?
Tol (2014) is not a "re-analysis" because that would present an alternative to the 97% as its main finding. Ditto if this paper was mainly concerned with identifying errors within Cook et al (2013). If the thrust of the paper were the inadequacy of method, it would then be less bothered with the specific result - but a whole whole lot more bothered that Tol (2014) demonstrates on how to achieve an adequate method. Tol's paper is polemical but for no justifiable academic reason, and this is magnified by the content of the Abstract.But why end there. Tol goes well beyond the substance of his paper when he tells us that, although there is "very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct," for Cook et al (2013) "theirs is not a consensus on the causes of climate change." And anyway "consensus is irrelevant in science," and "has no academic value," because it "serves a political purpose, rather than a scientific one," at least in this case. Yet in this case, this particular consensus, "it is well-known" already and "it does not matter whether the exact number is 90% or 99.9%." And further, the alleged errors within Cook et al (2013) "may strengthen the belief that all is not well in climate research." So don't do this consensus enumerating stuff. Stick with the reviews of the literature itself. They already establish where science has got to on climate change."The IPCC fulfils this role."
That, I fear, is all argument for argument's sake. It is not useful to man nor beast. But I do see in it the sort of argument that somebody in denial would likely come out with. -
scaddenp at 19:11 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
Context here might help. 200mW/m2 is 4x average flux, but flux through an active volcanic area (eg the Taupo Volcanic Zone) is around 700. Thwaites is high in places but not extreme.
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bratisla at 18:32 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
I did a quick search for any evidence of geothermal flux temporal change, to no avail. What is known is that, of course, geothermal flux increases a lot when a magma bubble goes closer to the surface and triggers dyke creation - it comes with seismic long period events and increased hydrothermal activity. And using geothermal heat reservoir to produce heat or electricity "depletes" them, creating a "cold" bubble that can be replenished over time (a loooong time)
So, changes in geothermal flux are *possible*. Even on a 10 year timescale.
BUT. I may be wrong, but I do not see any natural mechanism other than a volcanic system reactivating under the glacier ; such a system should be detectable by an increase of LP events recorded by seismic stations. Otherwise geothermal flux should be quite stable, and therefore can not explain the *increase* of calving speed.
Nor can it explain the glacier front retreat. My 2 cents.
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scaddenp at 17:48 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
I agree it lubricate flow but moving back the grounding line? Alternative hypothesis - the observed warmer ocean is eroding the shelves and glacier ends. What seems most likely? Also consider that fluxes this high are very localized.
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Klapper at 15:53 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
@scaddenp #5:
If geothermal flux was increasing it could contribute to basal melt, which would in turn lubricate and accelerate flow. So you could make an argument that increases in geothermal flux could trigger increases in caving rate.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:49 PM on 11 June 2014Challenges in Constraining Climate Sensitivity: Should IPCC AR5’s Lower Bound Be Revised Upward?
Though the discussion needs to move beyond global average surface temperature as the main metric I would prefer to clarify that a global average surface temperature trend based on following average surface temperatures of longer time periods (like a rolling 30 year average) can still be meaningful. A longer time period can reasonably average in the many signficant but randomly fluctuating factors that can affect the global average surface temperature. The 30 year average in the GISTemp data has continued to rise through the past 15 years at a rate of over 0.15 degrees per decade. However, a longer time average could lead the delayers to claim te need to wait 30 more years before deciding if anthing conclusive has been proven. That would not be helpful.
SKS has presented other effective ways of showing the changes by including reasonable adjustments of global average surface temperature for the major variable influences.
The greatest benefit from the continued pursuit of even better way of integrating all the factors will be the improved ability to forecast things like expected regional weather to improve crop performance by better matching planting with the expected regional weather during the growing season, or the improved forecasting of the potential for significant regional weather related emergencies.
The more humanity is able to understand the way our amazing planet functions the easier it will be to develop a sustainable better future for all.
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WheelsOC at 14:00 PM on 11 June 2014Challenges in Constraining Climate Sensitivity: Should IPCC AR5’s Lower Bound Be Revised Upward?
"Nature As An Ensemble Member, Not An Ensemble Mean"
If this kind if thing were more widely known and understood, it might take some of the punch out of those "the models didn't predict the Pause!" posts that always swamp the comment threads of any news article about climate change.
Of course, it also helps to understand the difference between a model projection and a climate/weather FORECAST. That's a slightly broader issue, into which the data/ensemble difference can figure neatly.
Frankly I think the general public needs a simple primer on climate modeling, and why you can't just eyeball the typical ensemble mean graph and extract useful information without knowing how these things work. But this primer would have to be a mass-media, mainstream kind of thing that also reaches the audience demographics who need it most. We can't just trust to climate blogs and Youtube presentations to get the info where it needs to go, because self-selection is so very prevalent. Good luck getting Murdoch-owned networks to run such a segment.
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scaddenp at 13:56 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
Hmm. Those fluxes are quite high and they claim validation against ice drilling. I would expect volcanic fluxes to vary somewhat in time as well but to be highly localised. However, I dont think you could extend that to be the cause of rapid calving and ice-shelf loss.
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DSL at 13:20 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
I mean given what the report says it should be obvious that a time series on sub-glacial geothermal activity doesn't exist. This is a potential start to such measurement, and it's an important indicator that such activity is significant, but no one associated with this study has anywhere claimed that flux under WAIS is increasing or decreasing on the scale of climate, so no claims of "this instead of that" can be made.
If the WAIS is rapidly deteriorating, and the cause is increasing geothermal flux, what an remarkable event this is. When was the last time any major Antarctic glacier rapidly deteriorated as a result of such flux? Not in the last 1.5 million years, I'd wager.
That's not to dismiss the effect, of course. Flux may be constant, but it still plays a critical role in helping along the decline of the WAIS. This is quite bad news.
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wili at 12:59 PM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
So..."rather obvioustly"...nothing is obvious?
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DSL at 07:07 AM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
Rather obviously, the research says little about the trend in sub-glacial geothermal flux. Perhaps the trend has been negative over the last five hundred years. Perhaps positive. Perhaps the diminishing ice is allowing increased geothermal activity. The paper is really about a new method of determining sub-glacial geothermal flux.
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wili at 05:27 AM on 11 June 2014Ice picks: Five pieces of ice news revealing earth’s ice cover is in serious decline
Any chance you could also comment on this recent paper?: Dustin M. Schroeder, Donald D. Blankenship, Duncan A. Young, and Enrica Quartini, (2014), "Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet", PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1405184111
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/04/1405184111.abstract
I'm already seeing denialists jumping all over it, claiming it shows that GW is not responsible for any of the melt in Antarctica.
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citizenschallenge at 02:26 AM on 11 June 2014Resources and links documenting Tol's 24 errors
Good information. For what it's worth, I've reposted this along with some comments. :- )
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2014/06/richard-tols-big-mistake-or-malicious.html
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Tom Curtis at 01:46 AM on 11 June 2014Richard Tol accidentally confirms the 97% global warming consensus
Richard Tol has now published a response of sorts to the "24 errors". I say of sorts in that he merely responds in a single line, often with fairly straightforward falsehoods. As an example of the later, he responds to Error 22, ie, his claim that the trend in endorsements in Cook13 is due to a trend in composition by saying:
"C14 do not dispute key claim: C13 mistook trend in composition for trend in endorsement."
However, C14 explicitly state (and highlight in a side box) that:
"Additionally, the compositional changes in the abstracts occur halfway through the survey period, but the consensus shift was observed in the first 25% of the period. The shift in composition and the shift in consensus do not coincide, thus negating T14’s claim."
So, the 24 Errors document explicitly rejects Tol's claim, providing clear cut evidence for that rejection. I don't know whether Tol's straightforwardly false claim is a consequence of his reading no more of the document than section headings, or whether he does not care about the truth of the matter, and expects his supporters to care no more, so that a straight forward falsehood is all he needs. As a response to criticism, however, it is simply not good enough.
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Tom Curtis at 23:09 PM on 10 June 2014Richard Tol accidentally confirms the 97% global warming consensus
Meanwhile, returning to the actual topic, I have been running through the data and found a genuine error in Cook et al 2013. Specifically, in Cook13 it is claimed that initially "... 33% of endorsement ratings disagreed". In fact, a careful comparison of all first and second ratings shows that only 15.56% of first and second ratings for given papers disagreed. I presume the authors determined that figure as I did, by determining the number of 2nd ratings that disagreed with first ratings (or vice versa) and doubled it to allow that a disagreement between a second rating and first rating is also a disagreement between first and second ratings but did not double the denominator to allow for the fact that there were twice as many abstracts if both ratings are considered.
Given the detailed analysis of the paper performed by Tol, it is remarkable that he did not also check the initial disagreement rate and simply accepted the stated figure. Regardless, with the correct figure, the "error rate" drops from his (incorrectly calculated) 18.5% to 7.6%. That leads to an estimated final error rate of 1.43% (compared to Tol's 6.67%). Applying that error rate using Tol's demonstrably faulty method then results in a corrected consensus rate of 96.5% (compared to Tol's 91.4%).
So even if Tol's primary analysis were correct, rather than the absurdity it in fact is, his conclusions do not follow from the data he analyses.
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Composer99 at 23:02 PM on 10 June 2014Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
nickels was also resorting to a genuine fallacy of argument from authority - on the sole basis of nickels' asserted PhD, we were supposed to take nickels' criticisms of climate modelling at their word.
To which the response is, not going to happen.
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Tom Curtis at 22:54 PM on 10 June 2014Richard Tol accidentally confirms the 97% global warming consensus
chriskoz @28, regardless of RobH's assertions, the article did in fact appear in the Australian, and the Australian is certainly published by one of the constituent bodies, ie, News Ltd. Further, publication of this sort of biased, and poorly researched story on climate science is par for the course for the Australian and Grahame Lloyd. Indeed, the Australian is so bad that Tim Lambert, prior to becoming unfortunately inactive, was up to number 83 in his series on "The Australian's war on science". The Australian's treatment of climate science also features heavily in Robert Manne's astute criticism of that publication (very worth buying by any Australian citizen or student of the press).
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chriskoz at 21:49 PM on 10 June 2014Richard Tol accidentally confirms the 97% global warming consensus
Tom@27,
Thanks for your link to APC. Re your quotes about principles, they only apply to the constituent bodies of APC. Incidentally, I looked at APC complain page and found out this:
The only major newspaper which is not published by a constituent body is The West Australian. [...] The Council may also consider complaints about material published by other publishers. But, unlike constituent bodies, those publishers are not under a legal obligation to cooperate with the Council or to publish any adjudication by it.
Note the assertion by RobH@25:
Although appearing in the West Australian, this item would never appear in the The Australian
I don't read Australian so i'm not sure what's going on here but based on the above,it now appears obvious that this article by Graham Lloyd, the Sydney-based env editor, was deliberately placed in West Australian, so as to avoid the adjudication by APC.
But that does not preclude anyone, like me and you from making a complain to the publisher itself. I remember having sent couple complains to newspapers like smh or HP about their climate science contents. In each time, the response was positive and the contents fixed. What makes you think that the Australian ignores the rulings of APC? Have you sent them any comments/complains in the past (like I did to smh) but were ignored?
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CBDunkerson at 21:29 PM on 10 June 2014President Obama gets serious on climate change
Hi vrooomie.
Yes, that's from the United Nations development goals site.
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