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Comments 37451 to 37500:

37451. Rob Honeycutt at 01:57 AM on 27 March 2014
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972
       

       adrian smits @5...  Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you must be referring to this web page here. The full quote that you post is also found there.

       What you would find if you pushed just a little further are a few interesting elements to this story. First, the graph presented on that page do not come from the paper that is being quoted. The paper doesn't specifically compare N. Sweden temperature to N. Hemisphere temps. They've pulled a trick on you by adjusting the two Y-axis scales to fit the message they want to deliver to you. Note the left axis applies to Korallgrotten series of oxygen isotope readings and the left side applies to NH temperature.

       The graph originates from this website called CO2 Science, which is funded by the the fossil fuel industry and run by Dr Craig Idso. The CO2 Science site has gone through and reinterpreted peer reviewed research, added their own made up graphs, that generally do not agree with the actual findings of the actual research. And if you don't believe me, just pick one paper on their site, email the lead author and ask them if they agree with CO2 Science's interpretation. I've done this and in each case the scientists do not agree with the re-interpretations of their research.

       The actual paper this is derived from is: Sundqvist et al 2010. Stable isotopes in a stalagmite from NW Sweden document environmental changes over the past 4000 years. 

       This research is limited to speliotherm data for Northern Sweden.

37452. CBDunkerson at 21:00 PM on 26 March 2014
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972
       

       Merlin5by5, while your argument about carbon isotopes is off-topic and mostly incoherent (i.e. nothing you said addresses the fact that fossil fuels, and thus power plant emissions, have different isotope signatures than growing plants), you can find an explanation of carbon isotopes (and various other proofs that humans are responsible for rising CO2 levels) here.

37453. Tom Curtis at 19:39 PM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       A slight error in my post @12.  Regression against coastal temperatures suggests normalized hurricane damages will be approximately 4 times greater, not 3 times as claimed in that post.

37454. Tom Curtis at 19:30 PM on 26 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Gary Marsh @37, your initial premise is that there has been a reduction in plant mass.  That is shown to be false by the IPCC data.  If you now want to alter your premise by detailing water content of different sorts of plant mass, you need to actually provide detailed information on the relative water contents of different forms of plants, plus the relative growth or loss of those different plants.  You may then get an argument up that supports some measurable impact on sea level rise, (though I doubt it).  But if you don't do that legwork, you have nothing to discuss.  Your theory becomes "If all these complex and unmeasured factors come out just right, then changes in the biosphere are increasing sea level through loss of water."  To which is is sufficient to respond, "If they come out wrong, then you have the opposite, or no, effect".  The later is far more probably sight unseen than the former.  

37455. Gary Marsh at 19:22 PM on 26 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Tom Curtis  - It appears that the information you've provided from the IPCC is refferring to Carbon and CO2. The scenario I proposed for consideration concerns the direct transfer of H2O/water, it being a quicker and more direct contributer to sea level rise when it is released via deforestation, tropical and otherwise. I appreciate there are an enourmouse amount of variables to be considered when attempting to quantify the water holding capacity of the myriad types of forest, especially when factoring in attendent animal life from microble to mammal, the subterranian trunk and canopy and micro atmospherical climate which will hold significant quantities of water when forested and much less when deforested! add all these factors together and there will be a net movement of WATER. Although related this is a different process from the movement of Carbon, certainly it would appear to have a much more immediate effect. So again I ask if anyone can show me the data or studies if they even exist.

       Moderator Response:

       (Rob P) - You were provided with peer-reviewed literature in your comment @ 27, however you have not bothered to read any of it, or make any attempt to understand it.

       There has been a net growth in total biomass of land-plants over the recent decade, hence the uptake of carbon and water by plants has likewise grown.

       You are now in slogan-chanting territory and any further repetition of this meme, without any supporting evidence, will be deleted

37456. Tom Curtis at 19:20 PM on 26 March 2014
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972
       

       Merlin5by5 @6:

       "... the exact period (1995-2010), that the IPCC admitted showed NO statistical warming"

       1)  First, is it possible for statistics to warm?  I did not think so, and so do not think it is worthy of comment (or meaningful to say).  You apparently disagree.  So, over that interval, did your calculus warm or cool?  What about your geometry?

       Perhaps, just possibly, what you really meant to say was that "the warming trend from 1995-2010 was not statistically significant".  That is not the same as "not warming".  Every statistically significant warming trend can be decomposed into smaller parts, none of which have a statistically significant warming trend.  That carries no implication as to whether or not the overall trend was a warming trend or not.  Restating "the warming trend from 1995-2010 was not statistically significant" as "there was no statistically significant warming" merely attempts to gloss over that fact - to bamboozle people into thinking there was no warming trend when there was one.

       2)  The IPCC made no specific claim about the period 1995-2010.  Rather, they discussed (Box TS3) the period 1998-2012.  Further, they made no specific claims about the statistical significance of the trend in that period, merely noting:

       "The observed GMST has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years . Depending on the observational data set, the GMST trend over 1998–2012 is estimated to be around one third to one half of the trend over 1951–2012. For example, in HadCRUT4 the trend is 0.04°C per decade over 1998–2012, compared to 0.11°C per decade over 1951–2012. The reduction in observed GMST trend is most marked in NH winter."

       So, when you claim 1995-2010 is "the exact period ... the IPCC admited showed NO statistical warming", you merely cram two falsehoods into one sentence (among all the other falsehoods).  

       3)  Further, by sliding the the start period forward, you attempt to conceal that the actual start period of the period or reduced trend is 1998, year of record breaking heat due to a near record breaking El Nino.  That is, you conceal the fact that the interval is cherry picked.  You also create further falsehood, because the interval from Jan 1995-Dec 2010 does show statistically significant warming.  Using HadCRUT4, the warming is 0.142 +/- 0.132 C per decade.

       So, thirteen words, and three blatant falsehoods.  That's a fairly impressive score.  The rest of the rant appears to keep up that same ratio.  So, perhaps instead of asking us what would be honest, you can start your "skepticism" by being truthfull.  Of course, that simple step would end your fake skepticism as well. 

37457. Merlin5by5 at 19:20 PM on 26 March 2014
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972
       

       By the way, Moderator, this web sites attempt to claim ISOTOPES isotopes points to human combustion, and not natural processes is incredibly ignorant of ACTUAL actual power production facilities. They have been low oxygen, high heat soak, cyclone furnaces since at least the 1950s. They produce a different mix of carbon and oxygen isotopes.

       The point is it burns to carbon on one side, and FEO2, iron rust, burning carbon into a proto-diamond sand, and oxygen to black iron/atomic O2, in nano-particle size and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least an order of magnitude, so it's not anything like what your (sic) Science predicts. Did you even look at how modern furnaces work?

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] The use of "all caps" (except for acronyms) is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Please read the Comments Policy and adhere to it.

       [DB] All subsequent discussions of isotopes by you should take place on this thread, AFTER reading it. 

37458. Tom Curtis at 18:35 PM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       I have been playing around with Pielke's figures, and found several interesting facts.  

       The first is that Pielke's normalization procedure is relative to the year to which you normalize the data.  Comparing the data normalized relative to 2005 with that normalized relative to 2010, we find that the rank of different years between 1900 and 2005 according to how damaging they are changes for 69 of 106 years (65%).  Twenty-one of those years had less than 0.05 billion dollars damage normalized to 2005, and consequently had rank changes as the result of the change of one or two low valued years having a change in rounding due to the increased values in 2010. Restricting consideration to those years with more than 5 billion dollars damage normalized relative to 2005, we still have 18 out of 55 years (33%) changing rank.  Indeed, three out of the top 40 years normalized relative to 2005 drop out of the top 40 normalized relative to 2010.  The highest ranked year in 2005 that changes rank is 1944, which drops from rank 6 to rank 7.  The largest change if rank in the top 40 years normalized relative to 2005 is 1970, which rises from rank 34 to rank 27 (7 levels).  All this suggest that the concept of "most damaging year for US Hurricanes" is a very fluid concept, as defined by Pielke.

       The second interesting fact is a consequence of the first.  It turns out that normalized relative to 2010, the trend in normalized damages is 70% greater than that trend normalized relative to 2005.  Part of that is a consequence simply of inflated values for 2010 relative to 2005, but even allowing for that, the trend remains 48.8% higher.  Pielke tells us ad nauseum that the trend in normalized hurricane damage is not statistically significant, but that trend over the same interval (1900-2005) can change by 50%, and potentially more just by changing the year of normalization.  Given this variability, it is dubious that Pielke's trend calculation is even meaningfull.

       Out of interest, I regressed Pielke's normalized data agains the SST for the South East coastal waters of the USA. (HadSST3: 100-70 West, 15-40 North.  Data retrieved from the KNMI explorer.)  Regressing normalized damages relative to 2010 over the period 1900-2010, I found that for every 1 C increase in coastal SST, annual normalized damages increased by 10.9 Billion dollars on average.  That is the third interesting fact.  This value changes with interval examined, and with year of normalization.  However, over the interval 1900-2005, the increased damage per degree C was 11.5 Billion normalized relative to 2005, and 12.5 Billion normalized relative to 2010.  Thus, while this measure is not ideal, it is far more robust than the simple annual trend examined by Pielke.  Based on that, with BAU and Pielke's normalizations, we can expect normalized damages from Hurricanes to approximately triple in the US.  That is, even after we allow for changing populations, increased wealth and inflation, Hurricane damages will still be about three times more expensive under global warming.

       None of the above means I think Pielke's normalization proceedure is adequate.  It is not.  Some of the reasons why not are given in the OP.  But even if we allow Pielke his normalization, his desired conclusion only follows if you allow him to present his evidence in a very special way.  Look at it more closely, and you see all he has is playing cards. 

37459. Merlin5by5 at 18:00 PM on 26 March 2014
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972
       

       Your arguments seem to ignore and date from, the exact period (1995-2010), that the IPCC admitted showed NO no statistical warming. At first there was a claim that it was a PAUSE pause, but historical data from NON non-City based observation posts, have noted NO no pause, but a continuation of no statistical warming. Global Oceans haven't risen, European land has risen, and Indian land is sinking beneath the asian land mass. The same processes have been going on for Millions of years. We haven't just ignored negative feedback processes, we have pointedly tried to debunk them, and AVOIDED avoided any attempt to quantify their effects. You can hardly blame the US government for being skeptical.

       (-snip-)

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] The use of "all caps" (except for acronyms) is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. Please read the Comments Policy and adhere to it.  

       [DB] Intimations of impropriety snipped.

37460. chriskoz at 17:11 PM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       Tony@2,

       What point are you trying to make?

       Ignoring your bad practice of linking to your own blog here, without any comment or clarification (which is against SkS comment policy), I'm trying to read & understand your blog article. However don't see how Silver's misaplication of Bayesian stats as described therein is relevant to this article which is about Pielke Jr's post at FiveThirtyEight. Please explain, otherwise I rest my case that your comment is OT trolling.

37461. dana1981 at 06:05 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       P.T. @6 - this is off topic but Curry/Lindzen/Christy aren't on the APS climate statement review panel.  That's a myth created by confused denialist blogs.  They were part of a 6-person 'expert' panel (also including Santer and Held and one other maintream climate scientist whose name I forget) who gave presentations to the APS panel in January.  That's the extent of their influence.

       Back on topic, Pielke wrote to the Guardian (where a condensed version of this post is published) complaining that he had been misrepresented, etc.  However, none of his complaints were accurate - they either ignored the supporting evidence provided in the post, or were bait and switch attempts.  The post has been determined to be factually accurate and will remain as-is.

37462. Albatross at 03:50 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       Thanks KR,

       That is a good post at RC and I'm happy that they are dealing with some of the common fallacies used by fake skpetics like Pielke Jnr.

       As I mentioned to Kevin Trenberth the other day-- "We are poking the climate system with a stick and physics dictates that it will get increasingly annonyed".

       Another analogy for a trick that is used by fake skeptics is folks like Pielke Jnr. want us all to keep looking in the rear-view mirror while we accelerate towards a preventable disaster (e.g., a brick wall).

       
       There were more problems with Pielke's 538 opinion pieces that we did not cover here because of space limitations.  I'll add some more if I can find the time.

37463. Maggnum at 03:48 AM on 26 March 2014
       Climate Science Legal Defense Fund Needs Your Help!
       

       And deductible in Canada?

37464. KR at 03:03 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       RealClimate has an exceedingly relevant post by Stefan Rahmstorf, The most common fallacy in discussing extreme weather events, discussing how obfuscators like Pielke Jr. present absence of evidence (due to rare and random events and insufficient statistics) as evidence of absence, a subtle but clear logical fallacy. 

       As one example presented, Emanual 2005 notes statistically significant increases in the power of Atlantic hurricanes - followed by Pielke arguing that there was no such increase in US land-falling hurricanes. Emanuel wrote and confirmed that: “While we can already detect trends in data for global hurricane activity considering the whole life of each storm, we estimate that it would take at least another 50 years to detect any long-term trend in U.S. landfalling hurricane statistics, so powerful is the role of chance in these numbers.” 

       Pielke has a long record of cherry-picking the noisiest data possible and trying to argue that nothing is happening - when the full data is quite clear.

37465. supak at 02:43 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       After asking him to put his money where his mouth is until he was sick of me, he said this:

       https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/448199600046743552

       "I'll put my money on the IPCC, how about you?"

       My answer:

       "OK, @RogerPielkeJr, let's try this. You say 0.2°C per decade (IPCC), I'll take the over. Will you take the under?"

       No response.

       I'm bugging 538 to start a play money prediction market for climate. They could offer prizes to the best performing portfolios every year. I'm not holding my breath.

37466. P.T. Goodman at 02:29 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       This is disappointing to be sure. It only encourages "skeptics." The appointment of Curry and Lindzen to an APS review board for climate change is somewhat more troubling. OTOH, now that they are there, they have to actually take responsibility for their statements which are now official. But this, too, only encourages skeptics.

37467. rprovin at 02:15 AM on 26 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       Here is a map from NOAA Western Regional Climate Center that shows temperature anomalies for the California 2014 winter. One picture says it all. Here is the URL for a larger version.

       

37468. Alpinist at 01:08 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       "Except for some reason Pielke only plots the data from 1990 to 2013"

       I'm pretty sure we all know the reason...

37469. Albatross at 00:23 AM on 26 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       Hi Michael@1,

       We thought so too at first-- the figure is a little confusing. The LHS is event count and the RHS is cost.  So the trend lines appear to apply to the cost for each group.

37470. Composer99 at 22:43 PM on 25 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       Suffice to say, I am disappointed that Nate Silver would bring Pielke Jr onto his team for the climate desk, though not as disappointed as I am in Pielke Jr for adopting the unsupported and obfuscatory positions he does.

37471. Tony Noerpel at 22:27 PM on 25 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       I have to say I could see this coming.  :+)

       http://brleader.com/?p=12412

       Tony

37472. Micawber at 21:04 PM on 25 March 2014
       Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
       

       41 Glenn Tamblyn

       The whole point of the paper cited is that most of the 93% AGW trapped by the surface ocean in the Northern Hemisphere goes into melting floating ice from the bottom up.

       For the past century the ocean heating has been buffered by the Arctic basal ice melt. The rapid warming at the beginning of the 20th century melted deep tidewater glacier keels of the type that sunk Titanic.

       The mid-century cooling period saw the melting of multi-year ice and deep keels of ice islands as suggested in 1955 as a major climate change impact. The bottom-up melting of Arctic ice was so great that the result was an overall cooling of sea surface temperatures!

       That mid-century cooling was removed from SST records because it did not fit with the 30-year statistical trends. Apparently this is a common practice in atmospheric physics as noted by Kinsman (1957) and Aberson (2012) according to the authors.

       The rapid warming post 1986 that James Wright cites is a direct result of the decline in floating ice. This is the major contribution from the authors cited by the Matthews papers. I consider them definitive because they are based on real ground truth timeseries data unaltered by models or statistics. 

       Scientific method demands the verification by repeated experimental ground truth as the nearest we can get to the 'truth'. I believe the experiments reported by the Matthews papers were the first measurements at sea of surface temperature, evaporation and heat sequestration. Climatologists never go to sea. That is a major problem if the bulk of the heat is there!

       So, it is simply not true to say the 7% is split between melting ice, warming ground and air in roughly equal proportions. Where is the ground truth scientific evidence for that?

       The work they report was done in 2008 in the Pacific and salinity measurements stopped in 2006 at Port Erin. The scientific response surely should be to resume the timeseries ASAP to verify or modify these catastrophic findings.

       Surely the loss of the Malaysian 777 in the Antarctic divergent surface gyre shows how little we know of the surface of the Blue Planet?

       This calls for a major shift to ocean surface studies to understand what is going on inn this unstudied surface. James Wright's article could not come at a better time.

       I think Glynn, we would be better off forgetting the trivial 7% in air until we know much much more about the 97%.

       Heat from the ocean with its more than 3,000 times greater heat capacity than air will show up as rapidly warming air after is thaw a few glacial icesheets in any case.

        

37473. Tom Curtis at 20:55 PM on 25 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Gary Marsh @34, the easiest one to consult is the IPCC:

       

       You will see that "Net Land Flux", ie, the balance between "Gross photosynthesis" and "Total respiration and fire" sequesters 2.6 +/-1.2 Petagrams C per annum.  From that we must subtract the 1.1 +/- 0.8 Petagrams emissions from "Net land use change" (which includes deforestation).  That yields a net sequestration of 1.5 +/- 1.44 Petagrams C per annum.  The uncertainty is at the 90% confidence level, indicating that there is a better than 95% chance that the net flux sequesters a small amount of CO2 annually, and a remote chance that the flux is effectively neutral.

       It should be noted that there has been a net reduction of the carbon reservoir in plants and soil of 30 +/- 45 Petagrams of Carbon, equivalent to approximately 15 ppmv.  It is therefore, likely that the net flux has not always sequestered CO2 over the last 264 years, but currently with tropical deforestation partially balanced by reforestation in the NH, and with the additional effects of CO2 fertilization, the reverse is the case.

37474. michael sweet at 20:05 PM on 25 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       Tom,

       You are correct, I wrote in haste.  I should have said no significant cold records in the CONUS.  There were no monthly cold records.  There were no record cold winters set. The only significant record set was the hottest winter in California. I have not even heard of any individual cities that set cold records longer than a few days.  

       DAK: We agree that it was exceptionally hot (I wonder why) in California last winter.  As you said, the record for hottest winter was shattered.  Since drought and heat feed off each other, it will be interesting to see how hot it is in California this summer.

37475. adrian smits at 19:47 PM on 25 March 2014
       Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: J.S. Sawyer in 1972
       

       "Sundqvist et al. write that "the stable isotope records show enriched isotopic values during the, for Scandinavia, comparatively cold period AD 1300-1700 [which they equate with the Little Ice Age] and depleted values during the warmer period AD 800-1000 [which they equate with the Medieval Warm Period]." And as can clearly be seen from the figure above, the two δ18O depletion "peaks" (actually inverted valleys) of the Medieval Warm Period are both more extreme than the "peak" value of the Current Warm Period, which appears at the end of the record."  This is peer reviewed and I found it by googling LIttle ice age sweden peer reviewed.

37476. wideEyedPupil at 19:20 PM on 25 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Thanks for the responce, Tom. I forgot to come back and check up till now. There were three things that made me uncomfortable with the kind of (smug) over-confidence of the reportage:

       1. was the certainty that 6 metres would take 2000 for sure which was why I asked it here. Polar ice melt in Arctic has outstripped previous IPCC AR high sensativity senarios since positive feedbacks like melt water fluid dynamics wasn't included. Surge factors of storms at kingtide can have a SL rise multiplier effect up to even 100x, although presumably that's more about inland effected areas than actual rise on the land/sea edge.

       2. unknown timelines for under-researched 'methane burbping' of frozen gases in Arctic sea bed, tundra and Antarctic sea ice. Sensitivity of these gases to sea warming is somewhat in dispute and atmospheric GHG levels, and ocean warming pathways are still very much dependant on future human carbon intensive activity levels. The amounts of methane and COx stored frozen in these places dwarf the so-called remaining carbon budget of 565Gt (Meinshausen 2ºC concept). It's not clear to me the likely size or time of the earliest of these 'burps' but there is already wide columns of these gases rising into the atmosphere. It's not clear to me how much they would accelorate sea level rise.

       3. the most critical problem with the MW report was the (blyth) omission of the fact that while the Opera House may not see sandbagging/re-footing for well beyond a millenia the climatic tipping point that will guarenty that consequence is likely to be yesterday, today or some time in the next few decades (Kevin Anderson, Tyndal Climate Centre). So urgency is justified (in preference to scoffing). That certainly sents alarm bells ringing for me even if MW think they; have better things to think about in 2 thousand years. The consequence of that level of sea rise on cities and agriculture (in combination with a warmer more extreme climate) will be way more significant than the damages bill to the Opera House of course.

       Please comment on issue of climatic tipping points regards polar ice melt and attendant methane/COx leaking, Tom.

37477. Gary Marsh at 18:13 PM on 25 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Tom Curtis 33.   do you have a data source for year after year plant matter increase?

37478. MichaelK at 18:05 PM on 25 March 2014
       Cherry picked and misrepresented climate science undermines FiveThirtyEight brand
       

       It appears that there is a problem with the first Munich Re graph supplied by NewScientist. In the trend graph, the colours for earthquakes and extreme temperatures should be swapped. As the NewScientist article states, the number of earthquakes has remained constant. It is the extreme temperatures, droughts etc which are increasing. 

        

37479. Tom Curtis at 14:19 PM on 25 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       Michael Sweet @6, it is not strictly true that no cold records were set.  For individual stations, over the 365 days to March 22nd, in general cold records outnumbered warm records.  That is misleading if we only look at the number of records, however, for in all time records, warm records outnumbered cold records 4.2 to 1, it what is acknowledged as a cold year relative to the recent record.  The actual data are:

       Period ending 22th/3/2014
       Record_Period__Warm_Records__Cool_Records__Ratio
       Daily__________46667___________59190_________0.79
       Monthly________1867_____________3002_________0.62
       All Time_________188_______________45_________4.18

       (Note, data updates daily, so linked data will not correspond with data shown after 25th)

       In general, there will be 30 daily records per montly record, and 12 montly record per all time record.  The actual ratios over the last 365 days are 21.74 eaily records per montly record, and 20.9 montly record per all time record.  Because daily records are far more common than all time records, it is the all time records that are most significant.

       Further, these are records for individual stations.  Divisional, State, and Regional records (in that order), are far more significant than those for individual stations.  In that respect, California set an all time warm record for the winter season, while no state set an all time cold record to my knowledge.

37480. DAK4Blizzard at 13:30 PM on 25 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       Michael Sweet: Yes, you are correct. Thanks for checking my numbers! I must have been accidentally looking at January-February when I wrote 2F warmer than any other winter. For those 2 months, there is one previous winter (1986) I overlooked that was within 1.2F of this year's January-February.
       
       I did see a few articles over the past couple of months in the LA Times referring to the warm temperatures (one on rattlesnakes coming out early and another on struggling ski resorts). But I take your point about where the media focus has been, and that when they cover California, it's mainly been on the lack of precipitation. I'll assert that, assuming no change in precipitation (it's projected to generally decrease), warmer years by several degrees in California will generally promote more frequent and intense drought conditions.

37481. chriskoz at 12:12 PM on 25 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       A good article about recent landslide event near Arlington WA, (over SR530 - the road I used to travel very often) can be arguably linked to AGW. That's the dry winter followed by very wet early spring: 7.14 inches of rain has fallen this month, well above the normal of 4.57 inches, undoutedly contributed to the hill instability.

37482. Tom Dayton at 10:29 AM on 25 March 2014
       Hansen's 1988 prediction was wrong
       

       Tamino has updated Hansen's 1988 prediction by swapping in actual values of forcings (except volcanic) more recently than was done by RealClimate seven years ago.  The forcings are closest to Hansen's Scenario C forcings.  So actual temperatures should have been closest to Hanson's Scenario C model projection.  Guess what?

37483. Tom Dayton at 10:06 AM on 25 March 2014
       Scientists can't even predict weather
       

       Steve Easterbrook has a great balloon analogy of weather versus climate.

37484. Michael Whittemore at 09:59 AM on 25 March 2014
       Climate Science Legal Defense Fund Needs Your Help!
       

       Any idea if it would be tax deductible here in Australia?

37485. lucia at 09:40 AM on 25 March 2014
       A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 7
       

       Having backend code that looks at each user input for specific pairs of SQL commands, such as 'select' and 'into'; 'delete' and 'from' etc will enable such input to be discarded. And when such input is detected, ..

        

       ZBblock (available free) does checks these things. If detected the connection is blocked.  If the user redoubles efforts that IP is blocked from all '.php' scripts protected by ZBblock for a period of time.  http://www.spambotsecurity.com/zbblock.php 

       I've used it since 2011, and include some custom scripts for extra security. (Sometimes my custom stuff goes overboard.  But SkS wouldn't be required to add my extra experimental blocks.)  Had SkS been using this in 2012, it would have blocked many of the queries above, particularly those including things like "union" and "select".

        

       ZBblock also has a 'block Tor' feature which can be activated by setting that feature "on", and in anycase, many Tor IPs get blocked even without checking that setting because they are on  large server farms that rend space to lots of hackers and scrapers.  Connections from certain serverfarms are almost never real people, blocking results in few false positives.  

       
       Whether or not SkS had chosen to use the "Tor" block, using ZBBlock would have at least slowed the hacker, it seems to me was likely  using a 'fingerprinting' type script. These things are widely available and using them a hacker need not expend much  "human" trying systematic variations of queries or keeping track of which resulted in useful information.  Anyway, it seems to me the order of operations seems very much like a script that arrived and started testing the first '....php?query=something' item visible in the the html, and seemed to visit the posts that appeared on the front page and so on.  That's pretty much what a script would do.

       Something like ZBblock might have derailed the script entirely-- by giving it miscues it couldn't interpret. It might have derailed the hacker who, though motivated to hack, may not have been interested in working very hard at it. Possibly, if his script worked while he was sipping Red Bull and playing online games: great! If not: no big deal. 

       That said: given  given the large number of security holes, maybe he would have succeeded but more slowly. Presumably you've closed most of these holes. I would still suggest using ZBblock. It's free. Easy to use. And gives a layer of protection.

        

       Moderator Response:

       [BL] No.  The attack was absolutely not scripted.  We see attacks such as those on a weekly basis, and their patterns are clear and indisputable.  The hacker's SQL injection, by contrast, inconsistently tried combinations first on one page or parameter, then another, then returned to the first page, then looked at other pages without trying anything, and so on.  He also didn't try every parameter or even every numeric parameter on every page, only some, and he didn't always stick to numeric parameters (he occasionally tried string parameters, but only randomly and occasionally).

       The bouncing around, the non-systematic use of parameter values, the variety of delays in activities, all point unequivocally to the active involvement of a living human being. 

       In addition, he was almost always using "GET" parameters (values which are appended to the URL itself, and so are visible to a person in the address bar without reading the HTML code of the web page).  99% of scripted attacks use post parameters (by scanning the HTML code for forms and input fields, usually login or search pages).  The use of GET parameters, while it can be (and is sometimes) scripted, is far more indicative of a person, who can click a link, look at the resulting URL, and then play with it (selectively and intelligently).

       Scripted attacks also tend to use easily detected (by a program) results.  The script can't easily look at a page to determine if the attack worked, so they include code like this:

       SELECT * FROM argument WHERE ArgumentId = '16 and 5=6 union select 0x5E5B7D7E -‌-'
       SELECT * FROM argument WHERE ArgumentId = '16' and 5=6 union select 0x5E5B7D7E -‌- And '6'='6'
       SELECT * FROM argument WHERE ArgumentId = '16 and 5=6 union select 0x5E5B7D7E,0x5E5B7D7E -‌-'
       SELECT * FROM argument WHERE ArgumentId = '16' and 5=6 union select 0x5E5B7D7E,0x5E5B7D7E -‌- And '6'='6'

       That is, of course, only one, brief and limited example.  That attack went on for dozens of tries, and then tried again with slightly different syntax, and again and again.  The 0x5E5B7D7E part displays ^[}~ if it succeeds.  That's a character sequence that is very, very unlikely to appear on any page, and hence is easily detected by a program.  If the program sees that show up in the page, the attack worked and a human gets involved.  If it doesn't, the script moves on to the next combination (although it will cycle through this many times, increasing the number of SELECT parameters to match the original query, similar to the way the hacker did on February 20, 2012).

       The attack on SkS was absolutely not scripted.  Whether you like it or not, whether or not it fits into your pre-determined desire to see this hack as a leak or at worst an easy endeavor (so that you can shift the blame to SkS for having lax security, instead of the hacker)... the guy spent almost nine hours one day conducting SQL injection attacks, and another six hours the next day trolling the system and grabbing data and code.  He then spent days and days continuing his hack.

       No matter how you cut it, it took a whole lot of time and energy for SkS to be hacked.  No matter how easy you want the hack to have been, it wasn't.

37486. wili at 08:54 AM on 25 March 2014
       Climate Science Legal Defense Fund Needs Your Help!
       

       As they say, "The check's in the mail!" (But it really will be, soon. '-) )

       Thanks for reminding us about this. But isn't there also (or doesn't there need to be) a Climate Science OFfence Fund? How was the suit against National Review funded, for example. We can't always just be playing defense here, folks.

       If someone knows of such a fund, please post the contact info for it.

37487. Tom Curtis at 08:09 AM on 25 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Gary Marsh @32, observations of the carbon budget show that plants represent a net sink of CO2, ie, that on average there is more plant matter on Earth at the end of each year than at the start.  That means that plants are an increasing reservoir of water rather than, as you would have it, a decreasing reservoir.  Absent other effects, the increase in net plant mass would tend to decrease sea level rise.

37488. John Hartz at 07:54 AM on 25 March 2014
       97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
       

       Phronesis:

       To guide the What We Know initiative, AAAS convened a group of prominent experts in climate science.

       Mario Molina (Chair), U of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography

       James McCarthy (Co-chair), Harvard University

       Diana Wall (Co-chair), Colorado State University

       Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University

       Kim Cobb, Georgia Institute of Technology

       Julia Cole, University of Arizona

       Sarah Das, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

       Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University

       Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

       Howard Frumkin, University of Washington

       Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University

       Camille Parmesan, U of Texas, Austin and University of Plymouth, UK

       Marshall Shepherd, U of Georgia

37489. Ken in Oz at 07:44 AM on 25 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       It may just be coincidence, but a lot of media like to use the 'hottest', 'coldest', 'wettest', 'driest' line with monotonous regularity. But they are not usually talking about actual records being broken; they are 'hottest' or 'coldest' in 50 yrs or 20 yrs or however long it was since the last time it was that 'hot' or 'cold'. Could be interesting to see if this is more commonplace within media outlets that play up the denial and doubt although for a lot of media content it is just poor quality. Ultimately it diminishes the perceptions people have of real records being broken. Whilst the science on climate depends on accurate information, action on climate depends on public perceptions and this misuse of these superlatives muddies public perceptions in a subtle but influential way.

37490. dfaccini at 07:25 AM on 25 March 2014
       Free computer game - World at the Crossroads
       

       I was starting to go crazy because, on my Windows 7, I wasn't able to change the read only setting.

       I tried everything, eventually I changed the UAC settings (START-RUN-"UAC", and you can put the setting on the lower level) and I succeeded.

       See here: 

       http://itexpertvoice.com/home/fixing-the-windows-7-read-only-folder-blues/

37491. Sapient Fridge at 06:21 AM on 25 March 2014
       A Hack By Any Other Name — Index
       

       Looks good.  Thanks for putting the index together.  I'll circulate the link to my techie friends who wouldn't normally visit SkS.

37492. PhilBMorris at 01:36 AM on 25 March 2014
       A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 7
       

       This comment may be somewhat 'late in the day' but of value anyway (I think).  SQL injection is the one of the real dangers of interactive websites, and protecting against it adequiately requires multiple levels of defence.

       1. All user input needs to be checked to detect possible injections.  Having backend code that looks at each user input for specific pairs of SQL commands, such as 'select' and 'into'; 'delete' and 'from' etc will enable such input to be discarded.  And when such input is detected, take the user to the home page; better this than displaying a page telling the hacker that their attempt has been foiled, which may cause them to redouble their efforts.  The code that checks for specific pairs of SQL commands should also check for possible scripting syntax.

       2. All interactions with the SQL database should be via parameterised queries.  I noticed one comment regarding hack 3 (SQL Injection) that all interactions with the database should used stored procedures.  That doesn't do the job; stored procedures may use parameterized queries, but can equally well construct SQL statements that use user input directly.  Bad practice but still possible.  Injection attacks are foiled completely via parameterized queries.  Re-writing backend code to do this can take quite an effort if the code base is large.  For .NET websites (which is what I code in) I wrote a program that autogenerates code for all DB interactions based on the DB schema; that code only ever uses parameterized queries to interact with the database.

       3.  The SQL database should be on a subnet entirely separate from the website subnet and access to the database subnet vie the internet should be prevented by the firewall.  Access to the database computers should only be allowed via computers behind the firewall.  

37493. michael sweet at 00:28 AM on 25 March 2014
       97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
       

       Phronesis,

       It is interesting to learn that you know more about scientific opinion on AGW than the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  I am sure other readers will make their own choice about whether they should believe the AAAS or a nameless voice on the internet.  

       This is a scientific board.  People are expected to provide evidence to support their claims.  Peer-reviewed evidence is best.  You do not appear to care about evidence.   You might find that your method of argument is better received at one of the skeptic sites where they do not care about evidence either.

37494. michael sweet at 00:23 AM on 25 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       Dave,

       When I went to the NCDC website I found that California was only 0.8F (!) higher than the previous warmest winter.  Since these records are usually broken by 0.1 degree, that is a significant record.

       I have only seen one mention of the record heat in California in the mainstream media.  The cold, which was typical weather 50 years ago, is widely reported as record cold, even though no records were set.  This is the problem we face with global warming: the media only reports what fossil fuel companies want people to hear.

37495. John Hartz at 23:56 PM on 24 March 2014
       2014 SkS Weekly Digest #12
       

       icefest & Tom Curtis:

       The errors you pointed out have been corrected. Thank you for bringing them to our attetnion.

37496. Gary Marsh at 23:17 PM on 24 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Based on my estimation above (see 29.) 130 cubic kilometres of water directly lost each year to deforestation, spread over the world ocean surface of aproximatly 361 million square kilometres would equate to aproximately a 0.3mm rise per year, this allows for a percentage that would end up in rivers, reservoirs the atmosphere and the ground. I'm not a scientist or a skilled resercher so my quantities and sums must be checked, this is a significant figure so surely it is being accounted for somewhere and I'm just not finding it?

       Moderator Response:

       (Rob P) - No, the scenario you conjured up isn't accounted for. Not sure why this would surprise you given that you seem unwilling to read the scientific literature on sea level rise and provide zero supporting evidence for your scenario.  

37497. Gary Marsh at 20:57 PM on 24 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       BTW I can't see a facility to edit our posts, my last one double entried when my web browser had to "recover the webpage"...    sorry!

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Your duplicate post has been deleted.

37498. Gary Marsh at 20:56 PM on 24 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       In case my last direct tinyurl link breaks, you can use this one but National Geographic will want you to sign in with email or facebook to read the article. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120531-groundwater-depletion-may-accelerate-sea-level-rise/?

       To sumarise a snip from the article referring to the work of a team of Dutch scientists led by hydrologist Yoshihide Wada 

       "Newly constructed reservoirs above ground can offset the net loss of water underground. These, Wada said, trap water that would otherwise reach the sea. Before 1990 or so, he added, that offset was large enough that the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change never took groundwater depletion into account in predicting 21st-century sea-level rise. But that offset is no longer as significant as it once was, Wada said. "There are not so many places where people can build new reservoirs," he said. "They are already built."

       Already, he and his colleagues have found, groundwater depletion is adding about 0.6 millimeters per year (about one-fortieth of an inch) to the Earth's sea level. By 2050, he said, the triple pressures of growing population, economic development, and higher irrigation needs due to a warming climate will increase that to 0.82millimeters per year—enough to raise sea levels by 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) above 1990 levels. Between 2050 and 2100, according to some estimates, sea levels would rise even faster. To put that in perspective, he said, groundwater depletion adds about 25 percent to projected rates of sea-level rise, making it the largest contributor from land to sea-level rise other than the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Even the melting of glaciers in the world's high mountains won't contribute more to rising sea levels, Wada said."

37499. Gary Marsh at 20:44 PM on 24 March 2014
       Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
       

       Glenn Tamblyn

       You are correct, I mistakenly thought the resevoir and surface water effect was taken into account in this study. The following article from the National Geographic News updates the information somewhat, whilst raising further points for consideration :)  http://tinyurl.com/NatGeo-Groundwater   It also mentions the forest effect, though having not found figures for this I am going to estimate an average of 1cubic metre height of water lost per square metre of forest/rainforest loss, to take into account water held in ground, biomass, roots, animals, above surface trees plants and atmospheric humidity, this would equal one cubic kilometre of water every 1000 kilometres of forest lost, times this by 130 000 square kilimetres lost per year = 130 cubic kilometres of extra water per year that ends up largely in the sea. I would apreciate informed comments as to how far off my estimations are and as to if there is any significance to this quantily of yeatly increase affecting sea level rise...   Mind you that last part I should be able to find out myself.. it's the per square kilometre water storage capacity of forest and attendents that are hard for me to assess.

37500. Andy Skuce at 19:02 PM on 24 March 2014
       97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
       

       Anyone who thinks that the consensus is significantly less than 97% can demonstrate this relatively easily. All they have to do is to find, let's say,  5-10% or more papers in a given random sample that implicitly or explicitly reject humans as the main cause of  global warming. They don't have to do a fine sub-classification like we did, or sort the no-position papers from the rest, just find the thumbs-down papers. (Hint, some doubters of AGW already have some long--and dubious--lists of papers that supposedly reject AGW, so you could just search for them in any given sample.)

       A few hours of careful work requiring no special equipment and Cook et al could, in principle, be falsified. Several people who question our work seem to have put lots of effort into writing blogposts, examining our statistics, submitting formal rebuttals, making FOI requests and writing angry letters to all and sundry. Yet, if they were right, a convincing knock-out punch would  be easy to deliver, just by looking through a random sample of scientific papers on climate change. But this work has not even been tried, or if it has, it hasn't been reported.

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