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Russ R. at 02:56 AM on 13 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
In my haste to argue about what John Abraham left out of his analysis, I neglected to commend him for presenting an otherwise very level-headed and even-handed perspective. It's rather refreshing.
Reasonable people can agree on facts, acknowledge uncertainties, and disagree about what should or shouldn't be done, without automatically resulting in "clenched fists and indigestion".
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vrooomie at 02:56 AM on 13 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
Russ R., I find it *incredibly* difficult to believe your assertion: I've read many, *many* articles, journals, and academic papers that show it's qwuite the opposite. Many study these effects, and it iis disingenuous to suggest it is "being ignored."
There may well be an instance, here and there, that shows this --the effects of climate policies-- is in its infancy, but to suggest no one is looking into this issue, is not believable,
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Russ R. at 02:49 AM on 13 February 2014Discussing global warming: why does this have to be so hard?
There is one other major area of uncertainty that is being ignored here...
6. How will climate change policies (and their unintended consequences) impact economies and societies?
You might consider, as an example, the recent experience in Spain: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/business/energy-environment/renewable-energy-in-spain-is-taking-a-beating.html
Or, as another example, Ontario: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-cuts-back-on-green-energy-deal/article12718627/
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Jim Eager at 02:33 AM on 13 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
tblakelee, that would fall under the "mining fossil fuels" catagery in the opening sentence.
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gws at 02:30 AM on 13 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
tblakeslee @7: The important words here are "can" or "may" as you used. Have a look at this and this post. Like with any other industrial process, there is a chance things go wrong, and therefore risk management, proper planning, and execution is needed. If BP and the other companies involved had adhered to that, the Deepwater Horizon may have never been in the news. Suffice it to say, reality is different.
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tblakeslee at 02:01 AM on 13 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
What about the extensive horizontal drilling and fracking to release natural gas from tight shale formations. It seems that a lot of methane may be released before it can be captured.
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gws at 01:44 AM on 13 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
@3&5
Actually, the article did not discuss sinks much because oxidation of methane in the troposphere is very well understood. It constitutes the major sink of methane, minor sinks being soil (not ocean, which is a source) uptake by methanotrophs and oxidation in the stratosphere. The oxidation sink it maintained by OH radicals and there is no evidence that the abundance of that radical is changing. Hence, as we do know methane sinks better than its sources, the renewed tropospheric increase is indeed thought to be a proxy for changing source strength.
The graph from the paper, presented at the AGU Fall Meeting in Dec. 2013 and posted by Andy @2, is a spatio-temporal extrapolation of the tropospheric methane growth rate calculated from gas samples obtained from the global sampling network. The network is comparatively sparse, thus the fine detail of the map should not be overinterpreted. It is, however, detailed enough to conclude that the largest growth rates since 2007 have occurred in the tropics and northen midlatitudes (2009, 2012). Not much more can be said than what is in the article. However, from what is known about the sources, particularly the largest source, natural wetlands, wet and warm years in regions like the Amazon, have significant effects on tropospheric methane, and so do years with large biomass burning emissions (e.g. Simpson et al., JGR 2006).
If the tropics were to get not just warmer, but also wetter (that is the expectation), there is thus likely a positive feedback loop on warming via increasing wetland methane emissions. The same may be true for biomass burning if on average more burning will occur as a result of warming and drying in seasonally dry tropical and subtropical regions.
The discrepancy between bottom-up and top-down budget estimates is actually nothing new. The inventories are often outdated, and rarely carefully checked against atmospheric data. Not too surprising because maintaining inventories is cheap compared to measurements. That does not mean the inventory is always bad, but it cautions against trusting it, especially when it is old and/or based on limited input data. The global inventory is not necessarily biased the same way as the US inventory, so while recent US data create a perception that emissions are generally underestimated, that does not automatically mean the same should be true for global emissions.
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Klapper at 01:22 AM on 13 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
@HK #49:
My original post didn't mention the sun. It put forward a relatively simple concept: if the IPO can suppress warming, it possibly can enhance it too. Hence some part of the warming of the late 70's to 2000 might have been driven by the +phase of the IPO. Whether this cycle in the IPO is driven by indirect solar effects (I don't think it could be TSI), I don't know. Certainly some scientists like Nicola Scaffeta think it is somehow related to solar cycles, even though he does not specify a hypothesis of the mechanism.
However, the cycle exists, whether we understand the mechanism or not. That is the real topic of this blog, and my point remains: could the +IPO have enhanced the warming between 1975 and 2000?
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Paul D at 01:18 AM on 13 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Given that the deniers are pointing to two papers about the Walker circulation.
See jsam and Terranova above.It would be useful if someone clarified the difference between what is researched/described in those papers as opposed to what is looked at Matthew England et al.
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Dikran Marsupial at 00:36 AM on 13 February 2014Models are unreliable
knaugle "Most current climate models completely missed the current warming pause."
This is actually completely unsurprising, however to see why this is, you need to understand how GCMs operate, which in trun will show what they can reasonably expect to be able to predict and what they can't.
Imagine we had a quantum mirror which we could use to visit Earths in parallel universes. Say we could choose only those where the climate forcings (e.g. solar, volcanic, aerosols, CO2 etc.) are exactly the same as they are on our Earth, but the initial conditions are slightly different (e.g. a butterfly flapped its wings on one, but decided not to bother in another). In this case, the response to the forcings will be exactly the same on the parallel Earths, but each will have a different set of variations in climate due to sources of "internal variability" such as ENSO.
Now you could have no better climate model than this, even in theory, as the parallel Earths have exactly the same laws of physics and infinite temporal and spatial resolution. Would they have predicted the "warming pause"? Well yes and no. The warming pause is likely the effect of sources of internal variability, in fact such sources of variability are completely sufficient as an explanation of the lack of warming (e.g. Foster and Rahmstorf). These are chaotic, and while these periods of little or no warming will be observed occasionally on the parallel Earths, they won't generally ocurr at the same time as the pause on this Earth.
So what can we predict from the model? Well if you take the average of the temperatures of the Parallel Earths, you will get an estimate of the forced response (i.e. the reaction of the climate to the change in the forcings, e.g. CO2). This is what is relevant to climate policy, not the effects of internal variability which are quasi-cyclical and have little long term effect on the climate. The forced response does not show pauses, but that doesn't mean the models are not predicting that pauses will happen everynow and again (but without being able to specify when)
Now, lets return to real climate models, Easterling and Wehner show that these pauses are also found in the output of individual model runs as well, but again the timing of the pauses is unpredictable. So it is unfair to say that the modells have missed the pause. They have said we should expect them to happen, but can't predict when they will happen.
Why should we expect real climate models to be able to predict something that a theoretically perfect model could not?
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knaugle at 00:12 AM on 13 February 2014Models are unreliable
A problem I have with this entry supporting climate models is that it seems to skirt what is most critical of them. Most current climate models completely missed the current warming pause. This is an issue that has spawned a host of investigation. A recent article about stronger trade winds in the media for example. Also, it also does not address that ALL models of complex systems mispredict to some extent. Given climate models are long term projections of where we are going, it is reasonable to expect that they will miss shorter term climate movements. From my point of view, it is more indicative that climate models seem to still say we should be warming even after the past decade or so of flat atmospheric temperatures is taken into account. Those who would deny that CO2 causes ANY warming or that its effect is small and not significant may point to the past decade as proof of future results. I'd love to sell them a bridge in NY for that risky logic.
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bruiser at 23:45 PM on 12 February 2014Australia’s hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it
@Barry, hi Barry, I did not change the topic so much as respond to your comment on your reference to "1990-2013, it is not the reason why 1990-2013 was hot relative to 1910-1939." Going back 80 years does not cut it and there has been some excellent work done on the urban heat island effect which can add up to 4 degrees to a city's temperature. The Sydney observatory is a great site for the length of recorded data but just as the Melbourne data is skewed due to location, Sydney suffers from the same problems. I should also correct my previous post - 1889 was the very hot year.
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chriskoz at 23:29 PM on 12 February 20142014 SkS News Bulletin #1: Keystone XL Pipeline
Russ,
It should be obvious to you following michael sweet@11, that your stance on unimportance of KXL is a big-time classic example of an individual involved in the tragedy of commons. If it is not obvious to you, please make yourself familiar with tragedy of commons and with specific examples of it in the past (sanitary waste in cities, acid rain, ozone hole, etc.).
The individual here is a corporation building KXL and pocketting profit from it while dumping 'miniscule amount of CO2' as an externality. There are thousands of such individuals in CA alone (and many more will follow when tar sands are tapped for unrestrained exploration) each doing exactly the same, following your argumentation. Common here is the atmosphere - the dumping ground that cannot "self-clean", because the natural 'cleaning' processes are 1000s times slower than the dump accumulation. Therefore the dump (CO2) accumulates. So, if you, as an individual, contribute to 0.00683°C/century, thousand individuals can make it 6.83°C/century.
The known tragedy of commons solutions involve (1) some form of governmental regulations, (2) individuals can cooperate to conserve the resource in the name of mutual benefit (3) conversion of common good into private property, giving the new owner an incentive to enforce its sustainability.
In case of CO2 pollution, (3) does not work because CO2 is invisible gas. Efforts in (2) - UNFCCC together with COP series - mostly failed so far. That leaves us with (1) - banning the further proliferation of FF infrastructure, in this case Obama's disapproval - as the only promissing method to solve (or at least alleviate) this problem.
The alternative "laissez faire" attitude always results in such problem worsening, as we learned from the examples I mentioned above. The outcome of CO2 problem cannot be any different. If you argue that KXL does not play part in that picture please explain. I'll follow your arguments with interest.
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Markoh at 22:18 PM on 12 February 2014Carbon Emissions on Tragic Trajectory
One Planet
The return on investment cannot be ignored. If infrastructure is only required for a short duration, then the financiers need to be repaid in that shorter period. No one will lend money if only a proportion or none is to be repaid. To do so would be a donation.
You wouldn't lend money or put money in the bank if you were not going to get it back, well not of the magnitudes required. If it was to be a donation, given that the population of developing countries is about 4 times the population of developed countries, the funds required or donation is mind boggling.
With 4 times as many people in developing nations as developed nations, during the transition period you suggest the CO2 emissions would dwarf the western worlds current CO2 emissions. It's just not feasible.
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Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Klapper:
What about the fingerprints of the recent global warming?
6 of the 13 fingerprints listed here are incompatible with a warming sun, 2 are neutral and 5 are related to the source of the extra CO2.
That and comment 48 by DSL should be the end of the argument It’s the sun.
Any further discussion about this topic probably belongs to that thread and not here. -
folke_kelm at 18:52 PM on 12 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
#3
Mike,
Methane in the atmosphere is oxydised to CO2 and water. This process is dependent of the concentration of Methane in the atmosphere as well as the ceoncentration of a catalyst (which may be fairly constant).
This means, the more methane you have the faster it will be removed. If you have a stable emission of methane, the rate of oxidation will rise until the rate of emission and rate of removal will be equal. The concentration in the atmosphere will level out.
a new rise in methane concentration means, that emission is speeding up again to higher levels than before. Unfortunately the mechanisms of oxidation in the atmosphere are not fully understood. If this would be the case you could read the concentration of methane as a direct proxy of emission rates.
Note, that methane in the atmosphere has a far less remaining time than CO2. Methane will be eliminated by oxidation, CO2 can not be removed by fast working mechanisms, only by geological processes.
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Klapper at 17:16 PM on 12 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@One Planet #68 #66:
Here's a suggestion: stop pontificating about people's motives. That will not and should not win a science debate. What counts is the hypotheses they put forward and the facts they use to support those hypotheses and your countering hypothesis and facts.
If you think the question is unfounded then address it with facts, not discussion or inuendo about the morality of people who don't agree with you.
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Rob Painting at 16:39 PM on 12 February 2014The Oceans Warmed up Sharply in 2013: We're Going to Need a Bigger Graph
howardlee - "I don't see how we can get heat into the deep oceans without also getting CO2 into the deep oceans."
When the wind-driven ocean circulation is intense, such as during the negative phase of the IPO & La Nina, there is strong upwelling of cold deep water along the equator, and along the eastern coasts of the continents. This is known as Ekman suction. This cold deep water is high in dissolved CO2, and therefore there is a large flux of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from the ocean. During the positive phase of the IPO, and during El Nino, the circulation winds down. This shuts down the upwelling and flux of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Contrary to your assertion, there is a greater uptake of CO2 into the global oceans during the positive phase of the IPO & El Nino. Note the graph below from Keeling (1995) - taken from the SkS rebuttal on Murry Salby & CO2. The bottom figure (b) is the oceanic exchange of carbon and the blue colour denotes La Nina periods. Note how the oceanic flux is negative - indicating loss of carbon from the ocean.
Of course the oceans are storing more CO2 over the long-term - this is why the oceans are acidifying at most likely the fastest rate (outside of an asteroid impact) in the last 300 million years. I'm just pointing out some of the complexity.
As for strong subsurface ocean storage giving more time for humans their act together, that really depends how much longer this (cool surface) phase of the circulation lasts. The recent unprecedented intensification of the trade winds may simply be shortening the length of the cycle - meaning that this negative phase may be much shorter than the previous one. We shall see.
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DSL at 13:41 PM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
More from Lockwood:
Lockwood 2008: "It is shown that the contribution of solar variability to the temperature trend since 1987 is small and downward; the best estimate is -1.3% and the 2? confidence level sets the uncertainty range of -0.7 to -1.9%." http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464/2094/1387.abstract
Lockwood 2008: "The conclusions of our previous paper, that solar forcing has declined over the past 20 years while surface air temperatures have continued to rise, are shown to apply for the full range of potential time constants for the climate response to the variations in the solar forcings." http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464/2094/1367.abstractLockwood 2007: "The observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanism is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified." http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/lockwood2007.pdf
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:38 PM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Wouldn't you have to almost completely igonore the vertical temperature profile, as well as the relative level of radiative forcing to consider solar to be the major responsible forcing?
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Michael Whittemore at 11:49 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
@ terranova & @ jsam both these papers you reference look at the evaporation near Indonesia. This process is slowing due to increased evaporation from global warming. The increased trade winds have been caused by the onset of the IPO. I might be a little off, it's just what I have noted from all these denier blogs.
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Klapper at 11:29 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
@ HK #31:
@ Scaddenp #38:
You're fairly sure that solar peaked in the late '50s. However, here's what Lockwood & Frohlich 2007 said about solar activity in the 20th century: "Hence, all solar trends since 1987 have been in the opposite direction to those seen or inferred in the majority of the twentieth century—particularly in the first half of that century". They don't argue that solar peaked in the late '50s. To be sure they are adament that solar could not have had an effect after 1985. I agree except I would extend that date to the mid '90s based on the aa index.
Note the shortest length solar cycle (22 from '86 to '96) is also the most intense from the aa index, which is an indication that things weren't quite over by '85 as Lockwood asserts.
Here's another point: say hypothetically I accept the Lockwood argument that solar rose through the first half of the 20th century, then plateaued until say the mid '80s and then declined. Since climate doesn't equilibriate immediately to changes in forcing is it not possible that this sustained high level of solar activity was responsible for onging climate change through the '80s and into the '90s? And wouldn't that be true even if the actual peak was in 1958 as you assert?
Moderator Response:[TD] The lag between solar forcing and temperature response is not that long. And the moment the solar forcing flattened, the energy imbalance must start to decrease, which has not happened. See the post "Climate Time Lag," and please comment there if you want to discuss that topic more.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:51 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
It was once considered that the ocean uptake of CO2 might be able to keep atmospheric concentrations safe, but that idea was shown to be wrong many decades ago.
It might help, also, to put the depth of the oceans into perspective.
The distance across the Pacific is ~6000 miles (9650 km). That is 9,650,000 meters, and the average ocean depth is ~4500 meters. In rough numbers, the Pacific ocean is about 2200X as wide as it is deep.
The thickness of a standard piece of paper is 0.1mm, and it's about 216mm wide. Interestingly, that's about 2100X as wide as thick.
So, while the oceans are very large bodies of water, relative to the full scale of the surface of the Earth, they are proportionately fairly thin.
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scaddenp at 10:30 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Muzz, ocean models are bound by laws of thermodynamics. You need to dream up some physically reasonable mechanism for dragging more heat deeper, faster than has been observed so far. Estimates for very deep heating (below 2000m) is constrained by steric sealevel rise. I would regard this is clutching at straws. People dont tend to explore physically unreasonsonable propositions especially when physically reasonable models are working okay.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:24 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Muzz... What makes you think that no one has considered this idea?
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Muzz at 10:03 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
There is always the possibility, one that no one seems to want to explore, that for the absolute possible amount of AGW that can be produced the ocean is for all intents and purposes an infinite heat sink.
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scaddenp at 08:48 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
dlen - trade winds and ENSO are deeply intertwined. Try this recent review article for more detail. Wang et al 2012.
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Jim Eager at 08:38 AM on 12 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
Mike, see Eli's post Passing Gas on the rapid but rather complicated pathway of CH4 conversion to H2O + CO2 in the tmosphere. It is dependent on the presence of the OH radical.
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dlen at 08:33 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
AFAIK the el nino southern oscillation has been made responsible for the low temperatures especially in 2008 and 2012, which contribute most to the impression of some warming pause. (Foster and Rahmstorf).
It is unclear to me - and may be to others - in what relation the trade wind strengthening stand to ENSO. Both phenomena operate on the same theatre with the water body of the pacific ocean beeing shoveled over in this or the other direction.
Does anybody can give a clarification or a link to one?
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Mike3267 at 07:55 AM on 12 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
The article did not discuss processes that remove methane from the atmosphere. I assume these would primarily be oxidation and absorption by the oceans. Is it clear these have a steady rate, or could these rates change?
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Andy Skuce at 07:51 AM on 12 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
It is interesting to note that the global bottom-up methane emission estimates are more than the top-down measurements. Local and regional studies generally show the opposite tendency (see this recent SkS post by gws).
I am not quite sure what to make of that. I suppose that most of it can be attributed to a lack of adequate local and regional measurements and uncertainties in natural and human emissions rates used in the bottom-up calculations.
The other figure in the article shows a remarkable change in the distribution and amount of global emissions, starting in 2007. The authors point out that the recent rise in methane emissions is dominated by non-fossil sources, which perhaps suggests a link to global climate change, but exactly to what factors exactly is not clear.
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kanspaugh at 07:31 AM on 12 February 2014Establishing consensus is vital for climate action
Yes, "clarifying the existence" of the consensus is the problem and goal. This was easier to do with the consensus over the harmful effects of tobacco smoke, since almost everyone knew someone who was a habitual smoker and got sick / died from it. Really drove home the point. No means quite so pointed and personal of underscoring the existence of consensus over AGW. Not as simple, of course, to attribute suffering and death from extreme weather events to global warming than it is to attribute cancer / heart disease to smoking.
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Jim Eager at 06:17 AM on 12 February 2014A methane mystery: Scientists probe unanswered questions about methane and climate change
Two other notable anthropogenic sources of methane worth mentioning are our cattle herding and wet rice agriculture.
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scaddenp at 06:15 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
I am well aware of Svalgaard's opinions - he is a true skeptic as opposed to someone who is only skeptical of views opposed to their preconceptions - but my point is that none of the actual data supports solar involvement in recent warning. You seem to pinning hopes on some possible unknown rather than heeding the warnings from what is known from actual physics and measurement. It seems to me that your views on AGW are biased by an a priori position rather than informed by published science.
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ubrew12 at 04:51 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Isn't the engine for the trade winds the Hadley circulation, and the engine for that circulation is the heat pumped into the air by water changing phase (raining) at the equator? As water vapor increases with global warming, shouldn't this circulation become enhanced, and thus the trade winds enhanced as well? If so, the trade-wind shear-stress induced vertical ocean circulation (La Nina) may be a 'helpful' negative feedback in the next few decades. Helpful with climate consequences, though not with sea level rise.
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ianw01 at 04:34 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
mgardner@34: No, not worth further debate. I think we both know what's going on here, and probably either of us could edit Bob's post for dimensional correctness. As I'm sure he could too. :-)
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william5331 at 04:18 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
So perhaps we should push ahead with sail assisted ships pushed around the world by these enhanced trade winds. They weren't called trade winds for nothing.
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mgardner at 02:31 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
ianw01@32
I said I thought it was a great explanation, but I can elaborate on how it might be improved if you insist. Note that Bob was using the term shear "force" not "stress" of the wind when he introduced the block, and the transition to F/A was not overtly related back to the "stress" usage for wind. To my mind, the transitional sentence could be interpreted either way. Is it worth arguing about? -
Terranova at 02:20 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Does the paper entitled "Slowdown of the Walker circulation driven by tropical Indo-Pacific warming" by Tokinaga, et al, 2012, contradict the report referenced in your post? Help a biologist out!
The abstract for the paper can be found here.
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michael sweet at 01:58 AM on 12 February 20142014 SkS News Bulletin #1: Keystone XL Pipeline
Russ,
The issue is that you are making an incorrect argument. Since your argument is irrelevant to the discussion it is simple for me to conceed it. You are arguing that no single project measurably affects AGW therefor none should be opposed. This only demonstrates how large the fossil fuel industry is worldwide and emphasizes that all projects need to be opposed.
All projects are important to AGW. All projects need to be opposed. For several reasons I have already outlined, the KXL pipeline is especially bad and is appropriate to draw a line in the sand for.
The tragedy of the commons is that no one individual contributes greatly to the distruction of the commons. The combined effect of everyone is to destroy the commons. The solution is for everyone to help conserve the commons.
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ianw01 at 00:50 AM on 12 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
mgardner @29: You are correct that the friction force in the block example is independent of area (for first order effects). However, the reason the area was (correctly) brought into the discussion by BobLoblaw is that the goal was to express the horizontal force on a per-unit-area basis. (i.e. as a shear stress). Stress is force per unit area.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:30 AM on 12 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Klapper,
More 'on topic', are you looking exclusively at the trend of values in the 'gaps' in the HadCRUT4 data coverage of the planet for all of te available ways of looking at trends in the 'gaps'?
If all you are doing is looking at data of a complete region , not just the clear gaps in the HadCRUT4 evaluation (and choosing one data set as the basis for making a point), any 'conclusion' would be unproven. That would be similar to reviewing the global average surface temperature trend since 1998 without considering the 'noise' of things like the ENSO and volcanic events (which is exactly the point of this article). After an ENSO as powerful as the 1997/98 event, with as little volcanic dimming as occurred in that time period, it would be possible to come to a reasonable 'conclusion' about a 'warming trend rate'. Until then any claims based just on the values would be unfounded.
The point of my larger comment was a reasoned explanation of the persistence of unfounded questions being raised, even after they have been answered. Some people do not want this issue to be better understood. Some people just want to 'raise doubts' any way they can get away with for as long as they can get away with.
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Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Klapper #22:
None of the graphs in Svalgaard’s paper support the idea that solar activity is responsible for any of the recent global warming (last 30-40 years), not even Shapiro’s controversial TSI reconstruction in the right panel of figure 5. (read why it’s controversial and probably wrong here)
I didn’t say the sun peaked 50 years ago, but “more than 50 years ago”. Maybe I should have been more precise and said 1958, as these graphs show:
Anyway, the fingerprints of the recent warming don’t fit the “it’s the sun” claim. For instance, more warming in winter than summer in the Arctic is the opposite of what the sun is expected to do.
So I’m pretty sure that the sun has no responsibility for the recent warming, although it probably played a role before 1960.
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Russ R. at 00:12 AM on 12 February 20142014 SkS News Bulletin #1: Keystone XL Pipeline
scaddenp,
After the numerous, ridiculously generous assumptions I made, I don't think you have any justification to quibble over my numbers. I agree that there are other exernalities not accounted for in my analysis, but you'll find the same is true of all energy technologies (solar, nuclear, wind, battery, etc.). We can debate the magnitudes, but you should at least acknowledge their existence.
vrooomie,
The Scientific American article you linked to answers a rather different question (What is the impact of the entire Alberta tar sands on global warming?) and answers that question (0.4C), making no mention of the fact that the Keystone XL pipeline would require ~6,000 years to pump that volume of crude. It also blissfully ignores the fact that other fossil fuels will be burned if the tar sands are not.
michael sweet,
thank you for conceding my argument that the KXL pipeline is meaningless to the climate. I trust you will henceforth be quick to correct those misinformed individuals claiming that the pipeline's impact will be catastrophic (or even measurable).
In closing, I would be more than happy to not use the "A-word", but only when this site stops using the "D-word". I fully agree that a more constructive debate will result when everyone sticks to facts and leaves out the name-calling.
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howardlee at 23:40 PM on 11 February 2014The Oceans Warmed up Sharply in 2013: We're Going to Need a Bigger Graph
In a weird way, isn't the fact that deep oceans are warming actually (slightly) good news? Let me explain.
As I understand it, there are (simply put) fast feedbacks and slow feedbacks. The conventional wisdom is that in the time since the industrial era, only the fast feedbacks have been operating (surface ocean, lapse rate, sea ice, snow, water vapor, biosphere). Our rate of CO2 increase has been outstripping their ability to absorb CO2.
Slow feedbacks including the deep ocean, are meant to cut in only after a number of centuries to millennia.
If we have evidence that the deep ocean is coming "into play" NOW, that implies surface-deep heat exchange and therefore, presumably, gas exchange. If so, even though we keep building heat in the planetary system (bad news I get it) from a surface point of view, might this buy a few more decades to get emissions down (assuming actual political & business action)?
By bringing the deep ocean into play, it's like turning on a bigger AC - with observed changes to surface global temps in recent years.
Against this idea is the fact that CO2 has continued to rise without any apparent inflection, but then we are cranking it out at such a rate that's not really surprising.
I don't see how we can get heat into the deep oceans without also getting CO2 into the deep oceans.
I'm not an oceanographer but it would seem important to understand the physical location(s) geographically of this extra heat and if its associated with a current, when will that current return those extra joules to the surface? That would be a bad year. If the deep currents are slow we may have a couple of extra decades before then, unless thermal instability disrupts those currents...
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CBDunkerson at 22:32 PM on 11 February 2014Warming oceans consistent with rising sea level & global energy imbalance
It isn't a direct measure of temperature, but Bering sea ice is currently very low for this time of year.
This winter a lot of warm air has been pulled up into the Arctic... which in turn has pushed cold air down into the eastern U.S. Climate deniers have been out in force in my area, 'Look, snow! So much for global warming'... yet I can remember that 30 years ago the winters were routinely colder and more snow covered even than this. The fact that the Arctic has seen an abnormally warm winter could also lead to a large sea ice melt this summer.
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Klapper at 22:07 PM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
@ scaddenp #26:
Here's a quote from the link you posted (Svalgaard 2013).
"It should be clear that there is no consensus and that the question mark in the title of the present paper is fully justified: we do not know what the variation of solar activity has been even over the most recent 170 years, let alone in centuries and millennia past. It is somewhat of a travesty that we cannot provide the climate research community with that fundamental piece of input to their debate."
The aa-index is what it is. Whatever proxies you use to reconstruct the magnetic activity of the sun, here down on earth the actual measurements show a steady increase to at least the very end of the 20th century. Perhaps there are complications of how the solar wind and magnetic activity interact. I don't know, but certainly there is room to speculate that indirect solar effects need not have peaked 50 years ago, particularly in light of Svalgaard's quote above. -
mgardner at 21:18 PM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Bob Loblaw @17
A great explanation; I too had no clue about the wind stuff, but here's a nitpick in the interest of basic physics purity: The friction for a sliding dry block isn't dependent on surface area.
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michael sweet at 21:13 PM on 11 February 2014Warming oceans consistent with rising sea level & global energy imbalance
Elmwood,
Neven's Arctic Sea Ice Graphs page has a lot of graphs that cover Alaska. If you are a casual reader there are a lot of graphs to look through. This page shows the daily and weekly sea temperature anomalies worldwide. It currently shows the Bearing sea as warm. I do not remember a week this year when the Bearing sea was cold, it has been warm or neutral. There is a large hot spot south of Alaska in the North Pacific ocean. It has been there for months.
Yesterdays temperature anomaly plot for the entire world shows Anchorage cool as you describe. The weekly product is still not working.
I imagine your news sources are fairly biased in Alaska. This is a good site to ask questions. We all are interested in weaknesses, they show areas you can learn more.
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Xolin at 18:01 PM on 11 February 2014Why rainbows and oil slicks help to show the greenhouse effect
UBrew12 @ #13
I don't wish to dismiss your analogy out of hand - because analogies can be useful in explaining abstract concepts to laypeople - but your dye in a swimming pool explanation is almost, but not quite, entirely incorrect in demonstrating the effect of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
The pool dye advertised (apart from its almost complete lack of usefulness in anything other than some trivial First World sense) has none of the properties of CO2, does not behave in the atmposphere as CO2 does, nor does it emulate any of the physics necessary to explain CO2 influence. Suffice it to say - without boring all in the know - that explanations of the electromagnetic energy transfer and blocking mechanisms of CO2, its mixing levels at given temperatures and energy levels, and its raison d'etre in the equations of a myriad thermodynamic equations (such as the Stefan-Boltzmann), amongst other things, using an analogy that only shows a superficial resemblance to reality is misleading and unhelpful.
We need to argue against the deniers with objective, scientifically robust and valid empirical proof. Otherwise we risk dissembling into argument entropy where each side attempts to explain hyper-complex realms with simpler and simpler examples that results in a complete loss of any form of epistemological basis...And I, for one, would rather 'lose' an argument to a denier than relinquish that.
Moderator Response:[PW] To all:
I'm as vociferous a fan of 'outing' those who dismiss the science of climate change as any, but let's all *drop* the use of the d-word; if you feel compelled, use 'dismissive,' or 'pseudoskeptic.' It only gives the dismissives ammo and it doesn't truly reflect the reality. There are true skeptics--pretty much 100% of all scientists--and pseudoskeptics, those who have little to no training in what they are dismissing. Not only do we need to "argue against the deniers with objective, scientifically robust and valid empirical proof.", we also need to do it as respectfully as we can.
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