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chrisd3 at 04:10 AM on 7 January 2014The Weekly Standard's Lindzen puff piece exemplifies the conservative media's climate failures
Dana, the Hansen vs. observed temperature portion of the chart is really useful. Have you written this up in greater detail anywhere (methodology, etc.)?
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deweaver at 04:08 AM on 7 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
gws:
Our estimates of cattle biomass and food conversion effieciency with associated methane production is fairly well known. We do understand the microbiology of starting with anaerobic fermentation of cellulose to hydrogen and acetate, with the cow living on the acetate as a carbon source, and the hydrogen being detoxified (toxic to the fermenters) by reacting (using different bacteria) with CO2 to produce methane.
I have not seen good studies on termite food conversion efficiencies, and estimates of standing biomass and food consumption are SWAGS at best (Scientific Wild Ass Guesses). Remember there are many species of termite with different microbiological ecologies, whose efficiency depends upon the ability of the gut to prevent O2 diffusion in a very small high surface area/volume ratio reactor. Any O2 in an anaerobic microbiological reactor will destroy the food energy value by producing heat, CO2 and water from the cellulose. We are now obtaining good data on the microbiomes in people and cattle, but termits are far down the list of priorities.In the tropics, only termites and ruminants can utilize cellulose for energy, and most of the tropic plants produce a lot of cellulose. If they produce proteins, some insect will eat them, and they live in nutrient-deficient soils with limited NPK, but an infinite amount of CO2 to create cellulose. Plants in the tropics don't have winter to kill off non-termite species of insects (who can't digest cellulose). The plants have a survival choice of becoming primarly non-digestable (cellulose/lignin) or toxic or both.
I have also not seen any discusssion about methane losses to bacteria in the soil and on surfaces. When you look at microbiological oxidation of methane to CO2 and H2O, the rates are dependent upon concentrations at low concentration ranges. There is an Smin (minimum substrate concentration) where the methane oxidation rates in aerobic soils goes to zero, but above that concentration the rate increases rapidly as the bacteria utilize a high volume food source.This increasing rate of oxidation as a function of concentration can result in the biological oxidation rate increasing much faster than the concentration, making methane concentations in the atmosphere self-limiting as bacteria use the methane as a food supply. I have seen very little relevant research on biologial oxidation of methane.
I would be suprised that 5% of the methane being produced is being lost. Flow measurement and billing systems automatically determine BTU content and flow rates to fractions of a % accuracy. When 5% of 100 billion is 5 billion dollars, most businesses don't leave that much money on the table.
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kanspaugh at 03:11 AM on 7 January 2014The Weekly Standard's Lindzen puff piece exemplifies the conservative media's climate failures
I think the author nails it when he says that Richard "Tricky Dickey" Lindzen has made a career of being wrong. I'd say his contrarian nature is psychopathological except that I've noticed he tends always to be contrary in a way that pleases deep-pocketed industries like Big Oil and Big Tobacco. So just a cynical servant of corporate interests with all the ethical integrity of a mob lawyer. A fit object for our scorn, not our pity.
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gws at 02:23 AM on 7 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
newairly @21: There is no single best answer on this since electricity production (or other natural gas uses) efficiencies vary. A more detailed monograph on this question was linked in the article, and the interactive graph is here.
An example for an instantaneous switch: Methane leaked has to be compared to the amount of carbon dioxide it would otherwise have produced had it not been released but instead burned to replace coal, so the molar GWP is what is needed for the calculation. Assuming a typical 40% higher efficiency of electricity production, 2.5 times less CO2 is emitted from a natural gas relative to a coal-fired power plant. If f is the fraction of methane leaked, then
GWPmol x f - 2.5 x (1-f) = 0
for the break-even point you asked about. Using a 20-yr GWPmol = 31 (aka 86/2.72), this gives f approximately equal to 7.5%.
Which GWP value you choose is less of a scientific, but rather political or moral question. The advantages of using natural gas over coal are obvious. Replacing coal by natural gas for energy production while minimizing methane leaks will reduce greenhouse gas emissions very significantly.
However, the important thing to realize is that this cannot be the final answer since natural gas is still a fossil fuel that is sure to run out eventually. Is its extensive use going to hamper the development of renewables? Are those advocating the "bridge" going to point out to the industry that they ought to stop exploring/mining in a few decades?
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John Hartz at 02:00 AM on 7 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Matthew L and Poster:
By design, the Weekly News Roundup is a compilation of news articles from around the world which address some aspect of climate change be it scientific and/or policy related. The News Roundup is provided as a service to our readers who like to keep their fingers on the pulse about what's happening and how it is being communicated.
The headlines and text for each article included in a news roundup are verbatim from the article as originally posted and/or published.
The inclusion of an article in the news roundup does not equate to SkS endorsement of the article.
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Tom Dayton at 23:59 PM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Terranova, that issue was addressed by HotWhopper recently.
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Terranova at 21:21 PM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The mangrove paper totally ignores the pertinent fact that recovery efforts for the mangroves were put in place after hurricanes destroyed a large portion of them. That fact needs to be accounted for.
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Poster9662 at 21:01 PM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
But surely "Australia burns" is a localised not a global event and could be classed more as weather than climate. In reality on a global scale 2013 was the fourth hottest year behind 1998, 2010 and 2005. So why in 2006-09 and 2011 and 2012 were there not concerns of global colling? I am well aware of the trend lines but taking one year in one country in isolation, which is what is happening here, doesn't really have much validity in a global context. For example the residents of the US could using the same logic, say that as in 2013 (and for the first time since 1993) there were more record cold temperatures than record hot temperatures (USA Today January 2 2014 http://tinyurl.com/lfkwpel) that global cooling rather than global warming is occurring
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Matthew L at 20:51 PM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
OK, let me try again. In the first item on this page you use the phrase "while Australia burns" because it had its warmest year and had forest fires. To me this is literally inflammatory on a site supposedly devoted to science. We could discuss how forest fires are due to more direct human intervention than rising CO2, such as poor woodland management, building housing in forest areas and arson, but my main point is that one year of data is weather not climate. Other parts of the globe had cold years - this site bills itself as putting forward the science behind experiencing "global warming" (note no denial of this fact) and it is not scientifically valid to imply that one warm year in one part of the world is indicative of anything other than unusual "weather".
In fact this very point is made in the item headed "Dear Donald Trump...". Yes, Winter does not equal global cooling any more than one warm year in one place (or the whole globe for that matter) equals global warming.
Having been a long time reader and supporter of this site as an excellent resource on the science I am being increasingly put off by the increasingly political tone and lack of balance. Please put this post up so that I can see whether others agree or disagree with me.
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martin3818 at 20:35 PM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #1
"Coming soon on SKS - 4C possible by 2100"
@Robin Painting
Thanks in advance for covering this exciting new paper. I have read quite a bit about it, but I still haven't really understood how mixing of the lower troposphere dries the boundary layer, nor why this mixing will increase when surface temperatures increase.
It would be very helpful if you could explain this bit in detail for dummies like me.
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michael sweet at 13:31 PM on 6 January 20142013 in Review: a Productive Year for Skeptical Science
Bienh,
I think the reference you want is Solomen et al a popular science description is here. They describe variable stratospheric aerosol reducing the temperature about 0.05 C in the past decade. I did not understand how they separated anthropogenic and natural aerosols. Google is your friend.
They claim that aerosols will significantly affect temperatures in the future and models will be inaccurate if this is not considered (seems obvious enough to me).
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Riduna at 12:53 PM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Wol – “any tax on carbon which doesn't have a direct impact on the end user (the electricity consumer) is hardly effective”
Wrong. The Gillard governments carbon tax was imposed on major emitters, such as electricity generators, in a bid to induce them to reduce their emissions and in this regard it was successful. Why would you tax end users of products, eg. electricity, rather than emitters?
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2013 in Review: a Productive Year for Skeptical Science
Bienh - I don't know where you might have read that; GISS lists forcings up through 2012, and there is no such increase in stratospheric aerosols that might be coming from volcanic activity.
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wili at 11:15 AM on 6 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
Slight correction: In spite of what the graph seems to show, the last part of the abstract of the paper states specifically:
"Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios."
So we are now warmer than nearly any time in the Holocene, and getting warmer fast.
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wili at 10:49 AM on 6 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
The importance of the first graph is not just that it shows that the temps are rising faster than any other time in the holocene, but that we are now hotter than any time in the Holocene, which in turn means that we are hotter than any time in the last 110,000 years or so (since the Eemian Interglacial)--in other words hotter than any time since fully modern man evolved.
We have already created a world that our species has never experienced, and every day we are pushing it further outside of the range underwhich we have evolved as a species and as a civilization. So thanks for placing that important graph at the top. It should be at the top of every human's mind.
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wili at 10:37 AM on 6 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
jja, as the top graph shows, global temperatures had been dropping by about .1 degree C per millennium for the last 7000 years (since the 'Holocene Climate Optimum'). The Little Ice Age was just a little, probably regional, wiggle in that long decline.
So beyond your excellent point about industrialization bringing us out of that cold trend, we should point out that we should be some part of tenth of a degree _colder_ than that period by now. That we are instead some .8 degrees warmer, in that context, is even more shocking.
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wili at 10:31 AM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Wol, dude, it would be oxymoronic if there was a tax on _everything_ which was then turned back. Taxing carbon only will constantly steer people away from carbon-intensive sources and toward conservation and non-carbon sources.
But ultimately we may be in agreement, since I see such taxes as only a very inadequate start toward what we much implement. Carbon emissions are essentially bombs that we are creating and dropping on our children. If we knew of someone manufacturing explosives that we knew they planned to explode in our children's schools, we would not just try to discourage them from doing so by modestly increasing their taxes--we would move as quickly as we could to banning the production of such threatening material. This is what we have to come to see fossil-death-fuels as--a clear and present threat to our very existence and that of our children.
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Wol at 09:58 AM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
>>The problems with Abbott government policies is that it not only repeals sensible, effective and very necessary measures aimed at curbing Australian greenhouse gas emissions<<
I would take you up on that: any tax on carbon which doesn't have a direct impact on the end user (the electricity consumer) is hardly effective. Taxing carbon and then giving a rebate to some is close to oxymoronic - the whole point is to make people aware of the tax and to reduce consumption.
Moderator Response:[JH] Unnecessary white space eliminated.
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Bienh at 09:24 AM on 6 January 20142013 in Review: a Productive Year for Skeptical Science
I am looking for a reference I can use regarding "increased volcanic activity," as one of the reasons why there has been some apparent cooling, as I am writing a chapter on 'climate change denial' as unethical behaviour for a book on ethics (to be called "Engineering ethics: International and environmental stability"). I am sure I have read somewhere that "volcanic activity has been approximately twice as strong in the years 2008 to 2011 than between 1999 and 2002." I thought it was in WGIAR5 SPM, but I cannot find it there. I also keep reading that the Pinatubo eruption was stronger than anything later. I am aware of papers explaining other reasons why surface warming has been less than expected. By the way, an multi-disciplinary online course on "Climate change: challenges and solutions" by scientists from Exeter University and the Met Office starts next week. I just hope it helps to change the indifferent and hostile reaction towards the subject which has been so common after Climategate,
Bienh
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chriskoz at 08:45 AM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
william@4,
As sea level rises, the vertical restraint on coral growth is removed [...]. Note that corals kept up with the 6mm/year rise in sea level since the end of the last glacial and filled in 120m
I think your point hardly makes any difference. Climate change during interglacial transition was quite different to that caused by AWG today. The main issue to corals is ocean acidification. They can grow fast, even outgrow the SLR twice as fast as today, if they have favorite conditions.
Note that during the glacial transitions, if anything ocean became less acidic, because it released its CO2 into athmosphere as it warmed. Today, the opposite happens: C is dug out of long-term, 100Ma reservoirs, dumped into atmosphere and ultimately sunk into ocean as CO2. And it's happening at alarmingly fast rate, beyond any adaptation capability by biosphere. So, with OA rising fast, the corals will simply dissolve: they cannot grow, let alone keep up with the pace of SLR.
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Synapsid at 07:03 AM on 6 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
Andy Skuce @ 18:
Thanks for the referral to the McKenna article--the very research we need is getting underway. This is the best news I've seen for a long time.
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Riduna at 06:55 AM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The problems with Abbott government policies is that it not only repeals sensible, effective and very necessary measures aimed at curbing Australian greenhouse gas emissions (put in place by the Gillard government) but it also removes measures aimed at promoting development and use of renewable technology.
Abbott goes further by promoting, assisting and encouraging the development of new coal mines and subsidizing their operation. As if that were not enough, he has either abolished or withdrawn funding from scientific organizations with responsibility for independently informing the public on the science of climate change and government on appropriate targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. While embracing a target of reducing Australia’s CO2 emissions to 5% below 2000 emissions by 2020,
Mr Abbott ignores the science and scientists who call for a reduction of 25% by 2020. Apart from an ideological position, reluctance to adopt a more pragmatic target may have something to do with the fact the his proposals for Direct Action to reduce emissions simply can not deliver more than a 5% reduction over the next 6 years. Both politically and in terms of temperature,
Mr Abbott is likely find that by the time of the next General election (2016), the numbers are not on his side. His position on climate change in the face of a warming reality is barely tenable and will be considerably less so when he is forced to ask the electorate for their support.
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jja at 06:51 AM on 6 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
industrialization ended the little ice age
the next one would probably be a recent analysis by JPL regarding the little ice age:
skeptics are forever saying that the recent warming is caused by "coming out of the little ice age" without causation. If industrialization is the cause of "coming out of the little ice age" and industrialization is the primary force that increases atmospheric CO2 then, in this case, I am in full agreement with those "skeptics". -
william5331 at 05:32 AM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The demise of corals would be a double whammy. As sea level rises, the vertical restraint on coral growth is removed and Corals, which are a tad over 60% Carbon dioxide by weight, should be doing their part in sequestering CO2. Kill the corals (and the oysters and the pteropods and the foram's etc) and this sink ends. Note that corals kept up with the 6mm/year rise in sea level since the end of the last glacial and filled in 120m.
The cloud thing is interesting. If we kill the oceans will there be more methyl sulphide or less emitted into the atmosphere. (have I got the chemical right). This is an emission from algae and is supposed to help seed clouds. I suppose if the oceans are completely dead, there will be no more algae but in between, the oceans could be a slimy soup of algae with more of the chemical emitted???
mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/carbon-sinks.html
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John Hartz at 02:01 AM on 6 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
@ Matthew L: Your post was deleted in its entirety becuase it constituted inflamatory sloganeering which is prohibited by the SkS Comments Plolicy. Please read the Comments Policy and adhere to it.
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OPatrick at 21:40 PM on 5 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
Tom, I agree - and, as you've said, similar can be said for the Sherwood paper and indeed probably for any of the papers listed above. Any single paper is only ever likely to be an incremental improvement in our understanding.
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barry1487 at 14:33 PM on 5 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Took Abbott only a few days in government to axe the Climate Change Commission.
Dark days indeed.
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newairly at 13:41 PM on 5 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
What is the level of fugitive emissions at which natural gas has the same global warming effect as coal when used for electricity production?
The comparison should use modern, efficient coal fired plants and the most efficient natural gas plants to give the best case scenario for "base load" electricity. Many comparisons I have seen use the 100 year GWP for methane, but this is not realistic. We should worry about a much shorter timeframe and the use of the 20 year GWP of 84, or even the 10 year which I think would be way over 100.
It would appear that if the warming over shorter time frames is used that fugitive rates as low as 1% would totally negate any benefit compared with coal. What happens in the next decade is crucial.
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Tom Curtis at 12:39 PM on 5 January 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
Doug @15, I cannot show you that you are wrong. Nor can I show you that you are right. The BAU trajectory depends on too many imponderables, such as the relative rate of improvement in the technology of fossil fuel extraction vs the rate of improvement of power output from renewable sources. Our civilization can probably struggle along long enough to exhaust all conventional sources of oil and gas. If technological development makes harnassing unconventional sources economic, then BAU will take us to a CO2 warming induced hell faster than projected by IPCC BAU models, which assume declining carbon intensity whereas a widespread conversion to non-conventional fossil fuel sources will see a significant increase in carbon intensity. Alternatively, renewable energy may become much cheaper faster than costs of extraction of non-renewable fossil fuels and of coal, in which case fossil fuel use will be driven to only a small part of the economy by economics alone. It is possible that neither will happen, in which case we are indeed heading for a peak-oil like catastrophe.
What I am confident of is that we need to load the dice in favour of renewable energy (including "renewable nuclear power", where that is defined as nuclear power in which disposed waste is rendered no more dangerous than the original ores) to have a chance of steering though to a winning solution. That is, we need a carbon price. But even an effective carbon price does not gaurantee we will avoid all of the other potential ecological catastrophes (for humans) we are facing.
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Doug Hutcheson at 11:43 AM on 5 January 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
Tom Curtis @ 14, you correctly state "continuing growth - bar an apocalypse - is locked in". I have to admit, I am expecting some kind of 'apocalypse' to reduce our population, whether it be resource wars, drug-resistant epidemics, or starvation triggered by economic collapse (perhaps due to the loss of economic growth following that other elephant in the room, peak oil).
What I do not expect is BAU to continue long enough for humaity to have time to burn all available fossil carbon: if I am wrong about that, we are doomed to even worse causes of negative population growth.
Sadly, I have no science to link to in support of my pessimism, just my reading of human nature and (dim?) awareness of some of our looming problems. Please show me I am wrong!
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Doug Hutcheson at 11:25 AM on 5 January 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
I have to admit, my anger at Abbott's climate science denialism has caused me to make somewhat intemperate comments, both here and at The Conversation. As I am not a scientist, speaking in anger does not reflect badly on my dispassionate professionalism, but it still disappoints me that I can be so provoked. This inexplicable blindness by Tony Abbott single-handedly caused my traditional Conservative vote to go to the Left in the recent Australian election and I see no prospect of it going back to the Right any time soon.
I am also encountering a surprising number of people who share my concerns: surprising, in that I live in an overwhelmingly Right wing electorate, where the National member enjoys a massive share of the vote.
Is it too much to hope that light is dawning in this benighted political landscape? Time will tell, but time is against us.
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Tom Curtis at 11:10 AM on 5 January 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
Oneplanetforever @9, the per capita Australian dietary intake is 13,350 kilojoules per day, which I am informed represents 4.28 times the global per capita sustainable food intake. Presumably, therefore, we must reduce our food intake to 23.4% of its current value, or 3,120 kilojoules per day. As it happens, that is 46.9% of the per capita daily dietary intake of Eritrea, the nation with the lowest per capita food intake in the world (first link). It is also only 35.9% of the recommended daily dietary intake. Put another way, if we are to live "sustainably" with regard to food intake, we must either all live in a permanent state of malnutrition, or we must reduce the Earth's population to less than 2.5 billion people. The later, unfortunately, is not an option in the near term in that population growth is governed by generational factors, so that continuing growth - bar an apocalypse - is locked in over the next twenty odd years at least.
I take dietary food requirements as it is fundamental, and stark. It places our dilemma up front. The dilemma is this:
1) We can accept the ecological constraints as an upper bound on our capability and aspiration that can never be exceeded; or
2) We can recognize the ecological constraints but find technological means to break through them.
The later means finding new means of food production that exceed the energy constraints of the biosphere without imparing the biosphere. One potential such method (already tried by the Russians) is growing food underground using energy from artificial sources. Another would be the staple of sci-fi, yeast (or algae) vats, again with energy from artificial sources. A third is increasing biological productivity be fertilizers. A fourth might be the direct production of the chemicals of food on an industrial basis. These all require the use of artifical energy. That may include solar energy from solar plants, as plants are very inefficient at producing food energy from solar energy. Alternatively, it may mean nuclear power. Because all these means require the large scale production of energy, all make more accute the issue of finding sustainable energy sources.
However, the former means permanently locking humans in an economic state no more advanced than feudalism. It requires switching to wide scale farming for a small population using limited energy sources. That will tie a far greater proportion of the Earth's population directly into food production, and make inefficient wide spread trade. High technological science (particularly in electronics and medicine) cannot survive in that sort of context. Nor can the existence of a substantial scientific class. That rout means, in fact, the end of the great experiment that began with the enlightenment.
Faced with that dilemma I do not hesitate to choose the second option. In one respect it is more risky, but from another perspecitive, the first option avoids risk by accepting complete defeat as a solution. By giving up our aspiration to be more than another disease ridden animal subject to the whims of nature and distinguished from other animals primarilly only by the fact that we are smart enough to bind ourselves in superstition; we have given up that which makes us human, and that which makes being human something special.
Granted, if we take the second option, we may fail. Our economy may become sustainable again by force majeure of nature, dropping us through catastrophe back to the situation to which you aspire, or even to extinction. But that failure matters not one wit to the planet, which will still have life, and still rebuild within a few millions of years (a trivial time period geologically) ecosystems as complex as any that exist now. It only matters to us now. So our choice is simple. Do we strive to be more - or settle for failure for fear that our striving will not succeed.
You have chosen failure. It is a choice I cannot accept.
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Tom Curtis at 10:25 AM on 5 January 20142013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
davidnewell @10, without going into detail, sea water already has a large DIC content so that spraying it in the open is likely to absorb little, if any, extra CO2. Further, any water that evaporates in droplet form will tend to release its CO2 so that the volume of water transported and evaporated does not contribute to carbon sequestration. What would contribute to carbon sequestration using play soils is the difference in DIC content between sea water and that formed in the ponds resulting from spraying. As far as I can tell, given that the water is sprayed onto carbonate, the DIC will increase, potentially releasing CO2 by reducing the pH in of the soils. Chemistry is not my strong suite, so I can be persuaded otherwise - especially by a chemist who specializes in this area (such as David Archer) indicating my error.
My essential point, however, is that the factors you cite (total CO2 content of airflow through spayed area) as indicating the carbon sequestration potential of your scheme are in fact irrelevant to that potential. Further, your stated secondary benefits are at the expense of greatly reduced effectiveness in your scheme. If I am wrong about the chemistry, your scheme may work as a method of carbon sequestration, but you have not shown that it will, nor given any reasonable means of calculating its potential benefit.
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gws at 10:14 AM on 5 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
Stephen @16: Basically, yes.
However, consider that the EPA uses only data it considers very well established, and goes at times to extremes to make sure measurements and resulting data it uses are essentially unassailable (since the EPA has to defend itself in court a lot ...). Thus the outdated use of the methane GWP. Now that a new IPCC report is out, EPA will consider redoing calcs using the new GWP, but possibly not until a few more papers come out addressing that topic. I will not make a prediction.
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Tom Curtis at 09:58 AM on 5 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
OPatrick @11, creating a buzz in the denialosphere is not the same as having a significant scientific impact. As to the later, Nic Lewis's paper is just one recent paper on climate sensitivity, many of which show much larger values:
There is no particular reason to think his method is more reliable than others, and indeed, some reason to think its results vary widely depending on choice of time frame, making it a fairly unreliable method.
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OPatrick at 08:52 AM on 5 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
Maybe I've spent too much time in the wrong places to judge the real nature of the climate science discourse (it certainly feels that way) but I'd have said Nic Lewis' climate sensitivity paper probably had a disproportionately large impact. Did this paper get on to the short list Roz?
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michael sweet at 07:44 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Aristotelian,
This Wikipedia article describes the break up of the Ward Ice shelf on North Elesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic from 2002-2010. It was a remnant of the Ellesmere Island Ice Shelf which was 3,000 years old when discovered in 1875 (dated using drift wood on the inner surface of the shelf). Virtually all of the Arctic ice shelves have melted since their discovery, this is only the first hit of a Google search. The shelf survived the MWP and has melted with modern AGW. Since the ice shelf was 3,000 years old, how could the MWP have been warmer, even in the Canadian Arctic where it was presumably the warmest?
Please provide a link for your supposed Ice shelf melting during the MWP. Perhaps your sources of information are feeding you fabricated data. That is why they are called deniers.
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scaddenp at 06:36 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
MWP has warming occuring in different places at different times and not at all in some places. Warming now is occuring at different rates in different places, but the whole planet is warming. eg see here spatial distribution for warming since 1980. Compare that with spatial distribution during the MWP shown in the intermediate version of this article.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:32 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
And to answer your question, modern warming is homogeneous, whereas the MWP was heterogeneous. Peaks of MWP warming occur during a span of about 600-800 years. Some places it was as early as 1400 years ago, some places as recent as 600 years ago.
If you go back to the CO2 Science site and look closely at all the graphs they present, you can clearly see this.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:27 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
aristotelian... RE: "artice shelf melting"
It would be helpful if you could provide links to what you're referring to.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:25 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Aristotelian... This is definitely not a 1000 year representation, but it gives you a better idea of the changes in spacial distribution of temperature on the planet for the past 150 years.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:55 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Aristotelian, SkS is not some random website and if you believe so, you have not paid any attention. It won the Eureka Prize of the Australian Musem for advancement of climate knowledge. That's not a popular online vote in which everybody who has no clue can click and bots can click automatically. Every SkS article is backed up by peer-reviewed science papers, readers are encouraged to explore them, so the kind of dissimulation that happens at Idso's site can't happen. Several of the SkS moderators have had publications in high impact science journals in the past 3 years. In comparison, it took years for Watts to publish one paper, and when he did, it failed to confirm the very premise to the existence of his website. It also brought nothing new to previous publications by others that had already done that.
So really ,the choice is between a website with established expertise demonstrated by winning awards from scientific organizations and a record of publications in the field, against some random interview in the NYT. That is a much better representation of reality in this case.
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aristotelian at 05:49 AM on 5 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Is the current Global Warming trend hetetrogeneious? If the artice shelf melting was not a indicator of global warming 1000 yeears ago, why is it considered an indicator, today?
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william5331 at 05:36 AM on 5 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
There is a mechanism that could result in a sudden methane burp. As a thougt experiment, take a diving bottle and fill it half full of clathrate that you have dredged from the ocean. Put a bung in the opening. Deck temperature is, say 50C. The clathrate begins to give up its methane and the pressure rises in the bottle. When the pressure gets to a certain point (equivalent to a depth of about 700m) the clatrate stops giving out its methane. If clatrate below the bottom of the ocean is being stabilized by, for instance, the strength of an overlying layer of permafrost rather than by the depth at which it occurs. anything that breaches this cap (mehanaclude - like an aquaclude) could result in a sudden release of methane that is already in the gasseous form and from remaining clathrate that is now exposed to warm water but now without sufficient pressure to keep it stable. An earthquake could do it or a land slide on the contenental slope north of Russia as the permafrost slowly weakens to the point where such a land slide can occur.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2013/08/a-methane-spike.html
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Gestur at 02:08 AM on 5 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
We all have our own personal vectors of importance weights when it comes to climate research. These days mine tend to place much weight on research that sheds a clearer light on why we shouldn’t be considering solar radiation management geo-engineering, what I’ve called ‘the mother of all moral hazards’. And so the two papers that I would rate as highly policy relevant this past year are the theoretical paper by A. Kleidon and M. Renner of the Max Planck Institute published in Earth Systems Dynamics (“A simple explanation for the sensitivity of the hydrologic cycle to surface temperature and solar radiation and its implications for global climate change”) and then the multiple Earth System climate-model verification of this effect by S. Tilmes et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (“The hydrological impact of geoengineering in the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project”). Together, they make a compelling case that if you tried to nullify global temperature increases with solar radiation management techniques, the expected consequences would be reduced global evaporation leading to lower rainfall and significant changes in its distribution.
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RozPidcock at 00:35 AM on 5 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
Interesting discussion, thanks. I'd say my idea was to summarise papers that made it into the media's collective consciousness this year rather than perhaps the most worthy contributions to climate science - although some tick both boxes. I suppose a better title might have been "5 papers that shaped climate science discourse'.
Kosaka & Xie nearly made the cut (and I do link to it in the final section) since the pre-WG1 timing made it quite a media conversation piece. But I felt Balmaseda et al. first described the Pacific warming/cooling mechanism (incidentally, the authors of that paper had some interesting comments about Kosaka & Xie on that front http://bit.ly/1g7Ocm6)
And yes, sadly the new Sherwood paper about climate sensitivity came just after I'd written this piece. Though it perhaps would have slotted in as a continuation of the media interest in climate sensitivity this year rather than forming a category on its own. Glad to hear all your thoughts, keep them coming ...
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StBarnabas at 23:28 PM on 4 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
Kevin
Cowtan and Way is a very nice paper. I do wish I had written it; but it is not fair to say "anyone could have done it" a good grounding in physical sciences is needed. I know in much of my professional life everyone has a PhD in Physics - but this is not generally true. When I discuss climate change with my brother in law (who is a skeptic) we have no common ground. Much of the population has very little grounding in Physical Sciences. Well done again
sean
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Andy Skuce at 18:25 PM on 4 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
Miguelito @6
Michael Levi has also written about the Uintah study. According to him, there is a fairly recent bottom-up study that showed that there are high leakage rates, around 5%, in that area due mainly to gas gathering and processing activities. Had the authors of the top-down study used a 2-sigma confidence interval, their results would have overlapped with the bottom-up results.
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Andy Skuce at 17:43 PM on 4 January 2014Methane emissions from oil & gas development
Synapsaid:
You may be interested in this excellent long read on an amateur scientist looking for gas leaks in the US NE.
There is some information on the problem with corroding cast-iron distribution pipes here. Astonishingly, some of these pipes, still in use, were installed as early as the 1830s, decades before the Civil War.
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Rob Honeycutt at 15:20 PM on 4 January 2014Medieval Warm Period was warmer
aristotelian... Whenever you hear someone say (or see it stated somewhere) that the MWP was global, ask one simple question: "Was the MWP heterogeneous?"
That's all you have to say.
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