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chriskoz at 11:44 AM on 18 January 2014Australia’s hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it
smh env editor Peter Hannam has noted in his latest piece Scorchers: the reality of a sunburnt country:
Before the 2009 [...] Black Saturday bushfires, Melbourne had never recorded a day where the temperature averaged above 35 degrees. That event delivered two of them.
This week's heatwave [...] delivered three more such days with average temperatures over 35 - and a record four days with maximums over 41 - in a row.
So, from the climate perspective, the 2014 heatwave is more remarkable than that famous 2009 devastation because it was even more extreme.
People (except few BOM analysts and climatologists) obviously will not think of it as such because there were no "big fires" (as yet, thankfully Black Saturday-like strong winds have been missing us), so we need to trumpet this news throughout: folks, 2014 is even more extreme than 2009! We've beat that famous extreme record in just 5 years and under ENSO neutral conditions!
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Riduna at 10:42 AM on 18 January 2014Australia’s hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it
Interestingly, 2013 records were set in the presence of an ENSO hiatus. 2014 is likely to see development of an El Niño resulting in surface temperatures exceeding those of 2013.
South Eastern Australia has already had its first heat-wave of 2014 with sustained temperatures exceeding 40°C for >3 consecutive days causing bushfires which have ravaged over 500,000 ha of South Australia and Victoria.
In terms of premature deaths and property loss, it is possible that 2014 will set new records, possibly exacerbated by El Niño induced drought affecting stock and agricultural yields. The immediate future is far from bright.
Unfortunately these outcomes are compunded by public policy which is, nominally, predictaed on recognitiion of anthropogenic global warming but in practice seeks to significantly increase the production, export and use of fossil fuels.
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Tom Dayton at 09:49 AM on 18 January 2014Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
Andrew Dessler reproduced The SkS Escalater in his U.S. Congressional testimony yesterday.
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DSL at 07:52 AM on 18 January 2014Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
On a side note, I have to point out that Henry P's analysis should be submitted for publication. It's perfect for a journal like, oh, Pattern Recognition in Physics.
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Tom Dayton at 06:41 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK, why on Earth do you think that only temperature minimum would be affected by human influences?
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2013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK - I have replied on the appropriate thread (Thanks, DSL). Please read the opening post there.
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Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
MoreCarbonOK - "yes, I read everything that you said!" And you apparently ignored it - you have considered absolutely nothing about statistical significance.
Your arguments are really just climastrology, curve-fitting, with no understanding of the difference between short term variation and trends, and with absolutely no connection to physics.
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william5331 at 06:17 AM on 18 January 2014High-stakes climate poker
The only way we will ever defeat fossil fuel is to make it economically unfeasible. Look, for instance, what happened within fossil fuel when cheap gas challenged coal. Within a few short years coal declined in America from 50% of the energy generating mix to 35%. Solar is economically feasible in many areas now but the hold up has to do with the regulations surrounding the relationship between the small generator, the power company and the government. Get these right and solar will expand hugely and fossil fuels will be pushed into a corner. The following links give a sample of the problems involved. We must hit fossil fuel in their underbelly rather than going into a head on attack. They have far too much money for us to win that type of conflict.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/solar-power-and-ratchet.html
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2009/09/german-fit-system-brilliant.html
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MoreCarbonOK at 06:10 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
@KR
yes, I read everything that you said!
but all of you forgot to look at maxima (to identify natural patterns) and minima (to see if there is any man made influence)
go back to check henry's work
4)
the end results on the bottom of the first table (on maximum temperatures),
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
clearly showed a drop in the speed of warming that started around 38 years ago, and continued to drop every other period I looked//…
5)I did a linear fit, on those 4 results for the drop in the speed of global maximum temps,
ended up with y=0.0018x -0.0314, with r2=0.96
At that stage I was sure to know that I had hooked a fish:
I was at least 95% sure (max) temperatures were falling. I had wanted to take at least 50 samples but decided this would not be necessary which such high correlation.
6)On same maxima data, a polynomial fit, of 2nd order, i.e. parabolic, gave me
y= -0.000049×2 + 0.004267x – 0.056745
r2=0.995
That is very high, showing a natural relationship, like the trajectory of somebody throwing a ball…
7)projection on the above parabolic fit backward, ( 5 years) showed a curve:
happening around 40 years ago. You always have to be careful with forward and backward projection, but you can do so with such high correlation (0.995)
8)ergo: the final curve must be a sine wave fit, with another curve happening, somewhere on the bottom…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/chosing one full Schwabe solar cycle (12 years) or multiples (23) is fine, if you know where we are going.
chosing 16 years (as I did with Alaska) and still prove a significant cooling trend is showing you the trouble of the climate change that is coming up ahead
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
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DSL at 06:01 AM on 18 January 2014Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
It's not cherry-picking? Hrmmm, what were you saying in 2007, when the trend since 1992 was 0.286C per decade? The current trend from 1992 is 0.168C per decade. Pretty warm, despite it covering your period of cooling.
You are cherry-picking, Henry. I didn't even mention your primary cherry-pick, which was to use <4% of the thermal capacity of the climate system to claim "global cooling." That's like reviewing a restaurant based on having had a bit of an appetizer and a glass of water. You've sought ought the periods and surface temp analyses that support your position. You give no methodological justification for choosing the sets/periods (why not GISS, which has better global coverage? Why not account for the findings of Cowtan & Way 2013?). You fail to point out that 6-8 year "cooling trends" have occurred several times over the last forty years, yet the overall trend since 1960 (when solar and surface temp began to part ways, e.g. Pasini et al. 2012) is strongly positive.
Try regressing out the signals from solar, ENSO, and aerosols, and see if your conclusions still hold. Are the oceans cooling? Is global land ice mass growing?
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2013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK - You did read my previous comment regarding time periods too short to obtain statistical significance? Such as the 'trend' since last Tuesday?
I suggest you take a look at the SkS Trend Calculator and look at the uncertainty statistics for those short time periods. The range of uncertainties includes negative trends, and zero - and they include the long-term trend of about 0.16C/decade. None of those are ruled out with only 12 years of data, as there is simply too much year-to-year variation to detect a slow trend. Tom Curtis, one of the other commenters here, has pointed out that an ordinary least squares (OLS) trend line is a mathematic result also including the uncertainty of that trend - something you have been ignoring. The uncertainties on such a short trend mean that you cannot legitimately state there are significant trend changes.
You should also look over at Tamino's Double Standard post - cherry picking statistically meaningless trends works both ways, and both are meaningless:
To summarize: your claims are meaningless as viewing too short a data set means you are looking at noise, not trend, and you need to learn something about statistical significance. You are just making noise about short term noise.
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MoreCarbonOK at 05:39 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
@Rob Honeycutt
It would be if you had not studied the drop in maximum temperatures first,
to see the natural pattern emerging
best fit for the drop in maximum temps
any other best fit on my collected data, would have us fall into much more (disastrous) global cooling
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:26 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK @13... You selection of 2002 as a break point for the trend lines is, by definition, a cherry pick.
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MoreCarbonOK at 04:33 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
@ KR
All the data for the last 12 years say it is cooling, globally. This includes my own 3 data sets
As the temperature differential between the poles and equator grows larger due to the cooling from the top, very likely something will also change on earth. Predictably, there would be a small (?) shift of cloud formation and precipitation, more towards the equator, on average. (think of the flooding in Indonesia, Brazil, Philipines, etc). At the equator insolation is 684 W/m2 whereas on average it is 342 W/m2. So, if there are more clouds in and around the equator, this will amplify the cooling effect due to less direct natural insolation of earth (clouds deflect a lot of radiation). Furthermore, in a cooling world there is more likely less moisture in the air, but even assuming equal amounts of water vapour available in the air, a lesser amount of clouds and precipitation will be available for spreading to higher latitudes. So, a natural consequence of global cooling is that at the higher latitudes it will become cooler and/or drier.
Hence the warming in places that used to get more rain.
At the higher latitudes, like Alaska, it is getting significantly cooler, as global cooling continues.
@ MA Rodger
how can I show the graph from Excell showing the temp. development of the ten weather stations in Alaska?
Moderator Response:[RH] In order to post a chart you have to first find a place to host the image online. Then you can't create a link to the image.
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MoreCarbonOK at 03:47 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
wow
I got it. Thanks MA
if somebody can just delete my comments 14 and 17
we might get the view back to normal?
I think according to your site policy, you also have to delete a comment that said or implied I was delusional? (=ad hominem comment)
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MA Rodger at 03:36 AM on 18 January 2014Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows
As suggested of me @27, armed with a big mug of hot tea, I sat down and read Matthews & Matthews (2014). My low opinion of it remains unaltered. I didn't spot the header on the document until afterwards. "This discussion paper is/has been under review for the journal Ocean Science (OS). Please refer to the corresponding final paper in OS if available." This is not a published document!! It is still under review.
It is a very strange paper. Previous papers that have been published by the authors are more normal (ie their previous 2-parter, Matthew 2012/Matthew & Matthew 2012 ). Perhaps the authors thought that if their previous work failed to make its mark (the previous 2-parter has nothing but self-citation according to Google Scholar), they should pull out all the stops on this latest one (with its unpublished part 1). And they have certainly pulled out stops - far too many.
The very start of the introduction reads like they saw their work as a step towards doing to SST what BEST believed they were doing to land temperature. The (very long) introduction mainly shows they haven't really nailed what they are trying to say or prove. I see no point, for instance, for the tour of sea level, museum & caves they treat us with. Likewise much else - for instance, the tidal topology of the Irish Sea is not germane to the work they actually present.
The analysis that leads to their results in Fig2a/Table 1 are nowhere discribed. Their results here seem more a confirmation and not a proper statistical analysis to determine the timing of the "distinct periods". I'm sure you could get the same confirmational result from HadSST3 or HadCET, so I don't see what their analysis is providing that is new. (The "distinct periods" appear 'consistent' with the mysterious "three phases of Arctic icemelt" referenced to the unpublished Matthews & Matthews (2013).)
The sunspot discussion is just blather with the statistical comment pure nonsense. Quote of the paper "We therefore suggest the 1959 record high surface waters travelled through the Arctic to produce the record cold-water flux in 1963 on the global gyre system." I'm sure that made perfect sense to somebody once upon a time.
I don't see why only two 10-year analyses were made within 3.6. The 3.7 finding appears strangely at odds with the SST data. The daily density data analysis fig 5b is but curve-fitting. While the salinity discussion is perhaps interesting, it and the data is just lobbed in with no proper introduction. (For instance how rare are data sets such as these?)
The "Heat formerly used in the annual ice melt ... (and) now available for additional surface warming" is worryingly negative in value (and not additive - or is that 'not subtractative'?). The 10% increase in the PIOMAS ASIV cycle may be relevant to cold fresh water fluxes reaching Manx but quite how and why Greenland or fresh river water entering the Arctic Ocean aren't also relevant and quantified is a bit of a mystery. And sea ice thickness is but a digression for those with strong opinions about basal ice melting.The "Discussion" (4.1-4.3) is for the most part of dubious relevance and back to featuring the unpublished Matthew & Matthew (2013). It contains quite a few raised eyebrows, while the alleged "Conclusions" end with a reference to Matthews and Matthews (2013b) which isn't a listed reference.
A strange paper indeed.
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Composer99 at 03:34 AM on 18 January 2014Global warming stopped in
1998,1995,2002,2007,2010, ????
With respect to MoreCarbonOK's comment on the recent Australia thread, I find it interesitng that MoreCarbonOK would assert
All the major global data sets are showing that earth had its maximum heat output around 1998 and that we have made the turn down since then.
but then support it with WoodForTrees graphs in which none of the trend lines (as far as I can see) peak in 1998 - they are set to start in 2002.
I'm no good at statistics, but even that strikes me as fishy support for an argument.
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MoreCarbonOK at 03:33 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
Thanks MA Rodger. I got it from your comment. I am sorry for the mess I made
This is not cherry picking
All the major data sets show it has been cooling for the duration of 2002-2014 = 12 years = 1 Schwabe solar cycle
Moderator Response:[RH] Don't worry about the mess. There's a clean up crew. :-)
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r.pauli at 02:41 AM on 18 January 2014High-stakes climate poker
The Great Game. Supression of public discussion is the key strategy from the fossil fuel industry. The recent news reports on weather calamities will never mention the cause, global warming, or the root cause of global warming. But half the world sort of knows, even if it is unspoken.
Now we see why http://nyr.kr/KncIVp - the NSA (as quintessential government) must listen to the pulse of the world population - not individuals, but the average messages from mass populations. When foment rises, then much will change. So listening is vital - it is the perfect opinion poll - because it is authentic, it is heard. Proxy democracy by chatter. When the voices speak loudly to an issue, it will be heard
So the goal is to orchestrate that chatter so as to control the <i>vox populi</i> Supressing of information or discussion becomes a battle in the information war. People will learn and talk about it, or not. But many will die out. And the first physical victims will be those without voices - Each tragic decimation acts to distill the surviving population to the actively engaged in strong communication. New warriors step up in the information war.
All this - survival struggle and comminitcation drama, playing out in a closed planetary system with physical systems in increasingly rapid decline. Astoundingly exciting game. But all the cards are visible if we look for them.
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MA Rodger at 02:13 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK @17/18.
To link stuff with this text editor you have to ignore all the HTML stuff.
(1) Type in the text you want folk to see. This is not cherry picking.
(2) Select with your cursor the bit of the text you want the link attached to This is not cherry picking.
(3) Select 'link' button on the 'Insert' menu bar and enter the appropriate URL. This is not cherry picking.
Job done.
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2013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK - Use the "Insert" tab of the comment editor to put in hyperlinks or images, or if you prefer use the "Source" tab for raw HTML; those codes no longer work in the "Basic" view.
Moderators - It might be worth updating the Comments Policy regarding HTML insertions.
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2013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
MoreCarbonOK - Your posts display a rather appalling lack of statistical understanding. You've posted trends since 2002 (11 years), trends with uncertainties for HadCRUT4, RSS, UAH (I'll add GISS) of -0.031 ±0.165, -0.079 ±0.292, 0.029 ±0.293, and -0.009 ±0.185 °C/decade respectively. None of those trend estimates rejects the longer term warming trend - you might as well make assertions based on the trends since last Tuesday.
You are making noise about noise. However, you have given a shining example of a bad argument, which might be useful information for readers...
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MoreCarbonOK at 01:27 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
Sorry
I always mess this up,
I was trying to do it like you guys instructed
what did I do wrong?
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MoreCarbonOK at 01:23 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
DSL says
Henry, how's about you avoid cherry-picking start date and region
Henry says
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YubeDude at 01:14 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
Follow the link offered in post #10...
Not since the Onion have I enjoed such a wide ranging and disconnected offering of satire pretending to be science.
This might stand alone as one of the funniest attempts (though completely delusional) at denial on the web. Thank god for blogs and the democratization of opinion; albeit uninformed and non-scientific opinion that is pulled out of the tailpipe.
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DSL at 00:30 AM on 18 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
Henry, how's about you avoid cherry-picking start date and region, and instead show your math for your global analysis and post your response to the appropriate thread (after reading it and the comment stream that follows).
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MoreCarbonOK at 23:47 PM on 17 January 20142013 was Australia's Hottest Year, Warm for Much of the World
Interesting.
You say Australia is getting warmer.
I am stunned to find how many people still do not believe me when I tell them it is cooling, globally. All the major global data sets are showing that earth had its maximum heat output around 1998 and that we have made the turn down since then. To be fair, I think that I made the prediction that it had started globally cooling, naturally, even before many others had become aware of it. In my final report:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
one of the things I mentioned on what would happen, as a result of global cooling, was:
"At the higher latitudes >[40] it will become progressively cooler and/or drier, from now onward, ultimately culminating in a big drought period similar to the Dust bowl drought 1932-1939."So how are my predictions concerning this panning out? Well I have not yet started looking at rainfall patterns. I wish I had time for that. Paradoxically, I have noted that one may even expect to see some warming in the areas where it does get drier. This may have happened in Australia as well. What I have done now is to take a sample of ten weather stations in Alaska and look at the change in the average temperature there, over time.
[ I have a picture from excell, alternatively I can send you the file with the results of the ten weather stations)
Alaska is situated between latitudes 60 and 70 degrees. It has a number of good weather stations with reliable results. I took all the average daily data from the stations indicated in the graph from 1998 until 2014, compressed to an average annual temperature. I submit that this sample of weather stations is representative for the whole of Alaska. Note that 9 out of the 10 weather stations are showing a negative trend, i.e. a cooling trend. You can also clearly see that each of the stations’ results correlate sharply with each other in terms of rises and falls. I think it would therefore be fair to take the average of the 10 slopes of the ten linear trends as representative for the whole of Alaska, and indeed, for the whole of earth’s [60-70] latitude (inland only). If we do that, I find that the temperature in Alaska and [60-70] has been dropping at an average rate of 0.55 degrees C per decade, since 1998.
This means that since 1998, average ambient temperatures in Alaska have already dropped by almost 1 degree C. We are not even halfway through the cooling period, which I predict will last until at least 2038 or 2039 (+ 5 years).
Anyone still interested in investing in the Arctic? -
Elmwood at 17:08 PM on 17 January 2014High-stakes climate poker
I live in Anchorage, AK and work with the oil industry. The oil companies have an undue influence on politics in our state and have managed to buy themselves a tax break worth billions a year.
This money could be used to for renewable energy, homes for the homeless, you name it. But instead the money will leave our state and go somewhere else, only to increase fossil fuel consumption.
Now Shell has plans to drill in the Chukchi and ConoccoPhllips produce oil in NPR-A. How is any of this in our best interest at this point?
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energydata at 10:16 AM on 17 January 2014High-stakes climate poker
At the beginning of 2012, we had a CO2 budget of about 1010 GtCO2. At that time, the remaining global fossil fuel reserves contained about 3400 GtCO2, about 3.5 times the budget. (Source: http://j.mp/FF_RR_CO2)
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Wol at 08:37 AM on 17 January 2014Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs
>>The current central pillar in the efforts to deceive people ..............<<
I'm glad you used the word "current" - the deniers change from one falsified argument to another as each is demolished. -
Kiwiiano at 05:31 AM on 17 January 2014Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs
You might like to consider adding the tonnage of fossil carbon we have released since 1850 or such.Would need some guesstimates for the earlier times but the sheer minute-by-minute gigatonnage pouring forth nowadays is going to produce a timer that looks like the US Debt Clock
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Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
Hank_Stoney - I suspect because, in part, there is considerable confusion between resolution and detection - a confusion I have encountered more than once in the realm of signal processing.
A band-limit of 300 years, as per the Marcott et al analysis, means that their methodology won't be able to resolve or separate discrete events (warming or cooling) less than perhaps 600 years apart, as they would be blurred together. Detecting that something happened, however, is another story entirely. You can look through a telescope at a distant pulsar or supernova, sized far below the resolution of your telescope - and yet detect it as a bright spot that clearly tells you that something is present. In much the same fashion the 'unicorn spike' so beloved of the 'skeptics' would add 0.9*100 or 90 Cyr to the Marcott data, and even the blurring of the Marcott processing would still show this as a clearly detectable bump in the mean.
You don't need to resolve something to detect it.
I agree, it's important to distinguish between peer-reviewed science and unfiltered (so to speak) opinions on blogs. Which is but one reason I found your description of the blog based discussion of 'unicorns' as a dust-up a bit odd; that seems to be giving more credence to blogged objections than to the replies.
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vrooomie at 00:23 AM on 17 January 2014Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows
I read the Matthews & Matthews 2014 paper: it is indeed badly written, poorly supported, and, at least at this point, amateurish. It may have good points, but they are difficult to tease out of the poorly-written nature of it.
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CBDunkerson at 22:21 PM on 16 January 2014Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs
The current central pillar in the efforts to deceive people about global warming is the 'no warming for the past X years' lie. This widget and the underlying data on total (mostly ocean) warming is the most effective response to that nonsense (the statistical argument is equally valid, but not as easy for some people to follow).
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MA Rodger at 20:14 PM on 16 January 2014Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows
Micawber @27.
You say "I suggest you read the whole document and then think about the physics."
Perhaps I should. Perhaps I will. That I have not thus far is because of a number of factors, not the least being that the document is so badly written. And my advice to any who attempt like Matthews & Matthews (2014) to run the 100 metres against a field of international sprinters when they themselves yet remain reliant on a baby-walker to keep their backside off the floor (I don't think that an unfair assessment of their academic position and their academic ambition): my advice would be to present a paper written to the highest possible standard. From such a position and attempting so much, it is essential that you impress a wide audience with a well-argued thesis and demonstrat that you really do know your stuff. Sadly Matthews & Matthews (2014) is a scholarly nightmare. And it would remain so even if Matthews & Matthews (2013) were published and available, which unforgivably it is not.
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Paul Pukite at 16:56 PM on 16 January 2014Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows
The contribution due to TSI fluctuations is close to that theoretically predicted based on energy balance
The Cause of the Pause is due to thermodynamic Laws. It really is not that complicated.
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Hank_Stoney at 14:02 PM on 16 January 2014Hockey sticks to huge methane burps: Five papers that shaped climate science in 2013
@KR - Fair enough but then why did Marcott et al not explicitly state this? Even after having been given the opportunity to respond to this issue in the FAQ, they chosenot to make such a claim. Given the significance of such a result, I'd like to think they would have made their case if it were at all justified.
So I reiterate: in order to avoid confusion when discussing this (or any other) study, I personally think that it would be wise to carefully distinguish between the actual peer-reviewed conclusions that the authors intended and those inferred and written about in the blogosphere after the fact by those such as Tamino and yourself, in this instance.
In any case, the Marcott et al paper was a great contribution to paleoclimate studies from last year and certainly deserves mention in this post.
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scaddenp at 11:43 AM on 16 January 2014Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows
Micawber - the note of caution is due to it being apparently not yet published. It is also not wise to rush into enthusiasm over a paper till it has faced the cold hard scrutiny of other expert workers in the field.
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Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
Tom Curtis - It would scale linearly for that computation. The ratio of height change would only shift for different duration or shape spikes, for signals with a different frequency distribution.
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Doug Hutcheson at 09:44 AM on 16 January 2014Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs
Another excellent piece of science communication by SkS. This widget, together with the escalator graphic, tells a huge part of the AGW story. Well done.
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Muzz at 09:29 AM on 16 January 2014Mitigation Mosaic: How small steps can make a difference
Direct action as it should be applied
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Tom Curtis at 09:22 AM on 16 January 2014Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
KR @97, thankyou for analyzing the doubly perturbed case. Fairly clearly, I was correct that the additional perturbation would further smooth the spike, but you were correct that it would not smooth it sufficiently to make it indistiguishable within the Marcott reconstruction. Indeed, my estimate @72 of the likely magnitude of the effect of that additional smoothing is shown to have overstated the effect.
Comparison with the Marcott reconstruction shows the largest hillock in that reconstruction to be just 0.8 C (around 5 kya), ie, about 1/3rd of the magnitude produced by smoothing the "unicorn spike" of 0.9 C. Assuming the effect scales linearly, that suggests "unicorn spikes" do not exceed 0.3 C if they exist at all in the Holocene.
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wili at 07:05 AM on 16 January 2014Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs
Yes, this is really great. And thanks for putting Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog near the top of your page. We had quite a tussle over there when it fisrt went up. Glad to see he kept it.
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Micawber at 04:09 AM on 16 January 2014Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows
MA Rodger @25
I take the work presented seriously because it is based entirely on over a century of daily observations to oceanographic standards.
It is not wise to trivialise such rare fieldwork. I think it would be wise to consider their thesis that 93% of global warming is in the oceans. It seems to me that this should be the focus of futher work on anthropogenic warming.
There is clearly some hitch in publication of the first paper. However, it is summarised in the introduction. The three phases of warming and the links to Arctic ice melt are important findings. Surely it is worth considering the physics of real rare observations without carping about other issues.
Is it plausible to suggest the three SST warming phases link to Arctic ice melt? What are the consequences? Any research should be verified by experiment. That has been the problem with SST taken for climatological purposes as the authors point out.
Do you wish to challenge the simple fact that SST has been taken from unknown depths and corrected for unverified evaporative cooling or engine room warming since 1955?
Moreover, it is 3000 less accurate for oceanographic dynamics and completely omits essential salinity. That is like measuring air temperature without pressure. Water heated from the top has buoyance dependent on salinity and temperature. None of this is included in current models.
I am enthousiastic about these new findings because they are based on field verification that is the foundation of scientific method.
I suggest you read the whole document and then think about the physics.
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william5331 at 04:08 AM on 16 January 2014Mitigation Mosaic: How small steps can make a difference
From Felbach's point of view, the real significance of this is if/when the ecological and/or economic brown stuff hits the wind pusher, they will be sitting pretty while all around them will wish they had done the same.
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gws at 03:06 AM on 16 January 2014It's aerosols
carbtheory @20, first of all, you should not place all your argument on one publication, even if it turns out correct. That said, I presume you are talking about this presentation, given 14 years ago: http://www.me.umn.edu/centers/mel/reports/dbkucdavis.pdf
It shows on said page three (not including the front page), a "typical" diesel engine exhaust PM mass and number distribution. These (ultrafine and fine) particles are actually generated from gas-to-particle conversion, often inside the exhaust pipe. And yes, such traffic related emissions are responsible for a significant amount of fine PM in urban areas (not globally). The, most abundant in terms of numbers, ultrafine particles coalesce within hours to at most days into the accumulation range (the size range in the middle of that graph, labelled). They do not act as CCN themselves.
The accumulation mode is named such because that is where atmospheric PM "accumulates" after coalescence (i.e. from smaller particles) or deposition (i.e. removal of larger particles) over time. Due to steep number reductions (do not mistake emissions with ambient abundances), they do not significantly grow by coalescence any more, but mostly by condensation, i.e. more gas-to-particle conversion, which limits the overall growth rate and total size achievable. Their lifetime in the atmosphere is on the order of a week and thus they do not mix throughout the troposphere.
And yes, not all accumulation mode particles are good CCN. They have to be hygroscopic. Köhler theory describes what you are looking for. You can try this also.
The "energy usage" is not what matters in terms of how much PM is formed. Sulfur content is much more relevant. That is why it was mandatorily reduced in diesel a few years ago.
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Esop at 01:55 AM on 16 January 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #2
Tom (#4): That is not good. Amazing how the anti-science folks have gotten into position in AUS, by the sound of it.
Up here in Scandinavia, the deniers have been unusually quiet after month after month with extremely mild temperatures. Last 30 days average sits an amazing 7C above normal, but the cold weather just arrived, so the anti science guys will start to blow their horns any day now. The public just soaks up their nonsense like a sponge. Just saw an interview with random folks on the street in the local paper, and it read like a Monckton statement. Only guy worried with the extremely warm winter temps was an Englishman that could not believe the +7C (24-7) in Oslo, Norway (60 degs north) in January. He was also appalled that the locals did not care at all.
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Esop at 01:42 AM on 16 January 2014Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs
Awesome!
The deniers have attacked these with furious anger. The reason? The widgets are very effective at conveying the message to the general public, and the deniers aim is to distort that message.
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carbtheory at 17:08 PM on 15 January 2014It's aerosols
@ 19, first sentence, quite believable.
Second sentence: take a look at page 3 of the study I refered to, by mass the majority of emissions are between 0.1 um and 1 um. By number the majority are substantally smaller than 0.05 um for typicle deisel engine particle size. So, with an extremely high number weighting in what they describe as nueclii mode particles where does that leave us for potential CCN from those emissions once they start mixing with the atmosphere? This is for an internal combustion engine. However petroleum accounts for a higher % energy usage than coal.
Third sentence: "Accumulation mode particles", the name suggests they are growing in size, mass or both. Wikipedia state a 'typical' CCN size of 0.2 um. I'm under the impression that the accumulation mode particles that become CCN need to reach a minimum size which is dependant on how hydroscopic they are ( due to their chemical composition ) and the atmospheric conditions they exist in. Is this assumption correct?
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PluviAL at 15:38 PM on 15 January 2014Global warming and energy – intertwined problems in Africa
The best opportunity to reduce our CO2 footprint is to help undeveloped and developing regions to leapfrog the West into much greater efficiency. The grid is terribly wasteful. Distributed generation can happen painlessly, and avoid grid waste. People are use to a lower rate of energy use, and so moving up a little is a great comfort, yet costs little in comparison to wasteful ways of developed regions. Unless something like Pluvinergy is made operative, we must jump way ahead of what we have achieved so far; practically nothing in CO2 reductions. Helping the developing world in africa and other places to cope with and adjust to climate change this way is the wisest use of resources and time.
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