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JamesRMartin at 06:19 AM on 28 October 2013A Glimpse at Our Possible Future Climate, Best to Worst Case Scenarios
Is the doubling of CO2 under discussion here
(a) a doubling of current CO2 concentrations?
(b) a doubling of atmospheric CO2 relative to the pre-industrialization levels?
(c) other?
This (above) is my main reason for commenting, but if anyone wants to address the following comments as well, that'd be fine.
The IPCC recently came out with a proposed "carbon budget" which amounts, more or less, to allowing for a near doubling of current CO2 emissions since the beginning of the industrial age.
For what it is worth, the IPCC carbon budget strikes me as quite optimistic, given that the Arctic sea ice nearly disappeared in summer recently and is expected to do so within a few years. Combine this with the many positive feedback mechanisms which would likely occur as a result of this dramatic shift in the Arctic, and it appears our budget is probably already about consumed.
Moderator Response:[JH] This comment thread is an appropriate venue for a discussion of your (a) and (b).
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Jim Hunt at 00:54 AM on 28 October 2013Fox News defends global warming false balance by denying the 97% consensus
Jubble @3 - Sorry, but Friday has already been and gone. I thought based on previous correspondence we were intending to keep in touch about this sort of thing? Here's where we're up to at this end on hauling The Telegraph before the Press Complaints Commission:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2013/10/will-the-telegraph-print-the-truth-in-the-cold-light-of-day/
So far they have at least corrected a couple of their most blatant inaccuracies, and we've yet to make a formal complaint to the PCC. IIRC Fox were spouting the same "60%" nonsense as The Mail and The Telegraph last month. How might one go about persuading a US based purveyor of "news" to publish a similar "correction"? -
Tom Curtis at 20:42 PM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
MA Rodger @294, the difference between the GISS graph and the WUWT/World Climate Report Graph is that the former is for annual values, while the later is for Summer (JJA) means only. I have downloaded the data, and plotted the graphs myself, and can verify that the WUWT graph is the summer data, as claimed. The claim that the flatness of the summer graph means there has been no warming, however, is simply false. Arctic summer tempertures near ice fields are very constant because of the large amount of ice in the vicinity. The temperature of the ice is, naturally enough, freezing - and prevents temperatures rising more than about 3 C above zero. Excess energy that would have raised temperatures in the absense of ice melts the ice instead.
I should note that WUWT and the World Climate Report correctly identify their graph as being of summer temperatures in each case, so there can be no suggestion that they have passed of summer temperatures as annual temperatures. They have merely misinterpreted the significance of the stable summer temperatures over time.
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chriskoz at 20:42 PM on 27 October 2013The Coming Plague
The discussion about peak oil is realy OT here, but I want to mention important historical facts in this context:
- the EROEI for oil refining at the begining of XX century was 100:1 (fabulous)
- now (2010) is about 10:1, new explorations are a bit lower, some 7:1
- EROEI on tar sands is only 5:1
As pointed by Andy, tar sands are starting to be viable and their reserves substantial. We have a fair bit to go before petroleum industry collapses when EROEI reaches unviable 1:1. Most economists predict that it may not happen until ~2100, i.e. petroleum will be with us for another 100y. The Mora 2013 study timeframe finishes at 2100, therefore the collapse feared here will likely not affect Mora 2013 results. It is more likely that emissions will just increase as the result of increased petroleum production footprint as EROEI shrinks. Tom Curtis@9 comment is right on that issue is spot on and I concur.
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CBDunkerson at 20:10 PM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
And this is the problem... there is a segment of the population for whom complete nonsense is automatically held to be 'good science' if it states what they want to believe. There are still many people who think, 'McIntyre proved that PCA always produces a hockey stick shape'.
Similarly, people otherwise capable of basic reasoning somehow lose the ability to understand the simplest concepts of statistical analysis (e.g. 15 year trends in lower atmospheric warming a few years apart give radically different results, ergo these trends are obviously too short to be indicative of the long term impact) when there is any 'refutation' at all... no matter how meaningless.
Too much credit is given to the few skeptics capable of performing actual scientific analysis... because none of their science supports the nonsense they spread. The fact that Pielke senior, Curry, Lindzen, Christy, Spencer, Muller, and various others have conducted actual scientific research with valid methodologies and repeatable results does not excuse the fact that they have also made blatantly false statements to advance various beliefs which they cannot substantiate scientifically. After someone at the LA Times said that they don't print letters from climate 'skeptics' containing false information various other papers stated their policies. The Denver Post stated that the matter is still in doubt and it would be "editorial arrogance" to dismiss the views of "properly credentialed experts" like Spencer and Curry. The quotations from these two are particularly galling because Spencer's is outright false and Curry's deliberately misleading;
http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_24333316/carroll-one-truth-global-warming
The fact that these sometimes scientists have not been sufficiently called out and denounced for their false claims means that they will continue to be given equal (or greater) time by many segments of the press and provides cover for the Tisdale's and Watts's to push climate denial into the realm of fantasy and nonsense.
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MA Rodger at 19:35 PM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
@292 & 293.
The origin of the Wattsupian graph dates back to the 2009 Axford et al paper on the work at Lake CF8. At the time Wattsupia simply re-posted the World Climate Report nonsense. There is a debunk from 2009 by Dale Husband stating that a quick look at the GISTEMPS data shows the graph is bogus. "That's not even remotely the same chart!" I am presently unable to expand on this as the GISTEMP station page isn't working for me.
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dana1981 at 19:26 PM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
Note that 1990 was the hottest year on record at the time. The only reason it's now "not especially hot" is because of the global warming that's occurred over the subsequent 2 decades.
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scaddenp at 17:08 PM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
Well after picking myself off the floor, perhaps the way to discuss this constructively would be you, hank, what it was that impressed you about the piece and what made you think that it discussed actual science.
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Andy Skuce at 14:09 PM on 27 October 2013The Coming Plague
Try this for the Jaccard book chapter link
Update: The original link came from Mark Jaccard's blog, (here, scroll down to near the bottom). This link seems only to work intermittently, so I downloaded the pdf and uploaded it to my own blog.
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Philippe Chantreau at 13:58 PM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
The "high road"? ROFL. Tisdale's word salad is a perfect fit for the venue where it is published, nothing more...
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Stephen Leahy at 12:40 PM on 27 October 2013The Coming Plague
Joel - try this link for city projection.
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Joel_Huberman at 12:24 PM on 27 October 2013The Coming Plague
This is an interesting article, and it is greatly enhanced and clarified by the discussion. I've tried to follow some of the links, and I've found two that don't work for me. The first is in the tenth paragraph from the end of the main article: (City by city projection here). The second is in comment 14 by Andy Skuce (this book chapter by energy economist Mark Jaccard). I hope both links can be fixed.
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scaddenp at 11:12 AM on 27 October 2013Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature
Ironbark, if your impression of climategate emails is based on solely on emails as reported by the misinformation crew, then you are missing some interesting information - like how the misinformation/disinformation sites manipulate you. You might want to check out about:
Selective editing of the emails to cast them in a different light
and strangely omitted emails that provide context. The links allow you to check blog posts against the emails so you can see that there is no further wool being pulled over your eyes.
How do feel about being manipulated like this?
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Andy Skuce at 11:09 AM on 27 October 2013The Coming Plague
I would suggest that anyone who thinks Peak Oil is a bigger problem than climate change should read this book chapter by energy economist Mark Jaccard. The following graph comes from there, showing that there are abundant new souces of oil that will be expensive, but below the current market price of crude oil:
There is also a good discussion of the "Peak Debate" on page 435 of this document, which also contains a very detailed assessment of energy resources from fossil fuels to renewables. The untapped resources of unconventional oil are huge, but they are dwarfed by the remaining gas and coal resources. See this chart (too wide to embed here) from the Summary for Policymakers of the Global Energy Assessment report.
Peak oil is not really about energy, but about transportation fuels. Many countries already are used to paying very high prices for liquid fuels because of taxes. If Americans have to start paying the same prices as Europeans for gasoline, that will require a tough economic adjustment, but surely not a disaster.
The big problem, as the Mora article shows, is that we are already well along the road to changing the climate to an unprecedented state. Yet we have barely got started digging up and burning the available carbon.
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Tom Curtis at 10:54 AM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
hank_ @6, you and I will have to disagree about what constitutes a "Good read if you ar actually interested in the science". Essentially Tisdale's argument comes down to the claim that 1990 was not "especially hot" because it was in the upper 27th percentile of temperature residuals rather than in the upper who knows what percentile, for he never says what percentile he would consider "especially hot". So, he is quibbling about words and trying to hide the fact behind a barrage of graphs, mostly irrelevant. It may be good science by Tisdale's standards, but it is not good science. Indeed, from my point of view it is not science at all, just "sciency talk".
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Tom Curtis at 10:09 AM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Michael, actually, the WUWT graph only extends to 2008. The data available from GISS extends to 2010. However, this is probably only because the copied a graph from a 2009 post on the World Climate Report. The greater contribution to the flatness of the WUWT graph is that they only show summer temperatures, which have not risen as fast as annual temperatures. That is probably because excess energy in summer goes into the arctic ice melt rather than into raising temperatures, as can be seen in this plot of seasonal variation in arctic temperatures based on DMI data:
Thankyou for the compliment, by the way. However, I also enjoy your posts and would like to see more of them.
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hank_ at 09:00 AM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
Fwiw, and if anyone is interested, "Tony" answers Tamino with more graphs and actually takes the high road (comparitively). Good read if you are actually interested in the science and not the stone throwing.
Link not needed, those with interest will know where to look.
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michael sweet at 08:57 AM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Tom,
Thank you for posting the link to GISS. I wanted to look up that data and did not know the right page.
On WUWT they post only the Clyde data, and they delete the data after 2009 so that it looks flatter. I noticed that you linked all the relevant data and kept in all the data points. Why don't you also only link to the data that appears to support your position best? ;).
I post rarely now because I think your responses are better than mine. Keep up the good work.
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Tom Curtis at 08:37 AM on 27 October 2013The Coming Plague
funglestrumpet @11, I was responding to your claim that:
"One of the arguments that she repeats quite often is that climate change is not going to be as bad as BAU indicates simply because we are now running on the dregs of the world's oil supply. All, or nearly all, of the 'easy oil' has been extracted (the so-called low hanging fruit) and so the only direction for oil prices to go is up, unless the economy collapses."
Economic collapse was only mentioned conditionally, and the focus is the effect on climate change of peak oil. You later say she is pessimistic about the economy, but her pessimism realy is not the topic here. However, once again, if she thinks the lack of liquid fossil fuel supply risks economic collapse due to peak oil, she should be strongly campaigning now for a tax on the use of liquid fossil fuels in stationary energy supply.
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Tom Curtis at 08:23 AM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Stranger @288, if you click on Baffin Island on the map at the Giss Station Data page, you will see a list of nearby stations. If you click on one of those, you will see a graph of the annual temperture data for that station. One example is this, from Frobisher Bay (extreme south of Baffin Island), which definitely shows a trend. So do Clyde, Coral Harbour, Hall Beach, Fort Chimo, and Gothab Nuuk, all selected because they have a complete or almost complete record to 2013 and are within approx 800 km of Frobisher Bay. Many other stations in the area are seriously incomplete, and show apparently no trend. Given that all the stations with nearly complete records and the GISS temperature index for the region all show positive trends, the apparent lack of trend in the incomplete records is likely a function of time period or missing data. However, it is quite possible that you could be shown a temperture series for a station on Baffin Island with little or not trend. There are cherry picking opportunities everywhere ;)
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grindupBaker at 06:09 AM on 27 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
I agree with Bert. When "debating" (a bit risable) in a public forum the purpose is that perhaps other bods who are impartial but interested will browse through there and hopefully find my arguments more convincing, it is never to "change the mind" of whoever you are (ahem) "debating" with in a public forum. But it might be different with you more highbrow types, perhaps you were debating without the quotes with Prof. Muller a few years back.
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villabolo at 05:42 AM on 27 October 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #43B
Some good news on Cuba and its oil consumption:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUWces5TkCA
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Stranger8170 at 02:27 AM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Michael, thanks for your comments. I was engaged with someone who most likely saw the WUWT postings. I've hardly ever gone there except when someone at this site links to it.
It seems like when new issues arise I find myself unable to expond on it with someone from the skeptic side who seem to have more experience than I have. The good thing is that when they confond me I'm able to ask you guys to help me see it in a proper context.
So as new issues arise that I'm not familue with I'll make my occasional request to help me out.
Moderator Response:[JH] That's what we are here for. Thank you for all that you do.
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michael sweet at 02:04 AM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Stranger,
All the global temperature records show strong warming in the Arctic. This yearly GISS report shows about 1.5 C increase over baseline for the Baffin area in 2011. 2012 is similar. Perhaps you could cite your record that states no warming from 1970 to the present on Baffin Island? I found a reference on WUWT that claims that. Since the sea ice has collapsed in that area the past decade, it is clear that it has been warmer than it used to be. Perhaps WUWT has been cherry picking their data stations again.
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Stranger8170 at 00:02 AM on 27 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Thanks Michael and Tom. The article linked was much more informative the the ones I read at Yahoo and other news outlets. The information on the C-14 and the moss was very helpful.
The claim now is that the Arctic has cooled about 1 degree over 5,000 years (with several shorter warm periods between). But the Baffin Island weather station doesn't even show warming from 1970 to present so how can this study claim otherwise?
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John Hartz at 23:28 PM on 26 October 2013The Coming Plague
@funglestrumpet #11:
Tilt!
Economic scenarios are inputs to climate models. Therefore, there is no need to create new models in order to do the analyses you believe should be done.
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:43 PM on 26 October 2013Scientists tried to 'hide the decline' in global temperature
Ironbark wrote: "Unless the emails I've read, are not the emails commonly understood, the use of words trick,"
This is a classic example of somebody misunderstanding a scientific comment due to ignorance of scientific terminology. The word "trick" is commonly used to refer to a mathematical or algorithmic device that provides a particularly neat solution to some problem. It has precisely nothing to do with desception. It isn't hard to find examples of this usage, for instance in my field (machine learning) there is a well-known paper called "The Kernel Trick for Distances" and this usage is not at all uncommon, as Google Scholar reveals. Of course the "skeptic" blogs are unable to accept this and happily misrepresent the emails as evidence of intentional desception.
So ironbark, do you accept that the use of the word "trick" does not imply the intent to mislead in a scientific context?
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funglestrumpet at 21:30 PM on 26 October 2013The Coming Plague
Tom Curtis @ 9. While your argument centres on CO2, Gail's centres on the economy. If it crashes, and I see nothing in your post that argues against that eventuality, then CO2 production will automatically fall simply because the energy usage will fall.
More worryingly, Gail believes, along with a number of financial pundits, that the finance system is also on the verge of collapse. There is a body of opinion that argues that fiat currencies simply cannot survive. If you look at QE, you will see that America has a tiger by the tail. The very hint of tapering their rate of QE immediately puts interest rates skywards, and if that happens, then what we have just lived through since 2007/8 will be a picnic in comparision to the disruption that would then result. In those circumstances, CO2 production will fall dramatically.
Furthermore, you cannot simply dismiss falling oil availability because it is not the major producer of CO2. Oil price impinges on all aspects of the economy and puts prices up in the process. Look around you and you will see people in both full-time employment and in full-time poverty, queing at food banks for whatever they can get in order to feed their families (and we are in the 21st century). Imagine the circumstances where prices keep rising while wage rates remain stagnant. (Look at the number of websites that discuss prepping and living off-grid that are sprouting up. Perhaps people can see the writing on the wall.)
In fact, you make Gail's point for her. She repeated says that too many pundits only see the situation we are in with blinkers on ('blinders' in AmE) and thus only see it from one viewpoint. It is an extention of Lovelock's position from a scientific perspective that climate change needs to considered from that of all scientific disciplines. A position that he as a polymath is in a good position to argue from.
Perhaps there are climate models that take into account possible scenarios regarding the fragility of the world's financial and economic systems and their eventual collapse, but I do not know of any. If they do not exist, then perhaps they should, seeing as the debate about them in other circles is pushing climate change down the agenda. Showing a broad appreciation of the world's various systems that will determine the financial and economic outcomes and how they will affect the way climate change develops, would bring climate models to centre stage, or close to it at least. Let's face it, it is those systems that will eventually determine in large part the atmospheric CO2 content and with that the amount the climate will change.
Clearly, such models would show financial/economic collapse as beneficial from a climate change perspective. Being honest about such matters would raise the status of climate models and lead to them informing current policy on how to combat it. Such honesty would also stop the complaint that climate scientists are always forecasting alarm - with the suspicion that it is all a ploy to gain funding. Wouldn't it be nice to put an end to that nonsense?
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michael sweet at 21:20 PM on 26 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Stranger,
In the linked descriptions of the research Dr. Miller, the scientist doing the research, describes the ice caps on Baffin Island as retreating at a rate of 1-2 meters a year. They collect all their samples from the very edge of the ice, less than a meter away. It follows that if the ice retreats a meter a year and you collect your sample from 0.5 meters of the ice that the sample was covered by ice last year. Plants grow very slowly in these conditions so contamination by fresh growth can be eliminated by careful sampling. It is simple enough for the scientists to collect data several years in a row to confirm that the samples were ice covered in the past. Next year you can collect from areas that you document are ice covered this year. For exceptional samples scientists return to the site the next year and confirm their previous result. Tom's picture is of the camp the scientists have. It is not the collection site. In this area the ice does not flow over the ground so old samples have not been disturbed (in most locations flowing glaciers destroy plant samples, that did not happen here). Denier claims that Dr. Miller does not know that that the samples were ice covered in the past are easily shown to be ignorant of the facts. In general, you should question claims that professionals make simple errors that are easily checked. Scientists ensure that their claims are substianted by the data. Is it likely that Dr. Miller would spend months camping on Baffin Island, thinking about the data every day, and make a mistake that could be recognized in one minute by an untrained eye? It is much more likely the deniers have not read the paper and are making up the problems.
The samples are reported variously to be older than 40,000 years and 120,000 old. This is due to the fact that it is not possible to date samples over 40,000 years old using carbon-14. Once samples are 40,000 years old all the C-14 is gone (some scientists claim they can date to 50,000 years ago). The climate 40,000 years ago was much colder than today so the most plausible age is 120,000 years old which was the last time there was an interglacial. (Note that older ages cannot be excluded, the samples could be much older, but not younger, than 120,000 years).
Most of the samples are only about 5,000 years old (easily carbon dated). It is known from other work that it has been getting cooler on Baffin Island for the past 5,000 years (until the start of AGW). This work indicates that climate models have substantially underestimated the warming in this area. That suggests that it will warm more in the future than currently predicted. Those crazy alarmist models, underpredicting warming again!
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Bert from Eltham at 19:39 PM on 26 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
I have come to the conclusion that arguing with deniers is like reasoning with two year olds. It is an utter waste of time! All we can do is to repeatedly put up the evidence in a form that the layman can understand. It will not be long before the evidence becomes self evident. This has already started. Flooded subways in New York and bushfires in the middle of spring in Sydney are two tiny examples of many more. These purely 'natural' events should get the locals thinking! How many more 'natural ' events do we put up with before we hit irreversible tipping points? Bert
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MA Rodger at 18:12 PM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
Ironbark @13.
Your request that I ease up on the 'denialist' trigger would be more likely heeded if you ease up on the denialist argumentation. This you singlularly fail to do. In the very same paragraph as your request you tell us Richard Muller describes that the e-mail hacks from CRU demonstrated 'scientific malpractice' (he may well have done, he has a history of denial) and you then intimate that "the graph" (presumably the "hockey stick" from Mann et al 1999) used by the IPCC and Al Gore was also show after 10 years to be wrong. You cannot be serious!I do not know where you get such deluded ideas from. Mann et al 1999 featured in IPCC TAR of 2001 and along with a whole bag full of other 'hockeysticks', also in IPCC AR4 of 2007. And if you bother to examine the final draft of IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 5 figure 5.7 you will see that Mann et al 1999 is now replaced by Mann et al 2008, within which the work of Mann et al 1999 remains all correct and ship shape being presented within figure 3(b) of that paper. There was no error, no malpractice attached to the 'hockeystick'.
Do you deny this to be so? Or will you accept that 'climategate' had zero impact on the science.
(Note. There is somewhere on video a UK climatologist (?) who delights in pointing to some minor adjustment to a global temperature record for part of a decade of the 19th century that was the sum total scientific impact of 'climategate', so perhaps "zero impact" is not entirely correct.)Of course (as pointed out @24) this is off topic here. Indeed, to remain on topic, please do not present your detailed thoughts concerning a different SkS post in this comment thread. That other SkS post does have a comment thread of its own which is provided for such a purpose.
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william5331 at 16:01 PM on 26 October 2013The Coming Plague
How does this article, stating that the greatest changes will be in low latitudes, square with the observations so far that the greatest temperature differences have been observed at high latitudes. In a way, it is probably not that important which goes first. We have jacked our populations so high that we are higly vulnerable to crop failures. Even the results of a single year's failure of the Northern Hemisphere wheat crop doesn't bear thinking about. ps. Now the Chinese are building large numbers of fishing boats to descimate the tuna of the South Pacific, the last one in the world and jelly fish seem to be taking over and feeding up the food chain. In the mean time we continue to harvest turtles (which eat jelly fish) and the few fish species that do likewise. Hard for us to point the finger, though. We have descimated all the rest of the oceans before the Chinese became involved.
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panzerboy at 15:00 PM on 26 October 2013Double Standard on Internal Variability
Willard Tony is Anthony Watts?
Aunt Judy Judith Curry from Climate etc?
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Composer99 at 14:40 PM on 26 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
The typical one is: "I dont like proposed climate solutions/promoters; ergo climate science is wrong". That thinking is just crazy.
Oh, come now, scaddenp, where would we be if we couldn't get on with the classic standbys of dismissing climate science, "because Al Gore!", "because David Suzuki!", or "because Obama, that's why!" - where, I ask you?
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Tom Curtis at 14:06 PM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
Ironbark, further to the moderators comment @19, your comments on "climategate" are not sloganeering because you make them. They are sloganeering because you make them but decline to provide evidence in support of your stated position. Where you to provide that evidence on an appropriate thread, they would not be sloganeering. Where you to provide that evidence here, they would still not be sloganeering, but would remain off topic.
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Tom Curtis at 13:59 PM on 26 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
I should add, the story by Tom Yulsman linked to above, or better, an account by one of the authors of the study would be a wonderful addition to SkS.
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Tom Curtis at 13:57 PM on 26 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Stranger @23, I assume you are referring to this research, a popular account of which is given here. The same research is detailed more briefly in the link provided by Doug Bostrom.
Given that, all that is required for moss to not accumulate new C14 from the atmosphere is that it be either dead, or unexposed to the atmosphere (ie, covered in ice). There is a slight twist to that. Specifically, if new and living moss grows in the same location as old and dead moss, it will potentially contaminate the age signal, making the older moss appear younger. If you look at this image from the popular report, you will see areas in which new plants is growing by the green colour:
In fact, looking closely, it appears that the new plants are grass rather than moss. That is important for two reasons. First, it makes it easier to distinguish between the old moss and the new growth, thereby avoiding cross contamination. Second, It is my understanding that moss will grow in situations too cold for grass to grow, suggesting a possibility that Baffin Island is now warmer than when the moss was formerly growing, not just when it was ice covered. Of course, that later point depends critically on the species of moss involved, and as the original research is behind a pay wall, I cannot confirm it.
Despite the fact that C14 doesn't distinguish between a merely dead plant, and one covered by ice, the conclusion AGW "skeptics" apparently want to draw from that does not follow. That is because if a soil is not ice covered, and is above freezing for at least part of the year, new plants will grow in it. Those new plants will then show up as having a relatively young age in carbon dating. Thus, for the "skeptic" scenario to make sense, the ice would have had to melt away without temperatures ever rising above freezing. Quite apart from the conundrum in that, temperatures in the area are definitely above freezing for at least part of the year now so even in that scenario, temperatures are still warmer than they have been, likely in the last 110,000 years.
I should note that I am not expert in arctic biota, so there may be some contrived way in which temeratures were briefly warmer in the interval and not shown up based on biology alone. However, the only time since the end of the last ice age in which temperatures may have been warmer is shown by the younger C14 ages across much of the transect to have also been a period when the icecap was growing. (Those younger ages also illustrate my point in the preceding paragraph.)
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scaddenp at 13:12 PM on 26 October 2013Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
I think there is something constructive that come out the exchange with EITR
1/ just because we want/need something doesnt invalidate science against it. Watch the mental hoops people do over chocolate/coffee/alcohol/marijuana (and previously tobacco) also. The typical one is: "I dont like proposed climate solutions/promoters; ergo climate science is wrong". That thinking is just crazy.
2/ Proposing FF as a solution for continuing population growth is similarly logical flawed.
- it only postpones a problem because FF are finite.
- if we only used FF for growing and transporting food, then it wouldnt have much impact on climate.
- from climate perspective, the population problem is the number of wealthy westerners guzzling FF, not the teeming population in 3rd world.
- no problem is solved by denial.Over population does need a solution (one of about 10 problems we must solve simultaneously) and preferrably lets do it by reducing fertility rather than increasing mortality. Climate change does the later.
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Doug Bostrom at 13:01 PM on 26 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
I'm not quite sure I understand your question, Stranger. Does it help to consider that neither dead moss nor moss that is in a complete metabolic stasis will replenish C14 from the atmosphere? As well, it's not likely that dead moss exposed to weathering would endure for 44,000 years, not even in a very cold, dry climate.
Maybe if you could point to where you read about this. Was it something to do with this research?
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Stranger8170 at 12:06 PM on 26 October 2013Temp record is unreliable
Sorry, hope this question isn't to far off topic. Today I've read several articles about the moss found on Baffin Island. They said they had determined it was 44K years old from carbon dating. I was just told that when the moss died it would have stopped generating C-14. There is no way to differentiate between dead moss and dead moss covered by ice. So when the researchers can say they have "old" dead moss but they can't say anything about ice unless they can prove that without the ice the moss would have (mysteriously) come back to life and the C-14 started accumulating again.
I have no idea of how carbon dating works on moss so I thought I'd enquire.
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Ironbark at 11:00 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
At 21 - thanks scaddenp, that is exactly what I'm referring to - appreciate the leads of where to head to next.
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Ironbark at 10:57 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
Moderator - apreciate that you have a difficult job here. I would have no problem with all my posts on this topic being deleted excluding comment 18 which I think represents an uncontroversial question relating to models (a question I think many people a keen to here answers on, from those who know more about it). I will take up the opportunity of discussing those other off topic areas on other areas at SKS which are more appropriate as you have suggested.
Moderator Response:[JH] I will let your prior comments stand as is because they provide the background and context of this ongoing discussion. Perhaps you should spend more time reading and digesting the responses to your comments and less time posting new comments.
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scaddenp at 10:50 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
"The question was if there is a scientific principle of allowable variance from observations, before the underlying assumptions are questioned. How long can the pause be expected to continue?'
If you read up some of the threads on so-called "pause", you will understand this better (in fact read the IPCC AR5 analysis), but as I understand it, the question is more philosphical. Firstly, the models can get some things totally wrong without invalidated climate theory. Things that would invalidate climate theory would be an end to the energy imbalance; LW spectral reading in violation of theory, total ocean heat content declining etc.
The question on models though is whether they have useful skill (do better than null hypothesis that tomorrow will like today or similar). The climate modellers would be the first to tell you that climate model has no skill at decadal level projection. They do not predict internal variability well. On the other hand, if add in internal variability (eg the Foster and Rahmsdorf paper or similar efforts), then do you expect them to "hindcast" pretty well. Thus if you get an El Nino year where there temperatures are lower than previous El Nino years of similar magnitude, (or for that matter La nina years compared to earlier La Nina years) without volcanoes or similar forcings then you would say something missing from the model.
Climate models to be useful have to predict climate so 30 year trends significantly smaller than predicted would also indicate an issue - with the models but not necessarily with climate science. I would note that Manabe's primitive 1975 model allowed Broecker to predict 2010 temperatures remarkably well.
The "models are unreliable" thread has much much more.
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Tom Curtis at 10:36 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
Ironbark @19, your clearly believe, and have stated in effect that the hockeystick graph, ie, the graph from Mann, Bradley and Hughes 1999 both "hid the decline" and substituted real temperature data for proxy data to do so. Neither is true. How is spreading the contrary opinion not spreading misinformation?
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Ironbark at 10:21 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
At 18, Thanks Tom - I disagree with your comments regarding it being a spread of misinformation, but respect the moderator's wishes that this topic is not the area for such a discussion.
Moderator Response:[JH] Tom Curtis has conveniently provided you with an appropriate venue for discussing climategate. If you cannot defend your stated opinions there, please cease and desist from stating them again. Sloganeering and excessive repitition are both prohibited by the SkS Comment Policy. Yes, your opinions on climategate are sloganeering.
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Tom Curtis at 10:15 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
Ironbark writes @13:
"My point is that if it takes a decade for that to come out from the original papers, after the graph was used by the IPCC and Al Gore, what hope now do ordinary people have to take any study that's not older than 10 years on face value?"
S/he continues @15:
"People objectively seeking the truth (which we're all keen to know) would have encouraged people trawling over their work. It would have been far more relevant and less damaging to the AGW hypothesis if the hockey stick had been displayed what the proxy data actually showed. Then others could have built on that."
I am not going to discuss these comments in detail here, as they are off topic. If Ironbark wants a serious discussion on this issue, s/he should post on the topic here.
I will, however, point out that Michael Mann's graph as featured in the IPCC TAR, and in Al Gore's lecture series, movie and book does not hide the decline. Nor does it substitute real temperatures for proxy temperatures in any case. The suggestion that he did so comes from a blatant misinterpretation of something that Phil Jones says he (Phil Jones) did with another graph that has never appeared in any IPCC publication, nor been used by Al Gore (or anybody else so far as I know). Nor, for that matter, did Phil Jones do what Michael Mann actually did in his paper that produced the graph used by the IPCC and Gore.
This is typical of the whole "climategate" farce. Almost the entire basis of attack against the authors of the CRU emails has been on the misinterpretation of a few lines of text taken out of context. I strongly recommend that Ironbark not keep on spreading that misinformation until they have investigated the issue in detail here on an appropriate thread where more knowledgable people can point out, point by point, the nature of the misinterpretation involved. Alternatively, they can consider the possibility that many independent inquiries that have exonerated the authors of the emails of wrongdoing have all simply conspired to hide the truth. Absent such a conspiracy theory, it is absurd to keep on pushing the misinformation about the emails in the face of those multiple, independent exonerations.
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Ironbark at 09:59 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
At 14 doug-bostrom - thank you - on topic... the topic of the thread is trusting models.
Hindcasting sounds good, but if you went to the races with a someone who had a formula that predicted the winner of every race yesterday, but missed picking the winners in the first couple of races today, how much money would you keep giving him? This is how ordinary people think - people can judge that as simplistic, but I know a lot of people who think that way and AGW denial will only increase if there isn't an answer a layman can understand.
The question was if there is a scientific principle of allowable variance from observations, before the underlying assumptions are questioned. How long can the pause be expected to continue?
If there is a thread that explains model deviations from predictions since 2000, (not hindcasted predictions) that would be useful - and people such as myself, who aren't as intelligent as a lot of people on here can have a response to others when those reasonable questions are asked.
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Ironbark at 09:40 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
At 13 - Moderator, will do, thank you.
Moderator Response:[JH] If you wish to discuss "climategate" further, please do it on the thread of an article about the subject.
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Ironbark at 09:39 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
At 10 - DSL, whether others agree with me or not on the Climategate issue is secondary to my overall question.
Unless the emails I've read, are not the emails commonly understood, the use of words trick, 'hide the decline', the attempts to control what Journals published to restrict dissenting papers shows clear bias. People objectively seeking the truth (which we're all keen to know) would have encouraged people trawling over their work. It would have been far more relevant and less damaging to the AGW hypothesis if the hockey stick had been displayed what the proxy data actually showed. Then others could have built on that. Humanity would be better off for those scientific papers. Instead those papers set back the cause of objective people who say the evidence substantiates AGW and the climate community is only making it worse by not calling a spade a spade. People like Professor Richard Mullins calling it 'scientific malpractice' are to me, the best hope of restoring integrity in the eyes of the ordinary person, though apparently his opinions are the minority here.
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Doug Bostrom at 09:34 AM on 26 October 2013Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science
Just so we keep our stories straight...
-- Climategate and MBH 98 have to do with models how?
-- Al Gore has to do with models how?
-- Poor people we're presently choosing not care for have to do with models how?
Would be nice if we could stay on topic. Distinguishing one topic from another is a skill that can easily be learned. Start by remembering that GCMs are are not policy, GCMs are not celebrities, GCMs are not paleoclimate reconstructions, GCMs are not archaic emails on unrelated topics.
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