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Comments 41351 to 41400:

41351. MartinG at 15:23 PM on 15 October 2013
       Consensus study most downloaded paper in all Institute of Physics journals
       

       Most downloaded? Hmmmm - I wouldnt brag about that - it may be the most downloaded because it is the most interesting, or most exciting, or most informative - or that it is the most controversial, the most flawed, or the most criticised. I think I would rather read some logical rebuttals to the massive criticism that it has induced please.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Lose the snark, or lose your posting privilege.

41352. KR at 13:52 PM on 15 October 2013
       Consensus study most downloaded paper in all Institute of Physics journals
       

       My compliments to all authors. IMO well written and well supported.

       And considering the ongoing and multiple exploding heads over the paper in denier-ville, very effective at addressing the consensus gap. 

41353. scaddenp at 12:40 PM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       "have to respectfully disagree with you about testing climate model on past data. First, we really do not have enough solid and reliable measurements of the past to really determine the various components of the climate. "

       Excuse me but have you read any paper on the topic at all? Looked at the paleoclimate section of WG1? You have measurements of various climatic parameters with obviously error bounds on them. You have have estimates of forcings with similar error bounds. You run the models and see whether range of results for forcings are within the error limits for forcings. Are the forcings well enough known to constrain the models for testing? Well no, in some cases, yes in others. You can certainly make the statement that observations of past climates are expliciable from modern climate theory.
       Start at Chap 6 AR4. Read the papers.

       Moderator Response:

       (Rob P) - Please note that Stealth's last few comments have been deleted due to violation of the comments policy. Replies to these deleted comments have likewise been erased.

       If you wish to continue, limit yourselves to either one or two commenters - in order to avoid 'dogpiling' on Stealth. And request that Stealth provide peer-reviewed literature to support his claims. Claims made without the backing of the peer-reviewed scientfic literature are nothing more than non-expert personal opinion.

       Further 'dogpiling' and/or scientifically unsupported claims will result in comments being deleted.

41354. chriskoz at 12:29 PM on 15 October 2013
       Two degrees: how we imagine climate change
       

       Third paragraph under the graphic says:

       But these events (Laurentide icesheet) happened 18,000 years ago, over a timeframe of hundreds of years, as a result of changes in the earth’s orbit and other natural forces.

       That does not make sense. If you're talking about Heinrich events, you may say they lasted for few hundred years. But if you are talking about Milankovic cycles, this is a typo, you probably meant "hundred thousands of years".

       If my assumption about the typo is correct, then in next paragraph you state: "human-forced climate change is happening at 10,000 times the rate". That statement is not in the right ballpark (rate too fast), because in reality AGW's happening in hundreds of years, so ~1000 times faster that Milankovic forcings.

41355. Leto at 11:57 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       Stealth wrote:

       As a decent poker player myself, it is not a foregone conclusion that an expert will beat a complete novice.

       I am afraid you appear determined to resist enlightenment. Try to understand the conceptual point behind the analogies, rather than getting side-tracked into a discussion of the analogy itself. The odds of my mother beating the world expert in poker over several hours of play are close to zero, despite the unpredictable short-term possibility of her getting an unbeatable hand at any one moment, but that is not the point. The point is, the long-term predictability of an expert-vs-novice poker session is obviously much higher than its short-term predictability. The long-term rise in a swimming pool's level during filling is much more predictable than the moment-to-moment splashes. The physics of heat accumulation on the planet are much more amenable to modelling than short-term cycles and weather.

       Don't argue the analogies unless you put the effort into understanding the concept behind them. The analogies were raised because you seemed to take it as axiomatic that long-term predictability could never exceed short-term predictability, a view that is trivially easy to falsify.

       I chose this name because it is what I do, and I think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to software and modeling. This doesn’t mean all modeling and all software, but it is easier for me to extrapolate my knowledge and experience from my domain than, say, someone in the mortuary business. (Emphasis added).

       I think you have amply demonstrated that your experience in the aviation domain is actually preventing you from understanding. I see too much extrapolation from an entirely unrelated domain, which has a different dependence on small-scale and short-term phenomena completely unlike climatology, coupled with preconceived ideas about what conclusions you want to reach.

       Perhaps this is what some of you were trying to explain, but it didn’t come across very clear.

       See above. The problem is with the receiver. The points were very clear to anyone prepared to be educated.

41356. Tom Curtis at 11:41 AM on 15 October 2013
       Ocean In Critical State from Cumulative Impacts
       

       bibasir @9, here is a link to the abstract and paper (pdf).

41357. KR at 10:13 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       Stealth - "...the fact remains that sea surface temps and global air temps have been very steady for a long time, contrary to the models projections."

       Did you actually read the opening post??? It doesn't appear so... See the third figure; recent (and by that I mean the 15-17 years discussed by deniers) trends are but short term, statistically insignificant noise, cherry-picked from an extreme El Nino to a series of La Ninas. It's noteworthy that similar length trends (1992-2006) can be shown to have trends just as extreme in the other direction - a clear sign that you are not looking at enough data. 

       I've said this before, discussing recent trends and statistically significant trends. Examining any time-span starting in the instrumental record and ending in the present:

       • Over no period is warming statistically excluded.
       • Over no period is the hypothesis of "no warming" statistically supported WRT a null hypothesis of the longer term trends.
       • And over any period with enough data to actually separate the two hypotheses – there is warming. 
41358. bibasir at 10:05 AM on 15 October 2013
       Ocean In Critical State from Cumulative Impacts
       

       The scariest piece of information to me was published in Nature July 29, 2010. I'm not good at links, but use Google Scholar and search "Boris Worm phytoplankton." His team reported a 40% drop in phytoplankton since 1950. Phytoplankton are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world's oxygen and suck up carbon dioxide. Half the world's oxygen! I don't know why that fact alone does not send shudders through the population. It may take a long time before oxygen levels are depleted enough to cause harm, but what then?

41359. scaddenp at 09:58 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       Hmm, weather is chaotic. Whether climate is chaotic is an open question. Heat a large pan of water. The convection currents and surface temperatures are a challenge to model, but one thing for sure - while the heat at bottom exceeds heat loss from pan, then pan will keep on heating.

       By the way, if you want to discuss modelling directly with the climate modellers then ask away at RealClimate (read their FAQ first) - or on Isaacc Held's blog when the US government reopens.

41360. KR at 09:57 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       Stealth - Boundary value solutions can indeed deal with changes in forcings that were not in the original projection scenarios, by simply running on actual values. If the LA (or Detroit) freeway model accurately reflected those boundaries and limits, running it with a different set of economics would indeed give the average traffic for that scenario. That is the essence of running multiple projections with different emissions scenarios (RCPs) - projecting what might happen over a range of economic scenarios in order to understand the consequences of different actions. 

       And a projection is indeed testable - as Tom Curtis points out simply running a physically based boundary value model on past forcings should (if correct) reproduce historic temperatures, or perhaps using hold-out cross validation. And models can (and will) be tested against future developments, see the discussion of Hansens 1988 model and actual (as opposed to projected) emissions. 

       Finally, as to your statement "...in a chaotic and non linear system like the climate", I would have to completely disagree. Yes, there are aspects of chaos and non-linearity in the weather. But (and this is very important) even the most chaotic system orbits on an attractor, which center the long term averages, the climate. And the location of that attractor is driven by the boundary conditions, by thermodynamics and conservation of energy. Weather will vary around the boundary conditions, but the further it goes from balance the strong the correcting forcing. 

       Claiming that we cannot understand how the climate behaves under forcing changes is really an Appeal to Complexity fallacy - given that our models actually do very well. 

41361. scaddenp at 09:45 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       I picked on Luxembourgh because they come in at a whooping 300kWh/p/d.

41362. MA Rodger at 09:20 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       scaddenp @78.

       I'm not entirely sure why you pick on Luxembourg but they actually do have the largest per capita accumulative CO2 emissions (since 1750). There is a bit of geography here. Second on such a list is UK & Belgium is fourth (only receltly overhauled by USA) as this is the region where the industrial revolution first grew big. Luxembourg continues to have a big steel industry and is a very small country which is why it manages to remain out in front. (Thus didn't feel they should feature on this graphic of national & per capita accumulative emissions because I considered Luxembourg with its steel industry a sort of special case. And they are a small counrty.)

41363. Tom Curtis at 09:01 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       SAM @152, I have to disagree with you on the falsifiability of models based on projections based on two points:

       1)  Although models can only make projections of future climate changes, they can be run with historical forcings to make retrodictions of past climate changes.  Because the historical forcings are not the quantities being retrodicted, this represents a true test of the validity of the models.  This has been extended to testing whether models reproduce reconstructed past climates (including transitions between glacials and interglacials) with appropriate changes in forcings.

       2)  Even projections are falifiable.  To do so simply requires that the evolution of forcings over a given period be sufficiently close to match those of a model projection; and that the temperatures in the period of the projection run consistently outside the outer bounds of the projected temperature range.  It should be noted that, because the outer bounds are large relative to the projected change in temperature in the short term, that is almost impossible in the short term.  In the longer term (30+ years), however, the projected (and possible) temperature changes are large relative to the outer bounds and falsification becomes easy.  In other words, the experiment takes a long time to run.  There is nothing wrong with that.  It is simply the case that some experiments do take a long time to run.  That does not make them any less scientific. 

41364. StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 08:29 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       I’ve done a little more research, and I’ve stumbled upon something from the Met Office. This clears up some of the discussion, perhaps, and it is against some of the points I have made, so please give me credit for being honest and forthcoming in the discussion:

       “We should not confuse climate prediction with climate change projection. Climate prediction is about saying what the state of the climate will be in the next few years, and it depends absolutely on knowing what the state of the climate is today. And that requires a vast number of high quality observations, of the atmosphere and especially of the ocean.”

       “The IPCC model simulations are projections and not predictions; in other words the models do not start from the state of the climate system today or even 10 years ago. There is no mileage in a story about models being ‘flawed’ because they did not predict the pause; it’s merely a misunderstanding of the science and the difference between a prediction and a projection.”

       I think this clears up some of the discussion, I think. Perhaps this is what some of you were trying to explain, but it didn’t come across very clear. I was thinking that GCMs are making predictions instead of projections. Nevertheless, I don’t like projections because they are not falsifiable. Without known inputs and projected outputs, and truth data to compare against, how are these models tested and validated? I can’t think of a single way to verify them, and only one way to falsify them, and that is for the climate to cool when it is projected to warm. So, if the current global temperature pause extends out further or turns into cooling, only then will we have a falsification of the models.

       And here a few select replies to some points made above:

       Tom Dayton @144: I’ll re-read the SkS post on “How Reliable are the Models” again. I had some specific issues with it, but I’ll keep them to that post. As for Steve Easterbrook’s explaination… did you read it and understand it? I don’t think so. One sentence there sums it all up: “This layered approach does not attempt to quantify model validity”. Nuf’said.

       Leto @145: As for my username and background -- I am not pulling rank or appealing to authority as I understand those logical fallacies. I chose this name because it is what I do, and I think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to software and modeling. This doesn’t mean all modeling and all software, but it is easier for me to extrapolate my knowledge and experience from my domain than, say, someone in the mortuary business.

       KR @146: yes, you are correct in that I was misunderstanding boundary and initial value problems. I’ve read up on them a little, and I am not sure how useful they in the longer term. In your traffic projection example, yes they work well, but only when all of your underlying assumptions are met. For example, 10 years ago Detroit assumed much about the economy and economic growth and built a lot of stuff. Then the broader economy turned down, people left, and the city has gone bankrupt. The future is really hard to predict.

       I think models are at the very low end of their boundary conditions with the current pause. Whether all the heat is stealthily sinking into the deep ocean is a separate issue, but the fact remains that sea surface temps and global air temps have been very steady for a long time, contrary to the models projections. Even all the big climate houses are admitting the pause, so you guys might as well admit it too.

       And for your statement of “as we have a pretty good handle on the physics”, I disagree. Sure we have a good understanding of a lot of physics, but in a chaotic and non linear system like the climate, I think there is much that is not known. Take ENSO, PDO, and ADO, no one has a good physics model describing these, and they are major drivers of the climate. Unless you believe there is almost nothing unknown in the climate, then your statement on having a good handle in physics is a red herring. Donald Rumsfeld said it best: “There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.” I am pretty confident that there will be some unknown unknowns that will turn current climate science on its head -- and the pause is starting to back it up. If Wyatt’s and Curry’s peer reviewed paper on “Stadium Waves” (see: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/10/10/%E2%80%98stadium-waves%E2%80%99-could-explain-lull-global-warming) published in Climate Dynamics is correct, the pause could last much longer and would clearly falsify the climate models and most of AGW. I think we have time to wait another decade or two before taking an drastic action on curbing CO2 emissions to see if the IPCC’s projections are correct or not.

       Barry @149: coin flipping is a false analogy and not applicable forecasting climate or any chaotic system.

       JasonB @150 (and Leto @145): As a decent poker player myself, it is not a foregone conclusion that an expert will beat a complete novice. On average it is much more likely an expert will win, but in any given instance the claim is not true at all. The entire casino industry is built upon the Central Limit Theorem, which states “the arithmetic mean of a sufficiently large number of iterates of independent random variables, each with a well-defined expected value and well-defined variance, will be approximately normally distributed.” If a roulette wheel pays 36-to-1 on selecting the correct number on the wheel but there are 38 numbers (counting 0 and 00), assuming a fair wheel that is random, then the house has a 5.3% advantage over the player. In the long run, they $0.053 for every dollar bet on the wheel. This gaming theory with a well defined mean does not apply to the climate – the climate is chaotic, non linear and does not have a well defined mean.

41365. scaddenp at 08:08 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       What I would really like to see is an American (or Luxembourg) version of the document. How do you actually manage to use 250kWh/p/d? That's more than double NZ or UK but I wouldnt have thought the lifestyle that much more energy intensive. I suspect the figure for consumer energy use have some issues.

41366. scaddenp at 06:40 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       vroomie - the original is linked from here at Hot Topic. Oliver Bruce did an update last year, serialised at Hot Topic, starting here. The final document can be downloaded from here.

41367. GRLCowan at 06:23 AM on 15 October 2013
       SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
       

       ... and so over-quick posts seeking to be first, and over-persistent seekers of the last word, will be demotivated.

41368. GRLCowan at 06:19 AM on 15 October 2013
       SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
       

       Magma (#17) -- "early posts will receive more views and more opportunities for votes, up or down, than later ones, regardless of 'quality'" -- that leads to seeking to be first and/or last.

       A solution that should be possible is for all comments, or all comments that are replies to the above-the-line article rather than to any other BTL comment,  to be presented in pseudorandom order. That way, everyone gets an equal share of the first/last visibility advantage.

41369. grindupBaker at 05:50 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       @History reader #66, DSL #70. I think History's questions are better answered by locating those bell curves of weather events and discussions of them (I recall lectures by, perhaps, Dr. Wasdell, Dr. Hansen, Prof. Muller posted as videos that included explanations of the bell curve of weather events both widening at the base and moving towards the severe events. My understanding is that a weather event is not "caused by global warming", which is simplistic. The additionaI energy in the system (in the oceans) makes more events more energetic, but to greatly varying amounts so that it is incorrect to say "this is a global warming one, that's a regular one like we had before". It's important to note that "global warming" is in its early years so we should not expect every weather event to be more powerful than any prior weather event.

       "powerful east coast storms", the east coast of which country or continent ? (is my so-subtle way of saying the peoples of Land Incognita really notice the navel-gazing south of the Sumas border crossing here. I mean we really really notice it and a commenter would gain great creds by searching for a similar size weather event in some country over there, study and add to their comments to show cosmopolitanism  in the global topic of global warming).

        

41370. vrooomie at 05:23 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       scaddenp, would you be so kind as to proivide a link to your analysis? I'd like to share it with my Kiwi friends.

41371. scaddenp at 05:04 AM on 15 October 2013
       Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
       

       Dont forget in your analysis that deep ocean heat transport is still constrained by steric sealevel rise.

41372. scaddenp at 05:01 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       jdixon - It's very interesting book. It inspired me to make and publish the same analysis for my country (NZ) though with a slightly different emphasis. His approach of looking at things in terms of kWh/p/d is very useful.

41373. JasonB at 04:26 AM on 15 October 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       dvaytw,

       Addressing those points in reverse order:

       Figure 5 in the advanced version of this post compares raw data with corrected data, putting the lie to the last claim.

       The idea that the average cannot be determined accurately due to sparse samples is disproven by the fact that the same temperature trend can be derived by using approximately 60 rural-only stations (e.g. Nick Stokes' effort referred to in the OP; caerbannog also posts regularly about his downloadable toolkit e.g. comment #8 on this post, which itself is about Kevin C's tool). Anybody attempting to cast doubt on the basis of point 2 really has to explain how the reconstructed record is so robust and insensitive to the particular stations used.

       The average = (min+max)/2 temperature issue is irrelevant; all that matters is whether it creates a bias. In the US, where temperatures were recorded by volunteers and the time of day of observation (TOBS) changed over time, it actually does create a bias (a step change to cooler readings at a given station when the change occurs, which caused a reduction in trend over time as the change rolled out), but that can be corrected for, and if it's not, it demonstrably doesn't make much difference. BEST's approach, of simply splitting the station when a step change is detected, deals with this without any correction required.

       Finally, a global average is not difficult to work out, but it's also not necessary to compute in order to detect global warming — the issue is the change in temperature not the temperature itself, which is why "temperature anomaly" is always used, and the change is easy to detect. One of the reasons why so few stations are required is that anomalies are strongly correlated over large distances (demonstrated empirically by Hansen et al way back in the 80s) even while the actual temperatures between nearby stations can vary widely (e.g. with altitude and surrounding environment).

       I should probably also point out that the "global warming claim" isn't based on "a graph" that shows that "mean annual global temperature" has been increasing. For a start, it goes back over 100 years, with the calculations of Arrhenius that showed increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations would increase global temperatures, coupled with the fact that we have increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations by about 40% and continue to do so; the graph merely provides evidence to support the theory. Secondly, there's an awful lot more evidence out there than just "a graph". Tell them to look at what's happening in the Arctic sometime.

41374. MA Rodger at 04:16 AM on 15 October 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       dvaytw @274.

       The first criticism, that there is no "global average" temperature, is hardily "fundamental." The word "average" has many meanings. That it is used in a way of which the critic disapproves is of no fundamental importance, except perhaps to the critic himself who is evidently "no statistician."
       Given what was said, I guess the critcism is confined to land temperature measurements.
       It is true that on land the daily maximum and minimum temperature is all that is recorded. It is the standard practice and dates back to 1772 with the CET. The average of these two readings would then be "the mean recorded temperature" which makes it an average.
       The critic appears to be suggesting that an average minute-by-minute daily temperature would yield a result with no global temperature rise. Quite how that could be so is unclear. Both the maximum and the minimum averages have been rising in recent decades. And that the minimums have been rising more steeply than the maximums is symptomatic of increased atmospheric insulation - or an enhanced greenhouse effect.

       As for the second criticism, it is pure nonsense. As DSL reminds us, the assertion that urban heat islands have significantly distorted the temperature record is difficult to maintain when the satellite record provides essentially the same result.

41375. jdixon1980 at 03:55 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       I made a similar comment under the relevant "Climate Myth" post (#65, by the way), and looking back, I see that scaddenp has offered some insights there (thought I recognized your ID).  I have not read MacKay's Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air, but I see he has a free downloadable pdf here: http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html, and I will take your suggestion of reading it.

41376. jdixon1980 at 03:42 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       scaddenp @60:

       "MacKay estimates UK consumption at 125kWh/p/d while USA manager 250kWh/p/d. By comparison Hong Kong manages on 80kWh/p/d and India on less than 20. I'd say there was scope to redefine "need" somewhat."

       I'd say there is too, but I don't think we can say that energy "needs" are necessarily met by a per-capita distribution as low as India's, let alone that of many sub-Saharan African countries.  I would like to see more discussion of this, as it is the only argument against rapid decarbonization of industry that I have heard from climate contrarians that seems to me like it could even potentially be valid.  With (hundreds of millions?) of people the world over truly living with what we could only honestly call "energy poverty" (I'm thinking at least that a kids-huddled-under-streetlights-doing-homework-in-the-evening type of situation qualifies), there is undoubtedly a serious problem.  I also understand that international treaties like Kyoto/Copenhagen/UNFCCC don't place mandatory emissions reductions or even emissions growth limits on poor (or "non-Annex 1"?) countries, so it's not like international climate policy is overtly snubbing the world's energy-poor.  But on the other hand, is it possible that staying within, say, a 2-degrees-C global emissions budget could be irreconcilable with the goal of lifting X number of people out of energy poverty?  Or, on the other hand, if the goals are reconcilable, how much longer will it take for the quality of life of that X number of people to be improved on a responsible (in terms of maintaining or restoring climate stability) emissions budget, compared to how long it would take by simply throwing up coal and gas power plants willy-nilly, emissions budget be damned (entertaining for the moment the idea that we have enough readily available fossil fuel on Earth to eradicate energy poverty by burning it)?  If the difference is several decades, then adequately addressing the AGW problem could be imposing a continued miserable existence (or at least one that would seem so to me if I had to live it) on an entire generation of the world's energy-poor.  

       This bothers me a lot (I live in the US, where we overconsume and can't agree on a fiscal budget, let alone a CO2 one), especially when I consider it also in light of the concept of "global overshoot day," defined as the day of a given year on which our cumulative consumption of natural resources exceeds that which the Earth has the capacity to restore in a year, which according to the Global Footprint Network (an organization that I admittedly don't know much about, so I can't speak to the robustness or credibility of the science behind its pronouncements) occurred sometime in August this year, if I remember correctly.  Meaning that, if per capita energy consumption correlates to consumption of other resources, as I assume it must to some degree, then raising India's or China's per-capita energy consumption up to say even UK's level is a scary thought for global resource conservation in general, whether or not it involves blowing past any global emissions budget that might avoid climate mayhem.  

       I realize I'm touching on a lot of highly specialized subjects in one rambling comment.  The main point that I would like to make is that I would like to see either a thoughtful SkS post that addresses the subject of energy poverty head-on, or more discussion under the Climate Myth "CO2 Limits Will Hurt the Poor," where the main post (as of now) simply takes an end-around route by observing that unmitigated climate change itself will disproportionately hurt the poor.  I don't doubt that that is true, but I would like to see some kind of comparative analysis of whether climate change will hurt the poor more or less than the differential amount of energy poverty (if any) that the poor will be made to endure by being subject to a global emissions budget that will safely avoid climate catastrophe(even if there are no limits being imposed on poorer countries now, surely limits would have to be imposed as soon as the kind of rapid emissions growth ensued that would be necessary to lift people from energy poverty - by burning fossil fuels - to anything resembling what would feel like energy prosperity to an American or Brit, e.g.) .  

41377. tmbtx at 03:03 AM on 15 October 2013
       Two degrees: how we imagine climate change
       

       I believe the current status is we've already warmed nearly 1 degree with another degree already in the pipeline.  So, essentially, we're already at 2.  Is it fair to say that, even with the urgency that people are trying to invoke, it's still being understated?

41378. DSL at 02:41 AM on 15 October 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       dvaytw, I suggest you ask the person how s/he would, ideally, determine whether or not global energy storage was increasing via the enhanced greenhouse effect.  That will either push the person toward an evasive rejection of the greenhouse effect (which you can counter with directly measured surface data that confirm model expectations) or push the person into giving you their answer to the question.  If you get that answer, then you can compare it with what scientists are actually doing.  

       It's an odd complaint anyway, since satellite data--even the raw data--confirm the surface station trend, and stratospheric cooling can only be partially attributed to other causes.  Then there's ocean heat content data (an invitation to weasel via Pielke and Tisdale, though), global ice mass loss data (harder to deal with, but the move will probably be "it's happened before."), changes in biosphere, thermosteric sea level rise, and the host of other fingerprints.

41379. dvaytw at 02:24 AM on 15 October 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       I'm doing another AGW debate and was wondering if someone can give me a quick response to the following claim, or refer me to where I can read up on it myself:
       
       "To start with the "global warming" claim. It is based on a graph showing that "mean annual global temperature" has been increasing.

       This claim fails from two fundamental facts

       1. No average temperature of any part of the earth's surface, over any period, has ever been made. How can you derive a "global average" when you do not even have a single "local" average?

       What they actually use is the procedure used from 1850, which is to make one measurement a day at the weather station from a maximum/minimum thermometer. The mean of these two is taken to be the average. No statistician could agree that a plausible average can be obtained this way. The potential bias is more than the claimed "global warming.

       2. The sample is grossly unrepresentative of the earth's surface, mostly near to towns. No statistician could accept an "average" based on such a poor sample.

       It cannot possibly be "corrected" It is of interest that frantic efforts to "correct" for these uncorrectable errors have produced mean temperature records for the USA and China which show no overall "warming" at all. If they were able to "correct" the rest, the same result is likely."

41380. Claude Allaigre at 02:18 AM on 15 October 2013
       Two degrees: how we imagine climate change
       

       It might be interesting to mention Hansen and Sato's "Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change" where it is written :

       We conclude that the ocean core data are correct in indicating that global temperature was only slightly higher in the Eemian and Holsteinian interglacial periods than in the Holocene, at most by about 1°C, but probably by only several tenths of a degree Celsius. (p 18)

       
       Augmentation of peak Holocene temperature by even 1°C would be sufficient to trigger powerful amplifying polar feedbacks, leading to a planet at least as warm as in the Eemian and Holsteinian periods, making ice sheet disintegration and large sea level rise inevitable. (p 19)

       BAU scenarios result in global warming of the order of 3-6°C. It is this scenario for which we assert that multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale are not only possible, but almost dead certain. Such a huge rapidly increasing climate forcing dwarfs anything in the paleoclimate record. Antarctic ice shelves would disappear and the lower reaches of the Antarctic ice sheets would experience summer melt comparable to that on Greenland today. (p 20)

       
       We have presented evidence in this paper that prior interglacial periods were less than 1°C warmer than the Holocene maximum. If we are correct in that conclusion, the EU2C scenario implies a sea level rise of many meters. It is difficult to predict a time scale for the sea level rise, but it would be dangerous and foolish to take such a global warming scenario as a goal. (p 20)

       Conceivably a 2°C target is based partly on a perception of what is politically realistic, rather than a statement of pure science. In any event, our science analysis suggests that such a target is not only unwise, but likely a disaster scenario. (p 27)

       I don't know about his science but do you agree that the 2°C limit is indeed a politically realistic target rather than a statement of pure science ?

        

41381. DSL at 02:10 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       History Reader, to give you an illustration of my first claim, take a pinball machine.  Build a device that shoots the pinball into the machine at precisely the same speed each time.  Shoot the ball in and then track the ball.  Now, shift every bumper one millimeter to the left (a tiny shift!), and each kicker a millimeter to the right.  Now shoot the ball again.  Same track?  Same score (without using the flippers)?  No. Or, if the same score, not for the same reasons.  

       Undoubtedly there will be some natural variation that will affect the track on each run beyond the re-placement of the bumpers and kickers, but the re-placement of those elements certainly has an effect, and over a long number of runs, the difference between the two states (pre-re-placement and re-placement) will become clear, as the signals of short-term natural variation (climate read: ENSO, PDO, 11-year solar cycle) start to average out.  

       Of course, we're not shifting the climate a millimeter to the left.  Given the geological bounds of climate (the bounds set by precedence and physics), we're moving the bumpers and kickers about an inch to the left.  However, we're not doing it all at once.  It feels immediate to the evolutionary progress of the biosphere, but to the individual human it feels quite slow and relatively harmless.  The ball is still bouncing around at the top of the machine, though.

41382. Stephen Leahy at 02:04 AM on 15 October 2013
       Ocean In Critical State from Cumulative Impacts
       

       TonyW  2C is political and what countries have agreed to stay below under the UNFCCC. And are supposed to sign a legally-binding treaty in 2015 on their cuts to get there. It's a target to aim for. 1.5C is a better target, and some countries are fighting for that.  

41383. DSL at 01:58 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       History read, the scientific explanation for attribution of weather events to global warming is pretty simple, really.  All specific weather events have occurred as they have actually occurred as a result of global warming.  To imagine a global warming-free world where Sandy develops and tracks as it actually did last year is irrational, to say the least.  An increase in global energy storage affects every part of the system, and from a variety of directions.

       Also, with something like hurricanes, most non-experts I've talked with baseline their experience in the 1970s or 1980s, as if that were the period before global warming.  It was not, and global warming = persistent change.  The science on hurricane development under global warming is, at best, only loosely aligned under one theory.  Journalists, in general, have done badly in communicating this area of the science to the general public.  

       As far as humans being powerful is concerned, note that humans are simply enhancing an already very powerful natural mechanism--the greenhouse effect.  The theory of the greenhouse effect is extremely well-supported by direct observation/measurement, and it hasn't faced a serious challenge in about a century.  We are simply doubling the strength of one major component of that effect, and through that doubling we enhance the power of several other components of that effect (H2O and CH4).  

41384. Tom Curtis at 00:59 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       History reader @6, you refer to "... the media hyped global cooling scare ...".  As a reader of history, you should know better than to get your information from people who are known to falsify the record.  When deniers have to make fake Time magazine covers in order to prove the existence of a "media hyped global cooling scare", that tells you that the actual evidence does not support their claim.

41385. MA Rodger at 00:48 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       History Reader @66.

       While all your questions may not be so readily answered as the first example you set, that first is hardily an obscure question. And neither is its answer. Your question of course should be framed a little differently as obviously Sandy was not a product of human endeaviour. Rather its path and intensity was much influenced by human endeaviour.

41386. PluviAL at 00:38 AM on 15 October 2013
       SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
       

       What happened to the reply option?

       This is my favorite subject, on which I would like to write a book discussing the propositions offered by Quillian on OFD (Open Forum control Democracy.) The key ingredient his concept adds is to quantify the voting according to the pre-qualifications of the commentator. A commentator who has a lot of approval on the subject would weigh in much more heavily than a novice, a troll, or a bot, as defined by the user community in prior commentary. It parrellels peer review by design, but in a dynamic process. I call the concept ASCEND as one chapter in my new book Pluvinergy. Although the book is about climate adjustment technology, the ability to discuss global adjustments reasonably is critical, thus the necessity of the topic.

41387. vrooomie at 00:15 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       "AGW however is a direct threat to those who adhere to the ideology of free market and libertarianism, since AGW very clearly indicates what is required to avoid the consequences."

        

       Even more importantly, Iin my opinion, is the fact that AGW itself is one of the largest and most stark examples of a market failure, and to those who fervently believe in lassiez faire capitalism as the Holy Grail that can solve all our ills, it is a *very* inconvenient fact that lays bare the falsity of that long-held supposition.

41388. History reader at 00:11 AM on 15 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       Whenever we hear things like "worst flood in 100 years", "strongest hurricane since..." "most tornadoes in 50 years" or whatever here are the things that come to my mind.

       Identify and explain all of the natural factors that caused that record event in the past long before man had much effect on CO2 then identify and explain all of the man made factors that made the recent event equal or exceed the past natural events.

       That is the scientific explaination I am looking for.

       If man caused Sandy then what caused the more powerful storm that hit New York in 1821?

       If nature caused 5 hurricanes to hit the east coast in 1954-55 then why do people claim that the recent fewer and less powerful east coast storms are caused by man?

       Prior to the strong La Nina (cooler Pacific waters) fueled Joplin tornado outbreak there was the super outbreak of tornadoes in 1974 (another strong La Nina) fueled outbreak. Why was the 1974 outbreak that occurred during the media hyped global cooling scare different than the Joplin outbreak where people blamed warming. Even though both were actually caused by the same thing that fuels all severe weather. Interaction between air masses of different temperatures.

       Why was nature as powerful in the past as man is claimed to be today?

41389. Eric (skeptic) at 21:57 PM on 14 October 2013
       Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
       

       Thanks scaddenp.  I quickly scanned it and will address their conclusion of relatively low uncertainty (20% or less).  But the deeper ocean has more uncertainty which includes model uncertainty from the assimilation method that I mentioned above.  That will be my main focus.

41390. Lanfear at 20:40 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       chriskoz@6

       "The reason is: the religious institutions around the world do accept AGW"

       I have to disagree with you on your analysis.

       The reason is that your objection does not touch the core of the comparison (which you seem to acknowledge), which is that people who denies the scientific premise of AGW do that based on their belief/ideology because AGW is a direct threat to their belief system.

       I do want to take a moment and clarify my stance: I consider both (politcal) ideology and religions equal in that the other promotes some economic of social idea on a pedestal, while the latter places a superbeing on it. To the degree where this becomes sacrosanct and no critique is tolerated/accepted.

       In this situation, a scientific theory which directly threatens the dogma of the believer causes the believer to be in a state of cognitive dissonance and the solution is either to modify the dogma to accommodate the new information, abandon it altogether, or reject the science, not based on facts, but on secondary reasons (ad hominem etc.).

       AGW is not directly contradicting the central tenets of most of the religions (although some seem to interpret the texts differently). Hence your reference to Vatican acceptance is not very strong. It would be better to observe how vehemently the various religions has opposed, and changed their dogma (eg. the Anglican Church of England), due to research in evolution and cosmology, both which directly contradicts what the sacred texts claim to be the truth.

       AGW however is a direct threat to those who adhere to the ideology of free market and libertarianism, since AGW very clearly indicates what is required to avoid the consequences.

       The crowd that follows and repeats the lies as "alternative theories" on WUWT or such blogs, are poeple who for some reasons are unable or too lazy to verify the "skeptic claims".

       Are you sure there is not even a single person among that group of people, who does not really believe in what is published on those blogs? The last sentence is in essence saying: They accept the "alternative theories" on blind faith, contrary to what science says. Is this really so different to how some of the (traditionally) religious people are rejecting science on the field of evolution and cosmology?

       Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a expert on neither theology, nor AGW/Evolution/Cosmology. Any corrections are much appreciated.

41391. JasonB at 19:57 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       Jubble @ 63,

       The scientific argument has clearly been won - there was never an argument in the first place.

       That's not true. Arrhenius' 1896 paper was thought to have been refuted for half a century due to a flawed experiment by J. Koch in 1900. (Interesting read.) It took a long time for the scientific community to come around.

       The irony, of course, is that "skeptics" now raise all the same objections that were raised and dealt with years ago by real scientists in forming the modern consensus view, all the while proclaiming that they are the ones fighting the closed-minded establishment that has "already made up its mind" oblivious to the fact that the "skeptics" actually represent the holdovers of the old estalishment view that took so long to overcome with scientific evidence!

       It's like Flat Earthers complaining that modern scientists are stuck in their ways and not considering new, alternative theories!

       This is also an interesting read that you might like.

       I have just posted the following on WUWT - let's see what sort of response I get:

       You may be surprised by what they think is convincing evidence. :-)

41392. Jubble at 19:26 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       MARoger @56 & JasonB @62: The scientific argument has clearly been won - there was never an argument in the first place.  

       The popular argument is very much up for grabs, though.  Throughout history, proving the science has only ever been the first important step of many before concerted action can be taken.  Examples are smog in London in the mid 20th century (4000 deaths in 4 days 1952 were initially blamed on influenza - it wasn't until 1956 that legislation was brought in) and of course tobacco.

       Climate contrarians (as they like to be known) will not produce the science, because it is not there.  They will instead try to denigrate the scientists, badging climate science as not a real science at all (other than those cherry-picked studies that can be woven into a superficially convincing argument for "natural variability"), and describing the IPCC as a corrupt group of inept close-knit non-scientists, rather than a panel summarising the work of 1000's of scientists.

       I have just posted the following on WUWT - let's see what sort of response I get:

       "I am looking to be convinced that AGW is a myth or not a problem. I admit that currently I believe that on balance it isn’t a myth and is a problem. My background is in science, with a joint hons undergraduate degree in Math and Physics from the University of Nottingham, England and a post-graduate in applied statistics (operational research) from the London School of Economics.

       Fire away – how can I be convinced? I’ve read “Climate – the Counter Consensus”, if that helps."

41393. JasonB at 16:31 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       Jubble @ 54:

       The main counter-AGW argument appears to be: The climate has changed before and no-one truly understands it, therefore there may be some other explanation of the current changes than anthropogenic that is not accounted for in the climate science and the models.

       That's an argument from ignorance, though. They may not truly understand it, but to say that no-one does asserts a level of knowledge on their part that they clearly lack.

       I think it's worth reiterating that AGW was not invented to explain "the current changes". The current changes were predicted long before they were observed — Svente Arrhenius' first computed a climate sensitivity of 4C in 1896!

       I would point those people to:

       1. Spencer Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming", showing just how long the theory has been around and how it has evolved over time.

       2. Frank Capra's short film "The Unchained Goddess" from the 1950s talking about the possible consequences of mankind's CO2 emissions.

       3. Richard Alley's talk at AGU in 2009, "The Biggest Control Knob — Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History", giving an excellent overview of the role CO2 has played in Earth's history.

       The fact that climate has changed before — and we know why — is one of the reasons we can predict what will happen this time!

       Thinking that, in spite of all this, the science might still be wrong and the problem may not be as bad as it currently seems, is wishful thinking for which there is no evidence and a bad risk management strategy. I think it's safe to say, as the OP essentially does, that a prima facie case has been made and the burden of proof has now shifted on to the other side if they wish to argue for inaction.

41394. JasonB at 14:41 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       SASM  @ 133,

       I think we all understand that this type of comparison isn’t meaningful in the initial stages of the forecast. But, as time advances forward the min/max trend lines become wider, and once they are as wide as the noisy temperature data, then the location of the origin really shouldn’t matter. For example, in your chart @126, you can see that the min/max trend lines are outside the 2.5%/97.5% model bands by 2013 or 2014.

       Nevertheless, in both my chart and yours, it is clear that global temperatures are at the very low end of the model projections. You show the +/-2.5% bands and the current HADCRUT4 data is touching the lower 2.5% band. I read that as there was only a 2.5% chance that the global temperature would reach this level.

       This is circular reasoning/begging the question. You're claiming that as time moves forward the min/max trend lines behave more and more like temperature bands, then use the observation that the temperature data is touching the lower 2.5% band to argue there is a problem.

       Tom's graph @ 126 very clearly showed the actual trend line that should be compared to the min/max trend lines. The actual trend line is about half way between the mean trend and the minimum trend. It is well within the range. QED.

       If you disagree, then how would any of you determine that the models are inaccurate? What is your method of testing and validation?

       Look at the second figure in the OP — Tamino's graph of projection trends and observation trends, together with their uncertainties.

       If they were disjoint — i.e. if the projected trends with their ranges did not overlap meaningfully with the observed trends plus their uncertainties, then we'd want to go back and figure out what we missed (or whether, instead, we had miscalculated something).

       We're a long way from that.

       BTW, as has already been pointed out, HADCRUT4 has a known systematic error because it omits the fastest-warming regions of the globe. The models have no such error in their temperature calculations. If you're getting close to showing there could be a problem (which you aren't, but at some point it's possible) then it's worth checking to see whether it's what you're using for observations that are the cause, rather than the models. (This has happened before, with UAH, for example.) Alternatively, you could apply HADCRUT4's algorithm to the model output to compare like-with-like.

       If your position is robust then it should stand up when using multiple data sets, not just the one data set that is known to underestimate warming. In other words, when you're right on the margin, you don't want to be accussed of cherry-picking the data set to prove your point.

       In this case, however, we're not right on the margin, but it's good to be prepared should we eventually be so.

41395. JasonB at 14:08 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       Leto @ 145,

       A professional poker player sits down with a novice. The hands and flow of money are totally unpredictable in the short term, but we know who is going to win by the end of the evening

       In fact, the entire casino industry is based on the fact that over a large number of games with a large number of people, a small bias in favour of the house will give them a profit even if they can't predict whether they will win or lose any particular game.

41396. Climate Bob at 13:37 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       Fossil fuel companies are not stupid and neither are they poor. They spend millions each year on research, scientists and technicians, Climate change is threatening their business and if it was a false science or if there was another way out they could easily spend the money on research and find it and prove it. Denying that is is happening is only wasting time and a lot of people are going to die.

41397. barry1487 at 12:52 PM on 14 October 2013
       Why Curry, McIntyre, and Co. are Still Wrong about IPCC Climate Model Accuracy
       

       "You cannot have accurate long term forecasts and inaccurate short term forecasts."

       I just flipped 7 heads and 3 tails. The model that predicts very nearly 50%/50% distribution over 1000 coin flips, then, cannot be right.

41398. scaddenp at 11:48 AM on 14 October 2013
       Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation
       

       One other point for Elephant.

       "10 percent of children in the UK for example live in poverty. We also cannot provide our current energy needs."

       What is considered poverty is a rather relative measure. As is what you define as an energy "need"? You could also argue that poverty is actually a distribution problem and that having abundant energy isnt going to remove poverty. MacKay estimates UK consumption at 125kWh/p/d while USA manager 250kWh/p/d. By comparison Hong Kong manages on 80kWh/p/d and India on less than 20. I'd say there was scope to redefine "need" somewhat.

41399. scaddenp at 10:52 AM on 14 October 2013
       Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
       

       Probably worth also have a scan of Von Schuckmann and La Traon 2011, "How well can we derive Global Ocean Indicators from Argo data?"

41400. John Cook at 08:10 AM on 14 October 2013
       SkS social experiment: using comment ratings to help moderation
       

       Jim Pettit, I'm well aware of the danger of denier gamification of the rating system (I read extensively on the topic before installing this system). Gamification is slightly more difficult at SkS because in order to rate, one needs to register a user account with a working email address. It's not impossible to register multiple accounts, by any means, but raising the bar does weed out a significant number of potential trolls. Because each rating is tracked, even if someone does gamify the system with multiple accounts, if they are detected, their ratings can be instantly removed. So there is very little return on investment for deniers wishing to undermine our rating system.

       But here's another interesting twist. There has been scholarly research into using social network analysis to detect sock puppets (multiple accounts by a single user) engaging in exactly this type of behaviour. If deniers do try sockpuppeting at SkS, they present a wonderful research opportunity. So bring it on :-)

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