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VictorVenema at 07:35 AM on 8 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
Chris Brierley wrote: "I would point out though that publishers are at the mercy of their journals' editors - so they may sometimes by unwitting victims. Publishers don't (and shouldn't) make editorial decisions. Their main input is to select the editors in the first place."
A publisher cannot avoid all problems, but don't they set the rules? Shouldn't they have rules for who is the editor of a paper if the official (guest-)editor submits a paper himself? You need such rules so that the author cannot select his own reviewers and would know their names. You cannot expect good reviews without such rules.
One of the problems was a paper that had ended up in the wrong journal. They did promise to transfer the article, but up to now did not do so. Makes the impression they do not care about quality.
I am afraid, SkS will have to write something about this new journal more often.
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MA Rodger at 04:33 AM on 8 September 2013There is no consensus
spoonieduck @564.
There are of course many who would say that science is always in flux so there can never be a scientific consensus. This is perhaps theoretically true, and perhaps more than theoretically. In a recent BBC radio interview Prof Joanna Haigh suggested that if you put a bunch of professors in a room together, the last thing they are going to do is agree with each other. As a profession, academics make their mark in the world by arguing with each other; arguing and winning. Thus Professor Haigh's point is that the AGW consensus is all the more powerful because the IPCC has actually managed to bash academia into singing off the same hymn sheet.
Using your dictionary definitions, you are probably correct to say there is no "solidarity of opinion" concerning AGW. Or at least it is fragile. Them professors will soon start arguing if you let them. But your dictionary also describes "collective judgement or belief" as being consensus. I think that has been achieved. AGW is real and it is bad, potentially exceedingly bad. And with the dissenting 3% entirely disagreeing with each other as to what the consensus has got wrong in reaching such a judgement, the "collective judgement" looks even better grounded.
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Leland Palmer at 04:03 AM on 8 September 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
The following figure is from Benton and Twichett's paper:
How to kill (almost) all life: the end-Permian extinction event
Notice the carbon isotope excursions illustrated at the left side of the figure- parallel carbon isotope excursions from both carbonate and organic carbon sources. Notice the extinction of numerous fossil species on the right- in fact roughly 60% of all families and 80% of all genera became extinct, during the End Permian. The timescale of the extinction, according to other sources, was about 80 thousand years- but the initial apparent release was much quicker- less than two thousand years, according to many sources.
As the authors point out:
Not only must this new source of 12C be identified, but
that source must also be capable of overwhelming normal
atmospheric feedback systems. The only option so far
identified is the methane released from gas hydrates
(Box 3), an idea that has been accepted with alacrity
[21,23,24,31].
The assumption is that initial global warming at the
PTr boundary, triggered by the huge Siberian eruptions,
melted frozen gas hydrate bodies, and massive volumes
of methane rich in 12C rose to the surface of the oceans
in huge bubbles. This vast input of methane into the
atmosphere caused more warming, which could have
melted further gas hydrate reservoirs. The process
continued in a positive feedback spiral that has been
termed the ‘runaway greenhouse’ phenomenon. Some
sort of threshold was probably reached, which was beyond
where the natural systems that normally reduce carbon
dioxide levels could operate effectively. The system
spiralled out of control, leading to the biggest crash in
the history of life.There are other carbon isotope excursions associated with mass extinction events, including the End Triassic, a couple of oceanic anoxic events in the Jurassic, and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. All of these correspond very well to the injection of several trillion tons of methane from the oceanic hydrates into the atmosphere. There are very large numbers of sudden isotope excursions, of course, corresponding to smaller methane releases, and smaller hyperthermal events- some of which appear to be timed to orbital cycles, and so to orbitally driven global warming.
This is hard scientific isotope evidence, coming from the rocks of many, many sites around the world, duplicated numerous times by numerous scientists.
This carbon isotope evidence of past apparent methane catastrophes cannot safely be ignored, in my opinion.
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DSL at 03:50 AM on 8 September 2013There is no consensus
Seriously spoonie? You don't think there's a consensus on the theory of the enhanced greenhouse effect? That's all AGW is, plus the proposition that humans are responsible for the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2. You realize that there are no comprehensive alternative theories and that the climate of the past cannot be explained without resorting to the greenhouse effect (and of course the GHE has been directly measured from surface).
Or is it that you're being imprecise in your complaint/claim? -
spoonieduck at 03:30 AM on 8 September 2013There is no consensus
OK, DB, so I'll give it another shot. My comment is strictly on topic.
Definitions are important in any debate so I've gone directly to the source i.e. Random House Webster's College Dictionary [1997]:
"Consensus": 1. collective judgment or belief; solidarity of opinion. 2. general agreement or concord; harmony. [1850-55; < L, = consent[ire] to be in agreement, harmony
--Usage. The expression "consensus of opinion" is sometimes criticized as being redundant on the basis that "consensus" alone conveys the meaning. Although the redundancy argument is weakened if "consensus" is taken in its earlier and valid sense of "general agreement or concord," the criticism of this phrase has been so persistent that "consensus of opinion" occurs only infrequently in edited formal writing. The phrase "general consensus" is also objected to as redundant.
Now, Spoonie will comment. Using the strict definition of the word "consensus", it can certainly be argued that there is no consensus concerning AGW theory. There is no "solidarity of opinion". There is little "concord" and there definitely is no "harmony."
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tcflood at 03:18 AM on 8 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
Regarding comments 5 and 7:
There's an interesting paper "The polarizing impact of scientific literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks" in Nature Climate Change, Vol 2, p 732, 2012 that is worth reading. Scientific literacy is no guarantee that someone will agree with you.
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DSL at 23:49 PM on 7 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
Stephen, let's back off the generalizations re the humanities. Humanities majors don't have a lock on scientific non-expertise. I also imagine that many of the people at the BBC have backgrounds in communications/journalism, which are not considered part of the humanities. The problem is not a particular area of training. The problem is the driving interest that leads people to say "yes" instead of "no" when it comes to manufacturing debate.
Could scientific training help them say "no"? It couldn't hurt, but it's certainly no universal medicine. Witness Lindzen, Michaels, Spencer, Morner, Soon, et al. Witness the 32,000 signers of the OISM petition, all allegedly with some scientific training.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the general public doesn't know the difference between Nature and Energy & Environment. One cannot appeal to scientific reason when speaking to the general public--at least not beyond a surface treatment. The arguments of the Watts, et al., align with political platforms, not with measures of scientific credibility, and so the ideas of Watts et al. spread to a much greater audience. The BBC receives that spread in return: pressure from the public and from policymakers.
There's no easy solution. Pushing critical thinking skills is important, of course, but I've seen the best of my student thinkers shortcut when thinking through an issue toward which he had little motivation. Climate science is definitely not an area of science that can be untangled in a day with a sharp mind. I frequently encounter people who are smart and understand the greenhouse effect but who argue from the equilibrium climate sensitivity that the IPCC has overestimated warming. These are engineers and scientists in other fields, not humanities majors, and it takes a really long time to get them to understand what is blazingly obvious to me (the oceans), and I am trained in the humanities (ABD right now).
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BillEverett at 20:10 PM on 7 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
It is unfortunate that our ordinary language doesn't match the facts of thermodynamics very well, in particular, that we don't have separate common words to distinguish between an increase of heat energy in a system and an increase of the temperature of the system. We consequently seem to have continuing confusion between an accelerating increase of heat in the global system and a varying increase of the temperatures of different parts of the system.
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Stephen Ferguson at 18:57 PM on 7 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
Brilliant video.
The Radio 4 excerpt is typical of the BBC news reporting, which, dominated as it is by humanities graduates, is institutionally incapable of understanding the gigantic difference between evidence-based science and ideological-based propaganda.
They are arrogant in their ignorance too, even choosing to ignore their own internal review carried out in 2011 by Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, on the accuracy and impartiality of the BBC’s science output
Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics puts it well.
“But it is clear that the BBC’s cadre of unscientific senior staff has simply ignored this aspect of the review by Professor Jones. In his evidence to the House of Commons select committee on science and technology on 17 July, David Jordan, director of editorial policy and standards at the BBC and a graduate of economics and politics from the University of Bristol, told MPs: "[Professor Jones] also made one recommendation which we didn’t take on board which is that we should regard climate science as settled in effect, and therefore that we shouldn’t hear from dissenting voices on the science of climate change and we didn’t agree with that because we think the BBC’s role is to reflect all views and opinions in society and we’ve continued to do that."
This is the result of erroneously believing that climate change is just a political issue, and based on a matter of opinion. But the laws of atmospheric physics are not a "point of view", and this wrong-headed approach by the BBC means it is sacrificing accuracy by being impartial between facts and fictions.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/giving-platform-climate-change-sceptics-bbc-misleading-public
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One Planet Only Forever at 10:24 AM on 7 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
martin,
The inter-relationship of the various things being measured and discussed is important to understand.
The oceans gathering heat will affect global average surface tempeature when the next strong El Nino event develops. The history of global average surface temperatures shows a statistically significant effect from the ENSO cycle. The global average is bumped up by El Nino and is bumped down by La Nina. ENSO is currently fairly neutral and the global average temperture is as high as values were during the big El Nino bump of 1997-98.
Therefore, anyone tracking the global average surface temperture should also include an adjustment for the phase and degree of the ENSO cycle that is influencing it. The other understood variable impacts on the global average surface temperature should also be included.
When that is done there is no recent significant slowing down or pause in the global average surface temperature values.
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Riduna at 09:56 AM on 7 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
Interesting graphics. They show that none of the ocean warming in lower latitudes penetrates polar oceans - which is not the case and is misleading.
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John Hartz at 09:08 AM on 7 September 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
@Andy Skuce #54:
Nafeez Ahmed reponds to Michael Tobis in a lengthy article, Why the jury's still out on the risk of Arctic methane catastrophe, posted Sep 5 on his Guardian blog, Earth Insight.
Here's the lead paragraph of Ahmed's post.
About a week ago, climate scientist Michael Tobis wrote a critique of my 'Seven facts about the Arctic methane time bomb' following a twitter exchange with him and Chris Colose, author of an article at Skeptical Science arguing that the core scenario of a new Nature paper by Gail Whiteman et. al on the economic costs of Arctic climate change is extremely unlikely.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:01 AM on 7 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
chriskoz,
Eventually the strength of the science will win out. However, this issue needs action now, not eventually. Those wishing to delay the reduction of their personal opportunity to get more benefit for themselves desperately need to be able to maintain support for their delay tactics, and claiming "a peer-reviewed paper said..." is highly sought. Their target audience is unlikely to ever learn about any eventual rebuittal.
Scientific research is constantly identifying problems being created by "profitable activities". Very coordinated political public relations deceptive marketing programs are abused by the profiteers as long as they can get away with them. The wealthier the profiteers are the more deceptive marketing they can create. Governments pursuing tax revenue have also joined in the deliberately deceptive marketing campaigns. And in this case, the need to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, they have an audience that is easy to impress. Many people desire more personal profit, pleasure, comfort and convenience any way they can justify getting away with.
The politics of this issue makes it desirable for "unsubstantiated claims" to be able to be published in "peer-reviewed journals". That is probably why some new "peer-reviewed journals" have popped up. They may be part of the deliberate deception action plan trying to delay changes that would genuinely lead to sustainable human activity.
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martin3818 at 08:49 AM on 7 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
Will the heat stay locked away in the ocean's depths or will it all come back and global warming accelerate?
Is it possible that global warming can increase the probability of La niñas? A negative feedback?
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Leland Palmer at 06:31 AM on 7 September 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
Hi davidnewell-
The siren song of reassurance is tempting, I'll admit.
But we need to remember that the total cumulative greenhouse heating from buring a ton of fossil fuel is on the order of 100,000 times the useful heat of combustion, according to numerous modelers including Ken Caldeira of Stanford.
If we destabililize the methane hydrates, the cumulative greenhouse heating from buring a ton of fossil fuel could be millions of times the useful heat of combustion. So the greenhouse side effects of fossil fuel use are much, much greater than the benefit.
This is not a sustainable system, when we are talking about burning trillions of tons of methane from the hydrates, or worse yet, releasing it without buring it.
Arguments that we know precisely how fast the methane hydrates will destabilize, and therefore we should bet the future of the planet on our present incomplete state of knowledge are very, very weak arguments, in my opinion.
According to numerous sources including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the fossil fuel industry is waging a war of disinformation about this subject, as well. One of the key goals of that disinformation campaign is to inject confusion into the debate.
In such an environment, with tens of trillions of dollars at stake, we should not be tempted by arguments that tell us what we really want to hear, I think.
We all really want to hear that things will be all right, I think.
But the carbon isotope signatures of multiple past apparent methane catastrophes cannot be prudently ignored, in my opinion. We may not know precisely how past methane catastrophes occurred.
But, the simplest explanation, the best theory, is that past methane catastrophes did in fact occur. The methane gun hypothesis is in fact the only consistent hypothesis put forth to this date to explain a whole series of mass extinction events, I think.
These carbon isotope excursions correspond very well with the injection of several trillion tons of methane into the atmosphere from the methane hydrates- not just once, but several times in sufficient quantity to cause mass extinction events.
The carbon isotope excursions associated with past mass extinction events are hard scientific evidence, which cannot be safely ignored, in my opinion.
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kmalpede at 01:07 AM on 7 September 2013Free Staged Reading of a new Climate Change Play - Extreme Whether in New York September 10th
Thank you, Chriskoz. The play is also based on James Hansen and Michael Mann, and others who have been attacked just for doing good science and being concerned about the fate of the earth. But, I, too, find Jennifer's theories really interesting and have tried to represent them accurately in the play. Also, Jennifer was extremely open with me, very willing to talk to a playwright who just called her up and asked for her help. I appreciate that enormously. And James Hansen also took a read of the play before he saw it and gave me one note.
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chriskoz at 00:59 AM on 7 September 2013Free Staged Reading of a new Climate Change Play - Extreme Whether in New York September 10th
Strong words from Jennifer Francis about "misleaders".
I'm not surprised the play is based on her. In addition of being of one of the most promient public figures of climate science, her theory (slowing and meandering jet stream) is IMO the most interesting recent breakthrough with our understanding of climate change. Good choice of inspiration.
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DSL at 23:35 PM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
Chriskoz: "the rebutals will follow and eventual correction will be forced, or the author will be disgraced."
Yah, but disgrace is apparently not the final stage. Witness Mörner and Soon. In reality, the rebuttals follow, but the authors just develop their own journals and sciencey organizations. This is a public issue: the general public can't tell the difference between Nature and Energy & Environment, and policy-makers are not motivated to do so. A simulacrum of climate science is emerging, an internally incoherent copy that is nevertheless given life by the ignorance (not stupidity) of the general public and the unwillingness of policy-makers to think and act independent of their effective constituencies (not the people). The engineers of the simulacrum either know what they're doing and have committed themselves (Mörner and Soon) or they're like Watts, who doesn't really understand the science and probably wakes up every morning hoping new information will vindicate him.
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chriskoz at 19:25 PM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
We can only speculate what was the reason for this instance of peer review failure (vested interest or pal review or something else), we won't know.
We have to admit that peer review process, as climate science itself, is not bullet-proof. Mishaps as such will happen. We need to put it in perspective: how many climate science publications are beeing produced annualy? In tens of thousands. Peer review works resonably well in all those cases. Just this one case being an only notable failure in the entire process is not that bad.
And most important, the science will eventualy win when the failure case is exposed: Chris' resignation is just a start, the rebutals will follow and eventual correction will be forced, or the author will be disgraced.
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Doug Hutcheson at 17:44 PM on 6 September 2013Global Warming Includes Oceans Too - and Continues to Rise Fast
Another pearl of wisdom from Peter Sinclair. Even the 'Thanks' credits reflect a cross-section of scientific knowledge and probity.
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tcflood at 15:44 PM on 6 September 2013Greenhouse Effect Basics: Warm Earth, Cold Atmosphere
MThompson;
It just occurred to me that a good example might be to suppose that the GHG of concern were benzene. Let's suppose that the molecular vibration of interest were the C-H stretching mode at about 3000 cm-1. Let's say the earth somehow naturally emitted significant IR energy at that frequency. The benzene C-H stretch would be excited and that energy would be immediately transferred to the surrounding O2 and N2 thermal bath. Suppose that the ambient atmospheric temperature were about 40 C. The Boltzman distribution for that vibrational mode would be ~100 % v0 and 1 x 10^-6 % of v1. With no significant concentration of v1 at equlibrium, no emission of IR at 3000 cm-1 would be seen (say, back-radiation toward earth) from this system.
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tcflood at 15:00 PM on 6 September 2013Greenhouse Effect Basics: Warm Earth, Cold Atmosphere
MThompson at 95;
I don't know that this is all going to matter in understanding the greenhouse effect, but to get the clearest physical picture of what is going on, it is probably best to separate the two phenomena of (1) IR pumping of the CO2 bending mode which has the effect of heating the surrounding atmosphere and (2) the temperature-dependent equilibrium between the vibrational groundstate (v0) and the first excited state (v1) which leads to a steadystate concentration of v1 from which IR emission occurs.
In (1) photoexcitation forms a v1 CO2* in a single specific molecule which then has a lifetime of only picoseconds because it undergoes collisional energy transfer reforming v0 CO2 and distributing the energy into the local atmospheric vicinity. Photoexcitation can be thought of as only causing atmospheric warming.
In (2) the thermal pool of all the atmospheric gases has enough energy to cause, say, 4% of the total CO2 population to persist as a constant concentration of v1 excited state species in accordance with the Boltzmann equation. Now, spontaneous emission is a strictly first-order kinetic phenonenon so that the rate of emission depends on a constant times the concentration of the excited state. The rates at which individual molecular excited states are thermally produced or thermally quenched don't matter -- only the concentration matters for photon emission.
If you are able to view the system as having two independent processes in this way, it may be easier to understand.
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DSL at 12:47 PM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
Kramm had a run-in with SoD last year. See the comment stream.
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spoonieduck at 12:09 PM on 6 September 2013There is no consensus
Kkennett09,
I'm new here and I'm trying to get to the right subject--consensus. Anyway, you bring up tobacco in apparent reference to disease and propaganda. Yes, the tobacco industries desperately avoided getting saddled and hired the best--the absolute best--attorneys available to slip the noose. They failed because the statistics are so obvious. The chance of developing bronchogenic carcinoma [for one] is 10 times greater in smokers than in non-smokers.
(-snip-).
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic, sloganeering, inflammatory and ideology snipped.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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Tom Curtis at 09:44 AM on 6 September 2013Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
"How, in the assertions that CO2 radiates spontaneously at NTP, did the measurements eliminate the background radiation from the container? And, where can I look up tables of penetration depth of i/r in CO2 against temperature and pressure? Surely with so much invested in the subject, these should be standard engineer's tables."
Hitran is the equivalent of the engineering toolbox for CO2 emission and absorption in the IR spectrum. The 15 micron emission spectrum of CO2 was measured by Gordon and McCubbin (1965). The instrument used is described in McCubbin, Lowenthal and Gordon (1965).
That (-snip-) does not know of the science gives no information at all as to whether or not the science exists.
Moderator Response:[DB] Inflammatory snipped.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:36 AM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
I'm really fascinated by this. It strikes me as strange that someone, like Akasofu, whom I gather has the capacity to do substantial, original research, would think that it's okay to not do similar work related to climate change?
Surely he understands this paper was not truly up to snuff. What would be his motivation?
Could there be an element that he doesn't want to push any deeper into the material because it might actually challenge the conclusions he prefers to believe?
Could he be knowingly publishing bad research counter to AGW for ideological reasons?
People like Pat Michaels and the Idso's, I think I get those guys. For them climate denial is a lucrative gig. They are, essentially, working for the FF industry and will present conclusions the industry needs. Their pay depends on producing contradictory claims, accurate or not.
It's these second tier researchers who don't seem (as far as I know) derive any direct income from the FF industry that I don't get.
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davidnewell at 09:27 AM on 6 September 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
This is the last thing Shakhova says in the video:
"strictly speaking, we do not like what we see there. Absolutely do not like."
==============
This thread should be at least a partial relief to her, as it is to me, since it was obvious that she was deeply and personally concerned about the issue. Besides, she's really pretty.
So at least we have a possibility of having a Planet for more than another 25 years or so.
Whew!
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MThompson at 08:38 AM on 6 September 2013Greenhouse Effect Basics: Warm Earth, Cold Atmosphere
tcflood at 94,
Thanks very much. My percentages were for the energy of all gas molecules that had enough energy to excite CO2, but your steady-state 4% number is more direct and to-the-point.
Now to continue developing my mental image, the photons from the earth's surface blackbody radiation in the range of 13-18 microns (770 to 560 cm-1) are pumping the CO2->CO2* transition. The CO2* relax in one of two ways: by colliding with other atmospheric gas molecules and thus raise their kinetic energy, or the CO2* relax by releasing photons in the range of 13-18 microns. Is this a good visualization?
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Steve Bloom at 08:21 AM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
I see that the Editor-in-Chief (Nicole Molders) is a colleague of Akasofu's at UAF and given the timing of her arrival there I suspect may have been hired by him. She has co-authored a number of papers with Kramm (possibly also hired by Akasofu?), who himself has a bit of a reputation.
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K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 06:15 AM on 6 September 2013The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
MA Rodger, for BC I am currently relying on Skeie et al. 2011a, while it is the companion Skeie et al. 2011b paper for all other aerosol species. The latter also provides some interesting forcing estimates, though I'd rather treat them with caution ;-)
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Chris Brierley at 05:34 AM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
@Albatross and @StBarnabas - thank you for the support.
@Ferran R. Vilar - I've fixed the links now. Sorry about that.
@VictorVenema - It's interesting that similar things have happened before with the publisher. I wasn't aware of any of that previous history. I wonder if I would have come across those instances if I'd spent more time looking into the publisher's reputation at the outset. I would point out though that publishers are at the mercy of their journals' editors - so they may sometimes by unwitting victims. Publishers don't (and shouldn't) make editorial decisions. Their main input is to select the editors in the first place. Although consulting with me or others members of the board earlier could have prevented this farce. I've not been involved with enough other publishers enough to known how much blame should be placed at MDPI for this, but it looks like this isn't an isolated incident from your comment.
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Leland Palmer at 05:17 AM on 6 September 2013Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate
It appears that some methane hydrate deposits are associated with high salt brine deposits- and those hydrates may be much, much less stable than the majority of hydrate deposits.
When methane hydrate crystals form, these crystals exclude salt and other impurities from their crystal structure, in the well known "purification by crystalization" process.
This apparently leads to high salt concentrations in some deposits, which allows those deposits to be at the triple point of the system- in which liquid, methane gas, and solid hydrate co-exist.
For these deposits, methane gas is much more mobile, and can apparently migrate upward through the hydrate deposit as a gas, according to authors including Peter Flemmings and his student Xiaoli Liu :
DYNAMICS OF SHALLOW MARINE GAS HYDRATE AND FREE GAS SYSTEMS
(2) Massive release of methane from gas hydrate depends on its proximity to the three-phase boundary. Where methane flux is high, there is a three-phase zone from the base of the hydrate stability zone to the seafloor. The three-phase zone increases the amount of hydrates located at the three-phase boundary; thus it can rapidly respond to environmental changes. Hydrate dissociation within the three-phase zone is regulated by changes in salinity required for three-phase equilibrium with temperature. The dissociated free gas can be released to the ocean via the three phase zone, even though hydrates do not completely dissociate during a small warming event. We estimate that a 4°C increase in seafloor temperature can release 70% of methane stored in the hydrate system that is initially at three-phase equilibrium, providing a mechanism for rapid methane release.
Such high salt methane deposits may be fairly common, according to authors including Maria Torres and Miriam Kastner:
OCCURRENCE OF HIGH SALINITY FLUIDS ASSOCIATED WITH MASSIVE NEAR-SEAFLOOR GAS HYDRATE DEPOSITS
CONCLUSIONS
Massive gas hydrate and chloride brines in near- seafloor sediments along continental margins are not at all uncommon, and may represent a significant carbon reservoir, which is susceptible to oceanographic perturbations....Preliminary estimates suggest that there is approximately 125 x 10-3 Gt of carbon trapped in the Ulleung Basin brine patches. If we assume that there are 200-500 such locations sites worldwide, this will represent a ~25 to 62.5 Gt carbon, which is 0.25 to 12% of the total carbon thought to be sequestered in gas hydrate deposits globally.
The existence of these deposits may be the answer to the disconnect between the geological evidence of past methane catastrophes and our current lack of understanding of how these mass extinction events occurred.
These high salt deposits could provide a bridge between orbital or anthropogenic forcing and massive methane release from the oceanic methane hydrates. Along with permafrost decay and shallow permafrost bound hydrates, these high salt hydrates could be the answer to how massive methane releases could occasionally be triggered by relatively minor triggering events.
Global methane hydrate inventories are probably very high, due to a series of recent ice ages. We are providing an exceptionally rapid and systematic triggering event by our global greenhouse emissions. The situation seems ideal, to me, for the generation of a methane catastrophe- perhaps the biggest one ever.
Why hasn't a biosphere ending methane catastrophe occurred before? The End Permian was a close call, perhaps, with upwards of 90 percent of species exterminated. And the sun is hotter now, by a couple of percent, than it was during the End Permian.
Maybe a biosphere ending runaway greenhouse hasn't happened before, just by luck.
If a low level or greater runaway had happened before, we would not be around to discuss it.
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old sage at 04:59 AM on 6 September 2013Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
I've stood back a bit to let my critics reflect on what I have said - and recant where appropriate!
First, (-snip-).Moderator Response:[DB] "I do not believe the waste heat theory has been refuted"
Then take that portion of the discussion here:
It's Waste Heat
Be sure to read the ENTIRE discussion thread first.
"Surely with so much invested in the subject, these should be standard engineer's tables"
Please cease with arguments from personal incredulity.
The remainder of your comment was snipped due to its inapprpriateness for this thread. Feel free to repost those pertinent bits on the It's Waste Heat above.
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franklefkin at 04:57 AM on 6 September 20132013 Arctic Sea Ice Extent Prediction
I know it is still early in September, but it looks like we have a winner with Kevin @ 5,000,000 km2.
The only question left, is will the final tally fall within his +/- range of 100,000 km2.
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Paul R Price at 04:54 AM on 6 September 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #36A
Regarding "A carbon tax that America could live with", it is worh pointing to Kevin Anderson's recent post Why Carbon Prices Can't Deliver the 2º Target. I would like to see some more discussion of Anderson's thinking in SkS or is it already here somewhere?
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MA Rodger at 03:35 AM on 6 September 2013The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
K.a.r.S.t.e.N @21.
Nonetheless, thank you for the comment. It prompted me to mix "black carbon" into a renewed bit of searching & quickly arrived at Bond et al 2007 "Historical emissions of black and organic carbon aerosol from energy-related combustion, 1850–2000." They wade through the various coal uses & historical energy intensities. They find falling global BC emissions from coal use after 1925 but very little deviation from a constant rate of increase from all sources.
And they work through their estimation methods so I can have a bit of fun seeing if I can sort out some sort of smog factor.
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Ferran P. Vilar at 01:09 AM on 6 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
"Page not found" when clicking on "Katsman & van Oldenborgh (2011)" and "correction". Thank you for correcting!
Moderator Response:[DB] The links worked for me just now.
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Rob Honeycutt at 22:44 PM on 5 September 2013Models are unreliable
cruzn... I think you'll actually find that people here are willing to entertain contrarian ideas, but you have to be able to substantiate your position far better than you're currently doing.
Just because you think something is obvious does not make you automatically correct. As the moderator is saying, you must back your claims with actual science and research.
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dvaytw at 21:55 PM on 5 September 2013It's El Niño
PS - is there a way to set the thread so I get an email notification when there's a response?
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K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 21:50 PM on 5 September 2013The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
MA Rogder @18: I don't have much to add to Toms comment. Black Carbon emissons seems to have risen a bit faster at that time while sulfate emissions stalled temporarily. Anthropogenic aerosol forcing hence not negative. But unless current emission inventories change dramatically, forcing contributions from anthropogenic aerosols are marginal between 1920-1940. Some propose land use changes as a more potent driver. I think that's also only a tiny part of the story. Another minor contribution may arise from a temperature station coverage bias (less robust SH data).
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0^0 at 20:34 PM on 5 September 2013The 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result
It looks like the Legates paper is part of an ongoing "discussion" on the pages of that journal....There has been a recent article by Bedford & Cook
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11191-013-9608-3
and I trust the "discussion" continues in this journal -- and perhaps elsewhere as well http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/4/451/2013/esdd-4-451-2013.html
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michael sweet at 19:59 PM on 5 September 2013The 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result
The article OO referred to is in an education journal, not a climate or science journal. I ma a teacher and read those journals occasionally. The standard to get a paper in is very low. Does anyone have expewrience with this particular journal?
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Tom Curtis at 17:01 PM on 5 September 2013The 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result
0^0 @1, I ran some calculations on the detailed results as released on this site. They show that to obtain a 0.3% "consensus rating", Legates et al had to only count papers rated 1, and then also exclude any papers categorized as "impacts" and "mitigation".
The first step not only excludes every paper that endorses the consensus without explicitly quantifying the contribution of humans, or only implicitly endorses the consensus - it actually counts them and neutral (rating 4) papers as disendorsing the consensus. That follows because they are not rejecting the 32.6% of all abstracts rated as endorsing the consensus in Cook et al, but the 97.1% "among abstracts with AGW position". So, either it is a deliberate strawman by quantifying something they know to belong to a different category (% among all abstracts) or they are tacitly asserting that all abstracts have a position on AGW, and that overwhelmingly that position is a refusal to endorse AGW. Curiously they are willing to assert this without any sign that they themselves have rated the abstracts. They are insisting that their a priori rating is better than Cook et al's empirical rating.
Excluding "impacts" and "mitigation" papers is even more dubious. First, it confuses "endorses" with "is evidence of". A paper about marigolds could "endorse" AGW by simply noting that they think AGW is true. That is not evidence of AGW, and nobody pretends otherwise. It merely indicates the opinion of the authors about AGW (ie, they think it is true). And, of course, Cook et al is not trying to measure the level of evidence, but the distribution of opinions. In fact, it is one of the main arguments of the pseudo-skeptics that a consensus is not evidence, but here they ignore that distinction and pretend that Cook et al by trying to measure consensus is actually trying to measure evidence, the only basis on which excluding "mitigation" papers would be relevant.
It is worse than that, however, for a large portion of "impacts" papers are about the climatological impacts of increasing CO2 levels. They make findings about such things as the likely temperature increase from a doubling of CO2, or from historical and projected CO2 emissions. These are exactly the sort of papers that do provide evidence about whether or not anthropogenic emissions have caused >50% of recent temperature increases. Yet Legates et al want to exclude them as irrelevant (while counting them among "abstracts with [an] AGW position".
The contortion of reasoning involved in their claim is, as you can see, beyond belief.
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0^0 at 16:18 PM on 5 September 2013The 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result
Oops.. Sorry about the text snippet in the end due to poor proof reading.. Yes, that paper is now widely celebrated in WUWT and other places...
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0^0 at 16:15 PM on 5 September 2013The 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result
Appears there is a new paper http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9 by the team David R. Legates, Willie Soon, William M. Briggs and Christopher Monckton of Brenchley "Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change" claiming that the consensus is at 0.3% level.
Unfortunately that is hidden behind paywalls so I have not been able to read the details. However, it seems like they must be using some sematic "tricks" to reach their conclusions as self rating of the authors should be proof enough to clarify any doubts.
celebrated in WUWT etc challenging the consensus paper
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Albatross at 14:38 PM on 5 September 2013Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Climate over its Akasofu Publication
Dr. Brierley,
Thank you for sharing. It is a pity that it had to come to this, but you made a principled and very courageous decision. In my opinion, you also made the correct decision.
All of the best.
Albatross
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DSL at 12:39 PM on 5 September 2013It's the sun
Cruzn, that's a really wierd argument. You're implying that solar is responsible for the fifty year trend, yet the 11-year cycle is not well-represented in the GMST trend. For a forcing to be that dominant, one would expect the trend of that forcing to be writ large in the long-term trend. It's not. The long-term trend is rather steady in its advance. Surely you're not arguing from the long-term solar trend--clearly flat or falling since 1960. We just had the deepest 11-year cycle minimum in the instrumental period (trough bottomed out through 2009-2010). That trough spent a year below the minima of previous cycles. The 12-month period between mid 2009 and mid 2010 was the warmest 12-month period in the instrumental record.
If you were truly basing your theory on solid evidence, you'd have absolutely no need or motivation for the bitter tone and reluctance to share your math. Your past history smells like troll. Is that the extent of your contribution?
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davidnewell at 12:27 PM on 5 September 2013The Pacific Ocean fills in another piece of the global warming puzzle, and puzzles Curry
One Planet Only Forever @ 14.
Thank you for that summary explanation. Very thoughtful.
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cruzn246 at 11:08 AM on 5 September 2013Models are unreliable
(-snip-).
Moderator Response:[DB] Please comport yourself with this site's Comments Policy. In it you will note under the Sloganeering section that if you wish to differ with established science, you will need to bring reputable evidence to support that chosen differing. Mere assertion, as has been your wont, fails to rise to that burden of proof.
Sloganeering snipped.
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Roger D at 10:51 AM on 5 September 2013Models are unreliable
cruzn246:
"Tell me why it has essentially stopped warming just when the solar torch let up?"
See the SkS climate myth #2 "it's the sun". The first graph does not support your statement above. Also, what do you mean, specifically in @628 when you say "it has stopped warming". Specifically what do you mean when you say "it".
Finally, I think it is a strech to imply that the modelers and those that utilize them to aid in understanding climate change "think they have it all figured out". However, you sound like that. And in my opinon have much less of a leg to stand on in your assertions.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please note that cruzn246 has an extensive history of sloganeering and trolling in this venue.
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