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Comments 42951 to 43000:

  1. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Michael Sweet @ 18

    There is a difference between contributing and causing.  Read your link again.   There is nothing there that implies that humans are the main cause of climate change over the party centuries or millenia.    Furthermore, the query about the statement being a part of the referenced paper is still not answered. 

  2. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Terranova:

    There is substantial evidence that Humans have been causing climate change for 8,000 years.  Primarily due to farming and deforrestation.  The last that I recall, scientists were coming to a consensus that this explaination was the best way to model the recent climate changes.   The rate of human caused climate change has substantially increased in the last 150 years. Your cries of "inaccuracy" would be a lot more convincing if you did your homework.  Please read up on the past 4-8 millenia and retract your comment above.

  3. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    From what's available on the nature website: "This fast retreat is governed mainly by rapid ablation due to the lowered surface elevation resulting from delayed isostatic rebound14, 15, 16, which is the lithosphere–asthenosphere response. Carbon dioxide is involved, but is not determinative, in the evolution of the 100,000-year glacial cycles."  Emphasis mine.

     

    From the article above: "Of course, on top of these epic natural cycles manmade carbon emissions are having an effect on the climate. Over short timescales (geologically speaking) of centuries and millennia, greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the main cause of climate change."  (-snip-).  

    I asked, but did not get a reply ( -snip-), about the final section of this post "Where Are We At Today".  It appears to be an add-on from the article author and not part of the paper referenced.  

    If in fact it is not part of the paper represented in the post, then we are back to the "inaccurate" topic.  If it is part of the paper, then I would like to see it and I will retract my statement.  

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Argument from personal incredulity snipped.  Inflammatory snipped.

  4. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    IanC @14, yes.  I realized essentially the same point last night just before going to sleep.  The key point is that given the rate at which heat propogates by conduction, the current warming will not yet have impacted basal ice except by means of surface melt water carrying warmth to the base of the ice sheet (where it is able to do so) or at the edges of the ice sheet.

  5. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    I think Freya Roberts post fails to mention that the most important feedback according to the research paper is geological - the delayed isostatic rebound. This keeps the ice elevation low and therefore ice loss remains high while the ice sheet retreats. It is this delay which is responsible for the 100 kyear cycle. Other feed backs, dust feedback, oceanfeedback are less important.

    The 100 kyear cycle can  be reproduced in models even if CO2 levels are kept constant, although CO2 does influence the size of the ice sheet. If the rebound is instantaneous  the 100 kyear cycle is no longer dominant.

  6. A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

    Chaps agreed a bit disappointing regarding the Irish Times, when I lived in Ireland it was easily the best paper - in the UK the Guardian is my paper of choice. I know Ian Elliott, or at least knew him when I was an undergraduate in Physics at UCD (1970ies). He was vwry good at public engagement. I can't really comment on him professionally as after becoming a graduate student in astronomy our paths never  crossed.

    StB

  7. A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

    cynicus,

    Correct, and what is disquieting is that the newspaper in question if far from being the usual Murdoch lowest-common-denominator or Daily Mail rag. Like the Economist and the New York Times, even the quality publications are inconsistent. I suspect the Environment correspondent and the Science correspondent of the Irish Times do not seem eye-to-eye.

  8. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Tom @ 13,

    It is true that geothermal heat is trivial at the ice-air interface, but not so at the ice-land interface. I think 'surface' here is meant to be the surface of the lithosphere and not the surface of the ice; with this interpretation the abstract is correct.

  9. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    p4gs @11, I would also be interested in such an article.

    Just from looking at the abstract, it is a very interesting paper.  Evidently, the weight of continental ice sheets causes a thining of the crust under the ice sheet, allowing enhanced geothermal heat flow.  The effect can be seen in the upper right of the diagram below, shown with increased detail in the inset.  As can be seen, heat flow reaches a minimum (green colours) during interglacials, and a maximum during glacials when the ice is thickest.  As an aside, that suggests a very significant melt back of the greenland ice sheet during interglacials, to relieve the burden of ice mass and allow thickening of the lithosphere beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet.

     

    WUWT appears to want to beat this up into a major factor, claiming:

    "The Greenland ice sheet is melting from below, caused by a high heat flow from the mantle into the lithosphere."


    They assert his despite their cutaway view of the Greenland Ice Sheet showing no temperatures above freezing. However, the diagram below should put paid to any such denier fantasies. The range of geothermal heat flux shown is from 0.043 to 0.061 W/m^2. That compares to a global average of 0.087 W/m^2, and is relatively small even for continental plates as can be seen below:

    (Units are mW/m^2)

    The peak rate, is therefore less than a 10th of the TOA energy imbalance caused by AGW, and the change in heat flow between glacial and interglacial is about a sixth of that again.

    I must admit that having actually seen the figure shown, I am surprised that the abstract states:

    "At the Earth’s surface, heat fluxes from the interior1 are generally insignificant compared with those from the Sun and atmosphere2, except in areas permanently blanketed by ice."

    It would have been rather more accurate to state:

    "At the Earth’s surface, heat fluxes from the interior1 are generally insignificant compared with those from the Sun and atmosphere2, except including in areas permanently blanketed by ice."

  10. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    p4gs - Looks like references to this paper are already showing up on the denial sites, in the apparent hopes of yet another claim that "it's not us". 

    Those claims would only make sense if there had been recent changes in the heat from the lithosphere - long standing heat patterns would be part of pre-Industrial conditions as well, and not causes of recent melt acceleration. Not to mention that observed changes in GHGs already account for the Greenland changes we've seen, and such "not us" claims would have to somehow explain those away...

  11. Where SkS-Material gets used - Coursera's Climate Literacy Course

    Just now received the Coursera email that the 2nd iteration of Climate Literacy will start on September 30, 2013!

  12. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    I want Skeptical Science to do an article on this newly published research:

    http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1898.html

    Moderator Response:

    [JH] See: Greenland Ice Is Melting -- Even from Below: Heat Flow from the Mantle Contributes to the Ice Melt, ScienceDaily, Aug 11, 2013. 

  13. A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

    chriskoz @2, you calculated the equilibrium climate response, wheras Dana calculated the transient climate response.  The difference is in the factor of 0.67 Dana introduces for that purpose.  Absent that, his value would have been 0.45 (or 0.48 with a less aggressive rounding).

    One twist on this is that radiative forcing is calculated at the tropopause rather than the top of the thermosphere.  Most UV radiation is absorbed above the tropopause, and the UV component of sunlight will varies in greater proportion with changing TSI.  The effect is that with reduced TSI, relatively more of TSI will reach the surface than currently does.  The solar forcing will still reduce, but not as much as the reduction in TSI so that the cooling will be even less than calculated.

    Conversely, for the same reason, it requires a greater than 1.55% increase in TSI to generate a 3.7 W/m^2 increase in solar forcing.

    Finally, it is possible that some such mechanism as that proposed by Svensmark would result in a greater reduction in temperature than simple calculations from TSI would suggest.  His theory as it stands has been pretty much ruled out.  Clouds form with great facility even in the absense of cosmic rays, and therefore cosmic rays are not the dominant force governing climate over the history of the Earth.  However, cosmic rays may facilitate the generation of additional cloud nucleation particles thereby decreasing the average droplet size in clouds and hence increasing cloud albedo.  This may amplify the direct TSI forcing by as much a factor of 2.  Of course, there is as yet no solid evidence that this is the case.  It just cannot be ruled out either.

  14. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33A

    New discovered Mesospheric Polar Clouds possible indicator of Global Warming Link

     

    Save the Earth Link

  15. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    chriskoz #8, fair enough, Though i thought the video was also good, since it points out rate of changes (natural vs human attributed forcing) also explains why there cannot be a runaway snowball earth. 

  16. A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

    One often encounters articles like this where some cherrypicked-out-of-context-but-original quotes from bonafide scientists (like Lockwood in the Irish Times article) is mixed with the breathtaking slay-of-hand conclusion by a fake authority and presented as a compelling picture to the public. In this case the fake authority who makes the final headline claim is Ian Elliott, an ex-astronomer who pensioned 12 years ago and has only few papers published during his professional career, none of which about the solar influence on Earths climate.

    Judging by the wide circulation in the denial echo chamber this article is a perfect rehash of the old tobacco tactics.

  17. A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

    Dana,

    I think your final formula to calculate ∆T is unreadable due to too many factors used. In the end, reading it, I'm confused which number is which factor.

    I did my own calculation with simpler numbers as follows.

    In my calculation, I don't need to consider ∆TSI. I can take amount of sun energy absorbed by Earth (∆TSabs) and assume it changes by the same percentage as ∆TSI. I think your calculation makes the same assumption, although I'm not sure. Then, from (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997), I look at this picture:

    Earth Energy Balance

    and find out the amount of Sun energy absorbed by Earth is 168+67 W/m2 = 235W/m2 (ground + athmosphere absorbtion on the left side of picture).

    So ∆TSabs = 0.25% * 235W/m2 = 0.5875W/m2

    With the equilibrium sensitivity of 0.75K/Wm2, the corresponding ∆T is 0.5875*0.75 = 0.44K

    So, my number is larger than yours (0.3K), other suties you quote. Why is that? Did I make a mistake?

  18. A grand solar minimum would barely make a dent in human-caused global warming

    I am glad the Irish Times article came to your attention. The newspaper has actually a reasonably good record at reporting on climate change. The article on the solar minimum was an aberration because it did not mention CO2 at all, or the effect solar changes might have on global warming.

    I intend to mail the link to this post to the science correspondent.

  19. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    Peter Lang:

    I've begun to notice a trend:

    People interested in clear, effective communication tend to "show their working", or provide sources which have the same effect. You'll notice Aristarchus quotes passages from the report that the LA Times article discusses, and Tom Curtis quotes the article itself; they both lay out the flow of their argument, clearly and concisely.

    By contrast, you appear to have acted in a manner consistent with attempting to obfuscate and confuse:

    First, when asked to show your working and/or provide examples, you simply don't. You have not provided any reason to accept your claim about the LA Times article (which is hardly necessary since Aristarchus and Tom Curtis' comments would render such reason irrelevant on account of being factually false), you have not provided any reason to take your word over, say, the IEA's, and you do not provide any reference clearly showing the misbehaviour you attribute to the renewable energy industry.

    Second, as a substitute for clearly making your case, you rely on bluster. You have no basis to make any assumptions about the physics knowledge of other participants in this forum.  You also rely on the lazy "do your own reading" tactic, which I personally find very tiresome - after all, there's no prima facie reason to believe that someone going off and doing more reading will come back and agree with you. (*)

    Finally, you make a pedantic, and apparently false, distinction between energy and power. Some rather basic definitions show that power and energy are in fact very nearly interchangeable, as power is simply a measure of energy transfer over time:

    In physics, power is defined as the amount of energy consumed per unit time.

    The dimension of power is energy divided by time. The SI unit of power is the watt (W), which is equal to one joule per second.

    Power is the rate of doing work or the rate of using energy [...]

    Ultimately, to speak of power is to speak of energy. Little surprise, then, that these terms are (colloquially) interchangeable when used outside of STEM circles. And, I might add, so much for your claim that they are "totally different".

    (*) Like the appeal to authority/expertise, this sort of claim is not always a failure of logic or argument - sometimes someone really just needs to read up more on a subject. However, such exhortations should be made in response to obvious nonsense, such as when someone argues that, say, vaccines cause autism, or, topically for Skeptical Science, when someone argues that, say, the greenhouse effect violates the laws of thermodynamics.

  20. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    I have a technical question that I cannot figure out because I don't have access to full text.

    I'm interested in knowing some more details: how they ran their simulation and what parameters did they establish to be the "tipping points" moving the climate in and out of glaciation.

    In particular I'm interested how their model differ from Archer's CLIMBER model, that argues the minimum solar insolation at 65N be  the triggering factor for gradual continental icesheet buildup.

  21. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Chris@2,4,

    You should be aware that the Hansen video you've linked to and the paper - subject to this post - are talking about different timescales. Hansen talks about 65Ma cenozoic timescale (and by implication of that context, he does not bother to consider the time granularity less than some 1Ma), while the subject paper talks about the pleistocene glacial periods of last 400Ka-1Ma.

    Different factors influence average climate over those timescales. In particular, 100ka long Milankovic cycles considered by the paper override the Hansen's tectonic forcings that act on 500ka+ timescales. Therefore, although "the melting cryosphere" appears on your video, I would argue that this video has nothing to do with the article at hand.

    It is very important to distinguish the timescale of changes, e.g. while debunking common "climate has changed before" myth.

    - rock weathering/volcanoes with tectonic forcings: 500ky+ up to several Ma

    - Ice ages with Milankovic forcings: 10ka - 100ky

    - AGW: 100y (at least 100 times faster than any natural forcings)

    We must make clear distinction about timescales involved, otherwise we fall into the same trap the ignorant "skeptics" have fell with the myth I recalled above.

     

  22. Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate

    Paul Beckwith's response as a link.

  23. Toward Improved Discussions of Methane & Climate

    Here's Paul Beckwith's response to this SKS article:
    http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/08/toward-genuinely-improved-discussions-of-methane-and-climate.html

  24. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Dana1981,

    Is the section entitled "Where We Are Today" directly from the study itself, or an add-on from Freya Roberts?  The paper is paywalled unless you have another link available.  

  25. Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

    It is interesting to note the "sea change" beginning to be noted in local papers, and at cocktail partys.  Much less "denying" of the facts:  the most dominent response to the rising reality is "Oh well, I'll be dead and gone, WTFrack..."

    So now begins the penetration of the psyche of the reality that life on this planet is threatened:  at the very least, "civilization" is at risk.

    Not an easy transition to accept, everyone lives here.

  26. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    Peter Lang:

    1) You incorrectly claim the post above is improperly titled.  The title of the post above is "2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B".  The post correctly reports the headline of a news article without comment.  Are you suggesting that SkS news round up should edit the headlines of news articles on which it reports to fit our understanding of the topic?

    2)  It is well known that authors of newspaper articles are not responsible for the headlines.  They are merely responsible for the contents of the article (and not always all of that).  As such any issue you have should be directed at the contents rather than the headlines, and the contents are accurate.  They correctly report that wind is "wind energy became the No. 1 source of new U.S. electricity generation capacity".

    So, if your complaint is that newspaper editors often distort news stories in the headlines - well granted, but what does that have to do with SkS (unless, of course, your demand is that SkS misquote headlines when they report them)? 

    All in all, your determination to ascribe an error to SkS for not misquoting a headline is rather self revelatory.  Clearly if that is your approach, you will not like SkS.  But that has nothing to do with the quality of SkS articles.

  27. Understanding the long-term carbon-cycle: weathering of rocks - a vitally important carbon-sink

    KR:

     

    I've read the "comments policy" , KR, and also have read the "geoengineering" thread.

    I manage another large bulletin board, and encounter your "this belongs better elsewhere" notation fairly frequently.   However, once there have been responses and evolution of the thread, generally moving it causes more problems of meaning.

    Yes, the proposal is "geoengineering", but more specifically, it utilizes the "weathering of rock" propereties to effect it's end.  (As stated, "effectiveness" needs to be quantified by a third party independent lab..) (will be done within 6 months.)

    I am of the opinion that we MUST effect direct air capture, or reap a whirlwind that will be unthinkably destructive.  I hope for all our sakes and subsequent generation's sakes, that this approach works, because it is one of very few that appear to be scaleable.   

    thank you.

    David

     

  28. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    In response to Peter Lang #7

    But the title of the artice refers to energy.

    No, it refers to energy source.

    Trolling, personal attacks and conspiracy theories aside, could you provide some numbers, with reference, on the subject of capacity additions versus energy generated by those additions ?

  29. The Albedo Effect and Global Warming

    ???  Well, we could descend into trivia on this point, but thank you for explaining to me what the term means to you.  I would have to defer to your comment aboput saying "what we ar e FOR": it was an error, although a slight one, in my own estimation of my intent.

    However, having stated that screwing up the planet is an example of what we are "NOT FOR" is another way to state that a terminal cancer is NOT FOR individual health.

    You agree that there is an obvious interconnectedness of everything,   You, for example, and me?  How about if it was you and me and everybody else and the Earth, and we call it "Gaia" and try to figure out what is needed for "thriving?"

     

    Mostly, you are projecting your own perceptions on me, and then "tilting" at them.

     

    Let's agree that ther is only one god, and we and everyone else bow down to it.

    That god is "God Reality", capitals provided only for efffect.

    Wiat, have to go pay my Gaia taxes.

     

     

     

  30. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    Composer 99 and Aristarchus

    You need to do some reading to understand the difference between power and energy.  Capacity is measured in units of power.  But the title of the artice refers to energy.  They are totally different.  The Renewabl energy industry and advocates try to confuse them to mislead.  Clearly they succeed with many people.   Both of you need to get some understanding about the basics and what you are reading before quotiong from artciles that are clearly outsidce your area of expertise..

    (-snip-).

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Since you have not furnished any examples nor have you supplied reputable evidence of errors replete with emended suggested text itself based in the literature, your continuance in this line of inquiry is sloganeering (snipped).

  31. Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

    Especially for the "armchair" scientists, Coursera is offering a new course on climate change offered by the University of Melbourn.  You can go to Coursera.com to enroll.

  32. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Presumably the ice sheet albedo change is relatively straightforward to calculate, and we have data on greenhouse gas changes from ice cores, so is there anything new or substantially different in this study which would lead to different conclusions about fast feedback climate sensitivity - i.e. lower or higher than the generally accepted figure of around 0.75°C/W/m², or 3°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ from 280 to 560ppm?

  33. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    The linked video content is directly relevant to the question "What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?".

  34. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Chris,

    What is your point?  In your linked video Hansen says that volcanoes affect CO2 and climate over eons of time.  Current CO2 changes are human caused and are 10,000 times faster than volcanoes.

    No-one disputes that in the past volcanoes have affected climate.  Current climate change is caused by humans.

  35. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    This video explains how volcanoes too can melt the cryosphere.

  36. Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

    CT has done that, but it's only up to 2006 (with a few more yearly anims for the 2000s).  They also have a comparator.  I like the tab flip, though, because it's a little more dramatic.  

    Need to shoot them an email for the updated anim.

  37. Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

    funglestrumpet @ 9

    All the images are at arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/archive.html

    A video expert could, with a bit of time, put the entire dataset into a movie. 

  38. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    In response to Peter Lang #4

    The U.S. DoE (Wind) report is available here.

    It says, page 6, executive summary :

    Wind Power Represented the Largest Source of U.S. Electric-Generating Capacity Additions in 2012. Wind Power constituted 43% of all nameplate capacity additions in 2012, overtaking natural gas-fired generation as the leading source of new capacity. This follows the 5 previous years in which wind power represented between 25% and 43% of new U.S. electric generation capacity in each year.

    which is what the LA times wrote in its unreliable article and what SkS copied.

    It seems that you made the basic error of not checking the source.

    Secondly, the use of the capacity for new additions makes sense so that new equipment from january to december weight the same. I suppose it would be possible to count differently but that's not what the DoE is doing.

    Third, note that natural-gas power plant, although they could generate power 90% of the time or more, do not, in practice, as they have to adapt to demand and other factors. From the eia website :

    Between 2005 (purple line) and 2010 (red line) average capacity factors for natural gas plant operations between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. rose from 26% to 32%. For peak hours—from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.—capacity factors averaged about 50% (the red line) on a national basis in 2010 compared to about 40% in 2005.

    Your sentence "Wind, like solar, produce little energy from their capacity. You need roughly three times as much wind capacity to supply the same energy as a conventional power station over say a year." is too simplistic to account for the reality of power generation.

    Fourth, this post was just a news roundup, where some articles are quoted without comment. Even if the article quoted was incorrect - and he wasn't - judging the quality of this website on just that seems completely unfair.

    Fifth, could you please provide examples of other basic errors on this website ? I will be there to ask for corrections.

  39. funglestrumpet at 01:37 AM on 14 August 2013
    Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

    DSL @ 7

     

    Any chance of getting those two ice concentration images put into one of those clever graphics that flips between the two conditions - in the same way the 'escalator' one does? It does rather spell out just how much the Arctic is changing.

  40. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    Peter Lang:

    On what basis should others accept your claim that "the amount of energy generated" is more important than capacity in determining what is or is not the "fastest-growing energy source" in the US? FAQs and summary documents I have seen by the IEA and other informational agencies (such as this one) tend to use capacity as a metric for ability to generate power.

    Further, expecting a site maintained and updated by humans to be 100% error-free - by the way, please provide examples - strikes me as inherently unreasonable. What matters is not what happens when errors are made, because they are inevitable. What matters is whether and how they are corrected.

  41. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    The title of the post "U.S. wind power fastest-growing energy source in 2012, report says" is incorrect.  The article says:

    "In a first, wind energy became the No. 1 source of new U.S. electricity generation capacity in 2012, according to a report released by the Energy Department on Tuesday."

    The article is about the capacity, not the amount of energy generated.  Wind, like solar, produce little energy from their capacity.  You need roughly three times as much wind capacity to supply the same energy as a conventional power station over say a year.

    I seldom look at SKS anymore because each time I do I find it makes basic errors, or uncritically quotes unreliable artciles as in this case, or is involved in advocacy.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Please furnish evidence of such supposed basic errors.  Unsupported assertions bordering on sloganeering struck out.

  42. What makes ice sheets grow and shrink?

    Excellent piece. One minor nitpick though: Some things are implied to be new results from this study, but they aren't all that new. For instance, the fact that Milankovitch cycles alone aren't enough to explain the ice age cycle has been known pretty much since the beginning of that theory. Scientists have been looking at the necessary feedbacks for decades. 

    For a general history of the science of the ice ages, see http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm [warning, massive wall of text :-)]

  43. Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

    Nice to see some well-deserved recognition for Neven's efforts. He runs a great blog.

  44. The Albedo Effect and Global Warming

    David, Gaia is not simply about the obvious interconnectedness of everything.  There is the suggestion made by its proponents that the Earth has an agenda -- if not forethought, a program that strives toward a goal.  There's no evidence for this.  Appealing to the unknown and then defining it according to your own needs is not good thinking, and that's what most people do when they seek to supplement science with another method.  You can't define with any sort of authority (beyond your own assumption of your own authority) what the supplement looks like.  Who is Gaia?  The part of Gaia that is beyond science is a figment of your imagination, differing in quality (sometimes radically) from every other human's concept of beyond-science Gaia.  If you don't have any rigorously-discovered evidence for this reality undiscoverable by science, and you don't even have a consistent logic for confirming what counts as evidence, then you're not going anywhere. 

  45. CO2 has a short residence time

    And like a bad penny, this silly argument has risen again. Someone named Gosta Petterson (a professor emeritus of biochemistry and specialist in reaction kinetics, not atmosphere or carbon cycle) is once again claiming that individual molecular residence time (one way) is somehow identical to CO2 concentration change time (with most CO2 molecules simply exchanging for another from a different climate compartment), a much slower process. 

    There's a good discussion of this topic and the errors involved on SkS, under The Independence of Global Warming on Residence Time of CO2.

    Sadly, this appears to be yet another example of an emeritus professor wandering out of his specialty, and with little perspective proclaiming an entire field of science invalid. And of long-debunked myths being recycled over and over again...

  46. Ocean Acidification: Eating Away at Life in the Southern Ocean

    Well, both description are ok, but there is a term missing for CO2 increase and results on marine life, fish.

  47. Ocean Acidification: Eating Away at Life in the Southern Ocean

    Re technical term description

     

    "Ocean acidification is occurring as a result of carbon dioxide emissions from industrial activity dissolving into the oceans, and involves a fundamental change in the chemistry of the global oceans."

     

    The wikipedia entry is a bit misleading

    " Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceans, caused by the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere." Link

  48. 2013 SkS Weekly Digest #32

    This cartoon is actually not far from reality.

    This picture (taken from priceofoil.org):

    How did they get there?

    looks as sobering as the cartoon and even more surreal. Admitedly, taken as to induce emotions but still a good documentary.

  49. Ocean Acidification: Eating Away at Life in the Southern Ocean

    Another impact from OA

     

    Carbon Dioxide Is ‘Driving Fish Crazy’

    Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous system of sea fishes with serious consequences for their survival Link

  50. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32B

    A Deadly Climb From Glaciation to Hothouse — Why the Permian-Triassic Extinction is Pertinent to Human Warming Link

    A Mechanism for Shallow Methane Hydrate Dissociation Link

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