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michael sweet at 21:18 PM on 16 June 2013Peak Water, Peak Oil…Now, Peak Soil?
Boswarm,
Could you provide a citation to support your claims or do we have to rely on your uninformed opinion? Hand waving claims can be dismissed with a hand wave.
In my 1/2 acre orchard in Florida sand, I started mulching with oak leaves (almost pure carbon) three years ago to reduce weeds. My trees look much better now and I have a lot of earthworms, which were not there before. Soil chemistry is complex, but it is well known that soil is degraded in many locations where there have been farms for a long time. Look at the pictures of Iraq. They have farmed there for centuries and much of the country is now dessert.
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Boswarm at 19:27 PM on 16 June 2013Peak Water, Peak Oil…Now, Peak Soil?
This article by Stephen Leahy and copied here by John Hartz is showing ignorance of soil science. There is nothing here to read. Australia is a totally different soil science, and generalisations such as this are not useful to the climate debate. S/Wombat above... you don't have to keep carbon in the soil, just keep turning it over.
Please no more coments.
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MA Rodger at 18:29 PM on 16 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years?
So Where is Amo?
The land of the southern hemisphere isn't a promising palce to look. It has only half the area of the land in the northern hemisphere, & over a quarter of it is Antarctica which temperature-wise has a mind of its own. But even so, can we see Amo there?
No sign of him on the Southern continents. (Then we could have expected that because the temperature data for the Southern hemisphere showed no sign of Amo. But you can't go turning over two pages at once in a children's book, can you?)
So is Amo up North on the continents, hiding behind that fat kid with a limp?
Well, the 'limpy' bit that bottoms out in 1970 drops far earlier than Amo but that isn't a problem because it isn't what were looking for - th1970 dip is the kid with the limp (that is unless Amo was on holiday for some reason in 1910). So it's the earlier bit that bottoms out in 1910 is where we should be looking.
60-90N - That doesn't really drop into the 1910 dip. It's sort of already there.
30-60N - That doesn't really drop into the 1910 dip at all but stays up until 1940.
0-30N - That does dip down to 1910 but sort of stays down from there all the way to 1970. If we decide the levelling off 1910-40 is the bobble on Amo's hat, then we'd be adding a contirbution to the peak-to-peak Global Amo wobble of 0.1C x 9% of global area = potentially 0.009C max. But can we identify it as Amo just from the bobble on his hat? -
MA Rodger at 18:14 PM on 16 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
With the HadCRUT4 profile evident interannually on the T&ZH13 MLR results in Fig 5b, it eventually dawned on me that it was odd the same profile wasn't evident in fig 5a. So I did a quick scale of that graph and for comparison also the HadCRUT3 results from Foster & Rahmstorf 2011.
So why does the introduction of AMO into the MLR re-introduce HadCRUT4 wobbles? Is it the Sol, Vol & ENSO signals in AMO cancelling out their input into the analysis?
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Sceptical Wombat at 17:31 PM on 16 June 2013Peak Water, Peak Oil…Now, Peak Soil?
Putting more carbon into soil will improve the quality of the soil and should be done for that reason. However as a method of reducing CO2 in the atmosphere it makes little economic sense.
To keep organic carbon in the soil each extra ton of carbon must be accompanied by 80 Kg of nitrogen, 20 Kg of phosporous and 14 kg of sulphur which in Australia would have a total cost of about $250. Stubble generally contains small amounts of these nutrients ( with the exception of legume stubble which is relatively rich in Nitrogen) so they would have to be added in some other way.
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Peeve at 17:11 PM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
You can tell Cook's work hurt the denialists movement as they have responded rapidly to muddy the waters. Their 'science is not settled' meme is shattered and they must work hard to salvage something.
Personally I have used the retort to denialists 'so you know better than 97% scientists do you?' to be very effective. There is no need to be logical as they are impervious to reason, but a sharp put down works wonders.
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panzerboy at 16:22 PM on 16 June 2013Peak Water, Peak Oil…Now, Peak Soil?
'“It takes half a millennia to build two centimetres of living soil and only seconds to destroy it,” Glover said.'
In Iceland, I believe that statement, in Brazil or Indonesia?
I have no idea, perhaps this rate of soil growth of 0.04mm/yr IS constant everywhere on the planet but my spidey-sense says no. Anyone know for sure?
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grindupBaker at 11:30 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
"...man is responsible for catastrophically warming..." S.B. "...man might become responsible...". Guy quoted seems to be a useless pessimist.
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Ken in Oz at 11:19 AM on 16 June 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
If the US is anything like Australia then a big contributing factor to unwillingness of governments to commit to nuclear as emissions solution has to be entrenched climate science denial and obstructionism within conservative politics; plenty of criticising environmentalists for failing to push for nuclear from there, (pleasing to pro-nukers), but an absence of actual commitment to nuclear to replace fossils fuels (should be dispeasing but pro-nukers are given to clutching at straws).
This ought to be clear evidence that they are fair weather friends at best, and, given an absolute (in Australia) commitment to protection of fossil fuels embodied in their climate policy obstructionism, actually enemies of nuclear to replace them. So we get the argument - "If emission are a problem then they (environmentalists) should push for nuclear" being combined with (never actually stated out loud) "emissions are not a problem so we are not going to push for nuclear". Sorry but climate/energy is not about what greenies should do but about what mainstream politicians should do.
If you think nuclear is the best climate solution then you will gain more and sooner by making it clear to your conservative reps that climate science denial is absolutely unacceptable. I believe it will be more effective than fighting against anti-nuclear greenies because nuclear's biggest obstacle is weakness of support, not strength of opposition. Those conservatives are still closer to the centre of mainstream politics than green extremists and have far more clout.
Once their obstructionism isn't tenable anymore they are more likely to actually support nuclear. As long as their aim is to protect fossil fuels they never will.
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william5331 at 10:57 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Have you seen Bill Maher's take on think tanks. Too funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcJohfS4vTQ
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Synapsid at 09:24 AM on 16 June 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
ClimateChangeExtremist,
Again, thorium reactors do indeed produce weapons-grade material; we hear far too often that they don't.
Thorium will not support a chain reaction. Bombarding thorium 232 with neutrons produces uranium 233, which will, and that is what happens in a thorium reactor. Attempts to build a U233 bomb in the 1950s saw low yield because of radiation from U232, another result of the neutron bombardment, and its decay products, which triggered premature fission. U232 is difficult to separate from U233 but it is easy to separate from the parent of U233 (protactinium 233). The Pr233, isolated, decays into U233 with no impurities, which can indeed run a reactor but which also can be used to build a bomb. A research reactor can be used for the neutron bombardment of thorium.
The 12 December issue of Nature has an article by four British nuclear engineers which outlines two standard protocols for separating the protactinium from U232.
Thorium reactors would be a proliferation hazard just as uranium reactors can be.
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kiwipoet at 07:52 AM on 16 June 2013Peak Water, Peak Oil…Now, Peak Soil?
A timely story. Note story with similiar focus and discussion on Hot Topic. Good video too.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-answer-lies-in-the-soil-you-have-to-have-a-sense-of-humus/
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JohnMashey at 07:43 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Remmber: Heartland is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity, and its funders wer able to reduce their taxes via their gifts. Hence, American taxpayers in effect subsized this China fiasco. For some history, including some of the funding follies, see Fakery 2.
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Nick Palmer at 04:20 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
I find it quite funny that the arrogant types at Heartland have upset the Chinese so much. Diplomatic incident anyone? They've got so used to slagging off climate science, they just got too cocksure and went too far
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ShaneGreenup at 02:44 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Either they can't remove the Press Release, or they simply forgot to take it down when they took the PR off their own website:
http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLink&linkId=96631
(Link to rbutr so avoid linking to the PRWeb page itself) -
JARWillis at 02:44 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
What are the deniers actually saying?
If 80% of people tell you you are driving towards a precipice, sane people at least slow down. At 97% most would probably stop. When the deniers knit themselves up in arguments about percentages here, and what kinds of scientific papers you include in your analysis, at what level are they actually happy for us all to hurtle onwards, carrying their children with us?
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dana1981 at 01:21 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Dumb Scientist - thanks, I've updated the Heartland links to the WebCited version. Heartland is now backtracking fast:
"To be clear, the release of this new publication does not imply CAS and any of its affiliates involved with its production 'endorse' the skeptical views contained in the report."
Damage control mode!
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r.pauli at 01:10 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Denialist propaganda is a dangerous weapon - when weilded by psychopaths it destroys the future -- an unintentional mis-fire at the misinformed - mostly children.
It is a loose cannon firing wildly in every direction.
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citizenschallenge at 00:43 AM on 16 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Nice informative post Dana, thanks for getting this out there.
FWIW since it makes a good bookend for this saga I've reposted it at.
"Heartland Institute caught in a lie - Chinese Academy of Science objects"
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2013/06/heartland-institute-caught-in-lie.html
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timallard at 23:48 PM on 15 June 2013The last time carbon dioxide concentrations were around 400ppm: a snapshot from Arctic Siberia
"The fact that there exists strong evidence for past major warming and its consequences in both polar regions suggests an interconnectivity between the poles, with the implication that these are effects occurring on a global scale."
Consider that right now the planet increases heat retention daily, radiative forcing, and that the flucuations in CO2 are not affecting this much at all due to it still being a rising value. Because of this the atmosphere is now moving heat north and cold south, and the reverse in the southern hemisphere faster and more directly due-north, due-south over both poles as a result.
Both poles are doing this and indications of this are the late season snow in both Europe and the Midwest at this time. These are not mysterious but a by-product of the atmosphere being a heat-transfer system vainly trying to maintain thermal balance until we remove the cause.
This process is to me what keeps global temperatures from rising at this time, it's like we're using an old-style ice-box to cool the house and once the ice is gone nothing is left to cool the planet, ice melted and permafrost thawed.
Therefore global temperature is not a good short-term indicator, it's not predicitive of what's going on, an example, 30-years ago near Disco Island only dogsleds could be used for 6-months of the year, today hunters use their fishing boats to hunt seal, very few use their sleds anymore. What model predicted this?
Further, observing jetstream paths for many years I noticed that many times the air arriving in the Disco Bay area came from the Tropic of Cancer latitudes in the Pacific, gained latitude as moved east and continued NNE to pass over Disco Bay. This versus the cold-period regime that brought very cold air from the north for especially the three coldest months Jan-Mar. From locals they have observed this from being on average -30C historically to today where it's rare to have below -10C, a +68F/20C rise in average temperature.
This easily explains the loss of sea-ice in this area and it's from new jetstream paths being taken quite often in winter which was not predicted by models, thus my reason for bringing it up. That is to recognize that the atmosphere is doing many north-south pieces of jetstream moving the cold to the equator and heat to the poles, this needs to be included in models, we have a new circulation pattern now, the atmosphere is being driven by the radiative forcing regardless of what global temperature registers as it's being held back until the cold storage from the previous ice-age is gone.
So, I'd suggest to modelers & others, that heat-transfer is the main driver now and without assessing the volume heat transfer by analyzing air masses, their volume, temperature, humidity and direction there's no way to be predictive of these on-the-ground radical changes such as at Disco Bay.
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Dumb Scientist at 23:32 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Glenn @ 16: Don't worry, the internet never forgets. Just like we'll never forget this billboard.
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Tom Curtis at 21:18 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
chriskoz @15, the link was intended to be to my comment of June 13th, at 3:19am on the wottsupwiththatblog article on Tol's fourth draft. The blog is a new blog focussed on critiquing WUWT.
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Rob Honeycutt at 20:58 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
You have to hand it to the CAS. They're handling this quite well.
And for the HI folks, it sounds like their "landmark event" has turned into a new "low water mark." The sense I get is they're just short of an escort to the airport by the authorities.
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Paul D at 19:19 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
I just love that update from the Chinese Academy of Sciences!
It characterises organisations like The Heartland Institute and GWPF to a 'T'.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 18:13 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
At the HI site from the link above:
"Error 404. Oops!
Something went wrong.
The page you are looking for could not be found."
Now I wonder why?
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chriskoz at 18:01 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Tom Curtis@7,
Your link to #comment-1103 @ WUWT points to nowhere, certainly not to something that you allegedly "explain in more detail". Either you mistyped your link, or (far more likely) the admin over there decided to delete your comment.
I, unlike folks on WUWT, am interested in reading the logical arguments you make, so if you have the deleted text hanging around, please post it here. Thanks!
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chriskoz at 17:15 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Rob Honeycutt@10,
I second your opinion. I looked at the meaning of the exotic word "heft" on google (the weight of someone or something), and having found the meaning, I still don't understand what that concocted Heartland's sentence means. But looks like I must give up and conclude this concoction is impossible to understand by logic. Because, like most contrarian's statements, its purpose is to confuse rather than clarify things.
Well, Heartland got away relatively lightly, with comparing climate scientists to unibomber, maybe they don't get awaqy lighly with distorting CAS position, I hold by breath on it...
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MA Rodger at 17:06 PM on 15 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
Tom Curtis @168.
You most likely still do get a wobble from calculating NA SST - SA SST. The actual values would require delving into grided data but the NCDC provide SST for differing latitudes that I recently graphed. (Thus the N Atlantic & N Pacific SST are combined.) The wobble has a definite "limp" for 0-30ºN and an 'anti-limp' in the Arctic. If you assume the limp & anti-limp can be explained away without diminishing the AMO as a natural wobbler of global temperature, and noting there is no matching wobble for Southern SST, I think the maximum contribution from these SSTs into the average global figure is about the same for both wobbles (the Arctic being smaller than the Northern tropics) at 0.065ºC peak-to-peak. T&Zh13 suggests a far higher figure: 40% of recent warming = 0.265ºC peak-to-peak.
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Ari Jokimäki at 15:59 PM on 15 June 2013An estimate of the consensus project paper search coverage
Daniel, the consensus project did not use 'climate change' as criteria for anything. Preliminary sample was built using search phrases 'global climate change' and 'global warming'. And of course, simple mention of climate change (or specific search phrases used) doesn't suggest that paper supports AGW, hence a large proportion of neutral papers was found in the project.
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dana1981 at 13:40 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Yeah, it sounds like CAS is super ticked off by Heartland's misrepresentation of their positions on global warming. Whoops! There's probably some Heartland folks in China right now - I would not want to be in their shoes.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:21 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
It's great that the CAS is taking this so seriously. In fact, it sounds like they're taking it very seriously, with legal threats attached (i.e., "consequences and liabilities").
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wbkjf620522 at 12:48 PM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
The Statements on the Chinese Translation of the“Climate Change Reconsidered—NIPCC Report”
2013-06-14
The Chinese translation of the “Climate Change Reconsidered—NIPCC report” was organized by the Information Center for Global Change Studies, published in May 2013 through Science Press, with an accompanying workshop on climate change issues in Beijing on June 15, 2013. However, the Heartland Institute published the news titled “Chinese Academy of Sciences publishes Heartland Institute research skeptical of Global Warming” in a strongly misleading way on its website, implying that the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) supports their views, in contrary to what is clearly stated in the Translators’ Note in the Chinese translation.
The claim of the Heartland Institute about CAS’ endorsement of its report is completely false. To clarify the fact, we formally issue the following statements:
(1) The translation and publication of the Chinese version of the NIPCC report, and the related workshop, are purely non-official academic activities the group of translators. They do not represent, nor they have ever claimed to represent, CAS or any of CAS institutes. They translated the report and organized the workshop just for the purpose of academic discussion of different views.
(2) The above fact was made very clear in the Translators’ Note in the book, and was known to the NIPCC report authors and the Heartland Institute before the translation started. The false claim by the Heartland Institute was made public without any knowledge of the translator group.
(3) Since there is absolutely no ground for the so called CAS endorsement of the report, and the actions by the Heartland Institute went way beyond acceptable academic integrity, we have requested by email to the president of the Heartland Institute that the false news on its website to be removed. We also requested that the Institute issue a public apology to CAS for the misleading statement on the CAS endorsement.
(4) If the Heartland Institute does not withdraw its false news or refuse to apologize, all the consequences and liabilities should be borne by the Heartland Institute. We reserve the right for further actions to protect the rights of CAS and the translators group.
Information Center for Global Change Studies,
Scientific Information Center for Resources and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
June 14, 2013.http://www.llas.cas.cn/tzgg/201306/t20130614_3866222.html
http://english.cas.cn/Ne/CASE/201306/t20130615_104625.shtml -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:59 AM on 15 June 2013CO2 effect is saturated
To add to what Tom said, the flip side of the absurdity put forth by that WUWT post is that is fails to acknowledget that atmospheric CO2 in very high concentrations is clearly responsible getting the earth out of past deep glaciation events. That well documented relationship could never occur if the CO2 effect was fully saturated at lower concentrations.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:54 AM on 15 June 2013CO2 effect is saturated
Stealth... If you genuinely want to take a "skeptical" approach to the issue of climate change, WUWT is clearly not the place to go. If you want to confirm your predetermined position that nearly all the published research and nearly all the actively publishing climate scientists are wrong... then WUWT is your one stop shop.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:25 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
It really is fascinating how poorly crafted that sentence is ("...enormous heft behind the questionable notion..."). You could read tons into such a glaring grammatical error. Perhaps it's an indication of stresses within their inner sactum. Or maybe just a late work night.
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Tom Curtis at 11:07 AM on 15 June 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
It has occurred to me that the most neutral definition of the AMO would be the unforced variation in North Atlantic SST. Given that forcing from aerosols is regionally confined, the forcing in the North Atlantic can be expected to differ substantially from global forcing, given that aerosol emissions from North America and Europe have varied substantially with changes in dominant fuel use, wars and emissions controls. Therefore, the least question beging approach to identifying the AMO in the twentieth century would be to determine the effect of NA forcing on NA SST by regression, then remove that influence mathematically. As water from the South Atlantic is fed into the Gulf Stream and hence influences NA SST, it may also be desirable to eliminate that influence by the same means. Having removed the influence of NA Forcings and SA SST from the NA SST, whatever remains would approximate to the unforced variation in SST. It may or may not contain a 70 year cycle of any significant magnitude.
I have two questions.
First, has anybody actually taken this approach and reported the results?
Second (specifically for KK Tung), if you identify the unforced SST variation in the NA by this means, and use that instead of your AMO in your multiple regression, what is the resulting anthropogenic trend?
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Matt Fitzpatrick at 10:48 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
"... puts enormous scientific heft behind the questionable notion that man is responsible for catastrophically warming the planet."
I don't think he wrote what he thinks he wrote.
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K.a.r.S.t.e.N at 09:35 AM on 15 June 2013Has the rate of surface warming changed? 16 years revisited
Apologies for the very late comment. I'd quickly like to add the results published in [Stenchikov et al. 2009] to the debate. In their [Fig.2], OHC and surface temperature changes from GFDL-CM2.1 are juxtaposed. I think it is fairly representative for other GCMs. Given that the temperature signal fades out quickly, I wouldn't be too concerned regarding the impact upon the FR11 methodology. It remains small at all time scales. What remains indeed unaccounted for is the volcanic OHC imprint (which seems responsible for the trend difference between GCMs and FR11 highlighted in [Troy Masters] analysis). However, the restoration of the volcanic OHC imbalance introduces a fairly constant (underlying) trend which is implicitly accounted for by the FR11 method.
As to changes in forcing: We all agree that they won't be detected with the FR11 method (as pointed out in the paper). If one were to assume that non-volcanic OHC anomalies approximately correlate with ENSO (as the results of Balmaseda et al. seem to confirm), one is left with changes in external forcing which the FR11 method would certainly miss, namely anthropogenic aerosols and recent changes in volcanic aerosols. While I agree that the assumption of a constant anthropogenic aerosol forcing over the last 30-40 years is questionable, at least the forcing at the beginning (end of the 1970s) and the end (today) of the analysis is fairly similar to the best of my knowledge. While major volcanic eruptions are accounted for, the more recent smaller eruptions are omitted. I adopted Fig.5 in [Vernier et al. 2011] in order to update the FR11 method until Dec 2012 for GISS temperatures. As a result, the [previous] trend estimate increases [slightly] and the tail end goes up a bit. Apart from 2012, nothing to worry so far. Having seen several unusual cold spells in 2012, the dip is explicable with natural variability. I would be surprised to see another such unexpected dip in 2013.
Bottomline: Currently, I don't see strong evidence for undetected changes in forcing which isn't considered with FR11 (after having accounted for recent volcanic eruptions). The video (which I liked a lot) seems to be as valid as before.
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Don9000 at 09:25 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
DSL--
I'd say you were on to something, save that the author of the article is Heartland's "Director of Communications," which indicates he's drawing a salary and is not merely being paid piecemeal. Of course, his brief biography at the bottom of the article shows he's also a former Washington Times reporter, and the rest of it suggests he's part of the conservative go-to group on such issues, so the error he's made is not really excusable for the reasons you suggest.
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Tom Curtis at 08:43 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Danieltreed @5, I have examined that claim by Tol. To begin with, it is irrelevant that the search terms used in Cook et al return a smaller sample unless that sample is also skewed. Tol does indeed also claim that it is skewed, but it is possible to use the data he provides to determine the potential effect of that skew. As it turns out, because of the near identity of the number of papers in disciplines which are under represented, and those which are over represented, that potential effect is very small. In fact, as a percentage of endorsements and rejections, the maximum range in the result possible if the skew was corrected is between 97.4 and 98.6%, compared to the 98.04% from the abstract survey. I discuss this issue in more detail here (see the third example of "Tol's consistent bias").
I am not sure what you mean by saying "the endorsement graph is refuse". Indeed, such vague negative criticisms indicate only that you reject the study because it is ideologically inconvenient. People with genuine criticisms are able to state them coherently, and in such a way that people can examine them for flaws.
My best guess as to what you mean is that you are referring to Tol's claim that the pattern of increasing endorsements is purely a result of change of composition over time. If so, you should recognize that Tol's analysis fails because the trend towards increased endorsement is strongest in the period 1991-2000, during which time there is no trend in composition. In constrast, from 2001-2011 the trend in composition is strongest, while the trend in endorsement is much weaker. This pattern is part of the reason for the very low correlation between composition and endorsements (r2=0.065). Tol's claim that the trend in endorsements is based on a trend in composition, then, is based on a simple eyeball assessment of a graph and fails the simplest statistical test. I explain this in more detail here.
As it happens, what is actually happening is a trend towards increased endorsement with no change in compostion in the first period, while the trend in endorsement in the second period is largely explained by the trend in composition. This pattern fits the hypothesis that "...the fundamental science of AGW is no longer controversial among the publishing science community and the remaining debate in the field has moved to other topics." In particular, it fits the idea of increasing confirmation of AGW up to the IPCC TAR after which scientists increasingly accepted AGW as a working hypothesis except for a few hold outs who found that ideologically unacceptable.
Finally, no knowledgable person argues that AGW is true because a consensus of scientists accepts it. Nevertheless, scientists - especially climate scientists- are the experts in this field. "An expert is somebody who knows all the basic mistakes in a field, and how to avoid them." Therefore if you think those climate scientists have missed something basic, ie, something that can be identified in a blog without any background knowledge in climate science, you are almost certainly a crank on a par with people who claim to have invented perpetual motion, or proved that the world is flat. The climate scientists may be missing something which makes them wrong about AGW, but it will be something very subtle, or something very complex. And it won't turn up on WUWT.
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Andy Skuce at 07:33 AM on 15 June 2013A Miss by Myles: Why Professor Allen is wrong to think carbon capture and storage will solve the climate crisis
Sudden_Disillusion @15 : I did read about the Savory talk in several places, but I also heard it harshly criticized. For example: James McWilliams in Slate and Chis Clarke at KCET.
I haven't looked at this issue in any detail myself, but a quick glance at those critiques leaves me skeptical of Savory's claims.
Unusually, Savory's talk was commented on favorably both at Climate Denial Crock of the Week and at Watt's Up With That. At WUWT, contrarian Tim Ball wrote a rebuttal.
My co-author, rustneversleeps, made a comment at Planet3.0 on the carbon sequestration potential of Savory's methods.
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Alexandre at 07:13 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
danieltreed at 06:36 AM on 15 June, 2013
I suggest Dr. Richard Tol (or yourself) make a similar survey using your sampling method and category criteria and see how (or if) the results differ. Then you can even come back to discuss the ups and downs of each approach. I suspect after doing real research you would be less prone to dismissing others.
Nobody said consensus = science. This survey just shows that the 'skeptic' argument that "there is no consensus" is bogus. Of course, once you show that, goalposts move.
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funglestrumpet at 07:10 AM on 15 June 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
ClimateChangeExtremist @ 2
In addition to the benefits you list, LFTRs cannot be used to make bombs without killing the bomb makers and without screaming "Here I am!" once made. Furthermore, they lend themselves to small modular construction, ie. they could be made in factories and transported to their desired location via road transport. They do not need copius amouns of water, so can be put almost anywhere (NIMBYs permitting) and seeing as they run very hot, can be far more efficient. On top of all that they can be made to burn the existing nuclear waste that so excites the Greens. When running soley on thorium they burn nearly 100% of the fuel, not the 1 or 2% that uranium fueled reactors do.
With world oil supply being what it is, the 'danger' we face is that there is a breakthrough in the electrification of transport and coal is chosen to meet the rising need for electricity, with all that would mean for climate change.
I would far rather leave my family with some radioactive waste to contend with - they might use it to heat their houses - than I would leave them to starve because we just did not plan our energy production intelligently.
Anyone who thinks that climate science suffers at the hands of the fossil fuel industry has seen nothing like what they do to the nuclear industry.
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danieltreed at 06:36 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
The sampling used for that 97% consensus number is based on a ludicrous sampling technique.
They used the terms "global climate change" and "global warming"... anyone involved in SEO or PPC will tell you that is way too restrictive, and Dr. Richard Tol investigated the data, and found that the number of papers cited would have QUADRUPLED had the search terms included simply "climate change."
Tol lists other details about the flaw in the sampling. The "Endorsement" graph is statistical refuse. I find the entire argument that consensus=science to be absurd, but that for another day I suppose. -
scaddenp at 06:33 AM on 15 June 2013Murry Salby - Confused About The Carbon Cycle
Well it would have to be published somewhere where reviewers would be unaware of the rebuttal to Humlum and where they were not aware of other methods of determining the contribution (eg d13 isotope balance, Henry's law etc). Good luck on that but then I'm amazed Humlum could find reviewers clueless enough to let his past.
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DSL at 05:22 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
Don, the writers at Heartland would probably defend themselves by claiming that they are simply selling their labor to the highest bidder, in the classic capitalist formulation. There is no ethical connection between them as ethical agents and the way that their labor is used by those who have bought that labor. If their funders want to shape public opinion in such and such a way, who are they to interject their own ethical concerns into the production process? If there were an ethical connection, they would be forced to admit that workers everywhere have a right to control the means of production, and do so in a way that is ethically suitable. That would be antithetical to their convictions about capitalism (which they developed independently, of course, of course).
No, no . . . they are just providing for their families, just doing their 9-5 . . . go on up the chain of command if you want to find a villain (and then back down to the shareholders and the great conundrum of democracy: how do you split responsibility 500 ways? Find absolution by firing the CEO.).
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Don9000 at 03:24 AM on 15 June 2013Heartland's Chinese Academy of Sciences Fantasy
That the Heartland Institute seems endlessly capable of emitting this kind of effluvia is one of the more strange aberations of the age. Is it not a form of collective insanity?
There is evidence that the delusion is wearing thin. Oddly enough, the first part of the quote from the Heartland article, authored by Jim Lakely, contains what strikes me as an egregious Freudian slip. I was so struck by it that I went to the original article to see if it might be a mistake in dana's post. It is not. Here once again is the quote from Lakely's article:
"The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will present the two books at a June 15 event in Beijing, a landmark event that puts enormous scientific heft behind the questionable notion that man is responsible for catastrophically warming the planet."
Breaking this sentence down, I'd paraphrase the guts of it like this:
The CAS event will give enormous scientific credit to the idea that humans are causing global warming.
There is simply no rational way read Lakely's original sentence and come to the opposite conclusion. Lakely and his colleagues at Heartland may view our role in global warming as a "questionable notion," but that doesn't change the actual sense of what Lakely has written. One could, I suppose, somewhat inaccurately paraphrase the sentence this way:
The presentation of these two books at the CAS event will give enormous scientific credit to the idea that humans are causing global warming.
But that reading is even more embarrassing for the folks at Heartland.
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Don9000 at 02:54 AM on 15 June 2013UK Secretary of State for the Environment reveals his depth of knowledge of climate change (not!)
William,
I think your estimate of a mid-22nd century appointment with 500 ppm atmospheric CO2 is a bit off. The atmosphere gained approximately 3 ppm CO2 in this past year and the average increase from 2000 to 2010 is about 2 ppm as seen in the graph found here:
www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
If even the 2 ppm per year rate is used, if this rate of increase were to continue for the rest of the century, by 2100 the atmosphere will have gained approximately 174 ppm. That would bump the total up to 574 ppm. If the rate of increase is closer to 3 ppm, we could conceivably blow past 650 ppm by 2100.
This apparently inexorable upward trend is one reason I worry about the seemingly good news regarding the 3.8% decrease in carbon emissions that has just been seen in the US, even as globally emissions went up by 1.4% according to the IEA:That is to say, it seems to me that there is a good chance that scientifically challenged politicans and skeptics here in the US will, as they do whenever there is an unseasonable snowstorm or cold snap, seize on such news and think 'we've done our part' or conclude that the problem has gone away when the reality is that vastly greater reductions are required.
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barry1487 at 02:19 AM on 15 June 2013Antarctica is gaining ice
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but 2012 study points to changing wind patterns responsible for increasing sea ice in the Antarctic:The ultimate cause of the wind and ice changes lies in the large-scale climate variability of the Southern Hemisphere. Antarctic sea ice can contain 35-year cyclic anomalies that might be partly aliased into our calculations, but our trends cover several such cycles and are consistent with longer-term studies. Aspects of the wind trends (and therefore ice-motion trends) can be attributed to large-scale modes such as the Southern Annular Mode and El Nino/Southern Oscillation. Modern trends in these modes could arise through natural variability, but some evidence suggests that they are forced by the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole and increased greenhouse gases. Our conclusions that ice-motion trends are dominated by winds, and that winds contribute significantly to ice concentration trends through both dynamic and thermodynamic effects, reinforce the need for a better understanding of both the wind changes and the anthropogenic forcing of relevant climate modes.http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/18383638/1671623978/name/Antarctic+sea+ice.pdf -
KR at 01:52 AM on 15 June 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #24A
ClimateChangeExtremist - And if thorium fission were actually proven economic and deployable. Despite small test efforts, those have yet to be shown to date; the technology is (at present) immature.
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