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scaddenp at 07:35 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
Usual implications over climate science funding is that its just climate scientists trying to line their own pockets. (maybe this tells a lot about the way the accusers think). However, when you look at what climate science money is spent on, it mostly instrumentation - especially satellites. Scientists draw their usual, modest salaries.
As to government priorities - if predictions showed a catastrophic asteroid impact likely in 2050, wouldn't you expect governments to fund research into checking this was correct and investigating methods to avoid collision? If anything, governments are underfunding science and instead subsidizing fossil fuels. How does that make sense?
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Mal Adapted at 07:31 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
RomanM,
Supplementing John Hartz's comment "According to Table 3 of the CBO report, the annual federal budget for climate science programs averaged roughly $2 billion (in 2009 dollars) over the twelve year period 1998 thru 2009", I'll point out that according to table 3, more than half of that $2G/yrwent to NASA. The text of the report states that
NASA's efforts have been dominated by the design, development, and procurement of satellites engaged in the observation of the planet and its atmosphere and the analysis of the data that those satellites collect.
The data collected by those satellites is available to all researchers, whether they support the consensus or not. What a gravy train for skeptics!
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Bob Tisdale at 07:29 AM on 1 June 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Tom Dayton at 6 writes: “But frustratingly, the article undermines its own point by having the diagram labeled ‘Global Mean Temperature’ instead of ‘Global Surface Atmospheric Temperature.’ Likewise, the paragraph after the diagram does not specify ‘surface atmospheric.’ Will you change those, please?”
Tom, I didn’t find a response to your concerns on this thread, so allow me. The dataset Kevin Trenberth is using in his illustration is the NCDC’s monthly global surface (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) temperature anomaly index (degrees C). Refer to the overview here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php
It is made up of sea surface temperature and land surface air temperature data, with most of it (about 70%) being sea surface temperature data. Therefore, Kevin Trenberth cannot call it “surface atmospheric” temperature.
Regards.
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Andy Skuce at 07:17 AM on 1 June 20132013 SkS News Bulletin #14: Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone XL Pipeline
Breaking news:
Although it is technically possible for the Canadian Federal Government to push this through, it is unlikely due to the extent of public opposition in BC, the strong position now taken by the recently elected centre-right provincial government and, not least, the firm stance taken by First Nations. There is no precedent for a large infrastructure project to be imposed on a Canadian Province against its will. (In many ways, Canadian provinces have more power than US states or even EU countries.)
Over to you, President Obama...
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KR at 06:42 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
RomanM - My apologies, but I had missed that particular link to your blog post among the many in the 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial overview.
Your objections were met in the paper itself and the FAQ - percentages of denial in climate science have remained in the <5% level, mentions of AGW in abstracts have decreased over time since it is not controversial. Abstracts are small - when I write an abstract I devote that limited space to new information and issues, not wasting it on background matters settled decades ago. Your argument claiming increasing uncertainty is simply absurd.
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John Hartz at 06:37 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
RomanM:
Thank you for the link to the Congressional Budget Office report, Federal Climate Change Programs: Funding History and Policy Issues published in March 2010.
According to Table 3 of the CBO report, the annual federal budget for climate science programs averaged roughly $2 billion (in 2009 dollars) over the twelve year period 1998 thru 2009.
Do you believe that this level of funding was exorbitant?
Do you believe that the money was well spent?
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RomanM at 06:29 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
@KR #54
I posted on this thread because the work that I did was referenced in the head post. Do you expect that if I am to reply to that referencing, I need to wander around the site looking for a "better place"?
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Tom Dayton at 06:22 AM on 1 June 2013It's cosmic rays
DMCarey, as I was trying to answer that same question, I discovered other commenters in other threads here at Skeptical Science already had answered. (What a team!)
This is merely Lu recycling the same claims he has been making for years. His claims have been proven wrong repeatedly. RealClimate has a short critique with a link to a peer-reviewed critique.
And see the It's CFCs entry here at Skeptical Science.
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KR at 06:15 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
RomanM - I have replied to you on the relevant thread.
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KR at 06:14 AM on 1 June 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
RomanM - If you want the raw data in all its glory, take a look at the papers supplemental data; I believe (based on other discussions) that the raw data was a bit late in getting posted by ERL.
Author self-ratings were, I understand, covered by a non-disclosure and are not included.
Again, the important detail is the percentage of scientific consensus - while there have been a few more rejection papers in recent years, as a fraction of published science denial of AGW remains a tiny tiny fragment.
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RomanM at 05:56 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
@John Hartz #50
You might start by looking at this pdf from the US government:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/112xx/doc11224/03-26-climatechange.pdf
See Figure 1 and Table 1 at the beginning of the document. This is just one source of funding, albeit a very important one.
@KR #51
Am I missing something? I don't see any annual "raw numbers". "Raw numbers" are found in a Table, not a Figure. If you read my blog post at CA, you willl see that I had to digitize the Figure to get a reasonable approximation of the "raw numbers" ffor analyzing the regressions. try digitizing the red triangles in Figure 1 if you think those are "raw numbers".
As far as "living on an academic salary", I spent 40 years doing just that before retiring from my "day job" five years ago to live on a pension. I still do an online stat course for my university just to keep my hand in the academic environment.
Are you telling me that acquiring research funds is not important for a professor? I did not say that they are "in it for the money".
And yes, I am aware that the paper is "presenting percentages." However if you think that this means that the "raw numbers" shouldn't also be automatically reported, you are extremely naive.
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Dumb Scientist at 05:21 AM on 1 June 2013It's not bad
Our current CO2 emissions rate is ten times faster than the rate which preceded the end-Permian extinction, 250 million years ago. Also, I've pointed out that fossilized leaves from the PETM confirm that a rapid CO2 increase (still not as fast as today's) stresses ecosystems.
Scientists use more evidence than just first year calculus to determine climate sensitivity to CO2. Here's a figure from Royer et al. 2007 (PDF) which concludes that “a climate sensitivity greater than 1.5°C has probably been a robust feature of the Earth’s climate system over the past 420 million years”.
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KR at 05:15 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
RomanM - A fascinating choice of threads for your comment, given that your statement "I agree with some of the other comments that journal gatekeeping may have played some role in this process..." is a direct fit for #5, Conspiracy theories. Your "...many billions of dollars..." line is another denial myth, that climate scientists are in it for the money - and I dare you to live on an average academic salary and honestly say that.
The Cook paper is about and is reporting percentages as a conclusion about consensus, not the raw numbers. However, those raw numbers were given in the paper. See Figure 1 of the paper, total numbers and percentages. Your argument makes no sense whatsoever.
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John Hartz at 05:02 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
@RomanM #50:
You state:
I agree with some of the other comments that journal gatekeeping may have played some role in this process, but it seems much more obvious that the major reason for the proliferation of global warming and climate change papers is the many billions of dollars which have been allotted over the last 20 years to such research.
What is the source of your assertion that many billions of dollars have been expended by climate scientsts over the past 20 years?
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Composer99 at 04:23 AM on 1 June 2013It's not bad
I'm not sure where to post this inquiry, and this thread seems the best, so it'll go here.
I posted a link, a couple of weeks ago now, to a paper shared by Skeptical Science's Facebook page, onto my own feed.
This resulted in an intense discussion with a pseudo-skeptic. Naturally, it had nothing particularly to do with the paper. Among the various arguments was one I have not encountered before, which was made in reply to a point I made about the problems related to the rate of current change:
Your whole augment then is based not on the actual level of CO2 or temperature but that you can determine what the gradient of CO2 has been over the last 200 million years. Basic multivariable calculus just because you have a large change in the first derivative based on on variable doesn't mean that variable will dominate the function's value and to make that conclusion in any branch of science or engineering is prima facie false. Your system could simply be going through some oscillation before reaching a new steady state.
I didn't pick up on the obvious misrepresentation ("Your whole augment then is based not on the actual level of CO2 or temperature but that you can determine what the gradient of CO2 has been over the last 200 million years") at the time.
Anyway, my university calculus is, charitably put, rusty, so while I strongly suspect this claim is a load of bollocks (the notion that vast swathes of experimentally-verified atmospheric physics can be upended by basic multivariable calculus strikes me as ridiculous in the extreme) I'm not in a position to make a strong rebuttal (I did note that, indeed, trying to appeal to a principle of maths as a way of evading the evidence is bunk).
Are there any other suggestions for rebutting this claim?
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RomanM at 04:08 AM on 1 June 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
I would normally not comment on this particular blog site, however, this post appears to reference some work that I did on the sole statistical "analyses" in the paper:
Some blogs advanced a related logical fallacy by claiming that this shows 'an increase in uncertainty.' However, if uncertainty over the cause of global warming were increasing, we would expect to see the percentage of papers rejecting or minimizing human-caused global warming increasing. On the contrary, rejection studies are becoming less common as well. That scientists feel the issue is settled science actually suggests there is more certainty about the causes of global warming.
Despite the shortage of expected tabular results of the various aspects of the data, it was possible to sufficiently reproduce the numeric data from Figure 2(b). You can plot the numbers yourself. I commented on this on the referenced Watts' thread in response to another comment:
The number of papers rejecting AGW is increasing with almost half of them coming in the last five years of the study period. The percentage of such papers annually has indeed been decreasing because of the increases in the numbers of papers in the other two categories.
I agree with some of the other comments that journal gatekeeping may have played some role in this process, but it seems much more obvious that the major reason for the proliferation of global warming and climate change papers is the many billions of dollars which have been allotted over the last 20 years to such research. (-snip-).
My original criticism of the paper was that the regressions calculated and reported in the paper were inappropriately done as they were ignoring the changing numbers of papers in the various years. Perhaps you or someone else could comment on why my critiques of the regressions are wrong and/or why this shortcoming should not be corrected in the publication itself.
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic ideology snipped.
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DMCarey at 04:00 AM on 1 June 2013It's cosmic rays
I was wondering if someone with a stronger background in physics than I could help place this new discovery into the broader context of the scientific knowledge of climate change. I can't say I agree with Dr. Lu's assertion that CFCs are the sole cause, and that CO2 can be ruled out, but that degree of correlation within Antarctica certainly does present a strong argument.
Could it be possible that the link between CFCs and cosmic rays does indeed play a strong role in determining Antarctic temperatures, even if the role in the global climate system is less pronounced?
https://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/global-warming-caused-cfcs-not-carbon-dioxide-study-says
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KR at 02:41 AM on 1 June 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Some observations:
- It's entirely reasonable to find a few individual abstracts that folks can disagree upon (despite the 2 or 2/3 raters who agreed on classifications in Cook et al). But that means nothing without context, with statistics on how many disagreements barry or anyone else finds. Statistics, or it's meaningless nit-picking.
- The context of AGW should be understood by anyone submitting peer-reviewed papers on the subject, as per the IPCC reports, as "Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely [>90% probability] caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years." Arguments otherwise really only make sense to people who are not familar with the field - and are hence irrelevant to the paper under discussion.
At this point, the circling of the arguments re: consensus, and the wash/rinse/repeat cycle of arguing over individual abstracts absent the context of statistics on how many are inarguable, strikes me as excessive repetition as per the Comments Policy.
Perhaps folks could reserve further comments to aspects of this topic not already reviewed ad nauseum?
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dana1981 at 01:12 AM on 1 June 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
John Cook covered the Lu argument in 2010. This is the third or fourth iteration of the same fundamentally flawed argument, without acknowledging that other scientists have revealed those fundamental flaws. It's BS (bad science).
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dhogaza at 00:58 AM on 1 June 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
There's a silver lining in the Lu fiasco ...
"He claims to have good statistical evidence that both ozone depletion and global warming come almost exclusively from halogenated compounds"
Once upon a time, this lead one Tony Willard Watts to post, with a big splash, that Lu has shown that halogenated compounds, not CFCs, were responsible for ozone depletion, thus the Montreal accords were based on incorrect science, as CFCs have no affect on ozone.
Think about that for a moment ...
Hilarity ensued ...
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shoyemore at 00:18 AM on 1 June 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
tcflood #29, it's
I was on a discussion about this (is Lu saying that CFCs lifted earth out of the Ice Ages?) when a "JohnMashey" interjected with the following information:
Lu has been on this kick for years, publishing in increasingly less credible journals and ignoring all refutations. See Gavin Schmidt on Lu:
search RealClimate for 2011 post: from ‘interesting but incorrect’ to just wrongwww.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/lu-from-interesting-but-incorrect-to-just-wrong/
Note that Int J. of Modern Physics B (NOT a climate science journal) did not help its reputation by publishing the absurd Gerlich & Tseuschner paper, also analyzed at RC.
True to form, the paper has done the rounds of the usual blogs and the Wall Street Journal.
So, while the fake-skeptics may twitch with fake-excitement, let's not hold our breath that this is the ex-machina solution we have all been waiting for.
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tcflood at 23:51 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Have you guys seen this paper by Q.-B. Lu at the U of Waterloo?
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1210/1210.6844.pdf
He claims to have good statistical evidence that both ozone depletion and global warming come almost exclusively from halogenated compounds.I got it off Curry's site, so even if it is 100% bogus, I suppose we will be hearing about it from now on.
I'd really like to hear what you think.
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noelfuller at 22:01 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
LarryM (18) and Composer99 (13)
Thanks for the references, I have seen them before and the one somewhere with all the circles, and found them very helpful. However, they apportion heat content rather than indicate total heat content as a line in kilojoules
which is what I am looking for. I would expect the line to be free of internal acean variability, but wobbling a bit with aerosol, cloud and solar variation but overcoming the ocean lag effect relative to surface atmospheric temperatures. Greenhouse gas buildup would be the dominant influence on the curve. However, I suspect that this is rather hard to achieve with precision.
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noelfuller at 21:46 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
owenamoe 7
I think we have to have a reference to where the temperature of some part of the atmosphere is measured and because that is generally where we can easily reach to place a thermometer in a stable position we are measuring temperature within a few metres of the soil or sea surface. I understand that we have to get up a wee bit when we want to get air temperature over ice. If we left out the reference to surface we would be in the rather silly position of implying the measured temperature was the average temperature of the entire troposphere say. We know the air gets colder as we gain altitude. By surface atmospheric temperature we are of course not talking about soil temperatures or sea surface temperatures. This measure is in some ways analogous to sea ice extent. Both measures exist because we can measure them with what we have. Sea ice extent is also subject to which way the wind blows, and I suspect to how thin the ice is. By far the best measure is sea ice volume but that is much harder. Similarly surface atmospheric temperature is also a representative measure. the easiest to record with the longest instrumental history, interestingly influenced by all the agencies that shove heat about in the ocean but by far the most telling figure if only we could measure it as readily is heat content.
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Dikran Marsupial at 19:09 PM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry Did the simulations performed for the paper include the last 200 years, and did they include the rise in atmospheric CO2 over this period due to anthropogenic emissions?
(Hint: I rather doubt they simulated the whole of the last 180 million years as this would have taken rather a lot of time to run on the computer).
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JasonB at 18:54 PM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry,
You might be better off using a category other than Paleoclimate for your checking.
Firstly, due to the fact that it deals with the ancient past, it has almost the equal-lowest "relevance" rating of the four categories (only 22% of papers were classified as expressing an opinion on the topic, vs nearly 57% of Mitigation papers and 32% of Methods papers) and is more likely to include factors that are going to make it difficult to categorise without a deep understanding of the topic.
Secondly, it is also the smallest category (6.6% of all papers), and so even if you somehow prove that every one of the papers classified in favour of the consensus should have been neutral instead, it will have almost no impact on the final result. (If you want to show a problem in general, and not just with Paleoclimate papers, then I would argue you should randomly select from all papers and not just a particular category.)
If you are going to pick a particular category, I'd suggest Mitigation: it has the highest Consensus rating (99.84% — 1,912 rated in favour, just 3 rated against; 20 × level 1 vs 0 × level 7, 418 × level 2 vs 2 × level 6, and 1,474 × level 3 vs 1 × level 5) as well as the highest percentage of papers rated as being relevant (nearly 57%).
Regarding the four papers we both checked, Cook et al rated two as endorsing the consensus and two as neutral, and you rated two as endorsing and two as neutral. Even though you agreed with Cook et al on two and disagreed on two, the net effect was the same because the two you disagreed on went opposite directions. Of course, this sample is far too small to draw any conclusions, so you might want to use the tool to try a much larger set of papers and compare your ratings with Cook et al, but the point is this: when the numbers are so highly skewed in one direction, even gross errors have very little impact on the final results, and so far there's no indication of gross errors. As Tom originally pointed out, even if half of the original authors mis-classified their papers as endorsing the consensus instead of being neutral, the results would still be overwhelming.
As for finding full papers that should be classified differently to what you would get based on the abstract alone, in and of itself this isn't a problem — it's only a problem if abstract classification is not an unbiased estimator of paper classification. In other words, if papers endorsing the consensus are more likely to say something to that effect in their abstract than papers rejecting the consensus (or vice-versa). The fact that such a large number of papers that Cook et al classified as neutral were rated by their authors as taking a position on the topic can be a simple reflection of the additional information in the paper (or the fact that they don't have to try to figure out what they mean) rather than any indication that the authors used a lower "bar" than Cook et al.
If you are going to keep checking papers, don't forget to report how many you checked that you didn't have a problem with the rating of. If you pre-filter the information to only report those that you disagree with, then we have no way of knowing what the impact of that is. Disagreeing with 100 out of 100 papers is very different to disagreeing with 100 out of 10,000.
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Lanfear at 16:56 PM on 31 May 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
"Again; if you feel this is in error, do the work. Evaluate some abtracts with your particular critera, present your data, and see if it holds up"
This indeed is why we can with confidence talk about denialists: The lack of relevant (scientific) evidence backing up their claims which contradicts the well known science.
We have a excellent example: The claimed falsification done at CRU. Why is it that not a single denialist has taken any time to actually prove their claims (thus also proving that the label denialist is false)?
The only case where the result was actually displayed AFAIK, was the BEST reconstruction, and that did not go the way the (then) sceptic crowd assumed, resulting instead to outright rejection (again without any tangible material to back them up), as well as a slew of argument fallacies such as 'true scotsman' and not to forget in one particular case, a total backtracking of earlier claim (you know who this was).
The reality is, that as long as they choose to remain as bystanders spouting their anti-scientific belief-artifacts at the scientific arena, not participating using the scientific methods (ie. 'doing the work' as KR and many others in this thread expresses it), they will, by their own actions, remain denialists.
Maybe the most comical part is that by voicing their poorly founded thoughts, the deniers are actually providing valid material for an objective analysis of the denial, as attested by the Lewandowsky et al. studies.
Another absurdity is that the denialists continuously claim that the climate science has been politisized, yet their main method of critique is that found in politics (by innuendo, character assassination etc), not science.
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Tom Curtis at 15:59 PM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Barry @242:
"We have conducted four Early Jurassic experiments with increased CO2, using the explicit method; however, specifying SSTs minimizes the climate effects by previously accounting for many CO2-induced feedbacks (sea-ice decrease, water-vapour increase), thus limiting the CO2 effect to direct radiative heating."
(My emphasis)
How is that not clear enough for you?
I have already summarized this quote, including a quote of the final crucial phrase and directed you to the part of the article which contains it; and yet now you want to put your hazy understanding against the author's direct statement.
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Tom Curtis at 15:49 PM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry, this is the continental configuration during the Jurassic:
This is the continental configuration now:
The paper and abstract asserts that the change in ocean currents brought about by that difference in continental configuration between the modern and jurassic may be enough to account for a 5-10 degrees C difference in GMST. Do you wish to suggest that that is significant (or even relevant) evidence suggesting that the motion of Africa 2.15 meters to the North East over the last century has caused a significant portion of the 0.7 C warming over the last 100 years? If you do not, then the effect of the very large difference in continental positions between the modern and the Jurassic is irrelevant to warming over the last century, and therefore irrelevant to the classification of the paper (and abstract).
I have chosen the case of Africa as it currently has the largest current impact on GMST by my understanding. You may prefer to use the (at most) 10 meter increase in the width of the Atlantic over the same interval, and argue that that has significantly increased GMST. In fact, pick any continental motion, or sum of them and tell me you think there is evidence that their combined effect has caused 0.2 C warming over the last century (ie, sufficient to be statistically distinguishable) and show me a remotely plausible theory as to how it could do so, and I will accept that the paper should have been rated a six or seven.
Absent that, you are merely focussing on an irrelevancy in assessing the paper, and IMO a transparent irrelevancy.
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nealjking at 15:02 PM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry,
I believe your interpretation of the first sentence of the abstract is absurd and perverse: It's pretty clear that they're NOT including the last 200 years within the period of study, which comprises 180 million years. For one thing, they contrast the warming of the period under study from that of "the present": You can't do that unless they're mutually exclusive. A minimization of the role of CO2 during the Jurassic has precisely nothing to imply about the role of CO2 today; especially since CO2 did not jump from 280 ppm to 400 ppm within 200 years during the Jurassic, as it has in the present era.
Further,
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Rob Honeycutt at 14:27 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
@19... "(-snippedy-snip-snip-)"
I do believe you enjoyed that, DB.
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dhogaza at 14:15 PM on 31 May 2013The 5 characteristics of global warming consensus denial
Take solace in the fact that about 90% of climate science denialism rests on stolen e-mail from CRU and from Skeptical Science.
If it weren't for felonious conduct, what would they have?
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DSL at 14:11 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Of course! Cottonballs returns!
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DSL at 14:10 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Yah, but it seems like I saw something almost identical to this over at SoD a year ago or so. About eight comments of interchange between the regulars and this person, and off s/he went in a huff. I guess we'll see if CSR is a drive by.
Suddenly, all the pyrgeometers in the world stop working. Puckrin and Evans are taken out in handcuffs. Watts posts that he knew it all the time . . . he was working on a paper, in fact. It was going to be a blockbuster . . . -
scaddenp at 14:04 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Well with so many other sites banning him, he must be getting desparate - just not desparate enough to read a physics textbook.
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William Haas at 13:41 PM on 31 May 2013Uncertainty no excuse for procrastinating on climate change
dkaroly, Thanks for the new graph. It does a lot to help sell the validity of your simulations.
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Tom Curtis at 13:27 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
DSL, classic Sky Dragon of course. Invents a greenhouse theory they know to be false, and kill it - then assert without warrant that the theory they have shown to be false is the actual theory used by climate scientists.
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Tom Curtis at 13:25 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
An evident lack of Climate_Science_Research @19 claims that:
"If you believe that planetary surface temperatures are all to do with radiative forcing rather than non-radiative heat transfers, then you are implicitly agreeing with IPCC authors (and Dr Roy Spencer) that a column of air in the troposphere would have been isothermal but for the assumed greenhouse effect."
In fact the IPCC states any thing so silly as to claim that a column of air in the troposphere would be isothermal were it not for the greenhouse effect. Nor, to my knowledge, does any scientist associated with the IPCC scientist nor Spencer. Certainly no climate physicist would be so silly. Rather, they state the opposite, ie, that without a non-isothermal troposphere there would be no greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect does influence the lapse rate in the troposphere, but only in a small way. It would cause it to be much larger (ie, much greater reduction of temperature with altitude) except for convection. If the slope exceeds a certain value, that generates convection which brings it down to that value (the dry adiabatic lapse rate). If the air is moist, the release of latent energy of vaporization as the water vapour condenses further reduces the lapse rate. These factors, then, shift the lapse rate from what it would be in their absence; but the troposphere would cool with altitude even in their absence.
Having given a wrong account of the history and state of knowledge of planetary physics, he says,
"The gravitationally induced temperature gradient in every planetary troposphere is fully sufficient to explain all planetary surface temperatures."
But that is absurd. It is equivalent to saying that knowing the slope of one line is sufficient for knowing its intersect with the x-axis.
The lapse rate is indeed a gradient (slope) and would exist without a green house effect. But for any slope there are an infinite number of possible intersects with the x-axis. Only once you specify the co-ordinates of at least one point on the line does the slope tell you the intercept. Thus when the x-axis is temperature and the y-axis is altitude, the lapse rate is represented by any line having the same slope on the graph. But only when we find the temperature at a given point on such a line do we determine the intercept with the x-axis (surface temperature). And, of course, the temperature that determines the surface temperature is governed by radiative physics.
I recommend that the ill named Climate_Science_Research actually read the last link, and take up the subject there (where it is on topic) rather than here (where it is not).
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DSL at 13:09 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Hrmmm . . . appears to b a copy/paste and sounds awfully familiar. Where have I heard this before . . .
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barry1487 at 12:57 PM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
This paleo abstract (1992), assigning no value to anthro greenhouse warming, or even mentioning anthropogenic influence, was rated 3.
No mention of anthro influence or value in the body of the paper either, but at one point it is remarked that the effect of enhanced greenhouse gases in the Early Eocene may have been 'minor'. No idea how a self-rating Author would rate this one.
This 1993 abstract assigns no value to CO2 warming, saying only that post-industrial increases in CO2, CH4 and N2O "may well have contributed to the observed global warming." Marked as 3 (no full version).
.....
I've been skimming titles in paleoclimate, ignoring ones that do not immediately present themselves as pertaining to the modern period. But I've noted that Cook et al have rated at level 3 any paper which suggests enhanced CO2 levels should cause global warming. Most times, the abstracts I've looked at make no mention of antrho influence or the modern period, and give no quantification on CO2 contribution to warming.
Contrary to my thesis upthread, it appears that Cook et al may have rated at the lower bar (any amount of warming from enhanced CO2). If so, this would make the comparative results Cook13/self-rating Authors less problematic.
Tom, it appears you may have overestimated the ratings stringency of Cook et al. Scroll through the paleoclimate category and I believe you will concur.
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Climate_Science_Research at 12:40 PM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
(-snippedy-snip-snip-)
Moderator Response:[DB] More Doug Cotton sock puppetry. Privileges revoked, again.
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barry1487 at 11:56 AM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
I wonder, Tom, what you make of Dana Nuticelli's comment;
"Note that if a paper said humans are causing less than 50% of global warming, or that another factor was causing more than 50% (or ‘most’, or some similar language), we put it in our rejections/minimization of the human influence category. Our basis was the IPCC statement that humans have caused most global warming since the mid-20th century. But if a paper simply said ‘human greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming’, that went into the endorsement category as well. After all, there’s no reason for most climate research to say ‘humans are causing >50% of global warming’ (except attribution research), especially in the abstract."
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/consensus-behind-the-numbers/#comment-18747
That looks to me like a qualitative statement rated as a qunatitative one.
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barry1487 at 11:53 AM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Tom,
your points are well-taken. For your point 3), however, I believe they ran simulations to test for CO2-specific warming, and the feedbacks were not pre-imposed. Read the bottom of page 557, 1st column ("Table 3...", where they go on to state that feedbacks to CO2 forcing are the primary cause of warmth.
In the conclusions, they mention that their results have implications for "future" warming.
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barry1487 at 11:28 AM on 31 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Dikran,
For me, the abstract "minimises" the role of CO2. I do not know how it can be read any other way, unless one were to completely ignore the first sentence. In fact, the first sentence strongly suggests a 7 rating might be appropriate. (Leaving aside, for the moment, that the period of interest falls outside the ratings - but then, why is paleoclimate a category at all, if not because lessons from the geological past have implications for today?)
nealjking,
In fact, if I had to guess at the author's opinion, I would point out that he seems to use the global climate models (GCMs) with great confidence. So, I would guess that he would be likely to be confident about applying GCMs to the present-day climate as well:
I think most climate scientists would agree that anthro CO2 has caused a significant amount/most of the global warming for the last 50 - 100 years. But are they rating their papers or giving a vote according to their general opinion? This paper did not assess the validity of GCMs for current conditions.
Any case, Cook et al gave it a 3 based on the abstract, which I don't think is supportable when you consider options 5 and 6. How could the abstract not be seen as minimising the role of CO2, considered in the geological period they investigate? Alternatively, how could it not be marked a 4 if the time period is inapplicable?
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John Hartz at 10:40 AM on 31 May 2013Uncertainty no excuse for procrastinating on climate change
William Haas: Your most recent comment was a moderation complaint and was therefore deleted. Please loose the sarcastic tone as well. You should be able to answer the questions posed by Dikran Marsupial without repeating yourself.
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LarryM at 10:12 AM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
noelfuller and Composer99: There is also an updated heat content graph. You might also like the Global Warming Components infographic.
For readers who haven't visited the SkS Climate Graphics page in awhile, they have been updated by adding informative captions, and links to SkS material that references each graphic. So, browsing the Climate Graphics page provides an informative inroad into the wealth of SkS material.
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William Haas at 08:21 AM on 31 May 2013Uncertainty no excuse for procrastinating on climate change
Tom Dayton #19
The article says that the last IPCC assessment on climate change was made back in 2007. That was more than 5 years ago. The authors apparently feel that there are inadequacies in the old models so they are offering their new simplified models. The article says, "we wanted to calibrate the key climate and carbon cycle parameters in a simple climate model using historical data ..." They talked about 50 years. I am saying that their simulation would be a lot more credible if they calibrated it over a 150 year period.
Moderator Response:[JH] You have articulated your position more than once now. Plese note that excessive repitition is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
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Tom Curtis at 07:47 AM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
tcflood @16, details on the operaton of Argo floats can be found here. As you will note, the Argo floats measure temperature from 0-2000 meters in depth. Other systems are used for temperature (and hence OHC) measurements below that depth. Some continue to be used above 2000 m, but they are nowhere near as numerous as the Argo floats.
For actual OHC data, the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) is the best first stop.
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tcflood at 07:36 AM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
Let me mention that I have also read Balmesda, Trenberth, and Kallen in their accepted for publication article "Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content." They make a point of comparing the OHC record with and without Argo data, and they get slightly less warming without Argo. I can't tell if the Argo data are synonymus with "data below 700m". Please help.
Moderator Response:[DB] See here for a discussion of BTK13.
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tcflood at 07:20 AM on 31 May 2013Global warming is here to stay, whichever way you look at it
I just read John Cook's update of "It's Cooling" and most of the associated discussion over 2009-2011. I was struck in that discussion by the unsettled business of how OHC below 700m was measured. I was particularly confused by the discussion around how good the Argo data are and the different ways the data is massaged. Is there a good place I can do to get the latest on how the deep sea heat content science is going?
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