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Comments 45701 to 45750:

45701. John Hartz at 23:52 PM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       @Mark Bahner #96:

       In response to Tom Curtis, you state, When we get your predictions, we can figure out whether Robin Hanson, I, or you are right about world GDP growth in the 21st century.

       Exactly who is the "we"?

       Exactly how are "we" going to figure out who is right?  

        

45702. cRR Kampen at 23:11 PM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       #36 SirCharles, you're right. That measure is inappropriate.

       
       Great conspiracy theorizing at WUWT. They should develop that, then tomorrow they can go into the trash cans of hollow earthists, chemtrail believers, UFO nutcases and creationists - or have they already arrived there?

45703. cRR Kampen at 19:09 PM on 7 May 2013
       WMO Annual Climate Statement Confirms 2012 as Among Top Ten Warmest Years
       

       LarryM #2, perfect :)

       Of course WMO's graph depicts the same thing and it is only its 2012 bar I'm fussing about.

       The picture you provided suggests, by the way, a slight divergence in trend between La Niña- and El Niño years. Not at all statistically significant I guess, but La Niña seems to inhibit atmospheric(!) AGW some more than other EN/SO phases.

45704. JasonB at 14:11 PM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       KR:

       I find this approach delightfully optimistic in its child-like charm, yet completely unrealistic.

       Reminds me of Star Trek, where apparently GDP has grown so much that nobody actually needs to work nor earn money any more, they just do whatever takes their fancy and everything is free.

       Still can't figure out why some fancy being starship captains and others "fancy" being bossed around rather than sitting at home all day watching TV and playing computer games...

45705. JasonB at 14:05 PM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       Mark Bahner @ 96:

       And though the analysis of the economic aspects of artificial intelligence is a small field, I’d say he’s one of the leading thinkers in that area. So I’m curious what your credentials are? Have you ever published any papers on either economics or artificial intelligence?

       I can't speak for Tom but I have published (a long time ago) in the field of AI and I make a living today creating technology that greatly enhances productivity so I guess I'm one of the "doers" (as opposed to "thinkers") in that area. In fact, a couple of months ago a free trial I offered was turned down out of concern that the "amazing efficiency" gained would result in management taking the opportunity to downsize the department in question, which highlights the flip side (also mentioned in the paper you linked to): productivity gains often result in job losses and the need for humans to find another niche to fill that the machines aren't yet capable of performing. GDP could well rise while a few get incredibly rich and the rest struggle to find work and survive.

       But back to an earlier point I made: I get annoyed by so-called "futurists" predicting wonderful advances in the technology, usually based on the ever-diminishing cost of computing power, who appear to have no idea that the thing that makes that computer power actually useful is a much harder nut to crack. As someone who has spent a long time and lots of money developing "intelligent" software — although I wouldn't classify it as "artificial intelligence", and I would regard as clueless anybody who tried to — I can tell you that that's where the real challenge lies.

       Allow me to explain:

       Estimates vary on the processing power of the human brain, from about 10 petaFLOPS up to about 100 petaFLOPS, but somewhere in the middle seems reasonable. Titan, the current fastest computer in the world, is about half that. In theory, then, Titan could run a human-equivalent AI at about half real-time. Except it can't, because we don't know how to write such a program.

       Put the top two supercomputers together and they actually have enough power to run a human-equivalent AI in real time. The top five, combined, have enough power for two human brains or, presumably, one really smart one. Even Folding@home has approximately 12 petaFLOPS at its disposal, which would put it at #3 in the world.

       The computing power is there. It already exists. In the future it will just get cheaper. (It's still hard to compete with ~50 petaFLOPS that can be mass produced by unskilled labour, of course.)

       But we don't know how to harness it to create an artificial intelligence; we use it for simple number crunching. I don't think any of these supercomputers has ever deduced the existence of rice pudding nor income tax on their own.

       I’m so interested to get your expert opinion on what economic growth will be like in the 21st century, that I’ll send you $20 if you’ll provide your predictions in a similar manner to mine.

       Why? You've made that offer a couple of times now and I can't see what possible value there would be in any of our predictions of future GDP growth, just as I see very little value in any of the economists' predictions of future GDP growth. You seem to place a lot of value in something that is utterly worthless. At least with the IPCC's temperature projections there's some physical models underlying them; I tend to view economic forecasts as coming under the heading "Just Making Stuff Up". They have a hard enough time predicting the present, let alone the future.

45706. SirCharles at 12:49 PM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       @cRR Kampen at 00:48 AM on 3 May, 2013

       
       I believe it's anything but about the 97%. I suppose it's all about how ordinary people are evaluating the findings of scientific studies.

45707. KR at 12:41 PM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       See the Climate Troll Illustrated Bestiary, Breakthrough Boys. Mark Bahner seems to assume that we will economically rocket out of our own problems with no other effort. 

       I find this approach delightfully optimistic in its child-like charm, yet completely unrealistic. Real economics, looking at the potentials for growth in the developing world and with a more grounded evaluation of technical change, are less likely to predict magic growth that will wipe away all issues due to excess capacity - rocket cars in every garage, AI's that do the hard work for us, etc, would be great, but experience doesn't support such a cornucopian view. 

45708. Mark Bahner at 12:41 PM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       I appear to have hit a nerve (Mark Bahner @96).So much so that Bahner is resorting to the implicit argument that Hanson must be right because he has good credentials.

       No, I'm asking who you are, that you can write things like:

       “…an article which overstates recent real growth rate, and assumes that the introduciton of AI is the golden goose of economics without actually plotting the course of economic growth durring the information revolution. That is, it has no more intellectual credibility than Bahner's attempt, for all that the author is seeking to have it published."

       “Of course, this merely reminds me of what they say about stopped clocks, or, perhaps more aptly in Hanson's case, a clock I once saw whose hour and minute hands tracked the second hand, and hence was also right twice a day (and accurate never).”

       [-snip-]

       The interesting feature is the prediction of a 4.3% growth rate per annum, doubling every 16 years...

       That's not a prediction. It's an observation of the recent growth rate (up to the time of the paper, of course...which I think was 2001).

       However, given that Bahner likes credentials, perhaps he will like the predictions of the Noble Prize winning economist, Rober Lucas Jr:

       Yes, Robert Lucas Jr. has a Nobel Prize in Economics. And who wouldn't respect that (except you, perhaps)? But I bet he's wrong:

       Long Bets Prediction #194 (Circa 2004)

       That prediction is:

       “The world per-capita GDP in the year 2000 was approximately $7,200. The world per-capita GDP (in year 2000 dollars) will exceed $13,000 in the year 2020, $31,000 in 2040, $130,000 in 2060, $1,000,000 in 2080, and $10,000,000 in 2100.”

       Again, what are your predictions?

       P.S. I don't have the Journal of Economic Perspectives paper in front of me, but I'm pretty sure the figure you cite is of per-capita income growth (so population growth would need to be included to get the total world GDP growth rate).

       Moderator Response:

       [RH] Definitely no cyberber stalking allowed at SkS.  

       [DB] Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right.  This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

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45709. Tom Curtis at 11:32 AM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       I appear to have hit a nerve (Mark Bahner @96).  So much so that Bahner is resorting to the implicit argument that Hanson must be right because he has good credentials.  I am more (un)impressed by Hanson's claim that:

       "Without machine intelligence, world product grows at a familiar rate of 4.3% per year, doubling every 16 years, with about 40% of technological progress coming from ordinary computers. With machine intelligence, the (instantaneous) annual growth rate would be 45%, ten times higher, making world product double every 18 months! If the product shares are raised by 20%, and general technology growth is lowered to preserve the 4.4% figure, the new doubling time falls to less than 6 months."

       The interesting feature is the prediction of a 4.3% growth rate per annum, doubling every 16 years with technological advancement in computers, but no AI.  That is an emperical prediction that can be compared to the economic record since the advent of commerical computers in the 1960s:

       

       

       or the penetration of computers (or at least computer chips) into all aspects of the market in the 2000s:

       

       The simple fact is that the world has seen declining, or at best steady economic growth over a period in which Hanson's theory predicts a doubling of economic growth every 16 years.  Therefore his theory is falsified empirically, and was falsified when he published it as he would have known had he done any retrodiction with the theory to compare with empirical data.  Given that it does not matter what his credentials are; we have no empirical basis to accept his theoretical projections.

       However, given that Bahner likes credentials, perhaps he will like the predictions of the Noble Prize winning economist, Rober Lucas Jr:

       

        

45710. Mark Bahner at 10:03 AM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       Tom Curtis (#94) writes:

       "I would not assume that Bahner is an economist,..." -->That's right, I'm an engineer.

       "...or indeed, that he has any university level economics training."-->Four or five courses. (I generally sought out the least "human" of the Humanities courses that were a required part of my engineering degree. ;-) Other courses included the History of Science (excellent); History of the U.S. from 1929-1941; Astrophysics; and others (a fairly eclectic mix).

       "The only thing it really shows is that he likes reading cornucopian futurists, and that he is almost completely ignorant of physics..."-->That makes me curious about your background. What did you study and what is your career?

       I ask this because of your opinion that I am “almost completely ignorant of physics” and because you have said things like this about Robin Hanson, and his paper on "Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence":

       “…an article which overstates recent real growth rate, and assumes that the introduciton of AI is the golden goose of economics without actually plotting the course of economic growth durring the information revolution. That is, it has no more intellectual credibility than Bahner's attempt, for all that the author is seeking to have it published."

       “Of course, this merely reminds me of what they say about stopped clocks, or, perhaps more aptly in Hanson's case, a clock I once saw whose hour and minute hands tracked the second hand, and hence was also right twice a day (and accurate never).”

       Just for folks who don’t know: Robin Hanson has a PhD from the California Institute of Technology (aka, Caltech). He’s an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He’s an expert on idea futures and was involved in the creation of the Foresight Exchange and DARPA’s FutureMAP project. And though the analysis of the economic aspects of artificial intelligence is a small field, I’d say he’s one of the leading thinkers in that area. So I’m curious what your credentials are? Have you ever published any papers on either economics or artificial intelligence?

       And I’m also curious to get your expert opinion on what economic growth will be like in the 21st century. (You're obviously an expert, given your easy dismissal of Robin Hanson's and my analyses.) In October 2004 I made the following predictions for inflation=-adjusted world-wide per-capita GDP growth rates in the 21st century::

       2010-2020 = 3.5 %/yr
       2020-2030 = 4.5 %/yr
       2030-2040 = 6.0 %/yr
       2040-2050 = 8.0 %/yr
       2050-2060 = 11.0 %/yr

       …2060-2100 > 11.0 %/yr

       In November 2005, after I made those predictions in October 2004, I did calculations of the number of human brain equivalents (HBEs) added each year by computers

       Nov. 2005: Why 21st century economic growth will be spectacular

       After doing those calculations, I think the economic growth is likely to be much higher from 2030 onward than I even predicted in 2004. (Barring takeover by Terminators or global thermonuclear war.)

       I’m so interested to get your expert opinion on what economic growth will be like in the 21st century, that I’ll send you $20 if you’ll provide your predictions in a similar manner to mine. That is, if you provide your predictions for inflation-adjusted world per-capita GDP growth for every decade in the 21st century, I’ll send you $20. When we get your predictions, we can figure out whether Robin Hanson, I, or you are right  about world GDP growth in the 21st century. It makes a big difference regarding whether removing CO2 from the atmosphere will be viable in the 22nd century.

       P.S. Though I should again note that even if the IPCC economic growth rate and CO2 projections are correct, it’s pretty clear that removing CO2 from the atmosphere will be viable in the 22nd century.

        

45711. Steve Metzler at 09:32 AM on 7 May 2013
       Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
       

       I'm with composer99 and others on this. Whenever Spencer's name comes up in a positive light in a climate science related thread, inevitably flung out there by a contrarian, I now throw the Cornwall Alliance book right back at them. It's nearly always *crickets* after that.

       
       The poor man must carry a boatload of cognitive dissonance around with him.

45712. dana1981 at 09:21 AM on 7 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       John Chapman @5 - do you have a link to that Archibald prediction?

45713. barry1487 at 09:01 AM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       From the article that dealt with crowd funding of this project;

       Over the past year volunteers here at Skeptical Science have been quietly engaged in a landmark citizen science project. We have completed the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate science papers ever done. Some 21 years worth of climate papers – more than 12,000 in all – have been carefully ranked by their level of endorsement of human-caused global warming. We also invited thousands of the authors of these papers to rate their own papers.

       
       

       https://skepticalscience.com/Be-part-of-landmark-citizen-science-paper-on-consensus.html
       

       Seemed pretty clear to me that many papers had been rated by the authors of those papers.
       

45714. Jonas at 06:39 AM on 7 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       So SOI has no trend, but temperature has.

       But even if SOI had a trend, this would not disprove human induced global warming: SOI could potentially be altered or given a trend by human made global warming (or even be disrupted completely by the human caused temperature change): a correlation does not explain which factor is the physical cause ...

45715. John Chapman at 06:39 AM on 7 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       David Archibald makes a similar prediction (catastrophic temp drop) for 2013 based on solar activity.  We can visit that next year!

45716. chris at 03:58 AM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       Very interesting survey - well done for thinking this through - there's some fascinating elements of psychology and the nature of scientific understanding and knowledge in this.

       Like most of the respondents on this thread I also slightly underscored relative to the authors consideration of their endorsement of AGW in their papers (I scored 3.0 on average; the authors scored 2.5 in my selection of 10).

       I suspect this relates to two things. The first already mentioned here is that the authors have a conceptual framework outside of the specific element of the study in their paper and this influences their own perception of the level of endorsement in their study. The second is that an abstract doesn't give a full account of the level of endorsement that might pertain in the paper as a whole. The authors have access to this - those of us rating on the basis of abstracts alone don't.

       In support of the above I had a look at a few of the papers in my ten in their entirety, after doing the survey. In all of the examples I looked at I would have scored the paper one step higher (ie.e. towards endorsement) had I known what was in the full paper.

45717. Steve L at 01:54 AM on 7 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       I know your philosophy is to tackle the science rather than the contexts that surround it, but a naive reader may get the impression from the beginning of the post that McLean is a legit climate researcher.  His ridiculous prediction may say to a naive reader -- "I knew those climate science jerks didn't know anything about how climate works."  But really that would be the wrong impression.

45718. JasonB at 01:43 AM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       MMM @ 31,

       That's exactly what I meant by "just goes to show how deep the level of acceptance of the consensus is" above. It's much harder for the original authors to assess the abstract in isolation when they know what they feel and what they were trying to get across.

45719. JasonB at 01:39 AM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       Tom Curtis @ 30,

       I did use the words "pretty remote" rather than "ridiculously remote" and "something to write home about", so I stand by my comment. :-)

       Also, I didn't make the claim that the sample set were supposed to be from the entire set of 12,000, merely commented on the statements of those that did. It had already occurred to me that the original wording made no mention of the sample size for this exercise.

       Finally, speaking of reading comprehension:

       Finally, I am concerned that you have seen four sets given that we are asked to only take the survey once.

       I never said I took the survey more than once. In fact I only took the survey exactly one time, the results of which I reported above. Since "results are only recorded if the survey is completed" it seemed harmless to check to see if I could reproduce the behaviour being reported on the fake skeptic blogs, and the last time was just so I could double-check the exact wording of the different categories.

45720. dana1981 at 01:11 AM on 7 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       dwr @1 - yes thanks, typo corrected.  Indeed I haven't seen any contrarian blogs revisit McLean's prediction, other than the one mentioned in this post that rather absurdly tried to argue he was right.

45721. Michael2013 at 00:51 AM on 7 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       cargo transportation Thank you for a very interesting post!

45722. Philippe Chantreau at 00:48 AM on 7 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       Thanks for the precisions Tom.I confess that I could think of so many other things to do with my time that I did not go explore M.B.'s blog. I did not assume that he was an economist but he did have an overall tone not too distinct from the overly optimistic ones who advocate for a solve-all, laisser-faire market, in spite of clear evidence that it does not work. Your account about his blog seems to be consistent with his attempts at bribing people to go comment there...

45723. MMM at 00:05 AM on 7 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       Ah. Now I understand that "The average rating of the 10 papers by the authors of the papers was 2.7." is in fact worded correctly, since the random draws were not from the full 12,000+ but rather from the subset that had ratings by the lead author of the paper itself.

        

       This might also explain why most people here are getting higher average ratings than the ratings given by the authors - the authors might be drawing on their full knowledge of the paper, while we have to depend on just what is contained within the abstract itself...

45724. dwr at 21:17 PM on 6 May 2013
       Distinguishing Between Short-Term Variability and Long-Term Trends
       

       First paragraph below Fig 4. hyperlink 'McClean et al.  (2013)' perhaps should be (2009)?

        

       Funny how these failed predictions are seldom revisited by 'sceptic' blogs, isn't it.

45725. Tom Curtis at 20:04 PM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       JasonB @27, the probability that any one of the ten papers should be identical to any of the papers in a prior selection given that the papers are randomly selected from 12,000 papers is just 0.458%, or just under 1 in 200; which is fairly remote, but not ridiculously so.  The probability that you would get an identical paper in two of four retries rises to 1.366%, or just under 1 in 73.  Certainly nothing to write home about.  The odds that one of 100 readers should have an identical paper to one reported by a previous reader rises to 36.782% (if they report all ten titles) and is hardly surprising at all.  Hence I consider the evidence adduced that the paper selection is not random is decidely lacking, and consists mostly of a failure to differentiate between the odds of a certain result with a single trial, and that odds with multiple trials.

       Having said that, the 12,000 papers are those surveyed in the original paper already accepted for publication.  The specific claim is:

       "This survey mirrors a paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, to be published soon in Environmental Research Letters, that analysed over 12,000 climate papers published between 1991 to 2011."

       So, claims of non-random sampling not only fail at mathematics, but also fail at reading comprehension.

         As you surmise, it is likely that the abstacts used in the current survey in which you participated are a subset of the 12,000 used in the original paper.  Specifically, they are probably drawn from those which actually recieved an author rating.

       Speaking of which, it is my understanding that the author rating of a paper consists of the rating given to the paper by the lead author of the paper, rather than being the mean rating of all authors of the paper.

       Finally, I am concerned that you have seen four sets given that we are asked to only take the survey once.

45726. jyyh at 18:28 PM on 6 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       <John Brookes> I think he said a few months back he's preparing a new book, so this may be related to that, real life hurries, that is.

45727. John Brookes at 17:39 PM on 6 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       Just one more very OT thing.  What is up with Tamino?  No new blog posts for some time, and not taking comments...

45728. jyyh at 16:53 PM on 6 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       oops, the equatorial argument might be wrong since it's projected that the high northern oceans would warm up the most relatively, thus the expansion of water would be higher in the northern hemisphere. but anyway the simple amount of ice melt = amount of sea level rise equation does not hold locally everywhere.

45729. Lanfear at 16:48 PM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       jyyh@21

       "anyway a nice way to educate people of the research done"

       Aha!

       So this is nothing but an insidious plot by the warmistas to force the true sceptics to read the propaganda created by the industrial climate complex.

       In other words, nothing but a brute attempt to indoctrinate the opponents.

       </troll>

45730. jyyh at 16:14 PM on 6 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       <pikaia> also considering the rotation of the earth, and the melt in the Antarctica, the highest rise should be equatorial so this estimate might not be too far off. (local housing infotainment) The lowest building limit currently for temporary residence buildings is (if I recall correctly) +2 m so there'll be a lot of ocean front cottages on sale in Finland in 2150, I guess. Currently their prices are way outside normal salary rates. Main reason of selling those to outsiders currently is testament disputes. In cities though, even residential buildings may sometimes be built this low. These might be pretty cheap after some heavy winter storm/harsh winter+fast spring (ending local infotainment)

45731. JasonB at 15:07 PM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       I saw this in the comments at Lucia's:

       For whats its worth, my scores have been under 4, but over 3. That would mean the literature I reviewed, was lukewarm.

       What it means is that, on average, the papers he reviewed were somewhere between "not mentioning what's causing global warming" and "implying humans are causing global warming".

       Somehow this got converted, in his mind, into a statement about climate sensitivity.

45732. JasonB at 14:45 PM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       On a side note, I had a look at WUWT's posting on this mentioned above and I had to laugh — the conspiracist ideation runs deep. :-) Their mantra appears to be "I may be paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?" :-) I love the fact that they're unwilling to have a go because of what it may reveal about them.

       The concerns centre around two aspects; the first is the survey code embedded in the URL, which is presumably intended to track which site the reviewer followed the link from. To avoid triggering a Pavlovian response next time (assuming conspiracy theories weren't the intended purpose of the survey code :) I would suggest using the HTTP referer field instead next time. It isn't perfect (copying-and-pasting the link instead of clicking on it will defeat it) but it might filter out some of the noise.

       The second is the randomness of the papers. I did a quick calculation and the chance of two people seeing the same paper out of a random selection of 10 out of 12,000 is pretty remote, so the fact that I've seen the same paper twice in four sessions suggests that the actual number of papers being used is far fewer than 12,000. This makes sense if the authors of the papers were actually asked to rate their own papers, and it wouldn't take many papers to turn up useful results.

       The funny thing is that when I noticed the above it made me laugh and very keen to see what the outcome will be; when the WUWT crowd noticed it they got too scared to take the survey. It's like primitive tribes-people being afraid of their soul being captured by someone taking a photograph. Brilliant!

45733. JasonB at 14:27 PM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       barry,

       It's not clear whether "the paper authors' ratings" refers to Cook et al or the authors of the original papers themselves. See MMM @ 18 above. The way it's worded is certainly ambiguous and assuming MMM is correct I agree that it could do with rewording. If the ratings really are from the authors of the original papers then the fact that an unbiased reading of their abstracts in isolation by third parties consistently seems to give a lower level of endorsement of the consensus than the authors themselves just goes to show how deep the level of acceptance of the consensus is.

       I've long been impressed by the lack of bias amongst SkS' readership, and a willingness to disagree with each other even if it gives "ammunition" to "the other side".

       As for the difference in scores, the biggest problem is likely the implicit endorsement question, which is highly subjective: "abstract implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gases cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause." The papers I classified as "neutral" rather than "implicit endorsement" all took global warming for granted, but none of them mentioned the cause of that global warming — rather, they were talking about the effect of that global warming on the particular subject of the paper. As I mentioned above, reading just the first line of the introduction to one of those papers made it very clear that the authors of the paper themselves fully supported human causation, but because they didn't say that in the abstract I had to classify that as neutral under my interpretation of the rules. It is possible that others, looking at the same abstract, might say that the paper implicitly endorsed human causation of global warming because, for example, it didn't try to suggest any other cause or cast doubt on the prevailing theory. Simply changing my four "neutral"s to "implicit endorement"s on that basis would reduce the difference to 2.9 (me) vs 2.8 (the authors).

45734. chriskoz at 14:20 PM on 6 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       John Brookes@4,

       You are correct. "uneven warming of seas" should be replaced by "isostatic rebound from last glacial maximum". This and "changes in the Earth’s gravity field" are the 2 mean SL variations we know. Of course we are considering long term, excluding short term noise such as tides and weather fluctuations. "Uneven warming" is part of the weather.

45735. barry1487 at 13:13 PM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       I may not be a complete dunce.

       Of the 10 papers that you rated, your average rating was 3.5 (to put that number into context, 1 represents endorsement of AGW, 7 represents rejection of AGW and 4 represents no position). The average rating of the 10 papers by the authors of the papers was 3.3.

       
       Everyone posting here so far has rated their 10 papers less favourably towards endorsing AGW than did the authors, indicating a distinct lack of bias for this blog's readership. It may be that the abstracts are more neutral than the full results of the paper. Nevertheless, this small sample suggests an honest, objective approach from SkS readers, not to mention the comments above. Here be true skeptics.

       
       If it's not giving away too much before submission/publication, how did the Cook et al team's results match up with the paper authors' ratings?

       Response:

       [JC] Nah, that's giving too much away, Barry. You're just going to have to wait :-)

45736. John Brookes at 11:33 AM on 6 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       "There is, however, great regional variation in the rise, for reasons such as the uneven warming of seas,..."

       I would have thought that uneven warming would not effect the regional sea level?

45737. macoles at 09:01 AM on 6 May 2013
       WMO Annual Climate Statement Confirms 2012 as Among Top Ten Warmest Years
       

       Thanks LarryM, that link clears it up nicely. I also hadn't realised that these ENSO indices can vary significantly month to month rather than just year to year, so the starting month makes a big difference too.

45738. Tom Curtis at 08:01 AM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       I should add, Shub also demonstrates the much larger readership at the "skeptical blogs" than at the pro-science blogs.  It follows that had the owners of those "skeptical" blogs posted links to the survey, the proportion of "skeptics" to pro-consensus respondents to the survey would have been reversed.  The lack of "skeptical" respondents to the survey was not by design of Lewandowsky and his co-authors.  Rather it is the direct consequence of "skeptics" not wanting their views of their supporters to be known.  Probably with good reason.  

45739. Tom Curtis at 07:46 AM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       keitho @22, its odd that you should refer to Shub Niggurath's piece as proof of chicanery in LOG13 (moon landing paper).  What he demonstrates after detailed (and likely biased) analysis is that slightly less than 80% of commenters on the pro-science sites that posted LOG13 survey support the consensus on climate change; ie, approximately the same percentage as in the survey itself.  Beyond that the analysis seems entirely based on misinterpreting "broad readership" as meaning "readership equally divided between those opposing and those accepting the consensus".

       Curiously, despite his detailed analysis, he fails to mention that a link to the survey was posted on at least one "skeptical" blog, ie, Junk Science.  Admitedly Junk Science was not one of the blogs contacted by Lewandowsky, but that is hardly relevant.  The fact that the link was posted on a "skeptical blog" undermines the entire basis of Shub's analysis.

45740. Tom Curtis at 07:35 AM on 6 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       Philippe Chantreau @93, I would not assume that Bahner is an economist, or indeed, that he has any university level economics training.  His blog shows only 12 posts since it started in July 2007, none of which shows detailed economic reasoning, or detailed reasoning of any sort.  The only thing it really shows is that he likes reading cornucopian futurists, and that he is almost completely ignorant of physics (he claims that what amounts to a 20 foot wide barrier of weighted corks could stop a storm surge, and that the weighing would stop it drifting of station in the face of a hurricane).  HIs blog ("Random Thoughts") is well named, but could perhaps be better named "Thoughtless comments".

45741. Philippe Chantreau at 03:20 AM on 6 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       Mark Bahner sounds like an economist. Only they can postulate the future existence of wealth and then start using it as if it not only will come into existence for sure, but in fact already exists. That attitude, when it turns into a frenzy, was the cause of the largest market crashes in history. A sizeable amount of wealth in today's world is wealth that does not have any real existence. Of course, the really clever ones are those who can cash in on thesefrenzies on the very short term, because they keep the assets acquired even after the whole house of cards collapses.

       I tend to trust economists that were able to predict bubbles and crashes before they happen, such as Jeremy Grantham. Unfortunately, that kind of clearsighted economist is unlikely to gather more attention about this subject than they did with the Japanese bubble, tech bubble, housing bubble, etc. People like easy and worry-free, so the Bahners of the World will always have a larger audience. Then when it hits the fan, the clearsighted ones will be under fire for not being more convincing.

       http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange

       http://www2.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Home.aspx

45742. keitho at 01:13 AM on 6 May 2013
       Participate in a survey measuring consensus in climate research
       

       I do hope that the same chicanery that happened with the last attempt at profiling doesn't happen again. Shub Niggurath has done some analysis on that paper and it doesn't look good . . 

        

       http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/05/lewandowsky-et-al-2013-surveying-peter-to-report-on-paul/#comment-1297865

45743. LarryM at 00:48 AM on 6 May 2013
       WMO Annual Climate Statement Confirms 2012 as Among Top Ten Warmest Years
       

       macoles - There are several ways to define El Nino/La Nina/Neutral, so no exact definition.  The WMO press release didn't specify their definition, but for the above animated graph see the associated caption and links by clicking on it, or go directly to the explanation in this article.  In summary, the average of 3 common ENSO indices was calculated for each year, and the bottom, middle, and top one-thirds were used as the 3 categories.

45744. pikaia at 18:02 PM on 5 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       It is an interesting fact that if the whole of the Greenland ice sheet melted, while average sea levels would rise by 7 metres, near Greenland the sea level would FALL by 100 metres! This is because the ice exerets a considerable gravitational force on the surrounding ocean.

       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdY-ZezK7w

45745. Rob Painting at 16:44 PM on 5 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       Why would you find a rising sea level trend there surprising? The region was squished down by the presence of the Fennoscandian ice sheet during the last ice age, and the land has been rising back up since then. The rate of glacial isostatic uplift slows over time, so a globally coherent melt of land-based ice (and consequent global sea level rise), such as today, will eventually overcome local factors.   

45746. JasonB at 16:38 PM on 5 May 2013
       Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
       

       Mark Bahner,

       Of course not. I consider it profoundly immoral for the poor to sacrifice for the benefit of the rich and well-off. Don't you, too?

       I consider it a meaningless slogan without context. With context, what you are saying is that not only should poor people throw their rubbish on the front lawns of the rich because the cost of cleaning it up as a proportion of income is less for the rich people than the cost of garbage collection is for the poor, but that it's actually "profoundly immoral" to ask the poor people to take care of their own garbage.

       Where this analogy breaks down, of course, is that in the actual case in question you don't actually know for a fact that the recipients of the rubbish are rich. There are plenty of reasons to suggest they may actually be worse off than we are, economists' fantasies notwithstanding. Firstly, they will be dealing with the consequences of AGW, which we've barely had a taste of so far. Secondly, they won't be able to take advantage of the huge boon in cheap energy that we've benefited from over the past 150 years or so thanks to fossil fuels, which has had an enormous effect on our standard of living, because they are a finite resource anyway.

       And even if GDP increases, that doesn't mean that everyone benefits. Those living on low-lying Pacific islands and places like Bangladesh may find their homelands and way of life destroyed forever. Those depending on sea-sourced protein may be suffering profoundly from the consequences of overfishing and the effect of ocean acidification on the food chain. What about those dependent on glacial run-off for their water supply? Surely it is profoundly immoral for them to have to sacrifice for the benefit of those of us now enjoying the benefits of the fossil fuel boom? It does seem a little self-serving to suggest that it would be immoral of us to lower our living standards for their benefit by making it seem as if they are the rich ones and we are the poor.

45747. Matt Fitzpatrick at 16:17 PM on 5 May 2013
       Climate change will raise the sea level in the Gulf of Finland
       

       If the Gulf of Bothnia starts showing a rising trend too, that'd be a pretty big surprise.

       English Wikipedia's article on the Baltic Sea has some interesting background on this topic, including a map showing about how much of Finland was submerged 11,000 years ago.

45748. Composer99 at 14:01 PM on 5 May 2013
       Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
       

       Phil L:

       I don't really see the Cornwall Alliance as being a matter of reflecting badly on evangelical Christians - at least not in the context of Dr Spencer.

       Rather, what I perceive is the case is that it reflects badly - very badly - on Dr Spencer.

       Basically, as far as I can see, as long as you have your scientific integrity intact, you can be corrupt, perjured, flawed, fallible, whatever - and still function effectively as a scientist.

       But if you compromise your scientific integrity, it doesn't matter how upstanding you are in every other area of your life - it's game over, as far as being taken seriously as a scientist goes.

       IMO Spencer signing on to the Cornwall Alliance means he has sacrificed his scientific integrity. Stick a fork in him: he's done.

45749. scaddenp at 11:48 AM on 5 May 2013
       Roy Spencer's Catholic Online Climate Myths
       

       Good point Phil L,. And check this by  Professor of Public Policy, J Boston here

45750. michael sweet at 10:55 AM on 5 May 2013
       Renewables can't provide baseload power
       

       ThinkProgress has an article about Portugal generating 70% of their power for the first quarter of this year from renewables.  They had about 37% from hydro and 27% from wind.  Solar was only 0.7%. (I am not sure why the numbers do not add up to 70%.  The original Portugese press release contains these numbers).  Since hydro is the most flexible method of power generation (more flexible than coal, gas or nuclear), being able to ramp up quickly if needed and available at any time, they are able to easily use a lot of wind.  Apparently it was rainy and windy so they got a lot more renewable than last year.  They saved a lot of cash not buying coal and gas.  For those who say renewables cannot provide more than 40% of energy, what do you think about this proof of concept?  They exported about 6% of energy used.  Presumably they exported on windy days.  Stilll nowhere near as much export as the nuclear plants in France have to do every night.

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