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Comments 47051 to 47100:

  1. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Craig: One way that the ocean can transfer heat to the atmosphere even though the local air temperature is warmer than the water temperature is through evaporation.  When water evaporates, the water vapor carries off the heat energy required to change from the liquid sate to a gaseous state, leaving the remaining water a little cooler.  Air masses are more mobile than the ocean waters, and when they move to a cooler region, the water vapor condenses as rain or snow, leaving the heat energy in the atmossphere.

  2. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Craig, here's Levitus et al. 2012.  The methodology section will give you part of the answer.  

    CO2 does not warm the oceans independent of the indirect downward longwave radiation mechanism (increased skin temp forces a "deepening" of the convective temp gradient) and the direct method of surface layer mixing.  

    Also, the ocean-atmosphere relationship is extraordinarily complex and is the reason why modeling requires massive computing power.  One can also add ice into the mix: global ice mass loss has accelerated in the last decade, despite what appears to be a surface temp flattening.

    Moderator Response: [JH] My apologies for inadvertently deleting the following post: "On Craig's last question: the ocean heats up until it overcomes the skin temp. This is a very complex process, since the ocean surface is churning at the same time. Also, atmospheric temp across the ocean's surface is not uniform, nor is solar input (cloudiness complicates things). Ocean circulation is another factor. That's why the SST map looks rather marbled (and would look even worse close up). "If you want to know much, much more, in excruciating detail, go to SoD."
  3. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    I am also curious about what would cause the proposed increased heat content of the oceans to "come out" and thus warm the climate. My curiosity is built around the assumption that the warmer air mass must have transferred heat to the ocean ( warmer to colder ) and that raises the thought that the atmosphere would have to get colder than the ocean for it ( the air ) to be warmed by the sea.

    In the meantime the atmospoheric CO2 continues to rise leading to a warmer atmosphere.

  4. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    mandas,

    there is no controversy about the well established fact that many climate change deniers are also conspiracy theorists.

    Huh?

    Climate change deniers do not exist.

    Climate change denial does not exist.

  5. Glenn Tamblyn at 21:55 PM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Brad @52:

    "Tom, you may find this hard to believe but I don't doubt the reality of AGW. My only agenda, or axe to grind if you like, is defending the integrity of science.Tom, you may find this hard to believe but I don't doubt the reality of AGW. My only agenda, or axe to grind if you like, is defending the integrity of science."

    So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?

  6. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Thanks Chris.  But you'd do your yourself a service, and us, and perhaps the planet, if you'd use plain english :)

  7. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    Thanks for the good suggestion, gpwayne. Fixed now.

    ---

    Pete, that's a good question, but keep in mind, as useful a tool the DMI temp graph is, it doesn't measure, but models temperatures above 80N, which is only a part of the Arctic Circle (see for instance the Uni Bremen SIC map to get an idea of the area above 80N, second circle from the North Pole). I think this is the main reason for the discrepancy between this year and last year.

    On this post's image with the temp anomalies in the lower right corner you can see that most of the heat since January has been around the Greenland and Baffin Bay area. You can compare that to this image I used last year for my winter analysis. Again, see lower right image for 2012 JFM temp anomalies. There, more heat is within the 80N circle.

    A comparison between the images gives an idea, but they are not completely identical. For this year's image the anomaly colour range extends from -7 to +7, but for last year's image it's -5 to +5. In April's winter analysis I will of course compare apple to apple.

    It's also good to remember that high pressure areas cause cloudless skies, meaning that a lot of heat gets radiated out of the Arctic. Last year didn't have highs of this magnitude.

  8. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    What brought about the shift from increasing atmospheric temperatures to increasing ocean temperatures?

    Will this change be sustained or will the air go back to rapid warming again?

    Presumably the oceans are being warmed by the atmosphere, or alternatively the atmosphere is being cooled by the ocean acting as a heat sink. With the reduced warming of the atmosphere will the warming of the oceans slow down or is the CO2 concentration warming the oceans independently of the air temperature?

    I was under the impression the ARGO buoys only measure down to 700m at present. Is there a program under way to measure temperatures all the way down to the sea bed?

     

    Sorry for all the questions but the paper seems aimed at specialists who probably know all this wheras I am just an inquisitive amateur.

    Moderator Response: (Rob P) See this SkS post:How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats the Ocean.
  9. Enhanced SkS Graphics Provide New Entry Point into SkS Material

    Nice work guys.

    I wonder what's the criteria for some of the graphics to be honoured in SkS Climate Graphics page?

    I ask because in those ~5y of its existance, SkS produced far more graphics that included therein. For example, in the Carttons category, we have new image every weeks, but only one (santa on melter NPole) in Graphics page... Just curius.

  10. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    Thanks for the good suggestion, gpwayne. Fixed now.

    ---

    Pete, that's a good question, but keep in mind, as useful a tool the DMI temp graph is, it doesn't measure, but models temperatures above 80N, which is only a part of the Arctic Circle (see for instance the Uni Bremen SIC map to get an idea of the area above 80N, second circle from the North Pole). I think this is the main reason for the discrepancy between this year and last year.

    On this post's image with the temp anomalies in the lower right corner you can see that most of the heat since January has been around the Greenland and Baffin Bay area. You can compare that to this image I used last year for my winter analysis. Again, see lower right image for 2012 JFM temp anomalies. There, more heat is within the 80N circle.

    A comparison between the images gives an idea, but they are not completely identical. For this year's image the anomaly colour range extends from -7 to +7, but for last year's image it's -5 to +5. In April's winter analysis I will of course compare apple to apple.

    It's also good to remember that high pressure areas cause cloudless skies, meaning that a lot of heat gets radiated out of the Arctic. Last year didn't have highs of this magnitude.

  11. A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy

    "So... extracting uranium from the oceans is a feasible plan, but storing wind and solar power for later use is not.

    Right, we've crossed the 'five fold crazy' line. I'm done here"

    Extracting uranium from the oceans is proven technology:

    www.neutron.kth.se/courses/reactor_physics/NEA-redbook2003.pdf

    See page 22.

    Fo course, we don't need to mine uranium from the oceans yet, but perhaps in a hundred or two hundred years it will be worthwhile. Until that time, there are still vast amounts of uranium in conventional mines. But it's good to know that the amount of uranium we can get is virtually limitless.

    BTW, don't worry about going crazy. It happens to a lot of people once they start realising that everything they thought they knew about nuclear power is wrong. Breaking down one's own indoctrination can cause feelings of stress and uncertainty, but it will pass. Don't give up!

  12. A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy

    "How would you propose to solve the mismatch between supply (which is ideally constant at a high capacity factor) and demand (which fluctuates over a wide range) at high penetrations of nuclear power?

    The places I've checked have a difference between minimum demand and maximum demand over the course of a year of about 2.5:1, and over the course of a day as much as 2:1."

    We can simply look to France, which have a couple of their nuclear generating plants working in load-following mode. The French obtain 80% of their electricity using nuclear power. So your claim that only 40% can be done with nuclear is falsified by reality. The French, by the way, have the lowest cost and lowest co2 intensity electrity of any OECD country, which proves that nuclear is low co2 *and* low cost. French electricity is far, far less co2 intensive than German power, and is far cheaper, for example.

    "Also, if you're going to use fast breeders to counter the claim that there are genuine and well-founded concerns about uranium supply, then you should also be up-front about the cost of electricity from those fast breeders and the current state of production readiness of the technology. Exactly how far away are we from large-scale rollout of fast breeders (especially given how far behind schedule and over budget the first two EPRs are, and they're conventional reactors!)? How much CO2 can be abated by continuing to build wind farms at the present rate in the meantime?"

    We don't need to build fast breeders yet, although we know how to do it. Many countries have built fast breeders, such as France and Japan. The Russians have a fast reactor, the BN600 which they are already selling commercially for export. The technology is here. It works. Yes, it is a little bit more expensive than conventional once-through nuclear power plants, but this will probably change sometime this century or the next. In order to move to a low-co2, nuclear energy supply, breeders, fast breeders, and fast reactors will be built. Another reason to build such plants is because they result in far less nuclear waste. However, since the amount of nuclear waste is already very small for nuclear, making it even smaller is not a very important goal. For example, in the French nuclear power system, the total amount of nuclear waste per Frenchman is the size of a 20 EURO-cent coin. Tiny, tiny amount of waste, in other words. Easily handled.

    Wind farms can abate a lot of co2 emissions. But not enough, because they cannot supply most of the electricity you need. You need backup, which will be powdered coal or natural gas. Burning coal or gas releases huge amounts of carbon per unit of energy, compared to nuclear power. An energy system running on wind farms (and solar farms) and natural gas backup generators will not nearly achieve the amount of co2 reduction that we need, unless the amount of wind farms and solar farms becomes unreasonably large, leading to massive curtailment and massive hits to the economics.

  13. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Chappo@4

    OHC  - Ocean Heat Content (you found it)

    LST - Land surface temps

    AHC- Atmosphere Heat Content (I concede may have made it up)

    ENSO - ElNino Southern Oscilation Index

    ARGO - refered in the article itself

  14. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @89, if I understand you correctly, you have asked me to not analyze what you say because you feel free to express opinions you do not believe online.  Is that correct?

    If so, there is indeed no point in analyzing, or responding to any thing you write; for there is no reason to suppose you willingness to express opinions you do not hold is limited on any point.

    It also raises an interesting point for the moderators.  What exactly is the comment policy on people who accuse themselves of dishonesty?

    Regardless, given your now stated policy on being truthful in expressing your opinions online, I feel that I have no choice but to regard you as a troll in future.

  15. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Dana,

    Eyeballing the figure, it look as if the warming rates of all layers have been faster in the first half of last decade 2000-4 than today. What's the explanation? Would it be that current ENSO have been slowly transitioning to ElNino?

    Second question. Those dashed W/m2 lines are hard to align with 3 trends in order to estimate how the ocean is balancing its energy. If we were to estimate that, would it be in the order of 0.5 or 0.7W ? And what's the relationship between that energy flux and TOA radiative imbalance? I guess not necessarily 1:1...

  16. A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy

    "Let's start with understanding the basics before we move to extract all the uranium from the world ocean. How do we keep rats out of the switchboards of nuclear power plants? More to the point, how do we account for the foible of human nature that means we overlook the possibility of a rat interrupting the primary flow of cooling water at a fission generation facility?"

    The best solution would be to use fission technology that is not dependent on flowing cooling water. Inherently safe reactors, in other words. Current commercial reactor technology is based on scaled-up versions of 1950's submarine reactor technology. While the submarine reactors are inherently safe, when they were scaled-up for commercial power generation, the inherent safety feature was lost due to core power scaling more quickly than heat dissipation capacity (i.e. volume increased more than surface area of the core), and the need for uninterrupted cooling was introduced.

    In order to mitigate the problem of not having absolute containment, all nuclear reactors today were fitted and are fitted with secondary containment structures which will capture most or all of the radioactivity in case of 'rats in the swithcboard'. This worked well at TMI and reasonably well at Fukushima, although at Fukushima, some volatile radioactive material escaped through human failure (wrong operation of emergency vents), although the amount lost was arguably not very dangerous. While Fukushima is measurably contaminated with radionuclides, the contamination is rather benign, as stated recently by the WHO. Even in the worst case prognosis, about 1000 lives will in future be cut short due to Fukushima, which of course is a tiny, tiny amount of health effect compared to the at least 1.000.000 people *every year* who die from fossil burning polution world wide. In the EU alone, the usage of coal burning generating plants causes 18.000 people te die *every year*. While we need nuclear power to be as safe as possible, it is necessary to compare any health effects to the alternative: coal. To make nuclear power safer, it would be good to move to reactor designs that are not dependent on forced cooling.

  17. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Chris - could you kindly translate your plethora of acronyms into plain english please ?


    Ps:  OHC - Acronyms and Abbreviations - The Free Dictionary
    acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/OHCAcronym, Definition. OHC, Overhead Camshaft. OHC, Outer Hair Cells. OHC, Ocean Heat Content. OHC, Ontario Health Coalition (Canada). OHC, Order of the ...

    - What does D-LST stand for? D-LST Acronym / Abbreviation Meaning ...
    worddetail.org/acronym_and_abbreviation/d-lst25+ items – Find out more on D-LST similar meanings, acronyms and ...
    No Abbreviation Stand For
    1 D-LST Drug lymphocyte stimulation test
    1 D-M Diencephalon-mesencephalon
    What does LST stand for? LST Acronym / Abbreviation Meaning ...
    worddetail.org/acronym_and_abbreviation/lst/2LST abbreviation stands for: Leishmanin skin test. There are 62 meanings or full forms for LST in total. | Page: 2.

  18. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Does the ocean heat data suggest that 'global warming' only started around 1975 (ironically as solar irradiance started to decrease somewhat). Or rather what little warming did occur before that date was being dumped into the low thermal mass of the atmosphere?  I suppose we would need to know more about ocean temperatures before the 1950s to confirm that, but based on the limited timespan of measurements it's an interesting possibility.

  19. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    That confirms my opinion pronounced here a year or two ago, that we should use OHC as the measure of GW rate. We should virtually discontinue watching the LST with their ElNino/LaNina perturbations. Those perturbations have much  lesser impact on OHC. In fact, current LaNina cycle should have "apparently" increased the OHC, contributing to the subject acceleration.

    Few yaers back, we did not know how to measure OHC, now with the ARGO float we do measure it better and better. At some point I guess we may measure it so accurately that the difference betwen OHC and AHC (from global and vertical temps profile) will be used as a measure of ENSO.

  20. geoffchambers at 18:48 PM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Tom Curtis

    Please stop analysing my answers. I gave Timothey Mcveigh etc as examples of things I might say in an online survey. Or not. Since I see what you’re getting at, I’ve decided that I no longer believe that Prince Philip killed Lady Di. So there.

    See what I mean? Ask someone face to face who they’ll vote for and they’ll likely give you an honest answer. Ask questions on-line about subjects hardly anyone knows about , with no possibility of saying you don’t know and anything can happen. Or nothing.

    I know nothing about McVeigh, so the only honest answer would be “don’t know”. But this wasn’t permitted in the survey, and so I would have been tempted to go for ”strong belief” one way or the other. I believe strongly in people having strong opinions. I don’t believe in on-line surveys, (-snip-).

    By the way, the age range was from 10 to 95, according to the paper. Another reason for naming LOG12 as Unusual Survey of the Year.

    Moderator Response: [DB] Inflammatory snipped.
  21. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    Could I suggest it might be more accurate, and appropriate, to echo Neven's description - that the Greenland ice sheet surface was melting, rather than claim that "almost all of the Greenland Ice Sheet was melting at one point" which is not the kind of scientifically accurate description I have come to expect from SkS?

  22. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @78 (conspiracy theory).

    Well, I'm glad we have that sorted.  I cannot help noting, however, that your "I tend to find it credible" is considerably weaker than your WUWT statement that "I strongly agree".  It is also a far cry from considering it credible that CIA agents may be tempted to perform illegal acts, and considering simply part of their job (as indicated at WUWT).

    For the record, I have no opinion on Timothy McVeigh because I lack relevant information (and have never tried to find it).  I consider a plot to kill Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jnr implausible, and that while there is some suggestive evidence in the first case (I have not examined the second), it is insufficient to overcome the inherent implausibility of the theory and there is counter evidence.  So, my response is to refuse to answer the McVeigh question as any answer would mispresent my opinion; to weakly disagree on the Kennedy assassination, and to strongly disagree on the Martin Luther King assassination.  I strongly disagree with all other CY theories on the survey.

    All three scenarios are sufficiently plausible that they could be true (absent all evidence); but not sufficiently plausible that you would accept them in the absence of strong evidence.

    The question though, is not whether they are true or not.  In LOG12, the survey tests for the likelihood of accepting a conspiracy theory.  Somebody who accepts only one theory is still a conspiracy theorist but is not particularly prone to accepting them.  Somebody who accepts three, particularly somebody who strongly agrees with three...  Well, it seems to me they are setting a very low bar for acceptance for conspiracy theories.  They are reasonably classified as prone to conspiracist ideation.

  23. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @78:

    1)  Each recursive theory which shows "unreflexive counterfactual thinking" shows counterfactual thinking in that they could only be valid criticisms of LOG12 if at least one of the "skeptic" blogs had posted the survey.  As none of them did, the theories in question presupose counterfactual conditions for relevance.

    This is most obvious in theory 5:

    "Di fferent versions of the survey (5). Because question order was counterbalanced between di fferent versions of the LOG12 survey, links to the various versions were quasi-randomly assigned to participating blogs. The existence of di fferent versions of the survey gave rise to several hypotheses, for example that ". . . the most troubling new revelation appears to be that some climate skeptic blogs got di fferent questionaires [sic] than their counterpart AGW advocate blogs. . . . this negates the study on the basis of inconsistent sampling".  This hypothesis rests on counterfactual thinking: Even if survey versions had di ffered on some variable other than question order, given that none of the "skeptic" blogs posted the link and hence did not contribute responses, any claim regarding the published data based on those di fferences among versions rests on a counterfactual state of the world. Arguably, this hypothesis also rests on the presumption of nefarious intent and the belief that something must be wrong (NI, MbW )."

    (My emphasis)

    Clearly the quoted claim that the different question order "negates the study" is counterfactual in that, as the "skeptic" blogs never published the survey, the different question order for "skeptic" blog versions of the survey had no impact on the data collected.  Ergo it has no impact on the published paper.

    This is explained in LCOM13 each time the claim is made.  It is even explained that the claim that "skeptic" blogs were contacted later "... never matured to the point of clarifying how this delay could have had any bearing on the outcome of the study ...", but it is included as counterfactual in that any criticism of the database and hence paper based on the delayed contact must necessarilly be counterfactual.   

    Your inability to understand the explanation represents neither a flaw in the paper, nor a slander of any person (named or otherwise).

    2)  The fact that John Cook notified people of the survey on the SkS twitter feed rather than on the blog site itself is not an error in LCOM13 as LCOM13 does not make any claim to the contrary.  Rather, they quote a claim in LOG12, which does make that claim.  That is entirely appropriate because the actual event is not germaine to LCOM13, whereas the reported event against which the various hypotheses where directed was.

    3)  I am disinclined to say anybody is without bias, myself included.  More importantly, so were LCOM13, who only indicated that the two authors of LCOM13 who were also authors of LOG12 had a particular cause of bias, and that as a control for that, they were excluded from the data collection.

    Consequently, your claim that LCOM13 "... insist on the fact that the authors of the content analysis have been chosen for their lack of bias", is pure bunk and a straightforward misprepresentation of the claims in LCOM13.  Where I as hypercritical as you are, I would no doubt charge you with lying here.  Instead, I suspect you are simply so upset by the paper that you have not bothered to read carefully what it actually says.

    Again, your inability to read and comprehend what was written in LCOM13 is not a valid criticism of LCOM13

  24. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoffchambers @78

    "...I tend to find it credible that the fascist Timothy McVeigh had assistance from his fascist friends; that the communist / CIA agent Lee Harvey Oswald had assistance from his friends of one kind or another......I have no difficulty in imagining that the CIA (and possibly Texan Oil interests) conspired in the murder of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Therefore I am a Big Oil funded conservative...."

    No Geoff. Those things do not make you a conservative - they make you a conspiracy theorist.

  25. David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming

    Cicco, if AR4 is too ancient for you, there's always Jones et al. (2013). 

  26. Bert from Eltham at 11:45 AM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    It all seems to me that denial of having symptoms of conspiracist ideation is on the rise. When plotted as a time dependant function it looks just like the dreaded 'hockey stick' so often derided by deniers of AGW. There is a positive feedback in all this denial of having conspiracist ideation. Even when redefining your posts as being on the side of science or defending real science it is adding to these symptoms. Bert

  27. Steve Metzler at 10:56 AM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    I'm so glad that Tom Curtis explained that Brad Keyes imagines sites like Skeptical Science, Real Climate, and Open Mind are anti-science, whereas SPPI, Morano, Bishop Hill et. al. are 'science defending'. His perception of reality is completely flipped. I thought I was going crazy there for a while the other day reading the comments here, but now I understand why Brad has a thread all to himself on Deltoid. One word: containment.

  28. Rob Honeycutt at 10:52 AM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    RE: John @ 80....

    As opposed to how many people have used the term "fury" over the same period.  :-)

  29. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Out of curiosity, how many readers of this thread have used the word, "recursive" in casual conversation during the past twelve months or so?

     

    When discussing implementation strategies for an algorithm?  Not exactly casual, but it has been done...

  30. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    JH: ...how many readers of this thread have used the word, "recursive" in casual conversation during the past twelve months or so?

    Raises hand. 

  31. David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming

    Cicco - I would have to say one of the most clear illustrations of a climate null hypothesis, that of what we would expect with only natural forcings, is incorporated in the IPCC AR4 report:

    All forcings vs. Natural forcings

    [Source]

    Where the top illustration is the result of modeling temperatures with both natural and anthropogenic forcings, and the bottom is the result of modeling temperatures with only the natural forcings. Natural forcings alone, given the physics, would have resulted in temperatures some 0.8C cooler over the Industrial Era.

    Add to that, in the context of this thread, that ocean heat content has done nothing but rise in the last 50 years (see Fig. 1 in the opening post) whereas the null hypothesis would be no change. 

    Finally - in every temperature record we have,when you include enough information to separate between a null hypothesis of no warming and a long term warming trend (19-24 years, depending on the record and its short term variations) - you see statistically significant warming. There is really no doubt about that whatsoever. 

  32. David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming

    Hello everyone.  

    Normally in statistics the null hypothesis is that "nothing will change".  In the case of the global mean temperature that would mean that it would remain where we would expect it based upon "natural" events.  

    Given that has anyone seen a 95% or 99% confidence interval of where we'd expect the temperature to be if there was not an underlying change brought about by carbon dioxide?

    For a skeptic, or denialist, to pick on the confidence interval of a "prediction" is inconsequential.  There is no way that that could be modelled in a super accurate manner as there is no way that anyone can know for sure what the strengths of ENSO and solar cycles will be.  

    I'm guessing that if someone was to do a 99% confidence interval of stationarity of global mean temperature, allowing for know cycles that are out of humanity's hands, that the temperatures we have seen in the last few decades would have exceeded that.  

    In other words can we finally put up a statistical arguement to say that "almost surely" the global mean temperature is increasing?  

  33. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Out of curiosity, how many readers of this thread have used the word, "recursive" in casual conversation during the past twelve months or so?

  34. Pete Dunkelberg at 09:12 AM on 25 March 2013
    Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    This year so far, the Arctic has not matched last years high temperatures:

    http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php 

    Yet it seems that more cold air is pouring south from the Arctic than last year, at least in March. Is there a unified explanation for last year's high temperatures and this year's overall cooler Arctic?

    Why did the Arctic temperature plummet at around day 50?

  35. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    @geoffchambers:

    Out of curiosity, what is your position on Agenda 21?

  36. geoffchambers at 08:43 AM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Tom Curtis

    I’ve added a couple more errors at Frontiers, including the one which you admitted here. (-snip-).

    The point is, when you accuse named people of “counterfactual thinking” in a scientific paper, you need to be whiter than the whitest sepulchre. And when you insist on the fact that the authors of the content analysis have been chosen for their lack of bias; and (-snip-).

    On me and conspiracy theories:

    I tend to find it credible that the fascist Timothy McVeigh had assistance from his fascist friends; that the communist / CIA agent Lee Harvey Oswald had assistance from his friends of one kind or another, and so on. I would regard those who deny such possibilities as “conformist”.

    It’s odd, don’t you think, that those like Lewandowsky who treat the questioning of the official version of events as psychologically deviant, consider themselves as radical? I have no difficulty in imagining that the CIA (and possibly Texan Oil interests) conspired in the murder of Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Therefore I am a Big Oil funded conservative. Go figure.

    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Moderation complaints and Inflammatory snipped.

    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.

    Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.

    Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.

    Please take the time to review the Comments Policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.

  37. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Brad Keys @69

    You have missed dghoza's point completely.

    There is no controversy, because:

    1 - climate change is well established by science and evidence. Thrre is no controversy about it at all, except in the minds of those who deny science.

    2 - there is no controversy about the well established fact that many climate change deniers are also conspiracy theorists.  Anyone who has spent any time at all on climate change blogs knows that - from beliefs like scientiists are faking the science to obtain grant money, to its all a conspiracy to impose a socialist world government.  I have seen them all, time and time again.  Now there is supposed to be a conspiracy by Lewandowsky and Cook to discredit climate change 'sceptics' by equating them with conspiracy theorists.  My irony meter explodes every time I read threads like this. It is one of the most entertaining and hilarious things I get to read each day.

  38. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @60:

    "I can’t answer you in detail for reasons I can’t explain"

    In that case the evidence from your WUWT will have to stand.  And on that evidence you believe strongly at least three of the LOG12 survey conspiracies, including at least one involving assassinations. 

    "LCOM13 contained errors. More than 3; more like 30. It was wrong."

    No where near 30.  More like three, or possibly 4 substantive errors which at least one of the authors wants corrected prior to the paper being in print; and no error invalidating the primary thesis.

  39. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @61, that again?  Obsess much, do we?

    OK, John Cook tweeted the survey for LOG12 rather than posting it on SkS proper.  He then advised Lewnadowsky that the survey had been posted, and a year later when you questioned him, remembered only that it had been posted, and not that the post had only been by tweet.  Indeed, he's a busy person so posting on SkS proper may have slipped from his mental "to-do" list to his mental "done" list almost immediately.

    What follows?

    Is LOG12 distorted by an under representation of acceptors of the IPCC concensus as a result?  Does it make any substantive difference to the paper?

    The answer clearly is no to both.  The "error" in the paper is properly corrected prior to publication by a footnote saying that the SkS notice was tweeted rather than blogged; and is of so minor consequence it requires no erratum after publication.

    Only those determined to find every fault and blow them up without regard to any sense of proportion would care, let alone care and be pursuing the issue a year later. That you are doing so tells us nothing about the quality of LOG12, but shows that as a reviewer of LOG12 you are obsessive and biased.  That you are a conspiracy theorist suggests why.  The thesis of LOG12, ie, that people prone to conspiracist thinking are also more prone to anthropogenic global warming denial than are the rest of the population, strikes a little too close to home for your comfort. 

  40. Enhanced SkS Graphics Provide New Entry Point into SkS Material

    Well done, thank you guys.

  41. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    @John Cook:

    Do you now have enough raw material from this comment thread for another paper in your series?

  42. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Sphaerica,

    You can't see the irony? Really?

    Er, if we could both see it it wouldn't be ironic, would it?

  43. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    The comment that the leads freeze up rather quickly and the second comment that there is about as much ice volume now at its peak as there was last year hint at something interesting.  One would expect more ice to form each winter in this transition stage to a new climate regime.  If there is a cover of insullating ice on Sept 15, as was the case many years ago, heat has to conduct through this ice into the atmosphere in order to freeze more ice to the bottom of the ice sheet.  With open water or thin ice, heat transfer is much faster.  Later in the sequence, when the Arctic is open water, say, at the first of August, so much heat could be accumulated by the Arctic ocean that less total  ice will be formed in the winter.  The present situation may go some way to explain the increased influx of Atlantic water since more brine is being formed by the greater amount of ice formed and this sinking, south flowing brine is being replace on the surface from the south.  Incidentally, go to the NSIDC site for November and it is reported about half way down that open water is causing rising air and a little further down that winds are coming from the south.  Sounds very much like a reversal of the Polar Hadley cell which should occur in the fall as the land rapidly cools down.   Note also that the high pressue  is due to cold dense air falling.  , spreading out southward with a clockwise spin provided by coriolis.  It is weakening as this cooling decreases.  When some serious heat is collected by the Arctic ocean as the state of openness comes earlier and earlier in the year, we should have longer and longer periods of rising air with air sucked from the south and with a counter clockwise spin.  Coriolis  tends to push floating ice in the conventional clockwise rotating Beauford gyre toward the centre.  In a Counter clockwise rotation, which would be caused by rising air, Coriolis will tend to send the ice outward.  If strong enough, a reversed Beauford gyre should have upwelling of deep Atlantic water at its centre.

  44. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Brad,

    You can't see the irony?  Really?

  45. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Brad,

    He didn't ask "what controversy?"

    He asked "what scientific controversy."

    The fact that you'd like to argue doesn't make the argument worth having.

  46. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Sphaerica, you refer to

    a small community of "victims" who have identified themselves as separate and special

    It sounds like you're skeptical (as it were!) of their claims that they were targeted by an organised email campaign of death threats and had to relocate to higher-security facilities. I share your cynicism. Their victimhood was... convenient. :-)

  47. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
    dhogaza:"What scientific controversy?"This is a climate-change website. The scientific controversy has to do with how the global average temperature has responded and will respond to industrial carbon-dioxide emissions, and whether the effects will be net-beneficial or net-detrimental, and whether we need to do anything to moderate them.
  48. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Brad,

    I'm not going to engage you, because this is silly.  John Cook's paper says it all, and I have no intention of spending my time arguing about "sides" that have been entirely fabricated by a small community of "victims" who have identified themselves as separate and special.

  49. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    "Yes, it's unfortunate that a scientific controversy should play out along partisan lines."

     

    What scientific controversy?

  50. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Sphaerica, sorry, we cross-posted. I substantially agree with your latest comment:

    The whole concept of sides in this is warped.

    (Now that it's clearer what your position is, I take back my "speak for yourself" remark.)

    Yes, it's unfortunate that a scientific controversy should play out along partisan lines. Nevertheless, it's possible (and appropriate) to acknowledge that it has done so, without necessarily condoning it.

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