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Rob Honeycutt at 13:26 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
If I'm not mistaken, Pachauri wasn't even actually quoted. The reporter merely stated that Pachauri made the statement without providing an actual quote, nor providing a reference to where or when he was supposed to have made such a statement.
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chriskoz at 13:22 PM on 28 February 2013How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?
Thanks gws.
To recap my understanding, together with some numbers. Looking at this Carbon Cycle picture and figures 1 (NPP at preindustrial CO2 280ppm) and 2 (dNPP per doubled CO2 to 560ppm, let's call it "NPP sensitivity" or dNPP) above, I deduce:
- NPP 60Pg (or 60Gt) per 150Mkm2 (land surface area) means 0.4kg/m2 and that is the average value on Figure 1
- It's hard to eyeball the average NPP sensitivity from Figure 2 but it looks as "green" as Figure 1, then in the order of 0.2-0.4kg/m2, therefore average NPP sensitivity could result in a staggering doubling of 57pG NPP flux shown on carbon cycle and drawing that +204Pg from the atmosphere pretty quickly. That conclusion sounds incredible, prodived that fertilisation effect has hard limits and levels out in most autophytic species. I would not expect that dNPP could have such potential (in the ideal conditions of abundance of water & other nutrients). Perhaps I read Figure 2 incorrectly or my calculations are wrong.
- How much of that red 2.4Pg "Land sink" flux shown on Carbon Cycle picture is due to dNPP, remians highly uncertain.
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AndyS at 13:18 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Yes I am familiar with The Escalator. I am not getting involved in a discussion of whether there is actually a pause or not. See #51
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:14 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS... If you look at the animated GIF near the top of the right-hand column of this page you'll see "The Esculator."
The surface temperature record is a noisy data set. We expect to see periods that are level in a rising trend. What you might take note of is, the observed trend of the past 15, 16, 17, whatever number of years is not negative. You don't see temps falling anything close to what the have risen in recent decades.
The other thing you should note is that the radiative forcing from increased GHG's continued to rise. No one can expect that we can continue to increase radiative forcing and anything but warming, in spite of its stocatic behavior of the surface temperature record, to continue.
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70rn at 13:14 PM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Wait, suggesting this at you guys? Lol, no. I don't think taking down websites really has that much organizational bent to it. It has to do with people having an overly personalised view of the world, and seeing suppression of opinion counter to theirs as some form of defensive action. It's pretty obvious to me that such behaviour been heavilly directed towards pro-CC science urls, and a typical component of the mindset set appears to be focusing on specific individuals, and their supposed motives. I just find it really obnoxious regardless of the target.
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AndyS at 12:50 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Yes I did mean surface temps, thanks for the clarification. I am not really querying the technical details. I do accept the relatively short time scale and large error bars. What I am querying is the message presented to the public. Not just Pachauri, but also James Hansen in the "state of temps" report he did recently where there was some reference to pause or hiatus (can't remember the exact details).See #51 for my actual questions
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:43 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS (not Andy S) said... "...does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?"
"Land temps?" I think you're actually looking to ask about surface temps because land only temps are certainly greater than surface temp alone.
What is continually missed in the "temps have plateaued" argument is, this is yet another discussion about statistical significance. Temps have risen, but the observed trend doesn't rise to the 95% confidence level. That means that there is a chance the trend may be an element of noise in the data.
So, if you think about it for just a short moment, there is also a likelihood that the observed trend is actually higher rather than lower than the observed trend. But (fake) skeptics tend to ignore this fact.
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AndyS at 12:38 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
#48 Phillippe Chantrelle. Unlike your ad hom comment directed at me, my last one was directly relevant to the post.
So if the SkS postion is that there is no "pause" in warming by any definition, then these questions arise.(1) Was Pachauri misrepresented by The Australian?
(2) Was he badly briefed?
(3) Does he actually hold the views as presented, and if so why?
(4) Is he playing a political game to make the sceptic arguments sound irrelevant?
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Tom Curtis at 12:13 PM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS @46, the IPCC AR4 prediction for increase in global mean surface temperature over the period from 2001 - 2030 is 0.2 C per decade. Checking Gisstemp, the only global surface temperature record (HadCRUT3 and 4 and NCDC are not global, and UAH is not a surface temperature record), I find the that 15 year trend is 0.058 +/- 0.248 C per decade. That indicates that the short duration of measurement means there is insufficient data from the temperature record from Jan 1998 forward to determine whether trend is 0.306 C per decade, or - 0.19 C per decade, or some point in between. The error bars do not just tell you that the trend cannot be distinguished from zero. They also tell you that it cannot be distinguished from a value 50% greater than the IPCC projections.
So, I am certainly happy to accept the temperature record since 1998 is two short to distinguish between accelerated warming, and a reversal of warming. That, of course, being all that the error bars tell you. I am also happy to accept that the measured trend is positive, not zero.
I am not happy, as the deniers are trying to do, to say that the temperature record alone since 1998 is insufficient to distinguish between zero trend and 50% greater than IPCC projected trend, and that therefore the IPCC projection has been falsified - which is what the deniers have been repeatedly trying to do.
I will certainly not do so when the use of additional information beyond the temperature record (ie, the ENSO record, etc) shows the underlying trend to be about 0.212 +/- 0.097 C per decade.
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CTG at 11:51 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Still haven't bothered to learn any statistics, eh Andy? Leaving aside the issue of cherrypicked time periods, it is not true to say that if the slope of a linear trend is not significantly different from zero then the slope is equal to zero. It is simply that zero is included in the range of the possible values of the true slope of the trend.
Also, confidence limits on a regression are two-tailed, so it would be equally justified to claim that the rate of warming has increased over the last 15 years, as the high end of the confidence limits includes values greater than the warming trend over the last 40 years. This highlights the importance of choosing the correct null, as keithpickering pointed out earlier. The question is not whether or not there has been warming in the last 15 years, but is the trend of the last 15 years consistent with the earlier warming trend. Until such time as you can demonstrate that the current trend has deviated from the previous trend in a statistically significant way, you cannot claim that there has been "no warming".
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:43 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Signs are accumulating that point to an increasing likelihood of any exchange with Andy S to be a waste of time.
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dana1981 at 11:31 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
AndyS @46 - "does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?"
Nope, that's not accurate. The surface temp trend over the past 15 years is small, but still positive, even if starting in 1997/8 (which is a cherrypick due to the massive El Niño that year).
"there is a difference between the statement "global warming has stopped" and "there has been no significant change in surface temperature anomaly".
That's certainly true.
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AndyS at 11:04 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Leaving aside the ocean warming issue, does SkS accept that there has been no warming of land temps for the last 15 years or so?
i.e there is a difference between the statement "global warming has stopped" and "there has been no significant change in surface temperature anomaly". -
Philippe Chantreau at 10:28 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
There is a sizeable portion the conservative population that calls liberal media any outlet that publishes anything that is found threatening to an ideology with which there is an overwhelming emotional involvement. George Will demonstrates how that emotional involvement gets the better of one's judgement. A very clear example of this was given by the latest election.
As results started to come in and forecast could be made more and more accurate, any source projecting a result that was emotionally unacceptable was subjected to some sort of attack, often personal and removed from the subject matter. Eventually an more emotionally pleasing reality was substituted to the threatening one, and it was kept up by all possible means until denial became competely impossible to keep up.
The same behavior is observed toward AGW or anything that threatens the ideology. In the case of AGW, denial is rendered easier and deeper by the slow pace, the relatively subtle changes and the solid scientific litteracy necessary to understand the subject, litteracy that lacks in a large portion of the general population. I predict that, even when summer Arctic sea ice will have become a thing of the past, there will still be plenty of denial to go around.
George Will or Kevin's behaviors are predictable and understandable: they are defense mechanisms.
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Tom Curtis at 09:05 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
pelewis @17, unless Will's point that you should not base policy on minority views in science; but only on a solid concensus, your claim is simply false. Of course, if that was his point, as a firm concensus is in favour of sequestration, Will's article is self refuting.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:02 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
pelewis... Your statement makes no sense without anything to back up your conclusion.
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pelewis at 08:18 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
I'd say this article does a pretty good, although unintentional, job of supporting Will's statements. But then it is normal for Global Warming enthusiasts to intrepret contrary evidence as supporting evidence.
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Daniel Bailey at 07:55 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
If you are suggesting that this is a tit-fot-tat hacking exercise, you are posting on the correct thread for you.
It's conspiracies, like turtles, all the way down.
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George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin - I'm afraid you're just reinforcing Tom Curtis's observations. Will is portraying 'mainstream' climate science in the 1970's as having been in error, as a necessary antecedent for his assertion that mainstream science is wrong now.
You are the one who referred to the 'liberal media' and to liberals, not Will. That assertion of a biased media would in fact undermine Wills argument - it's entirely opposite to his claim.
As it stands:
- Wills argument was wrong the first time he made it (as his quotes are not science papers, represented minority views, and include previous/current climate denialists)
- It's wrong now (nothing has changed in his references, and he's been shown repeatedly to be incorrect)
- You have with your introduction of the phrase "liberal media" indicated your position and outlook (an outlook not commonly open to persuasion or to facts).
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Magma at 07:42 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin @14, Science Magazine, which dates back to 1880, is one of the top two general science journals in the world.
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Kevin8233 at 07:29 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
The New York Times
Science Magazine
International Wildlife
Science Digest
Christian Science Monitor
Newsweek.
These are not you typical locations to see peer reviewed science papers. The article was written to demonstrate Will's belief that the President and liberals were/are participating in hysteria mongerring.
Those quotes about climotologists are agreed etc were the titles of the articles, not his opinions.
I did not misrepresent Will's argument.
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Tom Curtis at 07:14 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin's comment @5 is probably more revealing than he would like. What George will wrote was:
'Remember when “a major cooling of the climate” was “widely considered inevitable” (New York Times, May 21, 1975) with “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation” (Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976) which must “stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery” (International Wildlife, July 1975)? Remember reports that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973)? Armadillos were leaving Nebraska, heading south, and heat-loving snails were scampering southward from European forests (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974). Newsweek (April 28, 1975) said meteorologists were “almost unanimous” that cooling would “reduce agricultural productivity.” '
Note the lack of mention of the term "liberal media". Therefore it is Kevin, not George Will who has classified Science as part of the "liberal media". Presumably Nature, PNAS, etc are also "liberal media" in his eyes.
While on the subject of Science Magazine, the discussion of "Future Climate" in the paper Will cites (all two paragraphs of it) indicates that in the absence of anthropogenic factors, "... the long term trend over the next 20,000 years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and a cooler climate". (My emphasis) What scaremongering. Suggesting that in the absence of anthropogenic factors we may face future glaciation sometime in the next 20,000 years. (/sarc)
In fact, in defending Wills, Kevin completely misrepresents his argument. Wills is at pains to suggest that there was a concensus of scientists believing in global cooling in the 1970s, hence the quotation of comments such as "the world's climatologists are agreed" and 'meteorologists were “almost unanimous” ' . That suggestion is necessary to his argument because there is undoubtedly a concennsus now that human emissions are causing global warming. By restricting the claim to "liberal media" Kevin undermines its logical force (even if he makes it more accurate).
As a final note, the most breathless quote reported by Wills is from International Wildlife, saying that global cooling must "stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery". That quote is from Nigel Calder, co-author with Svenmark of "The Chilling Stars". So the irony is that while Will can ony suggest the scare mongering of scientists by misrepresentation, he provides evidence that one of the denier's own darlings is a poor analyst of climate data, and not to be trusted.
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70rn at 06:12 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Not to add to the conspiracy theories, but incidentally it looked like Dr Spencer's blog just got hacked/taken down. These silly back and forth games on the internet aren't helping anyone.
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william5331 at 06:00 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Granted that most conspiracy theories are nutty and the proponents nuttier still but that doesn't mean that there are no conspiracies. People in power are always trying to gain an advantage by whatever means they can and if sufficiently insullated by their position, get a strong feeling of entitlement. Madof and his ponsie scheme was an example and price fixing between two ostensibly competing super market chains another. If there were no conspiracies, we wouldn't need much of our law to make these activities illegal and wouldn't need fraud squads in the police to catch them. Best not to go to the other extreme and dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. All we can do is consider each one based on the weight of evidence and be ready to change our minds if different evidence comes to light. The police criteria is not a bad start. Was there motivation and oportunity. Healthy scepticism is what differentiates a scientist from a priest.
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ubrew12 at 05:13 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
George Will is one pundit who, in service to his deeply-held conservative beliefs, will twist almost everything he says. Some part of his mind knows he's repeating a lie, but another part overrules it because it provides much-needed 'confirmation bias' for his readers. In the particular battle for ideas Will and others are engaged in, in America, the truthfulness of those ideas is no longer important. Their 'truthiness' IS.
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bjchip at 05:05 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Dana, John - Check figure 1 caption against the year 1971 in that year. I think the caption wants some correction? as that ONE year of that decade when it isn't. Needn't leave this comment up but you really want to make the caption exactly match the graph. -
Roger D at 05:02 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin@5 - I suppose you can assume Will is not promoting the idea that the media's distortion of what scientists "really thought" as indicated in the survey of peer reviewed papers in Figure 1, and instead say he is simply saying the "liberal media" got it wrong about an imminent ice age and are wrong now about the impact of the sequester. But that was his point, it would have been easy for him to simply add a sentence clarifying that the "liberal media" was wrong in the 1970's because they were misinterpreting or misrepresenting the then-current state of the science. But he didn't - and the likely reason is because he doesn't respect the now-current state of scientific understanding. Which is why Will himself is acting just like the "liberal media" did regarding ice age stories in the 70's.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:42 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
What Will cites is quite irrelevant. He's pushing the "scientists predicted cooling on the 70's" thing, which is a fat pile of BS. Anyone who actually has looked into it knows it's BS. Will knows it's BS.If he doesn't by now, he has likely gone somewhat senile. It is rather sad that the W.P. is compromising itself with such nonsense.
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DSL at 04:25 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
What Magma said, Hayduke. We now know with high confidence that orbital forcing is no match for anthro forcing. See Tzedakis et al. (2012).
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jsam at 03:59 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Many of the comments to the HuffPost article demonstrate further recursion. It's turtles all the way down.
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dana1981 at 03:59 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Kevin @5 - if you want to compare apples to apples, then Will should have listened to climate scientists in the 1970s, and he should be listenting to economists about the effects of the sequester today (which he is not doing, but that's off-topic).
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dana1981 at 03:57 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Hayduke @2 - again, it sounds like you're referring to very long-term climate changes, not imminent ones.
Magma @3 - good point.
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Kevin8233 at 03:55 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
I believe we may have an apples and oranges thing here.
Will did not claim anything as far as peer reviewed papers goes. He just listed several stories in the media. To refute his anology with a chart of peer reviewed papers is not accurate. He doesn't even make the claim that these articles that he is citing are the majority of the articles written on the subject, or that they are even written by scientists - in fact, he is implying that they were written by the "liberal media".
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Dennis at 03:41 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
I'm surprised that Will would head back into this territory. Several of his recent climate-myth laced opinion pieces have resulted in the Post publishing rebuttals from scientists. I think one even generated an article by the paper's ombudsman. I guess he feels safer in the 1970's. He has become a laughingstock inside the DC area with recent opinion pieces on the evils of blue jeans and criticism of an elementary schools' student government elections. I think the single biggest reason he still gets published is because his peers have gotten even worse with the facts.
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Magma at 03:35 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
The final paragraph of the 1976 Hays, Imbrie and Shackleton Science paper seems clear enough (emphasis added):
7) A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next several thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.
But perhaps Will hasn't had a chance to read it yet.
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Hayduke2000 at 03:29 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
The 1970s global cooling concern was engendered by a 1972 conference at Brown University called "The present interglacial: how and when will it end?" (Quaternary Research, November 1972). George Kukla and Robert Matthews, who organized the meeting, wrote to President Nixon about the need to study climatic change that might signal the onset of renewed glaciation. Concern for global cooling was very real and well documented.
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dana1981 at 03:24 AM on 28 February 2013The BEST Kind of Skepticism
KR @111 - that analysis was most recently updated with Wigley and Santer (2012) here, and will be updated with another new attribution study in a post probably next week.
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John Hartz at 02:54 AM on 28 February 2013George Will - Still Recycling Classic Climate Change Myths for The Washington Post
Dana: Kudos on an excellent post.
For those who may not be aware, George Will's columns are routinely re-published in numerous newspapers throughout the U.S. This is why it is so important for authors like Dana to rebute the poppycock about climate science and climate scientists that he frequently spreads.
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The BEST Kind of Skepticism
dvaytw - You might also look at the excellent summary dana1981 posted in A Comprehensive Review of the Causes of Global Warming, discussing eight or nine different studies of the causes of climate change.
The average attribution of warming to human causes is >100%, as without anthropogenic influences the climate should have cooled. Human driven warming has both counteracted natural cooling and added considerable warming over the last 150 years or so.
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Albatross at 01:59 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Hello Desertphile @44,
If I recall correctly, according to the US National Acadamy of Sciences it is correct to refer to the "theory of AGW". But this discussion is now straying off topic.
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dvaytw at 01:48 AM on 28 February 2013The BEST Kind of Skepticism
KR thanks! What an answer! I've been arguing the same-old same-old with "skeptics" on a podunk expat forum in Taiwan, and wow did you ever just help me slam dunk that debate! I already had the guy on the tip of a spear, and with your post, I just drove it right through his chest (lol), as he made this question central to his alleged "skepticism".
Very sorry if this is off-topic, but in case anyone's interested in seeing the debate, please have a look here:
British Met Service buries new climate-change analysis showing no warming trend - p. 17
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Bob Loblaw at 01:32 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Composer99@ 6: "see for example the research of Robert Altemeyer"
FYI, Altemeyer's summary of his career of research is readily available as a free download (one large file, plus a couple of smaller updates) at his web site The Authoritarians.
Chris Mooney also covers a lot of this sort of material. His two books The Republican War on Science and The Republican Brain make for good reading. He discusses Altemeyer's work in the second book (amongst much other research in social psychology). You'll have to buy or borrow (e.g., at a "library") the books.
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Composer99 at 01:00 AM on 28 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Further to Kevin C's point on the ideological independence of conspiracist ideation, I suspect conspiracist ideation tends to be more prevalent in people with more strongly authoritarian personalities, rather than being tied of necessity to specific ideological commitments.
(In the US and most other English-speaking countries, it so happens that the majority of people with stronger authoritarian personalities tend to be clustered in what would be characterised as politically "right-wing" aggregates.)
Based on the characteristics of authoritarian behaviour (see for example the research of Robert Altemeyer), as far as I can see people with stronger authoritarian personalities would be more likely than others to resort to unwarranted conspiracist ideation. In particular, strong levels of in-group/out-group identification (with resulting hostility to out-groups), higher levels of fearfulness regarding the world, and dogmaticism as the last-ditch defence of untenable convictions, strike me as the sorts of traits
(I say unwarranted because, as Kevin C notes regarding Oreskes' work, and as we have seen from history, sometimes people do engage in conspiracies. I personally do not see these as being carefully organized - tobacco or fossil fuel conglomerates do not need to deliberately collude to organize misinformation campaigns; they could easily converge on such activities by virtue of independent or copycat action - or requiring nefarious intent, even if people recognize that their methods are questionable and so work to conceal them to a greater or lesser extent.)
(I also say stronger authoritarian personalities because as far as I am aware everyone is in possession of some, most, or all authoritarian traits to some degree.)
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desertphile at 00:13 AM on 28 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Why was one of my comments removed? I stated a fact: there is no such thing as "AGW theory." There is the theory of physics, which explains human-caused climate change.
Meanwhile: "There appears to be a lot of use of the word 'denier' on this thread which indicates to me a lack of interest in science and a politically biased world view"
1) If a Denialist objects to the word "denier," the Denialist can suggest a better, or different, word to use for her or his behavior: is there a better one? The mental health care profession, when discussing the rejection of the evidence for human-caused climate change, uses the words "denier" and "denialism" and "denialist."
2) Science is supposed to be biased: science that is not biased is not science.
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gws at 21:09 PM on 27 February 2013How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?
thanks for the comments
angliss @1: the Wang paper you mention was not cited, however, the authors are well aware of nutrient limitations and have emphasized that their model does not account for them. Future work is supposed to take this additional step.
keenon350 @4: check out http://aspenface.mtu.edu/ ; ozone is indeed a major culprit, and we tend to underestimate its impact because we are not aware of how much more NPP we could actually get with low to very ozone abundances (<10 ppb), because those do not exist any more in the real world (background now typically is already >30 ppb).
chriskoz @6: numbers in caption fixed. In the paper they actually calculated a lower than contemporary NPP for pre-industrial [CO2], which they attributed "in part" to the lower [CO2]. But to address your question: I would not call the science on this "controversial", but rather "complex". At a particular study site where in-depth research allows studying local carbon cycling as a function of local climate, nutrient availability, and other factors, one may tease out a CO2-fertilization effect, and FACE projects were designed to particularly address the CO2 effect. But in a global model where local conditions are blended by averaging over time, space, and ecosystem type, I think one cannot hope to resolve the numerous drivers such that an accurate picture emerges everywhere. You may get it right for a mature boreal forest but not the African savanna or vice versa. However, the models are of course informed by results from the flux network and other measurements, so they will become more accurate over time, also because more ecosystem flux measurements are now in place in a larger variety of ecosystems than 10-20 years ago. Nevertheless, the models are mostly for guidance of what to expect under different scenarios.
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MA Rodger at 20:58 PM on 27 February 2013Did Murdoch's The Australian Misrepresent IPCC Chair Pachauri on Global Warming?
Tom Curtis @38
The GWPF's self-porclaimed position is more contradictory than simply its choice of name.
The GWPF tells us its "main focus is to analyse global warming policies and their economic and other implications" but most of their output is about the science, or their version of it. This is an even stranger situation for the GWPF because they make great play of not having "an official or shared view about the science of global warming. On climate science, our members and supporters cover a broad range of different views, from the IPCC position through agnosticism to outright scepticism."
This does not stop them bashing out ad nauseam the denialist non-scientific line with, for instance, their present 'headline' story "Lord Lawson Calls On Sir Paul Nurse To Acknowledge Global Temperature Standstill. In a letter to the President of the Royal Society, Lord Lawson has criticised Sir Paul Nurse for denying the reality of a global temperature standstill."
In his "call" as Chairman of the GWPF Lawson directly accuses Nurse of lying because "there has been no further recorded global warming at all for at least the past 15 years, as even the IPCC Chairman, Dr Pachauri, has now conceded. Whatever the precise reason for this, it cannot simply be dismissed or denied." So here we have a denier denying he is in denial, indeed accusing another of being in denial - this on a subject of science which his organisation has supposedly no official or shared view.there has been no further recorded global warming at all for at least the past 15 years, as even the IPCC Chairman, Dr Pachauri, has now conceded. Whatever the precise reason for this, it cannot simply be dismissed or denied. - See more at: http://www.thegwpf.org/lord-lawsons-letter-sir-paul-nurse/#sthash.m6tA4kBV.dpuf -
Kevin C at 19:59 PM on 27 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
The new paper is based on one very important point that I completely failed to grasp on my first reading of the paper.
It is completely unsurprising that many climate contrarians reacted with anger to the original ideation paper - and as a result that reaction provides no evidence of anything. The key point is that the anger reaction was expressed by constructing new conspiracy theories. That provides additional data which tends to support the original hypothesis.
The new data is not without it's problems - there is no control test in this case. Steve Mosher correctly suggests that as a control we would compare the reactions of the consensus community to an attack, although calibrating the results would be problematic. I am doubtful of an exclusive link between conservative ideologies and conspiracy ideation - I gave up reading the liberal newsroll 'Common Dreams' after finding too many stories which sounded like conspiracy theories and did not survive fact checking.
Oreskes' work is the outlier here. It is a conspiracy theory, but one which so far appears not to be born out of consipracy ideation and which survives fact-checking. Of course that does not mean that people of a liberal mindset cannot build it into their own conspiracy ideation. The issue has to be broken down into three separate questions:
1. Does the conspiracy theory survive a skeptical analysis of the evidence? (Roughly, is it true?)
2. Was the conspiracy theory born out of conspiracy-ideated thought processes?
3. Does the conspiracy theory continue to propogate through conspiracy-ideated thought processes?
These questions can have any combination of answers. My guess for Oreskes is that the answers would be yes, no, it varies. (Note: first answer corrected)
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Rob Painting at 17:39 PM on 27 February 2013How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?
Chriskoz - it's still a controversial topic. Clearly land-based plants (mostly trees) are drawing down a sizeable chunk of human CO2 emissions, but is this due to forest re-growth in the tropics, former Soviet Union countries, and China, or is this the fabled fertilization effect?
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chriskoz at 17:32 PM on 27 February 2013How big is the “carbon fertilization effect”?
In Figure 1 caotion, you said:
1 kg m−2 yr−1 is equal to 1 metric tons (t) ha-1 yr-1
I think this is a typo: ha = 10 000m2, therefore it should be 10 000kg or 10 metric tons.
To put the fertilisation effect in a proper context, it would be interesting to know how much of the increased fertilisation effect calculated by this study is currently happening with 40% CO2 increase since preindustrial. We know the fraction of anthropogenic C imbalance uptaken by ocean invasion and by the NH terestrial biosphere (from emissions - Mauna Loa measures and the isotopic footprint of C fluxes), so I think the direct comparison of the existing perturbation of AT carbon cycle and the carbon cycle predicted by this study is possible. Does anyone know of such comparison and can cite some numbers?
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Doug Hutcheson at 16:09 PM on 27 February 2013Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They're Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories
Look how long this post has been up and no conspiracy theorists have yet come here to argue. Clearly, the suggestion that climate science deniers tend also to be conspiracy theorists is invalidated by the lack of conspiratorial theorising on this thread: QED. I think there is a conspiracy, amongst conspiracy theorists, to confuse the climate change debate by not exposing conspiracies that they know must exist. Oh, no! Now I've exposed a conspiracy theory, thereby negating their attempt to hush it up! Where are my tin-foil underpants?
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